Meet the translator behind Christopher Nolan's Odyssey

[00:00:00]Every moment in history has said this is an unprecedented time. But of course, people are saying it very loudly right now for for very good reasons and they're far more powerful than any of us will be.

[00:00:11]>> It's about power rather than about are they nice people. Obviously, they're not.

[00:00:17]>> I think Jackson is more obviously smart than M. Damon is, right? And obviously Adysius, even though he's complicated, also does have to excel in intelligence.

[00:00:28]Going back to null and also the weapons in Homer are totally unrealistic um and then and totally inaconistic in terms of who uses which metals when. I kind of love this question because so many journalists sort of assumed that the main thing about me must be my gender. I don't think we can prove that without a time machine.

[00:00:47]Don't do that. It's going to be boring.

[00:00:50]Meet Homer first. We have things to say and actually we know things which the trolls don't necessarily.

[00:01:04]All right. So, I am here with Dr. Emily Wilson, and she is actually my former Greek professor. Um, back uh what was it? You said how long ago was has it has it been?

[00:01:15]>> It's more than 20 years. So, we were just talking about how it's appropriate for the Odyssey to be doing this sort of homecoming journey.

[00:01:23]>> Very, very cool. It's great to see you and it's great to have you here. Um, >> good to see you. Thank you for having me on. Yes.

[00:01:28]>> Yeah, of course. And, uh, I think I think the enthusiasm that you bring to ancient Greek, uh, the Ilia, the Odyssey, and other other texts is just something it's, uh, it's refreshing for this world right now.

[00:01:39]>> I'm so excited just to get to, you know, to get to talk about the Odyssey and the Iliad all day long and get to work on them all the time.

[00:01:45]>> I mean, that's your job.

[00:01:47]>> It's my job. It's my day job and I actually really love it and I do it do it as many hours a day as I can. I love it. which I can attest you as a professor, you were always extremely passionate about what you were teaching.

[00:01:58]You would get up there and you'd be on the chalkboard and you'd be sharing us little particles and accents and different declensions and uh >> I love the poetry even more than the particles, but I think it's me. So, we have to go with the particles first before you can get to the poetics. Yeah.

[00:02:16]>> Yeah. Exactly. No, and that makes sense.

[00:02:18]And I think that's very clear to everybody who's probably watching that you really do love this poetry and you love these stories very much. Um, >> which is important. So, I mean, everybody knows that the Odyssey is about to come out on the big screen.

[00:02:29]And, uh, what are you excited for this?

[00:02:32]I mean, I'm excited in terms of just how many more people are going to I mean, people who hadn't even heard of the Odyssey or didn't know anything much about um the these stories who might not even have heard of Athena are now going to get access to some version of this the narrative of this poem and some proportion of those people are then going to turn back and read the Odyssey in some translation or other. I think that's wonderful and just the the level of public engagement. And I also, of course, I'm hoping maybe this will inspire a few more students to sign up for introlevel Greek and get to read the Odyssey and the original. That would be wonderful.

[00:03:09]>> Yeah. Maybe maybe evade some of these cuts that are hitting higher education everywhere. Oh yes. I mean I hope it can also be used as leverage for you know grunt writing for the appeals to the deans to say you know there is this real engagement with this core humanities subject and please do not cut it because this is what the young people want.

[00:03:29]>> Yeah. No I agree. Um so so to you you see this as an opportunity to hook students and hook people. So you're not excited about the movie per se?

[00:03:39]>> You know I've been doing my research as is my wand. So, I've been, you know, watching lots of Christopher Nola movies and I I can I can So have I.

[00:03:47]>> Oh, yes. Right. And it's kind of fun. I can see how he's got an enormous budget.

[00:03:52]There's going to be some action sequences. There's going to be some blowing things up. Obviously, the tech for how he blows things up will be different in this one versus the Batman universe.

[00:04:02]I mean, the themes I can also see how there's a reason why Christopher Nolan was attracted to this narrative, right?

[00:04:08]Right. I mean, the themes of >> um time and memory and >> rivalry between men and substitution and code switching, those were have always been part of what he's interested in.

[00:04:21]And then also the narrative of a um a man is on a quest and there's a lost female character who will be completely underwritten and then somehow or other there will be a twist at the end. And that's every Christopher Neller movie. I can see how the script could would in a way have written itself.

[00:04:38]>> Yeah, >> there are things that don't come up in Christopher Nolan movies that are actually crucial in the Odyssey, such as Chaos, >> right? I mean, he does he's not actually interested in Eternal Fame, >> as far as I can see. Um, and I think that's actually very important in the original IP. Um, so I'm I'm going to be curious to see how does he deal with that or does he just ignore it?

[00:04:58]>> Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. What are you What are your fears for this film? Anything?

[00:05:03]I I think there's the Odyssey has enough in it that many different, you know, flowers can bloom. Even if there are lots of things about the movie that I think are annoying or that I elements of the original poem that are not there, it's not it's not my job to quibble about that. I So I It's not like it's going to destroy anything in the original if Christopher has missed something, right? The original is still there. It's fine.

[00:05:30]>> I don't know. But the armor doesn't look realistic to me.

[00:05:34]>> Of course, it doesn't. Yes, there are going to be many things that will be ridiculous about it, but in a way that's fun.

[00:05:40]>> Yeah. No, I agree. And I mean, if you think about Homer, it's an adaptation of oral poetry, which then gets adapted in the ancient world as well.

[00:05:47]>> I mean, imagine how how much the internet would be up in arms if they read Ure Helen, right? She didn't even go to Troy. This is terrible.

[00:05:56]>> No, she went to Egypt and she was an idol and Yeah. who's this new fangled um woke guy thinking about and then even Tersian women obviously a feminist adaptation of the Iliad you know.

[00:06:07]>> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. This is so what you're trying to say is that feminist adaptations have a long history.

[00:06:13]>> I think the the the long the long history of reinventing slices from the banquet of Homer and the Athenian tradedians were were on it much before anyone else was.

[00:06:25]>> Yeah. On that note, what what is it about these poems that makes them so adaptable? Why do people keep coming back to them?

[00:06:32]>> Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think the the answers have to do with I mean, there are so many different elements within them that I think one has to give a slightly different answer at different cultural moments, right? I mean if you sort of think about the even the modern as modern as in the last five or five five or 4 hundred years reception of Homer there have been many different um reasons why people in the 17th century turned back to Homer which were different from what does what do these poems mean in the 21st century I mean what the what the Iliad and the Odyssey meant to George Chapman who published the first translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey into English was actually somewhat late in the whole vernacular translation history. He's reading the Iliad in light of Elizabeth and Jacabian revenge drama and the Christian Pilgrim's Progress and you can which is getting layered into the Odyssey. You can see how that's a possible reading but it also is not how scholars in the 21st century read the Iliad or the Odyssey. So I think it's partly about this kind of negative capability that there are ways that these are poems in a really big way about community and individuals and outsiders and insiders belonging moving around between communities, conflicts within within within single communities and conflicts between one community and another. Um those are huge themes and the huge themes of grief and rage and loss and recovery right which both the heric poems touch on those themes those can get reinterpreted in different ways and then the poems are rich enough in their account of how do they deal with those themes that they can resonate in new ways with different cultural moments. So I sort of I resist the idea that they're eternal and therefore unchanging in their reception because I don't think that I don't think that's truthful to the much more complex reception histories.

[00:08:26]>> Yeah. And I mean you know it's same thing with your their origin even they're they're constantly changing as oral poetry from telling to telling. So >> the fact that these myths are much older than the poems themselves right so there are ways that the Iliad and the Odyssey are both this sort of legacy of long pre-existing oral tradition. So in some sense they're responding to, you know, periods far before the seventh century or whenever we think something like these poems was composed, but they're also responding in a more specific way to the archaic world.

[00:08:58]>> So there are ways that they're multihistorical as um I sort of resist the idea that they're totally multiiform because I think the poems we have are written compositions, but there are these layers of historical influence where they they responding to multiple different eras.

[00:09:14]That makes sense. So you're so you're firmly believing that there's a a single author to each of these poems or to both of them or something like that.

[00:09:22]>> I don't think we can prove that without a time machine. I think we could I mean I don't think there's any way to prove for instance one of the possible theories is dictation and with a scribe or scribes. Does that mean I mean depending on what you think happened in terms of how much input did the scribe have versus the oral poet maybe it was a team production but I I do think that they have a kind of monumental unity in terms of their narrative architecture such that I think >> even if it was a team they were working closely together to create something that makes sense in its own terms.

[00:09:57]>> Okay. And I think the ways that the whole narrative of the Iliad hangs together, the ways that the end echoes the beginning, these these circles of pattern within pattern in both poems. I think that means there's some real thought about the whole narrative. It wasn't just let's let's wing it and then someone else can take over the storytelling tomorrow night. It's there's a real thoughtfulness about the architecture, but that doesn't mean it's just it's the same person because of course a big movie like a like a Christopher Null movie, someone can write the script, but then there's also a lot of other people who are contributing. I mean, Casablanca was famously created by many many people like so many movies are.

[00:10:37]>> Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, obviously, we can't tell and maybe it was an individual, but I just don't think we can prove it. So this So you're basically saying that Emily Wilson is on record that Homer is not a he or a she, but a they.

[00:10:49]>> Oh, they. Yes.

[00:10:52]>> Just to bring it all back, right?

[00:10:54]>> They they is always the safest pronoun, I think. Right.

[00:10:58]>> Um so I one thing I was thinking of while doing a little bit of research on this is it actually surprised me at how many 21st century translations there are into English. There's there's something like 10 of them compared to only 12 in the 20th century. And so >> yes, I think it might be more than 12.

[00:11:13]But anyway, it's a this the pace of production of translations into English has very much increased. I mean, there were very few in the 18th century and then it increased a little bit in the 19th century and then it's been zooming over the last 40 years. And of course, it's partly market forces, right? It's partly there are so many different publishing houses, each of which wants their own um edition of the Odyssey and the Iliad. There are so many intro to world literature, intro to literature, intro to history, intro to whatever, where you need to make the students buy a copy of the Iliad and the Odyssey, even if you're only going to read a little bit. And that means that there's a market in terms of who will print it and who will buy it.

[00:11:55]>> That's our modern system of fragmentation and and capitalization. I suppose >> capital. Yes, exactly.

[00:12:01]>> It's all about capitalism. We have the legacy of great books called class classics which are a modern invention but they've they've picked up and even if you don't have Colombia core everywhere there are so many colleges especially in the US which have some version of a cannon class.

[00:12:17]>> So if you if if the homeriic team composers came to the modern day what would they think of all these translations and thoughts on that?

[00:12:26]>> I mean they would be baffled by so many things wouldn't they? I mean, anyone transported from the past would be so surprised by so many elements, even beyond language, that it's hard to hard to know where where to start. As far as I'm concerned, I want to honor some things that I think, you know, once once they got oriented, they would recognize, which are to do with the fact that these are poems. They have meter. They're designed for oral performance. there are um legibly or audibly distinct characters who talk differently and have distinct quotramatic points of view. And so obviously Homer who if if if they came back in their time came to to our future in their time machine wouldn't know what an audio book is. But if they listen to the audio book I think they might eventually get get a sense of this is something like a rapodic performance of these poems. That's the the context in which um you know archaic audiences would have been accustomed to experiencing Homer. Obviously not through the codecs, obviously not through the printed page, but through the ears.

[00:13:33]>> Maybe that's what makes your translation so different from others is your approach to thinking about it in terms of poetry and in terms of thinking about it in terms of uh an oral performance.

[00:13:44]You state at the end of your new book, The Wine Dark Sea, that uh you know, one goal, you read everything aloud, right?

[00:13:50]You know, to try to get the feeling of what it sounded like, not just how it read. Is that one of the key things you were trying to do differently?

[00:13:57]>> It was absolutely essential to what I wanted to do differently. Yes. So I mean, as as you know, I'd been teaching at Penn and then before that a little bit at Yale for years and years and years and including both teaching um wonderful students like you in ancient Greek, but also teaching lots of ancient literature in translation. And one of the things that always drove me a little bit crazy was that so many of the modern translations don't have meter and don't convey that experience of if you read it out loud you can hear a regular pattern a rhythm of sound. Um and so and it doesn't sound like traditional poetics where so I given that the original it's traditional poetics it something like this rhythm tactic was being used for poetic performance for centuries before the composition of these specific monumental poems in that rhythm. So I wanted to use the traditional poetic form in English which is amamic quentameter to try to tap into that that sense that even if the reader isn't thinking about poetics in any conscious way if they read it out loud they're going to hear even on an unconscious way this sounds like the rhythms of Shakespeare or Milton or or Tennyson or it has that beat to it and that it also has that capacity to be performable.

[00:15:17]>> Interesting. So do you when you were doing this do you both the Iliad and the Odyssey I mean do you do you try to consider yourself as a poet as much as a translator or how does that work?

[00:15:27]Obviously, it's not that I have to sort of make up new metaphors, but I have to think through what are the metaphors that are here. What are the sound patterns if there's a lot of alliteration, there's a lot of asinance, there's a poetic slashcreative element to thinking through. I can't necessarily use the same sound patterns as the original does, but homeic poetry is very illiterative and English can do that as well. So, I can do things with that even if I have to use different sound patterns from the Greek. Obviously, I do.

[00:15:57]>> That's something I think I realized. I I maybe I just didn't remember it from when you were doing your Twitter threads before, but in reading the wine dark sea, you mentioned the aliteration that you constantly brought in in addition to the meter, and I had not thought about that or realized it, I guess. Yeah.

[00:16:12]>> Yeah.

[00:16:12]>> Um, so do you write your own poetry as well? It feels like this is like very much a juggling act. You have so many different goals in mind when translating a piece like this that you can't keep all the balls in the air. Like I was thinking of one that must be surely sacrificed is the repetitiveness of the Homer in the original Greek with the epithets and the you know the king of kings type thing that that gets repeated over and over again. Your goal of keeping it concise and poetics drops that. Is there anything else you feel like it was dropped out in your in your due to your choices of of priorities >> with my Odyssey translation? Um one of my priorities as you know was pacing. So I can I can find myself to the same number of lines as the original. With the Iliad, I didn't do that. I dropped that because it just seemed impossible.

[00:16:56]In fact, I felt it was impossible with the number of names that there are. And you can't >> you can't make a name shorter than it is. Agamemnon, son of Atrius, takes up the whole line. So what am I going to do? I I actually need more lines than I than the original in order to make the silver count work. And then once I'd finished the Iliad translation, I thought I like that better. they made allowed me to do more with with the repetitions. So I'm actually redoing the Odyssey. I'm doing a new version of the Odyssey which will be longer and more >> with more epats. So with with the 2017 staration, I do have have quite a lot of repetitions.

[00:17:31]>> I have wind up se horse neto horse neester. Here he is again also has the horses and all of that. But I I felt that I can't do as much of it as the original does unless I have a few more syllables. So that's one of the motivations along with wanting more colosabic words to just do the whole thing over again about halfway through and they love getting to do it all over again.

[00:17:54]>> See, you know, I actually like your odyssey and its conscision when I assign it to students because it makes it so much easier. It's it's fewer pages for them, right?

[00:18:03]>> Pages. So I think there are definitely going to be people who will like the original Wilson translation more than the the redo. And that's fine. They can both be in the world. I think I think both of them are totally legitimate approaches because pacing is a real feature of the original that rapidity. I mean, you probably know about how Matthew Arnold in the 19th century famously said that in order to translate Homer, you need to evoke the rapidity, the plainness, and the nobility. And so many translations don't convey the rapidity and also very often don't convey the plainness, the straightforwardness of the syntax in the original, which both of which I think are crucial to try to convey in an English translation.

[00:18:44]>> But I mean, just to address your actual question, which I didn't didn't do.

[00:18:48]>> No, you're fine. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm very conscious that any this is the case with any language pair. Syntax is always different across languages. Word order is always different across languages.

[00:19:00]And given the heavy reliance on word order to convey syntax in English is very different from either Latin or ancient Greek where you can have a much more varied word order. I mean for instance the fact that both the Odyssey and the Iliad can begin with the subject in the accusative case right we can begin andra man whereas if I begin man it's going to sound like man oh man it's going to be but it's not what I'm going for the translation then has to repeat where the original doesn't repeat I mean of course many translators do a version of that they do Ross dash let me tell you about the Ross which is not what the original is doing. The original is just saying men in at the start of the Iliad once and we know it's the we know it's the object because of the ending which is not possible in English.

[00:19:52]>> No. No. There's so much that you can't do. I mean languages are so different.

[00:19:56]>> Yes. Exactly. Yes. And then another tiny one is just the existence of a duel which is so meaningful in so many ways and Homer very often emphatically uses a dual. For instance, when Penelope is talking about what the marriage bed means to her, she uses a whole sequence of jewels, which I think really matters.

[00:20:15]It matters. So, does not use the duel in that bed reunion scene in book 23. But how is the translator going to do that if you're translating into a language which does not have a dual?

[00:20:27]>> Yeah. I mean, I felt I had to repeat the word both and together in order to convey something like that. But it's a very different way of conveying this the tuness or the the pairedness. Yeah.

[00:20:41]>> Yeah. No, and I that's actually a really interesting point about the marriage bed and and how that scene is specifically in the duel. I remember struggling so much. I think the first time I read home poetry was book nine of the Iliad and there's a lot of duel in there.

[00:20:53]>> It's also famously there were actually more than more than two people going on the embassy and yet the jewels are used.

[00:21:01]So it's also I mean going back to this capital H capital Qmericic question that passage is often wrestled with in terms of is there an earlier version when there were fewer ambassadors which probably there was.

[00:21:13]>> That makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Um so on these notes we're hitting a lot of important points about language and stuff like that. When when when you encourage people to read the Odyssey or the Iliad, is there something that you want them to think about? Like what's the what would surprise them the most?

[00:21:30]Um, I mean, I think maybe two things.

[00:21:33]One is just do not be intimidated. It may be that you don't know how to pronounce all the names or you haven't heard of everyone. Don't freak out about that. I think people sometimes think, "Oh, I can't do this because I don't know who's who and I've got to somehow read an encyclopedia before I read Homer." Don't do that. It's going to be boring. Read Homer first because you'll pick it up along the way. It doesn't actually It's not that scary. And I think people sometimes think it's going to be scary because it's so old and um it's so so canonical and yet it actually you're going to be able to understand the vast majority of the narrative without knowing who most of the people are and you're going to pick it up along the way.

[00:22:11]>> Yeah.

[00:22:12]>> And of course if you were an ancient Greek child, that's how you would first experience it. You would listen to the stories over and over and the first time you hear it when you're a little child maybe you don't understand it all but then you read it again or you listen to it again and you'll get it. The second thing is just that um don't assume it's going to be primitive or morally simplistic. Um because I think people some sometimes also this is a sort of opposite point to what I just said but people sometimes think it's going to be scary but also it's going to be simple and therefore boring and neither of those is true right but it's actually both these epics are narotally very surprising and interesting I mean for instance the fact that the Iliad doesn't touch on any of the famous plot points of the myth we don't have um doesn't start with a judgment of Paris doesn't start with um the abduction of Helen, we don't have any of the famous bits. We don't have Achilles heel. We don't have the Trojan horse. We have a quarrel between two Greeks rather than between Greeks and Trojans. And similarly with the Odyssey doesn't start with the main guy. Doesn't start with a with the start of his wanderings. Starts with four books about his about Tmacus going nowhere. So these just the ways that these poems may seem to us as if they're the origin of everything because they're the origin of written Greek literature, that doesn't mean that they're actually at the beginning of a tra a tradition.

[00:23:38]They're in some ways at the end of a tradition and they're therefore designed for very sophisticated oral audiences who already know these stories and can cope with this very surprising way of coming a slant at the usual myths.

[00:23:53]>> Yeah. No, in fact that's you're echoing exactly what Joel Christensen and I were just talking about as the end of the tradition. Um on this issue of kind of morally complicated maybe is the right way to put it. Well, we'll get to that word in a second. But uh but is that something that you find is oftentimes misinterpreted in in by the modern public is this idea that a hero has to be morally pure or something like that and these heroes definitely aren't.

[00:24:20]>> Absolutely. I think that's something that both the public and um firsttime reader students really struggle with because there's the you know language has so many false friends when you go from either one period to another or one language to another they the modern American or English sense of hero conotes first responders are heroes because they save people in our community Superman is a hero because he's going to you know say save people um you know come come come in and fight the super villains and it's going to be this very sort of black and white morally simplistic universe if you have a hero and a villain and the heric poems don't have that at all and that of course the sense of the ancient term heros doesn't mean that I mean in her Greek heros can be used just to mean a guy a warrior it doesn't necessarily have any moral veilance at all and then of course in terms of hero cult hero's cult it's about these characters from myths who are close to the gods and do extraordinary things. But that doesn't mean their extraordinary things were were good for people around them. It very often does not mean that. It means the opposite. It means did extraordinary damage in many cases. But it the extraordinariness and the closeness to divinity are are the the associations of what does it mean to be a protagonist in a herriic epic or to be the object of cult whether it's Menaaus and Helen at Sparta or Adysius on Ithaca or Agamemnon or Achilles they're the objects of cult because they're bigger and more extraordinary than other mortals are.

[00:25:59]>> Yeah. And I mean in many ways you can just compare it to the Greek pantheon and the Greek gods themselves. They are not good or evil. They're compromised and complicated if you know what I mean.

[00:26:09]>> But they're also we need to honor them because they are extraordinary and they're far more powerful than any of us will be.

[00:26:15]>> It's about power rather than about are they nice people. Obviously they're not.

[00:26:20]>> Yeah. Exactly. So actually that is a pretty good segue into your opening uh line um where you translate polyrop polyropos I'm thinking modern poly tropos um into uh complicated um what were what are your thoughts on this this is obviously most people translate it as like twists and turns and cunning cunning gives that modern heroicness to it doesn't it complicated is different complicated is different I mean I haven't read every translation of the odyssey into every modern language But I actually don't think there's a standard way to translate it. I think it's translated many different ways by many different translators. Um, and of course it's a it's a difficult epithet. I think cunning is not a very good translation because that would suggest that the original connoted something about Adysius's intelligence which of course the poet composer whoever they they were could have used Polmetis which is a much more common epithet of Adysius. Metis of course is cunning intelligence. It's also the personified mother of Athena.

[00:27:27]Athena and Adessias have that closeness because they both specialize in strategic thinking and smarts of that sort of weasly kind um of that problem solving kind of kind that makes you the lone survivor of any disaster. But that's not the word that's used at the start of the poem. So it seemed to me that I want that it was important if possible to make a slightly surprising choice not to use a word that just says you've heard of Adysius. This is the usual thing about Adysius because I don't think that's what the use of this somewhat unusual epithet it actually only occurs twice in the Odyssey um is doing in that first line and it conotes as you suggested um turns but then tropos also conotes disguise or as in the word trope in English it can be a different mode of being and and it also could refer to the journey and the poem as well as the protagonist. So ideally I wanted if possible a word that would conote all of could be used of a poem or a journey as well as of a person which is not the case for um cunning for instance. You can't say that was a cunning journey whereas you can say that's a complicated journey. So I wanted ideally for the reader to have a sort of heads up at the beginning. This is going to be a a character who will whose layers will unfold over the course of the narrative, but also the poem's layers will unfold. And you may come to this thinking it's primitive because it's old. Firstly, it's not going to be that way. Um, and then also, of course, because I was prioritizing the pacing of the original. The original has this four syllable word puon.

[00:29:10]I wanted if possible to use a word that's the same length complicated.

[00:29:15]And of course >> I sat there counting it after you said that like >> and I wanted of course also to scan in the meter I'm using. So I that puts some limits on what what word can I use it has to end in a lightbeat because man is going to follow it and so on. if you there were these sort of poetic technical constraints and I know that quite a lot of translators have either translated it as if it was a different word as if it was cunning or resourceful which are different affects in Homer or else have done this sort of unpacking in a way footnote in the main text kind of thing of a man who was blah blah blah and blah blah blah and blah blah blah but by by the time you do that you kind of lost all the momentum of that first line and the oomph is gone right so >> and you're just focusing So the cost to um to translating an epithet as if it was a subordinate cause.

[00:30:07]>> Yeah. So I mean I I thought it was interesting in your new book how you discussed how you almost threw out that translation at the last minute because you discovered the song about shaft refers to him as complicated.

[00:30:20]>> Yeah, that was funny. I mean that's also one of these things about translation where you have to think about what does this word or phrase connote in the embedded linguistic culture that the reader of this text or the listener of this text will receive it right because of course the original composer of the Odyssey wasn't thinking about Isaac Hayes but the reader of my translation might be so I think that's very funny yes then I felt you know actually he's a complicated man but no one understands him like his woman that's actually Okay.

[00:30:50]>> It's a lot like Odysius and >> of course you ended that little segment by saying that Samuel L. Jackson would make a great Odicius. So you're saying that he'd be better than Matt Damon.

[00:31:03]>> I mean I think Samuel Jackson is more obviously smart than Matt Damon is.

[00:31:09]Right. And obviously Odysius even though he's complicated also does have to excel in intelligence. And I >> I don't know. I hesitate a little bit about the degree to which Matt Damon can do that. But I'm encouraged by the fact that he was good in talenting Mr. Ripley.

[00:31:23]>> Yeah. I think if he can convey he's got got more going on than you think.

[00:31:29]>> You know, you have a you have a way about being blunt that I think is awesome. Like you always you called you called Boris Johnson an incompetent drunk during one of your challenges which is like you wonder why some people some trolls come your way >> I mean you know fans of Matt Damon are going to be in my comments now like come on what about >> it been my kind of thing >> sort of kind So let's think about Odysius for a second then. What is what do you think is the biggest misconception people today have about Odysius?

[00:32:12]>> Um I mean it's hard to say because people today are quite diverse. Right. Right. I mean I'm not sure that I have a clear sense of all people today um in their vision of Adysius. I mean, I think one of the the stumbling blocks that I encounter with my students is the um is the challenges of trying not to import modern ideas about um what a relationship is and should be back onto the marriage of Adysius and Penelope because the heric poems are not working with the same ideas about what is normative sexuality, what is a normative elite marriage. Um, I mean, I find that it's useful to introduce people to the idea of moa. Um, the idea that there isn't really a a term in either archaic or classical Greek that corresponds exactly to genderneutral adultery. And so, I think the I mean, this is a very tiny piece, but it's one that I I find a lot of students get very hung up on the idea that why isn't it fair? Penelope doesn't get to sleep with any of the suitors, but Adysius spends eight years shacked up with these goddesses and then he's flirting with Narika and what's up with that? Aren't we supposed to be angry with him? And actually, I don't think we are. I mean, even even beyond the fact that obviously Calypso is trapping him by the end. Um, the Cersei relationship doesn't seem to be that way. The Nasika relationship isn't that way. And yet, from the perspective of the poem's norms, he's not a moss. He's not a man who steals another man's wife.

[00:33:51]>> Yeah.

[00:33:51]>> And therefore, he's not disrupting the elite household in the way that Paris by taking Helen from her household is disrupting the whole honor and wealth of Menaaus's household. And Agistus is doing the same thing by sleeping with Titanstra. Adysius isn't doing that. And so, he's not a moss. He's somebody who has glorious relationships with glorious goddesses. And that actually contributes to his chaos. and then ultimately to the chaos of his oos. So I think it's that's not necessarily about the protagonist but about the poem's narrative in terms of what generates um honor and what what doesn't generate honor. I think if you import a modern idea of adultery back onto the poem, you're not going to get that.

[00:34:35]>> Yeah. No, that makes sense. I think we need to read these poems in their own cultural context. What about uh in terms of Penelopey? What what do you think is the larger public misconceptions about her?

[00:34:46]Um I mean I think I think there's a sentimentalizing trend. I mean I think there's an idea that you know we want to think that and maybe related to we want adultery to be gender neutral and it should be it should be fair. It's not fair in the world of this poem. Um it should be that she's the real hero or heroine and we love her so much.

[00:35:09]I'm not sure if the poem loves her so much and I'm also not sure if the poem gives us the tools to fully understand her perspective. I think it's also really important that the poem does give us the tools to understand both her very deep unhappiness and confusion especially in her account and I love the passage at the end of book 19 where she's talking to the disguised Adysius and telling the story of her her dream about the geese and how she cries when the eagle kills her geese which gives us this really clear sense of how in a sense for an elite herriic woman there's something ideal about being frozen in time because the moment when an elite woman has power is at that moment of being a nonfair who's just on the point of marriage but not actually committed to any any one man. So she's not within the power of her her father or within the power of her husband. She's frozen in this moment of decision. Um but then once the husband comes back or if the husband comes then that's all gone away.

[00:36:10]And so there's a reason why she might be crying. I think the poem is also really insistent that Athena disempowers Penelopey cognitively. I mean, of course, there's a long long-standing scholarly debate about when does she recognize this old beggar? She seems to have more sympathy for him than for most of the layabouts who show up um wanting a hand out. And yet, does she actually know it's him? Athena has turned her mind aside, so she can't. Um, so I think the idea that the poem is showing us she sees through everything, she's always in control. I don't think she is. She is at least more in control than the people she's enslaving. So I think it's also just important not to sentmentalize the idea of the fact that she's less powerful than a mortal goddess obviously but she's also far more powerful than the um especially the women inside the house whom she has total control over.

[00:37:08]>> I think that's something you've written a lot about and talked a lot about is this the way in which you've tried to structure power dynamics in terms of gender and in terms of slavery and things like that. Um, do you want to summarize for people what your approach is in that?

[00:37:22]>> My approach is really just that I think it's import tune with what we've been saying about the fact that it's very important and sometimes difficult to get your mind around the fact that of course the heroic poems are set in a fantasy world, a mythical world where goddesses show up all the time. Doesn't actually happen and probably didn't actually happen even in archaic Greece. But that in some ways it's also a historical bold which has some alien historical features including the these um hierarchies of gender and power and enslavement or lack of enslavement and social class. And it seems to me that the translator as well as whoever's writing the introduction and who's whoever's introducing the poem in the classroom has has a responsibility to try to make sure that it's clear to the modern reader these are not servants. they don't have another home to go to. In in the case of the Odyssey where homes and homecoming is really important, I think it matters that the reader or listener should be able to understand these people inside the household are tied to the household through no will of their own.

[00:38:29]>> Yeah.

[00:38:30]>> Rather than that they are day visitors to this house. They don't have a homecoming because they've already this is they have no home. And that's part of what it is to be enslaved. And so if I use words like maid or servant, which quite a lot of translators have done, that obscures something very important about the poems worldbuilding.

[00:38:50]>> Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. A lot of people use handmmaids and you were much more uh blunt and honest, let's say, because that's what the Greek is, that they're enslaved, right? And >> Mo and yes, I mean handmade. What do people say for for the for the male slaves? Like do they use servant? I mean I think it also matters that that those words are parallel, right? It's not so the female um domestic slaves inside the house are typically women and then there are the the field hands kinds of demo who take care of the animals. Um but there needs to be this parallelism between the female slaves in the house and the male slaves in the animal fields. On this note, you it's back to juggling again because you're you try to convey this original culture, but at the same time, you've been very open about trying to bring your own approach to to this to to to I don't know, not not write the wrongs of press translators, that's the wrong way to put it, but to combat the other biases that other translators have. um what how do you how do you tackle this uh juggling act of bringing yourself to it and your own biases and being open about that while trying to convey what it was like you know in in the cultural context from 2500 years ago ago or so.

[00:40:04]>> Yeah. I mean I think it's about just being conscious of it and also being conscious of what can I do where because I can't do everything all all at once.

[00:40:12]everything everywhere all all at once is actually not possible such that um you know I was grateful that the publishers let me do quite long translators notes to try to explain to the reader here are some of my challenges here are some of my challenges working in in in this historical moment with this particular modern language which is English which has its own history every word has its own connotations and there are particular things that are going to be difficult to convey in the 21st century using this language um and that and that there are things that are going to be easier to convey in this in this moment than that might have been harder to convey 50 or 100 years ago. Not all of that is going to be able is going to be possible to to to put into the translation itself. Some of it needs to go in in the innotes or the introduction of or of a translator's note.

[00:41:00]>> Yeah. On that note, uh you're you're a vegetarian, right?

[00:41:03]>> I'm a vegetarian.

[00:41:05]>> Yeah, that's what I thought. I wanted to make sure though before I jumped in. So, how does that impact the Look, meat eating is a huge part of the Iliad and the Odyssey. So, how does that how does you being a vegetarian give you a different perspective on that?

[00:41:17]>> Yes. I mean, I I kind of love this question because so many journalists sort of assumed that the main thing about me must be my gender, even because that was the headline when my Odyssey came out. Um, even though I actually hadn't written anything about gender and it's not my primary scholarly interest.

[00:41:34]Um, and similarly, vegetarianism is just part of my life. It's I've been vegetarian all my adult life since I was a young teenager. To me, it's partly about just the imaginative leap of translation isn't about self-exression.

[00:41:48]And I kind of love it for that. It's about putting myself somewhere else and imagining a bigger world and more different possibilities. So, I I love the writing challenge of trying to make sure that every banquet scene has to sound as delicious as possible. No, I wouldn't eat that. But it's not it's not about me. It's about whether I can make the make the the sizzling meat and the the skewers and all of the the different parts of the fatty animal getting chopped up sound both delicious and honorific because of course the reason we have so many banquet scenes in Homer is that the banquet scene is a way of modeling. This is what a a social sharing scene is like. And then what this is what it's like when one person gets more than the rest. The fatty part of the animal from the back, the the gadas, the the prize of honor, which of course is is really important both in the Odyssey and the Iliad. The reason there's so much about eating is that it's about sharing and about who gets more.

[00:42:51]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right. This fundamental political question in a way or cotto political question about how do we weigh up the needs both to have equality in a society and some people are more special than others.

[00:43:04]>> So one of my uh pet hypotheses is that it actually functions in what we think of as food form because at the time that you know in the in the iron age and the archaic period people were not eating very much animal protein at all and yet these heroes are stuffing their faces with animal protein. And so I was wondering what you think of that idea.

[00:43:23]>> I think that's totally right because it I think it also fits with the fact that of course the weapons are also going back to Nolan also the weapons in Homer are totally unrealistic. Um and then and totally inaconistic in terms of who uses which metals when. Why do you have so many things made of gold? It's the same thing of this is an aspirational trope.

[00:43:45]It's not about what were people in real life archaic Greece using either for weapons or for constructing a wagon or making a tripod. There was not nearly that much gold. Um, and of course by the time these poems were composed, why don't you have more iron? It's the same thing that it's it's about a both both a fantasy world which might have never fully been the case but wouldn't it be great if we lived in this world where we meet meet every meal and dressed in gold all gold and bronze all the time that and you're so much bigger than everyone else everyone nowadays due to having eaten meat which real life people listening to the poem you're going to have to wait for the next festival to get a get a meal like that and you're never going to pressing gold because why would you?

[00:44:34]>> Exactly. No, that's a that's a good point that I you're right. I think there's a parallel there that there's this maybe not escapism but there's something there about a world an unattainable reality that we can't reach in these poems which I which reminds me as well of modern fantasy literature if you read like JRR Tolken the food is there front and center >> is there yes in fact even CS Lewis too right I mean the food is very often the most memorable element of these fantasy books because you can I mean I from the perspective of the writer it's easy to imagine just how delicious would that food be? How glorious would that food be if you're always hungry for meat? I also think it's really important in the world of the Odyssey that the suitors are characterized by their by their by their eating and never paying for their food.

[00:45:19]They're eating is the eating of Adysius's and Tmicus' boton botto. It's as if they're protocannibals because they're devouring the livelihood of these men who are who haven't haven't sh haven't chosen to share that. And so there's this illegitimate sharing of food. And then the the narrative turning point in the center of the poem is of course when the the heryroid the companions of Adysius eat the cattle of the sun. And going to your point about the gloriousness, we're told also in that same passage, plenty of fishes around around there and they're going around with those fish hooks getting some fish, but Urillicus can't stand it because that's not the the food porn thing. It's not glorious to eat fish or to scrape together some berries.

[00:46:03]>> Never eat fish. Yeah. make you look like a real child. So they kill the battle of the sun because they want to be the hero and the only way to be the hero is to eat meat.

[00:46:13]>> Yeah. Exactly. And in that sense, food and identity is at the core of the Odyssey. And you go around and see Cyclops, the literal cannibal, you see the lotus eaters, you see the sirens, etc. Yeah.

[00:46:23]>> Yes. It's all about food. Yes.

[00:46:25]>> Yeah. That's one of the reasons I love it. Um, what about the gory aspect of the food preparations? What do you think about those and how how did you tackle translating them? You know, the slaughtering of the animals and the endrails and all that kind of stuff.

[00:46:37]>> Oh, I think it's really fun. I love it.

[00:46:41]>> So, you're not a vegetarian because you're squeamish about me. You're a vegetarian for other >> No, I mean I think that it's terrible for the environment, the modern farming practices, and I I also I think animals have some rights and I don't want them to suffer the way they do in modern farming conditions. So, it's for those reasons. is not because I don't think it's fun to read about in narrative. I think it's great to read about in narrative.

[00:47:05]>> I'm a committed carnivore, but I'm with you that factory farming is absolutely terrible. It's terrible and terrible.

[00:47:10]>> Significant evil in the modern world.

[00:47:12]Yes.

[00:47:12]>> Yeah. I mean, if we live if we lived, you know, 2,000 years ago, I I might not be vegetarian, but I am now.

[00:47:18]>> Yeah. So, all right. This is something that you really did. You put yourself out there in a sense by by doing these translations, and you did receive a ton of publicity. Um, what what what's your what's I guess what's your favorite thing about being a public scholar?

[00:47:30]>> I mean, I think it's just it's been fun to talk to you just now, right? I mean, it's fun to get to talk to all kinds of people. I mean, you know, I think talking to you is symptomatic of all of these conversations that I get to have that I wouldn't otherwise have got to have in quite this way. I mean I would have got to you know talk to colleagues at conferences and students in the classroom but just the range of different contexts in which I get to go talk to general readers and go talk to students in lots of places beyond pen. I just love that. I think it's really exciting to get to hear different people's perspectives and questions and get to engage with just a much wider range of people about about homo in the ancient world. It's really fun.

[00:48:15]>> Yeah. And at the same time, you've written a lot and talked a lot about the importance of public scholarship, particularly in classics and and and history and and and subjects like that.

[00:48:24]Um, and you mentioned, I think, in in the crossing the wine dark sea, about how it's actually the non scholars that gatekeep classics. So, and the question is, how do we as scholars actually make the field more inclusive? What's your answer to that?

[00:48:39]>> I mean, I think you're doing a great job, Flint.

[00:48:42]>> No, not for me, but just in general.

[00:48:45]Yeah, but I think you're you're emblematic of just a good approach to this where you're you're not you're not sort of performing being threatened by there could be trolls attacking you, but you're you're still being willing to put yourself out there. I think that's really important and just being able to let some of the some of the the the more rubbishy or negative or toxic things just roll off you because there's going to be that. But just to keep going with the with realizing the majority of people who might engage with you and learn from you are benevolent people who are just curious and can get can learn can be can engage can ask reasonable questions that could lead to an exciting and interesting dialogue. and just trusting that process, trusting that there's going to be more good than harm that comes out of these dialogues and that the ultimate um goals have to do with more people engaging with this subject and also pushing back against the larger forces that that threaten the humanities, that threaten funding, that threaten enrollments, that threaten classics departments and um humanities disciplines in general. that the more we can put ourselves out there and be brave about it, the more we can encourage more dialogue, encourage more engagement, more curiosity, and then ultimately more more learning and more scholarship because the more young people get excited about it, the more students and the more future scholars and classics there are, which is great.

[00:50:14]>> Yeah. No, I agree. And I mean, you know, I think we we have to weather them slings and arrows, if you will. Exactly.

[00:50:20]>> Because like it's we live in such an anti-intellectual world that we're we're distorted and misrepresented and we have to put ourselves out there otherwise we will continue to be to lose ground.

[00:50:31]>> And don't let don't let the trolls claim the space because >> No, exactly.

[00:50:34]>> We have things to say and actually we know things which the trolls don't necessarily. So we should >> um how how do you go about convincing your colleagues and students to do similar public engagement and scholarship?

[00:50:48]I mean, I'm not sure if it's my job to tell other people what to do in I mean, I think >> No, but to encourage them that it's important, if you see what I mean.

[00:50:56]>> Yeah. I mean, I I guess I just talk to people about what I think is important and then other people can choose to make their own choices. I mean, I think it's partly just about showcasing that public scholarship also doesn't have to mean dumbing things down, which I think people also have that misperception. So I think addressing that when it comes up even if it's slightly implicit and just naming it and saying actually no in engaging seriously in translation or in talking to the public in all kinds of different ways. That doesn't mean I'm going to simplify my account of the heric poems. It means I'm going to avoid using jargon. I'm not going to avoid the kinds of shortcuts that you can use if you're writing exclusively for a tiny group of colleagues. But that doesn't mean you're not going to bring your whole mind and your whole awareness of the complexity of the problem to however you explain it, including to the public.

[00:51:51]So I think just correcting that misperception is crucial, especially when talking to colleagues about it because sometimes think, okay, I have to just just do peer-reviewed articles because that's the only way to be intellectually serious. And I think that's wrong. I think you can be just as intellectually serious when you're talking to people who are not colleagues. And in fact, it can really help your academic writing if you can do some non-academic writing.

[00:52:17]>> Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. And particularly the not dumbing down. I find that a lot of colleagues, you know, my my colleagues in archaeology, they're great with students at museum days. Yes. And then they they sort of treat adults the same way. And it's like, no, you have to make things complicated and nuanced for adults. You have to not dumb it down. You just have to make it understandable. Yeah.

[00:52:36]>> Yes. Exactly. Which is quite hard to do.

[00:52:38]and in fact takes an extra level of of thinking and of intellectual work. So in some ways it's harder than talking to or writing exclusively for your colleagues.

[00:52:48]>> Another theme that I picked up on your in your new book is that oftentimes some of the most successful popularizers of our fields aren't in our fields.

[00:52:57]>> And so how do how do you how do you address that? Because there's there's positives and negatives to that that that happen.

[00:53:04]>> There's positives and negatives. I think it's quite difficult and one has to frame it quite carefully. I mean, in a way, this comes back to the Christopher Nolan question, right? I mean, he's not a classist. He has a BA in English from a very long time ago, but he has this amateur interest in this poem, and he's going to do a lot to bring the Odyssey to new audiences, which is wonderful.

[00:53:25]He's also not going to engage with some elements of the poem that Homerrists today might think are important. And similarly with Stephven Fry or It is Hamilton, there are things that their work is presenting to the public which might be quite different from how an actual classicist would present Greek myth. And so I think there's this challenge of how do I talk about that so that I'm not just saying this is no good. This is by someone who doesn't know anything so don't don't bother with that. But it can be a great gateway and and so many of these things are great gateways and as long as ideally for some people it's not the end of the process right it can be this first sparks your interest and then you can go on and push push deeper and learn more and it doesn't have to be the end which means that in fact it doesn't matter if there are perhaps going to be some distortions and perhaps going to be some things that this particular version of antiquity gets wrong but you can learn that later.

[00:54:26]You don't have to micromanage every element of how do people get there because people get get to classics by all kinds of different means and it's fine.

[00:54:34]>> Yeah. So what you're really trying to instill is just people to enjoy it and to want to do more.

[00:54:40]>> Curiosity is what is I think really important. I mean I think in general it doesn't even have to be about antiquity but I I mean as you say intellect intellectually um so much of our culture is not as anti-intellectual. So I just want more people to be curious especially about the past and about literature in ways that I think there's so many forces that sort of say don't delve don't engage with ambiguous or difficult things don't think hard about the past let's just live in this world of sound bites and hot takes and the present moment and that's just losing out so much on the totality of human endeavors so I want people to have more curiosity about other people including the other people of the I I have one last question, but before I get to it, do you ever get frustrated how things that you say get clipped out and become hot tapes?

[00:55:32]>> I mean, yes.

[00:55:33]>> Not not not by not by the trolls. I want to clarify. Not by the trolls, but even by the people that are interviewing you and want and support you and stuff like that, >> you know, I can't control everything. I just have to let let a lot of that go.

[00:55:46]It's fine. That's part of what it what it means. I mean, as I was saying before, you have to be brave. You had to be brave about that too.

[00:55:53]>> Okay, this makes sense. And then like the big question I guess I got for you is uh so what's what's the benefits for society about people engaging more with the past and with literature and things like that? What's what's the good of that?

[00:56:05]>> That's such a great question. In a way I I don't want to sort of do a sound bite because I don't think it's about that. I don't think it's about there's just one good. I think it's this multiple set of goods. I think part of it is, you know, we live in a partic every moment in history has said this is an unprecedented time, but of course people are saying it very loudly right now for for very good reasons. I mean, human culture all across the world will be radically different in even a generation and given the the pace of climate change um things are really changing extremely fast and also of obviously AI, the internet, all of these things. I think it's absolut ab absolutely important especially in times of very rapid change for humans to have perspective and we don't have any perspective on ourselves and our own communities and our own moment in history unless we have some really deep awareness of the past.

[00:57:03]>> Okay. So curiosity gives you a different perspective is what you're saying.

[00:57:07]>> Yes. then makes you less less liable to um make rash and idiotic decisions about politics or about where are we going to go next if you haven't have a clearer sense of where have we been >> makes you less likely to elect an incompetent drunk is what you're saying >> yeah I hope I hope it makes you less liable to do that so >> no this was a real pleasure to to catch up with you and to chat the Odyssey and the Iliad in translation um I guess one last little thing at the end of your book, you have 20 rules for translation.

[00:57:40]Is there is there any one you really think that that you want to hammer home to people?

[00:57:46]>> A a less preachy one is is when you get stuck, go for a walk. I'm going to do that right now.

[00:57:50]>> Yeah, that's a good one. That's what I'm going to do afterwards, too. No, but thank you so much. This >> cross.

[00:57:57]>> And so, everybody should check out Crossing the Wine Dark Sea. And uh you're working now on a new Odyssey translation. Anything else you're working on that we should pay attention to? Um, I have several other projects, but I am I have kind of a backlog, so don't hold your breath. We're not going to take my time with this. I'm doing various other Greek myth related things, but you have to wait a minute to learn.

[00:58:19]>> Okay, no worries. And is there anywhere people should find you online?

[00:58:23]>> Uh, I still kind of have Blue Sky.

[00:58:25]That's about all I have. I have a website, too.

[00:58:28]>> Okay, I'll make sure to link to it down below.

[00:58:30]>> I've kind of given up on you.

[00:58:32]>> Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:58:34]Well, thank you so much. It was an absolute pleasure.

[00:58:37]>> Lovely to talk to you.

[00:58:38]>> Take care.

[00:58:43]Tickle giggles.

[00:58:46]Fiddle rhymes and riddles. Tickle tickle giggles. Squiggle tigle g.

[00:59:10]Unable Flint unable.