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Is it me, or does Emily Wilson do an amazing job impersonating Faye Dunaway, portraying Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest in front of all those woke lemmings from Columbia who will applaud her for defiling Homer with her shameless revisionism she calls translation? In place of applause, perhaps they should shower her with Valium.
By the time Professor Emily Wilson gave this talk, she must have given lectures and interviews about her Odyssey many times, but she still manages to be interesting and seem interested. Her Iliad, just published, and her introduction to it, are at least as good as her Odyssey. That is not to say I agree with her on everything. Regarding the execution of the 12 slave women who had affairs with the suitors, which Emily Wilson interprets as punishing them for being raped to 'purify' Odysseus' house, that is nonsense. It is true that Homer does not say why they are executed, presumably because it would have been so obvious to the original audience as not to need explaining, and some later translators have taken it upon themselves to supply their own explanation, calling these women 'sluts' and 'whores'. Also, that many other translators have understated the women's real status as slaves by calling them maids or servants. Likewise, Odysseus does accuse the suitors 'You raped my slave women.' Yet much of the other behaviour reported of some slave women in Odysseus' house while he has been away suggests that they are enjoying their liaisons with the suitors, for example when they go laughing to the beds of the suitors. Eurycleia says that 12 slave women, presumably the same 12, have become insolent to Penelope; surely the reaction of women whose spirits have been lifted by affairs with the suitors, who anticipate an honoured place under the new regime as mistress to the new master of the house or his friends. If they were suffering repeated sexual violence from the suitors, they would if anything be hoping Penelope would do something to protect them. And Melanthius, brother of one of them, Melantho, takes the side of the suitors in the fight at the end by arming them; a strange thing to do if one of them is raping his sister. The solution is surely to do with the fact that we know that there are a total of 50 slave women in Odysseus' and Penelope's house, of whom only 12, about a quarter, are executed. With over 100 wealthy, ill-behaved young bachelors in the house, with their male sexual urges, and 50 slave women, it may well be that both seduction and coerced sex occur. 12 women lie with the suitors willingly; some of the other 38 are taken by force. One could take a modern ideological attitude that 'no slave can truly consent to sex', except that in practice some of them will, having their own sexual desires and ambitions to ingratiate themselves with the young men who may soon be the permanent masters in the house. That is not to say that, by our morality, these women should have been owned as slaves in the first place, or that even bad slaves deserve to be killed. But then, we could equally argue that Odysseus should not have ruled Ithaca as a king, but should have turned the island into a constitutional, democratic republic with guarantees for human rights, trans rights and gay marriage, and should have banned animal sacrifices and been a conscientious objector during the Trojan War. Not realistic for that time and place.
Ha!!! Yes, well said. Emily is bringing in her worldview with this translation, which is fine. I’ve read many translations and in my head have formulated a story that borrows from each I guess.
