I've read a few translations, and while I appreciate Wilson's clarity, I honestly found it pretty boring. My wife and I read it aloud and, compared to Fagles (which is my favorite), the words she chose often seemed to lend no emotional energy to the story. I'm not trying to dismiss your opinion at all, but I'd really like to know what I'm missing.
IANALC (I am not a literary critic) but I share your impression of Wilson's translation.
I thinks Wilson makes things a little too clear in her effort to produce a modern story. This erases a lot of purposeful vagueness, allusions to background knowledge, innuendo, and general openness to interpretation that makes classics "feel classic."
For example, the first few lines of Pope's translation says that Odysseus, "Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d, Their manners noted, and their states survey’d." In Greek mythology, Odysseus was said to have been an unusually curious man. Even in his far-flung travels, he took note of the natural and human elements he encountered, as if he was Charles Darwin! Unlike Darwin's, though, his surveys were neither methodical nor preserved for posterity. His days were unnumbered, and we can merely glimpse a few portions of his exploits that a muse can snatch up for us. There's plenty of blank space for us to fill with our own imagination and interpretation. Indeed, we fill it with a sense of grandiosity and timelessness, as we do when we read any good epic from Homer to Tolkien.
This introduction to the main character is completely missing in Wilson's translation. Odysseus just becomes a "complicated man" who filmed five Die Hard movies in a row to save his crew and get back home. Wilson's opening feels... hollow. It leaves little room for imagination. It sets us up in popcorn mode, merely waiting for the author to fill us in, punch by punch.
Perhaps, everyday English has co-evolved with modern science for too long to avoid sounding matter-of-factly.
Yeah, and neither am I, although I do have a BA in literature from a third-tier college, which probably doesn't give me much credibility here. Your opinion is pretty close to my own. The only thing I might disagree with you on is that I'm not as attached to the (mildly) archaic language. I think modern English can serve a mythic function; it just doesn't really work for me in Wilson's translation. By the way, if anyone wants to compare, here are three versions of that one line:
Pope
> Wandering from clime to clime, observant stray’d, Their manners noted, and their states survey’d.
Fagles
> Many cities of men he saw and learned their minds
Wilson
> and where he went, and who he met
(On this one, Pope is my favorite too.)
That being said: this is all literature! It's mostly a matter of taste and opinion. And if Wilson's writing helps anyone get something new out of the Odyssey, I'm all for it. I'm genuinely just curious what that is.
Yep, it can be a matter of taste and opinion. Wilson is certainly more accessible, and has a lower chance of making a high school student hate literature for life. :)
But when so much detail is lost, one begins to wonder if it should be called an "abridged edition", even if it preserves the number of lines.
I've read the Fagles' translation of The Iliad, but the only Odyssey translation I've read is Wilson's.
Fagles is my favorite of the two, because he gave me more of what I wanted: high diction and mythic tone. Wilson's translation was great, and evidently captured the spirit of the Greek much better, but I wasn't really looking for that. I'm not a classicist, I don't read Greek. I want my blood to be stirred by evocative lines that transport me into a non-existent past. I don't think that's what Wilson was trying to accomplish, so it's no surprise she doesn't succeed at it.
But, to answer your question, one advantage of the Wilson Odyssey is that it is a really fast, fun translation to read. Whereas I found Fagles to be more of a study, Wilson was practically a page-turner. I'm not saying it was dumbed-down in any way! It's an amazing achievement to have maintained fidelity to the source text while also writing something approachable and engrossing for popular audiences. When she finishes translating the Iliad, I will buy that too, and probably give both her translations to someone I want to have a good experience with Homer. I wouldn't do that with Fagles.
> Fagles is my favorite of the two, because he gave me more of what I wanted: high diction and mythic tone.
Fair :). Lol I’ve been constantly re-reading The Lord of the Rings for the same reason :). And I’ve read (Fagles, I think) The Iliad for the same reasons.
You may have already, but if not check out the Seamus Heaney translation of ‘Beowulf.’
He doesn’t do “high diction” or “mythic tone”, but, imho, he’s managed to give the story a quite “epic tone” in a very contemporary and earthy fashion.
