Odysseus is such an asshole!

So full of himself, a liar and a cheat, having affairs all over while his wife is expected to be faithful for 20 years. Then he straight up murders a bunch of people, including the poor maids who weren't loyal enough whatever that means.

I'm starting to think his version of the story isn't even true... Is he the world's first unreliable narrator?

Is there a modern version that re-tells this story from another point of view, oh I just discovered Margaret Atwood's "The Penelopiad" so I should read that...

I first read Homer in the 19th-century French translation by Leconte de Lisle — the equivalent, say, of the 18th-century translation into English by Alexander Pope: a pompous, archaic and exhausting bore of a book. I kept my chin up and, after a while, tried another inflated Frenchman: the 1955 translation by the curly-moustached Victor Bérard (in the prestigious Pléiade edition, with an odd arrangement of chapters). A bit less depraved than the Parnassian poet, but all in all (alack!) not much better. Only last year came this new English translation by Emily Wilson, an American academic and allegedly the first woman to translate Homer into English. And it is a damned refreshing take on Homer! Basically, it’s the first time I’m reading The Odyssey without dozing off on every other page.

Yet, Wilson laid down a daunting challenge to herself: to keep the same number of verses as in Homer’s epic and transpose the Greek’s dactylic hexameters into the traditional (Shakespearian) iambic pentameter. An amazing feat indeed, and she pulled it off with ease, concealing, like an expert weaver, the technicalities of her achievement and dodging some of the ponderousness of the Homeric text (not least of which: the grinding epithets attached to each character or some awkward similes that pop up from time to time): the result is an unaffected, luminous poem, sometimes energetic, sometimes delicate, that flows effortlessly, focusing our attention not on some turgid, embalming, purple prose, but on what is actually at stake in the story, and on the beat of the tale.

A few things become glaringly apparent thanks to this new translation: Odysseus is not quite the wise and glorious war hero that we might think. As Wilson states in her opening verse, he is “a complicated man” (πολuτροπον), who messes around with everyone he encounters and talks rubbish on every occasion; in short: he is an inveterate liar. So much so that, in the end, he could easily qualify as the first case of “unreliable narrator”. Most notably, when he is invited to the court of Alcinous and tells the story of his misadventures after the Trojan War — the famous embedded and somewhat fantastical tale (books 9-12) of the Cicones, Lotus-Eaters, Cyclopes, Aeolus, Laestrygonians, Circe, Helios, the dead, the Sirens, Charybdis and Scylla and Calypso —, we cannot help but wonder to what extent Odysseus is making up all this, to entertain his generous hosts. Later on, Odysseus will tell a completely different account of his adventures to other people, or a strongly expurgated version of the first tale to his own wife, misrepresenting himself to her. In short, he is indeed a consummated storyteller — a shining mask for the rhapsodist himself?

If The Iliad is the grandfather of pretty much all literature, then The Odyssey is the grandmother: Aeneas, Sindbad, Gulliver, Robinson, Pym, Ahab, Nemo, Marlow are all descendants of Odysseus; Hamlet is a sort of echo of Telemachus; Excalibur is an ersatz of Odysseus’ mighty bow; James Joyce’s Dublin is a Homeric town. We might wonder, however, why Odysseus’ adventures have become such a significant source of inspiration for writers and scholars who claim to be feminists, like Emily Wilson, of course, but also recently Madeline Miller, with her best-seller Circe, and a few years ago, Margaret Atwood and her Penelopiad.

Clearly, most characters in The Odyssey express a form of mistrust towards the opposite sex: men believe women to be either nosy sluts or demi-hags; women would rather turn men into pigs or captives than actually deal with them. Even the fair queen Penelope — the only character on the level and the antithesis of the treacherous and fiendish Clytemnestra — is actually just as deceptive, weaving and unweaving her crewelwork to avoid standing up to the wolfish suitors. That being said, let’s save the old nanny Eurycleia, if you insist... But, after all, isn’t this gender suspiciousness at the heart of feminism? It is notable, by the way, that although Odysseus looks like the paragon of manliness and a confirmed skirt-chaser (Penelope, Circe, Calypso, Nausicaa), the fact of the matter is that he is either the punchbag of Poseidon (a male god) or a puppet in the hands of the goddess Athena (a female), who transforms him at will, stultifies his enemies and makes him the pin-up of every girl he encounters. I will confess: in this old tale, men are, at best, a bit ridiculous and irritating — if not “complicated”.

To top it all off, the Odyssey is, at its heart, a tale of extreme violence. I’m not just thinking of the savagery of Polyphemus, the Laestrygonians or Scylla, all blood-thirsty monsters who decimate Odysseus’ crewmen. I’m thinking of Odysseus himself, probably the most blood-thirsty character in the whole poem. In fact, instead of coming back home as the one true king of Ithaca and properly claim back his throne and wife in a straightforward manner, he chooses (or instead follows Athena’s plan) to approach the suitors under the guise of a despicable old beggar, puts the devil in them — curses, insults and stools fly back and forth across the saloon on every page — and, when the time is ripe, gets into a shooting spree, slaughters the suitors pitilessly one by one (they are a bunch of more than a hundred dudes!), and tortures atrociously whoever, herdsmen or slave girls alike, got mixed up with them. The Odyssey ends with a big spring cleaning in a merry bath of haemoglobin... Which begs a nagging question: seeing how he behaves, might Odysseus himself not have killed his crew at sea (perhaps to gobble them up, since he is such a gourmand of meatballs and shish kebabs?), and later on told all sorts of baloney about cyclops and shipwrecks to justify his situation?... Anyway, had Homer been working in Hollywood instead of Ancient Greece, he would indeed be on the same side as Peckinpah, Coppola, Scorsese and Tarantino!

And now, let’s wait for Emily Wilson to work her magic on The Iliad…

Thrilled to have finally read this!

Odysseus' decade-long voyage home through the unchartered seas was an uncertain, mystical, and prophetic journey comprised of divine revelations, natural temptations, and struggles that were overcome by Odysseus' unwavering perseverance, cleverness, and spiritual guidance; a pilgrimage of introspection and humans determination along with the power of imagination.

Homer's illustrations of Odysseus' adventurous voyage and Penelope's skillful handle of her suitors while maintaining an unswerving loyalty to her husband were a pleasure to read, where Odysseus' ultimate handling of his wife's suitors towards the end of the epic poem was excessively barbaric for my taste. Nevertheless, Odysseus' and Penelope's journey of progression and determination has left a strong impression on me.

"Okay, so here's what happened. I went out after work with the guys, we went to a perfectly nice bar, this chick was hitting on me but I totally brushed her off. Anyway we ended up getting pretty wrecked, and we might have smoked something in the bathroom, I'm not totally clear on that part, and then this gigantic one-eyed bouncer kicked us out so we somehow ended up at a strip club. The guys were total pigs but not me, seriously, that's not glitter on my neck. And then we totally drove right by these hookers without even stopping and here I am! Only a little bit late! By the way, I crashed the car and six of the guys are in jail. Ask for Officer Scylla."

Eh...Homer's right. Odysseus' version is better.

P.S. Do not try this story at home unless, when you get there, you're still capable of shooting your arrow into a narrow aperture.

Fagles' translation is excellent - the new standard - and Bernard Knox's enormous introduction is the best Homeric essay I've ever read.

A good companion read is Hal Roth's We Followed Odysseus - maybe not the most eloquent of books, but he retraces Odysseus's voyage (as best he can) in his sailboat, which is a pretty rad idea. I recreated his route as a Google map here, with notes on each of the stops. I also wrote summaries of each book of the Odyssey for a book club discussion; I've pasted them in the comments thread below, if you're interested.

The Fagles translation is brilliant.

Ever since I first read Homer’s epic describing the adventures of Odysseus back in my school days, three of those adventures fired my imagination: The Lotus Eaters, The Cyclops and the Sirens, most especially the Sirens. I just did revisit these sections of this Greek epic and my imagination was set aflame yet again. How much, you ask? Here is my microfiction as a tribute to the great poet:

THE SIRENS

This happened back in those days when I was a member of an experimental performing-arts troupe down in Greenwich Village. We would read poetry, dance and act out avant-garde plays in our dilapidated little theater. For a modest charge people could come in and watch for as long as they wanted.

Somehow, a business executive who worked downtown in the financial district heard of what we were doing and spoke with our director about an act he has all worked out but needed a supporting cast and that he would pay handsomely if we went along with him.

Well, experimental is experimental and if we were going to be well paid we had nothing to lose. The first thing he did was pass out our costumes. In addition to himself, he had parts for three men and three women. The play we were to perform was so simple we didn’t even need a written script. He was to be Odysseus from Homer’s epic and three men would be his sailors. As for the women, we would be the singing Sirens.

So, after he changed – quite a sight in a loincloth, being gray-haired, jowly, pasty-skinned and potbellied – we went on stage and he told the sailors how no man has ever heard the hypnotic songs of the Sirens and lived to tell the tale but he, mighty Odysseus, would be the first. He instructed the sailors to tie him to the ship’s mast. They used one of the building’s pillars and when he cried out as the Sirens sang their song the sailors, who had wax in their ears, were to bind him to the mast even tighter.

Meanwhile, three of us ladies were on stage as the Sirens, in costume, bare-breasted and outfitted with wings. We began singing a sweet, lilting melody. Mike – that was the businessman’s name – started screaming and the sailors tightened the ropes that bound him. The sailors were glad their ears were plugged as Mike screamed for nearly half an hour.

When the ship passed out of earshot of the Sirens, the sailors unbound mighty Odysseus and he collapsed on our makeshift stage, a mass of exhausted middle-aged flesh. The audience applauded, even cheered and we continued our performance of Odysseus and the Sirens every night for more than a week. Then one night Mike outdid himself. His blue eyes bulged, the veins in his neck popped and his face turned a deeper blood-scarlet than ever before. And what I feared might happen, did happen – Mike had a heart attack. We had to interrupt our performance and call an ambulance.

We all thought that was the end of our dealing with Mike aka Odysseus until our director received a call from the hospital. Mike told her he was going to be just fine and would be back on stage next week. We called a meeting and everyone agreed that we would suggest Mike seek psychiatric help but if he insists on playing Odysseus, he will have to take his act elsewhere.

i read this in school but i don't remember anything about it except the words "wine-dark sea" and that i hated it.

which seems like a good enough reason to reread it someday.

part of a series i'm doing in which i review books i read a long time ago, except in this case it's more of a to-read situation

It's impossible not to smile when you start reading such a classic and, after only the first few pages, you realize and completely understand why it's regarded as one of the most important works in literature. I'm always a little anxious when I tackle such important and renowned books for being afraid of not comprehending or loving them - War and Peace and Don Quixote, for example - as they seem to deserve. Not that I'm obligated to like them, but I always feel such buzz comes for a reason and I try to at least find out why. With The Odyssey, once again, I find that the ones who have read it before me were right: it's amazing.

I didn't have plans to read The Odyssey any time soon - I've never devoted much time to epic poems and this one has more than 12,000 verses -, but because I've been eying Ulysses on my shelves for quite some time, I decided to prepare myself for it and read about Odysseus with a great group here on Goodreads. To call Homer's book simply "a preparation" for Joyce's work is now not only unfair, but also absurd to me. However, I'm glad that I finally read it, whatever the reason behind it was.

The Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus's (Ulysses) journey back to his home Ithaca to return to his wife Penelope and son Telemachus after twenty years of absence. Our hero left his home to fight in the Trojan War - that alone lasted ten years - and encountered too many obstacles that kept him away for another ten years. Back in Ithaca, people had already lost hope that he could still be alive and his wife was being courted by suitors who wanted to marry her.

Alongside the emotional and heartfelt story, what grabbed my attention here was the poem's style and structure. 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.

I could try to write an analysis about the recurring themes on the book - vengeance, spiritual growth, hospitality - or try to decipher its symbolism - much has been written about Odysseus's bow, Laertes's shroud, the sea -, but I feel I would fail and wouldn't be able to do it in a deep level, especially after having read the great introduction and notes written by Bernard Knox.

What kept me away from Homer's work was the fear that it would be too dense and heavy on mythology - it is mythological, of course -, making it hard for me to understand it. Although labored, the narrative is quite simple and easy to follow. Knox's notes were a great companion to fill in the details I needed to comprehend the book in a deeper level.

Rating: it's my belief that a great book not only satisfy your expectations, but also inspire you to delve further into its writer's other works, similar subjects or even other books from the same time period. The Odyssey raised my interest about Greek mythology and The Iliad, so I guess it served its purpose with high colors. Because of that, 5 glowing and beautiful stars.

Like a bolt of lightning striking a tree, The Iliad of Homer set my cranium alight when its sheer incantatory power first washed over me. It's an astonishing work, brutal and violent, while at the same time deeply affecting, brimming with incisive insights into human nature.


Odysseus and crew, having taken precautions to not be lured by the Sirens' song, sail past them.

Homer's subsequent epic poem I was less enraptured by because of its lack of focus, even though it is unquestionable that it represents a high-water mark in the Western canon; its qualities as a narrative - and influence - can't be overstated. Similar to Odysseus, I was fervently hoping for a homecoming of some kind ( in my case back in the hands of the master poet ) but the return gave credence to the age-old adage that you truly never can come home again. That first, visceral contact spoiled me, proved to be much too potent for The Odyssey ever to be able to compete with.


Odysseus reveals himself and deals with the suitors.

Do I love it? No, but I coldly admire it from a distance, and as such hold it in great respect. More than likely I'll never get to a point of "intimacy" with it, in a manner of speaking.

Expansive reviews of this and The Iliad of Homer will probably follow in the future, when I decide on re-reading them, probably in different translations from the Richmond Lattimore one (which I highly recommend, especially for the latter).

*Originally rated 4.5 stars, but after rereading it multiple times and also having the chance to study it at university and still being endlessly fascinated by the story rather than growing bored by it, I'm bumping it up to the full 5 stars!

My parents split when I was very young. The arrangement they made between them was that my brother and I would spend the weekends with our father, but would live, during the week, with my mother. One winter, when I was ten years old, it started to snow heavily and gave no indication of stopping any time soon. It was a Sunday morning and my brother and I were due to leave dad’s and return to what, for us, was home. The snow, however, had other ideas.

To go home we had to catch two buses. The first was running late, but, otherwise, the ride, although slow, was pretty uneventful. We arrived in the centre of Sheffield sometime around one o’clock. It was then that things started to go awry. At the stop where we would usually catch the next bus, which was to take us into Rotherham, there was one already waiting. It did not, however, give the appearance of preparing to go anywhere; the engine was off and the driver was stood outside, smoking a cigarette. Being ten years old I did not want to ask the driver what was happening but I heard another potential passenger enquire as to when we would be allowed to board. ‘You won’t’ said the driver. ‘All buses have been cancelled due to the snow. I’m returning to the depot.’

At this a strange kind of panic overcame me. 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. Typically, my brother wanted to wait it out. The buses would start running again soon, he said. But I knew that wasn’t the case. 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.

To return to dad’s was, relatively speaking, easier; it was closer and the route was straightforward; but, as when after the split, when we were asked which parent we wanted to live with, we instinctively felt drawn to our mother, despite the inevitable hardships. And so, our decision made, we set off through the snow in the direction of home, following the route the bus would have taken. Yet time and distance, we found, are deceptive. What had taken 25 minutes on a bus, would, we thought, only take us an hour. But the bus wasn’t a young child; it wasn’t cold and tired and scared. On the bus, home had always seemed close, just around the next corner; but as we mashed through the snow it seemed impossible, unreachable; it seemed, after a couple of hours, as though it no longer existed; nothing existed, except the snow, which is all we could see.

Two or three times my brother fell down, and I, almost without stopping, dragged him to his feet, shouting encouragement into the snow. At some point night fell too; and still the heavy spidery flakes came down, punctuating the darkness. By this stage I could not have said why I was doing what I was doing; instinct had kicked in; one foot followed the other, regardless. I remember coming to a distinctive spot, a part of the journey that, by bus, always felt significant, because it meant only another five or ten minutes until we reached home. But on foot, mashing through thick boot-clinging snow, that last leg, which was up hill, seemed monstrous.

Eventually we made it, of course. As we descended the hill on the other side we were met by my mother and her then boyfriend, who, we were told, could not bear to wait any longer and had started to walk to meet us on the way. And there it was: home; which is, I found, not a physical building, but the look in my mother’s eyes as she ran to greet us.


[Odysseus in the Cave of Polyphemus by Jacob Jordaens]

The point of this story is to illustrate how universal great literature is, for whenever I think back to that day, which is something that I do quite often, I am immediately reminded of The Odyssey, Homer’s immortal poem. My brother and I did not encounter any Sirens, or Lotus Eaters or Cyclops, but our walk through the snow was, in principle, a fight to get home, to overcome adversity and return to the familiar and comfortable. And, on the most basic level, this is just what The Odyssey is about. Following the war at Troy, as he sought to return to Ithica, to his wife and son, Odysseus had stumbled from one disastrous situation to the next, until the great warrior found himself entrapped on an island for seven years by Calypso, a Goddess. Eventually, with the help of Pallas Athena, he is allowed to leave; and so continues his famous, epic quest.

“Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves- in their depravity- design
grief greater than the griefs that fate assigns.”

It may seem like an unusual thing to say about epic poetry, but there is a tremendous amount of dumb fun to be had when reading The Odyssey. The tricking of Polyphemus – who Odysseus gets drunk and subsequently blinds – is probably the most famous episode, but I also particularly enjoyed the beautiful witch Circe, who turns a number of the ship’s crew into pigs. To the modern reader, The Odyssey is a fantasy, having much in common with something like The Tempest or A Midsummer’s Night Dream or even fairytales; indeed, to highlight a more recent example, one can draw a number of parallels between Homer’s work and the Lord of the Rings saga. In this way, I would say that it has a broader appeal, is easier to digest, and certainly contains greater variety, than the brutal, relentless Iliad.

Despite the weird creatures, the faraway lands, the quest, and the prominence of a great hero, the heart of The Odyssey is conventional and domestic, in that it is concerned with values such as love and friendship and the importance of family. Again, this is in contrast to The Iliad, where honour and death and war are the focus. When Telemachus, Odysseus’ son, goes in search of news of his father he is given hospitality from a number of Odysseus’ friends, and their sons and daughters and wives, who are willing to do all they can to help him. Penelope, meanwhile, is, even after a number of years, and not knowing whether her husband is alive or dead, still resisting the suitors who have almost taken over her house. In fact, she even plays a trick on them, promising to take a new husband only after she has finished weaving a shroud, while unpicking it each night to make sure that she never does.

“Now from his breast into the eyes the ache
of longing mounted, and he wept at last,
his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms,
longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer
spent in rough water where his ship went down
under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea.
Few men can keep alive through a big serf
to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches
in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind:
and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband,
her white arms round him pressed as though forever.”

One thing I find refreshing about Greek myths, and by extension Homer’s work, is that women play such a strong role. It’s funny how hundreds of years later women would be seen as delicate, incapable creatures who need protecting by being locked up at home, and yet here their position, and personalities, are not dissimilar to the men’s. For example, Goddesses are worshipped and invoked just as much as God’s, and it is not the case that these Goddesses are concerned with flower arranging and children, they get their hands dirty, intervening and interacting with what is happening on earth, be that war or whatever. In fact, although The Odyssey is certainly Odysseus’ story [the clue is in the title], the second most important character is the grey-eyed Pallas Athena. Moreover, as noted earlier, Penelope, although upset that her husband is lost or dead, is no sap, while, conversely, the mighty Odysseus frequently bursts into tears.

If you have read any of my reviews you will likely know that, when approaching translated literature, choosing the best translation is, for me, of paramount importance; so much so that there are books that I haven’t enjoyed in one translation, and later really liked in another. The question of which translation one should read becomes particularly critical when one is concerned with poetry. Part of me, I must admit, is resistant to the idea of translated poetry altogether, because I just cannot see how it can possibly bear any great or significant resemblance to the original. Yet I think this is less of a danger with epic, narrative poetry; with something like The Odyssey, the translator has a story to tell, and as long as he or she tells it faithfully they have done at least half the job right.

For The Iliad I chose Robert Fagles’ critically acclaimed version. The reason for this is that I felt that his robust [you might uncharitably call it inelegant] style suited the material. I did, however, cringe frequently at some of his phrasing and word choices, which were far too modern for my taste. Therefore, for The Odyssey I went with Robert Fitzgerald, who, I believe, had a stronger ear for poetry and a more subtle touch. Yet, having said that, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend Fitzgerald’s rendering to the first time reader of Homer’s work. I think the popularity of Fagles’ translations has much to do with how accessible they are; the truth is that most people don’t care about the use of modern language in an ancient Greek text; in fact, the average reader would likely prefer language that is recognisable to them.

In comparison, Firtzgerald’s rendering is more of a challenge. Don’t get me wrong, his work is still readable and is, for the most part, easy enough to get a handle on, but some of his choices are potentially alienating or disorientating. For example, character and place names are spelt in a way that most of us will not recognise [Calypso is Kalypso, Circe is Kirke, Ithica is Ithika etc]. In most cases, deciphering these is, as you call tell by my examples, not especially difficult, but occasionally the spellings are outright baffling. The worst I can recall is Sirens, which in Fitzgerald’s version is Seirenes. When one encounters something like this, one is, unfortunately, taken out of the text as you try and work out what or whom exactly we are dealing with.

However, as previously hinted, the strength of his version is that it stands up as poetry. I can’t, of course, say that it is the best or most successful version, not having read them all, but it is consistently smooth, beautiful and stirring. There’s one line in it, which is repeated throughout the text, about the dawn’s ‘finger tips of rose,’ that I was particularly taken with, and which, moreover, I have seen elsewhere translated in such disappointing and clunky ways.


[Odysseus and the Sirens by Herbert James Draper]

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the poem is the sophisticated structure. I expected that it would be episodic, and it is, but I did not anticipate a non-linear narrative. The Odyssey begins in media res, with a significant proportion of the action already in the past. As we enter the story, Odysseus has been missing for many years, the suitors are surrounding his house in an effort to take his wife, and his son is about to begin his own journey for news of his father. Therefore, for quite some time the main character is off-stage, so to speak. When he does appear, he spends much of his time recounting the details of his life following the war in Troy. So, we only have access to the most exciting, and the most famous, episodes as flashbacks.

What this highlights is the important role that oral story-telling plays in the text. Throughout, Odysseus and many other characters tell tales, be they fictional or true, as a way or bonding or sharing information or entertaining each other, in the same way that we do now. I have always found this interesting, this seemingly universal, immortal desire to give voice to, and share, stories with other people. It is something, as the rambling introductions to my reviews attest, that I feel compelled to do myself. At one stage, Athena turns Odysseus into a beggar, and the hero creates for him an entire history, fleshing out and breathing life into the character he is playing. So there you have it: a book that shouts loudly about home and family and so on, but which, in a more subtle fashion, is equally concerned with, as well as being itself an example of, the joy and importance of communication and human interaction.