"The Homeric poems, especially the Iliad, are full of big emotions."
August 8, 2024 4:19 PM Subscribe
Emily Wilson has translated the Iliad and Odyssey, and teaches classics at the University of Pennsylvania. Recently, she was interviewed ...by the journal Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research.
A friend of mine served as the go-between to try to facilitate an introduction with this month’s guest. I did not do a good enough job explaining my reasons for wanting to interview her, so I can understand his confusion. After all, the guest I was after is a professor of classics who recently published a gorgeous translation of the Iliad. Not exactly a straight-line from that to an interview on the editorial page of an orthopaedic surgery journal.
“Not sure what topics Seth has in mind,” he wrote to her. “The tendon of Achilles, perhaps?”
Oedipus's complex club foot problems?
posted by jamjam at 4:44 PM on August 8 [2 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 4:44 PM on August 8 [2 favorites]
named our family four-legged friend Argos, after Odysseus’s dog.
O
M
G
so did we, er, I, I lost out to Dingo because the rest did notwant to have a dog named Argos
just sitting by the dock of the Bay
posted by clavdivs at 5:27 PM on August 8 [3 favorites]
O
M
G
so did we, er, I, I lost out to Dingo because the rest did notwant to have a dog named Argos
just sitting by the dock of the Bay
posted by clavdivs at 5:27 PM on August 8 [3 favorites]
posted by pollytropos
Wonderfully, delightfully eponysterical.
posted by tim_in_oz at 10:12 PM on August 8 [6 favorites]
Wonderfully, delightfully eponysterical.
posted by tim_in_oz at 10:12 PM on August 8 [6 favorites]
data suggest that we need to get better at listening. A recent study found that clinicians interrupted their patients just 11 seconds into the average interview
If the orthopaedic surgeon who fixed me up after my RTA is anything to go by, many doctors are crap at inter-personal relationships. I know that doctor was wonderful at triage, bone-setting and diagnostics because he saved the life of a friend of mine after another far more serious RTA. But he treated me like a specimen. Didn't bother me much - I'm an articulate, over-educated patriarch with a PhD - but I had a moment of bloody froth at the thought that he would thus address the elderly one lady owner of a broken hip who was next in line for his ministrations.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:33 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
If the orthopaedic surgeon who fixed me up after my RTA is anything to go by, many doctors are crap at inter-personal relationships. I know that doctor was wonderful at triage, bone-setting and diagnostics because he saved the life of a friend of mine after another far more serious RTA. But he treated me like a specimen. Didn't bother me much - I'm an articulate, over-educated patriarch with a PhD - but I had a moment of bloody froth at the thought that he would thus address the elderly one lady owner of a broken hip who was next in line for his ministrations.
posted by BobTheScientist at 12:33 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
Reading her rendition of the Odyssey was a rapturous delight. Thanks for this interview!
posted by dmh at 1:22 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
posted by dmh at 1:22 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
This was interesting, thanks for posting. I like what she says about being alone with one's feelings, and how rituals or words can help with that.
Also, "we are constantly reminded that every person killed on the battlefield has a name, a homeland, and parents who love him, and who will be devastated with grief at his death". I'm reading Asquith's (British PM in the First World War) letters to Venetia Stanley, which are a roller-coaster in many ways, but one of the things I've noticed is that Asquith doesn't show any grief about the thousands killed in the first months of the war - mostly "men", not officers -, until people he knows, or the sons of friends, start dying. Institutional class callousness.
posted by paduasoy at 2:09 AM on August 9
Also, "we are constantly reminded that every person killed on the battlefield has a name, a homeland, and parents who love him, and who will be devastated with grief at his death". I'm reading Asquith's (British PM in the First World War) letters to Venetia Stanley, which are a roller-coaster in many ways, but one of the things I've noticed is that Asquith doesn't show any grief about the thousands killed in the first months of the war - mostly "men", not officers -, until people he knows, or the sons of friends, start dying. Institutional class callousness.
posted by paduasoy at 2:09 AM on August 9
For a Homeric reading experience that focuses on "every person killed on the battlefield has a name," I'd strongly recommend Alice Oswald's Memorial - A Version of Homer's Iliad, a litany of those who died in that epic.
posted by the sobsister at 7:43 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
posted by the sobsister at 7:43 AM on August 9 [1 favorite]
I mean, in Greek the Iliad opens with RAAAAAGE. The old oral poets just grabbed all the attention in the room with that! So yes, big big emotions.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:10 PM on August 9
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 12:10 PM on August 9
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posted by chavenet at 4:23 PM on August 8 [3 favorites]