The Odyssey

An approachable version of The Odyssey in a plain and modern English. Wilson matches Homer line-for-line, but compresses each line to a 5-beat iambic pentameter. Her language is chiseled, sometimes to a fault. But it adds up to a surprisingly quick, enjoyable, and morally engaging read.

Homer's most vivid images really shine in this rendering: "He saw them fallen, all of them, so many; / lying in blood and dust, like fish hauled up / out of the dark-gray sea in fine-mesh nets; / tipped out upon the curving beach's sand, / they gasp for water from the salty sea. / The sun shines down and takes their life away. / So lay the suitors, heaped across each other."

The text avoids justifying or masking immoral or questionable acts and practices. The word "slave" is used frequently, rather than euphemisms. Sometimes the translation strikes a judgmental note, like when the opening stanza says of Odysseus and his men: "He failed to keep them safe." Overall, I loved being invited to see these characters as flawed people in a flawed world, not as monuments.

This feels like a book that needs two distinct reviews.

First, Emily Wilson's translation, which is wonderful. Just as Heaney moved Beowulf from "worthy work" to a fun read, Wilson's made The Odyssey eminently readable, while keeping it a formally structured long poem and apparently sticking scrupulously to the pacing of the original Greek. I had started reading other translations of this work but never actually finished them, so I'm delighted that this one now exists. And the maps, introduction, footnotes and dramatis personae all helped me follow a work that's heavy on reference and allusion.

But I have to say I didn't get on very well with the content. Some of it is delightful, from learning that Greeks have appreciated wine, olive oil and the sea for longer than much of the world's had written records, to all the descriptions that weren't about Odysseus himself. But there's a degree of repetitiveness to the language that grated--Wilson's introduction explains why it was so in a work written to be performed but it still took away from my experience of reading this as written text--a few too many passages that consist of just listing characters from other Greek myths to the point that they felt like the Torah's "begats", and by the end I found the character of Odysseus dislikable enough to not care about his fortunes.

I'm still glad to have read this. I didn't get anywhere near the exposure to Greek mythology that US schools seem to give, so much of the story was either new to me or connected dots that I'd picked up scattershot from English literature referencing them. And I have to say that I'm re-reading the Torah this year, which seems to be of approximately the same age, and found The Odyssey so much more sophisticated and compelling as a work of literature. But I can't exactly say that I like this story.