Homer

Notes on Books and Movies

With yesterday’s release of Christopher Nolan’s new film The Odyssey, came a hail of criticism from die-hard originalists, and unsurprising approbation from the “living document” crowd.

The attention, not its polarity, drove popularity. Cultural offense and controversy, likewise, drove discussion and airplay.

It was a significant achievement to retrofit an old tale, perhaps the original tale of Western culture, and make it anew.

In the greater scheme of things, dusting off and bringing such a cultural icon to light, may inspire the culturally lost and ignorant, to revisit what any educated individual has absorbed early in life.

This was a very good thing.

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In a sense, it was similar to the recent rash of cover bands mimicking original pop and rock standards online.

They sounded much like the original tracks, and some bands were at pains to duplicate appearances and personal mannerisms of long-gone musicians.

When all was said and done, however, the originality of such mimics hovered near zero.

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It was not as if the work had suddenly been discovered.

Its first rendering into English from Greek was published in 1616. Nor were all prior translators male.

It had been a cash cow for translators for centuries.

In fact, diminutive seventeenth century poet Alexander Pope made a substantial personal fortune by rendering Homer’s Greek into English couplets.

Likewise, orientalist T. E. Lawrence, spent four years on an Odyssey translation while stationed at Karachi with the R.A.F. in one of the early prose adaptations of The Odyssey.

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Ho for the wine-dark, wine-dark, wine-dark,

Ho for the wine dark sea…

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Lawrence made a striking claim: few other translators had personally seen the blood and violence, and killed men in battle as he had.

That put a different light on modern translators of The Odyssey.

Among those most often cited are Fitzgerald (1961), Wilson (2018), Mendelsohn (2025), Fagles (1996), and Lattimore (1965). These are the tip of an iceberg.

The consumer of translations most often did not know the original Greek text, although the literary components, images and metaphors of Homer have found their way into contemporary English more often than generally acknowledged.

The tastes and preferences of a modern Professor of Ancient Greek History may not coincide with the price an American audience was willing to pay to see Nolan’s film.

The current bickering concerned the film’s helmet and armor style which, strictly speaking from the archeological record, were anachronistic. Bear in mind Homer was writing of events in 730 BC, which had likely taken place in 1270 BC, five centuries earlier. Some depictions of Greek armor on vases contemporary with Homer, do not themselves get it historically right, technically.

If gender were the most important factor, Wilson’s translation offered a feminist woman’s point of view. The claim that she was the first woman to translate Homer is inaccurate and likely irrelevant. Unlike Lawrence, Wilson’s lack of first-hand familiarity with the gory subject matter beyond language will not satisfy some.

The recent release of Nolan’s film emphasizes that it was not just the tale, but the teller of the tale that informed its presentation. Some argued that the screenplay and production are more about Nolan and less about Homer.

Like any mode of entertainment, the tastes of the audience and the era in which they live, shaped their acceptance. A translation meant for a Victorian audience might have included shadings of meaning and social acceptability that would fall on deaf or unappreciative ears today.

Any undergraduate student of Shakespeare remembered the old saw that times change, but human nature does not.

The inherent and recognizable character of those whose story was presented in Odyssey, was the basis for its enduring legacy. The men, their challenges and their responses successful and unsuccessful, were familiar enough to establish rapport with any audience from any age, no matter the details of armor and translation.

It was those larger themes that were held so dearly by Greek nationals, who may be offended by Nolan’s choices in fleshing out the drama of the epic.

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Like another classic, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, the language and rhythms of the original may be difficult to render into English by virtue of the phonetics and form particular to a language.

A translator must make a choice between the formal poetry of the original, and how that was best rendered into English, as English poetry or as prose.

It is a useful exercise to hear a classic, whether the Psalms of David, or The Inferno, or Chaucer’s Canturbury Tales, or Beowulf or The Odyssey spoken, read or sung in their original language to understand that phrasing, rhythm and rhyme, the architecture of language, has a structural integrity and beauty even in absence of literal meaning of the words.

Some of the double entendre and connotations displaying artistic brilliance in the originals, may be impossible to preserve in translation. The story line and main points may survive the process even when the embellishments cannot, for linguistic reasons.

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If the net result of Nolan’s release was to ensure that most households obtain a digital or bound example of The Odyssey, no matter whose translation, and to ignite debates over film making and the original values of the work, it is all good.