The Iliad
Deft ... The most interesting question about Wilson’s new translation is not whether hers is a feminist Iliad (however this is defined) but whether it is the definitive Iliad for our times. My answer is yes ... Wilson has forged a poetic style in English that captures the essence of Homeric Greek ... On the page the metricality of Wilson’s verse is lost — the rhythm comes alive only when you read aloud, the words whistling up the windpipe, animating the tongue and striking the ear. No other translation communicates the oral nature of the poem so brilliantly ... Another key element in Wilson’s style is the register, poised between the high epic and the everyday. Her tone manages a sweeping grandeur without pomposity, and is both refreshingly modern and largely free of the jarring chattiness of contemporary colloquialisms ... Highly readable ... A genuine page-turner, and it is all too easy to gallop through it as one would a beach read.
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Stirring ... Whips and crackles beneath the familiar meter of loose iambic pentameter. Wilson tells it all in plain English, to elegant effect ... She deftly coaxes the original’s Dactylic hexameters into our own accentual tongue. We feel her joy, birthed by hard labor ... Wilson’s vibes with contemporary irony and idioms ... There’s a note of grace amid the grief, a hard-won wisdom — how modern is that? With both Homeric epics Wilson has pulled off a thrilling achievement.
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Propulsive ... Wilson’s translation of Homeric Greek is always buoyant and expressive. There are occasional slips in register that seem a little out of place ... But Wilson wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.
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