The idea of ‘the haunted text’ began while confronting the problem of Persephone in the Odyssey, which in terms of the circulatory system of the Singing Homer idea proved to be an arterial blockage. Persephone made the blood run cold. In this your singer has proved far less doughty than Odysseus himself on his journey. The end in sight was an essay on Homer’s Persephone, which is still a ‘part 3’ for the future. But as these things go, my little tale has grown in the telling, and the lessons learnt from this interlude will continue to shape the nature of the effort in this publication. The material on Persephone is looking increasingly like a footnote rather than a conclusion. I shall continue to do a rhapsodic reading of Homer and to revise my translation in each post. But the attempt to come to grips with the problem of allusion in Homer has led to a broader meditation on all kinds of musical reverberation. The ambition of my accompanying notes has turned into producing what the scholars call a ‘commentary’ on Homer, focusing on the point of contact with the Homeric performer; as I say in this talk, to meet him on his stage. My own work in progress has come round to seeing Homer’s script for his performer as also a ‘work in progress’.

To come, on our ongoing mission, once the three parts of this therapeutic talk are delivered: we return to passages from Homer’s Odyssey in English—we are about to meet Odysseus’ mother, whose soul is patiently waiting—with voicing of the Greek text, linear prose translation, and actor’s notes. Let’s go!

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The Haunted Text: Music, Allusion, and Stagecraft in Homer’s Odyssey