>> Eric Deggans: Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Eric Deggans.

As he said, once TV Critic for National Public Radio, now Critic-at-Large at National Public Radio and a Professor at Washington and Lee University.

And thank you in advance for your support of public media, by the way.

We really appreciate it.

[applause] And we need your help now more than ever, so we really appreciate it.

Not to make this about me as we're starting, but even though I'm a media analyst, I am not an analyst of media that was created 30 centuries ago.

So, I'm gonna freely admit that I am one of the people who probably knows the least about this subject.

And so bear with me, I'm gonna be asking questions as if I'm brain damaged or, an eight-year-old, and you're just gonna have to explain a lot of this to me.

But I am a TV nerd, you are too, right?

And I do know about "The Wizard of Oz."

I do know about "Stand by Me."

I do know about "Harry Potter."

I do know about "Catcher in the Rye," and you talk in your book about how "The Odyssey" is the precursor to all of these stories.

So talk a little bit about that to start.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah.

Well, in the introduction of my book, when you do a new translation of "The Odyssey," the first question that comes up is, why does anybody need a new translation of the Odyssey?

>> Eric Deggans: And that was my question number three.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: I'm way ahead of you.

And so I actually have a PowerPoint presentation that I do about this translation, where the first slide is the 60 English translations of "The Odyssey" that have come out since World War II.

So it's a very good question.

Why?

And in the introduction to my book, I talk about not necessarily why we need a new translation, but I think the really more interesting question, in a way, is why does "The Odyssey" continue to speak to us, I think maybe more than any other ancient work of literature, it seems present.

And as Eric, you raised in your question, we don't even realize how many genres and works flow out of Homer's Odyssey.

We're so used to certain things that we don't realize that somebody had to invent them.

And for example, science fiction can be traced back to "The Odyssey," which, and “The Iliad” also have walking, talking robots.

Hephaestus, the god of metalworking, has created a bunch of automata that serve him and do the housework.

The fantasy literature obviously stems from "The Odyssey" travel literature.

"The Odyssey" is the first work in the Western tradition, in the Western tradition, that has as a hero, somebody who is interested in the places that he's going.

Just wants to find out about stuff, as I have a sense that many of the people in this room are "Odyssey" fans.

And as many of you will know, throughout "The Odyssey," Odysseus, who spends ten years trying to get home after the Trojan War, keeps making these stops.

He's shipwrecked and he gets washed up on an island, whatever, and there's this sort of scene that keeps repeating itself where his men, these poor schlubs who are following him all over the Mediterranean, they're like, "Let's go back to the ship."

And he's like, "No, let's see who lives here."

>> Eric Deggans: So on "Star Trek," they would be like the red shirt guy?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, no, exactly.

They're totally the red shirt guy.

>> Eric Deggans: I'm translating for my people out there.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Right.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: And he's like Captain Kirk because he wants to, like, find out about the locals.

and then he hooks up with somebody.

So, I think science fiction, works that give free reign to the imagining other kinds of people, other kinds of customs, traditions.

One of the first lines of "The Odyssey," actually, line three, says, "Many, the cities... Many of the peoples whose cities he saw and whose ways of thinking he learned,” right.

He's interested in other cultures.

He's sort of the first anthropologist.

Then there's the another sort of thing that flows out of "The Odyssey" is the, it's such a cliche by now, but again, somebody had to invent it.

The idea that the journey is more important than the destination.

So this idea of the journey as a kind of metaphor for life, right?

The homecoming story, the picaresque novel, right?

A novel which consists of a series of adventures by a happy go lucky, accident prone main character.

So also, I would say rom-com in a funny way, which I talk about, as in the introduction, because among the many other things it is "The Odyssey" is about these two people who are trying to come together and keep being foiled by circumstances until an incredible final reunion.

And what's interesting to me, as a person who has devoted his life to Greek literature, is almost no genres flow out of "The Iliad" by contrast, and I love "The Iliad," don't get me wrong, but "The Odyssey" seems particularly fertile because its character is interested in everything.

It is interested in everything.

And so I think it just keeps speaking to us.

And of course, I left out the most obvious thing because it's the most obvious thing, which is a homecoming story.

Home, one of the most... The words, the Greek words for home and homecoming are repeated very often in "The Odyssey," and that is emotional for most people, right?

Home, the word “home” is an emotional word, and it's about somebody who just wants to get home.

And so all these things, I think, make it very alive.

And I think every ten years or so, ...translation comes out and people wanna, God willing, people want to read it.

They want to experience it because it says things that seem to be true all the time.

>> Eric Deggans: Very true.

>> Eric Deggans: And you point out, for example, that even though a lot of people... What are you looking for?

Oh, there you go.

You point out that even though a lot of people sort of focus on when Odysseus and his wife get together, that the real sort of conclusion of the book is when he comes back with his father, Laertes.

And I had the weirdest association when I read that, because I thought about the film "Nobody" with Bob Odenkirk, where he reunites with his dad right before they kill all the bad guys, and I was like, "Wow, even that comes from 'The Odyssey.

"” >> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

>> Eric Deggans: So as a professor, though, and I've had this experience too, sometimes it's hard to get students to appreciate the original thing when they're so familiar with all the offshoots of it.

And I wonder, is that ever a challenge with "The Odyssey?"

Because we're so used to these stories.

We're so used to the homecoming story, the rom-com story, the reuniting story.

Will it feel old hat to return to "The Odyssey?"

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: I don't... Well, I've never had that problem, actually.

I'm actually this semester at Bard College, where I teach in upstate New York.

I'm teaching two sections of an introduction to "The Odyssey" seminar, which are absolutely full, and we just had our first week of class.

And I think the kids are riveted by it.

I think actually it works the other way.

I think because they're familiar with the sort of offshoots.

American teenagers are very good movie critics, and TV critics.

Well, they know this stuff; they have a natural ability to talk about certain kinds of pop culture.

They're familiar with these stories, with these arcs.

It's just they've been raised on them.

But I think they're excited to see the mothership, so to speak.

And it is exciting.

I mean, I think "The Odyssey..." Who was it?

I think it was... Well, I can't think of anyone's name anymore.

>> Eric Deggans: It's called getting older, my friend.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: No.

[laughs] Well, some great Italian writer whose name I'll remember at 6:15 said, "A classic is a work that never stops having something to say to us," right?

And what's interesting about "The Odyssey" is I think it speaks to different ages.

So I remember very distinctly when I was the age of my students, 17 or 18.

It was the adventure part that I loved.

The encounters with Cyclops and the sirens and Scylla and Charybdis and the lotus eaters, the first potheads of world literature.

But then at a certain point, you start paying attention to other things.

One of the sort of poignancies of teaching very young students when you're talking about "The Odyssey” is it's a story about two people who have been separated for 20 years trying to get back to each other.

And they're 17.

They can't even imagine what that's like.

It's longer than their whole lives.

And I think you need to be middle aged before you really appreciate some of the poignancy of the poem.

And because, of course, eventually, spoiler alert, they are reunited.

But the poem is keenly aware of the time that they'll never get back, the time they were apart.

And that's something I think, as a middle-aged person speaks to you.

It's also a poem about recognition, right?

When he gets back in an era before TSA and Global Entry, he has to prove that this very bedraggled looking guy is the same hot young person who left 20 years ago.

I always say you cannot approach the "The Odyssey" until you've been to your 20th high school reunion.

[laughing] People walk up to you and they're like, "We dated."

I'm like: "What?"

So I think also in that sense, you can keep rereading it at different ages and different aspects of it will speak to you.

>> Eric Deggans: And he adopts many different identities to through this.

So there's a lot of that too.

What I thought was interesting that you talked about too, was this idea that it talks a lot about hospitality and almost hospitality as a measure of civilization.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Very much so.

>> Eric Deggans: Can you talk a little bit more about that?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah.

I mean, one of the... And this is a sort of the weird difficulty of teaching classics sometimes is that the Greeks and Romans, so many of our own institutions flow from them that they seem very familiar, right?

We think we're sort of us, or we wanna be them or not, in every respect.

But in a lot of ways they're very different.

So one of the most important codes of behavior in the archaic world that is represented in "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," is this absolute ethical imperative of treating your guests well, right?

This is a reciprocal relationship between hosts and guests.

And of course, it's a very important concept in "The Odyssey," because Odysseus keeps washing up in strange places and has to be welcomed by people he doesn't know.

And there was a code.

So the Greek word for stranger is also the word for guest, which actually other languages have that.

It's Xenos, which is where we get the word xenophobia from, right?

Fear of strangers.

Good moment to be talking about that.

And the code of behavior that flowed around how to treat a stranger was called xenia, right?

So "The Odyssey" constantly comes back to that, because in a world before credit cards and cell phones, you had to be able to travel in a way that you felt secure.

And so this was a sort of a code of behavior, but also a religious code that you, when someone appeared at your doorstep, you had to bathe them, feed them, and only then would you ask who they are, right?

And that was called xenia.

So obviously in "The Odyssey," it's very important because he himself is a stranger and keeps being either welcomed or people try to kill him or whatever.

And meanwhile, back at home, as many of you know, his own palace has been invaded by this group of 108 hormonal young guys who are trying to marry his wife, who thinks he's dead.

And they have violated this code by entering his home uninvited and unwanted and eating him out of house and home So it's the most important ethical code, I think, in "The Odyssey."

A lot of modern audiences have a problem with the end of "The Odyssey" when he finally gets home.

Another spoiler alert.

And kills all 118 of these guys who have been hanging around the palace, eating him out of house and home and trying to marry his wife.

I don't think the Greeks would have had that much of a problem with this because, xenia, this code of proper treatment of both the stranger and the host was presided over by Zeus, the king of the gods.

One of the aspects of Zeus was Zeus Xenios, Zeus, who presides over the institution of the proper treatment of guests and hosts.

And the suitors are violating this for years on end.

So their punishment is actually a religious punishment.

It seems excessive to us, but that's why they gotta go.

>> Eric Deggans: If I came home and a bunch of dudes were in my house eating my food, trying to get with my wife, take them out.

So, well, in terms of talking about the values reflected in "The Odyssey," one of the things you wrote, was that some of its values might be passé when not outright repugnant.

So can you talk a little bit about what that means?

What are some things that we might find in "The Odyssey" that, to modern sensibilities would seem kind of.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah.

I said before that we emulate the Greeks and Romans in many ways, but some of their institutions were repugnant to a modern sensibility.

The Greeks were, for example, a highly patriarchal culture, right?

Women couldn't vote, couldn't own property, couldn't leave the house unless they were heavily veiled.

We think of Pericles and democracy and Socrates and all, but those wonderful things coexisted with this incredible sort of repression of half the populace, right?

So that's one thing.

The economies of both Greece and Rome were based on the labor of enslaved people.

So that's another thing.

And enslaved people are important characters in "The Odyssey," and they all turn out to be.

One of the most wonderful things about "The Odyssey" is everyone turns out to have a story, no matter how much as it were, minor the character, everyone turns out to have a story.

And Homer gives them great stories.

How did they become enslaved?

There's a wonderful character who becomes a key character in the second half of the poem.

Eumaeus, the swineherd.

And you get a whole long story about how he ended up, where he was.

So I think, it's always important to remember that we admire these classics because they are great works of literature, for all the reasons we were just talking about.

But this is a culture which in many ways is very foreign to us.

And you have to sort of take the mix and acknowledge that there were aspects of these cultures that strike us as repulsive or perverse, and that's just part of the mix.

So you have to sort of extract the admirable parts and acknowledge the not admirable parts.

I will say, apropos of patriarchy, that one of the most interesting things about "The Odyssey," as many people in this room, I'm sure are aware, is that a question that comes up is, given the extent and the sort of ferocity of Greek patriarchy, it's interesting that "The Odyssey," almost more than any other work of ancient literature, has the most powerful and fascinating female figures.

So that's very interesting.

In spite of the patriarchy, in some way, it has some of the most memorable female characters in world literature: Penelope, Helen of Troy makes a fabulous cameo appearance up to her old tricks, coming on to Telemachus.

Eurycleia, the nurse.

Circe the goddess who's in love with Odysseus and offers him immortality, and he... >> Eric Deggans: Stays with her.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: ...says no.

Circe, who turns his men into pigs, which is, I always like to say, is redundant.

>> Eric Deggans: who said that?

I did not.

Direct your emails to him.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: No, but all kidding aside, I mean, these are incredibly... They're not only strong characters, all kidding aside, but they're powerful.

They have tremendous power.

He washes up on this island of these people called the Phaiakians, who were eventually the ones who bring him home at the end of his journeys.

And it's clear that it's the queen of these people, rather than the king that you have to make nice to in order to get a ride home.

So it's how that meshes or doesn't meshes with the fact that this is a very patriarchal culture is one of the fascinating things.

>> Eric Deggans: Yeah.

It seems like... And I do wanna talk a little bit about Homer, who, what Homer was, but it does seem as if Homer interrogates things as much as he reflects them, right?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: But like all great works of literature, my students, they come in and they wanna know, like, who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?

And I'm like, it's the fact that or is Odysseus, do we like him or do we not like him?

I said, this is an Amazon where it's like thumbs up or.

It's like he's interesting as a character because he is complicated, because it's hard to sort out what's good about him from what's bad about him, what's unattractive about him.

And I think the same is true of the work.

It raises questions rather than giving pat answers.

>> Eric Deggans: When you talked about him as a character that would do anything to survive.

It made me think, I mean, we're talking about all these storytelling devices that originated here.

The anti-hero, right?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah.

I mean, he's close to the first anti-hero in our tradition.

So you can compare Odysseus to, say, the hero of "The Iliad," Achilles, who's a great soldier and he's a straight talker.

And one of the interesting things about Odysseus is that he is complicated.

There are things about him that tremendously admirable, but there are things about him that are very shady and suspect.

And I think that makes him a much more interesting character.

And a lot of this stuff that he does is really not kosher.

I mean, it's really not good.

Some of you know I wrote a book about a very odd year of my life when my 82-year-old father decided to be a student in my freshman Odyssey seminar.

>> Eric Deggans: I wanted to ask about that.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: And he kept complaining all through the semester about, he's like, "This guy is a terrible captain.

He goes off to fight in the Trojan War, with hundreds of soldiers and dozens of ships.

And he's the only one who comes back.

It doesn't say much for his leadership," right?

But I think that's what makes him interesting.

It's exactly the balance between his sort of admirable qualities and his very deep flaws and unattractive qualities that make him good to think about.

>> Eric Deggans: And since you brought up that book, I did want to ask you about it, because that's sort of the origin story of this translation right?

In telling this story of teaching this class and really digging into "The Odyssey" with your father, you translated parts of it.

And so talk a little bit about how that led to what we're seeing now.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, so yes.

Cause that is the question: why do another translation "The Odyssey?"

And what happened was so I published that memoir about reading "The Odyssey" with my late dad in the fall of 2017, and for the purposes of that book, I had translated little snippets of the text.

And what happened was I was cleaning my kitchen floor on a cold January night in the Hudson Valley where I live, and the phone rang.

And what happened was there was an editor at the University of Chicago Press who had read my book about my dad and had liked the little translations I did for that.

And it turned out they had been looking for some time for someone to do a new translation of "The Odyssey" for their list.

And so she said, "Would you be interested?"

And I said, "Yes, actually."

I've written a lot about translation over the years, other people's translations of Greek and Latin and other languages.

So I'm sort of interested in the problems of translation, which are very complicated when you're doing Homer in particular.

And so I thought it would be an interesting challenge.

And that was the beginning of a six-year odyssey.

>> Eric Deggans: Of your own.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: As it were.

>> Eric Deggans: No pun intended.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, right.

>> Eric Deggans: So I saw one reviewer wrote that translation is a game of choice and compromise.

So if you agree, what did you choose and where did you compromise?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I think you always have to sacrifice something for something when you're translating.

Greek, ancient Greek, Homer's Greek is a very complicated language that has, for example, a much more complicated verbal system.

So just to give you an example of what I mean in ancient Greek, you can express the idea “to the women who are about to be married” in one word, okay?

So here are you doing a translation of "The Odyssey," you come across this one word, and if you're translating it into English, you have to say “to the women who are about to be married”, and that's practically a whole line, right?

And in the Greek, it's just one word.

So you see what I mean?

You have to figure out how... So you're doing a lot of compressing.

There are also concepts in Greek that are there's no exact match in English.

I think English is a very rich language because we have basically two traditions, two sort of traditions from which English flows.

There's the Latinate background for a lot of English words, and then there's the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic.

So for example, I just use an example.

I often refer to :justice,” righ The idea of “justice” comes from a Latin word, right?

There's also contrast that with “right,” right?

The idea of something of right, moral right.

“Right ”has a certain kind of impact for an English speaker.

Whereas “justice,” because it's Latinate, is a little fancier.

You see what I mean?

So that gives you a lot of options in English.

We have sort of two, two, two mints in one.

But you're always going to have to sacrifice something.

So, Homer will... Homer's lines are very long.

Remember, "The Odyssey" is a poem - 12,110 lines.

It's a poem.

And each line has a certain beat, a certain rhythm.

And if you want to replicate that rhythm, which was one of my priorities, you're gonna lose something that Homer has a little bit.

Because, paradoxically, Homer's lines are long, but they move very fast.

So you have a kind of rapidity and fluidity.

But a long line in English can feel long, right?

So are you gonna reproduce the line, or are you gonna try and reproduce the swiftness?

You see what I mean?

So there's always somebody's gonna go over the side of the lifeboat, right?

Basically.

And you just have to choose, as a translator, you have to choose what your priorities are from the get-go, knowing that you're going to be making sacrifices.

And that's why I think each translation is interestingly different, because each translator has decided what are the qualities that are important to them, and they're gonna emphasize those qualities, but you're gonna lose some of the other qualities.

>> Eric Deggans: And so from your perspective, and I know you might not think that you might even be the best judge of this, but how is your translation different in that way?

What were your priorities that maybe other translators didn't have?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I'm very interested in... So I'm sort of going against a recent trend, which has been to sort of modernize and update the language and make it more like ordinary English.

Because Homer's Greek was always weird even to Greeks.

Homer uses a Greek that no one actually ever spoke.

It's a purely literary language that evolved over many centuries It includes many dialects of Greek.

It includes traces of the Greek language from different stages of its development.

Its vocabulary was not normal.

Nobody ever went around speaking Homer's Greek.

So imagine you were writing an English poem, some of which sounded like Chaucer, some of which sounded like CNN news, some of which sounded like Shakespeare, and some of which sounded like Sylvia Plath all mixed together, right?

So, what are you gonna do?

And I think it's very important to remember that it's strange.

And I felt the strangeness of his language and this sort of formal features, these repeated epithets.

Every time Athena comes around, it's, "Oh, there's Athena with the bright owl eyes."

It's repeated every time.

And I think those repetitions are important, whereas a lot of modern translators try to just eliminate them because they seem weird to have these sort of verbatim repetitions.

So I'm sort of trying to... I also reproduce the very long line, which almost nobody does.

So I think I'm more interested in giving my reader or listener, cause I also recorded the audiobook... >> Eric Deggans: Which is very good, by the way.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: A chance to experience the sort of feel of Homer rather than just the meaning of the words.

>> Eric Deggans: So I want to let you guys know in about 15 minutes we're going to let you ask questions.

I always say, when I'm doing these things, you guys are going to ask better questions than me anyway.

So why don't you start thinking about what you might wanna ask.

And then we're gonna have you step up to one of these two mics and ask your questions of our esteemed guest.

So I've seen interviews where you say you're quite skeptical of this idea of relatability when it comes to translations.

But you also kind of have to be a bridge between this classic work and a modern audience.

So how do you negotiate those two things?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I think you can balance them.

I mean, I think, I've always as a writer and also as a translator.

I have great faith in the intelligence of my readers.

I don't think you need to dumb things down for people.

I think if you're picking up "The Odyssey" of Homer people understand that this is a 3000-year-old document, and it's not like reading the New York Times.

It's just gonna be a different experience.

And I think people get that the story is what's gonna carry you along, the wonderful story, right?

But I think I don't need to simplify the language.

I think people get it, and so I think you can sort of balance relatability, right, you do have to give the poem to people.

But I think people appreciate that this is not something that was written in 2025, and that there are gonna be odd elements of it.

And that's part of what it is.

Like, just as we were talking about the slavery, the patriarch, like this is a document from a very different era and a very different culture, and everyone gets that.

So I don't think you have to sort of smooth those things away because it represents a civilization.

And I presumably the reason you want to read it is cause you wanna understand a little bit about what that was like.

>> Eric Deggans: Yeah.

Yeah.

It's interesting too, that you mentioned the repeated epithets after they refer to a character, and I wondered if there were two things going on.

The first thing, like as a storyteller, I like that he's kind of reminding me an aspect of this character.

So whatever said after that, I'm seeing it through that lens.

So he's always reminding me of Athena's beauty.

He's always reminding me that Temecula is a, what's the phrase?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Sensible... >> Eric Deggans: Sensible books, sensible lad.

Yeah, he's always reminding me of that.

And the other thing I was wondering is if it was, it made it easier for the oral tradition.

Easier for them to remember.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, because you have to remember someone recited this from memory.

Right, I don't even remember my own phone number anymore unless I look at my phone, right?

But these, you always have to remember "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad" evolved in a pre-literate culture.

They didn't have writing.

So people memorize these things.

And part of the reason there are so many verbatim repetitions in Homeric poetry.

So, for example, whenever it's dinner time, there's a five-line passage that gets repeated verbatim, right?

And if I had to memorize the whole "Odyssey," boy, would I be happy when I got to that five-line passage because, like, "Oh, thank God I got that one down.

Look, I know that from translating 'The Odyssey."

There are passages much longer.

There are like 30-line passages which are verbatim repetitions.

And I would be like translating one day.

And I was like, "wait, I did this already.

I can have lunch early."

But those repetitions are, I think, for the performer because, remember, these things were performed.

You would have a dinner party if you were an aristocrat and you would hire a reciter to come.

And after dinner you'd say, "Oh, let's do book four of 'The Odyssey.'

Helen and Menelaus."

And that would be your entertainment.

These people were highly respected.

But I think those repetitions give them something to hold on to while they're doing their reciting.

Remember also that originally "The Odyssey" was composed in performance.

That's the current theory.

So way, way back, people would make it up while they were up there in front of the mic, so to speak, and eventually it sort of coalesced into its current form.

But I agree with you very much.

So this business of epithets, right?

Characters have certain qualities.

And every time their name comes up, they have an epithet.

So Athena is the goddess with the bright owl eyes in my translation.

Menelaus, whose wife Helen ran off with the houseguests, he's Menelaus of the loud war cry, right?

What's interesting is even when he's having breakfast, he's Menelaus of the loud war cry.

But as you point out, I think the epithets are important because they say something that is essentially true about the character.

It doesn't matter what they're doing at the moment, right?

Menelaus is always a person who was very good at yelling during battles, right?

That's who he is.

And he has other epithets, right?

But that's why I think and a lot of, as I mentioned, a lot of recent translators sort of translate that epithet differently each time for variety, but I do them all the same because I think it's sort of like the starch in the collar of the poem.

It's a little odd to us, but I think the oddness is part of what it is.

And it does remind you, like the gods: the gods who live forever.

That's one of the epithets of the gods.

And they will always be that way, and that's who they are.

>> Eric Deggans: That's amazing.

I love that.

Let's see.

Okay, I'll ask you a couple more questions then.

So one of the things that blew my mind, and I'm sure I should have known this, is that there isn't a Homer, right?

There's multiple people who we call Homer.

Can you explain, explain that?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: So we used to think, I mean, it used to be thought that there was a guy named Homer who wrote "The Iliad” and "The Odyssey."

And in the ancient world, there was a tradition that "The Iliad" was the product of his hot-blooded youth, and "The Odyssey" was the product of his humorous old age.

And then... But there were always, in both "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey," there were kind of inconsistencies in the plot, in certain kinds of events, things that didn't add up, which suggested, started to suggest to some people that maybe "The Odyssey" started out a bunch of different episodes or poems by different people that someone sort of put together and not all the edges fit that well.

And it was really in the end of the 18th century that people started thinking, "What if there was no Homer?” What if... Because they found out that even in ancient times, ancient scholars, because even in ancient Greece and Rome, there were people like me, college professors, who wrote books and articles that nobody read about "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."

I mean, there's a huge body of ancient scholarship, most of which is lost, about "The Iliad," "The Odyssey" it was revealed towards the end of the 18th century that even back then, in ancient times, people were arguing about the authenticity of certain passages and lines, which suggested that no one sat down and delivered a document the way that you and I have to deliver our copy to the editor, right?

But that these poems actually evolved over many generations.

They started out as smaller poems at different poets created, and someone started assembling them and making it into a larger whole.

And that explains the inconsistency.

So, for example, who here has read "The Odyssey," actually?

Yay!

Okay.

So there's a great question at the end of "The Odyssey," when Odysseus finally gets back to the palace disguised as a beggar, right?

And he's planning to kill all 108 suitors.

So he infiltrates his own palace.

And Penelope... And he looks like this totally bedraggled, ancient, wizened.

Penelope is like, instantly like "Oh, who is that guy?

Let's have him up for a cocktail."

And there's a debate among classicists that is very old about whether she knows it's him from the get-go, or whether she only learns at the very end when he's rejuvenated and looks great.

And one answer to the question is: both.

That two version, there was a version in which she's in on it from the beginning, where she's working with him to kill all the suitors.

And there was a version where she doesn't know.

And you kind of feel sometimes these inconsistencies or tensions, So I'd just like to let people, decide what feels right to them.

Yeah, it's interesting though.

But so we now use the word “Homer” as a kind of a shorthand for the long process that over many centuries, through which these poems evolve.

Because you can't, every time you want to talk about how "The Odyssey" came to be, you can't repeat what I just said, basically.

>> Eric Deggans: Well, and what strikes me about what you do is that on the one hand, you have to be very sort of grounded in the science and history of it.

You have to know these things about how this poem came together and some of the scholarship, that all of the scholarship that you can know that's available for it.

But on the other hand, you're making these observations about what it means and what it's saying.

That's a much more creative kind of thing.

You're straddling these two worlds in a way.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yes, and you can't translate a work unless you think you know what it means.

Because you're gonna come to passages that are, what's the word I'm looking for... ambiguous.

And you have to think you know what Homer, “Homer.” You have to think what Homer was doing.

Because you have to think, you can't be ambiguous in your translation, right?

So you have to... You can't sit down to translate until you have a sort of theory of the poem and what it's about.

And everyone has different ideas, which is great.

>> Eric Deggans: So we're gonna start taking your questions.

So if you guys would come up to these mics and I will call on you one at a time.

And while you're coming up I'm gonna ask my last question, which is, we are living in some pretty turbulent times, my friend.

And I'm wondering, how "The Odyssey" speaks to these times because it has spoken to other times so well.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I think I'll evade that question in a very interesting way.

I think "The Odyssey" because all kidding aside, I don't think it gives us an answer, but it shows a person who is working his way through very turbulent times.

Remember, the Trojan War is over.

The old ways are gone.

The old definition of heroism is over.

He's trying to make his way through a very dangerous and uncertain world on his own wits.

And I think that's another reason it speaks to us.

It's a poem about survival at the end of the day.

And I think it's another reason we can sort of connect to it.

And he's somebody making his way through uncertain times in a landscape both real and metaphorical.

That's extremely dangerous.

>> Eric Deggans: Makes sense.

All right, sir, your name and your question.

>> [inaudible].

My question is about the great classical mythologies of different countries.

I mean, Greek you have Iliad and Odyssey.

India, you have Mahabharata and Ramayana.

So when you look at the Iliad and the Mahabharata, it's amazing how there are almost exact equivalent characters: Arjuna and Achilles and many others.

So my question is, and this is probably could do with China and many of the great classical.

Has any study been done, whether it's the oral tradition that has passed on?

I think the Greeks came before the Indians so they could accuse the Indians of plagiarism, if there was anything.

But has there been any study done?

I mean, I think it's quite fascinating to see this.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, it's an excellent question.

There's a whole field of literary studies in comparative mythology where people do exactly what you're talking about, where they look at the mythologies of different civilizations: East, West, everything in between.

And what is interesting and sort of gives me hope for the future is that peoples all over the world have evolved basically the same myths with different characters, which means there's a kind of common humanity that's interested in the same thing.

You could also talk about the "Epic of Gilgamesh."

So yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot of work that's done on that.

It's super interesting.

It's a very good question.

>> Eric Deggans: Thank you.

Hey.

How you doing?

>> Hi.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Hi.

>> My name is Silas, and I'm wondering, how did you learn ancient Greek?

>> Eric Deggans: I should have asked that question.

That was such a good question.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Good question, Silas.

>> Let alone Homer's Greek.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Okay.

>> Eric Deggans: Let alone Homer's Greek.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, so you typically you... I learned ancient Greek when I was in college.

I went to the University of Virginia, just down the road, and I was already interested in Greek myths and mythology and ancient history, and I wanted to learn Greek.

And there are still people who teach ancient Greek.

And I just started taking classes.

And then now Homeric Greek, as you said, let alone Homer's Greek, right, is a special subcategory of Greek.

It's not like other kinds of Greek, so that you have to sort of study separately once you sort of get the basics down.

But it can be done, and I highly recommend it, cause you can dazzle people at parties with stuff about etymologies, like, for example, the word “serpent” is etymologically as the word “herpes”.

Maybe I shouldn't have used that example.

[laughing] So and this is... >> Eric Deggans: Cover your ears, youngster.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Don't pay attention to that.

Right.

“Hyper” and “super” are the same word.

>> Eric Deggans: Wow.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Hyper and super.

>> Eric Deggans: So you could start now, maybe you might know... Maybe you might know Greek as well as him.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Yeah, you can do it, you should do it.

>> Eric Deggans: Is that cool?

Did we answer your question?

>> Yeah.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Go for it.

>> Hi, my name is McCabee.

You mentioned taking a sort of traditional approach to the translation, and I'm wondering if you've encountered some of the recent tellings of, like, "Circe" by Madeline Miller or the fantastic "Ithaca" trilogy by Claire North, and how those approach the character somewhat differently and challenge some of the original versions of the characters and how that affects both your enjoyment of those and your enjoyment of the original?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I think you always have to remember that... I mean, I think it's great, whatever.

I personally am gonna get rich when I write my book about the Medusa myth, as told from the point of view of her hairdresser.

I think it's great.

And you always have to remember that, all kidding aside, ancient mythology was never codified, right?

There was no... The ancient Greeks did not have Edith Hamilton.

You see what I mean?

So people, the Greeks themselves played with their own myths, right?

"The Trojan Women" by Euripides, a play by Euripides, is a retelling of "The Iliad," told from the point of view of the female victims.

Excuse me, right?

So it's been done for thousands of years.

There's a version, Euripides wrote a play about Helen of Troy in which she didn't run away with Paris.

That was her phantom double.

And the real Helen was faithful and good.

So the Greeks were playing with this.

So these people who were doing this are actually engaged in a very old game.

And I say the more the merrier, because a lot of people get interested in the classics because of this work.

I don't love all of them, but some of them are very good.

Why not?

But I think the real point is that myth is very plastic and that's how the ancients thought of it.

You could play with it, you could give different endings.

You could... There's a version of the Oedipus myth by Euripides in which Jocasta does not kill herself after she learns the bad news.

So it's just part of a tradition that's actually very Greek.

Great question.

>>Eric Deggans: Yeah.

>> Hi, my name is Doug Whitehead One of the other old epics, the Aeneid eventually becomes kind of consolidated into the "Official Roman history."

They begin to appraise it.

It becomes a topic of art, you see, in people's houses, etcetera.

I understand Greece took a lot of time to consolidate, but was it any of the aspects of "The Odyssey" or "The Iliad" ever consolidated into, any of the official legends of any of the city states or alliances which came after?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Oh, I see.

I mean, the Greeks, I think the way that, if I'm understanding you correctly, the way that mythology entered into politics, let's say.

Greek city states did have this thing where they had sort of founding heroes whom they worshiped, whom they claimed as their founders.

And they were often characters from mythology.

That was sort of good PR, if you could.

>> Eric Deggans: So they weren't actual... >> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, look we still: Hello Washington, D.C.

>> Eric Deggans: Yeah, but George Washington existed.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: We still do it.

Not as we think, probably.

Yeah.

But you know what I mean?

I mean, that was a thing that they did.

But I don't think it was quite the same because remember the Roman state operated in a very different way from these Greek city states.

An interesting question.

>>Eric Deggans: Yeah.

>> Hi, I'm Elizabeth, and I'm wondering whether you made any translation choices that others in your field, other enthusiasts of "The Odyssey" would find particularly controversial?

>> Eric Deggans: Digging for dirt.

Are you a journalist?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: I wish I had, I'd be a lot richer.

No, I don't particularly think so.

I mean, I... >> Eric Deggans: Was [inaudible] making the lines longer.

I was wondering if that was controversial, no?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: No, I don't think so.

It's a choice but... >> Eric Deggans: I tried.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: I was... No, I don't think so, particularly.

I mean, the one thing that everyone looks like is line one, which has a famous adjective.

So the first line of "The Odyssey" says, "Tell me the tale of the man who..." And then there's an adjective in Greek, which is “polytropos”, which means having many turns.

And the first thing that people look at when they look at a translation of the Odyssey, if they know something, is, how are they going to translate that?

Because it's sort of untranslatable.

To a Greek person, an ancient Greek person.

It meant resourceful, right?

Like you have many turns of mind.

You have a lot of ways of thinking about things.

But it also has to describe his journey, which was very circuitous.

And that's what a lot of people, that's the adjective that people argue over because is it a good thing?

Is it a bad thing?

And I went through many, many agonized nights trying to think of what to do with that.

But also, the other interesting thing about translation... >> Eric Deggans: Wait a minute.

You can't go on now.

What did you do?

[laughs] >> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I'm not gonna tell you cause I want them to buy the book.

>> Eric Deggans: Yeah, you gotta read the book.

He'll tell you when he signs the book for you.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: No.

In my version, I said who had... Because the thing that not every translator does, but which to me was very important because it reflects something that's in the Greek, is it has to be a word that describes both how he thinks and what his journey looked like on a map.

And so I ...mind says, "Who had many roundabout ways."

And it's a true story that I had actually something different until like the day before I handed in the manuscript and then, I swear to God this is true.

But my great mentor Jenny Strauss Clay, a professor of Greek at UVA who was sort of looking at my translation and helping me, she never liked what I originally had, which was, "Who had so many twisty ways.” Which I kind of like, because it's a little sinister.

But she didn't like it, and I didn't want her not to like what I was doing, because I'm a good student.

And I was driving upstate where I live, and they had just replaced an intersection with a roundabout.

And I swear this is true, and I was entering the roundabout, which of course, Americans don't know how to use except in Boston.

And somebody had come to a complete stop which you're not supposed to do.

And I literally said out loud, I said, "Oh my God.

Nobody knows how to use roundabouts."

And I was like, "Ah, roundabouts.

I love roundabouts.” ‘Cause like somebody who does things in a roundabout way, it's not straightforward.

But I like that it had a round in it, the word round because of turns.

And so that's how I ended up.

>> Eric Deggans: Only a writer would that.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: I should drive more often.

I'd have good ideas.

Good question.

>> Eric Deggans: Thank you.

>> Hi, my name is Suzanne.

I wanted to know two things: One, what was the adaptation or translation of the Odyssey that sparked your passion for the book?

For me, it was the PBS Arthur episode where D.W.

is Odysseus and Buster is the Cyclops.

>> Erick Deggans: High quality.

>> And then you talked about how every translator has to make sacrifices.

And so what are a few translations of "The Odyssey" that you would recommend to people who love this story to read, and what are the different things they can pick up from it that other translations wouldn't have?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I always say, and it's not just a lot.

Look, all translation is a kind of collaborative activity.

Everyone's working on the same thing.

I don't think it's a competition.

I think everyone builds on other people's work.

I've taught "The Odyssey" for 36 years, so I've used virtually every English translation.

And I don't think there's a single translation I've read that doesn't have something to recommend it.

And in fact, people always wanna know, like Silas, who eventually will become a classics professor, or based on my answer, a venereal disease expert.

[laughing] I always say if... >> Eric Deggans: I thought I was gonna be the one bringing us down to the lower cultural level >> Daniel Mendelsohn: I always say, if you wanna get a sense of what "The Odyssey" is in the original and you're not gonna learn ancient Greek, read a bunch of translations like sort of superimpose them one on top of the other, and you start to see how different.

You read mine and you read the most recent one, Emily Wilson, they're totally different.

And she's very different from Bob Fagles, who's very different from Robert Fitzgerald, who's very different from Richard Lattimore.

And I say, look at every... Like read a book, one in somebody's translation, read book two in somebody else's.

I'm not gonna recommend one over the other because I've read them all basically at this point.

And I find each one gives you something different.

It's like wearing different colored lenses and looking at the same thing.

You're gonna see something different in each translation.

I can't remember the other half of your question.

>> Which was the one that started, that sparked your passion for it?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I know there are people old enough in this room who used to watch "The Little Rascals," and there was a famous episode of "The Little Rascals."

Does anybody remember this?

Where they're having a dream and they're trapped in the Cyclops cave?

Made a huge impression on me as a little.

We used to watch it before he went to school in the morning.

But I can't remember because I had a wonderful... A wonderful high school English teacher, Faye Greenspan on Long Island.

And her husband worked with my dad, and my parents were having a cocktail party.

This is like 1973.

I was 13, and she wasn't my teacher because I was in high school, yes, but she knew I was interested already.

I wanted to be a writer, and I was writing terrible things all the time.

And she said, "You should read “The Odyssey.” I think it's gonna be perfect for you."

And I got... I don't remember what was available at the time.

But it was probably a prose translation, not a poetry translation, and I was hooked.

>> Eric Deggans: Wow.

There you go.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Thank you.

>> Hi.

My name is Cassie.

What is your opinion on the "Telegony" as the sequel to "The Odyssey?"

Because in the "Epic Cycle," which is a modern construction, it's the sequel to "The Odyssey," and it's the end of Odysseus's story, but it undoes all the cathartic victories that we get in "The Odyssey” of like, Odysseus leaves home and marries another woman and has more kids and comes home to be killed.

So do you think of that as like the canonical ending of Odysseus's story, or like a weird poem someone else wrote?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, so this refers to... So you have to remember that "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" were sort of adjacent to a series of epic poems that has now been lost, which told the whole story of everything that preceded and followed the Trojan War, starting with actually, the first one was about the wedding of Achilles parents.

So we're going way back in time.

And the last one is this loony poem that you're referring to called "The Telegony," which is about... It's so wacky.

I'm happy it didn't survive.

[laughing] In which a son that Odysseus has after he hooks up with Circe years later, wants to know who his papa is.

It's sort of like the Oedipus story, basically.

And he sails to Ithaca and he meets a cranky old man on the road, and they get into an argument, and he kills the guy, and he goes home.

And of course, the guy he kills is Odysseus.

And then he goes and marries Penelope.

And then Telemachus, Odysseus son, marries Circe.

I have nothing to say, except I would have loved to be in the pitch meeting.

[laughing] But it's a great question because for the audience, it's good to remember that there were a lot of other epics floating around that didn't make it.

You always have to remember when you talk about the classics, you're talking about maybe 15 percent of what there was.

And we have no idea, whether what we got was the best or just had better agents or you know what I mean?

But it's a great... >> You don't try and synthesize that with the Homeric Odysseus.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: No.

Because I don't think it was like Madeline Miller and Pat Barker, they were just riffing a tradition, which was great.

I don't think you can try to put it together.

>> Thank you.

>> Eric Deggans: Alright.

We probably got time for one more.

So make it good, buddy.

>> It's a lot of pressure.

>> Eric Deggans: I know.

>> My name is Clementine.

The person behind me in line actually asked my question.

So I will ask, can you recite the five line dinner formula?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: No.

>> Eric Deggans: There's your answer.

How about one more question?

I wish I could help you.

There are things I can recite, but that's not one of them.

>> Hi, my name is Corey.

Thank you so much for being here.

It's been a joy to listen to you.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Thank you.

>> I am a teacher of tweens and a mother of tweens, and you have spoken a lot about the different translations and of course, reading them as a college student and then mentioned how teenagers would really connect to this story.

And you did talk a little bit about not recommending a particular translation.

So my question is, how would you recommend introducing this story or this collection of mini stories to younger readers?

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Well, I mean, there are abridged version.

I mean, depending how you look.

I read the whole thing when I was 13.

It can be done.

But there are abridged versions, there are fabulous graphic novels, actually, of "The Odyssey," fabulous graphic novels, but there are prose versions, excerpts.

I think that can get them hooked.

But again, I don't underestimate tweens, I think.

You might give them an abridged version and then give them a few pages of a translation and see how they, ask them what they think.

>> Eric Deggans: I'm gonna do what he's too modest to do, which is, say, just pick up Daniel's book.

Because I thought it was going to be really tough to get through or impenetrable because I was intimidated by it, and I found it very readable.

I think tweens will totally get it.

Just get his book.

>> Wonderful.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Thank you.

>> Eric Deggans: And on that note, I'm gonna thank you guys for joining us.

A hand for Daniel Mendelsohn.

Thank you so much, sir.

>> Daniel Mendelsohn: Thank you.

>> Eric Deggans: Enjoy the rest of the festival.

Thank you.

[applause] [upbeat music]