Emily Wilson revises Homer for new readers
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Emily Wilson, a Homeric scholar, recently released Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, a collection of essays detailing her approach to literary translation.
Wilson gained prominence with her 2017 translation of The Odyssey, which she promoted by openly sharing her translation choices and reasoning online. This transparency appealed to both academic classicists and readers new to Homer’s work. Her new book expands on these ideas, offering insight into the complexities of translation and her critical perspective on other translators’ work.
Wilson particularly critiques those who add unnecessary embellishments to original texts, using Daniel Mendelsohn’s recent Odyssey translation as an example. She argues a retranslation is only worthwhile if it offers a genuinely new perspective. Wilson is currently undertaking another full retranslation of The Odyssey, motivated by a desire for greater nuance and a commitment to more precise language, particularly when describing the roles of enslaved people in the epic.
She intends this new version to be longer than her 2017 translation, allowing for a more detailed rendering of Homer’s original work and a more thoughtful approach to complex topics.
