Revisioning Homer in the Modern World

1. Revisioning Homer in the Modern World

2. What in Homer appeals to contemporary authors? • The Iliad and The Odyssey are cornerstones of Western literary traditions • "The Iliad and The Odyssey have been read by such a vast diversity of men because they are unitary works of art and deal with universal experience with unsurpassed depth, breadth, and intensity." (Kenneth Rexroth) • The Iliad: the horrors of war and dangers of rage • The Odyssey: the longing for home and necessity for resocialization

4. A War among 3 Cultures • The Achaeans: The Greeks • The Trojans • The Olympian Gods

5. The Iliad • Reveals how making heroic valor a culture’s prime value is fundamentally destructive to social order and humane community • The first word in the poem is menin: rage • The rage of Achilles • Rage as the hero and subject of the poem • Rage that transforms Achilles into a killing machine and Hector into a corpse

6. Portrayed by Homer as an imperial court Meddle in the affairs of humanity Function as conceptual forces of nature and the psyche Aphrodite – lust Ares – war rage Athena – cunning strategy Olympians

7. The Trojans • Bronze Age, pre-Greek city state, conceive of themselves as members of the family of Troy • Although they disapprove of Paris, they unite in familial responsibility and assume his guilt in an act of collective family responsibility -- "our lot is best, to fight for our country” -- doomed David, Helen and Paris, 1788

8. The Trojan Family King Priam and Queen Hecuba Hector and Andromache Paris and Helen Cassandra Priam and Hecuba plead with Achilles for the body of Hector

9. Hector and Andromache • Hector is the greatest hero in and primary protector of Troy • With their son Astyanax, Hector and Andromache represent Troy’s future Giorgio de Chirico. Hector and Andromache. 1917. Oil on canvas. Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy

10. Hector and Andromacheby Douglas C. Eichenberg

12. Helen – born of a rape Rubens, Leda and the Swan, 1601-02

13. Leda and the Swan A sudden blow: The great wings beating still Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed By the dark webs, her nape caught in the bill, He holds her helpless breast upon his breast. How can those terrified vague fingers push The feathered glory from her loosening thighs? And how can body, laid in that white rush, But feel the strange heart beating where it lies? A shudder in the loins engenders there The broken wall, the burning roof and tower And Agamemnon dead. Being so caught up, So mastered by the brute blood of the air, Did she put on his knowledge with his power Before the indifferent beak could let her drop? -- William Butler Yeats Leonardo da Vinci, Leda

14. H. D. [Hilda Doolittle] HelenAll Greece hatesthe still eyes in the white face,the lustre as of oliveswhere she stands,and the white hands. All Greece revilesthe wan face when she smiles,hating it deeper stillwhen it grows wan and white,remembering past enchantmentsand past ills. Greece sees unmoved,God's daughter, born of love,the beauty of cool feetand slenderest knees,could love indeed the maid,only if she were laid,white ash amid funereal cypresses.

16. Is there another stronger than Love’s mother?is there one other, Discordia, Strife?Eris is sister of Ares,His unconquerable child is Eros;did Ares bequeath his arrowsalike to Eros, to Eris?O flame-tipped, O searing, O tearingburning, destructible furyof the challenge to the fairest;O flame-tipped, O searing, destroying arrow of Eros;O bliss of the end,Lethe, Death and forgetfulness,O bliss of the finalunquestioned nuptial kiss. H.D., Helen in Egypt, 1954 • H.D. picks up on the alternate story that Helen spent the Trojan War in Egypt and took Achilles as her lover -- or did she? • Tercets with echoes of terza rima • H.D.'s response to the horrors of WWI and WWII.

17. The Achaeans -- Greeks Historically piratical Barbaric chieftains whose prized values of nobility, pride, power, glamour, and strength thrive only among violence Each hero is out for himself -- failure provokes shame rather than assumption of responsibility -- leads to disorder and tragedy Allied together against Trojans only because of pact made with the wooing of Helen

18. AGAMEMNON

19. Clytemnestra Image by John Collier(1850-1934)

20. Clytemnestra’s Revenge

21. Orestes and Electra at Delphi

22. TheVengeance of Orestes

23. The Erinyes Orestes Pursued by the Furies by William Bouguereau (c.1862)

24. The Judgement of Athena: the substitution of trial by jury for vengeance in Athenian law

25. Aeschylus525-456 bceTHE ORESTAEIAAgamemnonThe Libation BearersThe Eumenides

26. Eugene O’NeillMourning Becomes Electra 1931 • Nobel Prize for Literature • Trilogy of plays based on The Oresteia • Reset into the American Civil War: A Union General returns to his home in New England • Filmed in 1947 by Dudley Nichols • Opera by Martin David Levy and Henry Butler performed by Metropolitan Opera in 1967.

27. Mourning Becomes Electra 1978 Made for PBS Television Directed by Nick Havinga

28. THE ODYSSEY

29. OdysseusKing of IthacaMajor StrategistConceived the Trojan HorseHusband to Penelope

30. A hero, drunk on hubris, cannot find his way home until he confronts his mortality and acknowledges the feminine.

31. J.M.W. Turner, Odysseus Deriding Polyphemus

32. The females of The Odyssey • Athena, goddess of wisdom, Odysseus’ protector • Calypso, sea nymph who captivated him for 7 years • Nausicaa, Phaecian princess, daughter of King Alcinous and Queen Arete • Circe, sorceress • The Sirens,fatal allure • Anticleia, Odysseus’ mother whom he visits in the Underworld • Eurycleia, Odysseus’ nurse • Penelope, Odysseus’ wife

34. “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing” My mother was raped by a holy swan.You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands.There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. “Circe: Mud Poems” One day you simply appeared in your stupid boat, your killer’s hand, your disjointed body, jagged as a shipwreck, skinny-ribbed, blue-eyed, scorched, thirsty, the usual, pretending to be – what? a survivor? 1974 Atwood’s earlier interest in Homer

35. The Penelopiad (2005) • “Now that I’m dead, I know everything” • “Don’t follow my example!” • Is she a reliable narrator? Penelope brooding over her loom by Max Klinger. 1895 Colour etching and aquatint. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

36. The Return of Odysseus, 1913 by William Roberts (1895 - 1980)Tate Gallery

37. The Fate of Penelope’s 12 maids • Voices act as a chorus to punctuate Penelope’s narration • Variety of formats • nursery rhyme • popular song • sea shanty • ballad • drama • lecture • trial • love song Telemachos executes the maidservants, 1973, Dame Elizabeth Frink (1930 - 1993), Tate Gallery

38. we are the maids the ones you killed the ones you failed we danced in air our bare feet twitched it was not fair with every goddess, queen and bitch from there to here you scratched your itch we did much less than what you did you judged us bad …. we danced on air the ones you failed the ones you killed

40. James Joyce, Ulysses, 1922 • Chronicles the passage through Dublin of its main character, Leopold Bloom, on a single day: June 16, 1904 • Plot parallels chapter-by-chapter, The Odyssey • Perhaps THE masterpiece of Modernist fiction Bloom by Joyce

41. Dublin on the Liffey River, home to

42. James Joyce

44. 24 poetic rhapsodies 33,333 17-syllable verses Odysseus’s adventures after he becomes bored with life in Ithaka Adventures take him from Sparta to Crete to Egypt through Africa and finally to Antartica where he dies. 1958 review from TIME magazine Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, 1938

45. Nikos Kazantzakis, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, 1938 I'm not pure, I'm not strong, I cannot love, I'm afraid! I'm choked with mud and shame, I fight but fight in vain with cries and gaudy wings, with voyages and wiles to choke that quivering mouth within me that cries 'Help!' A thin, thin crust of laughter, mockery, voices, tears, a lying false façade—all this is called Odysseus!"

47. Cold Mountain (1997)The last days of the Civil War The Union – emerging industrialists The Confederacy – plantation slave-holders Scots descendants – independent farmers

48. Cold Mountain: the film(1997)adapted and directed by Anthony Minghella. Starred Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger

49. Joel and Ethan Coen

50. O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) George Clooney as Ulysses Everett McGill, Tim Blake Nelson as Delmar O'Donnel, and John Turturro as Pete in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?.