1 post tagged “homer”

Two summers ago, I ran a classics reading circle here in town. We started in traditional fashion: with Homer.

Over the course of two months, I assigned a group of about eight readers, chunks of four chapters, about one hundred pages a week, of The Iliad as translated my Robert Fagles, and then its companion, The Odyssey. I was surprised how many of the participants had never read Homer before. I was expecting most had read a little in high school, but very few had actually taken the time to enjoy him. The most common excuse for coming was that they had reached an age where they realized that they had never read it before and that it was time to do so. This median age was probably in the mid forties. Well, better late than never. And Homer's not going anywhere fast. But more on that later.

Before I started this endeavor, I had decided that I was not going to teach Homer. I didn't want to teach Homer because, well, it's Homer! And this was a laid back reading group, not a bunch of grad students. I served as a guide, a repository for the readers. I would provide mythological background, historical context, significant literary tropes, vehicles, and devices when necessary, and even a little exegesis where appropriate, but this was their group. I wanted Homer to be their own.

And it became so. The discussions were wonderful. Very quickly, the group related what they found to their world to the things they read in the poems. And that's one of the beautiful things about Homer, I think. Love, hate, life, war, death, religion, virtue, vice. Some might say they are eternal themes, but I will not climb the slippery slope of Platonic forms now. The stories are told and retold. The trouble is that many people experience the retellings and never take the time or have the chance to experience the sources. Yes, Joyce's Ulysses is tremendous. But how less intimidating could it be if one had The Odyssey in the back of one's mind - even a cursory knowledge of it!

Gladiator did much for classicists. Brutal and stoic, Russell Crowe, aided by mindblowing computer graphics. While Harryhausen's special effects were great for their time and every SFX techie is indebted to him, stop action just doesn't cut it anymore. The film helped fill Latin classes and get kids and adults alike turned on to the ancient Mediterranean. This also meant that flops like Alexander annoyed us, too. But then there's Troy. Notice, it's "Troy", not "Iliad" and for good reason. The gods are absent, for one. And that's significant, because we learn in the first lines of the poem about the "Rage of Achilles, son of Peleus" and his fate to die. And we learn about how Zeus is pretty much the one who runs the show. All of this is absent in the film. And why? And that is why Homer is as important today as he was three thousand years ago. We reinvent ourselves and we rethink and reuse the past. Whether or not we know it, we stand on the shoulders of these giants. We can hate Homer. We can hate the dead white males that shaped our world, but we'd better have a good explanation as to why we do. This is why classics is so important.

When most people think "classics", they think Western Canon classics like, perhaps, Wuthering Heights or Moby Dick. This only goes to demonstrate the slow, but definite decline of classical civilization in the consciousness of the American public. "Classics" used to be the study of dead white Greek and Roman men. Well, it still is, to a great degree, but it's more careful in its assumptions and conclusions. Feminism and Critical Theory as well as Queer Theory and Poststructuralism and a number of different approaches have shaped the interpretation of classics bringing on a fresh approach to old ideas. Strangely enough, Marxism has brought a treasure trove of new thinking into the field. On the other hand, in these uncertain days, many social conservatives cling to the ancient virtues and bemoan the vices that our culture eschew and embrace. Are we so different from the ancients? Well, history does have a tendency to repeat itself. Notions of empire and immigration, law and anarchy, god and godlessness. They're all there. It's up to us to be honest with ourselves that we don't really know much about them. In that way, we're very much like the ancient Greeks and Romans now, aren't we?