The Odyssey – A Review

The Odyssey is a bit of a romp. It’s much more of a ‘Boys’ Own’ adventure than I was expecting and it’s for this reason that I finished it sooner than expected. Although it’s poetry, E. V. Rieu chose to translate it as prose and that makes all the difference. I’ve tried to read the other great post-Trojan War classic, The Aeneid, and had to give up when the refugees started holding boat races, which were described in minute detail.

This may reflect the differences between how stories were told in eighth century BC Greece and how they were told in first century BC Rome. On the other hand, it might just reflect the fact that I had to read bits of The Aeneid at school, in Latin, and didn’t get on with it.

The Odyssey is not a poem that could have been recited in its entirety over one evening. It requires a greater investment in time than that. Odysseus, the hero, doesn’t even appear until the fifth chapter. The reader is first introduced to his nineteen or twenty-year-old son, Telemachus. Telemachus is a puzzle to me. He’s a grown man, he’s brave and he’s Odysseus’ son, but he hasn’t taken charge of his father’s house in his father’s absence. He allows a group of men to court his mother, whilst they invade the house every day and eat his (or his father’s, since Telemachus believes that he’s still alive) goats, sheep and pigs. Things are so bad that they try to kill him. I don’t understand why he and his servants don’t see them off. If Penelope, his mother, is a widow, surely he has inherited his father’s property. I know it’s a less interesting story if Odysseus doesn’t have to rescue his wife, but it means that we spend 60 pages in the company of a young man who’s a bit of a failure.

When Odysseus does appear there are storms at sea, shipwrecks, encounters with seductive goddesses, and cunning tricks. It’s all terribly exciting, even though all his companions die on the way home. Suffice it to say that none of them dies quietly in his bed. Whilst Penelope has been fending off potential suitors since the fall of Troy, Odysseus has been the lover of goddesses and mortals. Double standards applied even then.

It all ends in a bloodbath, of course. Odysseus, Telemachus, a swineherd and a cowherd take on Penelope’s suitors. It was during this battle that I realised why Telemachus hadn’t been able to do anything about the suitor. There are lots of them and they have the support of many of the servants. There’s a particularly nasty scene where most of the maidservants are killed because they were the suitors’ lovers. Their deaths seem even worse because they’re first made to clean up after the battle in which their lovers were killed.

There’s a rather odd visit to Hades with the suitors, which demonstrates that the even the dead don’t see things as they really are.

There are some dull bits and a surprisingly large number of repetitions, but the whole thing mostly moves at a great pace. The Odyssey is the best part of three thousand years old, but it’s still extremely entertaining.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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The Odyssey

The Odyssey is more or less a sequel to The Illiad. The Illiad tells the story of a few weeks during the Trojan War. Odysseus, one of the Greek kings taking part in the war, is featured in The Illiad, and The Odyssey is about his lengthy return to Ithaca.

It was probably written around the end of the eighth century BC. Both books are epic poems and opinion is divided over whether they were written by a single person or by several.

Although there are many accounts of Homer’s life, it’s extremely unlikely that the poems were written by a man named Homer. The legends say he was blind and the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, so you can probably draw your own conclusions.

The translation is by E. V. Rieu (born 1887 and died 1972). He was co-founder of the Penguin Classics series and edited the range from 1944 to 1964. In 1946 his translation of The Odyssey was the first Penguin Classic to be published. He worked on it partly while he was on firewatch duty during the Second World War and read it to his daughters.

The translation is in prose and it reads like a novel, which makes it very approachable. My edition has no notes, but the characters are introduced properly and, so far, I’ve had no trouble understanding who’s who and what’s going on.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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End of Week Thirty-Six

The Odyssey is the last book of translated poetry in this year’s Goodreads classics challenge. Estimates vary on when it was written, but it’s getting on for three thousand years old and is the oldest work I’m reading for the challenge. My copy has been sitting on a shelf for the best part of thirty years and, now that I’m reading it, I wish I’d read it sooner. It’s easy to read and the translation is clear enough for me not to need notes, which is as well since the book doesn’t have any.

In Troilus and Criseyde Troilus has written a letter to Criseyde, who has failed to return to Troy after two months. We’ll pass over his tears staining the letter, although it’s interesting to note that this cliché has been around for at least 600 years. What most interested me about the letter is not just that Chaucer seems to accept that Troilus, a prince, can both read and write, but that Criseyde, a woman, can read the letter when she receives it and, given the nature of their relationship, write her own reply. That would indicate to me that, in the circles in which Chaucer moved, women could read and write. I’m wondering how Criseyde will reply. She has taken up with Diomede, a Greek. Given that she’s a Greek woman who’s been returned to her father, I’m not sure how either of them expected her to be able to return to Troy at all.

If you’re on Goodreads, I’d love to link up with you. You can find me here.

Books read in challenge: 8

Books read in year: 38

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Twelve

Here they are, sitting innocently on their shelf: the twelve classics I’m intending to read in 2018.

1. Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (trans Max Hayward and Manya Harari)
2. The Poetic Work of Rupert Brooke
3. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
4. The Ambassadors by Henry James
5. The Odyssey by Homer (trans E.V. Rieu)
6. Phaedrus by Plato (trans C.J. Rowe)
7. The Decameron by Boccaccio (trans G.H. McWilliam)
8. Canzoniere by Petrarch (trans Anthony Mortimer)
9. Erotic Poems by Ovid (trans Peter Green)
10. The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan (trans Rosalind Brown-Grant)
11. The City of God by St Augustine (trans Henry Bettenson)
12. Troilus and Criseyde by Geoffrey Chaucer

The two standbys are:

1. Becket by Anouilh
2. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie

This is quite a heavy list and I know I have to start with Dr Zhivago, as it’s a group read in the Catching up on Classics group in January. The poems can be read throughout the year, although I might decide to read them in one go. One of the things I like about this kind of challenge is that I have no idea how I’ll feel about any of the books when I get to them.

I’m also going to start Troilus and Criseyde next week. The poem itself is just over 300 pages long, but my Middle English is very poor and I want to be able to read it properly. It will probably take several weeks to read it.

Obviously I’ll be reading other books during the year and I’ll probably be mentioning some of them as we go on.

By the time I post again, I’ll have started reading. I’m looking forward to meeting Dr Zhivago.

 

The Second Three Books

The second three books come from before 1900. From now on you’ll mostly see books, plays and poetry more than five hundred years old. This is because of my plan to read things that might have been known to people in the fourteenth century, which will help me to write about them more sympathetically.

These contenders for a place on the list are:

1. The Bostonians by Henry James
2. The Ambassadors by Henry James
3. The Odyssey by Homer (trans E.V. Rieu)
4. Phaedrus by Plato (trans C. J. Rowe)

Of James’ works I’ve read Washington Square, The Europeans and The Turn of the Screw. I enjoyed all of them and would like to read something a bit longer. Since The Ambassadors was James’ own favourite, that’s the one I’m going for, unless anyone has something very strong to say against it.

That leaves The Odyssey and Phaedrus. I think the former has been on my shelves for almost thirty years and I must have started reading it once, but we didn’t quite hit it off. This time we might make it. I bought Phaedrus more recently in the hope that it would encourage me to work my way through Plato. It didn’t.  There’s a bookmark in the introduction, so this is another book I’ve started before and given up on. It’s fairly short, though, so I should be able to get through it, if it makes it to the final twelve.

Have you read any of these books? Should I read The Bostonians instead of The Ambassadors?