You put your finger on the tension I feel constantly in the Odyssey. Most everything about it is epic in sound and rhythm. But when what is being actually said begins to register, we are in the world of comedy, much of it seemingly class comedy. (Proteus is an ‘under servant’ of Poseidon, Menelaus has privileges because through Helen, he’s Zeus’s son-in-law. The examples multiply.) In the humiliating positions men are put in—meaning mostly males—while quoting the language of the Iliad—there seems something awfully close to satire.
The other bit of verse which bubbled up into mind during the busy distractions of the day was Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Marvelous how one poem illuminates another. For the first time, I recognised the "friend of man" dug up, or resurrected, from among the dull tangled roots being stirred by the currents of memory and desire, somewhat cruelly according to Eliot:
"O keep the dog far hence, that's friend to men or with his nails he'll dig it up again!"
A rather dark and disturbing vision hurled into the world by Ezekiel, haunting poets and madmen down the centuries, including poor old Eliot.
Which is why we prefer to read Keats.
"Only the lover is entheos says Plato. Only the lover is 'full of god'", pipes in Roberto Calasso.
Your talent for accents really puts emphasis on the performance aspect of Homer's work. Unfortunately, I keep snapping back into epic mode, a sort of opera with stentorian heroes strutting about on a stage and Divas of ample beauty fleshing out golden goddesses; Achilles the Breaker of Men, Telemachus the hero, and, when the attendant announces the boys to Zues-Fed Menelaus with winged words, the way you delivered them, the expectations cheated aspect really came crashing through the wall!
Which lent a sort of bicameral mind effect to the performance in which on the one hand we are running a banquet of the gods narrative while on the other reel a soap opera of very human characters is playing out. Homer once again seems to plunge us back into a domesticity, like the previous one when Athena arrives with the spear and the huge wooden tables were being washed down by servants. Here once again, there is a bustle of servants, music, tumblers and I can almost smell the horse shit in the stables.
I kept thinking of the Duke in Shakespeare's Twelth NIght:
You put your finger on the tension I feel constantly in the Odyssey. Most everything about it is epic in sound and rhythm. But when what is being actually said begins to register, we are in the world of comedy, much of it seemingly class comedy. (Proteus is an ‘under servant’ of Poseidon, Menelaus has privileges because through Helen, he’s Zeus’s son-in-law. The examples multiply.) In the humiliating positions men are put in—meaning mostly males—while quoting the language of the Iliad—there seems something awfully close to satire.
The other bit of verse which bubbled up into mind during the busy distractions of the day was Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn:
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Marvelous how one poem illuminates another. For the first time, I recognised the "friend of man" dug up, or resurrected, from among the dull tangled roots being stirred by the currents of memory and desire, somewhat cruelly according to Eliot:
"O keep the dog far hence, that's friend to men or with his nails he'll dig it up again!"
A rather dark and disturbing vision hurled into the world by Ezekiel, haunting poets and madmen down the centuries, including poor old Eliot.
Which is why we prefer to read Keats.
"Only the lover is entheos says Plato. Only the lover is 'full of god'", pipes in Roberto Calasso.
Your talent for accents really puts emphasis on the performance aspect of Homer's work. Unfortunately, I keep snapping back into epic mode, a sort of opera with stentorian heroes strutting about on a stage and Divas of ample beauty fleshing out golden goddesses; Achilles the Breaker of Men, Telemachus the hero, and, when the attendant announces the boys to Zues-Fed Menelaus with winged words, the way you delivered them, the expectations cheated aspect really came crashing through the wall!
Which lent a sort of bicameral mind effect to the performance in which on the one hand we are running a banquet of the gods narrative while on the other reel a soap opera of very human characters is playing out. Homer once again seems to plunge us back into a domesticity, like the previous one when Athena arrives with the spear and the huge wooden tables were being washed down by servants. Here once again, there is a bustle of servants, music, tumblers and I can almost smell the horse shit in the stables.
I kept thinking of the Duke in Shakespeare's Twelth NIght:
"If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity 10
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe'er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical."