“A translation, just like an original work of art, needs to have its own vision. And you need to have the humility to know that you can’t do everything. You have to commit to your own vision.” -Emily Wilson

Emily Wilson was cast as Athena in a stage production of “The Odyssey” at the age of eight. It turned out to be a defining moment in her life, that ultimately set her on a course of decades of passionate and devoted study.

Her 2018 translation of “The Odyssey” garnered overwhelming critical acclaim, became a bestseller, and is defining how a generation reads Homer, and by extension understands the relevance of classical literature in general. She followed up, in 2023, with her translation of “The Iliad.”

Her genius has been to render these ancient stories in swift, unpretentious, contemporary language, allowing us to see that despite the rise and fall of empires, despite dramatic cultural shifts and technological progress, there are some essential truths about human nature—we are creatures of hubris and humility, of conflict and collaboration, of profound selfishness and of profound sacrifice.

It is not hard to see in Homer’s Greece a startling similarity to our present-day world. Wilson assures us this is embedded in the text, writing in her introduction to “The Iliad,” “For a twenty-first-century reader, there is nothing unfamiliar about a partisan society riven by constant striving for celebrity dominance and attention.”

“Tell me about a complicated man,” begins “The Odyssey.” From this first line, Wilson establishes herself as one of the most astute translators working in the English language, a translator both of Ancient Greek and of human complexity.

Bio:

Emily Wilson is a classicist, translator, professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the author of the bestselling translations of Homer’s “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad” (winner of the 2024 Audie Award for Best Literary Fiction and Classics). In addition to Wilson’s “Odyssey” and “Iliad,” she has also published several other translated works, including translations of four tragedies of Euripides published in “The Greek Plays:” “Bacchae,” “Helen,” “Electra,” and “Trojan Women,” and translations of “Six Tragedies by Seneca.” Her other books include “The Greatest Empire: A Life of Seneca,” “The Death of Socrates: Hero, Villain, Chatterbox, Saint,” and “Mocked with Death: Tragic Overliving from Sophocles to Milton.” Wilson was named a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in Renaissance & Early Modern scholarship, a MacArthur Fellow, and a Guggenheim Fellow. Wilson is a Professor of classical studies and chair of the program in comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania. Wilson lives in Philadelphia with her family and pets.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/05/05/the-archive-project-portland-arts-and-lectures-emily-wilson/