It’s Complicated

I’m still awaiting my copy of Emily Wilson’s new translation of the Odyssey, but on the basis of passages circulating on social media and this New York Times Magazine interview it’s going to be well worth it. Certainly it’s already setting off some fascinating discussions of issues in translation: the particular choices that have to be made in trying to express concepts that don’t have an exact equivalent in the target language, and in particular words that have multiple senses and associations in the original. This is a problem in the very first line of the poem, with the word used to describe its main character, polytropos:

“One of the things I struggled with,” Wilson continued, sounding more exhilarated than frustrated as she began to unpack “polytropos,” the first description we get of Odysseus, “is of course this whole question of whether he is passive — the ‘much turning’ or ‘much turned’ — right? This was —”

“Treat me,” I interrupted, “as if I don’t know Greek,” as, in fact, I do not.

“The prefix poly,” Wilson said, laughing, “means ‘many’ or ‘multiple.’ Tropos means ‘turn.’ ‘Many’ or ‘multiple’ could suggest that he’s much turned, as if he is the one who has been put in the situation of having been to Troy, and back, and all around, gods and goddesses and monsters turning him off the straight course that, ideally, he’d like to be on. Or, it could be that he’s this untrustworthy kind of guy who is always going to get out of any situation by turning it to his advantage. It could be that he’s the turner.”

The point is that it could be either, or indeed both; certainly the poem offers ample evidence both of Odysseus’ twisting, detour-filled wanderings and his subtle, twisting mind. How can this be rendered in English? Do we choose a single word, echoing the original – and, if no word exists that evokes both meanings, which aspect do we choose to emphasise? Do we instead go for a phrase, at the expense of losing the neat directness of the first line of the original?

Wilson goes for “Tell me about a complicated man”. I rather like that; if you’re going to choose to emphasise Odysseus’ mind rather than his experiences, this does a good job of reserving judgement on whether he should be judged positively (‘clever’, ‘cunning’) or negatively (‘devious’, ‘slippery’) – because of course he is both, both by our standards and by those of the ancient Greeks, and we need to evaluate this in the light of subsequent events and actions. But of course you do then lose the passive element, the extent to which he’s a man caught up in complications as well, even if some of them are self-inflicted.

I’ve always liked “the man of crooked ways” as a means of capturing the ambiguity of the Greek – but then I’ve never been wholly enamoured of Odysseus, as someone who will always find a way to slide out of trouble and turn things to his advantage, the prince of plausible deniability. He is complicated, not just in his intelligence and cunning, but in the conflicting reactions which he provokes (or should provoke) in us – he ‘turns’ us as much as he turns the people he encounters. Homer’s opening sentence is not just a description of the lead character and the action to follow, it’s a warning…