The Odyssey (Emily Wilson Translation)

I’ve really wanted to try Wilson’s translation for a while now, both because of how different I’ve heard it is, but also because I haven’t really spent time with the full Odyssey for so many years.

This felt so accessible and direct — I really buy Wilson’s logic that the often dense language of other (often 20th century British) translations, which can have the illusion of feeling more “official”, is in fact potentially superfluous, given that older or heightened, academic English is no “closer” to the Greek than that of our contemporary English. Given this, for me, reading both Robert Fagles’ (for example) and Wilson’s translations were a great solution, as both show different, complimenting components of the story.