Resurrecting Homer
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 on the sea, and how he worked
to save his life and bring his men back home.
Book 1, The Odyssey by Homer
Translated by Emily Wilson
My love affair with ancient Rome and Greece started in childhood reading stories like Asterix, The Eagle of The Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff and Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy and peaked with three wonderful years studying Classics before the demands of adulthood rooted me in the present. But last year, I spent a couple of very happy months reading some modern retellings of ancient Greek stories and fell in love with the period all over again.
I was slightly prompted by my youngest who’d taken to aggressively speed testing me on my, quite frankly very out-of-date, knowledge of myths and legends whilst in the bath. ‘Yes, I can tell you who Pegasus’ mother was actually,’ I’d say and sneak out to the bookshelves to look it up. I’m pretty sure this was retaliation for my smug and unwanted commentary on their spelling lists. ‘That’s from the Latin/Greek, you know,’ I would tell them and both children would dramatically roll their eyes.
Anyway, the first one I read was the wonderful Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie. This is a searing reimagining of Sophocles’ play, Antigone, in a contemporary British Muslim setting. Shamsie’s sharp eye transfers perfectly the struggle between religious duty and the law of the land to contemporary Britain and it couldn’t be more relevant. I found Isma and Aneeka’s story so powerful that towards the end of the book I was desperately wondering how the story would end, having completely forgotten that I already knew. I should confess that I haven’t read Sophocles’ play, partly because I’d read the 1994 version by Jean Anouilh at school and disliked Antigone intensely. His is a tale of lone rebellion against the state in the context of anti-fascist French resistance and I found his Antigone spoilt and intractable. In many ways, I suspect that teenage me was not well equipped for tragedy but Shamsie’s Aneeka is, whilst equally single minded and stubborn, somehow more human.
Then I picked up was The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. The story assumes a romantic relationship between Achilles and Patroclus and begins before the well-known events of the Iliad. I enjoyed this thoroughly, a fast, lyrical read that can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge of Homer’s Iliad or the period. The madness of Achilles’s grief gains greater nuance in this context.
When I heard about Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey I was intrigued. Having laboured to translate Homer at university with the help of texts by various male translators, I was intrigued to read this one. Wilson’s translation is vibrant, fresh and as much joy to read as the original must have been to hear. The Introduction and Translator’s Note are also fully worth reading on their own. ‘There is a stranger outside your house… Invite him inside… It may not be as you expect.’
Penelope, Odysseus’ wife, had always lacked depth and charm for me. Clever but trapped, she spent twenty years waiting for him to return, famously weaving by day a shroud for Laertes that she must finish before she can marry again and unpicking it again by night so that it is never completed. Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad tells the story from the perspective of Penelope and her maids. Penelope feels more human but she is sharp, cynical, careless of her maids and casts doubt over her husband’s heroics. She is very real in Atwood’s tale but I found her no more likeable.
Pat Barker’s, The Silence of the Girls, is wonderful. This is a biting retelling of The Iliad from the point of view of the slave girl Briseis. It felt angry and raw and terrifyingly accurate. It's not that the original tells her story poorly but that, as a woman and a slave, her story wasn't considered worth telling at all. Pat Barker brings Briseis centre stage in the most stunning way.
I loved Circe by Madeline Miller even more than The Song of Achilles. Circe has been brought to life as a complex, flawed woman who overcomes her father’s banishment to a remote island with resilience and patience to become a powerful sorceress. Miller’s Circe is fully fleshed embodiment of personal strength and survival and knocks the cautionary tale of Homer’s Circe into the bin.
There are too many more to mention but I think I now have a new resolution to revisit the themes I loved as a child more often.
Translator’s Note The Odyssey