Dear friends,
Homeric poetry comes from a time when the earth’s pole pointed toward the Great Bear (Iliad XVIII.485-9, Odyssey 5.271-5). Modern science, and classical and Homeric scholarship, know nothing whatsoever about this time—the configuration of the earth, its continents, landscapes and seas, its peoples, even the colour of its skins and skies—only some compositions in language, that survived the thing it took to shift the axes of our world, compositions which persist and thrive to such an extent that we today may be sure that the tales told in them were, at least in part, about truly human beings. I have spent my life figuring out how to sound out authentically the word-music of these stories, composed in a dead language in a since reoriented world; and I hope my performance of Homer’s Odyssey will inspire others to become more familiar with this language, to the point where they can take their own impression of its precious surviving artefacts, and relive the human story of this world that was ancient to the ancients. There is another side of any world! Aethiopians are rumoured to live there, together with Cyclopses and bossy nymphs. The Odyssey, the world’s first and deepest comedy, brings you home.
Free for all are the recordings in Greek available as a podcast with the accompanying texts; by subscription (although free initially) will be my own impression in a linear English translation, papers, poems and essays, together with podcasts for paid subscribers of occasional commentary and readings in English.
Χαῖρε
David
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