Following her acclaimed translation of the Odyssey, Wilson has turned to Homer’s other, darker poem. She explains how she got stuck for six months – and why it speaks to today’s era of conflict
To understand why Wilson tussled so much to find her way into the poem, it is necessary to know something of its nature. It is set in the middle of the Trojan war. Not at the famous beginning – there’s no judgment of Paris, no abduction by the Trojans of Helen, wife of Menelaus of Sparta, the recovery of whom is the pretext for the Greek invasion. Nor is it set at the famous end, with the eventual storming of Troy by the Greeks after the subterfuge of the wooden horse.
That’s the bones of it, but there’s so much more to take in. The poem contains multitudes: three finely drawn worlds, of the Greeks, the Trojans and the gods; a whole range of competing and complementary architectures; exquisite variation of tone.
The spear going through the flesh is a manifestation of other kinds of violence that are always ongoing – of enslavement and colonisation On a desert island, would she want the Iliad or the Odyssey? “It’s a very difficult question,” she says. Nevertheless, she answers without a blink: “I’m an Iliad person. For sure. And I think I would always have said that.” In fact, she tells me, she remembers giving the same answer, age 17, when asked the question at school. “The Iliad feels more truthful,” Wilson says.
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