The Hidden Code

The Lost Books of the Odyssey 

by Zachary Mason

“As their song crescendoed I had the sudden conviction that the world, which I had considered the province of meaningless chances, a mad dance of atoms, was as orderly as the hexagons in the honeycombs I had just crushed into wax and that behind everything, from Helen's weaving to Circe's mountain to Scylla's death, was a subtle pattern, an order of the most compelling lucidity, but hidden from me, a code I could never crack.”   ― Zachary Mason, The Lost Books of the Odyssey

The Lost Books of the Odyssey is a fascinating and seductive debut book. It retells the traditional Homeric tale of the hero Odysseus and his arduous return trip following the fall of Troy. In it the Trojan War is retold alongside flashbacks as Odysseus travels from Troy to Ithaca. The chapters flow with witty turns or neat bows, more in the style of a short story writer. 

The book is a deft and subtle translation of Greek literature for the present day. Personhood, storytelling, memory, and self-awareness are some of the subjects it examines. According to how much light the story decides to shed, Mason's characters can change shape and become elusive, just like the ones in Homer's original.

The traditional Homer stories are transformed into new episodes, fragments, and revisions using beautiful prose, a vivid imagination, and stunning literary skill. When read as a whole, these additions expose the timeless Greek epic to countless resonant interpretations. The Lost Books of the Odyssey is  It is laced with wonderful wit, elegance, and playfulness. 

I found that it was worthwhile, but only for those who have already read Homer's original epic saga.

Whitman's Civil War Memoranda

Memoranda during the War 

by Walt Whitman

"I was in the habit of reading to the men. They were very fond of it, and liked declamatory poetical pieces."   ― Walt Whitman, p 55.

Walt Whitman's Memoranda During the War is the best book I have read about a seldom thought about aspect of the Civil War. Having gone to Washington D. C. at the end of 1862 to visit his wounded brother George, Walt stayed there to tend to the sick and wounded through the end of the War. He writes about the known and the unknown, the anonymous soldiers who all too frequently did not survive their wounds.
"Common People . . . to me the main interest of the War, I found, (and still, on recollection find,) in those specimens, and in the ambulance, the Hospital, and even the dead on the field.)" (p 6)

The narrative displays the sort of interior history that you cannot get in history books. There is present in his prose a sort of ethereal innocence at times and an immediacy that comes from the contemporaneous notes that Whitman maintained in small notebooks. Throughout the narrative is imbued with thoughts of Homer's Iliad that Whitman held close to his heart. But even closer to his heart were the beautiful young boys who were being sacrificed on the battlefields. The contradictions of those he saw who would often be dead before the week was over contrasted with the bodies that lay on the battlefields, sometimes for a week or more before they were retrieved.

He found time to insert his observations from his walks around Washington. One poetic moment he described The White House at night; "the brilliant gas-light shining---the palace-like portico---the tall, round columns, spotless as snow . . ." What a contrast with his days in the hospitals surrounded by blood-soaked wounded soldiers, too young to be called the veterans that they were.

He concludes the narrative with his speculations about the future for the country. This provides a fitting ending for what is a fascinating, moving, and above all a heartfelt account of our greatest poet's experiences during the Civil War.

Heroic Retelling

Ilium 

by Dan Simmons

“Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done . . . ‘Tis not too late to seek a newer world . . . Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’ We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak in time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, and not to yield.”  ― Dan Simmons, Ilium







Having fairly recently reread the Iliad of Homer this book is a good follow-up both as a change, in genre, and as renewing my knowledge of the Iliad helps in understanding Simmons' novel. For in his novel Homer's relevance is more than an opening prop or gimmick. It is the Iliad that initially provides a bearing, a compass for the reader upon which the rest of the narrative depends, and without which, it could be argued, the rest, at least during the first third or so of the book, would unravel. This is a complicated novel with regard to plot and it is the familiarity of the Iliad story line that initially binds the work together, serving as a sturdy foundation while the other two strands, at first seeming unrelated, gradually come together.

Part humor, part literary space opera (and perhaps part mind game for intellectuals), Ilium is fascinating in its grand scope as well as the way it reinterprets earlier works to conform to an entirely new epic type. Within it references abound, not only to literature but popular culture, current events, philosophy and recent concepts of physics. It can be difficult to keep one's bearings as the author's vision is so expansive that the scale of events, characters and themes so often touched upon or merely suggested, only to be later viewed from different circumstance or perspective. Much of what occurs throughout the novel is driven by anticipation of how the author will ultimately resolve and integrate all of his various plotlines, cast and speculation. Intriguing hints are laid, sometimes in opposition: Proust's exploration of time, memory and perception or the secret paths to the puzzle of life; the moravec Mahnmut's interpretation of Shakespeare's Sonnets as a dramatic construct; the interaction and influence of will, represented by Zeus, the Fates, and chaos, upon events taking place upon the plains of Ilium; the fulcrum Hockenberry is urged to find in order to change the outcome of Homer; or the identity of "'A bitter heart that bides its time and bites.'" Cosmologies and ontologies, as well as metaphors, are borrowed, their identities and purposes remaining unclear or unexplained, as is so much else by novel's end, though suspicions are delectably stirred. 

This is a novel that provides a wealth of ideas and action which successfully entice the reader to continue the saga in the sequel, Olympos.

Notes on Homer

Homer's The Odyssey


"Recognition"


By Book 17 of The Odyssey, Odysseus has finally returned to Ithaca after ten years at war and ten more years in slow return due to Poseidon's wrath.  He has appeared in disguise as an aged beggar (through the aid of Athena) and has been welcomed by his loyal swinherd, Emaeus.  This aspect of the plot may seem strange as Odysseus appears somewhat cold and calculating. Why doesn't he embrace his son and wife, overcome by emotion, after not seeing them for so many years? Odysseus has been shown to be wily and crafty many times in the epic, and his indirect approach is in keeping with this aspect of his character. Also, the text makes reference several times to Agamemnon and his troubles. As Homer's audience would have known, Agamemnon comes home to a wife who has taken up a lover and stealthily kills him. Things change as time passes, and after 20 years, Odysseus can't be too careful. 
One morning as he is out walking with Emaeus the following touching scene occurs:


"Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there
lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears . . .
It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus' dog, 
he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus' serving-men
could cart it off to manure th eking's estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect, 
here lay the hound, old Argos.
But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped, 
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side
and flicked away a tear. Hiding it from Eumaeus,
diverting his friend in a hasty, offhand way:
'Strange, Eumaeus, look, a dog like this,
lying here on a ding-hill . . .
what handsome lines!'" 

[as the conversation continues they leave]

"With that he entered the well-constructed palace,
strode through the halls and joined the proud suitors.
But the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos' eyes
the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away."

The Odyssey of Homer, trans. by Robert Fagles, Penguin Classics, 1996. pp 363-64, lines 317-360.

Where is Home, and can we Return?

Ignorance 

by Milan Kundera

"The same moviemaker of the subconscious who, by day, was sending her bits of the home landscape as images of happiness, by night would set up terrifying returns to that same land. The day was lit with the beauty of the land forsaken, the night by the horror of returning to it. The day would show her the paradise she had lost; the night, the hell she had fled."  - Milan Kundera, Ignorance





When Odysseus returned to Ithaka after twenty years of travel and travail he was welcomed home; but was his return to the place he remembered and to the wife that he remembered? With Ignorance Milan Kundera gives the reader a meditation on this theme and others. Ignorance raises the question of where home is anymore in the modern world, not only for émigrés but for anyone who moves around. The place of one’s birth no longer seems to qualify, as one grows away from it, moves to more attractive places, or becomes cosmopolitan in tastes. For people in and from formerly communist countries, sudden opportunities to travel and migrate, after decades of restricted opportunities, seem to have raised the question afresh.

Irena, the novel’s main character, who lives in Paris, has enjoyed the status of émigré for two decades: Parisians feel sorry for the poor Czech woman and after the fall of Czech communism in 1989, they begin to wonder why she is not hurrying back home to help out. Her Parisian friends seem to consider it her patriotic duty. Yet Irena has worked hard to become settled in Paris, where she buried her Czech husband and raised their two daughters, who for all practical matters are French. Now Irena has a job, an apartment, and a boyfriend in Paris, not a bad city in which to make one’s home. Only a visit from her mother, who still lives in Prague, persuades Irena to make a return visit to the city of her birth.

Josef, the novel’s other main character, likewise fled Czechoslovakia in 1969. He settled in Denmark, where he married a Danish woman, and they lived happily together until she died. Josef, still mourning her death and attached to their home in Denmark, where he keeps everything just as it was when she was alive, is also very slow to return to the land of his birth. Now he is returning for a visit only because he had promised his dying wife that he would.

On their way to Czechoslovakia, Irena and Josef meet by chance in the Paris airport. Irena remembers Josef from another chance encounter many years before in Prague, before she married. There had been some chemistry between the two, but after their meeting they had never seen each other again: “Their love story stopped before it could start.” Now Irena introduces herself again, and they agree to get together in Prague. Actually, Josef cannot remember her, but now he sees no reason to turn down an opportunity for friendship with a warm, good-looking woman.

Before they rendezvous in Prague, they both have certain rounds to make and this is where Kundera begins to raise doubts about the idea of the Great Return. Both Irena and Josef are struck by the strangeness of the spoken Czech language, which seems to have developed an ugly nasal drawl since their departure. They also both notice the hometown diminution effect: Landscapes and city scenes that once seemed impressive have shrunk into insignificance, if they have not disappeared altogether. Worst of all, the whole country has been inundated by tasteless popular culture and crass commercialism; for example, the music on the radio is described as “noise” and “sewage-water music,” and the tubercular face of writer Franz Kafka adorns a T-shirt for tourists.

Both Irena and Josef get a glimpse of what they might have become if they had stayed in Czechoslovakia. When the weather turns hot, Irena buys a dowdy Czech dress that makes her look “naïve, provincial, inelegant” and “pitiable, poor, weak, downtrodden.” In his high school diary that his brother had saved for him, Josef is able to contemplate the “little snot” he used to be, back in the days of his virginity, when he obsessed about girls but could express his feelings only by torturing his girlfriends emotionally. Both Irena and Josef also get an eyeful of their potential selves in the friends and relatives that they meet, who form a kind of gauntlet for the two visitors but who otherwise have not missed them for twenty years.

Irena tries to socialize with some Prague friends, but after an awkward moment, her friends declare their “plain-and-simple” preference for beer rather than the wine she offers them. Then, beer in hand, they stand around chatting to each other about local matters, pretty much ignoring Irena. They are totally uninterested in what she has been doing during the twenty years she was away. Irena realizes that they have “amputated twenty years from her life” and no longer have much in common with her. She already misses her Parisian friend Sylvie.

In the provincial hometown that he visits, Josef has to run an even worse gauntlet formed by his sister-in-law, his Czech former wife (to whom he was married for only a few months), and his stepdaughter. Josef’s brother is happy enough to see him again, though the brother is somewhat embarrassed because he has taken over the family home and Josef’s old belongings. Although she also enjoys his goods, Josef’s sister-in-law has not forgiven him for running off and causing them to suffer under the Communist regime. Worse, she calls up his former wife and tells her he is in town. Then his stepdaughter calls him to say she has to see him right away to discuss certain important matters that she cannot talk about on the phone, but when he calls back to break their appointment, the stepdaughter says her mother warned her about what “a filthy little egotist” he is.

By the time Irena and Josef meet in Prague, they are ready for some relief and consolation. They share each other’s stories over lunch and wine, then head up to his hotel room. Before long, they are making love, but it does not end well and he leaves to catch his plane back to Denmark.

Thus, the ending of the novel is immensely sad. For both Irena and Josef, the Great Return to their homeland fizzles out and so does their brief romance. Even though Josef realizes that Irena is in love with him, he is still emotionally committed to his dead wife. Irena and Josef have crossed paths again, but again their paths do not match. Another possibility, however, is that Irena will find the encounter with Josef liberating. Until this encounter, Irena has tended to be dependent in her relationships with other people—first with her mother, then with her husband, Martin, and even with her married boyfriend, Gustaf.

Throughout the novel, Kundera also draws parallels to and meditates on the ur-myth of the Great Return—the story of Homer’s Odyssey (c. 725 b.c.e.), which is at the center of Ignorance just as the story of Oedipus’s sense of moral responsibility is at the center of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Here Kundera seems to draw on the myth of Odysseus’s return primarily to show that it no longer applies to the modern world but is a romantic hangover from another time. For Odysseus, the return had tremendous validity, as he struggled to get back to his beloved homeland and wife. Around the time of the Victorian poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who wrote a stirring poem about Odysseus’s restlessness after his return, the myth started going downhill. Now the myth seems totally meaningless.

Where is home anymore? Where is love? In Ignorance Kundera seems to say that in the modern world neither of these is easy to find. Kundera destroys the idea that the place of one’s birth has any special significance. Instead, life is full of possibilities. Home and love are out there somewhere, but they have to be compatible with one’s identity, which in the modern world is a shifting, developing concept, dependent not just on one’s origins but on one’s experiences, memories, ideals, and ignorance.

Top Ten Books I Would Like to See under My Christmas Tree

Top Ten Tuesday is sponsored by The Broke and the Bookish.  The following are the top books I would welcome seeing under the tree on Christmas morning:



1.  THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH. By Richard Flanagan.  A frail humanity survives the unspeakable in this novel of the Burma-­Thailand Railway of World War II.  I still cannot forget reading his wonderful novel, Gould's Book of Fish.



2.  The Grove Centenary Editions of Samuel Beckett Boxed Set.  Need I say more?






3.  THE BONE CLOCKS. By David Mitchell.  In this latest head-­spinning flight into other dimensions from the author of “Cloud Atlas,” all borders between pubby England and the machinations of the undead begin to blur.  A great follow-up to Cloud Atlas which I loved. 



4.  A new edition of The Odyssey to read for the spring weekend retreat planned by the University of Chicago.

5.  COLORLESS TSUKURU TAZAKI AND HIS YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE. By Haruki Murakami. Translated by Philip Gabriel.  A novel of a man’s traumatic entrance into adulthood and the shadowy passages he must then ­negotiate.  I'm overdue to read more Murakami.



6.  THE DOG. By Joseph O’Neill.  In O’Neill’s disturbing, elegant novel, his first since “Netherland,” a lost and tormented New York lawyer recognizes more darkness within himself than in the iniquitous place he works, Dubai.  Our book group enjoyed Netherland.


7.  NORA WEBSTER. By Colm Toibin.  In Toibin’s luminous, elliptical novel, set in the late 1960s and early ’70s, an Irishwoman struggles toward independence after her husband’s unexpected death.  Having read Brooklyn I expect more of his best.




8.  THE POETRY OF DEREK WALCOTT 1948-2013. Selected by Glyn Maxwell.  Stroke by patient stroke, the poems in this largehearted and essential selection from Walcott, now 84, are the work of a painterly hand.  I admired Omeros several years ago and would like to delve further into Walcott's poetry.





9.  NAPOLEON: A Life. By Andrew Roberts.  Roberts brilliantly conveys the sheer energy of this military and organizational whirlwind.  This looks like a good way to explore his life.


10.  THE PARTHENON ENIGMA. By Joan Breton Connelly.  With first-rate scholarship, an archaeologist reinterprets the Parthenon frieze in this exciting and revelatory history.  This combines my interest in the classics with archaeology.  A sure winner.

Dublin Journey

Ulysses 
by James Joyce

“The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside.”  ― James Joyce, Ulysses

The plot and theme of James Joyce's Ulysses center on life as a journey. Joyce based the framework of his novel on the structure of one of the greatest and most influential epic poems, The Odyssey of Homer. In it Homer presented the archetypal journey of life as a heroic adventure. The protagonist, Odysseus (Roman name, Ulysses), encounters many perils–including giants, angry gods, and monsters–during his voyage home to Ithaca, Greece, after the Trojan War. In Joyce's Twentieth Century novel, the author also depicts life as a journey, in imitation of Homer. But Joyce presents this journey as humdrum, dreary, and uneventful. Joyce's Ulysses is a Jew of Hungarian origin, Leopold Bloom, who lives in Dublin, Ireland. His adventure consists of getting breakfast, feeding his cat, going to a funeral, doing legwork for his job, visiting pubs or restaurants, and thinking about his unfaithful wife. His activities parallel in some way the adventures of Homer's Ulysses. For example Bloom attends a funeral in a chapter entitled "Hades"; paralleling an episode in The Odyssey in which Ulysses visits Hades, the land of the dead (or Underworld) in Greek mythology. Bloom's unfaithful wife, Molly, represents the faithful wife of Ulysses, Penelope. A young aspiring writer, Stephen Dedalus, represents the son of Ulysses, Telemachus, who searches for his father. Although Dedalus is not Bloom's son, Dedalus nonetheless is depicted as searching for a father figure to replace his own drunken father.

But why, when almost everyone who has heard of this book and many others who have read Ulysses, would so many say it is "difficult"?
Perhaps it is a difficulty that is an inescapable aspect of the human condition and as such, when presented as literature, is accessible to humans. Perhaps it is a difficulty that may be overcome by simply reading the text, enjoying the story, and waiting for the moments, christened "Eureka" moments by Claudia Traudt (Instructor in the Basic Program of Liberal Education at The University of Chicago), where the text will become more understandable, part of your soul, if not less difficult.

Reading it reminds me of my own experience reading William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, another notoriously difficult book. After at least three readings and countless partial attempts one summer I found myself finally "in the zone" with the text suddenly alive and the voices of the characters, their streaming consciousnesses, clearer than ever before. "Eureka!"
This takes work and both serious reading of and listening to the text. It is a text that echoes and reechoes Homer's Odyssey. One example of this jumped out at me when references to the sea from Ulysses brought to my mind the image of Odysseus sitting on the shore of Calypso's island pining for his home. The result of reading and rereading this great text is that its fundamental humaneness comes to the fore and you can celebrate the greatness that is Joyce's Ulysses.

Ulysses by James Joyce.

Rejoice! A Celebration of Joyce

" ... did you ever see me running... ": 

James Joyce's Ulysses, a Human Work for Humans

a lecture by Claudia Traudt

"Ulysses is difficult.  It is also profoundly human and accessible.  Famously, Joyce has Leopold and Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus at the core of the story, and countless Dublin denizens radiating outward, echo , engage and collide with themes of Homer's Odyssey.  He also roars them through ORDINARY LIFE on June 16, 1904, as WE are roared through it.  In it, fear, memory, grief, food, sex, fights, fireworks, birth, death, affirmation crackle to life in language that Joyce makes at once celebrate and summon to consciousness our OWN experiences, art that has gone before (Shakespeare, Chaucer, Bunyan, Yeats, Mozart, Synge), and startling discoveries of most human capabilities." (Claudia Traudt, from the introduction to the lecture)


This morning I attended a lecture by Claudia Traudt in the "First Friday Lecture Series" of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults.  It was called a lecture but the experience was more like a celebration of the humanity of literature as demonstrated by James Joyce in his novel Ulysses.
The celebration began with a simmering and a glimmering, with the percolation of ideas and concepts that represent in some small way the nature of Joyce's work of literary genius.  Claudia began by asking a simple question about Ulysses: Is this for Humans?  The answer was an emphatic Yes!  But why, when almost everyone in the audience and many others who have read Ulysses would say it is "difficult"?
Perhaps it is a difficulty that is an inescapable aspect of the human condition and as such, when presented as literature, is accessible to humans.
Perhaps it is a difficulty that may be overcome by simply reading the text, enjoying the story, and waiting for the moments, christened "Eureka" moments by Claudia, where the text will become more understandable, part of your soul, if not less difficult.  It reminded me of my own experience reading William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, another notoriously difficult book.  After at least three readings and countless partial attempts one summer I found myself finally "in the zone" with the text suddenly alive and the voices of the characters, their streaming consciousnesses, clearer than ever before.  Eureka!


This takes work and both serious reading of and listening to the text.  It is a text that echoes and reechoes Homer's Odyssey. One example of this jumped out at me when references to the sea from Ulysses brought to my mind the image of Odysseus sitting on the shore of Calypso's island pining for his home.
  Most of the lecture that followed was a presentation of key examples from the text of the novel with intelligent and impassioned commentary by Claudia.  From the relative straightforward approach of Episode 7, known as "Aeolus" with its short sections demarcated by headlines to the soliloquy of Molly Bloom in Episode  18   with its run-on sentences, we luxuriated in the prose of Joyce that had many reaching for their dictionaries (and realizing that the handy portable dictionary they might be carrying with them was not up to the task of deciphering the relatively recondite prose of Joyce).
The lecture concluded with great joy and appreciation for the reassurance of the lecturer that Joyce's Ulysses is indeed "a Human Work for Humans".

Ulysses by James Joyce. Random House: Vintage Books, 1990 (1934)

The Iliad: Two Modern Retellings

An Iliad 

by Alessandro Baricco

Allesandro Baricco, better known for his novel Silk, turns to ancient Greece in this retelling of The Iliad, but unlike Homer the gods do not interfere in the affairs of the men who are battling each other in this version of the story. Modern motivations consume these humans as they make ancient history. The story is told by multiple narrators, including Odysseus, Achilles, and Nestor--familiar to those who have read the original. The New Yorker magazine wrote Baricco's retelling of the epic is "defiantly modern," but I would encourage you to see for yourself. It is certainly good read even if you have not read the original.

Ransom 

by David Malouf

David Malouf begins his retelling of the story with Achilles mourning the death of Patroclus during the Trojan War. Achilles, enraged at his friend's death, slays Hector, Patroclus' killer, and drags Hector's corpse behind a chariot around the walls of Troy. Rage as he does in Homer's original, Achilles terrifying aspect is amplified in comparison. Malouf tries to explain the psychology of Achilles, asking how a man capable of anything takes out his frustration. The narrative then shifts towards Priam, Hector's father and the King of Troy. Priam cannot stand the abuse of his beloved son's body. Malouf explores this parallel of loss between Priam and Achilles that Homer, in the original Iliad, left unsaid. Unlike the version told by Baricco a goddess intervenes and Priam then explains to Troy that he will make his way to the Greek camp with ransom treasure for Achilles. He hopes to stop his mistreatment of Hector’s body which Queen Hecuba points out is a suicide mission. Priam goes on the journey, despite warnings from his wife. He eventually meets Achilles at his tent, where the exchange is made. Priam appeals to Achilles' conscience, reminding him of his own father, in trying to persuade him to return Hector to Troy for a proper burial.
With the addition of Somax, the most successfully developed character in the entire narrative, Malouf makes certain changes to the original. Malouf takes liberties with the personalities of Priam and Achilles that are not entirely in consonant with their depictions in the Iliad. However, with Somax, Malouf manages to create a perfect character foil for Priam. Like many a royal figure before and after Priam has lived in a cocoon of safety for his entire life and is now forced to exit it to bury his son. Somax, who has by no means lived any life of luxury, unintentionally teaches Priam about the world outside of the palace: he is both ordinary and he is not the type of person that normally would have anything to do with the royal family, yet he is enthused with the opportunity. A delight to read as always, despite differences to the original, Malouf is successful in creating his own characters.

An Iliad by Alessandro Baricco. Alfred A. Knopf, 2006.
Ransom by David Malouf. Pantheon Books, 2010.

Caribbean Epic

Omeros 

by Derek Walcott

    "Except for one hand he sat as still as marble,
    with his egg-white eyes, fingers recounting the past
    of another sea, measured by the stroking oars.

    O open this day with the conch’s moan, Omeros,
    as you did in my boyhood, when I was a noun
    gently exhaled from the palate of the sunrise.."

Derek Walcott was born in 1930 in Castries, Santa Lucia. With the publication of Omeros in 1990, Derek Walcott produced a poem in the tradition of the Iliad

and the Aeneid.

Omeros is an epic poem spanning many years of history, both personal and international, and encompassing the sea and land of his many home lands, it is a tour de force that inspires the reader. Influenced by both Homer and Dante the poet blends references to time past and present, to places in which he lived when young and old, with a subtle touch that limns the beauty of a dream. I was gripped and intrigued by the complex thematics of anger, division, competition, lust, battle, domination, oppression, suffering, and eventually love, homecoming and redemption. Helen, woman and island, is presented as symbolic and actual center of the human struggle, and a goal of the competition of nations and individuals. I felt the evocative tapestry of this lengthy poem intriguing in the natural way he blended the old world of the Aegean with the new world of the Caribbean.

Most moving was the poet's journey in search for hope, love, meaning, and self-understanding in the midst of the injustice, the despair and hopelessness of the post colonial world. Omeros is a difficult but immensely rewarding, indeed enjoyable read for all poetry lovers of the new world.

Omeros by Derek Walcott

The Odyssey 

by Homer

further comments

""If only, my friend," reserved Penelope exclaimed, "everything you say would come to pass!" (p 400)


My reading of The Odyssey of Homer is continuing and with more than two-thirds of the poem completed we are in the home stretch. Last Sunday we discussed Book Nineteen which is titled "Penelope and Her Guest" by Robert Fagles in his recent translation, but more appropriately, I think, "Recognitions and a Dream" by Robert Fitzgerald in his classic translation from 1961. I say that because the book climaxes with first, Odysseus' old nurse's recognition of the scar he received during a a hunt for wild boars as a youth. The story is told of the great hunt, the boy Odysseus with his Father and Uncles - sons of Grandfather Autolycus who had named Odysseus (the Son of Pain), where Odysseus rashly runs ahead and is gouged by the Boar leaving the tell-tale scar. The incident reminds one of Faulkner's great story, The Bear, which narrates a similar rite of passage.
Second, we have Penelope, with the beggar (Odysseus still disguised and protected by Athena), sharing her dream  about the Eagle and the geese. The geese, representing the suitors, of course, and the Eagle, well we know the story. Yet, with all the dreaming and confrontations and discussion Penelope has doubt and cannot see the beggar as her long lost husband Odysseus. So she proposes a contest for the suitors to decide on which she will accept and hesitates at the insistence of the beggar that Odysseus will still return in time. The book ends with Penelope in pain seeing the solace of sleep:

                                                       With that                     

the queen went up to her lofty well-lit room

and not alone: her women followed close behind.

Penelope, once they reached the upper story,

fell to weeping for Odysseus, her beloved husband,

till watchful Athena sealed her eyes with welcome sleep.(p 408)

The Odyssey by Homer. Robert Fagles, trans. Viking Penguin, New York. 1996

Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey: 

A Biography 

by Alberto Manguel

"Every great work of literature is either the Iliad or the Odyssey"
- Raymond Queneau, Preface to Flaubert's Bouvard et Pecuchet, 1947


I have been rereading the Odyssey and last year reread the Iliad.  As background reading I found this collection of essays and commentary to be a valuable compendium of literary information.  Alberto Manguel's commentary is best read with the original works by Homer.  However, the commentary goes beyond the typical analysis of the text and includes references to and about the Odyssey and The Iliad that I found helpful. The influence of Homer's poetry on Virgil, Dante and religions from Christianity to Islam is valuable. Since this book is brief it can be used as a starting point for further investigation into any number of avenues in pursuit of understanding the importance of Homer for us today. Alberto Manguel is an excellent guide.


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Book Blogger Hop

With all your reading get more reading, understanding will follow. The connections made through the "book blogger hop" provide a new dimension in my reading life, so I participate and welcome those who share my love for reading and, perhaps, some of the books that I read and enjoy. More than ever I find that I am rereading books; currently The Brothers Karamazov, The Odyssey, Time Regained - the final volume of In Search of Lost Time, and Brideshead Revisited. That doesn't prevent me from reading books, new to me in the sense that I have not read them previously, including; Recapitulation by Wallace Stegner, Cakes and Ale by Maugham, and Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett. There is room for more books and reading the delightful literary blogs of others helps my not so limited imagination expand with wonder at the treasure trove available. Now, back to reading.

The Odyssey

by Homer

Introduction

Sing to me of the man, Muses, the man of twists and turns

driven time and again off course, once he had plundered

the hallowed heights of Troy.

(The Odyssey, 1.1-3)

Here we are once again, with the poet imploring the Muse to sing her song about the adventures ensuing the the fall of Troy. Having just finished rereading The Iliad which told of the rage of Achilles and the Trojan War, I find The Odyssey a much more congenial book, seemingly modern in structure and outlook, even as it tells of events before the beginning of history as we know it. It tells the journey of Odysseus on his way hhome from Troy, a journey that takes him ten years. Odysseus is a man who, according to none other than Zeus, "excels all men in wisdom," (1.79). Odysseus has offended Poseidon, the god of the seas, by blinding his son Polyphemus the Cyclops; and, Poseidon, in retaliation has driven Odysseus off-course and delayed his return home to Ithaca. Athena rouses the rest of the gods and takes up Odysseus case. It is thus that we find Athena going to Ithaca and, in the form of Mentes, helping Odysseus' son Telemachus as part of her plan. We also meet Penelope, the wise and patient wife of Odysseus, who has been fending off the suitors who have been pursuing her in Odysseus absence. Telemachus tells Athena: "And mother . . . she neither rejects a marriage she despises nor can she bear to bring the courting to an end -- while they continue to bleed my household white."(1.289-91). The situation is untenable and calls for action. With Athena's assurance that his father is still alive, Telelmachus may take the necessary action. We find ourselves in a very different kind of poem than The Iliad, but one that promises suspense and excitement. Key themes that appear and will reappear as we continue include the idea of the heroic journey, both for Odysseus and Telemachus, and the growth of the character of Odysseus, who is described by Athena as he endures his captivity under Calypso's power:

But he, straining for no more than a glimpse

of hearth-smoke drifting up from his own land,

Odysseus longs to die . . .

(1.69-71)

The Odyssey by Homer, Robert Fagles, transl. Viking Penguin, New York. 1996

Rediscovering Homer: Inside the Origins of the Epic

by Andrew Dalby

He knew the things that were and the things that would be and the things that had been before.

- Homer, The Iliad

While the title of Andrew Dalby's fascinating look at Homer is Rediscovering Homer, I would suggest that reinventing or unearthing the remains of Homer might be more appropriate. Not that he does not venture "inside the origins of the Epic", but that his project bears closer resemblance to an archaeological dig than a voyage of discovery. It is a dig that comes up short in part because it necessarily must be buttressed with speculation. Most scholars agree that the origins of the Epics of Homer and other ancient poetry are shrouded in mystery. We do not have enough hard evidence to reach firm conclusions about the true source of the poems in the form that we have them. Any conclusions about the poet and the process would seem to be speculative at best. This book is an attempt to challenge the notion that the written epics we have are the creation of an author named Homer. Homer the poet lived long before the epics were written and we do not know who eventually wrote them down. And, as Andrew Dalby argues, we do not even know the gender of the author. The attempt to provide this speculation with support makes for a fascinating book, albeit one that would be somewhat slimmer without general background material about the Homeric epics that is familiar to all who have read them. For those unfamiliar with the poems this book is a good introduction with the caveat that the second part of the book about the maker of the Odyssey and Iliad is controversial. Fortunately, the author concludes the book with a thoughtful "Guide to Further Reading" coda that provides excellent suggestions for readers interested in exploring further the world of the epic poem.

Rediscovering Homer by Andrew Dalby. W. W. Norton & Co., New York. 2006

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Poem for Summer

 

 

 

The Summer Rain

My books I’d fain cast off, I cannot read,
  ’Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed,

  And will not mind to hit their proper targe.

Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too,
  Our Shakespeare’s life were rich to live again,
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true,
  Nor Shakespeare’s books, unless his books were men.

Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough,
  What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town,
If juster battles are enacted now
  Between the ants upon this hummock’s crown?

Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn,
  If red or black the gods will favor most,
Or yonder Ajax will the phalanx turn,
  Struggling to heave some rock against the host.

Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour,
  For now I’ve business with this drop of dew,
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower—
  I’ll meet him shortly when the sky is blue.

This bed of herd’s grass and wild oats was spread
  Last year with nicer skill than monarchs use.
A clover tuft is pillow for my head,
  And violets quite overtop my shoes.

And now the cordial clouds have shut all in,
  And gently swells the wind to say all’s well;
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin,
  Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell.

I am well drenched upon my bed of oats;
  But see that globe come rolling down its stem,
Now like a lonely planet there it floats,
  And now it sinks into my garment’s hem.

Drip drip the trees for all the country round,
  And richness rare distills from every bough;
The wind alone it is makes every sound,
  Shaking down crystals on the leaves below.

For shame the sun will never show himself,
  Who could not with his beams e’er melt me so;
My dripping locks—they would become an elf,
  Who in a beaded coat does gayly go.

by Henry David Thoreau (1842)

Achilles' War: The True Story of the Illiad

by Caroline Alexander

It is the epic of epics, the most celebrated and enduring of all war stories ever told. - Caroline Alexander, Achilles' War, p 1.

This is an excellent book to read in conjunction with your latest rereading of Homer's Iliad, which is just what I have recently done. Caroline Alexander manages to emphasize the relevance of the Iliad for today by exploring references to other literature and deepening the meanings found within the Iliad by the reader. While Homer's epic stands alone for the serious reader, the addition of these resources widens the breadth of possibilities of understanding for the reader and, in my case, assisted in our discussion of the original text among our study group. What Ms. Alexander has not done is produce a traditional work of Homeric scholarship with commentary on linguistic expressions or the oral tradition. Rather this is more of an extended meditation on war and its meaning as beautifully expressed by Homer through Achilles and his other characters. The result is a successful addition to your reading and enjoyment of Homer but not a replacement for it.

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The Iliad
Achilles and Priam

"Priam must not see his son."
He feared that, overwhelmed by the sight of Hector,
wild with grief, Priam might let his anger flare
and Achilles might fly into fresh rage himself,
- The Iliad, Book 24, lines 683-6

The final book of The Iliad begins with the games over and the armies scattered, but Achilles remains in grief over the death of his friend Patrocles. He slowly is persuaded that he must return Hector's body to Priam. Even as his mother Thetis mourns the future fate of her son who is also doomed to die, the gods gather and continue to argue over the situation.

Priam prays to Zeus:

And Zeus in all his wisdom heard that prayer and straightaway the Father launched an eagle -- truest of Zeus's signs that fly the skies -- (lines 373-5)

Achilles the leader understands the situation as he returns the body of Hector to his father Priam. Priam, who implores him to "Remember your own father" in a moving speech. But the story may find a fitting summary in the words of Achilles when he says,

So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men
live on to bear such torments -- the gods live free of sorrows. (lines 613-14)





The Iliad by Homer. Robert Fagles, trans. Viking Penguin, New York. 1990

The Iliad

Achilles Fights the River

"the river roared."

- The Iliad, Book 21, line 19

Achilles takes his fight to the Trojans as Book 21 of the Iliad begins with the Trojans routed, one half blocked by Hera with the other half "packed in the silver-whirling river," (line 9). Achilles slays Lycaon, son of Priam, and Asteropaeus, son of Pelegon. Then he goes after the Trojan's allies from Paeona, beating and hacking them "in a blur of kills" (line 235). The blood of the men is so thick that the river rose and,

"taking a man's shape, its voice breaking out of a whirlpool:

"Stop, Achilles! Greater than any man on earth,

greater in courage too --

for the gods themselves are always at your side!

But if Zeus allows you to kill off all the Trojans,

drive them out of my depths at least,"

(lines 239-45) -

But Achilles proceeds to attack and fight the river itself. Continuing until the gods recognize that this cannot stay. Poseidon and Athena come to him and advise him, "It's not your fate to be swallowed by a river:" (line 328). The gods take over from this point and the book chronicles the spectacle of battles among the gods, mirroring the battles of the men below. even through this the river remains a thread that cannot be forgotten. The Trojan's and Hector's days in particular are numbered from this point onward.

The Iliad by Homer. Robert Fagles, trans. Viking Penguin, New York. 1990

The Iliad

"Roan Beauty"

"Why, Roan Beauty--why prophesy my doom?
Don't waste your breath. I know, well I know--
I am destined to die here. . ."
(Book 19, 497-99)





Achilles' roar permeates Books 18 and 19 of The Iliad. From the moment we read "Achilles , Zeus' favorite fighter, rose up. . ." to his "enormous cry" and the "fire, relentless, terrible, burst from proud-hearted Achilles' head,"(Book 18, 235 - 260), we and the Argives and even the Trojans, who immediately lose twelve of their fighters, are aware of the presence of Achilles. He has returned and he meets with Agamemnon to receive his due and assume leadership of the troops. His meeting with Agamemnon yields the the prophecy that:

For years to come, I think, they will remember the feud that flared between us both. (Book 19, 72-3)

But it is Roan Beauty who reminds Achilles and us of his ultimate sacrifice in this moving statement,:

The white-armed goddess Hera gave him voice:
"Yes! we will save your life--this time too--
master, mighty Achilles! But the day of death
already hovers near, and we are not to blame
but a great god is and the strong force of fate.
. . .
still you are doomed to die by force, Achilles,
cut down by a death less god and mortal man!"
(Book 19, 482-494)


The Roan Beauty does not speak again.


The Iliad by Homer. Robert Fagles, trans. Viking Penguin, New York. 1990