University of Pennsylvania classical studies professor Emily Wilson received considerable critical praise and popular attention for her translations of Homer's Odyssey and Iliad. In the 13 erudite and lively essays that compose Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, she reveals the complexities of the translator's art while simultaneously conducting a stimulating tour of Greek and Roman literature.
Starting from "The Pleasures of Translation," Wilson makes clear that literary translation involves much more than simply rendering ancient Greek or Latin into serviceable English prose. One recurring theme is the decision facing the translator about whether to preserve a work's poetic meter. She cites that as one of her primary goals in her translation of the Odyssey and the Iliad, though she provides numerous examples of others who've abandoned such restraint for prose poems and free verse.
The collection's longest and most technical piece is its last, "Translating the Odyssey." In it, Wilson takes readers inside the translator's workshop to reveal how "we dance different ways along the tightrope." She selects several brief passages from Homer's work and then analyzes the strikingly different ways translators from the 17th century to the present have delivered them to English-language readers. To illustrate the demands of the process--in many ways, she says, more challenging than creating original writing--she devotes several pages to describing her choice of the word "complicated" to introduce Odysseus.
Some of Wilson's essays travel deeply into the works of writers such as Sappho, Catullus, and Aeschylus, exploring subjects that include female sexuality, Roman humor, and slavery in the ancient world. One of the more accessible pieces is "Chill Out with the Stoics," her critique of "how contemporary people may claim ideas from Greek and Roman antiquity to serve modern cultural imperatives." In "Ancient Worlds: Edith Hamilton and the Popularisation of the Classics," she gives due credit for an engaging prose style to the widely read and admired author of The Greek Way and Mythology. However, she also takes Hamilton to task for her "woolly thinking, prejudices, distortions and errors" and her facile depiction of ancient Greece as a precursor of 20th-century U.S. democracy.
Wilson concludes Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea with a brief but helpful afterword containing 20 principles that direct her own practice as well as her evaluation of the translations of others. For her, "the project--of devoting your life to these great texts, of bringing them to life in new ways for new generations--is always worth it." Anyone who's been exposed to Wilson's work will learn much from the insights of these essays and will hope her journey as a trusted guide through this distant world continues. --Harvey Freedenberg, freelance reviewer
Shelf Talker: In this collection of 13 essays, classics scholar and eminent translator Emily Wilson illuminates the translator's task while considering some of the iconic works of Greek and Roman literature.