In
the spring of last year, during one of its brief and too-soon
summer-like glimpses, I was acquired by Homer; for it is said you
don't acquire Homer, Homer acquires you. And this, without meaning to
rhyme, I found to be true.
I
was gradually seduced, pulled towards these ancient tales and epic
poems, first by Margaret Atwood's telling of Penelope, and then
entirely by Adam Nicolson's personal musing, The
Mighty Dead, the
title taken from a line of Keats' poem
Endymion.
And though Keats is a personal favourite, I know more about his love
affair than his poetry, just as I've mostly been aware of Homer
through Penelope, the faithful wife of Odysseus, and Adam Nicolson
because of Sissinghurst and his connection to Vita Sackville-West and
Harold Nicolson, so you might say there was more than one magnet
involved. Or that there were many iron filings which in attaching
themselves to my person had weakened my, partially conscious,
resistance, and thus caused the mind's compass to oscillate and alter
its course.
I'm
not sure which analogy is more compelling, nor which Homer would be:
the greater magnet over all other magnets or one of the many iron
filings, perhaps not ultimately pulling me towards Homer but some
other destination: somewhere equally unknown but aware of that I'd
tried to evade.
The
attraction, however, was more subtle than instant; it evolved, book
by book, as knowledge was gleaned - new, retold or revived - grain
by grain until such a time when conditions were favourable for Homer
to call, sweetly and unmistakably, in the manner of a Siren's song,
and when I, lacking Odysseus's foresight, had left myself
unprotected: my eyes and ears open, ready to absorb and be absorbed.
Ready to be won.
What
was I won by? I've asked that of myself. I was in a myth and legends
phase. It was Penelope and her maids, the maids that Odysseus on his
return orders his son, Telemachus, to kill. It was the similarities
between Odysseus and the Norse shape-shifting god Loki. It was the
enthusiasm (and the exploration and the reasoning) of Adam Nicolson.
It was the mention of John Keats and how Homer enlarged his world. It
was....it was...it was...neither one thing or another. It was
everything and nothing. In particular. There was no Homeric moment.
In
a sense it was as if I'd missed a part of the plot bringing me to
this point: receptive to Homer's epics, like a lapse in continuity
which to a reader is glaringly obvious and yet has been overlooked by
the author and editorial team, not that I appeared to be the author
either of my reading destiny; whomever that author was they had taken
me in a backwards rather than a forwards motion, or possibly chosen
for me the harder path, because usually you wouldn't open, let alone
read, a literary appraisal before the text, though you might read it
(or refresh your memory) alongside. But after enjoying prose based
around these epics there was a demand within me for a more thorough
examination (and explanation) of Homer, except the excerpts given,
given as they were to emphasise a point, weren't therefore provided
in book order (from either the Iliad
or Odyssey)
and so my understanding of the unfolding dramas was akin to
Penelope's ploy to weave a shroud for her father-in-law to keep her
suitors at arm's length. In other words, my grasp though improved
upon was like Odysseus himself: slippery. And the verses, like
broken-up pottery, interspersed with commentary would not come
together as a whole; as pieces they were though sublime less valued
by my mind, and in that way unlike archaeological finds where even a
small shard (on its own without any discourse) can transmit something
of a settlement and its people.
There
was nothing else for it, to appreciate Homer at his finest and fully,
in all his majesty and tragedy I had to read the verse form, although
again they would be through somebody else's gaze. Nicolson acted as a
guide as to which translations and adaptations to search for, and so
deserves some of the credit, but it was Homer (or scores of Homers)
that did it, that got me started on a Homer-odyssey, from which I
emerged hungry for more (Greek myths) like Achilles (and his men)
waging war or city-ransacking Odysseus.
Picture credit: A Reading from Homer, 1885, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (source: WikiArt).
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
