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selenakLike a great many bookish kids of my generation and older, I first encountered the Greek myths - the Trojan War ones included - via a 19th century rendition and bowlderization, by Gustav Schwab. His big collection of Greek and Roman myths was THE standard present for almost a century. Nine years old me was spell bound and didn't notice the bowlderization until as a teenager I read some of Ovid's Metamorphoses in Latin in school, and some of the great theatre plays - Aischylos, Sophocles, Euripides - in German. I don't think I tackled the non-Gustav Schwab Iliad and the Oddyssey until I was in my later twenties, and then it was a nineteeth century translation, too, because as opposed to the Americans and the Brits, for some reason German scholars don't seem to have produced 20th or 21st century translations of Homer. (Retellings, yes. Fictionalisations, yes. Not translations. When I think of the big translation events being celebrated in the last decades, it's inevitably Shakespeare - seriously, you get a new Shakespeare in German pratically every decade, if not more -, and also the 1001 Nights stories (here the particular celebration was around the fact it was a translation not based on the famous French collection but directly on the Arabian tales.) Now I might be wrong here, and missing out on newer German translations, but googling doesn't give me that impression. Whereas in English, the Homer translation business is alive and thriving. What gives, German scholars?
Anyway, having heard much praise of Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, I listened to Claire Dane's rendition of it on Audible, and with the caveat that much to my Latin teachers' frustration, I chose not to learn Greek at school but French and hence am incapable of judging the "translation" part of it myself, I found the praise well deserved. It's a a text fascinating to listen to - including Wilson's introduction, which already is over an hour of listening time, but by no means missable - , and Wilson's decision to use English iambic pentameter makes the verse feel flowing and natural in that language. To requote her alraedy often quoted rendition of the proem illustrates this beautifully:
Odyssey
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
Not speaking Greek, I can't judge the accuracy of "a complicated man" versus the "man of twists and turns" of Fagles and the "contending man" of another translation, but purely as a reader/listener, it does strike me a as a good choice to set up the ambiguity of Odysseus right from the start. Similarly, "he failed to keep them safe" versus the "he lost them" I'm more used to from other versions heightens Odysseus' share of responsibility for the loss of his men.
Now, when you, like I, was introduced to the stories comprised in the Odyssey via the 19th century guy Gustav Schwab, who restructed the entire story to a linear fashion and focuses on the sea adventures (as opposed to Homer, who starts when Odysseus' wandering years are nearly over, doesn't put him on stage, so to speak, until a third of the story has passed because the beginning of the epic tells with Telemachus on Ithaca and his quest to find out what happened to his father via visiting Nestor and Menelaus first, and devotes far more page time on Oysseus on Ithaca - i.e. the Quentin Tarantino-esque revenge tale part of the story - than on the sefaring aadventures), that difference in focus and pacing is what inevitably strikes you first. But also all the differences threethousand years make and doesn't make in behavioral codes. Men in the Odyssey cry often and easy. Odysseus and Telemachus most of all, but also the other heroes. There is nothing to indicate this expression of emotion is coded as feminine. Otoh, Odysseus in his rendition of his adventures for his hosts mentions how he and his men directly after leaving Troy and before getting into the first big adventure sacked another city en route, "sharing" all the women and taking all the loot. As you do. This is not in any way seen as bad or unheroic behaviour. As opposed to the suitors' freeloading Listening to the epic instead of reading it and thus unable to skip anything really hammers home the whole idea of sacred hospitality (and being a good guest) as a central value. (Wilson in her introduction points out the epic's setting predates the use of money. Finding a good host on your travels who feasts you, clothes you and ressupplies you is quintessential for any traveller. But abusing this is therefore extra taboo.) And good lord, but the death of Agamemnon is evoked much, much more often than I recalled. (Schwab & Co. must have cut down the Agamemnon references to the bare minimum, because I could remember them only obviously in the underworld visit when the man himself shows up and in Sparta when Menelaos brings up his brother.) It's the constantly upheld fear that this is how Odysseus' return could go, one of the reasons for his disguises and drawn out undercoverness when finally at Ithaca. It's also intriguing to me that the Odyssey, created ca. 800 BC or thereabouts, has Aegisthos as the main instigator and actor in Agamemnon's death, and Clytaimnestra only as his seduced sidekick - she's even presented as at first having hold out against his attempts to seduce her before falling for him. Meanwhile, all the dramatists tackling the House of Atreus some centuries later make Clytaimnestra the main actor and Aegisthos (if he shows up in person at all) her sidekick, and also give her the death of Iphigenia as a key motive (as opposed to simply having fallen for Cousin Aegisthos). Now, dead Agamenon is still bitter about his wife - going as far as to tell Odysseus not to trust any woman, even if Penelope should prove faithful - because of this -, but everyone else evoking this death singles out Aegisthos as the chief villain and barely or not at all mentions Clytaimnestra.
Wilson in her introduction explains that she chose to use the term "slave" for the various more exact (as to their position in the household) signfiers for the various servants instead of the traditional "maid/handmaiden/nurse/steward/sevant" etc. because to a modern reader/listener, the later would imply these people actually get paid for their services and are free. As opposed to be being enslaved. This, btw, had gone right by 9 years old me when I first encountered the story in its bowlederized version; teenage me did realize that Greek household servants in myths were not paid for their labour, but I think I wasn't aware that, say, the swineherd Eumeious was also Odysseus' property as opposed to someone who saw him as his liege lord. For current readers, yes, I magine many if encountering the story for the first time would not consider someone called a maid or a servant to be a slave by necessity, too.
(Of course, one difference between ancient world slavery and US 19th century type of slavery would be that the former wasn't racially connotated and just about anyone could become a slave if their city got sacked (see Trojan women). This does not make a slave less of a slave.)
(Listening, I found it very interesting that the epic has Eurycleia, Odsseus' old nurse, mention Laertes (Odysseus' father) never touched her out of respect for his wife, and later that Penelope ensured Telemachus never put a hand on her maids. These are not addendums by Emily Wilson - I have a prose translation by T.E. Lawrence (yes, that Lawrence) to compare, and it's there as well - and it's an intriguing glimpse as to what was considered "good" behaviour. Given raping women while sacking cities is fine, I think the laudable behaviour here isn't that the female slaves don't get raped by Laertes and Telemachus, respectively, it's that Laertes respects his wife and knows this would be against her wishes, and Telemachus his mother, and/or that Penelope's servants are the absent Odysseus' property, and therefore it would not have been appropriate for his son to have a go.)
Peneleope's female servants being slaves is a point alluded to again in the passage that to my recollection has only gotten fictional attention in the last fifteen years or so (thanks to Margaret Atwood's Penelopeiad), and Wilson in her introduction also singles it out as something which many a previous translator has sawn fit to add additional sexism to, to wit: after the suitors are killed, Odysseus asks his former nurse which of the female slaves have been loyal and which have betrayed him. Eurycleia says out of the fifty women, only twelve were - and here is where the translations vary: having sex/consorting/ other verb with the suitors. Odsseus orders her to get these twelve, who are then made to clean up and help disposing of the bodies of the suitors; then Odysseus tells Telemachus to kill them via sword, but Telemachus, showing initiative without Athena prompting him for the first time in the epic, decides death by sword is too good for them and hangs all twelve. Wilson points out that a great many earlier translations have him refer to them as "sluts" or "whores", which he doesn't in the Greek original. After hearing her stark and visceral version:
[S]o the girls, their heads all in a row,
were strung up with the noose around their necks
to make their death an agony. They gasped,
feet twitching for a while, but not for long.
I checked the Lawrence translation and was glad to find good old Lawrence of Arabia also avoids said additional sexism. Same passage in prose, no lest ghastly as to what it describes:
Exactly thus were the women's heads all held a-row with a bight of cord drawn round each throat, to suffer their caitiff's death. A little while they twittered with their feet - only a little. It was not long.
Now the epic, in Wilson's translation as well as in any other, has used a great deal of narrative space to make the suitors obnoxious in their behavior to just about everyone, not to mention that they also earlier have a scheme to waylay and kill Telemachus en route back from Sparta to Ithaca. Their deaths thus work not dissimilar from the recent shows and movies featuring evil and often also stupid rich people who are then narratively punished after first having put the sympathetic characters through hell. But a current day audience is aware that the twelve women, being slaves, would not have had much of a choice, and at any rate only one of them has previously been given a name and a narrative opportunity to behave disdainfully to a still disguised Odysseus. Their deaths thus feel horrendously unearned and cruel. I did remember them, though, which is more than I can say of the death of the one male slave who had previously been shown throwing in his lot with the suitors and behaving aggressively and mockingly towards the Odysseus-loyal Eumeios the swineherd and towards the cattle driver. These two have a go at Melanthius unprompted by any orders, slice his nose and ears and hack off his genitals which are then fed to the dogs. (Not poor Argos the first loyal dog of world literature, he's already dead.) The Odssey: a Tarantino-esque splatterfest, like I said. (As opposed to the "maids" being hanged, I don't think this bit made it into the toned down versions.)
At the same time, I wouldn't say this is a grimdark story in its original form, and not just because there's a surprising amount of humor in it. (See also: Calypso, after Hermes has given her the order from Zeus to let Odysseus go early on in the epic, being annoyed at the double standard and listing all the cases where the male gods very much did not let go of their female mortals, for example. Or Nestor's tendency to ramble being narratively made fun of. Or Athena's plain delight in finding Odysseus, when he meets her in disguise, being so inventive in his lying.) There are plenty of examples for generous, good hospitality, hosts and courteous guests as well. Odysseus' reunion with his dead mother during his visit in the underworld, from his realisation that she's dead - she was still alive when he left Ithaca - to his conversation with her - is a very human moment, as his his willingness to go back to Circe' island just to bury the unfortunate Elpnor who died by accident when they previously departed. For all that she's described as holding him with her against his will, Calypso isn't made into a caricature and gets some of the most poetic passages. And there's the remarkable moment when Achilles, the previous epic's epitome of the warrior who chooses glory and a short life over a long life in mediocrity, tells Odysseus he'd rather be a long lived farmer on earth than the most admired hero in the underworld. (Which reminds me, I see Emily Wilson has now translated the Iliad as well, and I do want to check this out, too - again I think in audio form, because as pretentious as this sounds, there's an extra dimension to being able to listen to something that at first was created in oral form.) And in the final reunion of Odysseus with Penelope. Later fictionalisations have her recognizing him far earlier. The text is ambiguous enough to allow for that interpretation, since we're not told exactly what Penelope is thinking, but it's just as possible to take it at face value, that her test of him - evoking their marriage bed, whose nature (carved out of a living olive tree) only Odysseus will know - is just that, a test, which he has to pass before she accepts him as her husband. Odysseus and Penelope are the people whose cleverness the epic most often extolls, and that reunion scene does feel like they are evenly matched and suited to each other, culminating in this passage:
Finally, at last,
with joy the husband and wife arrived
back in the rites of their old marriage bed (…..)
And when
the couple had enjoyed their lovemaking,
they shared another pleasure — telling stories.
It's the last line that does it, and brings everything full circle, though the epic continues beyond this; the fathers of the suitors blaming Odysseus for not only the deaths of their sons but for taking an entire generation of men from Ithaca if you add those who died at Troy and en route home is solved by a l iteral dea ex machina, Athena making peace so there is no civil war on Ithaca. Not for the first time, my modern sensibilities wish the epic would have ended with the Odysseus and Penelope scene, but then again, allowing the people of Ithaca being not universally thrilled their lord is back but upset at all the deaths is acknwowledging that for all their obnoxious fratboyness, the suitors were human beings. (So were the twelve hanged women, of course, but nobody is set to fight for them or doubts Odysseus' right to dispense with them as he pleased.)
Really, though, the power of storytelling is something that works in this epic on both a Doylist and Watsonian level. Both when bards do it and when Odysseus spins one of his many invented or true (or are they?) stories about himself. And in the power the Odyssey still holds, after threethousand years. And that's why I think it's eminently fitting for "telling stories" being named as a joy on a lovel with lovemaking.
Anyway, having heard much praise of Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, I listened to Claire Dane's rendition of it on Audible, and with the caveat that much to my Latin teachers' frustration, I chose not to learn Greek at school but French and hence am incapable of judging the "translation" part of it myself, I found the praise well deserved. It's a a text fascinating to listen to - including Wilson's introduction, which already is over an hour of listening time, but by no means missable - , and Wilson's decision to use English iambic pentameter makes the verse feel flowing and natural in that language. To requote her alraedy often quoted rendition of the proem illustrates this beautifully:
Odyssey
Tell me about a complicated man.
Muse, tell me how he wandered and was lost
when he had wrecked the holy town of Troy,
and where he went, and who he met, the pain
he suffered in the storms at sea, and how
he worked to save his life and bring his men
back home. He failed to keep them safe; poor fools,
they ate the Sun God’s cattle, and the god
kept them from home. Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
Find the beginning.
Not speaking Greek, I can't judge the accuracy of "a complicated man" versus the "man of twists and turns" of Fagles and the "contending man" of another translation, but purely as a reader/listener, it does strike me a as a good choice to set up the ambiguity of Odysseus right from the start. Similarly, "he failed to keep them safe" versus the "he lost them" I'm more used to from other versions heightens Odysseus' share of responsibility for the loss of his men.
Now, when you, like I, was introduced to the stories comprised in the Odyssey via the 19th century guy Gustav Schwab, who restructed the entire story to a linear fashion and focuses on the sea adventures (as opposed to Homer, who starts when Odysseus' wandering years are nearly over, doesn't put him on stage, so to speak, until a third of the story has passed because the beginning of the epic tells with Telemachus on Ithaca and his quest to find out what happened to his father via visiting Nestor and Menelaus first, and devotes far more page time on Oysseus on Ithaca - i.e. the Quentin Tarantino-esque revenge tale part of the story - than on the sefaring aadventures), that difference in focus and pacing is what inevitably strikes you first. But also all the differences threethousand years make and doesn't make in behavioral codes. Men in the Odyssey cry often and easy. Odysseus and Telemachus most of all, but also the other heroes. There is nothing to indicate this expression of emotion is coded as feminine. Otoh, Odysseus in his rendition of his adventures for his hosts mentions how he and his men directly after leaving Troy and before getting into the first big adventure sacked another city en route, "sharing" all the women and taking all the loot. As you do. This is not in any way seen as bad or unheroic behaviour. As opposed to the suitors' freeloading Listening to the epic instead of reading it and thus unable to skip anything really hammers home the whole idea of sacred hospitality (and being a good guest) as a central value. (Wilson in her introduction points out the epic's setting predates the use of money. Finding a good host on your travels who feasts you, clothes you and ressupplies you is quintessential for any traveller. But abusing this is therefore extra taboo.) And good lord, but the death of Agamemnon is evoked much, much more often than I recalled. (Schwab & Co. must have cut down the Agamemnon references to the bare minimum, because I could remember them only obviously in the underworld visit when the man himself shows up and in Sparta when Menelaos brings up his brother.) It's the constantly upheld fear that this is how Odysseus' return could go, one of the reasons for his disguises and drawn out undercoverness when finally at Ithaca. It's also intriguing to me that the Odyssey, created ca. 800 BC or thereabouts, has Aegisthos as the main instigator and actor in Agamemnon's death, and Clytaimnestra only as his seduced sidekick - she's even presented as at first having hold out against his attempts to seduce her before falling for him. Meanwhile, all the dramatists tackling the House of Atreus some centuries later make Clytaimnestra the main actor and Aegisthos (if he shows up in person at all) her sidekick, and also give her the death of Iphigenia as a key motive (as opposed to simply having fallen for Cousin Aegisthos). Now, dead Agamenon is still bitter about his wife - going as far as to tell Odysseus not to trust any woman, even if Penelope should prove faithful - because of this -, but everyone else evoking this death singles out Aegisthos as the chief villain and barely or not at all mentions Clytaimnestra.
Wilson in her introduction explains that she chose to use the term "slave" for the various more exact (as to their position in the household) signfiers for the various servants instead of the traditional "maid/handmaiden/nurse/steward/sevant" etc. because to a modern reader/listener, the later would imply these people actually get paid for their services and are free. As opposed to be being enslaved. This, btw, had gone right by 9 years old me when I first encountered the story in its bowlederized version; teenage me did realize that Greek household servants in myths were not paid for their labour, but I think I wasn't aware that, say, the swineherd Eumeious was also Odysseus' property as opposed to someone who saw him as his liege lord. For current readers, yes, I magine many if encountering the story for the first time would not consider someone called a maid or a servant to be a slave by necessity, too.
(Of course, one difference between ancient world slavery and US 19th century type of slavery would be that the former wasn't racially connotated and just about anyone could become a slave if their city got sacked (see Trojan women). This does not make a slave less of a slave.)
(Listening, I found it very interesting that the epic has Eurycleia, Odsseus' old nurse, mention Laertes (Odysseus' father) never touched her out of respect for his wife, and later that Penelope ensured Telemachus never put a hand on her maids. These are not addendums by Emily Wilson - I have a prose translation by T.E. Lawrence (yes, that Lawrence) to compare, and it's there as well - and it's an intriguing glimpse as to what was considered "good" behaviour. Given raping women while sacking cities is fine, I think the laudable behaviour here isn't that the female slaves don't get raped by Laertes and Telemachus, respectively, it's that Laertes respects his wife and knows this would be against her wishes, and Telemachus his mother, and/or that Penelope's servants are the absent Odysseus' property, and therefore it would not have been appropriate for his son to have a go.)
Peneleope's female servants being slaves is a point alluded to again in the passage that to my recollection has only gotten fictional attention in the last fifteen years or so (thanks to Margaret Atwood's Penelopeiad), and Wilson in her introduction also singles it out as something which many a previous translator has sawn fit to add additional sexism to, to wit: after the suitors are killed, Odysseus asks his former nurse which of the female slaves have been loyal and which have betrayed him. Eurycleia says out of the fifty women, only twelve were - and here is where the translations vary: having sex/consorting/ other verb with the suitors. Odsseus orders her to get these twelve, who are then made to clean up and help disposing of the bodies of the suitors; then Odysseus tells Telemachus to kill them via sword, but Telemachus, showing initiative without Athena prompting him for the first time in the epic, decides death by sword is too good for them and hangs all twelve. Wilson points out that a great many earlier translations have him refer to them as "sluts" or "whores", which he doesn't in the Greek original. After hearing her stark and visceral version:
[S]o the girls, their heads all in a row,
were strung up with the noose around their necks
to make their death an agony. They gasped,
feet twitching for a while, but not for long.
I checked the Lawrence translation and was glad to find good old Lawrence of Arabia also avoids said additional sexism. Same passage in prose, no lest ghastly as to what it describes:
Exactly thus were the women's heads all held a-row with a bight of cord drawn round each throat, to suffer their caitiff's death. A little while they twittered with their feet - only a little. It was not long.
Now the epic, in Wilson's translation as well as in any other, has used a great deal of narrative space to make the suitors obnoxious in their behavior to just about everyone, not to mention that they also earlier have a scheme to waylay and kill Telemachus en route back from Sparta to Ithaca. Their deaths thus work not dissimilar from the recent shows and movies featuring evil and often also stupid rich people who are then narratively punished after first having put the sympathetic characters through hell. But a current day audience is aware that the twelve women, being slaves, would not have had much of a choice, and at any rate only one of them has previously been given a name and a narrative opportunity to behave disdainfully to a still disguised Odysseus. Their deaths thus feel horrendously unearned and cruel. I did remember them, though, which is more than I can say of the death of the one male slave who had previously been shown throwing in his lot with the suitors and behaving aggressively and mockingly towards the Odysseus-loyal Eumeios the swineherd and towards the cattle driver. These two have a go at Melanthius unprompted by any orders, slice his nose and ears and hack off his genitals which are then fed to the dogs. (Not poor Argos the first loyal dog of world literature, he's already dead.) The Odssey: a Tarantino-esque splatterfest, like I said. (As opposed to the "maids" being hanged, I don't think this bit made it into the toned down versions.)
At the same time, I wouldn't say this is a grimdark story in its original form, and not just because there's a surprising amount of humor in it. (See also: Calypso, after Hermes has given her the order from Zeus to let Odysseus go early on in the epic, being annoyed at the double standard and listing all the cases where the male gods very much did not let go of their female mortals, for example. Or Nestor's tendency to ramble being narratively made fun of. Or Athena's plain delight in finding Odysseus, when he meets her in disguise, being so inventive in his lying.) There are plenty of examples for generous, good hospitality, hosts and courteous guests as well. Odysseus' reunion with his dead mother during his visit in the underworld, from his realisation that she's dead - she was still alive when he left Ithaca - to his conversation with her - is a very human moment, as his his willingness to go back to Circe' island just to bury the unfortunate Elpnor who died by accident when they previously departed. For all that she's described as holding him with her against his will, Calypso isn't made into a caricature and gets some of the most poetic passages. And there's the remarkable moment when Achilles, the previous epic's epitome of the warrior who chooses glory and a short life over a long life in mediocrity, tells Odysseus he'd rather be a long lived farmer on earth than the most admired hero in the underworld. (Which reminds me, I see Emily Wilson has now translated the Iliad as well, and I do want to check this out, too - again I think in audio form, because as pretentious as this sounds, there's an extra dimension to being able to listen to something that at first was created in oral form.) And in the final reunion of Odysseus with Penelope. Later fictionalisations have her recognizing him far earlier. The text is ambiguous enough to allow for that interpretation, since we're not told exactly what Penelope is thinking, but it's just as possible to take it at face value, that her test of him - evoking their marriage bed, whose nature (carved out of a living olive tree) only Odysseus will know - is just that, a test, which he has to pass before she accepts him as her husband. Odysseus and Penelope are the people whose cleverness the epic most often extolls, and that reunion scene does feel like they are evenly matched and suited to each other, culminating in this passage:
Finally, at last,
with joy the husband and wife arrived
back in the rites of their old marriage bed (…..)
And when
the couple had enjoyed their lovemaking,
they shared another pleasure — telling stories.
It's the last line that does it, and brings everything full circle, though the epic continues beyond this; the fathers of the suitors blaming Odysseus for not only the deaths of their sons but for taking an entire generation of men from Ithaca if you add those who died at Troy and en route home is solved by a l iteral dea ex machina, Athena making peace so there is no civil war on Ithaca. Not for the first time, my modern sensibilities wish the epic would have ended with the Odysseus and Penelope scene, but then again, allowing the people of Ithaca being not universally thrilled their lord is back but upset at all the deaths is acknwowledging that for all their obnoxious fratboyness, the suitors were human beings. (So were the twelve hanged women, of course, but nobody is set to fight for them or doubts Odysseus' right to dispense with them as he pleased.)
Really, though, the power of storytelling is something that works in this epic on both a Doylist and Watsonian level. Both when bards do it and when Odysseus spins one of his many invented or true (or are they?) stories about himself. And in the power the Odyssey still holds, after threethousand years. And that's why I think it's eminently fitting for "telling stories" being named as a joy on a lovel with lovemaking.
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Date: 2023-11-15 10:30 pm (UTC)Not speaking Greek, I can't judge the accuracy of "a complicated man" versus the "man of twists and turns" of Fagles and the "contending man" of another translation, but purely as a reader/listener, it does strike me a as a good choice to set up the ambiguity of Odysseus right from the start. Similarly, "he failed to keep them safe" versus the "he lost them" I'm more used to from other versions heightens Odysseus' share of responsibility for the loss of his men.
I like the "he failed to keep them safe" part, but I think if I encountered "a complicated man" at the end of the line like that in the wild I would simply close the book and go back to Fagles! It seems very weak for andra... polutropon, where Fagles gets the sense much better. I know people I could describe as "a complicated man," whereas "a man of many twists and turns" signals that you're getting something much more, well, epic. And the placement also weakens it -- in "a complcated man" the adjective seems to me to carry more weight than the noun, whereas man, andra, a male person, is the opening word of the epic and appropriately so, given how much of it is about masculinity and femininity, and relations between men and women. And the sense of that is lost in Wilson's rendition.
I think the next time I get back to epic it will need to be the Bartsch translation of the Aeneid -- but this is definitely on my list if I ever go back to the Odyssey!
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Date: 2023-11-16 10:10 am (UTC)"Complicated" is a clever choice for πολύτροπος (of many turnings) because through its Latin etymology (complicō, to plait together) it picks up on the motif of weaving which threads literally and figuratively through the Odyssey. Songs and stories as well as textiles are woven in classical Greek; so are strategies; so are lies; it is the binding between Odysseus, Penelope, and Athene, all three of them tricksters. When the goddess calls out Odysseus on his Cretan lie on the shore of Ithaka, delighted that he won't give an inch of truth even on his home ground, she refers to his μύθων τε κλοπίων, οἵ τοι πεδόθεν φίλοι εἰσίν, his ruses and his stories that are as dear as nature to him, and describes him as
βροτῶν ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος ἁπάντων
βουλῇ καὶ μύθοισιν, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐν πᾶσι θεοῖσι
μήτι τε κλέομαι καὶ κέρδεσιν
far and away the best of mortals
at schemes and stories, while I among the gods
am famed for craft and clevernesses
—she is the goddess not of wisdom, but of μῆτις, tricky thought, creativity, the intelligence to think around corners and into the future; she finishes the speech by promising Odysseus that she has come to him now ἵνα τοι σὺν μῆτιν ὑφήνω, to weave mētis with him. So Wilson is signaling from the very beginning what braids this story all together, metafictionally too, since of course an epic poem is a woven thing as well, but the success of this translation choice depends partly on the reader's ability to recognize the root of the adjective, which is not universally guaranteed.
(I have not read Wilson's translation myself. "The man skilled in all ways of contending" was Robert Fitzgerald's rendering of polytropos; Lattimore used "the man of many ways." The turnings are both internal and external, the intricacy of mind and the highways and byways of travel. It's a tricky word, difficult to pin down one definitive meaning for, which is appropriate. [edit] Apparently I have been known to use "complicated" for Odysseus. You can see this nexus is important to me.)
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Date: 2023-11-18 07:51 am (UTC)Re: your (Oysseus) must have loved (Penelope) observation, given he chose mortality with her over immortality with Calypso, I dare say he did. Also the Wilson version really brought home how clever she is, and a strategist as well, and you do get the impression of them being each other's match in a way few mythological couples are.
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Date: 2023-11-17 06:02 am (UTC)Meanwhile, all the dramatists tackling the House of Atreus some centuries later
Huh. I think I prefer the version where Clytemnestra gets to be the villain of her own story (and have a sympathetic motive, even), not just along for the ride -- but that's interesting, the difference, and that she's not even much to be blamed in the Homer version.
This, btw, had gone right by 9 years old me when I first encountered the story in its bowlederized version
Oh, wow, yeah, this went right by me.
being annoyed at the double standard and listing all the cases where the male gods very much did not let go of their female mortals
Heeee. Okay, I need to read it again -- I'm very sure all the humor went right over the head of young!me. (I also read Jane Austen at this time in my life, and was utterly shocked to read Austen a few years later and find out she was hilarious, which I'd entirely missed the first time around.)
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Date: 2023-11-18 07:40 am (UTC)Huh. I think I prefer the version where Clytemnestra gets to be the villain of her own story (and have a sympathetic motive, even), not just along for the ride -- but that's interesting, the difference, and that she's not even much to be blamed in the Homer version.
Same here. I mean, as with Medea not being the one to kill her children pre Euripides' drama (though she does a great many other things in preceding myths), could you see this as a misogynistic blame the woman thing? Sure. But did it make the character more interesting? Absolutely! And if you ask me, in both cases those golden era of Athens drama playwrights looked at the myths not from a misogynistic but from an emotional "who makes the most interesting antagonist?" (in the case of Clytemnestra) and "what is the hardest, most shocking thing my protagonist witch from the Krim can do?" (in the case of Medea) pov. In the Odyssey, there isn't even a reference to Orestes committing matricide - it's only said Orestes killed Aegisthos in revenge for his father, so for all we know, Homerian Clytemnestra lives on a chastened sinner life. (Elektra isn't mentioned at all.) So while it's entirely possible the myths had already changed a few centuries later by the time our trio of classic playwrights had a go at them, I have my headcanon about Aischylos thinking: "So... Agamemnon comes home, gets killed by Aegisthos while Clytemnestra stands at the side, and then in the next play Orestes kills Aegisthos with everyone as his cheering squad because revenging your father is where it's at, that's just not interesting, and also, if Aegisthos has to explain his hugely complicated backstory as his reason for killing Agamemnon, people will get hopelessly lost before the central murder. It's just more interesting if Clytemnestra sits in the driver's seat and does it for Iphigenia as well as for power! And then Orestes has to kill his own mother which even in our patriarchal society makes it way harder to root for, and then I have a third play to impress my Athenians with where he's persecuted by the Furies and then helped in Athens by Athena and Apollo and the citizens of Athens who get to hear how fabulous they are! Beat that, fellow playwrights!
Sophocles & Euripides: Clytemnestra is the main killer IS way more interesting, but you know, we're also very interested in Elektra whom you wasted after the big recognition scene with Orestes.
Sophocles: I know! I'm good with a "two sisters" structure, I did that in my Antigone as well, so I'll give Elektra a softie nice sister who counsels acceptance and peace but Elektra wants REVENGGGGGE, she's just like Mom which is why they can't stand each other. Orestes who?
Euripides: Forget about the peaceful sister you introduced, I'm going to bring back murdered Iphigenia and retcon her as being saved by Artemis in the last second and brought to Tauris, but that's a separate play. First: My Elektra is the prime motivator of the matricide and pushes Orestes towards it. Aegisthos briefly shows up but yeah, of course it's Clytemnestra who was calling the shots there. But you know what, Aischylos, my sequel to the matricide isn't some FUCK YEAH ATHENS exculpation, Orestes and Elektra never make it there. Instead, the citizens of Mycenae are after their blood, because guess what, most of them were actually cool with being ruled by Clytemnestra and Aegisthos, and so the sibs are getting put on trial there, not in Athens. And then Menelaos and Helen show up and are totally unhelpful because Helen is Clytemnestra's sister and Menelaos after some bland "yeah, sorry about by bro Agamemnon, kids, but good lord, did you have to????" is eyeing becoming the ruler of Mycenae himself. And then Tyndareios shows up, father of Helen and Clytemnestra, and says WTF, grandkids, wtf? You know what, if you had send Clytemnestra into exile is punishment for her murdering Agamemnon, that would have been just, but murder??? No, not helping you, I'm rooting for your demise! And then Electra has this brainwave that if they're going to die, they a) need to take out Helen as the cause of all this misery, including Iphigenia's death because Iphigenia would never have been sacrificed without Helen running off with Paris, and b) kill cousin Hermione while they're at it, because that'll show Uncle Menealaos, the unhelpful bastard. And they already have Hermione kidnapped and Menelaos has the one good speech he has in any drama where he says WTF, WTF, when will this family killing end, can't we just bloody STOP with this, when I do my trademark thing of a deus ex machina intervention that's deliberately cynical and saying to the audience "you know what really would have happened, don't you?"' so there's an enforced happy end where Electra gets forgiven and marries Pylades, Orestes gets forgiven and marries Hermione, and peace is declared at least until the sequel where Orestes is Furies plagued again and ends up in Tauris finding Iphigenia.
Ghost of Homer: ....Kids these days....
Anyway, Aegisthos is one of those few Greek mythology characters who with one exception has never found anyone writing him sympathetically (the exception is Jean Giradoux' drama Elektra, where Aegisthos did kill Agamemnon together with Clytemnestra but is a better ruler than Agamemnon ever was, because the challenge to the audience and Elektra is, can you still be a moral absolutist and want revenge if you know it will end up in a worse situation than before), he's always some cowardly sidekick, which because Clytemnestra has become such a strong character doesn't quite work for me because what does she need him for then? And he does have a backstory that's spectacularly fucked up even for House of Atreus standards, or rather House of Tantalus standards, which makes it a bit regrettable that this is never used.
Refresher knowledge:
Tantalus: Son of Zeus. For a time, welcome at the Gods' table, clever man, got an attack of hubris, couldn't resist testing the Gods' knowledge by serving them a piece of flesh of his own son Pelops. The Gods realise what's going on, Pelops gets resurrected and Tantalus thrown into the underworld to suffer there his proverbial torment for the rest of eternity.
Pelops: Post resurrection has a relatively normal life, courts Hippodemia but wins her in a race via bribing the opposing charioteer whom he then ends up killing, thus continuing the currrrrrse. He and Hippodemia have a couple of kids, but the most important ones are Atreus and Thyestes.
Atreus and Thyestes (twins): Kill their half brother Chrysippus whom they consider rivals for the throne, get exiled and thus end up in Myceneae. Which they end up ruling, only they can't agree which one of them gets to be King. (Big surprise.) Atreus ends up winning but Thyestes retaliates by having an affair with Atreus' wife Aerope. Atreus finds out and escalates by killing two of this brother's kids (yes, Thyestes is also married) and serving them as dinner, Grandpa Tantalus style. Then he reveals what they are and has Thyestes banished for eating human flesh.
Thyestes goes bonkers, asks the Oracle of Delphi how he can avenge himself on his brother, and gets told he should have an incest kid with his remaining daughter Pelopia. He does just that. Poor Pelopia is horribly ashamed and exposes the incest baby (little Aegisthos) upon birth, but like all kids in Greek myths to whom this happened, he's first provided for by a kindly animal and then found by a shepherd and given to none other than King Atreus, who adopts him (not knowing who he is) and also has married Pelopia (believing her to be the daughter of someone else). From his previous wife, Aerope, he also has has the sons Agamemnon and Menelaos.
When Aegisthos has grown up, Atreus sends him after Thyestes to kill him. Pelopia kills herself. Thyestes reveals the truth as to who he is to Aegisthos who at once switches to team Thyestes and helps him kill Atreus instead. Thyestes and Aegisthos then rule Mycenea for some years while young Agamenon and Menelaos are in exile in Sparta with King Tyndareios, where they end up getting married to Clytemnestra and Helen respectively. Menelaos gets Sparta and uses the Spartan army to reconquer Mycenea and put Agamenon on the throne there. Thyestes dies in renewed exile, Aegisthos remains there until the Trojan War breaks out, and then goes to Mycenae to say hi to Clytemnestra.
Aeneid: here I haven't read an English translation, only German ones. For an alternate view on a key plot point, check out this post, she says cryptically. :)
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Date: 2023-11-26 08:06 pm (UTC)It's just more interesting if Clytemnestra sits in the driver's seat and does it for Iphigenia as well as for power!
Yes! It is! I applaud you for humanizing the women! :) (Look, the bar is low, but you passed it.)
Sophocles & Euripides: Clytemnestra is the main killer IS way more interesting, but you know, we're also very interested in Elektra whom you wasted after the big recognition scene with Orestes.
And yes to this as well, thank you for noticing her! :D
And then Electra has this brainwave that if they're going to die, they a) need to take out Helen as the cause of all this misery
Oh, Electra.
Interestingly, I'm only vaguely familiar with the Euripides version and rather more familiar with the other ones. I suspect my Greek Myth book I read in high school to have had its own favorite version(s)... but also of course I was getting retellings from various places which would emphasize one playwright or another. (Did you ever read Marion Zimmer Bradley's Firebrand? I mean, of course now we know MZB was awful, and I imagine if I went back I wouldn't like her stuff much, but her triumphantly unrepentant Clytemnestra definitely made an impact on teenage!me.)
he's always some cowardly sidekick, which because Clytemnestra has become such a strong character doesn't quite work for me because what does she need him for then?
Clytemnestra: Well... I mean, he's hot. Also will do what I say. Basically the exact opposite of Agamemnon, if you know what I mean.
Oh GOSH, I remembered that the House of Atreus was super messed up, though I only remembered Tantalus-Pelops and that Agamemnon and Menelaus eventually came from there. I... somehow had no idea, or had somehow forgotten... that Aegisthos was actually their half brother?! And had History with the family?? (It is also very possible that the retellings I read elided things like incest stories.)
Ha, I love fandom posts that mix fandom genre like that! SPN isn't my fandom but that was still very cool :)