
A Translator’s Reckoning with the Women of the Odyssey - diodorus
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/a-translators-reckoning-with-the-women-of-the-odyssey
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DoreenMichele
I wonder if Ms. Emily Wilson has ever spent time as a full-time wife and
homemaker. It does not sound to me like she has.

I have. I spent two decades at it. I often find the way modern working women
portray the traditional female role completely dismissive and scathing, like
it is all downside. I did not experience it as all down side.

I spent a lot of years trying to comprehend how to play the feminine role in
an empowered way, to stop seeing myself as simply a victim. The gist of what I
came to understand can be summed up in the negotiating trope "The first person
to name a number loses."

Emotional labor is a hot buzz word currently that seems to be the fashionable
new way to say that doing women's work makes you a chump, a victim. But I
think it is more complicated than that.

I don't like this trend that I see where modern women translate the stories of
traditional women and are as derisive of the woman's role as men are, if not
more so. The female slaves were executed, but so we're many men. This write up
implies that the death of women has a unique horror to it that we need not
feel over the more prosaic deaths of men.

At the time The Odyssey was written, life was generally harder than it is now.
This was true for both men and women, rich and poor. Death was pretty common.
It was not inherently more wonderful to be an executed male than an executed
female.

~~~
aestetix
I think this is spot on.

I probably won't read Wilson's translation -- I recently read Fagles', and am
not keen to re-read for sake of a new translation, although might be
interested in a comparison of translation differences. But you are correct
that Greek society was very, very different from "modern" society in many
ways.

I was debating going into the ways it is different, but it seems that the
political climate is too toxic, so I will instead link to a fantastic lecture
series on the Odyssey that I personally found enlightening:
[https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/odyssey-of-
homer.htm...](https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/odyssey-of-homer.html)

------
_red
> _But many students, scholars, and general readers want even more from this
> literary character: they want her to fit the ideal of an empowered woman. It
> is comforting to subscribe to the notion—as Daniel Mendelsohn does in his
> recently published memoir, “An Odyssey,” and as Robert Fagles does, in his
> translation of the poem—that the marriage between Odysseus and Penelope is a
> partnership of intellectual equals, based on true love and a shared outlook
> on life. Odysseus speaks, in Homer’s poem, of the ideal of like-mindedness
> (homophrosyne) in marriage._

The modern impulse to impose its cultural norms upon the past is deeply
upsetting. Its a sign of a frail, unsure, and declining culture.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The modern impulse to impose its cultural norms upon the past is deeply
> upsetting.

It's not a modern impulse, it's pretty much an invariant aspect of culture.

Of course, so is the tendency to perceive invariant aspects of culture as both
unique to the present culture and signs of decline.

~~~
ryanx435
> so is the tendency to invariant aspects of culture as .....

What are you trying to say here? Invariant is not a verb, and it's definition
of "never changing" doesn't make sense in the way you used it.

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/invariant](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/invariant)

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
You want the mathematical definition. All cultures judge others according to
their own norms, that's essentially the definition of what a culture is: a set
of norms and behaviors by which things are judged.

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microcolonel
I had figured I might have been misled by euphemisms in translations of
Odyssey, it did seem uncharacteristic of the period in time (even coming from
possibly the most progressive society of the time).

It's important to seek the truth before attempting to change it, and I'm glad
Emily can separate her clear desire to inhabit a different world from (what I
see as) the duty to accurately present the work. If I need a translation of
the Odyssey for myself or someone else, I guess I'll be getting a copy of this
one.

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skadamou
If you thought this was interesting, you might also like Margret Atwood's "The
Penelopiad"

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17645.The_Penelopiad](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17645.The_Penelopiad)

~~~
CalChris
> her twelve hanged maids

Yes, Penelope's maids come to a bad end. I think a lot of critics misread this
as misogyny on Homer's part. However, it is meant to be balanced with the
death of the suitors _and_ also Odysseus' shipmates, leaving only the marriage
at the end.

~~~
skadamou
Hmm, that's an interesting take I had not considered before. I can totally see
where our modern sense of sexuality/morality could get in the way of some of
Homer's subtler themes.

~~~
CalChris
Although I'm very partial to Fitzgerald for the Odyssey and to Lattimore for
the Iliad, I'm really looking forward to Wilson's translation.

~~~
madhadron
I also love Fitzgerald's Odyssey. I tried Wilson's, and it just didn't sing at
all, which really put me off.

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__s
On the topic of female gender & the Odyssey, here's a thesis 'Inhuman and
Heroic Women: Femininity in the Odyssey and the Arthurian Vulgate' which
includes reference to the original Greek text
[https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4157](https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/4157)

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DrScump
Related: last month's NY Times article about Wilson:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624881)

