“So much does Odysseus excel all others in cunning wiles; no human being can vie with him”

The Odyssey by Homer

The story

I’ve recently been told that nostos, from which we get the word ‘nostalgia’, means homecoming. This epic tale is all about nostos. After the Trojan war, a great hero (not the greatest, but pretty well-respected) Odysseus, somehow both favoured and cursed by the Gods, struggles to get home to his wife and his son. His journey will include ‘outwitting’ (or out-brutalising) monsters, avoiding seduction by beautiful women and denying the truth that he is an ageing man clinging to his inflated reputation. Basically, an Ancient Greek James Bond. Meanwhile, evil suitors have installed themselves in his kingdom (did I mention he’s a king?), eating his wife and son out of house and home.

Intrigued at all?

The blurb unsatisfactorily tells us:

“This prose translation of the Odyssey is so successful that it has taken its place as one of the few really outstanding versions of Homer’s famous epic poem. Walter Shewring has with rare skill reconciled the easy flow of the story with the formal uncolloquial style in which it is told.”

Worst bits

It’s a small quibble, but The Odyssey at times uses some pretty unpronounceable names to those unschooled in the Greek tongue. Circe’s island is called Aeaea. This is a fictitious island with a name consisting purely of vowels. Why would someone do that?

If indeed Homer wrote it (and by this point he would have been getting on in years), The Odyssey is a textbook example of the wish fulfilment of an elderly man. Odysseus, though old and scarred, is the epitome of the womaniser. Even goddesses fall at his feet, offering him their glittering beds. No youth is as strong or as handsome as the wizened hero, even when he wears rags and is battered by a string of shipwrecks.

The poem is very concerned with material possessions. Odysseus must end up with the same amount of items or more as when he began his adventure, even though the suitors at his homeland have been feasting away his economy. These possessions are gathered by Odysseus as he journeys as a guest (or a beggar, really) throughout other men’s lands. He gains and gains, and makes no plans to ever give anything back. He only vaguely hints at one point – and he may be lying, since he is pretending to be someone else at the time – that he deserves rich gifts because he has, in the past, bestowed similar items on other travellers in his kingdom.

Odysseus does not seem to develop at all through the book. He begins with much the same character as when he ends, and, as in all Greek myths, that character is of a brutal murderer with a greedy mind. He is a compulsive liar, an adulterer and a killer. Anyone unfamiliar with Greek myths will have a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Odysseus embodies a certain type of wily hero.

The entire poem is overly concerned with appearances. The Gods randomly make Odysseus more handsome at odd moments, simply to make others fall over themselves in praise of him. Ultimately, the one thing that irritates me the most about The Odyssey is its burning need to make a very flawed man into a legend.

Also, casual incest:

“Twelve children of his live in the palace with him; six are daughters, six are sons in the prime of youth; moreover the king has given his daughters as wives to his sons” – page 113.

Best bits

The play is charmingly arrogant, and in a rather comic way. I have two quotes to illustrate this:

“When Circe strikes you with the long wand she has, draw the keen sword from beside your thigh, rush upon her and make as if to kill her. She will shrink back, and then ask you to lie with her. At this you must let her have her way; she is a goddess; accept her bed, so that she may release your comrades and make you her cherished guest” – page 120, Hermes’ advice.

It is, of course, a foregone conclusion that Circe will proposition our hero. Even better, Odysseus has a little something to say about himself later:

“… though he was no such man as Odysseus, whom fame compares with the gods themselves… so much does Odysseus excel all others in cunning wiles; no human being can vie with him” – page 234, Odysseus (in disguise) to his wife.

I can’t pretend to know how everyone views it, but I could read The Odyssey just for the giggles. On a more serious note though, what we do see is in many ways a deeply moving story about a man who just wants to come home. Despite the archaic writing style of the translation, we can’t help but feel Odysseus’ frustration every time he is thwarted by some divine power that stops him from reaching his suffering wife and son. The story does not just revolve solely around Odysseus, but also his family. Telemachus’ education, or rather, how the goddess Athene tries to encourage the right principles in him, can come as a great culture shock as he is guided through a (somehow fully justified) plan of murder.

For the pure entertainment value alone, I would tell the world to read The Odyssey. The story-telling is surprisingly layered, as various characters – mostly Odysseus himself – take it upon themselves to narrate their own adventures. ‘Adventure’ is certainly the correct word. There are battles with monsters and debates with gods  – quite literally. Odysseus plays a fine main character. He is a sly one; the person who might be an ever-plotting villain in any Disney film. However, as we patiently follow him around, watching him shift through disguises, coming up with elaborate background tales and tricking his own villains, we get to appreciate the true nature of Ancient Greek cunning.

And finally, if you like your myths, you couldn’t possibly find a more satisfying tale.

Comparison with The Iliad

The Odyssey is usually thought of as a pseudo-sequel to The Iliad, supposedly Homer’s first epic (pull the other one) and you can find a review for that too on this blog. However, there’s a rather large chunk of story missing between each poem – the end of the Trojan war in fact – which is very briefly glossed over roughly halfway through The Odyssey. Therefore, to read one, you do not have to read the other.

Speaking with a few friends, the general mood of the young classicist is that The Iliad is a lot more boring than The Odyssey. This is true. The Odyssey has more monsters, more cunning tests of wit, more adventure and beautiful women and feel-good fuzzies.  It has fewer pages of genealogy, less moral monologues, less bromance and less internal turmoil.

Yet I was more disappointed by The Odyssey. It is, by comparison, extremely domestic, centring mostly on getting Odysseus back to his wife and son. Character flaws in The Iliad are pointed out bluntly, but The Odyssey attempts to cloak them with divine praise. There isn’t so much blood, guts and gore (both literally and metaphorically). Worst of all, I found that there were hardly any surprises in The Odyssey. It has dramatised so often in popular culture, from an episode of  The Simpsons to an episode of Arthur, that I already knew exactly what was going to happen. This is the great sin of classics, and I can say with confidence that no classic has seeped more onto our screens than The Odyssey.

My book

For this gem, I have been reading the Oxford World’s Classics version. Translated by Walter Shewring into prose, the story takes 298 pages to relate its tale (with very evenly sized chapters). I read it in six days.

The beauty of the Shewring version is that it contains a few footnotes that show pieces of translation done by other older translators. It amuses me every time Shewring quotes Pope, who tells the story of The Odyssey entirely in rhyme, and in a type of rhyme that doesn’t quite match what Shewring decides to write prosaically.

There is one issue with The Odyssey though. You may have noticed. There’s a naked man on the cover. Let’s be precise. There’s a naked (one-eyed, agonised) cyclops on the cover. I’ve actually chosen to use a very slightly different book cover for this blog, with the title in a more… strategic place. One of my friends saw my book, which is rather more revealing, and instead of making a comment on the cultural value of reading The Odyssey in a society that is beginning to prioritize classic films over classical books, she blurted, “That’s a really tiny -”

I stopped taking my book out in public after that.

Overall

Myths, legends, humour, heroism. Does any of that sound good? You should probably read The Odyssey.

Violence, masculinity, genealogy, bromance. Do you like any of those? You should probably read The Iliad.

Confusing morality debates that begin to creep way beyond the boundaries of a single imagined conversation (even if we’re assuming the speakers had unmentioned breaks to eat and sleep). If you like that, read Plato’s Republic. (“‘I’ll speak at some length in praise of the immoral life; by doing so, I’ll be showing you the kind of rejoinder I want you to develop when you criticize immorality and commend morality. What do you think of this plan?’ ‘I thoroughly approve,’ I replied. ‘I mean, `I can’t think of another topic which any thinking person would more gladly see cropping up again and again in his conversations.'”) – Republic, book II. Seriously, Plato? Seriously?

If you happen to be one of those thinking people who would gladly like to talk about morality again and again, perhaps the fanciful adventure of The Odyssey isn’t for you.

Then again, if you would like to see most of my arguments for Worst bits completely destroyed, Aristotle’s Poetics has a lovely section entitled “CRITICISMS OF HOMER AND HOW TO ANSWER THEM“.