Daniel Mendelsohn Interviewed in the New York Review of Books

Daniel Mendelsohn, the Charles Ranlett Flint Professor of Humanities, spoke with the New York Review of Books about his new translation of Homer’s Odyssey for the University of Chicago Press. In conversation with Lauren Kane, Mendelsohn discussed the challenges of balancing both poetic beauty and literal meaning in translating, the ways in which the story handles depictions of family relationships, and why the epic is experiencing a resurgence in modern retellings. The Odyssey, he says, is a “postwar poem, but it’s also a sort of post-everything poem. The old order has disappeared. The gods have receded. They’re almost not present at all, except in a couple of crucial moments, and certainly not in the way they’re present in the Iliad, where they’re all over the action and fighting in the battles. You feel the gods have withdrawn. Odysseus is a lone guy in a strange world with no familiar landmarks. The whole poem is haunted by a feeling that the old world order has come to an end, and now we’re just on our own, making our way as best we can. That may be what’s speaking to people.”

Post Date: 05-13-2025