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For a work that's believed to have been written in the 8th century BC, its quality and refinement certainly amazed me. Some of the story is told through flashbacks, some of it is told through different narrators and its narratives are non-linear, so I was positively surprised. A book-by-book reading of this new translation will begin March 1st on the Goodreads website, hosted by Kris Rabberman, Wilson’s colleague at the University of Pennsylvania. To prepare for the first online discussion later this week, Kris has suggested participants read the Introduction. If interested readers are still not entirely convinced they want this literary experience now, some excerpts have been reprinted in The Paris Review. Wilson’s translation reads very fast and very clearly.
After the cannibalistic Laestrygonians destroyed all of his ships except his own, Odysseus sailed on and reached the island of Aeaea, home of witch-goddess Circe. She turned half of his men into swine with drugged cheese and wine. Hermes warned Odysseus about Circe and gave Odysseus an herb called moly, making him resistant to Circe's magic. Odysseus forced Circe to change his men back to their human forms and was seduced by her.
Return to Ithaca (books 13–
The pace of the story is fast and moves quickly with hardly a chance to even catch your breath. I want to start with that because this is not one of those classics that I think is worth while only to get it under your belt or checked off a list. This was a great story with great characters and in a style that was both “off the usual path” but still easy to follow.
Odysseus reveals himself to his son, Telemachus, and to his loyal swineherd and cowherd. The old dog Argos, who had known his master as a pup, and the old nurse Eurycleia see on their own through the guise of age and poverty that Athene has helped the man of strategies don. To acknowledge the identity of this stranger as Odysseus is, in effect, to acknowledge authority itself, to demonstrate ones acquiescence to the whole system that legitimizes a kings rule. After all, no one who opposes the rights of Odysseus learns who the old beggar really is until he puts an arrow through Antinoüss throat. Not even such old, disloyal servants as Melantho and Melanthius show the slightest suspicion that the mysterious stranger they enjoy abusing is their dangerous master returned. Only those who submit themselves to the hierarchical system, who recognize their own places, can also recognize Odysseus.
Homer,
Odysseus' protectress, the goddess Athena, asks Zeus, king of the gods, to finally allow Odysseus to return home when Poseidon is absent from Mount Olympus. Disguised as a chieftain named Mentes, Athena visits Telemachus to urge him to search for news of his father. He offers her hospitality, and they observe the suitors dining rowdily while Phemius, the bard, performs a narrative poem for them. The Odyssey begins after the end of the ten-year Trojan War , from which Odysseus , king of Ithaca, has still not returned because he angered Poseidon, the god of the sea. There's a scene where Telemachus hangs twelve slave women (who'd slept with the suitors, thus "dishonoring" Odysseus and his family). He says he doesn't want to grant them an easy death by stabbing them, but make them suffer to death.
This third time I read it in preparation for tackling Joyce’s take on Homer. And this time, with a more detached stance, I have been surprised by the structure of the work, the handling of time, and the role of narration. And those aspects I take with me in this third reading. “As the end approaches, there are no longer any images from memory – there are only words. It is not strange that time may have confused those that once portrayed me with those that were symbols of the fate of the person that accompanied me for so many centuries. I have been Homer; soon, like Ulysses, I shall be Nobody; soon, I shall be all men – I shall be dead.” The Immortal by Jorge Luis Borges.
DETAILED MAP OF SOUTH GERMANY
The Odyssey begins after the end of the ten-year Trojan War , and Odysseus has still not returned home from the war because he angered the god Poseidon. Fagles' translation is excellent - the new standard - and Bernard Knox's enormous introduction is the best Homeric essay I've ever read. Although they're not exactly sequential, I'd recommend you to read The Iliad first, then The Odyssey. The Iliad provides you huge context, involving the Trojan War, plenty of characters , and the cosmovision of Ancient Greece.
These acts of sudden, cruel cleverness are not uncommon in epics and adventure tales. One tale of Viking raiders tells of how, after sailing into the Mediterranean, their ship reached one of the cities of the Roman Empire. Though just a small outpost, the Viking chief thought it was Rome itself, since its stone buildings towered over the farms of his homeland. Each of these prevarications can be seen sometimes as cruel, but each deception has a reasoning behind it.
This one is my preferred edition for reading the actual poem. I will write more about this one because it's the most interesting. Her introduction is so informative and insightful that it deserves five stars on its own. The adventures are fun to read and they reverberate interesting details about ancient myths of the Bronze Age Greek-speaking world and its surrounding lands. The parts about Odysseus' adventures are full of wonder, whimsy, and excitement.
Full search options are on the right side and top of the page. The formative influence of the Homeric epics in shaping Greek culture was widely recognized, and Homer was described as the teacher of Greece. Homer's works, which are about fifty percent speeches, provided models in persuasive speaking and writing that were emulated throughout the ancient and medieval Greek worlds. Fragments of Homer account for nearly half of all identifiable Greek literary papyrus finds.
In the year 90 the Romans expelled the Celts, occupied the inhabited areas north of the Danube, and expanded into the Gunzenhausen area. In the year 241 the Alemanni invaded the area and destroyed the fortress. A document from the year 823 supplies the first reliable written reference to Gunzenhausen.
Penelope does not have the agency and assertiveness that Wilson and many others would like to think she has. Trying to force assertiveness on female characters that really are just victimized in a patriarchal context is a bit counterproductive. My brother and I were halfway between my mother’s and my dad’s, with no phone and our fare the only money in our pockets. The snow had settled, and heavy spidery flakes were still bombing the city. Waiting would only make it harder to walk; and walking, I knew, was inevitable.
The Odyssey reads almost like a long folk tale, not an epic. Every translation of the Odyssey that I consulted was considerably simpler and less eloquent than the same translator's edition of The Iliad. I had highlighted many similes and beautiful lines in The Iliad, but my highlights in the Odyssey weren't that many at all. Second, I highly recommend this version, published by Penguin, written in prose, and covered in a pretty design, by Coralie Bickford-Smith. Not only is it gorgeous on your shelf, it’s physically comfortable to read, with its perfect size and soothing ivory pages.
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