A groundbreaking classicist is irreverently acting out The Odyssey on YouTube and it's great

If you want someone to read aloud to you in quarantine, you have a lot of options. Actors, actresses, and royals alike have recorded themselves reading everything from picture books to Harry Potter for the entertainment of fans stuck in isolation. But perhaps you're looking for something a little more … epic?

Classicist Emily Wilson, who in 2017 became the first woman to publish a translation of Homer's Odyssey into English, is working on releasing 24 daily two-minute videos of herself reciting passages of her book. "Translation is always like acting," she explained on Twitter. "We inhabit other people's voices. I am Nobody."

And she really gets into it. Props used in the first video include Athena's disguise of sunglasses (perhaps a slight deviation from the original text) as well as the goddess' "spear." You'll notice, also, that Wilson appropriately does the reading in an owl shirt. A dejected Telemachus, meanwhile, makes an appearance in a backwards baseball cap.

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It's absolutely worth watching below, and you can read more about Wilson's groundbreaking translation here at The Week. Jeva Lange

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