If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken/ twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools...

I did this interview for an internet publication, and they cut most of the literary references - quite understandably! I was characteristically longwinded. So I’m posting it here in case it’s of any interest. They asked questions that I’ve been asked a zillion times, but that seem to keep popping up, so I suspect there may be people who are curious about yet another version of my answers.

You’ve dedicated much of your career to bringing the Odyssey to life. What are your initial reactions to the film?

I very much hope many people go and see it in cinemas - it’s worth it to see on the big screen, because so much of the movie is about the visual effects, as well as the very loud sound track. This film is an event, and it has a lot of memorable moments. But I hope those who do so will also read or reread the poem. I hate to be that guy, but the book is a lot better than the film.

You’re the first woman to have her translation of the Odyssey published in English. What does that mean to you, and why does it matter?

Mostly, I don’t think it matters at all. It’s a silly little factoid, not something particularly relevant for my actual work. Gender wasn’t a topic in my scholarly or critical work before I began work on the Odyssey. I’d published various books and articles, mostly about male authors and male characters, with very little attention to gender. I’d published earlier translations - of Seneca’s tragedies - and none of the reviewers or readers of those translations seem to have thought my gender mattered for that work, and nor did I. But all of a sudden, “Woman Translates Odyssey“ became the universal headline, and then journalists began to ask me endlessly and unstoppably about my supposedly female or feminine or feminist perspective. Whatever I say or do, it continues even unto this day.

I’ve found it quite limiting to have my work constantly framed by journalists in terms of my gender. I see it as both simplistic and anti-feminist to insist that all women’s work has to be viewed as primarily “women’s”, as if all our toys must be pink and no other color - whereas men, lucky things, get to focus on what they actually care about, which might not be gender at all. Everything a woman does has to be described as a “feminist intervention”, even if she doesn’t see it in those terms at all (which I certainly don’t). As members of the unmarked gender category, men get to imagine that their gender has nothing to do with their interpretations or perspectives on the world or on literature or history. I keep urging journalists to ask men about their gender and how it informs their work,and please stop asking me about it, because I really don’t work on gender and it’s not my main interest... but those pleas don’t seem to be going anywhere.

I took on the project of re-translating the Odyssey, and then the Iliad, for reasons that had nothing to do with my gender identity, but had to do with my specific scholarly training and literary sensibiities, as someone with longstanding interests in poetic and narrative form, the long traditions of both ancient and early modern verse, and a very long-standing interest in drama and dramatic narrative. I felt that there was an opportunity to provide English readers with translations in traditional, regular meter - in contrast with the dozens of existing free verse and prose translations - and versions that would, like the originals, have a supple multiplicity of voice and perspective, as well as their emotional directness and vividness. Those proto-dramatic qualities are flattened in many existing translations. In approaching any dialogue or scene in the Homeric poems, I make a consious attempt to understand how the text portrays multiple perspectives, and I don’t assume ahead of time that women characters will be presented as inferior or ridiculous. But that’s surely not feminism; it’s about being a reasonably responsible, competent translator of these great poems. The bar for what “feminist translation” means ought to be a lot higher than that.

Beyond my own specific work: the fact that most translations of ancient texts into English have been done by men is notable and quite surprising. There are plenty of English-speaking classicists of all genders, so it’s not about lack of people who could do it, in theory. Plenty of women scholars have written books and articles about Homer. In other linguistic traditions (like French and Italian), there are plenty of published translations of ancient texts, including the Homeric poems, by women. I think it may have to do with the different educational traditions, and differing attitudes towards translation in general: in France and Italy, more people of all genders have some knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin (because of the lycée/ liceo schools), so there’s a wider pool of people qualified to translate texts like the Odyssey - it’s not confined to those who have PhD’s - and within the Anglophone academy, translation has traditionally been treated as a marginal pursuit - and therefore, the translation of ancient texts is often done by those who aren’t working towards tenure. But I still don’t fully know how to explain the gender gap. Maybe it’s partly about networks: I personally would have never done any of my translations if I hadn’t been invited to do so by specific editors in publishing houses. It seems possible that English-speaking publishers and editors have more often reached out to men, when looking for someone to sign up to create a new translation of a big epic poem. Beyond that, I really don’t know how to explain it.

I’m interested in Athena and some of the other Goddesses in the Odyssey. In Homer’s poems, they exercise the power afforded to them by their divinity, but they still remain subordinate to male gods due to their gender. How, if at all, does the movie explore this complicated status?

Nolan strips away most of the divinities in the film - apart from Zendaya’s Athena, who appears only to Odysseus (not Telemachus), and lacks all her usual attributes as a war goddess and goddess of strategy. She doesn’t really do anything - which is not the actor’s fault. Other goddesses appear - Calypso, Circe, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis - but there is no sign in the film that we are supposed to realize they are goddesses, and perhaps, in the world of the film, they aren’t. Zeus, Poseidon, Hermes and Helius do not appear, although there are some scary storms and shipwrecks. I understand the challenges of presenting deities on film, but I still missed the divine elements of the poem.

To address your actual question: Calypso, in the poem, has a wonderful speech complaining that male gods get to kidnap and rape any mortal woman they choose - whereas female gods are often stymied when they do the same, as with her own attempt to keep Odysseus prisoner on her island, which is blocked after seven years by the intervention of Hermes, messenger of Zeus. Calypso’s outrage is funny and very much motivated by her own self-interest: the impetus to send Hermes comes primarily from powerful Athena (=mostly female), rather than Zeus, and there are plenty of examples in the mythical tradition of goddesses who hold mortal men captive for all eternity - such as Dawn with Tithonus, who have been mentioned only a few lines earlier in the poem. None of this enjoyable complexity is present in the movie. Charlize Theron has no such speech, and we never see her having sex with Matt Damon, or having any feelings or thoughts of her own; her role in the film is mostly to be Damon’s helpful psychiatrist, who gets him over his PTSD by prescribing some powerful medication and listening tolerantly while he whines about his guilt. It’s a hard job, but Theron does it with grace.

What goddess’ power would you want and why?

As a translator, I see my work as having most affinity with Iris, the divine messenger goddess - and it’s fun that she’s also the rainbow. Iris is also less terrifying than most divinities in the Greek tradition. The more minor, non-Olympian deities - local nature goddesses, like Calypso or Circe or Thetis, or the Muses - are often less deadly than the more powerful ones, but even they can cause great devastation to mortals. I like the idea of having Artemis’ connection to animals and wild places, or Athena’s skill in strategy and craft. But I don’t really want to be any kind of goddess; it means, inevitably, having mortal blood on one’s divine hands. Divinities can rage forever, and feel no compunction about avenging even the most trivial of slights. I honor and respect those powers, but I am not eager to assume them for myself. It’s not easy to be a part-divine mortal - like Medea, or Helen, or Heracles, or Achilles. Such characters always do and experience terrible things. In the Iliad, Achilles uses what may seem like a small power from his goddess mother, Thetis - her power to persuade Zeus to enable Trojan victory, while he sits out of the fighting. But even that small piece of goddess power turns out to be deadly for both the Trojans and the Greeks, including Achilles himself. Odysseus has some of the strategic cunning of Athena, and with her help, this power enables him to regain his honor and control of his household, through a massacre. Imaginatively and emotionally, I absolutely understand the desire to wield divinely-granted power to gain honor. That’s not difficult to understand, and nor are the fury and grief of Achilles or Odysseus, at their various mortal losses. But if I had to choose for my own real life, I would rather have less power and less honor. If a goddess, any goddess, offers me power, I plan to decline.

You are no stranger to sexism in the world of Classics. You have a button on your website for people to submit their “misogynistic trolling.” What are one or two comments that have made you laugh, and do you have any strategies for not letting them get to you?

My partner had the idea of the misogynistic trolling button, after I got a little rash of hate mail and death threats. It’s made the culture war silliness a lot more fun for me. I like it when people use the “Trolling” button for other purposes - I have had quite a lot of people click it and then write things like, “I love your translations!”

In general, I remind myself that none of it has anything to do with me. When people write hateful things to or about me, I feel lucky not to be consumed by hatred myself. To quote a poem I learned by heart when I was a child and still often mutter to myself: “If you can keep your head when all about you/ are losing theirs and blaming it on you....” - then, “Yours is the earth, and everything that’s in it;/ And what is more - you’ll be a man, my son!” I find it particularly gratifying to recite Kipling to myself, since so much of the “discourse” swirls around misplaced notions about what a man is or should be. I’m grateful not to feel compelled to waste hours of my one wild and precious life in the swamps of conspiracy theories and railing against strangers on the internet, although I do feel bad for those who are doing that.

I think often about Euripides’ Helen - a wonderfully funny, dark, profound tragedy (of which I published a verse translation a few years ago), composed during the disastrous Peloponnesian War, which explores the variant Trojan War myth in which Helen never went to Troy at all: Hera made an “eidolon” in her stead, over which men fought, while Helen herself waited it all out in Egypt by the banks of the Nile. Fame is often a curse, especially for women, and Euripides’ Helen minds about being misunderstood. But this version of Helen has the patience of Penelope, and the cunning of Odysseus: she can, yet again, figure out a way to get out - of both a marriage and a narrative she doesn’t want. I find that a useful model to remember: when the stories about me seem to box me into an image I don’t recognize, I know I’m someone else, somewhere else, and I can invent new stories.