‘The Odyssey’: There’s No Place Like Home
A review of ‘The Odyssey’, by Homer.
One of the curious things about living in London is that the availability of attractions makes you less likely to see them. You will know what I mean if you live in you have never been to the Tower of London or ridden the London Eye. So perhaps, in much the same way, growing up in a culture so nourished by Homer makes us less likely to read him. We have a certain knowledge of his work almost by osmosis. How many people have actually read The Odyssey and The Iliad, or, for that matter, the whole of Shakespeare’s corpus, or got past Inferno and had a crack at Purgatorio?
I begin in this admittedly defensive fashion because a familiar and understandable refrain of classicists is that there is no point reviewing the Ancient Greek masterpieces unless an especially sparkling new translation of one of them has just appeared. Clearly, I disagree, but I do happen to have come upon an especially sparkling (if not exactly new) translation of The Odyssey by Emily Wilson, and I feel compelled to write about it for that reason and so as to enjoin anyone who has never got round to reading The Odyssey to give it the old college try.
Nestor and Menelaus could probably go swimming, à la Scrooge McDuck, in the enormous trove of gold they have happily looted from the Trojans.
The Odyssey essentially addresses the question posed at the conclusion of The Iliad: What happened after the fall of Troy? We learn that some of the Greek heroes have made it home, and made it home in style. In fact Nestor and Menelaus could probably go swimming, à la Scrooge McDuck, in the enormous trove of gold they have happily looted from the Trojans. Agamemnon has returned home, too, but to a muted welcome from his people. ‘Many-minded’ Odysseus, however, the King of Ithaca and wiliest of the Greeks, has yet to get back. And things at home are far from ideal, as it turns out: his wife, Penelope, is struggling to fend off over 100 thirsty suitors, and their son Telemachus is growing increasingly concerned about his father’s whereabouts.
This is how one of the founding stories of Western culture opens: with a man of great intelligence and adaptability facing a big problem and a ticking clock. Over the next 12,109 lines written in dactylic or ‘Homeric’ hexameter, we hear of how this man — Odysseus — has risen to that challenge: slaying monsters, evading sirens, and escaping the lustful clutches of needy nymphs on his journey back to Ithaca. Much of the story is told by Odysseus himself, who, recently freed from bondage at the hands of Calypso, is given a banquet in his honour by the Phaecians, who agree to help him get home.
The Odyssey confronts questions of free will, memory, honour, deception, and custom. That latter plays a starring role, often in connection with the Hellenic notion of sacred hospitality, subversions, inversions, and straightforward presentations are which are seen throughout the poem. The Cyclope Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant son of Poseidon and Thoosa, does away with hospitality in ironic fashion when, rather than offer Odysseus and his men something to eat, he eats two of them upon encountering them in a cave. But The Odyssey is also a story about good old-fashioned grit: perseverance in the face of obstacles of (in some instances, literally) supernatural proportions. And, like many of the classics, the story is about life: the great metaphorical personal journey back home, to our selves, if you like, which we are all fated to take.
The Odyssey is also a story about good old-fashioned grit: perseverance in the face of obstacles of (in this instance, literally) supernatural proportions.
Homer’s lofty poetic style imbues an already grand tale with a palpable sense of grandeur; but it also propels the narrative along and, through his use of metaphor, renders scenes in a vivid, almost cinematic fashion. Many of these scenes have become the subject of paintings by such artists as Degorge and Bottani, Hayez and Gleyre. Homer’s style is so effective that we find it, or traces of it, in Dante, Milton, Virgin, and Chaucer, among numberless other writers we count among the greatest that Europe has ever produced. Reading The Odyssey we get a profound feeling of being part of an audience, being addressed; it is one of the hallmarks of good storytelling, and you hardly have to be a traditionalist to get a little frisson at the thought of Homer (if he was indeed one person; scholars bicker over this) singing this epic tale to the people of Greece back in the 8th century B.C.
All this is rendered beautifully by Emily Wilson, who imposes her own gorgeous style on the poem without getting in the way of it, so to speak. The result is something our imagination can work effortlessly into a story that can be projected onto the screen of our consciousness with all the sharpness and colour of the sharpest and most colourful feature film. The Odyssey is a poem full of life. It can be read again and again, in full or in part, and one to which we can bring ourselves, wherever we happen to be in our life, so that we can experience something new every time.
