The Odyssey - tr. Emily Wilson

[troisoiseaux]

Lying Odysseus replied, I will
tell you the truth completely.

That's it, that's the book! Review over!

No, but seriously: I actually really, really enjoyed the Odyssey. This came as a bit of a surprise, honestly? Even with all the good things I'd heard about Emily Wilson's translation, there was a small suspicious part of me that remembered the one time I tried to read the Iliad in high school (I gave up almost immediately) and worried I might find the non-prose format too tedious; and given that I've read a couple of feminist, or at least female-centric, retellings of the Odyssey (Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad, Madeline Miller's Circe) in the past year, I also wondered if I would be too annoyed by the source material's treatment of its female characters* to enjoy it. Neither of these things turned out to be problems!

I found Wilson's translation really easy to read, while still being clearly not modern prose— one of the reviews quoted in the 'why you should read this book' summary bit (a review by Madeline Miller, in fact) described her language as "fresh, unpretentious, and lean... effortlessly easy to read and ... rigorously considered," which, yeah, that just about covers it. Clearly modern words/turns of phrase - kebab, tote bag, hustling - feel organic when they do appear. I was also delighted by Wilson's decision to slip in a few puns: "mercurial Hermes"; "Demeter with cornrows in her hair."


* I mean, it definitely was, you know, a story from Ancient Greece, but it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. I've read 21st century books with a poorer gender balance in its characters of note— like, you have Athena, Calypso,** Circe, Penelope, Helen, the Phaeacian princess and queen, Odysseus' old nurse, Melantho... poor Melantho. :( The murder of the twelve slave girls was super upsetting, especially because I could picture them so, so easily, whenever they were mentioned— just, like, this group of giggly, snarky teenage girls making the best of their situation.

Honestly, the one thing I didn't expect - especially having recently read Circe, which paints him in a very positive light - was how patronizing and rude Telemachus was to his mother. Like, his issue with the suitors was less that they were attempting to intimidate his mother to marry one of them, than the fact they were doing it at the expense of his inheritance, as opposed to going about it properly, i.e. through her father?! And when Athena convinced him to go questing in search of information about his father, his excuse for sneaking off without telling his mother was that he didn't want her to cry and "ruin her skin" or "spoil her beauty"???!!! Telemachus isn't going to be winning "son of the year" anytime soon.***

** Who, frankly, I am surprised hasn't gotten her own feminist retelling already; when Hermes showed up like, hey, Zeus says you have to let Odysseus leave now, she's like, EXCUSE ME???? I think you GODS are just JEALOUS whenever we goddesses make love to mortal men even though its totally fine when YOU do it!!

*** WHICH REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER BANANAS THING: the fact that multiple characters brought up the story of Orestes as an example of the right way for Telemachus to handle his situation, because Orestes did the Honorable and Manly thing of killing the guy who murdered his father and dishonored his mother. Like, I guess we're just leaving out to whole "haunted by furies" thing, in this version??

I liked Athena more than I'd expected (again, based off having recently read Circe). I mean, Odysseus is probably Exhibit A for the fact that gods don't play nicely with their toys, but Athena had a number of moments of genuine kindness— the part where, disguised as a human, she prays to Poseidon for blessings on their host and then "made the prayer come true herself"; sending Penelope a dream-version of her sister, to comfort her when she was worried over Telemachus' disappearance. Also surprised by the amount of footwork she did, disguising herself as different people to arrange things on Odysseus' and Telemachus' behalf, or even to guide them directly.

Other notes:

- I was surprised by the amount of the plot that happened second-hand.
- The scene where we meet Helen and Menelaus— I was genuinely surprised by how normal they were.
- The amount of time that people - and in particular, men - spend crying in this book? It's a lot!
- Argos the dog is the real MVP of the Odyssey.

Comments

[sovay]

Who, frankly, I am surprised hasn't gotten her own feminist retelling already

I've written at least one poem, although it is not online.

I like the Odyssey a lot.

[troisoiseaux]

Oh, cool!! :D

[maplemood]

I've got a copy of this and will probably try to start it over Thanksgiving break, when I'll have a little more time (in theory, anyway). I am prepped for getting annoyed with Telemachus, though, since my sister (who's read it) has told me he's pretty much a little shit.

[troisoiseaux]

I mean... I get that Telemachus has had to grow up with an absent father who may or may not even still be alive, and deal with a bunch of aggressive strangers literally eating away his inheritance to bully his mom into marrying one of them; the boy's got problems. BUT. He is just............ such a little shit.

[osprey_archer]

You are so right about Calypso! Maybe the problem is that she's basically her own feminist retelling in the original, calling out the male gods for their hypocrisy and all: it's all right when THEY keep mortal toys, but when a goddess does it, she has to give him back??? THE UNFAIRNESS. It would be hard to improve on that, especially given that we the readers don't exactly want her to keep Odysseus forever.

The murder of the slave girls is rough. Maybe the most alienating scene for a modern reader? Maybe the slave girls are the ones who need a feminist retelling. Although unless the author changed their ending somehow it would be really hard to read - at least as a full-length novel - might work better as a poem or short story.

And yes! The normalcy of Helen and Menelaus's home life. I'm not sure what I expected from them, but after Menelaus sacked a whole city to retrieve Helen, it feels almost anticlimactic to come upon them just doing normal ancient-Greek-king stuff.

[troisoiseaux]

Although unless the author changed their ending somehow it would be really hard to read - at least as a full-length novel - might work better as a poem or short story.

Margaret Atwood kind of already did this, in the Penelopiad!

To steal from my own review of it:

...Penelope's narration was interspersed with commentary from the twelve maids killed by Odysseus on his return to Ithaca, in the form of poems, skits, a court transcript, even a mock anthropology lecture on the maids as symbols of a matriarchal moon cult (which ends with a punch-to-the-stomach quote along the lines of “isn’t it so much easier to think of us as a metaphor, instead of actual flesh and blood girls, because then you don’t have to acknowledge that we suffered?”)

Re: Helen and Menelaus— I found it less anticlimactic than, like, deeply bizarre in its normalcy. Like, it's HELEN OF TROY and MENELAUS, yet we see them knitting and mourning and side-conferencing with each other over what to do about this crying teenager who may or may not be the son of Menelaus' friend. They're like..... somebody's parents.

Re: Calypso— I was thinking that too, but like, she's a goddess stuck on this gorgeous island with everything a person could ever want but, like, other people, and then this human man comes along and she loves him, yet he refuses immortality and just sits there crying on her perfect, perfect beach because he wants to go home??? To his wife*??? I feel like there's definitely a backstory there to explore/a story in itself to expand upon.

* Odysseus: the original Wife Guy.

[kaberett]

I enjoyed this review; thank you!

[troisoiseaux]

Aw, thanks! I think it's been a while since I properly reviewed one (1) book rather than covering a couple of different books in one weekly post.

[acequeenking]

<3 The Oddysey is a lovely epic poem, and improves upon the Iliad by not having a chapter that is mostly a recitation of the boats of every little greek city that happened to send a boat to Troy.

I really like the Wilson translation! I think it toes a very good line between trying to preserve the meaning of the original and, simultaneously, a natural-sounding line in English that doesn't sound awful.

Do you think reading Circe and the Penelopiad influenced your reading of the Oddysey? Because one thing I find fascinating about Ancient Greek media is how despite it being a very sexist society -- a without a doubt misogynistic society -- there are so many female characters with strong, even heroic attributes and clear power to influence events: Penelope's quiet and clever rebellion; Calypso's straight out pointing out of the double standards; Circe's knowledge and power; Athena the Patron; Persephone the master of ghosts. Circe and the Penelopiad often I think go further in this respect, both unquestionably feminist tales in many ways (especially the Penelopiad which is so much about women's roles and surviving as a woman in a man's world), but it captures my attention, even in the original.

There's an interesting (short) lecture from Dr. Fiona Macintosh from Oxford that talks about how very morally polarizing the hanging of the maids is, and how it has been simultaneously considered so minor a scene as to be cut from some translations (!) while others dwell, and how some of the retellings can make it the most upsetting and awful scene in the book -- especially the Penelopiad.

[troisoiseaux]

I think, if anything, reading the Odyssey had a bigger impact on my thoughts about Circe and the Penelopiad rather than the other way around, since it gave me the context of the source material and being able to identify, from there, what changes were (or weren't!) made by the authors in the retelling(s).

Ooh, I'll check that out! Thanks for the link!