“History worth reading. Stories worth remembering.”
In recent days, we have been witnessing what one might call an Odysseiad: the commentary on Nolan’s latest film, The Odyssey, by anyone with an opinion, whether before seeing it in cinemas or — perhaps more fairly — afterwards. As with another film that caused a stir in Greece a few months ago, the one about the life and death of Ioannis Kapodistrias, the first and last Governor of Greece, I had decided to let the noise die down a little before watching The Odyssey myself. There was never any chance that I would not see it, whatever the reactions might be, because I love Nolan and his work. That is why I have already booked tickets for tomorrow.
(you’ll find the original text in Greek below)
One might say that, in that case, it would have been better to write this stack after seeing the film. But this stack, fellow historiophile, is not yet another commentary on the movie, its inaccuracies, or its cinematic grandeur. I am not worried about the Homeric epics, nor about the way Hollywood has treated my homeland’s mythology over the years. The Homeric epics have been around for more than 2,500 years, and they have been taught continuously in Greek schools for generations, whatever power may have held sway in the Greek world. Their enduring presence lies in the fact that every age receives the epics, the great classical plays, and classical literature in general differently, according to its own needs. This means that any creator of a modern adaptation is free to reshape them into a version we may not personally like; so what each of us thinks about such variations probably matters very little. As the Romans used to say, de gustibus non est disputandum — or, in English, there’s no accounting for taste. We may not like it, but this is precisely how such works remain popular and relevant, thousands of years after they were first created.
But I digress, for our subject is something else. Those who have been here on this Substack for a while will already know my love not only for history and archaeology, but also for poetry. I have already published quite a few stacks in which I try, through poetry, either to express my feelings, or to make sense of current events, or — my personal favourite — to describe historical events and periods. Some of you may also have noticed my preference for C. P. Cavafy, the poet-historian, as he liked to call himself. Members of the Historiophiles Society, have even received a printout of perhaps my favourite poem, Cavafy’s “Thermopylae.”
The whole discussion around Nolan’s Odyssey, however, reminded me of two poems I love: another poem by C.P. Cavafy, perhaps his best-known one, which we mentioned briefly last year, “Ithaka,” and “Upon a Line of Foreign Verse” by the Nobel laureate in Literature (1963), George Seferis, whose relationship with Cavafy we also touched on briefly last year.
While Homer describes Odysseus as ‘δαΐφρων’ (battle-minded, wise-hearted, fiery-hearted), ‘τάλα’ (wretched, pitiable), ‘τλήμων’ (enduring, stout-hearted, long-suffering), and πολύτροπο (resourceful, complicated, a man of twists and turns — perhaps the most frequently debated of Odysseus’ epithets), among others, Seferis in his poem borrows the first line, “Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage…”, from a 16th-century sonnet by Joachim du Bellay, literally standing “on a foreign verse,” in order to create a rather different Odysseus:
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