{"id":8853,"date":"2017-11-04T15:07:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T21:07:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8853"},"modified":"2017-11-04T15:07:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-04T21:07:56","slug":"my-relationship-to-odysseus-its-complicated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8853","title":{"rendered":"My Relationship to Odysseus? It’s Complicated."},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"Later this month, a new translation of the Odyssey, the first into English by a female scholar, will be published. (Click the cover image for a link.)<\/p>\n

This New York Times<\/em> article about Emily Wilson and her approach to the poem t<\/a>ells how she “places her flag” with her translation of one word at the beginning, polytropos<\/em>, which she, unlike dozens of previous translators, chooses to translate as “complicated.” So her version opens like this:<\/p>\n

Tell me about a complicated man.
\nMuse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
\nwhen he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
\nand where he went, and who he met, the pain
\nhe suffered in the storms at sea, and how
\nhe worked to save his life and bring his men
\nback home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
\nthey ate the Sun God\u2019s cattle, and the god
\nkept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
\ntell the old story for our modern times.
\nFind the beginning.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Later this month, a new translation of the Odyssey, the first into English by a female scholar, will be published. (Click the cover image for a link.) This New York Times article about Emily Wilson and her approach to the poem tells how she “places her flag” with her translation of one word at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33,232,4],"class_list":["post-8853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-greece","tag-poetry","tag-scholarship"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2iN","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":487,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=487","url_meta":{"origin":8853,"position":0},"title":"In memorium Monica SjooMonica Sjoo,\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 9, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"In memorium Monica SjooMonica Sjoo, artist, writer, and a key figure in Goddess spirituality, died Monday. With Barbara Mor, she coauthored The Great Cosmic Mother: Discovering the Religion of the Earth (Harper San Francisco: 1987). She also wrote Return of the Dark\/Light Mother and other works.In an email circulated this\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7171,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7171","url_meta":{"origin":8853,"position":1},"title":"The Slut, the Priestess, and\/or the Poet","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent article in The New Yorker, \"How Gay was Sappho?\" re-examines two questions about the famous poet of antiquity: 1. 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Somewhere in there, perhaps, were sculptures based on a young woman named Audrey Munson.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"Audrey Munson","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/downloads.thedaily.com\/ui-images\/2011\/12\/04\/120511-opinions-history-audrey-munson-pandey-1-ss-662w.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2900,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2900","url_meta":{"origin":8853,"position":4},"title":"Quick Review: Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Karen Palmer, author of Spellbound: Inside West Africa's Witch Camps, is a veteran journalist, not a historian of witchcraft, so for me to read the book from the latter perspective is to do her a slight disservice. (As an inside, the subtitle might\u00a0 better read \"Inside Ghana's Witch Camps,\" but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Africa\"","block_context":{"text":"Africa","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=africa"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1199,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1199","url_meta":{"origin":8853,"position":5},"title":"Doreen Valiente remembered","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Hecate reminds us that ten years have passed since the Wiccan world lost Doreen Valiente, who still does not get enough credit for her part in creating the religion.I corresponded with her some in the 1980s, but, ironically, arrived in her home of Brighton just weeks after passing. Riding city\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8853"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8855,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8853\/revisions\/8855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}