Odyssey 8.96-255

I continue to be impressed by how fully realised are the dramatic presences in Homer. Most every character who speaks in the Odyssey has at least one angle on what they are saying, often more than one, which serves to give them dramatic life and vulnerability, even to undercut them in comic ways. This is all wonderful fodder for an actor. But it is in a way embarrassing to announce this Homeric thespian realisation as a discovery. I presume many of Homer’s modern readers have already seen the dimensions of Homer’s speeches for themselves. But for better or worse, I have been initiated in the ways of academic Homeric Studies, which means I have been primed to think in terms of ‘epic’ and ‘hero’ and even ‘epic hero’, or other concepts which turn out to be almost completely useless for the empirical engagement with the score for performing Homer which the ancient world has left us. We need not even mention notions of ‘oral theory of composition’ and ‘composition-in-performance’, even more useless for the interpretation of this artefact’s intent. All the oral theories are purely metre-based notions, which I have proved structurally inapplicable to Homer’s tonal poetry, or indeed any melodic composition. The Iliad and the Odyssey are, in point of fact, tonal poems, a point of fact which seems completely lost on the blinkered professionals who make a living in Homeric Studies.

To perform Homer for this project, however, has proved a step in real time beyond a negative theoretical proof, to an immersion in vivid dramatic reality. Aristotle tells us that prior to tragedy and comedy, ‘Homer alone … in particular crafted dramatic imitations (μιμήσεις δραματικὰς ἐποίησεν, Poetics 1448b37).’ Little attention has been paid to this priceless historical observation, as a clue to what rhapsodic performance in a theatre was actually like. The dramatic mimesis most obviously occurs when the narrator becomes one of his protagonists, and speaks a speech in that character’s voice. Something magic happens in these moments, however used we are now to the experience of staged theatre and film. A primary experience of Homeric performance was evidently not of traditional songs sung traditionally, or of improvisation, but of transformation, of the performer before one’s eyes into people and gods, and even horses, of different ages and sexes and voices, all within the hexameter rhythm and diction. And of course there is so much more to Homer’s one-man-show than this becoming other people. So while I apologise for perhaps overreacting to a myopia induced by a number of academic prejudices, I must also testify, to all those who love Greek regardless of their ability or familiarity, that this experience of entering into Homer’s speeches, in the flesh, has been exhilarating!

We begin with Odysseus hiding his sobs behind his cloak. The man is still mostly a cipher. We begin to peel the onion. Alcinous alone knows that the song of Demodocus (about a quarrel between Achilles and Odysseus) has caused the strong reaction in his guest. But he knows nothing more. Could this stranger be a god? Or could he be a fit husband for his daughter, a man of his own heart? His move as a host is to calm things down, to divert and distract from possible discomfort. But he seems a nervous host; despite his isolation, and the irrelevance of other people’s opinions to his status, he is worried what the stranger may think and report of his Phaeacians. The braggart takes over; let’s show this guy, he says, “how much we surpass all comers / At boxing and wrestling, long jumps and foot races.”

Homer warns us that the Phaeacians are going to set Odysseus some testing trials. Why are we on his side? Why should we trust this hidden man, who lies at every turn—whom the Athenian tragedians remembered, after all, as a scheming villain, a Machiavel who would say anything, manipulate the innocent, to serve his and his master’s end? Even now he is actively concealing himself, creating exploitable ambiguities in his hosts’ minds. I think an awful lot of work was done in his brief conversation with Calypso about Penelope. Whatever one makes of his judgement and decision, however much we may falsely invest it with our own romantic fantasies, Odysseus does in fact reject immortality, reject unending sex with a goddess and divine cooking and care on a desert isle, for the chance to reunite with his ageing wife at home. There is a core to this decision which cannot be dissembled, and whose significance cannot be denied—whatever it actually means! And of course through countless epochs, this decision of Odysseus has resonated with audiences who will fill it with any amount of their own sentimentality. Perhaps not knowing why he chose Penelope and mortality is part of his appeal. Hence we readily join Odysseus behind his mask through his scenes of dissembling, in hopes we both ‘get away with it.’

Clark Kent also is a total liar. But we are in complete sympathy with him while he lies his way through life at the Daily Planet, and even through his intimacy with Lois Lane. We know he has a secret power meant for good, which he could not wield effectively if he were to be found out. (James Bond is another whom we join as a secret agent. His revealing of his name is always an anticipated moment. Bond is always working for Her Majesty, like Odysseus for Athena.) I think there is something of watching Clark Kent in the way we watch Odysseus through this episode. There will be a right time and place for his revelation, we feel. A particular quality of Clark Kent, however, is that he resists the temptation to use his power on personal grounds. No amount of direct challenges to his manhood will phase him. He cannot be called out. He bites his lip and pushes up his glasses, until circumstances force him to find a phone booth. Odysseus, by contrast, is made of weaker stuff than Superman, though he sheds a superman’s tears behind his cape.

Homer has a good time with the Phaeacians’ names. There is a bit of Gilbert & Sullivan in the catalogue of nautical pronomens for the athletes. In the Greek reading I even start to intone the lines, often as line segments rather than single breaths. I shall have to have discuss these concrete possibilities for Homeric performance in a separate post, especially as we are about to witness a performance by Demodocus surrounded by dancers. One line, announcing the man who succeeds in calling him out and getting under Odysseus’ skin, sticks out amidst the list:

ἂν δὲ καὶ Εὐρύαλος βροτολοιγῶι ϝἶσος Ἄρηϊ

And up rose Euryalus, the equal of Ares, Bane-of-Mortals, (8.115)

Euryalus’ name, ‘Broad Sea’, fits in with the rest (‘Seagirtus, son of Manyship, son of Carpenterman’), but there is a (no doubt) comic resonance which alerts us to the fact that this fellow will cause trouble. He gets a whole line, for one thing. But ‘Euryalus’ is a name which is known to have belonged to one of the Giants who participated in the Gigantomachy, the war between the Olympians and the mighty Giants of old. This event belongs to a realm which was evidently myth and legend for Homer himself. The line above could easily have once stood, verbatim, in a lost epic poem about that prehistoric contest which shaped the fate of the world. Euryalus the Giant could literally have been a match for Ares, rather than flatteringly. The Phaeacians, now removed to the suburbs, used once to be neighbours and kin of actual Giants and Cyclopses. In Homer’s conceit, they ‘step from’ that time into our dramatic present. If the Phaeacians’ own Euryalus is a sendup of the ancient Giant, then Odysseus, the subject of his challenge—a weather-worn older man—stands in for Ares and the Olympians. The latter group in the contest is the one with God, and history, on its side.

Homer’s narrative is itself therefore suffused with the ambient comedy which also drives the expressions of his speakers. Laodamas, Alcinous’ son, seems a nice sort of chap. It was his seat Odysseus displaced when he first arrived at Alcinous’ house; he was described then as ‘man-friendly’ (ἀγαπήνορα), and that he used to sit closest to his father, who loved him specially. This word expresses a preference for the masculine, not simply a kind of humanist philanthropy. It is not at all clear, however, whether agapēnōr connotes a sexual preference for men, or if anything weird is being suggested about the relationship with his father. (As we shall see, Alcinous is a man who is evidently quite fond of sex, and he has already married his niece.) It is best to acknowledge that we do not have our bearings in the world of Homer’s usage, and that this can be perilous in gauging comedy. But it is also good to check the stifling prudishness that often biases Classicist assessments, which can prevent areas of Homer’s detail from even registering. What is clear from the presentation is that Laodamas is a nice guy—the good cop in the scene, in relation to Euryalus’ bad one—and that he also rather conspicuously checks out Odysseus’ masculine physique. He goes from his thighs and his calves, to dwell on his arms, and then his sturdy neck and great strength. He rhapsodises that Odysseus is not lacking any of his hēbē, his ‘youthful bloom’, despite his suffering. It is not certain whether he means some general healthy glow by ἥβη, or if he is actually looking at another part of Odysseus’ anatomy.

In response, Euryalus encourages Laodamas to literally call Odysseus out (prokalessai). Laodamas, for his part, does this in a most friendly and encouraging way. He’s almost prescribing exercise as a way to relieve stress! And he reminds Odysseus that his escort home is already prepared for afterward, the...

‘The stone boomed and whizzed’: Homer in English

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