The Odyssey: “Tell us this tale, goddess, child of Zeus; start anywhere in it!”

1/ The Odyssey is one of the foundational works of Western literature, and yet I knew so little about it and still had my surprises. Of course, I knew about the Wooden Horse at Troy (who doesn’t?), about Kirke (better known as Circe) turning Odysseus’s men into pigs, about Kalypso and the promise of immortality, about Penelope and her weaving trick, etc. but I didn’t know about the structure of the Odyssey. It’s natural, is it not, to assume that an epic poem from around the 8th century BC would start at the beginning and tell the story chronologically to the end? So I naively thought. But no, the Odyssey begins in medias res—actually towards the end—and we don’t see Odysseus till Book 5 (out of 24). Odysseus’s adventures are told by different people—by Odysseus himself in Books 9–12. 

I switched back and forth between Peter Green and Robert Fitzgerald before deciding to stick to Green. 

Let’s compare. This is Fitzgerald: 

“When primal Dawn spread on the eastern sky

her fingers of pink light, Odysseus’ true son

stood up, drew on his tunic and his mantle,

slung on a sword-belt and a new-edged sword,

tied his smooth feet into good rawhide sandals,

and left his room, a god’s brilliance upon him.

He found the criers with clarion voices and told them

to muster the unshorn Akhaians in full assembly.

The call sang out, and the men came streaming in;

and when they filled the assembly ground, he entered,

spear in hand, with two quick hounds at heel;

Athena lavished on him a sunlit grace

that held the eye of the multitude. Old men

made way for him as he took his father’s chair.” 

(Book 2) 

The same passage, by Green: 

“When Dawn appeared, early risen and rosy-fingered, 

Odysseus’ dear son got up from the bed he’d slept in, 

put on his clothes, slung a sharp sword from one shoulder, 

tied on a pair of fine sandals under his sleek feet, 

and sallied forth from his chamber, in appearance like a god. 

At once he issued orders to the clear-voiced heralds 

to call to assembly the long-haired Achaians. They made 

the proclamations he ordered, and quickly the people gathered. 

When they were met together in a single body 

Telemachos now joined them, a bronze spear in one hand, 

not alone, but accompanied by a pair of hunting dogs, 

and wondrous the grace that Athene now shed on him, 

so that the whole crowd watched him as he approached: 

he sat in his father’s seat, and the elders made way for him.” 

Fitzgerald: 

“Under the opening fingers of the dawn

Alkínoös, the sacred prince, arose,

and then arose Odysseus, raider of cities.

As the king willed, they went down by the shipways

to the assembly ground of the Phaiákians.

Side by side the two men took their ease there

on smooth stone benches. Meanwhile Pallas Athena

roamed through the byways of the town, contriving

Odysseus’ voyage home…”  

(Book 8) 

Green: 

“When Dawn appeared, early risen and rosy-fingered, 

Alkinoos, princely in power, arose from his slumber, 

and Odysseus, the Zeus-born sacker of cities, rose too. 

Alkinoos, princely in power, now led the way to 

the Phaiakians’ assembly place, built for them near their ships: 

On arrival there they sat down on the polished stones

side by side, while Pallas Athene went through the city 

in the likeness of the herald of sagacious Alkinoos, 

working on the return of great-hearted Odysseus…” 

Fitzgerald sounds better, Green can sometimes be rather dry and stilted, but it seems to me that Green retains better the repetition of Homer’s style. For instance, the image of Dawn, “early risen and rosy-fingered”, is said over and over again throughout the story, not only by the narrator but by different characters. 

Green also provides better notes (especially for an ignoramus like me). 

2/ I have enjoyed the Odyssey from the beginning, but my mistake at the start was comparing it to the Athenian tragedians and Shakespeare, wanting more poetry, finding some parts of the narration mundane and some passages prosaic. Then I realised it’s better to compare it to Don Quixote—to see the Odyssey as gradually leading to Don Quixote (and other novels). In many ways, the Odyssey is a precursor to the picaresque novel: a character travels from place to place and has adventures and meets different groups of people; he may tell strangers his own story or they may tell theirs, creating stories within the story. In this sense, Homer feels closer to Cervantes than to Shakespeare, or even Sophocles.

3/ I’m going backwards, reading the Odyssey after the tragedies of the 5th century BC. It turns out to be a good idea, as Homer tells the myths in snatches and only gives those mythological characters cameos—after all, Homer’s first audience was acquainted with them—but luckily I have seen them in close-up in the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (not to mention Seneca). Odysseus’s encounter with Aias (also known as Ajax) in the Underworld and the latter’s cold reaction would have been lost on me if I hadn’t read Sophocles’s play, but I have, and it’s a great scene.

Especially interesting is when I see the tragedies depart from Homer: Homer’s story about Oedipus for instance has quite a different ending from that of Sophocles’s play (I myself prefer Sophocles’s version). 

(On a side note, before getting into ancient Greek literature, I somehow always imagined Homer and the playwrights being around the same time, or not very far apart. The gap between Homer’s epics and Greek tragedy is about the same as between Gulliver’s Travels or Robison Crusoe and now). 

Let’s hope I have some more interesting things to say later on.