Süddeutsche Zeitung

Illustration for Süddeutsche Zeitung, on Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey and the question at the heart of the essay: who actually holds the power in this poem? Wilson famously rendered polytropos as "complicated man," and once you read Odysseus that way, not as a hero but as someone complicated, you start noticing that every turn of his journey depends on a woman. Athena, Ino, Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa, Penelope: goddesses, nymphs, a princess, a wife, each one deciding in her own way whether he survives, stays, or makes it home. The essay reads the Odyssey as a poem about masculinity held up, and held together, by women.

Athena decides when the storm lifts. Ino gives him the veil that keeps him afloat. Circe turns his men into pigs and then shelters him for a year. Calypso loves him too much to let him go.

Penelope buys time by unravelling her weaving night after night. And when a salt-crusted stranger drags himself out of the sea, it is Nausicaa, a girl washing clothes on the shore, who holds her ground while everyone else runs.

Two forces in the same body: the king who commands and the survivor who charms his way out.