The problem, to my mind, is not so much the repetitiveness of the epithets, but that some of them are by now so well-known that they’ve lost any real impact.

How did you approach this aspect?ĭM: I feel that the repetition of epithets and formulaic elements are a big part of why, to me, Homer feels like Homer. Then I thought-well, should I try to convey the rarity? Should I use something very fancy or recherché? I like twisty because it suggests, as does the by-now famous “complicated” of Emily Wilson, that this guy is problematic-which he certainly is.ĮR: So, one of the characteristic features of Homer is the repetition of epithets and stock phrases-pieces of language, sometimes just half a line, sometimes whole scenes or similes, which recur throughout the text. Odysseus is often described as polumetis, and so forth, but polutropos is a pretty rare word in archaic Greek.

Jenny Strauss Clay, who was my undergraduate mentor at UVA, and who’s a great Odyssey scholar, pointed out to me that polutropos only occurs twice in Homer. I like maximizing my options for conveying as many nuances as possible. There’s always the issue-and it may be moot-but how would a Greek speaker have processed polutropos? The answer to that question is pretty clear: the word was understood to mean “resourceful.” But today it’s hard not to want the etymology-this business of “turns”-to be present in the translation, especially in the way that I translate, which tends to be on the scholarly side. I finessed that by creating what looks like an end-stop-“he has so many twisty ways,” which refers to his way of being in the world-but then in the next line, you get “to wander,” which takes care of the journeying. The famous problem with polutropos is that whatever “much-turning” means, it clearly is meant to refer both to Odysseus’s personality and his journey. Your version reads, “Tell me the tale of a man, Muse, who had so many twisty ways / to wander.” How did you arrive at this rendering?ĭaniel Mendelsohn: You know, enjambment can do a lot. Over a plate of lemon poppy seed cookies on a chilly afternoon, Mendelsohn and interviewer Eve Romm had a rich conversation about Homeric epithets, identity politics and translation, dactylic hexameter, the rejection of immortality, and what “well-greaved” might actually mean.Įve Romm: I want to start by asking you about the very first line of the Odyssey, which includes the famously untranslatable epithet for Odysseus, polutropos. Daniel Mendelsohn on Translating the Odysseyįor the past several years, classicist and wide-ranging cultural critic Daniel Mendelsohn has been working on a new translation of the Odyssey.

Emily wilson the illiad