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.

* * Her answer continues beyond that

https://emily613.substack.com/p/if-you-can-bear-to-hear-the-truth?r=1g4uc&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer&triedRedirect=true