Lesche: Ancient Greece, New Ideas Translating the Odyssey, with Daniel Mendelsohn
Apr 2, 2025
01:00:37
How The Odyssey Translation Began
- Daniel Mendelsohn received the University of Chicago Press invite while washing his kitchen floor and began serious planning in 2018.
- He spent ~1 year researching, started translating mid-2019, drafted by summer 2022, then two years revising with Jenny Strauss Clay line-by-line.
Do Deep Scholarship Before Translating Homer
- Do immerse yourself in scholarship before translating; Mendelsohn spent 15 months re-educating himself on Homeric issues before drafting.
- He felt he needed that foundation to decide meter, tone, diction, and textual choices responsibly.
Eumaeus As Sardonic And Wounded
- Close translation work revealed character tonalities overlooked before: Eumaeus often speaks with sarcasm and wounded bitterness.
- Translating line-by-line pushed Mendelsohn to see Eumaeus as a sardonic, not merely kindly, figure.
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Intro
00:00 • 4min
How Mendelsohn was invited to translate
04:23 • 2min
Early planning and preparation
06:31 • 2min
Collaboration with Jenny Strauss Clay
08:34 • 2min
Translating versus scholarly writing
10:11 • 50sec
Philological approach and audience
11:02 • 3min
Intended readers and teaching use
14:22 • 1min
What translation revealed about Eumaeus
15:28 • 4min
Drafting process and daily routine
19:42 • 5min
Finding the poem's voice and tone
25:01 • 23sec
Anglo-Saxon diction choice
25:24 • 3min
Epithets and preserving Homeric formulae
28:03 • 8min
Reading the Argos passage aloud
35:51 • 4min
Recording the audiobook experience
39:49 • 2min
Why use a six-beat line
42:06 • 4min
Sound, assonance, and enjambment
46:14 • 8min
Why he's an Odyssey person
54:26 • 4min
Quick associations and closing remarks
58:50 • 1min
Outro
59:56 • 34sec
#44804
Three Rings
Daniel Mendelsohn
In 'Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate,' Daniel Mendelsohn investigates the literary device of ring composition and its appearances across texts and traditions.
The book explores how cyclical narrative structures shape readers' expectations and reflect themes of exile and destiny.
Mendelsohn blends close reading, comparative literature, and personal reflection to show how ring forms function in storytelling.
He traces the device from classical antiquity to modern narratives, elucidating its aesthetic and thematic effects.
The work contributes to understanding of narrative mechanics and the cultural meanings embedded in literary form.
#1096
• Mentioned in 35 episodes
Odyssey
Homer
#92099
The wrath of Athena
Jenny Strauss Clay
Jenny Strauss Clay's 'The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey' offers a detailed analysis of the goddess Athena's roles and motivations throughout the Odyssey, examining how divine agency shapes human affairs and narrative structure.
Clay explores the interactions between gods and mortals, focusing on themes of justice, vengeance, and moral order as mediated by divine characters.
The book draws on philological and literary evidence to reassess Athena's characterization and the poem's theological dimensions.
It has been influential in Homeric studies for its rigorous scholarship and interpretive insights.
Clay's work remains a key reference for students and scholars interested in divine agency in epic poetry.
#95623
The Elusive Embrace
Desire and the Riddle of Identity
Daniel Mendelsohn
Daniel Mendelsohn's 'The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity' examines the interplay between desire and identity using close readings of literary texts and psychoanalytic theory.
The book investigates how narratives shape and complicate human longing and self‑understanding, drawing on a range of authors and theoretical frameworks.
Mendelsohn combines personal reflection with scholarly analysis to illuminate how desire influences storytelling and subjectivity.
The work engages with questions of memory, family, and the construction of self in literature.
It reflects Mendelsohn's broader interest in how narratives mediate truth and personal history.
#91631
Blameless Aegisthus
A study of αμύμων and other Homeric epithets
Anne Parry
Anne Parry's 'Blameless Aegisthus' investigates the Homeric epithet αμύμων and other formulaic epithets, analyzing their linguistic, contextual, and interpretive implications within the epics.
The book provides detailed philological argumentation about the meaning and usage of these formulaic terms, contributing to debates about character portrayal and Homeric diction.
Parry's scholarship offers a thorough bibliography and close textual analysis aimed at specialists in Homeric studies.
The work helps clarify puzzling epithets that have vexed translators and commentators, such as the apparently ironic epithet applied to Aegisthus.
It remains a reference for those engaging in detailed Homeric philology.
#32744
• Mentioned in 2 episodes
The Lost
A Search for Six of Six Million
Daniel Mendelsohn
The Lost begins as the story of a boy who grew up in a family haunted by the disappearance of six relatives during the Holocaust.
Decades later, Daniel Mendelsohn sets out to find the remaining eyewitnesses to his relatives' fates, a quest that takes him to a dozen countries on four continents.
The book interweaves a world-wandering odyssey with childhood memories and ruminations on biblical texts and Jewish history, transforming the story of one family into a profound meditation on our fragile hold on the past.
It is a gripping, beautifully written literary tour de force that illuminates all that is lost and found in the passage of time.
#1096
• Mentioned in 35 episodes
Odyssey
Homer
#1068
• Mentioned in 36 episodes
Iliad
Homer
Daniel Mendelsohn joins me in the Lesche to discuss his new translation of Homer's Odyssey, out on April 9 with the University of Chicago Press.
Ancient texts
Homer, Iliad and Odyssey
Also mentioned
- Previous translations of the Odyssey by Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fitzgerald, and Emily Wilson (and Alexander Pope); also Caroline Alexander's Iliad.
- Previous books by Daniel Mendelsohn: An Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic (Knopf 2017), The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (Harper 2006), The Elusive Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (Knopf Doubleday 2009), and Three Rings: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate (University of Virginia Press, 2020)
- The Homeric scholarship of Jenny Strauss Clay, see, e.g., The Wrath of Athena: Gods and Men in the Odyssey. Princeton University Press, 1983. (Reprint, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996)
- Anne Parry, Blameless Aegisthus: A study of αμύμων and other Homeric epithets. Leiden 1973.
- Johanna's 2017 Eidolon essay on Daniel's An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, "'Ithaca Gave to You the Beautiful Journey': Classics, An Odyssey, and a Conversation with Daniel Mendelsohn"
About our guest
Daniel Mendelsohn, an award-winning memoirist, translator, and essayist, writes frequently for the New Yorker and New York Review of Books, where he is the Editor-at-large. His books include the international bestsellers "The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million" and "An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic," as well as a translation of the poetry of Constantine Cavafy. His translation of Homer's Odyssey will be published in April, 2025.
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Thanks for joining us in the Lesche!
Podcast art: Daniel Blanco
Theme music: "The Song of Seikilos," recomposed by Eftychia Christodoulou using Sibelius
This podcast is made possible with the generous support of Brown University’s Department of Classical Studies and the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study.
Instagram: @leschepodcast
Email: leschepodcast@gmail.com
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