‘Odyssey’ translator Emily Wilson: Nolan should've hired a screenwriter

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: Emily Wilson discusses why she translated the Odyssey, defending a metrical, line-conscious approach that preserves Homer’s speed, multivocality, and alienness. She critiques Christopher Nolan’s film for flattening character, motive, and the divine, while explaining how modern translations often domesticize violence, slavery, and sex. She also reflects on her background, public attention, and the growing audience for Homer.

Main Topics: Why Wilson translated Homer (Priority: 5/5): Wilson explains that teaching the Odyssey and Iliad in translation revealed what standard English versions often miss: poetic meter, oral performance, and distinct character voices. Critique of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (Priority: 5/5): She argues the film is a spectacle with strong actors but weak script, shallow motivation, and diminished psychological, emotional, political, and ethical depth. Translation philosophy and technique (Priority: 5/5): Wilson defends translating Homer into metrical English with close attention to line count, pacing, sound, and the rapid, propulsive quality of the original Greek. Alien world of Homer (Priority: 5/5): The conversation highlights elements often softened in modern retellings—active gods, sacrifice, slavery, and brutal household violence—as integral to the poems’ meaning. Misreadings of gender and feminism (Priority: 4/5): Wilson rejects the idea that her translation is simply a feminist intervention, arguing instead that it aims to represent the Greek text more honestly, including female and enslaved characters. Public reception, backlash, and accessibility (Priority: 4/5): She discusses praise, criticism, online misogyny, and the widening audience for Homer through books, audiobooks, classrooms, and the film’s popularity. Personal background and scholarly identity (Priority: 3/5): Wilson shares how childhood performances, scholarly parents, and her dual connection to England and the U.S. shaped her interest in classics and translation.

Key Arguments: Homeric poetry should be translated as poetry, not prose; meter and sound patterns matter because the original was designed for oral performance. Existing translations often domesticate Homer by adding modern idioms, softening violence, or inserting moral judgments that are not in the Greek. Nolan’s film is worth seeing as a cultural event, but it strips Odysseus of much of his complexity and makes his motivation too thin. The Odyssey’s divine and alien elements—gods, sacrifice, capricious intervention—are central and should not be minimized. Modern translators often over-explain or expand because they want to make the text feel familiar, but this can erase the poem’s speed and strangeness. Translating enslaved people as “servants” or making the women who are killed seem like “sluts” misrepresents the Greek and alters the ethical force of the story. Her work is not motivated by the idea that women automatically produce feminist translations; it is motivated by fidelity to the poem’s literary and historical realities. Audiobooks and read-aloud formats suit Homer especially well because the poems were originally experienced as performed oral literature.

Data Points: Time to complete 2017 Odyssey translation: 6 years - Wilson says her first major Odyssey translation took six years. First woman to translate the Odyssey into English: Yes - Wilson notes she learned this only after getting the publishing contract. MacArthur Fellowship: 1 - She received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship after the Odyssey translation. Guggenheim Fellowship: 1 - She received a Guggenheim after translating the Iliad. Years the fatal Seattle protest shooting has gone unsolved: 6 years - Mentioned in the opening promo, not part of the interview itself. Estimated poem length: Over 12,000 lines - Wilson references the scale of the Odyssey and the challenge of matching its length. Age of turning point performance: 8 - She says a childhood school production of the Odyssey turned her toward Greek myth. Film budget: $250 million - The host describes Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey adaptation as a $250 million film.

Pivotal Quotes: "Tell me about a complicated man, Muse, who was lost so long and fled so far" — Emily Wilson: Her translation of the Odyssey’s opening lines "I would be ashamed to have written any part of this script." — Emily Wilson: Her blunt assessment of Christopher Nolan’s screenplay "I think translation is very difficult. I think translation of poetry is really impossible." — Dave Davies / discussion: The interview frames Wilson’s core challenge in translating Homer

Implications: Wilson’s work encourages readers to encounter Homer as living poetry, not sanitized heritage. It also suggests that future translations and adaptations should preserve form, moral complexity, and strangeness rather than flattening the text for modern comfort.