Contact: Roger Martin, Research and Public Service, (785) 864-7239.
Columnist Roger Martin writes about research at KU and edits a webzine at http://www.research.ku.edu/explore.
I just read a jazzy new version of Homer's epic, the Odyssey. The translation, by University of Kansas classics professor Stan Lombardo, had been praised in a July issue of the New York Times Book Review.
It was my third reading of the Odyssey, and the most satisfying.
In an interview, I said to Lombardo, "I think of the Odyssey as an older man's book."
There's plenty to delight kids, too, of course. A giant one-eyed Cyclops traps Odysseus and his best warriors in his cave. He makes finger food out of some of them. Then our hero and the remaining men blind the Cyclops. After that, Odysseus can't stop himself from talking trash to the big creep.
For women, the book offers the figure of Penelope, who cleverly stalls the suitors as they compete for her hand during her husband's prolonged absence from home. And there's the wise goddess Athena, a constant counselor to Odysseus.
And still I say it: the Odyssey is a book for older men. For one thing, it's not about the pleasureful surges of chemical attraction to a new love, but the heart's treasuring of the old. The first of Odysseus' three involvements is with Calypso, a goddess who shares her island with him but who has nothing in common with the hero, Lombardo says. Then Odysseus meets Circe, with whom he has a spiritual connection, despite their other differences.
All along, however, our hero recognizes his singular bond to Penelope.
Lombardo says, "At one point, Odysseus remarks that there's nothing better in the world than when husband and wife think alike and have one mind and one heart. His mind is very close to Penelope's mind."
The book is also about the hardest lessons some men ever learn: self-control, trust and surrender.
For example, Odysseus has to disguise himself as a beggar and endure humiliation once he returns to his homeland in order to size up the situation there and plot his revenge on Penelope's rapacious suitors. Then, the night before he takes his revenge, obsessive thoughts keep him tossing and turning. "Let it go," Athena advises. "Some people trust their puny human friends more than you trust me."
Men in every age have been taught by word and example to claw and grasp. They seldom understand the power, freedom and sheer necessity of letting go of the controls and being patient. Some men learn these virtues only under duress, but all men who wish to be wise must learn them somehow.
Even then, it's hard to hold on to the wisdom. In the epic's last lines, Odysseus, having slaughtered Penelope's suitors, is confronted by their revenge-minded relatives. Athena shouts at all those present to lay down their arms. The relatives flee in dread. Odysseus takes out after them. But Zeus sends a personal message to him, through Athena, that it's time for him to show restraint as well.
If Homer's got it right, it's easy for older men to forget the scraps of wisdom we pay for with our suffering. We are never, therefore, done changing.