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To understand me better, you all ought to follow me home
This post is both signal-boost and shameless self-promotion, which will be a neat trick if I can pull it off.
Ottawa Storytellers are fundraising for the Odyssey Project: a twelve-hour telling of the epic from Olympos to Ithaka with eighteen storytellers and all the gods, tricks, and tales that can be conjured from words and voices and listening ears.
I can't think of a better choice for an all-day affair. The Odyssey is a storyteller's epic: it is what Athene says she loves most about Odysseus.
εἰδότες ἄμφω
κέρδε᾽, ἐπεὶ σὺ μέν ἐσσι βροτῶν ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος ἁπάντων
βουλῇ καὶ μύθοισιν, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐν πᾶσι θεοῖσι
μήτι τε κλέομαι καὶ κέρδεσιν
we two who know
guile, since you are by far the best of all mortals
at plans and stories, while among all the gods
I am famous for craft and clever ways
(Odyssey 13.296–299)
All that first night together in their olive-tree bed of twenty years, what Odysseus and Penelope do is tell one another the stories of the different kinds of hero they have been.
τὼ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν φιλότητος ἐταρπήτην ἐρατεινῆς,
τερπέσθην μύθοισι, πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐνέποντε,
ἡ μὲν ὅσ᾽ ἐν μεγάροισιν ἀνέσχετο δῖα γυναικῶν,
ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων ἐσορῶσ᾽ ἀΐδηλον ὅμιλον,
οἳ ἕθεν εἵνεκα πολλά, βόας καὶ ἴφια μῆλα,
ἔσφαζον, πολλὸς δὲ πίθων ἠφύσσετο οἶνος:
αὐτὰρ ὁ διογενὴς Ὀδυσεὺς ὅσα κήδε᾽ ἔθηκεν
ἀνθρώποις ὅσα τ᾽ αὐτὸς ὀϊζύσας ἐμόγησε,
πάντ᾽ ἔλεγ᾽: ἡ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐτέρπετ᾽ ἀκούουσ᾽, οὐδέ οἱ ὕπνος
πῖπτεν ἐπὶ βλεφάροισι πάρος καταλέξαι ἅπαντα.
and when they had had their sweet fill of lovemaking,
they took their pleasure in stories, telling one another,
she of all she had endured in her halls, bright among women,
watching the wrecking-crew of suitors
who made her the excuse for much slaughter of cattle
and fine sheep and emptying many jars of wine,
while Zeus-born Odysseus told of all the trouble he had made
for people and all he he had sorrowed and suffered himself,
and she was glad to listen, and neither did sleep
fall on her eyelids until he had finished it all.
(Odyssey 23.300–309)
The performance is on June 16th. One of the incentives is an illustrated print of my poem "Leukothea's Odyssey 6," originally published in Goblin Fruit. That's the shameless self-promotion, but it's a lovely thing. The artist is Elizabeth Paxson.
Help them bring Odysseus home.
Ottawa Storytellers are fundraising for the Odyssey Project: a twelve-hour telling of the epic from Olympos to Ithaka with eighteen storytellers and all the gods, tricks, and tales that can be conjured from words and voices and listening ears.
I can't think of a better choice for an all-day affair. The Odyssey is a storyteller's epic: it is what Athene says she loves most about Odysseus.
εἰδότες ἄμφω
κέρδε᾽, ἐπεὶ σὺ μέν ἐσσι βροτῶν ὄχ᾽ ἄριστος ἁπάντων
βουλῇ καὶ μύθοισιν, ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐν πᾶσι θεοῖσι
μήτι τε κλέομαι καὶ κέρδεσιν
we two who know
guile, since you are by far the best of all mortals
at plans and stories, while among all the gods
I am famous for craft and clever ways
(Odyssey 13.296–299)
All that first night together in their olive-tree bed of twenty years, what Odysseus and Penelope do is tell one another the stories of the different kinds of hero they have been.
τὼ δ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὖν φιλότητος ἐταρπήτην ἐρατεινῆς,
τερπέσθην μύθοισι, πρὸς ἀλλήλους ἐνέποντε,
ἡ μὲν ὅσ᾽ ἐν μεγάροισιν ἀνέσχετο δῖα γυναικῶν,
ἀνδρῶν μνηστήρων ἐσορῶσ᾽ ἀΐδηλον ὅμιλον,
οἳ ἕθεν εἵνεκα πολλά, βόας καὶ ἴφια μῆλα,
ἔσφαζον, πολλὸς δὲ πίθων ἠφύσσετο οἶνος:
αὐτὰρ ὁ διογενὴς Ὀδυσεὺς ὅσα κήδε᾽ ἔθηκεν
ἀνθρώποις ὅσα τ᾽ αὐτὸς ὀϊζύσας ἐμόγησε,
πάντ᾽ ἔλεγ᾽: ἡ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἐτέρπετ᾽ ἀκούουσ᾽, οὐδέ οἱ ὕπνος
πῖπτεν ἐπὶ βλεφάροισι πάρος καταλέξαι ἅπαντα.
and when they had had their sweet fill of lovemaking,
they took their pleasure in stories, telling one another,
she of all she had endured in her halls, bright among women,
watching the wrecking-crew of suitors
who made her the excuse for much slaughter of cattle
and fine sheep and emptying many jars of wine,
while Zeus-born Odysseus told of all the trouble he had made
for people and all he he had sorrowed and suffered himself,
and she was glad to listen, and neither did sleep
fall on her eyelids until he had finished it all.
(Odyssey 23.300–309)
The performance is on June 16th. One of the incentives is an illustrated print of my poem "Leukothea's Odyssey 6," originally published in Goblin Fruit. That's the shameless self-promotion, but it's a lovely thing. The artist is Elizabeth Paxson.
Help them bring Odysseus home.
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The end of next week, and I will support.
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Am I correct in thinking it's your own translation of the Odyssey here? Lovely stuff.
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Yay! It works!
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You can chip in very small amounts! Five dollars! A couple of sodas or a few hundred lines of dactylic hexameter!
Am I correct in thinking it's your own translation of the Odyssey here? Lovely stuff.
Yes; I think it's more of a workprint version than a publishable poem, but it's mine. Thank you.
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Thank you for asking if I would.
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With trumpets.
And now I will have This is my son, mine own Telemachus in my head all morning, through no fault of your own; but when I think of Odysseus and Penelope together, most often I think of Telemachus. Poor kid, who's to say he had it any better than Astyanax in the end. You can -- and as you have shown in translation, do -- reconnect with a woman you loved, as long as she loves you enough not to punch you in the chin and toss you out of bed, take your boat and shove it, sucker; the years of your child's childhood are gone, and you didn't see them, and he will always feel that even if it doesn't get into the poems.
(Although then one gets into the Western European tradition of Scamandrios' survival at the hands of -- Jesus, I forget who -- and the founding on his eventually virile behalf of any number of heroic dynasties. Is that in Childe Roland? I don't think I'm making it up.)
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Though I can't tell from the website what translation(s) (I'm assuming it'll be in English) they'll be using.
---L.
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Excellent!
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You're very welcome. They're the first online market I sold a poem to, and they publish lots of beautifully-writing people who aren't me, either.
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You can tell which ones are my translations! I don't attribute them to anyone else!
the years of your child's childhood are gone, and you didn't see them, and he will always feel that even if it doesn't get into the poems.
Poem, thank you.
Is that in Childe Roland? I don't think I'm making it up.
Astyanax-Skamandrios is definitely in Orlando Furioso. (He becomes king of Sicily and his heirs are the House of Este.) I don't know about Childe Roland, but that's as likely to be my unfamiliarity with post-classical Western literature as your making it up.
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I can't tell, either, but
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I can't quite connect the dots, but one is supposed to believe that the sword of Hector (I could use K's just as properly as I used the O, but then what need would there be for classicists to amend things?) came by way of Astyanax to Roland. Who presumably dropped it in the French Alps...
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Okay, that intrigues me. Milton Keynes is a complete dump, though. At least now.
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And Bletchley Park, really, but I am so horror-fascinated by the idea of Milton Keynes...
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I do still want whatever comes of Bletchley Park.
(. . . admittedly, the last time I said that . . .)