Recently Read: Homer's Odyssey

I've recently finished reading Homer's Odyssey. I read The Iliad a long time ago, and found it very boring. So I was apprehensive about reading this. Those fears were unfounded though, as, in contrast, this was much more fun. In fact, it felt as if it had been written by a completely different person.

The Iliad was like a long poem. This was more like a work of fiction. I emphasise fiction as this was very much the case. Obviously, tales of gods and monsters and trips to the underworld are always going to be somewhat fictional. However, there's always the perception with these ancient Greek works that there's some grain of truth beneath the mythology. There was very little sense of that deeper reality here. Here it read entirely like a work of fiction.

It also felt a little bit like medieval fiction. Some of the themes, such as Penelope unpicking the shroud she was weaving, felt like fairy tale motifs. So, as ever, my mind couldn't help but question the dating and authenticity as I avidly read on. Though, admittedly, it did feel pre-Christian too. Especially so all the animal sacrifices - a very heavy feature throughout. Odysseus's morals weren't especially Christian either. At the end of the book..

[ Spoiler ALERT! ]

..at the end of the book, Odysseus slaughters all his enemies - including the disloyal women in his household. So there's not too much Christian chivalry. There's also a prelude to this, where he thinks about slaughtering all the women but restrains himself, lol. In another passage he calls a woman a "bitch" and threatens to have her hacked to pieces.

(I know, it's childish to laugh at the naughty words, but when juxtaposed against the reverence these texts get it's just too amusing. They come with this grand reputation. You hear people talking about them in this incredibly highbrow way. Then you read them and you find they're not heady and intellectual at all. They're just entertainment. People read these stories in the past because they were fun. Not to show off how clever they were, as is the nature now.)

The character of Odysseus in general wasn't what I was expecting either. The popular image of Odysseus is that he's fox-like and cunning. Although there's an element of this in the book - his name is repeatedly pre-fixed with terms like 'wily' and 'quick-witted' - he comes across more like an emotional strongman. An ancient Arnold Schwarzenegger type figure. (Again, it makes more sense to understand these things as entertainment as opposed to academics. These were the movies and action figures of an earlier era.)

There's also a slight touch of Rigsby from Rising Damp about Odysseus too. He's constantly going on about how hard he's had it, and how no-one's suffered as much as he has. He's not just the 'wily' Odysseus, but also the 'long-suffering' Odysseus. This is another recurring theme.

Finally, I should note that though I'm mocking things a little bit, some of the language used was quite poetic. The recurring description of dawn as being 'rosy-fingered,' and this idea that words are 'winged.' As if the spoken words are so beautiful and powerful they fly, as if with wings, from the mouth to the listener. Likewise, the 'wine-dark' sea (though in the introduction to the text it's stated that something akin to 'wine-faced' would be a better translation of the original Greek).

All in all it was entertaining, bloody, and poetic.