The Odyssey

INTRODUCTION

Since I was small, I've heard the term Homer's Odyssey as well as the alternative term The Odyssey by Homer. It's always sounded interesting, yet I've never wanted to read it. Other than It Couldn't Be Done by Edgar Albert Guest and some other poems I've enjoyed over the years, such as aspects of If by Rudyard Kipling, I'm not one for poetry.

So, there was no appeal for me in considering reading twenty-four chapters of poetry. However, with an interest in ancient Greece, I continued to wonder about the plot of The Odyssey.

And I'm sure I'm not the only person on Earth who feels this way. You may have watched the movie Troy, for instance, but have no desire to read The Iliad.

Henceforth, and in order, how I came to discover The Odyssey over the years, in my own way, with some nostalgic and amusing memories along the way.

MINI-SERIES

Back in the 1990s, I watched the mini-series The Odyssey. Albeit not entirely – I missed certain scenes in both episodes. In those days, one couldn't pause live TV, and there were no streaming channels yet either on which one could go up and down a duration bar.

About two years ago, I decided to watch it again, this time in full, on YouTube. And then, to refresh my memory for the sake of this post, I watched it again last month.

The humorous side of closed captions. Eumaeus welcoming Telemachus back to Greece: "Jalapenos, you're safe." Odysseus then calls out to Telemachus through a shelter window, "Columbus!" Odysseus, soon after that, tells Telemachus, "Seuss is alive."

The mini-series begins with five minutes of cliches and melodrama. And some of the scenes throughout are average, either in dialogue or direction.

However, looking at it on the whole, and not with the over-analytical eye of the critic, if you're into or don't mind the age of an old mini-series, or the imperfect CGI of the day, it's not bad for a lazy or rainy Sunday afternoon. Or something to fall asleep to on the couch late at night.

I liked the rugged settings. And the sea looked amazing throughout, whether calm and dark blue or violent and frothy.

Also, I didn't mind the fact that the last episode ends with the end of the adaptation of chapter 22. One can understand why the screenwriters went with the Hollywood ending – Odysseus and Penelope chatting and kissing – as opposed to going on to adapt chapters 23 and 24, which involve a whole array of different aspects, including animal sacrifice upon a fire.

Further, some people say these last two chapters were born out of passed-down stories; Homer didn't write them.

Another old mini-series about Greece was Hallmark's Jason and the Argonauts, which can also still be found on YouTube. Dennis Hopper plays the bad guy Pelias. And, back when I first watched it, each time he came on the screen, I half expected him to say something akin to one of his lines from Speed, with that distinctive look of his.

"Pop quiz, Jason. You need to find the golden fleece. What do you do? What do ya do!" King Aeson's bus explodes.

I have to say, back then and now, I preferred Jason and the Argonauts to The Odyssey.

Irrespective, what prevailed for me throughout watching them both again were nostalgic memories. Green jeans and mostly-white t-shirts, which was the fashion here in Durban a couple of decades ago, together with that youthful feeling that only your teen and young-adult years can give you.

Also, sitting watching mini-series with my mother when I was very small. A clear memory floats through my mind of a wooden ship sailing forth upon the sea in the 1980s series Marco Polo, all these years later.

THE RE-TELLING

Last year, I bought a book titled Homer's Odyssey from a hospice shop at which I used to volunteer. It is a re-telling of The Odyssey written by Jaroslav Hulak, an author from Czechoslovakia, as it was known back in the 1980s when the book was first published.

Whoever owned it kept it in excellent condition. They either read it gently, or it was an unwanted gift that stayed on a shelf for a few years. Either way it's still looking good more than three decades after it was originally bought. A real bargain.

This re-telling is 230 large, thick pages long. Most of these pages contain either a black-and-white or colour illustration in traditional Greek style. These illustrations, the latter type purposely grainy, complement the text.

Most of the chapters are like long short stories. The entertainment and plot of The Odyssey without the poetry.

There's also a twelve-page glossary at the back. While it doesn't cover every character and place name, which would have made it extremely long for a glossary, it does explain some, and in full paragraphs. Just in case you forget who's who and where, along the way.

That's great. Sometimes glossaries are very sparse or almost point form and might as well not even be there.

I started reading the re-telling weeks ago. Then spent most of my time working on a novel – writing and research. I've since returned to the re-telling in my spare time. On the Phaeacian island, Scheria, Odysseus has just responded to Laodamas' taunts by throwing a discus slightly further than what I did back in high school.

The front flap of the book's glossy, colourful dust jacket reads: Young readers today will relish this re-telling.

So I joke with my sister and my wife that it is my Odyssey pop-up book.

I look downcast when a picture doesn't open, and then my face lights up with glee when one does.

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS

After the initial few chapters of the re-telling came LibriVox. I've downloaded several audiobooks from LibriVox over the years, as well as listened to several on YouTube. Even as I type these words I can hear: "This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain."

The reading is enjoyable and is certainly not overshadowed by a couple of mispronounced names. And the actual translation by author Samuel Butler reads more like a novel than a poem.

If you want to have a listen, it's the upload with a photograph of a bust of Homer. 11:01:51.

Translations of The Odyssey fall into two categories. Firstly, novel-like translations, such as Butler's or Hulak's. Secondly, those that strive to be as close to the original text as possible.

Homer wrote The Odyssey in a style called dactylic hexameter. This simply means, to non-poetic eyes and ears such as mine, that each line of text contains both long and short syllables without fail.

For him to do this for twenty-four chapters is a feat. Equally, I take my hat off to those translators who attempted to stay as close to the original text as they could.

However, I personally didn't enjoy the excerpts I read on the internet – the olden-day language and the constant topsy-turviness of poetic licence.

PERSONAL VIEW

While I will never read a poetic translation of The Odyssey, the world of The Odyssey through adaptation, accompanied by nostalgia and humour, has been just fine. Life goes by so fast. When I'm ninety, I'll still picture watching mini-series with my mother, and that wonderful feeling of youth in my teen years and those of young adulthood.

By the way, those jeans were great quality. I think if I still owned them, and I left them hanging outside in a mythological battle with the elements, the jeans would win!