A Teacher's Odyssey

 

I was pleasantly surprised when some of my former Latin students posted online that they were awaiting my review of Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey.  My family and I had already planned to see it with one of my own former teachers, and so as the film unfolded, I began to consider what I would say for the sake of my students and friends.

A Child Running Around for Ice Cream

When we met my former teacher and one of her friends, I displayed a bit of enthusiasm as we walked to the auditorium where the film would be playing.  In her words, I was like a child running around for ice cream.

I'm not sure why she said that.  It wasn't as if I was such a fan boy that I wore the Indiana University Classical Studies t-shirt of my alma mater just for the occasion or had one of my adult children take a picture of me with the movie posters.  She was right, of course.  For a guy who has spent more than forty years in the worlds of ancient Greece and Rome, this was a movie I could not miss.

Teacher and student at the movies

It's Not PBS

This film is not a documentary on ancient warfare, Classical poetry, or ancient mythology.  It is retelling of a classic work of fiction that has some historical roots.  It serves no purpose to point out that the film does not use armor or props accurate to what we know of Bronze Age-Greece.  It is a retelling.  It is a translation, just as was Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus in 1960 and Zach Snyder's 2006 film 300, and every translation of anything, whether from one language into or another or from medium into another, will add things, omit things, and change things.  An exact, word-for-word version of Homer's Odyssey would simply be the 12,109 lines of dactylic hexameter Greek that constitute the original poem.

For this reason, the stylized armor did not bother me.  I enjoyed it as much as I did that in 300, to which the Trojan helmets bore more than a striking resemblance.

The sets and costumes gave us powerful and exciting visuals and worked well with the many action scenes of warfare and bloodshed.  In fact, they helped give it an otherworldly feel that was important to this retelling.

Is Frank Herbert the Descendant of Homer?

There is an unmistakable feeling of the Denis Villeneuve Dune movies at many points throughout Nolan's The Odyssey, and this makes sense.  The world of Dune is set in the year 10191 on the far off planet of Arrakis, and the world of The Odyssey is just as distant.  Bronze Age-Greece is five thousand years, give or take, removed from our time.  Its culture, values, traditions, rites, and methods of war are utterly alien to ours, and Nolan captures this, not only through the otherworldly feel of the sets and costumes, but also through the music.  In many places we hear metallic sounds in the background that lend an almost sci-fi effect and that sweep us into something entirely beyond ourselves.  And this is why certain language choices are discordant.

While "otherworldly" may be the term to describe much of the feel of this film, it is clearly set in the ancient Mediterranean region.  As a result, words like "mom," "dad," "party" used as a verb, and three instances of the f-word (once as a participle and twice in quick succession as an imperative) seem to stick out like a sore thumb.  Had this version of Homer's epic been set in a different time and place, much as it was in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, such contemporary colloquialisms may have worked, but here they are simply jarring.  Fortunately, such intrusions of our world into this one are few.

And the Oscar Goes To...

There are plenty of A-list names garnering attention in this cast, and most do a fine job with their characters.  This is not Matt Damon's crowning achievement, but he serves well as Odysseus.  Anne Hathaway is a strong Penelope, but top honors go to the supporting roles of Samantha Morton as Circe, Tom Holland as Telemachus, and John Leguizamo as Eumaeus.  Holland's son of Odysseus is appropriately whiny, not in the grating way of Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker, but as we have come to know him through Homer.  The true standouts, however, are Leguizamo, whose strength, loyalty, and brokenness make him a truly sympathetic character and one you want to watch, and Morton, whose portrayal of Circe as psychotic is genuinely disturbing.

Beyond Homer

There is an entire body of ancient literature beyond Homer's two epic poems Iliad and Odyssey that touches on the Trojan War, and Nolan's film draws on them to good effect.  The story of the Trojan Horse is famously told in Book II of Vergil's Latin epic Aeneid.  Vergil gives us the all-important key to making the whole trick work through the character of Sinon, who lies to the Trojans about the horse's true purpose, thus prompting them to take it into the city.  Sinon has a more significant role in the film than in Vergil's poem, but I will say more on this below.  In Wolfgang Petersen's 2004 film Troy, the Trojans arrive at the conclusion on their own that the horse is a gift to the gods, so the inclusion of Sinon here is helpful in making it more reasonable that they would have taken it into the city.

In the fifth century B.C., Aeschylus wrote his Oresteia, a trilogy of plays dealing with the homecoming of Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek expedition to Troy.  He had sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia before leaving in order to obtain fair winds for sailing, and that was a bridge too far for his wife Clytemnestra.  She took a lover after his departure and spent the years plotting her revenge.  Upon his return, he is stabbed in the bath, and this leads to Orestes, his son, planning and executing revenge for his father by killing his mother.

Menelaus and Helen

Nolan brings all this into his story, again to good effect.  It is first mentioned by Helen when Telemachus visits Menelaus.  She does not go into detail, but Agamemnon does when he returns from the underworld to talk with Odysseus.  Nolan uses this bit in a powerful away, but once again, I will touch on that below, and in a flashback to Telemachus's visit to the Spartan king, Menelaus tells him that Orestes killed his own mother.

Han Shot First

In Homer's poem only Odysseus can string and shoot his bow, and Penelope uses this as a test for the suitors seeking to marry her, challenging them to string and to shoot it through twelve axes as her husband used to do.  No one can do it, and Nolan was faced with a similarly impossible task.  This is a story that has been known and loved around the world for three thousand years.  Countless high school freshman read selections from it every year in English class.  There was no way this film would satisfy everyone.  As I said at the beginning, this film is a translation.  It leaves things out, it puts things in, and it changes elements.  For some, none of this will matter.  For others, it matters a great deal.  In the retelling of a tale as famous as Homer's Odyssey, there are certain bits we expect.  When George Lucas re-released the original Star Wars, he changed the scene in the cantina to show Greedo shooting first at Han Solo, but everyone who saw the film in 1977 knew it was the other way around.  Just Google that one for a fun diversion.  Here are a few of the omissions and changes and that were the most striking.

When Odysseus and his men enter the cave of the cyclops Polyphemus, the creature asks Odysseus his name, and he famously answers "Nobody."  After the men have run the stake into his eye, Polyphemus runs from his cave shouting, "Nobody has blinded me," and the other cyclopes tell him to shut up.  This is missing, and it is a mistake.  Nolan says he was not able to work it in.  But anyone familiar with the story only through that freshman English class would have looked for it, and it is strange not to have it.

The cyclops Polyphemus

Other omissions include Hermes giving moly to Odysseus to protect him from Circe's spell, which likely would go unnoticed by any but those most familiar with the poem.  Many, however, will likely recall that Aeolus gives Odysseus all the winds that would harm him bound in a bag, with only one left on the waters to blow his ships home.  His men untie the bag, and the other winds blow them off course, yet this makes no appearance in the film.  Odysseus does not land in Phaeacia, meet the daughter of King Alcinous, or receive the ship from the king that finally takes him to Ithaca.  Gone is the care he shows for his wife when, after the slaughter of the suitors, he tells Telemachus that the room must be cleansed before Penelope can lay eyes upon it, and missing, too, is the famous part about the bed he had made out of a tree.

We did get the episode with the Laestrygonians, although they went unnamed, Scylla and Charybdis, the theft of the sun god's cattle, the Sirens, the suitors attempting to string Odysseus's bow and shoot through the axes, Odysseus's old nurse recognizing his scar, and, in one of the most touching scenes in all of literature, the death of Argus, the dog who waited twenty years for his master to come home.  The episode with the lotus-eaters was transferred to the scenes with Calypso, and that worked well, and there is a nod to the desecration of the Palladium from the Iliad.

Odysseus vs. Laestrygonians

As for significant changes, there is ongoing discussion in the film of how Odysseus lied to Sinon so he would be more credible in telling the Trojans that the horse was a gift to the gods.  Only those familiar with Vergil's Aeneid will know that Sinon was fully aware of the plot and concocted an elaborate lie to deceive the Trojans.   Some will remember the trip Odysseus makes to Hades, but in the film the dead come to him, and it is here that one of the changes works quite well.  As Agamemnon tells Odysseus of his murder at the hands of his wife, he advises the Ithacan king to disguise himself when he gets home.  In Homer's tale, the disguise of a beggar for Odysseus is wrought by Athena, but this works nicely in the context Nolan has constructed.  The general narration of the poem is split across Odysseus's recounting of his adventures to Calypso and Telemachus's discussions with Menelaus, and this is quite effective.

Odyssey Plus

When it comes to additions to the film not found in the poem, three are worth noting.  There is a running focus on the fact that Odysseus did not allow Antinous, who would grow up to become one of the suitors of Penelope, to go with him to Troy.  In this version, Sinon took his place, eventually asking Odysseus to obtain vengeance for him after he has died.  This works dramatically, and although it is not strictly necessary to advance the plot, it does add an interesting element.  What is utterly unnecessary, however, is the sequence in which some of the suitors seek to murder Telemachus as he stops at Pylos on his return home from visiting Menelaus.  In the poem this is his first stop on the way to Menelaus, but it is not the change of order that is bothersome.  There is simply no need for the revised portrayal of the attempt on his life, which in the poem happens upon his return to Ithaca.  It works in the film, but no better than what Homer wrote, which leaves us wondering why the addition.

The other addition is the mindset of Odysseus.  He is known for his hubris, and this is well depicted in his line, "The gods help those who help themselves."  Yet when he is asked what he hears in the Sirens' song, he says it was the realization that he does not really want to go home.  This is a significant addition and change to the motivation of Homer's character, as is his level of self-reflection upon reuniting with his wife Penelope, a scene that necessitates another extended flashback to the Trojan War.  If I may invoke Star Wars once again, a remake of that saga in which Luke Skywalker is driven by thoughts of profit and Han Solo by desire to help the oppressed would cause audiences to howl.

The Final Grade

I am not a great fan of letter grades and will not assign one to this film.  Overall, it is good, and I enjoyed it.  Will I purchase it when it becomes available?  I will, and not only because as a Latin teacher I own most Greco-Roman based films.  Will I show clips to my students to illustrate aspects of the story?  I certainly will and would encourage English teachers to do the same.

The perceptive reader may note a certain underlying condemnation brought about by faint praise, and such a reader may be right.  It is impossible for me to see this film other than through the lens of the poem.  I am sure one unfamiliar with Homer will have an entirely different experience of it.  Still, for all the stunning visuals and sound we have come to expect from a Christopher Nolan work and indeed from most modern films, the script itself pales with those of yesteryear.  This is no Spartacus.  It is not even Gladiator.  In the end, I enjoyed it, but was most pleased with the desire it ignited within me to read the original once again.

Vowels and Baptism

It can be caused by viruses, bacteria, and parasites.  Lactose, fructose, and artificial sweeteners can cause it as well.  It can even be associated with diseases such as ulcerative colitis, and despite its relatively simple treatment, there is some debate over how to spell it, or at least there was recently among some of my friends.

When Wordsmiths Text

In a text thread of three other friends and me, one of us had shared a screenshot from a news update on a certain illness, one of the symptoms of which included the condition described above.  What bothered someone on the thread was that the word was spelled "diarrhoea" instead of the more familiar "diarrhea."  One of my friends quipped, "I'm sure Steve will give us a full etymological report, replete with Latin roots -- whether we want it or not!"  Since I am the obliging type, sent them a diagram tracing the roots of the word to the original Greek noun "diarrhoia," and began unpacking the matter at hand.

You will notice that the Greek noun ends with iota alpha (ia in the transliteration).  That iota often comes into English as "e," as in "Phoinix" becoming "Phoenix."  Same thing with Phoibos -> Phoebus, as in Apollo.  There is a tendency in English to collapse diphthongs into single vowels.  The spelling you see is legitimate and is closer to a transliteration from the Greek.  This is why "caelestis," the Latin word for "heavenly," comes into English as "celestial."  The "ae" diphthong has collapsed into the single vowel "e."

[Referring back to the original issue of why someone might spell "diarrhea" with an "o," I added the following.]  Richmond Lattimore did this kind of thing in his translations of Homer.  He wanted to convey a sense of the Greek, so he used transliterations of names, e.g. Achilleus (Achilles), Hektor (Hector), Achaians (Achaeans), etc.

After introducing Richmond Latimore into the discussion, I thought I would share with my friends the translation of the New Testament that this renowned translator of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey had produced, and it was then that our conversation took an important turn.

From Vowels to Baptism

As I searched for a link to Lattimore's New Testament, I ran across the story of his baptism in 1983, just a year before his death.  The story was told more than twenty years later by Rev. Andrew Mead in a sermon on Sunday, January 16, 2005.  The message is short, and I urge you to follow this link and read it now.

I remember excitedly discovering Lattimore's translation of the New Testament nearly thirty years ago, and I was drawn, as I always am when picking up any translation, to the preface.  This preface did not, as one might expect in a Bible, give historical or theological or other specifically biblical information.  It did, however, as one would expect in a translation of Homer or Vergil, present stylistic information and a discussion of the translator's method and underlying theory of translation.  This was a scholar's work.  It was the work of a poet, and it never occurred to me that there might have been something more going on for Lattimore himself.  Yet there clearly was, as Lattimore revealed to Rev. Mead, to whom he had just admitted his desire for Christian baptism at the age of 73.  Mead shares in his sermon that he pressed Lattimore on what had apparently been Lattimore's known difficulties with the faith.

"Dr. Lattimore [though he preferred it, it was difficult for me to call him Dick], I thought you had reservations about the Christian faith and the Church."  "I did," he replied.  "But you don't any longer?"  "No, not any longer."  "Please then may I ask you, when did they go away?"  He was silent for a space; then, again with that smile and twinkling eyes, he answered, "Somewhere in Saint Luke."

The Closeness of Reading

Translation involves the close reading of a text.  Even someone with a cursory knowledge of another language can skim a text in that language and glean information, but translation is something entirely different.  Is the verb in the indicative or subjunctive mood?  To what does this relative pronoun refer?  Answering questions like these is essential to making an accurate translation, but when it comes to the biblical text, this close reading leads to another kind of closeness, one that Lattimore clearly experienced.  When we slow down and ponder a biblical text, when we look at it from multiple angles and ruminate on it, as it were, at the atomic level, we are drawn closer to the One Who is the author, or more simply, to The One Who Is.

There is a difference between “to hen,” The One, of Plotinus, and “ho ōn,” The One Who Is.  It is the latter that we see surrounding the head of Jesus in icons and that we find in Revelation 4:8.  A close reading of these two Greek phrases reveals an impersonal quality to the former and a personal aspect to the latter, and therein lies all the difference.  God is not an idea, but a person.  To be precise, He is three persons eternally existing as one deity, and it would seem that this is Whom the renowned translator Richmond Lattimore encountered when reading closely the biblical text.  It is not necessary, of course, to read Hebrew or Greek or Latin to encounter God in the Bible.  What is necessary is a slow, careful reading, one that does more than skim a text to glean information.  Lattimore said that his reservations about the Christian faith were allayed "somewhere in Saint Luke."  What an exciting proposition to think that you, too, may encounter “ ho ōn,” The One Who Is, as you read the Bible today!

Spending Time With Euripides

It all started when my colleague at another school, Sarah McDaniels, shared this article about Emily Wilson's new translation of the Odyssey.  Eric Leveque, who has both a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Classics, is currently observing me as part of his Transition To Teaching program at Indiana University, and I eagerly shared the article with him at the beginning of our planning/lunch period.  We began an intense discussion about translation...the art of it, why people continue to engage in it, and the tantalizing impossibility of it.  Before long we were deep into a discussion that took in the incarnation of Christ, the nature of eternity, Protestant and Catholic theology, symbolism and realism, the essence of liturgy, the essence of the Eucharist, the distinction between to; e&n (to hen, the one) of Plotinus and oJ w\n (ho on, the one who is) that defines the God of Christianity, and what it means for high school students to enter into a text.

Now, both Eric and I can become quite distracted from more quotidian matters, and since he had not brought lunch, he had told me earlier of his need to run over to the local Chipotle to grab something.  Suddenly I realized that time was slipping by, but rather than end our stimulating conversation, I rode with him on his burrito quest simply to keep the discussion going.  As he paid for his order, I posted quickly to Facebook about the joy of our conversation, and a friend soon replied, "Wow. I would love to get a degree in classics."

And that comment takes us back to the article that started the whole thing.  Wyatt Mason, the author of the article on Emily Wilson and her new translation, wrote when describing her educational background, "[T]he appeal of classics as a discipline was profound."  Why would that be?  Why would the study of the literature and history, the cultures and languages, of the ancient Greeks and Romans offer a profound appeal?  Why would my Facebook friend say that she would love to get a degree in such studies?

Wilson's own story provides the answer, as Mason writes.  "Although Wilson was undecided on a direction after taking her undergraduate degree -- she had thoughts of doing law -- she ultimately chose to do further studies in English literature at Oxford while she figured her way forward, rereading some of her favorite books, particularly Milton's Paradise Lost.  Emerging with a sense that the writers she admired most were in dialogue with antiquity, Wilson pursued a Ph.D. in classics and comparative literature at Yale.  Wilson knew that if she was 'being smart,' she ought to focus on something understudied, like Plutarch.  'I loved Plutarch, but I didn't love him as deeply as I loved Sophocles, Euripides, Milton.  I just felt like I wanted to spend a little bit longer with Euripides.'"

I would not trade my B.A. in Classical Studies from Indiana University or my M.A. in Classics from The University of Texas for all the fish in the sea, and for the same reason that Wilson chose the direction she did.  Studying, engaging with, entering into the thoughts and linguistic artistry of the ancient Greeks and Romans are not only supremely satisfying per se, but such pursuits initiate an infinite, expanding spiral of exploration into the greatest achievements of humanity.  I can directly trace my fascination with and enjoyment of quantum physics, albeit at a layman's level, philosophy, poetry, cognitive science, prose, politics, and art to my Classical studies, and often these other interests have taken me back to the ancient world, for it is indeed true that many of the best of our thinkers and creators have been "in dialogue with antiquity."

If this were merely a piece describing a scintillating discussion with a colleague, I could just as well have posted it on Facebook rather than writing it up for an education blog, yet there is more going on here.  It is precisely Wilson's desire to "spend a little longer with Euripides" and the wish of my friend to attain a degree in Classics that is the reason Eric and I and so many others have chosen to teach.  We want others to experience such desires and wishes.  We want to introduce them to the wonders of the ancient world that themselves become gateways to wonders yet undiscovered.  Benjamin Jowett was correct in the preface to his 1881 translation of Thucydides when he wrote,

The voluminous learning of past ages [has] to be recast in easier and more manageable forms, and if Greek literature is not to pass away, it seems to be necessary that in every age some one who has drunk deeply from the original fountain should renew the love of it in the world, and once more present that old life, with its great ideas and great actions, its creations in politics and in art, like the distant remembrances of youth, before the delighted eyes of mankind.

As Eric and I discussed, teaching, too, is translation.  The Aeneid my students encounter is not the same as the one his students will experience, for he and I are unique human beings, and we will each bring to our presentation our own understandings.  Yes, we will try to help our students read the great works for themselves, but even were they to read in utter silence without our guidance, they would be performing their own interpretive act, making the translation of their reading a unique one.  The best classroom, then, is not one in which students merely acquire knowledge, but one in which they enter into that which they study, becoming a part of it as it becomes a part of them.  When that happens, students desire to spend a little bit longer with the authors and works that have shaped the world, and it is then that a teacher can say, "This is what I came to do."

Homer For Inmates

"Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’  Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’  The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’"  (Matthew 25:34-40, NIV)

Some think that Classics, the academic field that studies the language, history, and cultures of ancient Greece and Rome is the province of DWEMs.  They think it is nothing more than dead, white, European males studying dead, white, European males.  This, of course, is a blinkered view of things, born of a short-sighted understanding of history and a parochial worldview. It ignores Classicists like William Sanders Scarborough, Phillis Wheatley, George Morton Lightfoot, and Shelley Haley, to name only a few who were not all males and none of whom were white.

Yet there is also an illogical thread behind such a perspective.  There is a reason the works of Homer and Plato, Caesar and Cicero and Vergil have held the interest of the world for thousands of years and fall under the category of what is classic.  They have something to say to human beings.  These writers, by eloquently expressing truths and truth, have transcended the Mediterranean boundary of their mortal existence.  They belong now to the world.

Enter Bill Smoot, a teacher from an all-girls school in California who decided to take Homer into San Quentin.  His recent article tells the story of his daring decision to teach the Odyssey and other classic works of literature to inmates.  It turns out, they could relate to Odysseus, a man Homer describes as polytropos, or much turned, much buffeted by life.

Smoot's article is more than a report on an educational project.  It is more than a poetic expression of why I do what I do and of what I hope occurs in my high school classroom.  It is a clear and resounding call for what education can and should be for the least among us.  We have all read countless stories of art and music programs being cut in inner-city schools, and too often a false competition between STEM and liberal arts curricula leads some to opt for the former at the expense of the latter.

For more than two thousand years, human beings from around the world have, in the words of Alexander Pope, drunk deeply from the Pierian spring.  Bill Smoot reminds us that the living conditions and the socioeconomic circumstance of a person do not rule off the table the good, the true, and the beautiful.  Quite possibly, the least among us are those that benefit most from our best.