If you have not been on Twitter lately, and I know that many of you have left it in disgust, you will not have seen that the silly season is starting early.
A handful of people have been fulminating over Emily Wilson's translations of Homer, particularly her Odyssey. They have not held back, freely using terms like "outrageous" and "evil." And they have provoked a backlash from classicists challenging their knowledge of Greek and their understanding of how translations work.
Having no Greek myself, I am unable to weigh the merits of their arguments. But my reading of the emotional undertone of the posts suggests why these people have taken out against Emily Wilson. (1) She is a woman. (2) Her translation displays relatively straightforward English rather than the archaizing artificiality of some other translations. (3) Her work has gotten popular notice.
It would be well to remember that Homer has been through quite a lot, particularly over the Iliad. Keats enthused over Chapman's version. E.V. Rieu rendered it into prose. Alexander Pope turned it into rhyming couplets. The Lattimore and Fitzgerald 20th-century versions have their partisans. Dozens and dozens of translators over the past four centuries have Englished Homer, and the Iliad and Odyssey have survived them all. The Wilson translations will or will not stand depending on how deeply they satisfy before they too are superseded.
In the meantime, bros, just leave Emily Wilson alone.
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