The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

Emily Wilson’s 2017 translation of The Odyssey was a very different read for me. I had read a couple of versions of The Odyssey in my younger life. But her fresh translation of Homer came highly recommended, and I decided to give it a try.  The destination was the same, but the journey was quite different.  One of the most helpful aspects of this literary experience was the 81-page introduction in which Wilson reminds the reader of the storied history of epic poetry in the Greek classical age. I came away with a new appreciation of why this 3000-year-old tale is so foundational to literature we read today. Her writing is clearer, more emotional and “modern.”

We know the protagonist, Odysseus, as a war hero. But, in Wilson’s hands, he’s quite a complex guy. The narrative is all about the 20 years it’s taken him to leave his military victory in Troy and return to wife Penelope in Mycenae. He is a noble, a king, a leader, an athlete, a storyteller and a warrior. He’s smart and strategic, also cunning and devious. He knows how to lie. He values loyalty. A devoted husband, he also liberally allows himself to be seduced during his travels. During his extended absence, Penelope has remained loyal to him despite the irritating presence of false suitors camping out in the palace.Their goal is that Penelope choose one among them to wed her, all the while spending Odysseus’s resources and despoiling his home. The suitors’ goal is to assume his position and vast fortune.

There are monsters, giants, seductresses, savage storms and, most of all, there are gods. Tons of gods.  Some of them are good, often changing into human form to help Odysseus complete his voyage. Some of them are bad, as, for example, when Poseidon stirs up a violent storm to wreck Odysseus’s ship and prevent his return home. Even having completed the book, I still can’t keep all the gods straight.  Many of the major characters from Greek mythology put in an appearance in The Odyssey, and it’s refreshing to remember their disparate roles in so much of literature, plays and poetry, high opera and even children’s comics.

If you live for trigger warnings and are made uncomfortable reading about a fictional patriarchy, this story is not for you. Wilson is keenly sensitive to female roles and makes the reader acutely aware of Homer’s very explicit gender stereotyping.  If there are kings and masters of household, there are also slaves, whom she refers to as slaves and not euphemistically as servants. Some of them are noteworthy for their loyalty and courage.

In this Trump era of xenophobia, hostility to immigrants and mass deportation, there runs throughout The Odyssey a counter-theme. A recurrent and prominent leitmotif through this epic tale is hospitality: kindness to the stranger, caring for the unannounced and unknown guest, and a very expansive view of generosity to others. The importance of this to the well-being of humans is too often overlooked and aggressively dismissed in what passes for a code of conduct today.

Wilson has achieved her goal of writing with greater simplicity about often-embroidered classical themes, of using, as she explains, “fairly ordinary, straightforward, and readable English.”  Just last year, she also published her version of The Iliad. I have no doubt I’ll take that up at some point, just not immediately.