The Homeric Odyssey, the world’s most justly celebrated homecoming story, is a fable about the salvation of more than Odysseus. The recent film The Odyssey may save Hollywood as well. People, all of whom are story-swapping creatures, still yearn for captivating narratives, and Hollywood has been drifting away from captivating narratives for decades, part of the reason it has lost a good portion of its audience. Casablanca, staring Humphry Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, was captivating; the cartoonish Toy Story, the nation’s first entirely computer-animated feature film, was merely entertaining and novel.
Literary scholars are still disputing whether The Odyssey
attributed to Homer, a blind poet, was written by a single hand or whether it
was a product of multiple narratives, much like the books of the Bible. And, of course, scientifically minded
historians hope to clear up any confusion through a discovery of historical
facts. A movie soon to be available, The Odyssey, is on close inspection
faithful to the original story.
Both scholars and movie goers should shake off all
confusion. Homer’s Odyssey is a story
laced with fables – fabulous occurrences – that has as its center the
homecoming from burning Troy of the weary warrior Odysseus. And Odysseus in
Homer’s telling is entirely human, unlike Achilles in The Iliad, half god, half
man.
Odysseus is a Promethean
character, favored and cursed by the ancient Gods. Prometheus stole fire from
the Gods at Mount Olympus and shared the gift with mankind, a sin of
lèse-majesté for which he was punished by being chained for all eternity to a
rock, where a bird of prey continually fed on his liver. That image, while
fanciful, is not anti-factual; it is poetically true in the same sense that
Shakespeare’s imaginative, fact-based creation of the character of Lear is
true. Some Shakespearian scholars and virtually all poets might say that the
character of Lear is truer than truth.
So too with the Homeric character
of Odysseus.
Somewhat like Troy itself, with
its tall towers and matchless impenetrable walls, Hollywood, which seized and
bewitched audiences in the post-World War II period, today lies smoldering in
ruins, some critics say. The old town ain’t what it used to be. The glamor and
glitz is gone. Few of us any longer devote much of our attention to magazines
covering Hollywood, also on the wane, highlighting the fabulous, nearly
mythical “journeys” of new celebrities or stars and starlets of the silver
screen. Pornography in many cases has
dampened rather than excited public enthusiasm.
Odysseus in the Homeric narrative
and in the film has been absent from his home for twenty years – ten years
spent at war in Troy, and ten years spent wandering at sea. His wife Penelope
has been persistently loyal to Odysseus, along with their son Telemachus. In
his absence, 108 suitors have been seeking Penelope’s hand in marriage – and
Odysseus’s status and estate. Odysseus was the King of Ithaca, both rich and
famous, Penelope Queen of Ithaca.
Penelope does not dampen their
desire, but she frustrates their ambitions by means of a clever stratagem. She
tells her suitor she will answer their proposals once she has finished weaving
a burial shroud for Laertes, Odysseus’s father. What she weaves by day, she
unweaves by night. The suitors to a man protest that Odysseus is no longer
among the living: Penelope must choose.
Here is Homer on Penelope’s
clever stratagem:
So they urge on marriage, and I wind a skein of wiles. First some
daimōn breathed the thought in my heart to weave a garment, after setting up a
great fabric in my halls fine of thread and very wide; and I straightway spoke
among them: “Young men, my wooers, since godlike Odysseus is dead, be patient,
though eager for my marriage, until I finish this garment—I would not that my
threads should perish useless—a shroud for the hero Laertes against the time
when the fell fate of grievous death shall strike him down; lest any one of the
Achaean women in the land blame me, if he were to lie without a shroud, who had
won great possessions.” So I spoke, and their proud hearts consented. Then by
day I would weave the great web, but by night would unravel it, after having placed
torches by me. Thus for three years I went unnoticed and persuaded the
Achaeans; but when the fourth year came, as the seasons rolled on, as the
months waned, and many days had revolved, then verily by the help of my
maidens, disrespectful bitches, they came upon me and caught me, and upbraided
me loudly. So I finished the web against my will perforce. And now I can
neither escape the marriage nor devise any counsel more.
The past tense used by the
suitors of Penelope is deadly serious, and Penelope’s intelligence and cunning
– like Odysseus’ own fiery intelligence and cunning -- symbolize marital
fidelity, patience, and resourcefulness, making her one of the most celebrated and
heroic female figures in Greek mythology.
When Odysseus returns home, Penelope
need not “devise any counsel more.”
It was Penelope who suggested
that Odysseus dress as a beggar so that he might move unnoticed among
Penelope’s clamorous suitors. Both she and her son Telemachus knew of a
certainty that Odysseus had not died at Troy.
The movie under review is
faithful to the Homeric epic, and its timeless subjects are the same: the
arduous journey home, where the heart’s desire may be quenched; the heroic
faithfulness of Odysseus’ wife and son; the unsoiled marriage bed; and the
pleasure that arises when one‘s life comports with godly strictures.
Who says you cannot go home
again? God smiles on courage and faithfulness. A little of both will find a
way.
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