Just another WordPress weblog
*I know we are finishing reading up the English translation (books 23-24) this week, so if you haven’t finished it yet, I guess my post is a spoiler and you might want to skip over it!*
I finished reading the end of the english translation of the Odyssey prior to the last mid-term and wanted to comment on it over break, but silly me, I didn’t remember my password to the blog when I was at my home computer. So pardon me if my mind is a bit blurry on the details.
This weekend as I was finishing the Odyssey I noticed another parrallel between Odysseus and Penelope. When Penelope is told that Odysseus has returned, she is described as ‘her heart pondering much, whether [to do this] or [to do that], much as Odysseus is continually considering two options in his heart and choosing the one he thinks best. This seemed to fit nicely with how she was also like Odysseus while tricking the suitors into giving her gifts while keeping another thing in his heart. Though this time, Odysseus is not nearly as pleased when she chooses to restrain herself until Odyssues has managed to prove his identity to her.
Aside from this I would also like to take on last oportunity to vent about Homer’s dead spirits, in a medium where you all can just ignore me.
How is that the heroes in the underworld in Book 24 are able to share stories with each other? Surely, if they had been able to do that previosly Achilles would already know of all the honor his son had recieved before having to ask Odysseus about it becuase Agamemmnon could have told him. Did Odysseus leave extra blood behind for them to keep drinking or something? It seems strange to me that Homer would be inconnsistant on something like this when he is so careful during the rest of the story.
So I’ve been doing more research, and I found something that kinda builds upon my last post (about Odysseus giving up his immortality, the heroic paradox, etc.) In Nancy Sultan’s Exile and the Poetics of Loss in Greek Tradition, the wife of a hero is extremely important, as her mourning perpetuates his glory after his death, and therefore brings him immortality. Here is a quote:
“All heroes are mortal, and all must die - preferably with honor. A hero’s death means nothing, however, if his story dies with him. The woman’s presence and vocal performance both at the moment of death and for a long time after is required.” (80)
With this argument, one could say that Odysseus’ real reason for questioning about Penelope’s faithfulness is to ensure that his glory will be sung after he dies. That’s not to say that love doesn’t play a part in the equation, but in a culture that values glory so much, this makes sense.
What does everyone else think?
In reading book 18 about the confrontation between Iros and (disguised) Odysseus, I found that this passage was ironically amusing:
‘May Zeus, stranger, and all the other immortals give you what you want most of all and what is dear to your spirit, for having stopped the wandering of this greedy creature in our neighborhood. Soon we will take him across the mainland to Echetos, who preys on all men, and who is king there.’ So they spoke, and great Odysseus was pleased at the omen.
It is ironic that the suitors are giving omens about Odysseus getting what he most wants (the suitors’ own destruction) because he “stopped the wandering of this greedy creature in our own neighborhood…”, which is a metaphor for the suitors’ actions as well. If I was Odysseus, I would have had a hard time not laughing at that.
On a another note, is this king Echetos a kind of over-emphasized boogey man? Because he is said to “with pitiless bronze will cut off your nose and ears…etc”. He seems to be on the complete opposite end of reason and the end notes only said, “a cruel king somewhere in western Greece” and it makes you pity Iros a bit.
Also, I have wondered for a while…a lot of the characters seem to have stock/stereotypical names; Antinoos for example. Would this have been just a dramatic effect (like how in literature we have similar names for characters)? Because I honestly would not want to be named “Instead of a Mind” and I can’t imagine a mother looking at her newborn and saying that would be a good name for a child who hasn’t proven himself to do anything.
Yeah, these are pretty generic questions but it’s those little things that bother you the most.
Line 331, when Odysseus finishes his long speach about the land of the dead, he askes to go to sleep and to join his ”companions”. I tought that, at this point, he had already lost all of them… Am I missing anything?
For my senior seminar paper, I’m writing about the influences of classical Greek literature in Southern Renaissance literature. Basically, it is stemming from a novel we read about the Civil War which is loosely structured after the Iliad. Consequently, I’ve been reading a lot about Greek epics and heroes. One of the books I’ve read is The Heroic Paradox by Cedric Whitman, and he presents this as the heroic paradox:
“And, as the Greek tradition presents [the hero] to us, we see him motivated by two simultaneous, opposite needs: the need for absolute status, and the need for human context, commitment; or, as the Greeks would put it, the urge toward divinity, and the necessity of remaining mortal.” (p. 20)
In his discussion of heroes, Whitman makes an interesting observation that Odysseus actually solves the paradox. When he chooses to return home rather than stay on the island of Calypso, who promises him immortality, he “asserts moral and social values” and essentially “chooses the mortal and rejects the divine.”
What does everyone think of this - the paradox itself, or how Odysseus fits in it? I think that Odysseus has an immortality of sorts in his fame; therefore, he really has not rejected the divine, and in a way can achieve both. It’s not something central to the arguement of the paper, just a thought I wanted to share!
Since BBCnews is my homepage, I saw that they did a follow up article in reference to the question of Paliki being ancient Ithica, only connected to another island by fill from volcanoes.
In case any of you are interested, here is the link: Drill Hole Begins Homeric Quest.
First, I have to say this blog is very handy when you’re out of town!
In the translation, I had difficulty with lines 193-4. I understand it’s something about leaves on the ground (appropriate for this season!), but I just can’t seem to put all of the words together.
To echo Midori’s post, I, too, was amused by Eumaios’ reaction to Odysseus. I love the fact that he, unlike the others Odysseus has encountered, is not impressed with his wild stories. Is this an insight on his part, or is Odysseus finding it harder to conceal himself in his fatherland? But still, he takes care of his guest, and this is where my favorite lines came in:
You too, old man of many sorrows, since the spirit brought you here to me, do not try to please me nor spell me with lying words. It is not for that I will entertain and befriend you, but for fear of Zeus, the god of guests, and for my own pity. (14.386-9).
These lines reflect Eumaios’ blunt honesty, and yet he still offers hospitality. This shows how strongly the culture valued hospitality, that he would even take in one whom he strongly suspected of lying.
Book 13, lines 287-290: ‘The goddess, gray-eyed Athene, smiled on him, and stroked him with her hand, and took on the shape of a woman both beautiful and tall, and well versed in glorious handiworks…’
I liked this quote, since it shows that Athena truly cares for Odysseus (it is not for every mortal that a god(dess) will kindly touch them), her mortal counter-part. Also, I assume that this is her actual form that Homer is describing? Since Athena was known for her handiwork (I believe when Arachne contested her?) and she is described as tall and beautiful, both signs of immortality. Has Odysseus ever seen her in true form and not a disguise? If he hasn’t, it feels as if this scene is a very touching/poignant note to it (though it is touching in either respect).
I also found it ironic that in book 14 that Eumaios stated to a disguised Odysseus that he lied about what happened to him, even after Odysseus invested a good deal of cunning into the story he told the servant. It seems odd that Odysseus can charm anyone else into believing him, but his own servant won’t believe him. Is this a signal of some underlying theme/device?
Earlier, I think, Pietro wrote about the repetition and formulaic phrases in Homer and whether those indicate oral tradition as the source for the texts. I ran into some theories about Homer and oral vs. written while writing another paper (which involved medieval literacy / oral culture) because I was told to look at the work of A. Lord to see why people were writing about literacy in the 70s. As far as I can tell, he and others around the same time, working with Slavic oral traditions, came up with the theory that the Iliad and Odyssey were recorded oral tradition, so that while it retains many of the repetitions, &c., of the oral form, the written version had been even more deliberately composed in the process of recording it. It makes sense to me, because while there are definitely formulaic aspects, they’re still well-suited to the situation in which they’re used.
Relatedly, the oraltradition.org bibliography site was helpful for abstracts on the subject.
Latest Comments