The Odyssey

I keep reading anything but what I'm supposed to at the moment and randomly decided to pick up the Odyssey. I understand that it's important and all that jazz but I didn't find it particular entertaining. It was pretty meh, not the epic adventure I'd imagined it to be. Would like to read more retailings of it though to see more parts of the story more fleshed out but have no idea on the books just yet.

That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death

through the lives of mortal men,

and all to make a song for those to come…

The Odyssey was honestly a bit disappointing to me. Of Homer’s two major works, I thought this was supposed to be the fun, adventure-filled epic, with

The Iliad being the violent, bloody, and emotional one. What adventure

The Odyssey had

was quite fun, but a lot of it (especially the last few hundred pages) was just…kind of boring.

A lot of the poem is dedicated to conversations that I just didn’t think were that interesting. Telemachus asks for help finding his father; Odysseus asks for help to get home. And a

lot of the poem is dedicated to Telemachus and his mother Penelope dealing with all the “suitors” vying for Penelope’s hand while eating absolutely everything they have under the assumption that Odysseus is dead—spoiler, he’s not, and when he finally gets back this ends incredibly badly in some of the most horrific violence imaginable for all the suitors and handmaidens who helped them, doled out by good/nice guy Odysseus. (It really makes you appreciate modern American ideas of justice and appropriate punishment.) Honestly I think it’s these last 200 pages (~45%), at which point the adventure part is mainly over and the focus is on dealing with the suitors, that really brought the story down for me.

The gods are not as involved in

The Odyssey as I had expected. Mostly it’s just Athena running around in various disguises, which is fun for her but it means the book lacks some of the mythological grandeur that I found so appealing in

The Iliad.

When it came to the writing, I also found it less propulsive than

The Iliad. Maybe Fagles just didn’t do as good a job with this one, or maybe it’s just that the writing is not as vibrant, but there really wasn’t anything here that captured me like

The Illiad’s opening lines —

Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles—did. There was also a lot of repetition, like

young Dawn with her rose-red fingers that started to grate on me.

The highlight was definitely Odysseus’ adventures. You know the ones: the Cyclops, the sirens, the Charybdis. The books in this part of the poem were episodic and incredibly fun. I’d expected stories like these to make up the bulk of the poem—and if they had I would definitely have enjoyed this a lot more—but unfortunately a handful are all I get. There are also a handful of very touching emotional moments, like Odysseus learning of his mother’s death when meeting her ghost and Odysseus’ half-dead dog perking up and recognizing his master in disguise.

All told, I really liked the first half or so, then the rest was kind of a slog. Even so, it was a nice change of pace since it’s so wildly different from Western literature, so I’m glad I gave it a read.

Some favorite passages:

Ah how shameless—the way these mortals blame the gods.

From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes,

but they themselves, with their own reckless ways,

compound their pains beyond their proper share.

And sparkling-eyed Athena drove the matter home:

"Father, son of Cronus, our high and mighty king,

surely he goes down to a death he earned in full!

Let them all die so, all who do such things.

So by day she'd weave at her great and growing web—

by night, by the light of torches set beside her,

she would unravel all she'd done. Three whole years

she deceived us blind, seduced us with this scheme...

When the sun stands striding at high noon,

Then up from the waves he comes—

the Old Man of the Sea who never lies—

under a West Wind's gust that shrouds him round

in shuddering dark swells, and once he's out on land

he heads for his bed of rest in deep hollow caves and around him droves of seals—sleek pups bred

by his lovely ocean-lady—bed down too

in a huddle, flopping up from the gray surf,

giving off the sour reek of the salty ocean depths.

Ajax, now, went down with his long-oared fleet.

First Poseidon drove him onto the cliffs of Gyrae,

looming cliffs, then saved him from the breakers—

he'd have escaped his doom, too, despite Athena's hate,

if he hadn't flung that brazen boast, the mad blind fool.

"In the teeth of the gods," he bragged, "I have escaped

the ocean's sheer abyss!" Poseidon heard that frantic vaunt

and the god grasped his trident in both his massive hands

and struck the Gyraean headland, hacked the rock in two,

and the giant stump stood fast but the jagged spur

where Ajax perched at first, the raving madman—

toppling into the sea, it plunged him down, down

in the vast, seething depths. And so he died,

having drunk his fill of brine.

Even as he spoke

the sun set and the darkness swept the earth.

And now, withdrawing into the cavern's deep recesses,

long in each other's arms they lost themselves in love.

The wind lifting his spirits high, royal Odysseus

spread sail—gripping the tiller, seated astern—

and now the master mariner steered his craft,

sleep never closing his eyes, forever scanning

the stars, the Pleiades and the Plowman late to set

and the Great Bear that mankind also calls the Wagon:

the wheels on her axis always fixed, watching the Hunter

and she alone is denied a plunge in the Ocean's baths.

Just as that fear went churning through his mind

a tremendous roller swept him toward the rocky coast

where he'd have been flayed alive, his bones crushed

if the bright-eyed goddess Pallas had not inspired him now.

He lunged for a reef, he seized it with both hands and clung

for dear life, groaning until the giant wave surged past

and so he escaped its force, but the breaker's backwash

changed into him full fury and hurled him out to sea.

Like pebbles stuck in the suckers of some octopus

dragged from its lair—so strips of skin torn

from his clawing hands stuck to the rock face.

That was the song the famous harper sang

but great Odysseus melted into tears,

running down from his eyes to wet his cheeks...

as a woman weeps, her arms flung round her darling husband,

a man who fell in battle, fighting for town and townsmen,

trying to beat the day of doom from home and children.

Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath,

she clings for dear life, screams and shrills—

but the victors, just behind her,

digging spear-butts into her back and shoulders,

drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labor, pain,

and the most heartbreaking torment wastes her cheeks.

So from Odysseus' eyes ran tears of heartbreak now.

This is no deception sent by Queen Persephone,

this is just the way of mortals when we die.

Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together—

the fire in all its fury burns the body down to ashes

once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit,

rustling, flitters away.... flown like a dream.

But you must long for the daylight. Go, quickly.

Remember all these things

so one day you can tell them to your wife.'

Now wailing in fear, we rowed on up those straits,

Scylla to starboard, dreaded Charybdis off to port,

her horrible whirlpool gulping the sea-surge down, down

but when she spewed it up—like a cauldron over a raging fire—

all her churning depths would seethe and heave—exploding spray

showering down to splatter the peaks of both crags at once!

But when she swallowed the sea-surge down her gaping maw

the whole abyss lay bare and the rocks around her roared,

terrible, deafening—

bedrock showed down deep, boiling

black with sand—

and ashen terror gripped the men.

Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there

lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears...

It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus' dog

he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got

since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.

ln the old days young hunters loved to set him

coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.

But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,

on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting

out before the gates till Odysseus' serving-men

could cart it off to manure the king's estates.

Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,

here lay the hound, old Argos.

But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by

he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,

though he had no strength to drag himself an inch

toward his master. Odysseus glanced to the side

and flicked away a tear,

Odysseus. There was a man, or was he all a dream?

And Athena handed down her pacts of peace

between both sides for all the years to come—

the daughter of Zeus whose shield is storm and thunder,

yes, but the goddess still kept Mentor's build and voice.

I read the book. Thought it was magical. It is a myth book and it is about Odysseus' adversaries that he faces. It ends happily. If you like myth i would definitely suggest this book to read.