‘No sex, abysmal writing’: Emily Wilson torches Nolan’s ‘Odyssey’, but can a filmmaker really betray Homer?
Can an epic be betrayed? As critics clash over Christopher Nolan's Odyssey, translators of Indian literature offer a different answer
Not all critics view the original text as a sacrosanct boundary. (Booker Prizes/AP File/Universal Pictures) How loyal should a modern reimagining or translation be to its ancient source? Can there be any faithful version at all, and how much can one alter it before it becomes something else? This is the debate that has classicists, litterateurs and filmmakers at loggerheads since the release of Christopher Nolan’s $250-million spectacle The Odyssey.
Classicist Emily Wilson, whose translation was referred to and endorsed by the filmmaker, wrote a blistering review of Nolan’s movie in the London Review of Books, memorably bemoaning that “there are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.” Daniel Mendelsohn, another translator, called the onscreen Odysseus “tormented, guilt-ridden… stripped of humour and wit, seductiveness and cleverness” — a hero, he wrote, who “sounds like the heroes of Christopher Nolan movies,” not Homer’s.
However, not all critics view the original text as a sacrosanct boundary that film retellings should limit themselves to. Novelist Joyce Carol Oates fired back on X, accusing Wilson of a “tone of dismissal & haughty superiority” and writing: “One would expect a translator, of all people, beholden to a text, in service to a text, to be just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith…” Theo Nash, who has published on the textual history of the Odyssey, also argued that Nolan’s interpretation was not a betrayal of Homer but a coherent, if dark, reading through the lens of guilt, consequence and the collapse of civilisation.
This is the crux of the matter. At what point does interpretation become betrayal? And who gets to decide? The Indian Express spoke to translators and publishers about whether adaptations owe fidelity to a source, where the line falls if it does, and what they made of the Nolan controversy.
Daisy Rockwell: ‘Homer will outlive us all’
Daisy Rockwell won the International Booker Prize in 2022 for her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand.
Daisy Rockwell, who won the International Booker Prize in 2022 for her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, is not worried about Nolan’s film. She believes the controversy misses the point: that ancient epics are not fragile. “Ancient texts are famously resilient because they have survived countless retellings and renditions,” she told The Indian Express. “Epics like the Odyssey and the Mahabharata have survived millennia and one clumsy version is not going to hurt them in any way.”
“Whereas a translator or filmmaker must obtain copyright permission to recreate a version of a modern text, ancient texts are open to all,” says Rockwell, a translator of Hindi and Urdu literature. For Rockwell, the question is not whether Nolan has betrayed Homer, but whether Homer can be betrayed at all. “Homer will outlive us all, as will Valmiki and Vyasa, because all of them created epics of such power that humans will never stop retelling them.”
“I think Nolan has as much right to direct whatever version of the Odyssey he likes as Emily Wilson has to call it trash. Maybe tomorrow someone will come out with their own version using only their pet cats dressed up in funny costumes. Will this harm Homer? No.”
Nandakumar K’s translation of M Mukundan’s Delhi Gadhaka won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2021. (Photo: By special arrangement)
Srinath Perur is known for his translation of Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar.
Minakshi Thakur, publisher of Ekada, Westland Books’ imprint for English translations and texts in Indian languages. (Photo by special arrangement)
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