Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature by Emily Wilson; Liveright, 288 pp., $19.99
Emily Wilson’s Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, a new collection of essays pondering antiquity, offers many stops, all well worth pausing at. The sunlight of Wilson’s wit sparkles on the surface of her capacious learning. Brilliant, an overused word, applies here: Her scholarly authority is perfectly at home with vivid, lively prose.
Most sections set their sights not only on authors from Homer to Seneca but also, crucially, on the subject of translation. Whether her topic is Sappho, Aristophanes, Catullus, or Aeschylus, Wilson reminds us at every turn that understanding, let alone appreciating, ancient texts necessarily involves understanding their translations—which in turn shed light on the literary and cultural norms of their day. “Translating the Odyssey,” an essay inspired by a series of tweets Wilson wrote after her Odyssey was published, uses “close reading to invite readers to a more precise awareness of what’s at stake in the variety of Homeric translations into English.” Teachers of the poem have found Wilson’s granular readings of brief passages helpful, and no wonder. Whether or not you know Greek, Wilson gives a crystalline sense of the meaning and connotations of virtually every word. I’ll never read the first two lines of Book Five of the Odyssey the same way after Wilson’s brisk tour of renderings by Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Butler, Murray, Lawrence, Fitzgerald, Lattimore, Fagles, Lombardo—and herself. “Translating the Odyssey” should be required reading for anyone teaching or even simply reading the Odyssey in translation.
Many of the pieces in Crossing began as reviews, and sometimes the bones of the originals show through. Although one needn’t agree with Wilson’s every opinion of a given translation (she doesn’t quite convince me that Isobel Williams gives us a sense of how Catullus might have written had he lived in the 21st century), her points of reference are consistently stimulating. Like Edith Hall and A. E. Stallings, Wilson seems thoroughly at home (how does she find the time?) with popular culture. In “Punishment by Radish,” a packed but perfectly cogent paragraph compares aspects of Aristophanic comedy to sitcoms, late-night talk show hosts, Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Broadway musicals, and Disney Channel; her insights are clear and convincing without being obvious.
Sudden coruscations of humor—always in service of an important point—made me chuckle. “Reconstructing Sappho from what remains is … like trying to get a sense of a whole Tyrannosaurus rex from one claw” is unforgettable, as is this steelier glint of dry wit: “Some of [Aristophanes’s] best jokes turn on the pretence that people nowadays have been corrupted by new ways—when, in fact, as everyone knows, greed, lust and avarice do not require a teacher.”
Wilson isn’t afraid of being provocative, but she never throws the baby of an ancient text out with the bathwater of our cultural moment. In “Chill Out with the Stoics,” she describes Stoicism as “a philosophical and psychological system designed to comfort the rich and powerful for any perceived limits on their power, by assuring them that they are, after all, in control of everything that matters. It also conveniently promotes an idea of ‘virtue’ that is compatible with ignoring or enabling the suffering of everyone else in the world.” Enabling? Well, maybe; Wilson isn’t immune to hyperbole. She doesn’t deny, however, that “Stoicism provides a great deal of useful guidance for life, even for those of us who are neither ancient Roman citizens nor entrepreneurs.” (Note that steely glint of mischief again.) When you’re in physical pain or stuck for hours in an airport, stoicism does help—Wilson’s experiences and plenty of others’ bear this out. Similarly, Wilson unpacks the victory of patriarchal structures in the Oresteia without downplaying the trilogy’s brilliance.
References to stoical entrepreneur billionaires, Donald Trump, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, or Avril Lavigne: It’s refreshing to find a classicist who doesn’t ignore the 21st century. Wilson is writing for readers living now; she doesn’t use the canon as a stick with which to belabor our current moment, much as she deplores aspects of it. Alert, skeptical, learned, attentive, and outstandingly articulate, she makes the journey across the wine-dark sea endlessly enlightening, relevant, and fun. We’re all the beneficiaries.
