The Odyssey

“I my very very first readings of both the Iliad and the Odyssey came sort of listening to them because my mother who also loved classics uh would read me bedtime stories from selections from the Iliad and the Odyssey uh when I was a child”

“And I think that the Odyssey is a little bit more of an older person's story because it is about longing to go back home after you have been adventuring and lost in the world.”

“I think the first thing that I I always recommend to people who are new or who may have bogged down and I think in this case you're doing everything right is that these were stories and poems that originally came out of oral tradition.”

“Um, one of the great moments, this isn't necessarily vengeful, but one of the wonderful moments uh is is Calypso. She is a beautiful goddess and Odysius has shipwrecked on on her aisle”

“Well, you know, I always have my my Latin teacher agenda. So, I'm always thrilled if someone uh reads Cersei or Song of Achilles and then decides to read The Ali or the Odyssey. That is that is always a huge honor for me.”

“And so, let's just take the Odyssey, you know, which has to be one of the greatest stories ever told simply on a narrative level.”

“Very few things that you'll experience in life that are not there [in the Odyssey].”

“and so is the odyssey”

“and so is the odyssey it's a person goes on a journey and moby dick it just grabs me because the detail and the curiosity and the passion”

“he was reading not just Epictetus and not just the Stoics, but he was reading the Odyssey and the Iliad because Epictetus had said that students needed to be familiar with those works, too.”

“we talk a lot about books, people have opinions about books, people have opinions about the odyssey, but if people actually read them, if they actually read them more than once, you know, I think there's something there, too.”

“The Odyssey is not just a work of art. It is the sum total of ancient wisdom.”

“And so, not only is the Odyssey something you should read and watch and read and watch again, but you should read multiple translations...”

“It wasn't until I read Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey and I read it a few years ago. I made it all the way to the end, right?”

“Chris Hayes last year wrote a really good book called The Siren Song that's all about comparing social media and the attention economy to the sirens.”

“I'm talking, of course, about the Odyssey, and it's a favorite of many people, but most of all, the Stoics. There is no work that the Stoics reference more than the Odyssey.”

“And Odicius does this. He he is aided constantly throughout the Odyssey by Athena. And then Telmachus as he is coming of age. This is when he is approached by mentor as she is organizing the homecoming.”

“The Odyssey is a story about creativity, of course, and craftiness and leadership and discipline and courage. It's a story of warning against hubris. It's a story about the power of the gods and the traditions.”

“When was the Odyssey written? Was Homer blind? Is Homer the guy that wrote it? Did Odicius exist? Is this place Ithaca? Is this where it actually happened? Is this what it was all about? Senica says it doesn't [ __ ] matter.”

“You read the Odyssey and on some level it's about a guy getting home. Then you get older and you go, Oh, this is actually a guy who's less trying to get home, but is sort of condemned to always be moving and and doing.”

“The Odyssey is a story about perseverance.”

“That's what Odysseus is doing in the Odyssey.”

“like imagine you were running a company that had the library of not just like the greatest books of the last generation, but the Odyssey's doing pretty well, too.”

“And Posedonius says quoting the Odyssey that you must be best and always superior to others.”

“and the other one I I thought was so striking it wasn't until I read Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey that I and I've read it a few years ago I made it all the way to the end right”

“this a slight as side but I was telling my oldest the story of odsis and”

“here's the odyssey we don't even know how old this is right”

“it also appears in The Odyssey like a dozen times too you can n't be afraid”

“And yet I think when our students deal with, say, the Iliad or the Odyssey or Plato or Aristotle, they don't read them in the original languages. They usually read them in translation, but they learn some, actually, some of the Greek.”

“you mention in the book a wonderful story from a book we we talk about occasionally on Eon talk The Odyssey by Homer and you talk about uh the story of umus and odsis”

“yeah I've spoken about the how much I love the Odyssey by Homer and the Robert figures translation um a listener having heard that said he doesn't need to read it he read the comic book and he doesn't know what happens to Odysseus on his attempt to get home”

“we were talking about uh I think the Odyssey on the program at some point and Alyssa wrote me and said well I don't need to read it because I've read the comic book and I know what happens”

“so we don't as far as I know I I can't speak for every faculty member we teach The Iliad and the Odyssey here and I don't know whether people memorize any bits of it or chunks of it”

“and it raises the question of why we should read a book like Beowulf for A Book Like The Odyssey by Homer that is quote old uh you know we make our students read it here right at Shalom”

“as you start to acquire a perspective on the great minds of the past as you read books like the iliad and the odyssey when you read the plays of shakespeare when you read great thinkers in philosophy like nietzsche or plato or aristotle when you first encounter them or you read a great book like the sound and the”

“to read the iliad and the odyssey and to learn from them to learn with them is not to learn what other people have said about it it's for you to uncover what the text means what it says to you what its insights are”

“you know if you're in a small group with people arguing about what's really going on in the odyssey or the iliad or hamlet you better be a good listener”

“and great literature for example like the elliott or the odyssey deals with those those kind of dilemmas”

“Well, I'm a sucker. I think I'd pick the Odyssey.”

“Well, I'm a sucker. I think I'd pick the Odyssey. Um you know, it it's about travel, adventures, a sense of home, a very reliable wife who's come with me for for this adventure.”

“achilles odysseus um you know i'm writing a book where i think i'm going to include the scene where odysseus comes back to his waiting wife penelope to find about 108 people hanging out in his living room wooing her not a pleasant situation and he immediately kills them he kills them all”

“um uh i i'm a big fan of the fagles translation but i understand that uh emily wilson is is working on one”

“and you know you start your book uh with a quote from the odyssey homer's odyssey and i i've been reading the odyssey lately”

“Uh you talk about studying Homer with uh Robert Fitzgerald who at the time I think had the the most renowned translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey that that were out at the time.”

“Uh I think some people's I'm a big fan of of the Odyssey. I have not read the Iliad.”

“so i want you to get the get that that two-volume set of the fagel's translation of the iliad and the odyssey and we'll count that as one you can't leave off the odyssey”

“ask if he could enroll himself in Daniel Mendelson's freshman seminar on the Odyssey and and take a class with him um and he would come up from Long Island to Bard in Upstate New York and sit in on the seminar along with freshman students”

“so now I'm going to have that new Emily Wilson uh translation on my that that may be next for me after ulyses”

“There's actually this great book; there's an economist named Alexander Field who's done this; he's done a pair of great books in the 1930s and 1940s, but he talks in great detail about how the American military production machine basically spun up in 18 months.”

“Like, I'd rather read the Odyssey a hundred times than watch Netflix. Like, I am not looking for passive entertainment.”

“Christopher Nolan's new film, The Odyssey, is hitting theaters soon, and you still have time to read. Or, uh, maybe skim the 3,000-year-old poem it is based on.”

“But you probably know her from her best-selling novels, The Song of Achilles and Cersei, which reimagine the ancient source material in the Iliad and the Odyssey.”

“Hopefully everyone's aware at this point that the Odyssey is named after its main character Odysius. We have to talk about him.”

“Tony, you're here to talk about the Odyssey. Of course, uh it's a giant story and you have a new piece where you argue that it's possible that it is all the stories.”

“Homer is the author according to the Greeks of the Iliad and the Odyssey. These two poems that um you know”

“and and it the Odyssey is kind of a sequel to the Iliad which is a longer somewhat longer poem”

“translation these days. So Helen says she's the first person to recognize Tyicus. It's it's”

“and is starring in a major role in the the new version of the Odyssey, which is very woke and absurd”

“So now he there's been a lot of negative reaction to this woman having a role in the Odyssey as some sort of you know strong male figure”

“first of all, who decided it would be a good idea to make a movie out of the book no one wanted to read and no one enjoyed in high school, right? Like like a doorstopper book that you were like, when will it end? Good gracious. It went on forever.”

“the iliad and the odyssey totally fictional not based on anything real that had happened”

“I kind of make a comparison between that and like the Iliad and the Odyssey, right? This like the way that anytime you've got Homer introducing it's always like you know the there there's certain phrases anytime Achilles comes up”

“I kind of make a comparison between them and like the Iliad and the Odyssey, right? this like the way that anytime you've got Homer introducing it's always like you know the there there's certain phrases anytime Achilles comes up he uses the same kind of phrases”

“the name is from the odyssey uh the the island of the lotus eaters is the first island that odysseus and his crew arrive at”

“The name is from the odyssey... We only get like a few paragraphs in the odyssey and so a lot has been extrapolate extrapolated from that that doesn't really exist in the text like you know”

“I am persevering what I have done in response to suggestions from a number of our listeners and co-workers as well is supplemented ulyses with a recent translation of Homer's Odyssey it's Emily Wilson's new translation”

“but in the meantime it has gotten me into reading Emily Wilson's Odyssey and so U so I'm I'm reading these two kind of ulses things at the same time”

“Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The Odyssey. The [music] Odyssey.”

“Emily Wilson, her translation is apparently a primary influence on Nolan's version, his interpretation in this movie.”

“but if you had to choose one or the other I'm I'm really into the I'm reading the uh The Iliad I'm really into the Trojan warship right now”

“but then in the Odyssey”

“So with the Odyssey Homer, that whole adventure, it starts with Homer, who's on a beach weeping for his homeland”

“Odysseus in in the Odyssey, he's longing for for home. He's longing for Ithaca and that's what sets him off on his adventure.”

“Odysseus It might be in the Odyssey. I might have gotten that. But Odysseus talks to his own heart. And he calls it my phil- like my dear heart, my philos heart, right?”

“but not like the Odyssey is an exploration of a man's tragic flaws not a celebration of o like Odus is the bad guy in many ways you know what I mean”

“Yeah, I mean, to my the the the the title of the book which is drawn from the Odyssey is and it starts with Odysseus is on the mast and the whole point of that is that the sirens that lure the man to his death by warbling him in his ears”

“Why is the Odyssey such an important story? Well, it's a story that has affected a lot of people.”

“You know, as we're talking, The Odyssey is a huge film, right? Oh, yeah. That's the oldest story in the Western world, but it turns out it's the same story in many other worlds. It's about the young person who goes out and has adventures, searching for something, right?”

“Homer's Odyssey. Yes. But as interpreted by the great director of our time, Christopher Nolan. Have any of you idiots actually read the Odyssey? This is not great. I'm sorry, but The Odyssey is a terrible book.”

“I teach Homer, the lead, the Odyssey. I teach Plato, the Republic.”

“They just knew Homer. They just knew the Iliad, the Odyssey, and those things and thought it was all fake.”

“um just as a you remember ulyses odys was coming home from the Trojan War and realized he was going to pass the island of the sirens and he wanted to hear the song of the sirens but he knew that like any mortal man uh he'd crash into the rocks and die so you remember what he did he”

“They attribute both the Odyssey and the Iliad, which is kind of the prequel to the Odyssey, to Homer.”

“we're reading the Odyssey and oh come on oh that is so tough well it actually is better because I actually bought with my own money and I'm I'm a teacher so what I do I bought a graphic novel of the Odyssey and it's beautiful”

“well you said you just read The Odyssey The Odyssey is full of robots”

“and that goes all the way back to for instance homer so you read the ilad and the Odyssey you can see that there's a Narrative Approach of very useful”

“for those who don't necessarily think of Homer in this way or immediately know what this anecdote is is tell us it's very beginning of the Odyssey”

“what's your favorite novel um you know i don't know whether it's a novel but maybe the odyssey why the odyssey there are so many so many rich are archetypical stories in there”

“If you read Homer Homer has robots in the Iliad and a classical scholar was pointing out to me just a few months ago”

“In the Odyssey, he talks about the 'wine-dark sea.' Who thinks the ocean looks like wine?”

“I mean books like you know Johnny Tain The Iliad The Odyssey uh some Chronicles of Narnia books”

“And the the timelessness of that, and so, so many parts of the Odyssey are inexplicable; you know, as he gets there—not to spoil the ending—but you know he just, there's this sort of moment at the end where he just, you know, murders with his bare hands like a hundred people and just like, 'Of course he did!'”

“Such as about the idea that, just for instance, that an encounter with Shakespeare is better than an encounter with fiction, or that an encounter with the Odyssey is better.”

“there is an amazing story not that I know that this was where John was at but it could have been there is an amazing story from The Iliad and the Odyssey of Ajax”

“there's a you know a scene in The Iliad where one of the heroes kind of uh Walks from ship to ship because he's so huge and he is able to you know transmit himself from the prow to the next prow”

“they said oh uh Homer's description of Troy in the in the Iliad was a bunch of [ __ ]”

“um I'm now well within the Cyclops episode of um ulyses which I recognize because again I'm I'm reading Emily Wilson's Odyssey alongside ulyses”

“so Odysseus is on his way back from the Trojan War and uh and he has all these hardships and he's trying to get home and he gets told that the only way for him to get home is to to face skilla and cytus”

“Francis recalled performing Milton's paradise loss and Pope's translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey for his family and his autobiography, perhaps sensing that bragging about his tendency for spouting versus a child made him seem arrogant, Francis included this passage.”

“Emily Wilson who is a Classics professor at the University of Pennsylvania had previously translated The Odyssey back in 2017 and she did so I love that translation of the Odyssey”