The epic of the odyssey through Emily Wilson's translation
Welcome! I am so excited to dive into this with you. ’s 2017 translation of The Odyssey is a true cultural landmark—not just because it is the first complete English translation of the epic by a woman, but because of her incredibly fresh, clear, and rhythmic approach to the ancient text. Before we map out our journey and look at how she brings this ancient story to life, I would love to know a little bit about your background with the epic. Have you read other translations before (like Robert Fagles or Richmond Lattimore), or is this your first time experiencing Odysseus's long journey home?
I have read parts of it, but never a full translation.
It is completely fine to have only read fragments before. In fact, approaching a complete reading for the first time through the lens of 's work is a fantastic way to experience the epic. Her translation is particularly famous for stripping away the heavy, mock-antique language of older versions to reveal the rapid, driving pace of the original Greek.
The Music of Meter
One of the most structural choices Wilson made was matching the original poem line-for-line. While Homer wrote in , a rhythm that sounds natural in ancient Greek but incredibly forced in English, Wilson chose to translate the epic into iambic pentameter.
Iambic pentameter is the heartbeat of English poetry—it is the meter used by Shakespeare, Milton, and Chaucer. It follows a steady da-DUM, da-DUM rhythm, containing five beats per line. Let's look at how she uses this regular, musical meter to describe the goddess Calypso's island:
The scent of citrus and of brittle pine Suffused the island. Inside, she was singingBy using this natural rhythm, she keeps the story moving incredibly fast, matching the oral storytelling tradition of the original.
Let's continue to her translation philosophy and word choices
Stripping Away the Grandiose
To understand Emily Wilson's translation philosophy, we have to look at what she didn't do. For centuries, English translators operated under a style rule popularized by the 18th-century poet , who believed that Homer must always sound "grand, ornate, and rhetorically elevated."
This belief led to generations of translations written in a heavy, artificial "mock-antique" style. Translators filled their pages with archaic words like behold, thou, and steed to make the epic feel properly ancient and "literary." But Wilson pointed out a simple truth: Homeric Greek wasn't archaic to the ancient Greeks. It was clear, rapid, and direct.
Wilson's philosophy is to strip away that heavy, encrusted layer of Victorian and Edwardian pomp. Her goal is immediacy and naturalism.
Instead of making the characters sound like rigid statues, she makes them sound like living people, without ever "dumbing down" the poetry.
Let's look at one of the most famous examples of how this philosophy impacts her actual word choices: the very first line of the epic. For comparison, let's see how a traditional translator, Robert Fagles, opened the poem in 1996, compared to Wilson in 2017.
| Translator | The Opening Line of The Odyssey |
|---|---|
| Robert Fagles (1996) | "Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns..." |
| Emily Wilson (2017) | "Tell me about a complicated man." |
The Greek word Homer uses here is , which literally means "many-turned" or "much-turning." While Fagles opts for the poetic-sounding "man of twists and turns," Wilson cuts straight to the psychological core with "complicated."
It is a word that immediately makes Odysseus feel real, modern, and deeply human. He is not just a legendary hero; he is a man with layers, contradictions, and flaws.
Show me a comparison of other famous lines
Let's put Emily Wilson's distinctive voice side-by-side with older translations to see how she transforms the atmosphere of The Odyssey.
The Trapped Hero
A great place to start is the description of Odysseus trapped on Ogygia, the island of the goddess . Notice how Robert Fitzgerald, writing in 1961, wraps the scene in heavy, romanticized language. Then look at how Wilson handles the exact same Greek lines in 2017.
| Translator | Description of Odysseus's Captivity |
|---|---|
| Robert Fitzgerald (1961) | "[she] clung to him in her sea-hollowed caves— / a nymph, immortal and most beautiful, / who craved him for her own." |
| Emily Wilson (2017) | "Calypso, a great goddess, / had trapped him in her cave; she wanted him / to be her husband." |
Fitzgerald's version uses lush, passive imagery ("clung to him," "sea-hollowed caves") that makes Odysseus's captivity sound almost like an erotic luxury.
Wilson, on the other hand, calls a spade a spade. By choosing the word trapped, she highlights the bleak reality: Odysseus is a prisoner who desperately wants to go home. She doesn't romanticize the power dynamic between a powerful goddess and a mortal man.
Let's look at another famous moment: the appearance of , which Homer famously describes using a recurring, musical formula. Traditionalists have long translated this with an elevated, slightly dusty grandeur.
| Translator | The Arrival of Morning |
|---|---|
| Traditional Translations | "When the rosy-fingered Dawn, child of morning, appeared..." |
| Emily Wilson (2017) | "When early Dawn born of the mist appeared, / her fingers bright with roses..." |
While the compound "rosy-fingered" is a literal translation of the Greek word rhododaktylos, it has become a literary cliché that sounds a bit stiff in modern English. Wilson rephrases it to "fingers bright with roses," which feels like an active, visual image rather than a dusty, recycled poetic tag.
How does she handle the description of monsters, like the Cyclops?
Wilson brings the same lean, psychological realism to the epic's monsters, refusing to wrap them in romanticized, fairy-tale mystique. When she translates the encounter with the , she strips away the stylized, mythological distancing of older translations to make the threat feel immediate, visceral, and terrifyingly human.
| Translator | The Cyclops's Brutality |
|---|---|
| Robert Fitzgerald (1961) | "He clutched at my companions / and caught two in his hands like squirming puppies / to beat their brains out, spattering the floor." |
| Emily Wilson (2017) | "He reached and grabbed two men, and smashed them down / like puppies on the ground; their brains gushed out / and soaked the earth." |
Where Fitzgerald uses slightly delicate, literary phrasing like "beat their brains out, spattering the floor," Wilson's language is punchy and confrontational. Words like smashed and gushed are simple and monosyllabic, mirroring the brutal, unadorned impact of the giant's actual violence. She forces us to confront the scene as a raw horror rather than a stylized myth.
Now that we have explored her language, we are ready to move to the next part of her philosophy: how her translation choices fundamentally reshape the way we view the poem's female characters and household dynamics.