“Many translations import misogynistic language when it isn't there in the Greek,” she wrote. “In [Robert] Fagles’ best-selling version, ‘You sluts -- the suitors’ whores!’ [Stanley] Lombardo: ‘Sluts’. [Richmond] Lattimore: ‘Creatures’. [Robert] Fitzgerald: ‘Sluts’. [Alexander] Pope’s is the best: ‘nightly prostitutes to shame’.”
I guess I'm insufficiently sensitive to nuance. I just read a couple of translations of these passages online and all of them struck me as pretty gruesome. It is obvious that Telemachus does not like these ladies and hasn't for a long time. The women don't seem to put up any struggle. They don't say anything. Maybe the Greek text is less "misogynistic" than some translations suggest, but death by slow strangulation hardly suggests that Telemachus had much respect for the women, however delicate the language may be. The treatment of Melanthius doesn't show a lot of respect for men, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment