Which Translation: The Odyssey

Emily Wilson

2017 · Blank verse

Features

IntroNotesGlossaryIndexBibliographyMapsIllustrationsGreek textGreek line numbersLine-by-lineBy Iliad translatorComplete
1,823
Holdings
21
Reviews

Biography

Emily Rose Caroline Wilson (b. 1971) is a British-American classicist and professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, with a B.A. and M.Phil. from Oxford and a Ph.D. from Yale; she received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2019.

Wilson’s translation used iambic pentameter and modern English syntax, matching the original poem’s lines one-for-one. She rejected the ‘grand, ornate, rhetorically elevated’ tone set by Pope, as well as the foreignizing hexameter lines of Lattimore, instead prioritizing readable, idiomatic language.

Hailed as a ‘cultural landmark’ by Charlotte Higgins, Wilson’s translation was the first complete English Odyssey by a woman and received wide critical acclaim for its fresh, rapid verse, its treatment of female characters, and its avoidance of traditional but inaccurate masculine language and euphemisms.

Emily Wilson on Wikipedia ↗

Publication History

  • 2017 — W.W. Norton, The Odyssey ★
  • 2020 — W.W. Norton, The Odyssey: A New Translation, Contexts, Criticism (Norton Critical Edition)
  • 2026 — Folio Society, The Odyssey (illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins)

Reviews

The proem

1.1–11
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.

Penelope's weaving trick

2.96–111
‘Young men, you are my suitors. Since my husband,
the brave Odysseus, is dead, I know
you want to marry me. You must be patient;
I have worked hard to weave this winding-sheet
to bury good Laertes when he dies.
He gained such wealth, the women would reproach me
if he were buried with no shroud. Please let me
finish it!’ And her words made sense to us.
So every day she wove the mighty cloth,
and then at night by torchlight, she unwove it.
For three long years her trick beguiled the Greeks.
But when the fourth year’s seasons rolled around,
a woman slave who knew the truth told us.
We caught her there, unraveling the cloth,
and made her finish it.

Calypso's double standard

5.118–131
“You cruel, jealous gods! You bear a grudge
whenever any goddess takes a man
to sleep with as a lover in her bed.
Just so the gods who live at ease were angry
when rosy-fingered Dawn took up Orion,
and from her golden throne, chaste Artemis
attacked and killed him with her gentle arrows.
Demeter with the cornrows in her hair
indulged her own desire, and she made love
with Iasion in triple-furrowed fields—
till Zeus found out, hurled flashing flame and killed him.
So now, you male gods are upset with me
for living with a man. A man I saved!

Weeping on Calypso's shore

5.151–159
She found him on the shore. His eyes were always
tearful; he wept sweet life away, in longing
to go back home, since she no longer pleased him.
He had no choice. He spent his nights with her
inside her hollow cave, not wanting her
though she still wanted him. By day he sat
out on the rocky beach, in tears and grief,
staring in heartbreak at the fruitless sea.

Nausicaa finds Odysseus

6.127–141
Odysseus jumped up from out the bushes.
Grasping a leafy branch he broke it off
to cover up his manly private parts.
Just as a mountain lion trusts its strength,
and beaten by the rain and wind, its eyes
burn bright as it attacks the cows or sheep,
or wild deer, and hunger drives it on
to try the sturdy pens of sheep—so need
impelled Odysseus to come upon
the girls with pretty hair, though he was naked.
All caked with salt, he looked a dreadful sight.
They ran along the shore quite terrified,
some here, some there. But Nausicaa stayed still.
Athena made her legs stop trembling
and gave her courage in her heart.

War-widow simile

8.521–532
Odysseus was melting into tears;
his cheeks were wet with weeping, as a woman
weeps, as she falls to wrap her arms around
her husband, fallen fighting for his home
and children. She is watching as he gasps
and dies. She shrieks, a clear high wail, collapsing
upon his corpse. The men are right behind.
They hit her shoulders with their spears and lead her
to slavery, hard labor, and a life
of pain. Her face is marked with her despair.
In that same desperate way, Odysseus
was crying.

Cyclops eats the men

9.287–299
But he
made no reply and showed no mercy. Leaping
up high, he reached his hands towards my men,
seized two, and knocked them hard against the ground
like puppies, and the floor was wet with brains.
He ripped them limb by limb to make his meal,
then ate them like a lion on the mountains,
devouring flesh, entrails, and marrow bones,
and leaving nothing. Watching this disaster,
we wept and lifted up our hands in prayer
to Zeus. We felt so helpless. When the Cyclops
had filled his massive belly with his meal
of human meat and unmixed milk, he lay
stretched out among his flocks.

The Nobody trick

9.364–371
‘Cyclops, you asked my name. I will reveal it;
then you must give the gift you promised me,
of hospitality. My name is Noman.
My family and friends all call me Noman.’
He answered with no pity in his heart,
‘I will eat Noman last; first I will eat
the other men. That is my gift to you.’

Circe recognizes Odysseus

10.325–336
‘Who are you?
Where is your city? And who are your parents?
I am amazed that you could drink my potion
and yet not be bewitched. No other man
has drunk it and withstood the magic charm.
But you are different. Your mind is not
enchanted. You must be Odysseus,
the man who can adapt to anything.
Bright flashing Hermes of the golden wand
has often told me that you would sail here
from Troy in your swift ship. Now sheathe your sword
and come to bed with me. Through making love
we may begin to trust each other more.’

Anticlea's shade

11.204–215
Then in my heart I wanted to embrace
the spirit of my mother. She was dead,
and I did not know how. Three times I tried,
longing to touch her. But three times her ghost
flew from my arms, like shadows or like dreams.
Sharp pain pierced deeper in me as I cried,
‘No, Mother! Why do you not stay for me,
and let me hold you, even here in Hades?
Let us wrap loving arms around each other
and find a frigid comfort in shared tears!
But is this really you? Or has the Queen
sent me a phantom, to increase my grief?’

Achilles in the underworld

11.488–501
‘Odysseus, you must not comfort me
for death. I would prefer to be a workman,
hired by a poor man on a peasant farm,
than rule as king of all the dead. But come,
tell me about my son. Do you have news?
Did he march off to war to be a leader?
And what about my father Peleus?
Does he still have good standing among all
the Myrmidons? Or do they treat him badly
in Phthia and Greece, since he is old
and frail? Now I have left the light of day,
and am not there to help, as on the plains
of Troy when I was killing the best Trojans,
to help the Greeks.

The Sirens' song

12.184–192
‘Odysseus! Come here! You are well-known
from many stories! Glory of the Greeks!
Now stop your ship and listen to our voices.
All those who pass this way hear honeyed song,
poured from our mouths. The music brings them joy,
and they go on their way with greater knowledge,
since we know everything the Greeks and Trojans
suffered in Troy, by gods’ will; and we know
whatever happens anywhere on earth.’

Hyperion's cattle

12.341–352
All human deaths are hard to bear.
But starving is most miserable of all.
So let us poach the finest of these cattle,
and sacrifice them to the deathless gods.
If we get home to Ithaca, at once
we will construct a temple to the Sun God,
with treasure in it. If he is so angry
about these cows that he decides to wreck
our ship, and if the other gods agree—
I would prefer to drink the sea and die
at once, than perish slowly, shriveled up
here on this desert island.’

Argos recognizes Odysseus

17.324–328
With that, the swineherd went inside the palace,
to join the noble suitors. Twenty years
had passed since Argos saw Odysseus,
and now he saw him for the final time—
then suddenly, black death took hold of him.

Sleepless Odysseus

20.25–34
a man rotates a sausage full of fat
and blood; the huge fire blazes, and he longs
to have the roasting finished. So he squirmed,
this way and that, and wondered how he could
attack the shameless suitors, being one
against a multitude. Athena came
from heaven and stood near him, at his head,
resembling a woman, and she said,
“Why are you wide awake, unlucky man?

Stringing the bow

21.404–412
So he had tricked them all.
After examining the mighty bow
carefully, inch by inch—as easily
as an experienced musician stretches
a sheep-gut string around a lyre’s peg
and makes it fast—Odysseus, with ease,
strung the great bow. He held it in his right hand
and plucked the string, which sang like swallow-song,
a clear sweet note.

Odysseus reveals himself

22.1–8
Odysseus ripped off his rags. Now naked,
he leapt upon the threshold with his bow
and quiverfull of arrows, which he tipped
out in a rush before his feet, and spoke.
“Playtime is over. I will shoot again,
towards another mark no man has hit.
Apollo, may I manage it!”

The disloyal maids

22.465–474
At that, he wound a piece of sailor’s rope
round the rotunda and round the mighty pillar,
stretched up so high no foot could touch the ground.
As doves or thrushes spread their wings to fly
home to their nests, but someone sets a trap—
they crash into a net, a bitter bedtime;
just so the girls, their heads all in a row,
were strung up with the noose around their necks
to make their death an agony. They gasped,
feet twitching for a while, but not for long.

The olive-tree bed

23.181–190
She spoke to test him, and Odysseus
was furious, and told his loyal wife,
“Woman! Your words have cut my heart! Who moved
my bed? It would be difficult for even
a master craftsman—though a god could do it
with ease. No man, however young and strong,
could pry it out. There is a trick to how
this bed was made. I made it, no one else.

Shipwrecked sailor simile

23.233–241
As welcome as
the land to swimmers, when Poseidon wrecks
their ship at sea and breaks it with great waves
and driving winds; a few escape the sea
and reach the shore, their skin all caked with brine.
Grateful to be alive, they crawl to land.
So glad she was to see her own dear husband,
and her white arms would not let go his neck.