Emily Wilson, chairwoman of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, best-selling translator, and website-crashing Christopher Nolan hater, is going back to retranslate The Odyssey less than a decade after the publication of her 2017 modernizing take on the epic.
This isn’t just tweaking and refreshing some word choices. Wilson is starting over from the top with a completely new translation. It reminds me of that old myth about the Golden Gate Bridge being in a state of perpetual painting: once you reach the end of one translation of The Odyssey, you gotta go back to “ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε.”
The question is why, especially since two editions within a decade is bound to cause some confusion: which one will be the “definitive” Wilson translation? Wilson is aware that this might be an issue, and hopes teachers won’t “curse” her for it. The publisher was apparently not too happy either, according to Wilson, though selling over a million copies of an ancient epic probably won her some wiggle room.
It’s not that she thinks the 2017 version is bad. Wilson told the podcast Instant Classics that she’s “proud” of her previous work, even though it was a bit constrained.
“I think,” she said, “there are lots of good things about the kinds of compression and choices that I was forced into.”
