A Conversation with Dr. Emily Wilson
By Musings Staff
Dr. Emily Wilson talks to UCSD students at a coffee hour hosted by Pandora Forum at Art of Espresso.
In 2018, the Classical world shifted with the introduction of a new translation of Homer’s Odyssey, the timeless Greek tale of journey, loss, hope, and more than a few mythical misadventures. Dr. Emily Wilson, professor and department chair of Classical Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, brought a new perspective to her translation that resonated with audiences around the world. She is also credited with being the first woman to ever translate the Odyssey into English. Last year, she published a translation of its companion epic, the Iliad, which has also enjoyed the attention and acclaim of many readers.
In honor of her recent publication, UC San Diego’s Center for Hellenic Studies invited Dr. Wilson to speak at the Annual Ranglas Lecture on February 5th. Pandora Forum, UCSD’s undergraduate Classical Studies organization, was honored to sit down and have a conversation with her beforehand. Below is an edited transcript of Dr. Wilson’s conversation with Pandora Forum President and Musings Editor-in-Chief Iris Harshaw.
HARSHAW: We’re all here because we’re such big fans of your translations. Could you tell us a bit about what the act of translating means to you?
WILSON: I see translation as about recreating a whole experience. So it’s not just about “this sentence has this word order” or “this sentence has this syntax,” but whatever the feelings are that this text evokes, whatever stylistic vibe this passage has, whatever voice this character has, when in a way I see it as [...] a kind of performance for the page of a script that already exists in another language, to recreate it as a totally different social and linguistic context.
I mean, obviously there are many different metaphors one can use for it. In some ways, it’s like a different directing of a play. I mean, you can have many different productions of Hamlet; they can all be responsible in different ways, responding to different things. It could be like a different performance of a musical score. I sometimes think of it like if you have a beautiful sculpture all made out of LEGO, and you have to remake it, but you only have Play-Doh—What do you do? You have to be thinking always about, “What are the possibilities of the materials I’m using?”—which is the English language—and that’s not what the original is doing, but it’s making something that’s “like” in a way that’s going to perhaps be unpredictable.
HARSHAW: And you’re of course following in a long line of translators of Greek and Latin. Could you talk about why you found it important to keep translating these works over and over with each generation? Why is that important to us to keep doing?
WILSON: Yeah! I mean, I feel like… I mean, I actually don’t think it’s necessarily important! (audience laughs) I kind of think it might be, but it might not be. I mean, I think it depends on the particular text and the particular moment, you know? So I was asked to do— all of my translations that I’ve published, I was approached to consider doing it by editors. So it wasn’t that I, sort of, decided the world needs this or “I’m going to do this because I feel like doing it.” It was that an editor reached out to me to say, “Would you consider doing this?” And there was a place with the Odyssey where—and I was hesitant at first, because I wasn’t entirely sure about whether the world needed another English translation of the Odyssey when the world had a lot already. And then I did some meditation on my experiences in the classroom using different translations, and I did some close reading back over other translations that I read or knew about, and after that, I thought maybe I could do something that would be responsible and different.
I mean, I think in general, translations [...] that felt really fresh in one period can feel really stale. And it can be that the norms of the English language can be different, it can also be that scholarship about the original poems, or the original text, can have changed. In the case of Homer, I think there’s a lot more awareness now than there was 30 years ago about the sophistication of the narrative techniques and how the point of view is constantly shifting such that—I think there’s a sort of flattening out of point of view and perspective in some of the even relatively recent translations; I felt like it was necessary to echo how many different voices and perspectives there are in the original.
HARSHAW: And, of course, you're also writing in a form that people haven’t translated the Odyssey and the Iliad in in recent history, in iambic pentameter. Why did you make that choice? Why did you find that it was important to keep it in a meter that was recognizable for the English audience?
WILSON: Yeah, I thought that that was the big thing– I mean, when I wasn’t sure what else I could do, I thought, actually, this is a worthwhile thing to do because there’s been such a predominance in the 20th and 21st centuries of translations in free verse or in prose. And to me, the experience of reading the Greek, or listening to the Greek, or reading it out loud to myself, or hearing other people say it out loud—it’s essentially a musical experience. And it was a rhythmical and musical experience in antiquity. And so I felt like there’s just something huge missing if you’re not thinking about sound in the way that using a traditional meter invites the reader to pay attention to sound. I mean, even if the reader doesn’t know that it’s iambic pentameter, still, even so, if you read a little bit out loud, it’s going to trigger some things in a different way from if it’s free verse. So that seemed to me really important in offering something that’s different and really valuable. Yeah! And just queueing you in, also, that it is a traditional poetic form, and that it is designed for oral performance.
HARSHAW: Do you— now that you’ve finished the epics, the Homeric epics— do you have something you’re looking forward to on the horizon? What’s next for Emily Wilson?
WILSON: (laughs) I, so right now, I’m doing a shorter project, a translation of Ovid’s Heroides in Latin, so I’m really excited about it! (audible audience gasps) I think everyone else loves it too!
HARSHAW: We have some fans, yeah!
WILSON: Yeah, I’m having a great time doing it. And of course the form is very different, and I’m having fun sort of thinking about how to make sure each of the couplets feels punchline-y. It’s good!
HARSHAW: Very cool!
WILSON: I’m enjoying it, yes!
HARSHAW: Do you have any of your own favorite translators, in any language, or translations that you enjoy reading?
WILSON: I mean, I rely on translations for the languages I don’t know, so I feel like, you know, I read Russian novels, and I always read them in translation, and [...] I’ve read some Japanese literature, and I can’t read Japanese, so I’m grateful to the translators who made that possible for me. I feel like, within the Classical tradition, I like the older ones more, because I feel like I learn more from the older ones. But, yeah, I’m not sure I can, sort of, cite, “here’s my top ten list of [...] translators.”
There are lots of great translators working right now! In fact, [it’s] one of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the publication of these Homer translations getting press. I’ve then, sort of, got to meet other translators in different fields, and that’s been really exciting. I got to meet Edith Grossman before she died and I [worshiped] her, and she was a monumental figure, and, you know, I really admired her. It was great! And I got to meet Anton Hur, who translates from Korean, and I think he’s a really exciting, sort of, voice in translation at the moment.
HARSHAW: That’s very cool! I’m so glad that it’s like, you know, this world of translation can also include Classics translators.
WILSON: Oh yeah, it’s exciting! I mean, there’s so much dialogue, and there’s so much room for people to learn from each other about the challenges. Very often, I feel like you go into those conversations thinking, “We’ll have nothing in common, because translating from Arabic is nothing like translating from Latin, it’s just a different world.” And every time, I find, there are always points of commonality. Yeah, it’s exciting.
HARSHAW: More of a broader question, but we’re focused a lot in our organization and in our student body of Classicists on how the Classical field is changing—and how it should change—because it has to be something evolving for it to matter still to us, and it has to be something living, and something that stands for our values. So, how do you think the Classics field has changed since you entered it?
WILSON: I think in all kinds of great ways! I mean, I love that you guys are mostly young women, and I feel like that was not the case when I was starting out as an undergraduate. I mean, I went to a historically all-male college in Oxford, and all of my teachers were men, and I mean, it was… it still felt like a very, sort of, male field. And I don’t think that’s how it feels anymore. I think it feels very different just in terms of who is a Classics major, who has a Classics minor, and who feels a sense of belonging in the field, which is great.
I think there’s also just some sort of reckoning within the field about the things that have been problematic about the field, and the particular ways that the boundaries of Classics have been drawn to support exclusion, and the particular ways that people haven’t been, sort of, thinking enough about, “How did these disciplines form?” and “How did they form alongside systems of racism and classism and all of these different structures of exclusion?”
And I think there’s also just an opening up of the discipline in new ways intellectually through dialogue with, you know, other disciplines, and sort of realizing, “How much can we learn from Egyptologists and Ancient Studies people and people who work on other areas of the ancient world that might not even be adjacent to the Mediterranean?” There are all these different ways that Classical Studies is opening up, and it’s great! I mean, I think that’s always been the case Over the past 150 years, Classical Studies has always learned from other disciplines, even in the early 20th century, learning from anthropology, but I think it’s happening in a really exciting and vibrant way now.
HARSHAW: Yeah! I think we would agree.
WILSON: (laughs) Yeah, I’m so excited to see you all here! You’re the future.
HARSHAW: Silly question: if you were a character in The Iliad, what character would you be?
WILSON: If it’s, sort of, professional me, then I would be Iris, because she’s the closest thing to being a translator. And also being a rainbow is always fun! (audience laughs) Getting to be all glittery and colorful! But yeah, the crossing between worlds, and “here’s how I translate this message for this audience” [...] I love the funny scene when she goes to the boisterous winds who are getting drunk and has to convey the message in a tactful but also firm way. I mean, I think they just… struggling with language and how to communicate with different groups of people, I think she’s a character who clearly identifies with that.
(IRIS) HARSHAW: Yeah, me too, I’d be Iris! (audience laughs)
WILSON: It’s a great name, too!
HARSHAW: What’s on your reading list? What books are you reading next?
WILSON: I’m actually just rereading Moll Flaunders, which I think is a fun… totally different from ancient epic, but it sort of has this— I mean, I love it, it’s all about money, but making it funny, and also all about labor and women’s rights, and it’s fun! Yeah, sort of, a recommendation!
HARSHAW: Yeah! It’s a good recommendation!
WILSON: If you haven’t read any Dafoe, then you should read some Dafoe! It’s good!
And read Dafoe we will! Pandora Forum and Musings would like to thank Dr. Emily Wilson for her time and her wonderful responses. We are excited to keep up with what is next in the world of translation!
