Our contemporary world was made by imperialism in various forms succeeding one another and layer upon layer through the ages. I read these lines and wondered how soon the inevitable invaders would arrive.
“Athena went to the Phaeacians. This people used to live in Hyperia, a land of dancing. But their mighty neighbors, the Cyclopes, kept looting them, and they could not hold out. Their king, Nausithous, brought them to Scheria, a distant place, and built a wall around the town, and homes, and temples to the gods, and plots of land.”
“Do you believe he is an enemy? No living person ever born would come to our Phaeacia with a hostile mind, since we are much beloved by the gods. Our island is remote, washed round by sea; we have no human contact.”
Being isolated without fear of a hostile enemy because you are loved by the gods is precisely the kind of deathly stasis that a "complicated man" who wrestles with the gods could not stand.
it is not human because of what Hegel called our amphibian nature: we have knowledge/ cunning but not enough & weak instincts... so we can only dream of a place like that. I bet contemporary readers were aware of this wishful thinking.
This is one of my favorite parts of The Odyssey, because I like Nausicaa so much. I have a pretty clear visual image of her, based on a friend who was also a confident and beautiful young woman.
The quoted passage about Odysseus being like a mountain lion attacking sheep is a little unnerving though. You don't want him to attack Nausicaa and the other girls! Homer makes it a bit ambiguous: what kind of "need" is propelling Odysseus? You hope it's just that he's tired, cold, and hungry for some food and hospitality. Luckily that turns out to be the case, in this instance.
But we also know Odysseus to be a pretty ruthless pirate and kidnapper of women. He can be polite when he needs to be, but he won't be so polite when he arrives as a "stranger" in Ithaca.
A friend described the massacre in Ithaca as being "like a mass shooting." That seems fair.
I keep thinking about all these slave girls. They seem to be Nausicaa's "friends" in a way, but how can they be, really? I read somewhere recently that one of the worst things about slavery is that it takes away a person's ability to be a friend: a friend can make promises and keep them, but a slave can't, because she has no control over her life or her time.
My book club recently read "James," by Percival Everett. It's told from the point of view of Jim in "Huckleberry Finn." The question of the friendship between Jim and Huck in Twain's novel is constantly renegotiated and shifting. In "James," James has a kind of protective and parental attitude toward Huck, but he can't show it. He pretends to be dumb around Huck and speaks in a kind of slave-like language that is not really how he thinks.
Does that definition of slavery come from The Dawn of Everything? I remember reading it there, and the authors pointed out, too, that the English word "free" is derived from the root "friend."
I too recently read James, truly a read I rank as a top read the year and more. That issue of friendship or just of caring, is a core one, not just withe Huck but with other slaves. These 'girls' may be called 'friends', but there are always indicators of their slave status.
I recently read John Keene's story "Rivers" from his excellent 2015 collection "Counternarratives." Its retelling of the Jim POV predates the Everitt version by ten years. Reading it reminds me that enslavement in any form is violence, and that violence (in any form) always leads to more violence.
Thanks for mentioning Counternarratives. I’d never heard of it (or the author) but I looked it up online and will see if they have it at my local indie bookstore. Thanks for the tip. Looks interesting.
Struck by many instances of delightful translation in this section: "which they say / is where the gods will have their home forever" (40-41)--"they," the ur-voice, even more ancient than the gods! I suppose I'm not mature enough to not have giggled at "manly private parts" (129). And I'll admit to being moved by Odysseus's performance (?) of supplication: "I am in awe of you, afraid to touch / your knees" (168-169). Also, Athena having "poured attractiveness across" (235) Odysseus's body--just a wonderful visual; Odysseus truly Athena's canvas, clay, metal.
I read that section about Mount Olympus and immediately thought it was something from the oral tradition of the poem, a little set piece the bard could insert while coming up with the next part of the tale.
But the Olympus description is also fitting for Odysseus’ desire to reach home. For the Gods on Olympus, “home forever” is a necessary element of "happiness forevermore"…
Yes: there seem to be different levels and waves of certainty and knowledge among the gods. At times, they are guessing at something, or think something might be true or happen, but then, as you point out, at other times an "ur-voice" pokes its head up and says "this is true". This is one of the perspectives on the poem I am finding so intriguiing, the intertwined multi-layered interdependent living membrane of evolving "reality"
I’m going to out myself as a very frivolous, superficial reader who reads for plot first and foremost. A Princess and Her Laundry? What fun! Today’s reading was like a delightful Regency romp. Was Homer the Georgette Heyer of the Ancient World?
I read for plot also. But not only is there plot in this poem, but the language is fabulous and the direction the plot takes is constantly surprising. We go from a survival thriller to the women going to do laundry to Odysseus cleverly laying on the B.S. so he doesn't scare the women and can get clean and dressed.
I enjoyed the light, humorous tone today. The dream about a messy room, the ever-present dirty laundry, “slaves with tidy hair”, Nausicaa asking Dear Daddy for “the wagon with the big smooth wheels” , and Odysseus’s knee fetish. Not truly a fetish, I know, but what significance did kneeling-touching have back then? He may get to embrace Nausicaa’s mother’s knees “to supplicate” in tomorrow’s reading. Would supplication have been his intent with Nausicaa?
I think there was a custom in the ancient world that if you grasped somebody's knees, it meant you were begging for their help. I think it happens in The Iliad, when King Priam comes to beg Achilles for HEctor's body.
Yes! There’s a popular epithet used in Roman epic (probably in Greek too) when goddesses or beautiful young women wear short dresses—nuda genu (nude w/ respect to their knees) aka short skirts
Impressions from today's section: Athena is doing a LOT of work. I came to The Odyssey late in life, after having seen and read Miyazaki's Nausicaa comic and film of that name. I find Miyazaki's heroine perfectly reflects Homer's capable young princess, so those images are in my head as I read this section.
Speaking of images, a salt-crusted and shaggy naked man rising up from the leaves would be terrifying! But I have to laugh at how he covers himself with a branch, in a way foreshadowing Adam and Eve's fall, plus beginning a comic image of a naked dude covering himself with a leaf, one that seems ubiquitous in my head, but somehow resists finding a representative comic image. There is palpable menace in his contrast to the young women. Does Odysseus only dally with goddesses, not humans?
I laughed out loud a few times through this book, especially from the perspective of the girls, running around in terror at the sight of the salty naked guy, and then you can almost hear their "ooohs" and "ahhhs" when he transforms to god-like Odysseus!
Wow - many thanks for this little gem. The Brickworld 2014/virtuaLUG video, walking through the Lego adaptation is just great. Their Odyssey got first prize!
Nice legos! (Which feels like a word that belongs in this book, right?) I liked the Trojan horse. Felt like that was gilded over so quickly, considering the significance (I forget who but someone said he and Odysseus had been in the horse togerher).
I am increasingly interested in the counterpoint dance of (and resonances between) Athena, who is always stage managing complex situations, and Odysseus, the complicated man who works different perspectives and possible stories
the hero is rescued by an innocent maiden. This also reminds of the baby Moses being discovered by the Pharoah's daughter in the reeds...it is an interesting inversion of the maiden in distress trope...
I wonder why it’s described, twice, how Odysseus will speak
‘use charming words’ and ‘His words were calculated flattery’.
Is it to show his artfulness? Is it because he speaks to a young woman? Quite often it’s the women who must use careful words in front of men for their protection.
When Nausicaa does speak, she sounds wonderfully self-assured, and grounded, thinking ahead of what would happen at the wall gates if O were to traipse in with her.
Nausicaa is very poised and confident. I was struck by how she was able to direct Odysseus. And she knows her parents…she’ll ask a favor of Daddy, but she directs Odysseus to approach her mother.
I thought it an interesting detail, when confident young Nausicaa is providing her very detailed instructions to Odysseus regarding their arrival to town, when she delivers what is almost a comic aside beginning at line 6.273. It seems self-conscious, and maybe a little petulant, but gives a brief and very clear impression of the character of her fellow Phaeacians at the same time.
"The people in the town are proud; I worry / that they may speak against me. Someone rude / may say, 'Who is that big strong man with her? / Where did she find that stranger? Will he be / her husband? She has got him from a ship, /" etc.
“Just as a mountain lion trusts its strength." This is such a great read of the simile. Odysseus comes across as predator and manipulator - a bully or charmer when needed. "His words were calculated flattery." (147)
Odysseus' “chance” encounter with the female “maidens” who are out doing domestic tasks has lots of parallels with Biblical counterpoints.
Odysseus must wake up, see the pretty girl, (doing laundry by the Ocean) and have an escort to the town of the Phaeacians. The princess threw the ball towards a slave girl, who missed the catch. It fell down in an eddy; the girls all started screaming, very loudly. Odysseus woke up, and thought things over.
(pp. 200-201).
There are so many biblical parallels. Issac’s servant spotting Rebecca, Jacob chancing upon Rachel, and Moses seeing Zipporah. All of these occurred at well, while Odysseus is at the ocean. And all of the veneer of providence, Odysseus' directly because we hear Athena speak. There is also the parallel of a world where men, their power, their sexuality are in charge. But the women are not passive. Nausicaa, as others have pointed out, is Odysseus equal. And the the Bible matriarchs also seize control when needed. But the sense of danger is always there.
When I was reading Proust with a group, I put together a "Music for Reading Proust" list on Spotify. I haven't done similar for The Odyssey, but I did find this:
The War and Peace read-along was the highlight of my Covid reading. It was my first read-along and I got completely caught up in it. I’ve done several read-alongs since and have always enjoyed them.
I found it too late. I had set up a Lockdown read of Crime and punishment among fiends and others. We loved it too. Then I found APS and have been stalking then ever since.
Yes! Likewise, I have always felt that Anna’s raging at Vronsky before she went to the train station at the end was inspired by Dido’s anguished tirade at Aeneas as he left her for his destiny of founding Rome.
It's interesting that these queens are spinners and weavers, doing the work that female slaves were captured for. Purple was associated with wealth and status for centuries. Maybe the purple wool was dyed with tyrian purple, a very expensive dye that comes from a special snail. I'm guessing that queens and princesses did "luxury" fiber work, kind of like the elaborate embroidery that upper-class ladies used to do in Europe.
Of course, this is the author('s)(s') (a male? many males?) idea of what queens do or perhaps it is meant to be purely symbolic ... It does seem unlikely they'd do the very same task as their slaves, even if their materials were superior.
Perhaps the queens didn't do any spinning or weaving at all, but were off enjoying whatever activities they preferred! If this has been written by a woman/women, I wonder what role the queens might have? :)
A few things I like in this Book Nausicaa's clothes "lying there in dirty heaps". Of course they are. Odysseus's attempt to "cover his manly parts" with a leafy branch - a bit scratchy I would think.
Athena pouring" attractiveness across his head and shoulders" and making his "handsomeness dazzling". We all need a little help! And Nausicaa's advice to "suplicate" to her Mother. Getting on with mum has alway been important it seems.
Our contemporary world was made by imperialism in various forms succeeding one another and layer upon layer through the ages. I read these lines and wondered how soon the inevitable invaders would arrive.
“Athena went to the Phaeacians. This people used to live in Hyperia, a land of dancing. But their mighty neighbors, the Cyclopes, kept looting them, and they could not hold out. Their king, Nausithous, brought them to Scheria, a distant place, and built a wall around the town, and homes, and temples to the gods, and plots of land.”
“Do you believe he is an enemy? No living person ever born would come to our Phaeacia with a hostile mind, since we are much beloved by the gods. Our island is remote, washed round by sea; we have no human contact.”
I wish I lived on that island.
Being isolated without fear of a hostile enemy because you are loved by the gods is precisely the kind of deathly stasis that a "complicated man" who wrestles with the gods could not stand.
it is not human because of what Hegel called our amphibian nature: we have knowledge/ cunning but not enough & weak instincts... so we can only dream of a place like that. I bet contemporary readers were aware of this wishful thinking.
This is one of my favorite parts of The Odyssey, because I like Nausicaa so much. I have a pretty clear visual image of her, based on a friend who was also a confident and beautiful young woman.
The quoted passage about Odysseus being like a mountain lion attacking sheep is a little unnerving though. You don't want him to attack Nausicaa and the other girls! Homer makes it a bit ambiguous: what kind of "need" is propelling Odysseus? You hope it's just that he's tired, cold, and hungry for some food and hospitality. Luckily that turns out to be the case, in this instance.
But we also know Odysseus to be a pretty ruthless pirate and kidnapper of women. He can be polite when he needs to be, but he won't be so polite when he arrives as a "stranger" in Ithaca.
A friend described the massacre in Ithaca as being "like a mass shooting." That seems fair.
I keep thinking about all these slave girls. They seem to be Nausicaa's "friends" in a way, but how can they be, really? I read somewhere recently that one of the worst things about slavery is that it takes away a person's ability to be a friend: a friend can make promises and keep them, but a slave can't, because she has no control over her life or her time.
My book club recently read "James," by Percival Everett. It's told from the point of view of Jim in "Huckleberry Finn." The question of the friendship between Jim and Huck in Twain's novel is constantly renegotiated and shifting. In "James," James has a kind of protective and parental attitude toward Huck, but he can't show it. He pretends to be dumb around Huck and speaks in a kind of slave-like language that is not really how he thinks.
Does that definition of slavery come from The Dawn of Everything? I remember reading it there, and the authors pointed out, too, that the English word "free" is derived from the root "friend."
I too recently read James, truly a read I rank as a top read the year and more. That issue of friendship or just of caring, is a core one, not just withe Huck but with other slaves. These 'girls' may be called 'friends', but there are always indicators of their slave status.
I recently read John Keene's story "Rivers" from his excellent 2015 collection "Counternarratives." Its retelling of the Jim POV predates the Everitt version by ten years. Reading it reminds me that enslavement in any form is violence, and that violence (in any form) always leads to more violence.
Thanks for mentioning Counternarratives. I’d never heard of it (or the author) but I looked it up online and will see if they have it at my local indie bookstore. Thanks for the tip. Looks interesting.
Struck by many instances of delightful translation in this section: "which they say / is where the gods will have their home forever" (40-41)--"they," the ur-voice, even more ancient than the gods! I suppose I'm not mature enough to not have giggled at "manly private parts" (129). And I'll admit to being moved by Odysseus's performance (?) of supplication: "I am in awe of you, afraid to touch / your knees" (168-169). Also, Athena having "poured attractiveness across" (235) Odysseus's body--just a wonderful visual; Odysseus truly Athena's canvas, clay, metal.
I read that section about Mount Olympus and immediately thought it was something from the oral tradition of the poem, a little set piece the bard could insert while coming up with the next part of the tale.
But the Olympus description is also fitting for Odysseus’ desire to reach home. For the Gods on Olympus, “home forever” is a necessary element of "happiness forevermore"…
Thanks. That’s an excellent point.
Yes: there seem to be different levels and waves of certainty and knowledge among the gods. At times, they are guessing at something, or think something might be true or happen, but then, as you point out, at other times an "ur-voice" pokes its head up and says "this is true". This is one of the perspectives on the poem I am finding so intriguiing, the intertwined multi-layered interdependent living membrane of evolving "reality"
I wish the gods would sometimes pour attractiveness over me.
I’m still waiting. 😉
I’m going to out myself as a very frivolous, superficial reader who reads for plot first and foremost. A Princess and Her Laundry? What fun! Today’s reading was like a delightful Regency romp. Was Homer the Georgette Heyer of the Ancient World?
I like the idea of only doing laundry once in a very long while, as Nausicaa seems to do. And making it a party.
I read for plot also. But not only is there plot in this poem, but the language is fabulous and the direction the plot takes is constantly surprising. We go from a survival thriller to the women going to do laundry to Odysseus cleverly laying on the B.S. so he doesn't scare the women and can get clean and dressed.
He’s very good at flattery.
I enjoyed the light, humorous tone today. The dream about a messy room, the ever-present dirty laundry, “slaves with tidy hair”, Nausicaa asking Dear Daddy for “the wagon with the big smooth wheels” , and Odysseus’s knee fetish. Not truly a fetish, I know, but what significance did kneeling-touching have back then? He may get to embrace Nausicaa’s mother’s knees “to supplicate” in tomorrow’s reading. Would supplication have been his intent with Nausicaa?
It puts the phrase 'taking the knee' into a whole new dimension!
I think there was a custom in the ancient world that if you grasped somebody's knees, it meant you were begging for their help. I think it happens in The Iliad, when King Priam comes to beg Achilles for HEctor's body.
Yes! There’s a popular epithet used in Roman epic (probably in Greek too) when goddesses or beautiful young women wear short dresses—nuda genu (nude w/ respect to their knees) aka short skirts
https://blogs.dickinson.edu/homer/tag/priam/
There's a picture here of Priam grasping the knees of Achilles.
Thanks. That’s striking.
The knees! Yeah I understand the cultural part but personally I do not want some stranger grabbing my knees. Go away! lol!
Impressions from today's section: Athena is doing a LOT of work. I came to The Odyssey late in life, after having seen and read Miyazaki's Nausicaa comic and film of that name. I find Miyazaki's heroine perfectly reflects Homer's capable young princess, so those images are in my head as I read this section.
Speaking of images, a salt-crusted and shaggy naked man rising up from the leaves would be terrifying! But I have to laugh at how he covers himself with a branch, in a way foreshadowing Adam and Eve's fall, plus beginning a comic image of a naked dude covering himself with a leaf, one that seems ubiquitous in my head, but somehow resists finding a representative comic image. There is palpable menace in his contrast to the young women. Does Odysseus only dally with goddesses, not humans?
Relevant to our interests, I'm reading a collection of poems by Maxine Kumin, and read Pantoum, With Swan this morning: https://www.poemist.com/maxine-kumin/pantoum-with-swan and then found this page, in which farther down she talks about creating it: https://arlindo-correia.com/maxine_kumin.html
I laughed out loud a few times through this book, especially from the perspective of the girls, running around in terror at the sight of the salty naked guy, and then you can almost hear their "ooohs" and "ahhhs" when he transforms to god-like Odysseus!
I would love to see a Simpsons adaptation of this scene!
Ten years ago there was a Lego adaptation.of The Odyssey: https://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/31148
Wow - many thanks for this little gem. The Brickworld 2014/virtuaLUG video, walking through the Lego adaptation is just great. Their Odyssey got first prize!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvsYEniseGk&list=PLdoWYTc3JobE2wyn7pcZhy9NLvxwsoaf7&index=2
The Cyclops is great!
Nice legos! (Which feels like a word that belongs in this book, right?) I liked the Trojan horse. Felt like that was gilded over so quickly, considering the significance (I forget who but someone said he and Odysseus had been in the horse togerher).
There's also Lego Karl Ove! https://www.instagram.com/legokarlove/
LOL.
Yes please!
That episode would have to be written by Anne Washburn, of Mr. Burns fame
I am increasingly interested in the counterpoint dance of (and resonances between) Athena, who is always stage managing complex situations, and Odysseus, the complicated man who works different perspectives and possible stories
Pantoums are amazing… a tour de force.
I really liked reading about Kumon's construction of the poem, and her surprise when she pulled it off by pairing the last and first line.
the hero is rescued by an innocent maiden. This also reminds of the baby Moses being discovered by the Pharoah's daughter in the reeds...it is an interesting inversion of the maiden in distress trope...
I wonder why it’s described, twice, how Odysseus will speak
‘use charming words’ and ‘His words were calculated flattery’.
Is it to show his artfulness? Is it because he speaks to a young woman? Quite often it’s the women who must use careful words in front of men for their protection.
When Nausicaa does speak, she sounds wonderfully self-assured, and grounded, thinking ahead of what would happen at the wall gates if O were to traipse in with her.
Nausicaa is very poised and confident. I was struck by how she was able to direct Odysseus. And she knows her parents…she’ll ask a favor of Daddy, but she directs Odysseus to approach her mother.
And it doesn’t say here that Athena told her how to act towards Odysseus… she just knows.
I thought it an interesting detail, when confident young Nausicaa is providing her very detailed instructions to Odysseus regarding their arrival to town, when she delivers what is almost a comic aside beginning at line 6.273. It seems self-conscious, and maybe a little petulant, but gives a brief and very clear impression of the character of her fellow Phaeacians at the same time.
"The people in the town are proud; I worry / that they may speak against me. Someone rude / may say, 'Who is that big strong man with her? / Where did she find that stranger? Will he be / her husband? She has got him from a ship, /" etc.
“Just as a mountain lion trusts its strength." This is such a great read of the simile. Odysseus comes across as predator and manipulator - a bully or charmer when needed. "His words were calculated flattery." (147)
Odysseus' “chance” encounter with the female “maidens” who are out doing domestic tasks has lots of parallels with Biblical counterpoints.
Odysseus must wake up, see the pretty girl, (doing laundry by the Ocean) and have an escort to the town of the Phaeacians. The princess threw the ball towards a slave girl, who missed the catch. It fell down in an eddy; the girls all started screaming, very loudly. Odysseus woke up, and thought things over.
(pp. 200-201).
There are so many biblical parallels. Issac’s servant spotting Rebecca, Jacob chancing upon Rachel, and Moses seeing Zipporah. All of these occurred at well, while Odysseus is at the ocean. And all of the veneer of providence, Odysseus' directly because we hear Athena speak. There is also the parallel of a world where men, their power, their sexuality are in charge. But the women are not passive. Nausicaa, as others have pointed out, is Odysseus equal. And the the Bible matriarchs also seize control when needed. But the sense of danger is always there.
When I was reading Proust with a group, I put together a "Music for Reading Proust" list on Spotify. I haven't done similar for The Odyssey, but I did find this:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7xNAWPe9UVodGtBpW2UlgB
Nice, might try and have this on in the background tomorrow as I'm reading the next section.
Thanks for that.
many thanks - so atmospheric. Completely different to the music of 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou?' which has its own genius!
I love thinking of Odysseus singing “I am a man of constant sorrow.”
This looks good!
Now we know where Leo drew inspiration when he let Andrei meet Natasha and her girlhood friends on that beautiful spring day...
Yet another book that I haven't read - although I did watch the ten-part BBC offering.
A Public Space did an 85-day read-along led by Yiyun Li; it was so popular it was done twice. Perhaps Yiyun Li can be persuaded to do it again.
That would be great. This is my first ever group-read experience. I'm enjoying it immensely
The War and Peace read-along was the highlight of my Covid reading. It was my first read-along and I got completely caught up in it. I’ve done several read-alongs since and have always enjoyed them.
I found it too late. I had set up a Lockdown read of Crime and punishment among fiends and others. We loved it too. Then I found APS and have been stalking then ever since.
It was my entry too
APS and YL read W&P the following year as well (which is when I joined). I would read it again with them!
me too
Yes! Likewise, I have always felt that Anna’s raging at Vronsky before she went to the train station at the end was inspired by Dido’s anguished tirade at Aeneas as he left her for his destiny of founding Rome.
Aeneas was pious. Vronsky was just a jerk. Though maybe Aeneas was a jerk too.
He was 100% a jerk too haha
"I marvel at how Wilson has choreographed the word order across these lines." Great line. Marvel-ous in itself.
Another queen....another skein of purple wool!
It's interesting that these queens are spinners and weavers, doing the work that female slaves were captured for. Purple was associated with wealth and status for centuries. Maybe the purple wool was dyed with tyrian purple, a very expensive dye that comes from a special snail. I'm guessing that queens and princesses did "luxury" fiber work, kind of like the elaborate embroidery that upper-class ladies used to do in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple
I wondered about the purple. that seem so explain it and N's boast of the colour she is weaving.
There are some good YouTube videos I show my students about harvesting the purple from snails!
Of course, this is the author('s)(s') (a male? many males?) idea of what queens do or perhaps it is meant to be purely symbolic ... It does seem unlikely they'd do the very same task as their slaves, even if their materials were superior.
Perhaps the queens didn't do any spinning or weaving at all, but were off enjoying whatever activities they preferred! If this has been written by a woman/women, I wonder what role the queens might have? :)
A few things I like in this Book Nausicaa's clothes "lying there in dirty heaps". Of course they are. Odysseus's attempt to "cover his manly parts" with a leafy branch - a bit scratchy I would think.
Athena pouring" attractiveness across his head and shoulders" and making his "handsomeness dazzling". We all need a little help! And Nausicaa's advice to "suplicate" to her Mother. Getting on with mum has alway been important it seems.
Yes, and then Athena echoes Nausicaa's advice!
She does