NEW Slow Reading Pathway: Homer’s Odyssey
Starting Date: Tuesday, January 7th 2025
Finishes: June 2025
Time: 8 pm ET | 7 pm CT | 6 pm MT | 5 pm PT
Duration of sessions: 1.5 hours
Leader/Facilitator: Eric Stull
Duration: Weekly meetings, for 2 Quarters (6 months, April – September.)
Recordings available for those who miss sessions.
Cost: $250 Slow Reading Subscription X 2 Quarters To join this seminar, sign up for Q1 (Jan-Mar), to the slow reading program. If you would like to continue in April (April-June), you may renew your subscription at that time. Subscriber benefits include open access to all reading groups, as well as monthly one-on-one liberal arts consultations.
Description and Reading Schedule:
So, what is it — the mother of all human stories: the first epic of return, of coming home from war to peace and trouble, of marriage, of coming of age, of coming into age, of waiting for the return of love, of monsters (and us), of a land beyond the living, of self-singing, of grand hospitality, of domesticity, of beggary, of slavery, of wild barbarism, of civilized savagery, of a guardian goddess, of fame and invisibility, of lying truths and true lies, of sex (its sweetness and its pain), of sailing and the wine-dark sea (its brutality and its wonder)? If no story can, or should, be all things to all people, it’s hard to see how any can be many more things to any more people than The Odyssey, for the poem is as much-turning as the man (and the woman) whom it sings. Let’s read it slowly: a book a week, an hour and a half at a time, for 24 meetings— and then meet once more to see where we went after we return.
Reading schedule (winter and spring quarters)
We will begin The Odyssey on Tuesday, January 7, and read the poem on this extended two-quarter schedule, meeting each session for an hour and a half:
January 7: Book 1
January 14: Book 2
January 21: Book 3
January 28: Book 4
February 4: Book 5
February 11: Book 6
February 18: Book 7
February 25: Book 8
March 4: Book 9
March 11: Book 10
March 18: Book 11
March 25: Book 12
April 1: Book 13
April 8: Book 14
April 15: Book 15
April 22: Book 16
April 29: Book 17
May 6: Book 18
May 13: Book 19
May 20: Book 20
May 27: Book 21
June 3: Book 22
June 10: Book 23
June 17: Book 24
June 24: whole poem
Translations:
So many — and so little time! It’s good to have a common standard, but it’s also good to have a mix. I’ll be reading the one by Peter Green (U. California Press, ISBN: 9780520303362). I choose Green because his translation is clear, crisp, swift, lively, dignified but not ponderous, and as he himself says, does all that Lattimore was trying to do in his version, plus one more thing: instead of translating into the most common English meter, he has tried, following the example of C. Day-Lewis’ translation of Vergil’s Aeneid, to render the rhythm of Homer’s meter in English. There are, however, just since the middle of the last century, many other excellent to respectable verse translations, including those by the following: Lattimore, Fitzgerald, Sachs, Wilson, Fagles, Lombardo. I have read those just named, except Lombardo’s, and would recommend them in that order. This list ignores older verse translations (those by Pope and Chapman, for instance) and respected prose translations (including, notably, the one by T.E. Shaw, better known as Lawrence of Arabia). No translation can perfectly put across Homer’s poetry, but our relative Greeklessness invites us to poke around in more than the one we’ve made our mainstay. So, here’s my counsel: use a beloved translation, provided it is in verse and gives line numbers. It really helps to have those, especially if we have different translations. Some translations (those by Green, Lattimore, Wilson, Sachs) are line-for-line; some are not. These latter generally give two sets of line numbers: the numbers for the translation in the margins, the numbers for the Greek lines usually in brackets at the top or bottom of the page.
