Guernica Talks to Emily Wilson While She Translates The Iliad

Guernica's Ben Purkert interviewed Odyssey translator Emily Wilson! "We discussed toxic masculinity, pseudo feminism, and which pronouns are most appropriate for Homer," says Purkert. "She explained what lessons we might take from The Iliad, and why the epic remains so compelling to the 'emo teenager' in all of us." From their conversation:

Guernica: ...[The] Times referred to you as the first woman to translate The Odyssey, and I know many other outlets have really focused on this too. What has that been like?

Wilson: I’m grateful for the question. I should begin by clarifying that I’m the first woman to translate a complete edition of The Odyssey into English; other women have translated the poem into other languages. Some of the media coverage has made me uncomfortable, because it reflects Anglophone hegemony. Like, if it doesn’t exist in English, it doesn’t exist.

There’s also the issue of tokenism, as if you’d know absolutely everything you could possibly want to know about my interpretive and literary choices because of my sex. Which, of course, is absurd and rather pseudo-feminist. And yet I also recognize that a lot of the attention for the book was not unrelated to my being a woman. The media wouldn’t have cared otherwise.

Guernica: What impact did the success of your translation have on you?

Wilson: I was unknown before I published The Odyssey, and then suddenly I had a readership. I think about status very differently now as a result. Which is interesting, since The Iliad is all about status...

More at Guernica.