An Odyssey
for Old Guys?
by Roger Martin
A
jazzy translation of Homer's epic, the Odyssey, by University
of Kansas classics professor Stan Lombardo, earned high praise in the
New York Times Book Review.
There's plenty to delight kids
in this book. A giant one-eyed Cyclops traps Odysseus and his best warriors
in a cave. He makes finger food out of some of them. Then our hero and
the remaining men blind the Cyclops. After that, Odysseus can't stop
himself from talking trash to the big creep.
For women, the book offers the
figure of longsuffering Penelope, who cleverly stalls a house full of
suitors who are hanging out and competing for her hand during her husband
Odysseus' prolonged absence from home. They think he's died in the war
between the Greeks and Trojans. Penelope puts them off by saying she'll
choose a new guy -- but first she needs to finish this big weaving she's
working on. Unbeknownst to them, she's undoing at night all the weaving
she's done in the day, hoping against hope that her beloved will return.
Another great woman is the wise
goddess Athena, a constant counselor to Odysseus as he wends his way
home, calming him, helping him be patient and wise, counseling restraint
at the proper times.
Even so, after having read this
wonderful epic three times in my life, I want to go on record: I think
the Odyssey is a book for older guys.
For one thing, it's not about
the pleasureful surges of chemical attraction to a new love, but the
heart's treasuring of the old.
The first of Odysseus' three
involvements with women is with Calypso, a goddess who shares her island
with him but who has nothing in common with the hero, Lombardo says.
Then Odysseus meets Circe, with whom he has only a spiritual connection.
All along, however, our hero
recognizes his singular bond to Penelope. Lombardo says, "At one point
Odysseus remarks that there's nothing better in the world than when
husband and wife think alike and have one mind and one heart. His mind
is very close to Penelope's mind."
The book is also about the hardest
lessons some men ever learn: self-control, trust and surrender.
For example, Odysseus has to
disguise himself as a beggar and endure humiliation once he returns
to his homeland in order to size up the situation there and plot his
revenge on Penelope's rapacious suitors. Then, the night before he takes
his revenge, obsessive thoughts keep him tossing and turning. "Let it
go," Athena advises. "Some people trust their puny human friends more
than you trust me."
Men in every age have been taught
by word and example to claw and grasp. They seldom understand the power,
freedom and sheer necessity of letting go of the controls and being
patient. Some men learn these virtues only under duress, but all men
who wish to be wise must learn them.
Even then, it's hard to hold
on to the wisdom. In the epic's last lines, Odysseus, having slaughtered
Penelope's suitors, is confronted by their revenge-minded relatives.
Athena shouts at all those present to lay down their arms. The relatives
flee in dread. Odysseus takes out after them. But Zeus sends a personal
message to him, through Athena, that it's time for him to show restraint
as well.
Because it's easy for older men
to forget the scraps of wisdom we pay for with our suffering, we are
never done changing.
Now here's what translator Lombardo
thinks of the Odyssey.
Q: What's the ideal reading
age for the Odyssey?
A: Fifth graders have read it
and profited. That might be the lower limit. It's the sort of thing
that you can read late in life, also. The more experience you have,
the more you appreciate Odysseus as a man who learns from his experience.
Young girls really like it for
Penelope. They get into what she's going through, some kind of deep
sympathy. I go around to the schools a lot, and the junior high kids
like it for the adventures.
Q: I think of it as an old
man's book.
A: Did I tell you about the cover
I wanted for the book? It sums it up for me. It was a black and white
photograph by a Czech named Josef Koudelka, in an anthology called Gypsies.
It's a man and a woman. She's staring straight ahead. She's maybe 50.
Her hair is pulled back. She's in front of a cheap, white lace curtain
and is cradling, in her arms, the head of a man in profile. He has on
a tattered coat. It's Eastern Europe, post World War II, and these people
have been through enormous suffering but they're together again.
Q: How is the Odyssey
different from Homer's other great epic, the Iliad?
A: The Odyssey is an intensely
human poem. The first word of the first line is andra -- "man." The
gods don't play nearly the role that they play in the Iliad.
Poseidon causes some trouble
in the Odyssey, sure. He's after Odysseus. And Hermes helps Odysseus
once. But there are a total of four gods in the Odyssey, mostly in minor
roles. Even Athena is there in a kind of advisory capacity to Odysseus.
Odysseus shows what a human being
can do. He shows that someone in full possession of his wits, who is
constantly alert and paying attention, can survive almost anything.
Q: What about Odysseus appeals
so strongly to Athena?
A: In Book 13, Athena catches
him in a lie, and she says, "You cunning, habitual liar, I love you.
I think you're great." She calls him one of the two shrewdest minds
in the universe. To her he's a soul mate.
Q: And what about him and
Penelope? What's the basis of their attraction?
A: His mind is very close to
hers. They're always coming closer and closer together. There's a Greek
word for it: homophrosyne. Homo means "same" or "like" and phrosyne
means "mind."
When we first see Odysseus with
a woman -- Calypso -- their minds are not at all alike. And between
him and Circe there's a spiritual kindship, but they've also got differences.
Then, in Book 6, Odysseus says
to Nausicaa that there's nothing better in the world than when a husband
and wife think alike and have one mind and one heart.
Q: What's this book to teach
us?
A: Keep your wits about you and
your heart true. Odysseus never loses sight of what's really important
and what he really cares about. He gets home because he cares about
it. Imagine: seven years on an island with Calypso, and every day he's
crying his eyes out. He's not going to give up or forget.
Q: What gets Odysseus into
such trouble? What laws of heaven or Earth does he violate?
A: He really loses it a few times.
He loses it once with Penelope, who tricks him into revealing himself.
He loses self-control in that instance to establish his identity.
In fact, it's in trying to establish
his identity that he loses it three times.
Q: Is one of the book's themes
the need to surrender will?
A: Yes, surrender is a theme.
When he returns to his homeland and disguises himself as a beggar to
size up the situation, he puts his pride down. He has to lose ego, and
when he can do that completely, he can triumph.
Q: You've been criticized
for using slang in your translation. I remember Odysseus saying "I just
might haul off and bust you in the mouth." How do you defend that? Aren't
you afraid that any slang you use eventually will seem dated?
A: I try to choose slang that's
been around a long time. "Bust you in the mouth" has been around 50
years.
Lots of words, we don't even
know what they mean. They occur once and only once. My guess is that
a lot of those words would be equivalent to our slang.
Q: Is there any evidence in
the text, as you read it, that Homer was blind? Anything that tips you
off to that?
A: I think it's Homer's awareness
of light. Homer's sense of light leads to these beautiful images of
his related to dawn. I sense Homer's blindness in the notice he pays
to the luster of things, the way things shine. It's something that seems
to be apprehended by all of the senses, the complete mind, rather than
just the eyes.
