Daniel Mendelsohn is a literary polymath; he writes memoirs, monographs, literary and film criticism, edits the New York Review of Books (at large) and translates poetry both modern – three volumes of Cavafy – and now ancient, since his rendering of the Odyssey was recently published in the UK for Penguin Classics. It will probably be the authoritative translation for years to come.
An American who teaches at Bard College in New York, he is the opposite of the stuffy ivory tower classical scholars this country has traditionally produced, regularly trending on X with his surprising threads on how to translate Homeric epithets. He is probably the only translator of the Odyssey you might want to send to review a Spider-Man musical (as the NYRB has done). But he’s also the sober author of one of the most moving books about the Holocaust yet written, The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million (2006), which won a panoply of awards. His writing combines levity and moral seriousness as well as a deep erudition of the classical tradition in which he was trained and the modern tradition in which he is steeped.
Subscribe to read the full article. Change Browser if you are already subscribed.