TOP 10 ODYSSEYS / ODYSSEY ICEBERG (SPECIAL MENTION)

 

Sing, Muse, of the special mentions for my Top 10 Odysseys.

I’ve counted out my Top 10 Odysseys, the top ten odysseys to be found within the Odyssey.

That is, the demarcations or parts, narrative or thematic, identified within the fundamental continuity of the Odyssey, such as the standard demarcation of the Telemachy, the first four books with Odysseus’ son Telemachus as protagonist, from the balance of the Odyssey – with the latter also often divided into two parts, his wanderings and his homecoming (or more).

So yes, another of my mostly tongue-in-cheek top tens where I look at demarcations or parts within what is the fundamental continuity of the Odyssey – you could think of it as my Odyssey iceberg.

But as usual, wait – there’s more! There’s my typical twenty special mentions I like to have for my top ten lists, and yes, we’re in wild-tier here, at the bottom of or below the iceberg. We’re not talking the odysseys within the Odyssey itself, but increasingly weird and wild odysseys interpreting or reinterpreting the Odyssey

Except for my first special mention…

 

(1) EPIC CYCLE / TROJAN CYCLE

 

Not an odyssey within the Odyssey, but instead what the Odyssey itself was within – the larger mythos of the Trojan War.

What often surprises people about the Iliad and Odyssey is how small a timeframe of the events of the Trojan War or aftermath they actually narrate.

The Trojan War lasted ten years but the Iliad only shows a few weeks of the final year of the war – and even then does not depict the Trojan Horse or fall of Troy, contrary to popular belief from adaptations such as the film Troy.

The Odyssey is somewhat better. Yes, it ultimately does narrate the events of its ten year duration for Odysseus’ homecoming from Troy, although again the actual events depicted in it are the last few weeks of the final year – with everything before that being told by the characters, primarily Odysseus himself when it comes to his fantastic voyage, to other characters.

What follows from that is the other thing that often surprises people about the Iliad and Odyssey is that they are only two books, albeit the two books that survived intact, from the epic “cycle” of poetry in oral tradition for the larger mythos of the Trojan War.

One suspects that the Iliad and Odyssey were superior in quality to the other books, hence their survival, but six other books are usually identified for all eight books of Epic Cycle:

• Cypria – the Trojan War before the Iliad
• Aethiopis – the Trojan War after the Iliad to the death of Achilles
• Little Iliad & Iliupersis – the Trojan Horse and fall of Troy
• Nostoi – the return of other Greek heroes from Troy
• Telegony – sequel to the Odyssey

Speaking of which…

 

(2) TELEGONY

 

The sequel to the Odyssey (not attributed to Homer), the original text of which was subsequently lost as in did not survive except in fragments or commentary.

It takes up after Odysseus has returned to Ithaca and “comprises two distinct episodes” – “Odysseus voyage to Thesprotia, and the story of Telegonus”, Odysseus’ son with Circe. You could argue that it draws from elements or hints within the Odyssey, such that is an odyssey inherent within the Odyssey.

The first is presumably to make the sacrifices to appease Poseidon as instructed by the underworld shade of Tiresias in the Odyssey, such that it might have been dubbed the Tiresiad. Predictably given his track record in the Odyssey, Odysseus shacks up with the Thesprotian queen Callidice and they have a son, Polypoetes.

The second deals with his son with Circe, Telegonus, having grown to adulthood. Telegonus seeks out Odysseus as his father but ironically slays Odysseus instead by the kind of mistaken identity common in classical mythology – and fulfilment of prophecy, although I think it was stretching Tiresias’ prophecy that death would come to Odysseus “out of the sea” for Telemachus to use a supernatural spear tipped with the poisonous sting of a stingray.

“As Odysseus lies dying, he and Telegonus recognize one another, and Telegonus laments his mistake”. Telegonus then makes it weirder by bringing his father’s corpse, Odysseus’ widow Penelope, and Odysseus’ other son Telemachus back to Circe in Aeaea. Circe makes it even weirder by making them all immortal swingers who shack up with each other – Telegonus marries Penelope and Telemachus marries Circe.

 

(3) CULT OF ODYSSEUS

 

Like all good Greek heroes, Odysseus had a cult dedicated to him. There’s evidence suggesting a cult dedicated to him in – where else? – Ithaca, with “public games called the Odysseia” and “a designated public gathering place or a sanctuary, known as the Odysseion”

 

(4) AENEID

 

The Roman Odyssey or Virgil’s Odyssey – essentially imperial propaganda for Augustus, seeking to outdo the Iliad and the Odyssey by combining both.

After fleeing the falling Troy with family and companions, Trojan hero and legendary founder of Rome, Aeneas, has his own odyssey to Italy, matching many of the same beats from the Odyssey including his own prophetic visit to the underworld. In Italy, he fights his own version of the Iliad but founding a kingdom rather than destroying one.

Bonus points for name-dropping Odysseus (in his Latin name Ulysses) – and with snark to boot.

 

(5) DIVINE COMEDY

 

Dante out-Virgils Virgil, with his epic fantasy voyage through the afterlife, starting of course with the most famous (and fun) of its three parts, Inferno – the characteristic katabasis of heroes or poets into the underworld, or Hell in Dante’s case, with Virgil as his guide no less.

 

(6) ON THE CAVE OF THE NYMPHS IN THE ODYSSEY

 

From a few lines in Book 13 describing a cave on Ithaca, this is sadly not a raunchy romp involving the titular nymphs but an exegesis of those lines by Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry as an allegory of the cosmos and soul.

 

(7) THE AUTHORESS OF THE ODYSSEY / HOMER’S DAUGHTER – NAUSICAAD

 

Sing, muse!

Some readers have been intrigued, as I have been, by the higher prevalence for female characters in the Odyssey has a higher prevalence for female characters than its Homeric counterpart of the Iliad, perhaps not surprisingly for the former’s theme of homecoming or return from the latter’s war. The Odyssey’s protagonist Odysseus is strikingly dependent on the help of women for his homecoming, indeed without whom he would not have been able to return home – or not had a home to which he could return.

Such was the prevalence of female characters in the Odyssey, particularly when compared to the Iliad, that there’s something of a fringe theory – originating with nineteenth century English novelist Samuel Butler – that the “Homer” who wrote the Odyssey was a woman. Butler opined that it was a Sicilian woman, hence setting much of the Odyssey’s fantastic voyage in Sicily – and inserting herself in the Odyssey as Nausicaa, one of the women whose help was critical to Odysseus’ homecoming.

Butler “described his evidence for this in The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) and in the introduction and footnotes to his prose translation of the Odyssey (1900).”  Not surprisingly, Robert Graves picked up this ball and ran with it in his book Homer’s Daughter.

Which in a very real sense would make it Nausicaa’s Odyssey – or as I would dub it, the Nausicaad.

 

(8) FOLK ODYSSEY – HOMECOMING HUSBAND

 

We think of the Odyssey as a literary work, but it originated as a folk odyssey – a composition of bardic oral poetry, which probably varied somewhat between performances, and which was subsequently transcribed from one of its extant versions.

No doubt it has a number of folklore motifs throughout it, but a predominant one as classified in the Folklore Index (or Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index named for its authors) is The Homecoming Husband (ATU 974). Although that just prompts to mind the classic recurring subject of Playb0y cartoons for a husband coming home to apprehend his adulterous wife in flagrant delicto with the absurd excuse or explanation as the punchline – “Now you grab the choking victim like this…”

 

(9) LITERARY ODYSSEY – TWENTY READINGS

 

But yes, the folk Odyssey became a literary Odyssey – and an odyssey of literary theory.

There’s an intriguing book by literary theorist Nuria Perpinya, The Crypts of Criticism: Twenty Readings of the Odyssey, which offers up the titular twenty readings of the Odyssey by various theories of literary criticism – Freudian, Marxist, and so on.

 

(10) GEOGRAPHIC ODYSSEY – HOMER’S ITHACA

 

And then there’s the geographic Odyssey – the geography of the Odyssey, given the various named points of Odysseus’ wanderings and Ithaca itself for that matter.

This has arguably been the most fascinating odyssey within the Odyssey, certainly when it comes to speculation as to its locations, and essentially the subject in one way or another for (almost all) the balance of my special mentions.

Although there is a modern Ithaca, traditionally accepted to be Odysseus’ island kingdom, alternative locations have been speculated or theorized.

And then you get to the wider geography of the Odyssey. I tend to subscribe to the speculation or theory that the geography of the Odyssey is mythic – that is, otherworldly or locations in the mythic imagination rather than reality, albeit with some correlation or overlap.

However, there has been speculation about real world locations for the Odyssey, virtually since Homer’s ancient contemporaries onwards – although coinciding with such expressions of skepticism as that by the geographer Eratosthenes (as reported by Strabo, one of those who offered the most detailed list of real world locations): “You will find the scene of Odysseus’ wanderings when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of winds”.

 

(11) WESTERN ODYSSEY

 

Go west, young man!

Perhaps the most common geographic Odyssey, both in ancient tradition and in modern opinion, placing the locations of Odysseus’ wanderings in the central or western Mediterranean, particularly around Italy – with Scylla and Charybdis for example traditionally being identified as the Straits of Messina between Sicily and the Italian mainland.

There’s also something of a double entendre here for the place of the Odyssey, and the Iliad for that matter, as a foundational text of Western literary culture.

 

(12) CELTIC ODYSSEY

 

Yes, this is a fringe theory but it’s too fun not to include here. Britain associated itself with Troy through Brutus, a descendant of Aeneas, as legendary king and founder of Britain, indeed with his name as the origin of the name of Britain.

Dutch writer Iman Wilkens took that a step further in his 1990 book, Where Troy Once Stood: The Mystery of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey revealed, to propose that Troy itself was in England and that the Trojan War was fought between rival Celts. It was then the Celts, as the Sea Peoples, who brought the Homeric epics with them to the Mediterranean.

Accordingly, the Odyssey was in the Atlantic – for example with Scylla and Charybdis located at St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall.

Which brings me to…

 

(13) ATLANTIC ODYSSEY

 

You don’t have to subscribe to fringe theories that Troy and the Trojan War were in Britain to propose that at least some of the locations in the Odyssey were in the Atlantic.

Some ancient traditions proposed this. Apollodorus of Athens proposed all the wanderings were in some sort of mythic realm in the Atlantic. Strabo similarly proposed that Phaeacia and Calypso’s island Ogygia were in the Atlantic, as did Plutarch for Ogygia.

That probably influenced modern authors to propose Atlantic locations, some even proposing as far afield as North America, Caribbean, and South America – I particularly like one theory that has the Amazon as the river Acheron in the underworld.

 

(14) BALTIC ODYSSEY

 

Go north, young man?

And then there’s the fringe theory of Felice Vinci, who proposed the Baltic Sea and northern Europe as the setting for the Odyssey.

Funnily enough, there seem to be hints of this in Nolan’s film – some of which seems closer to a Baltic setting than a Mediterranean one.

 

(15) ARABIAN ODYSSEY – SINBAD

 

No, I’m not proposing a fringe theory for Homer’s Odyssey in the Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf or Red Sea, perhaps even involving a circumnavigation of Africa, although any of those would be awesome.

I’m proposing that the legendary voyages of Sinbad are effectively an Arabian Odyssey – I believe the influence of the Odyssey on the tales of Sinbad is generally acknowledged, even to the extent that some of the former reappears in the latter.

 

(16) AMERICAN ODYSSEY

 

I stand by my quip that the Second World War is the American Iliad and the Cold War is the American Odyssey.

However, that quip might well be made for American history elsewhere – Vietnam as Iliad (albeit in defeat rather than victory) and post-Vietnam history, the First World War as Iliad and the Lost Generation as Odyssey, the Civil War as Iliad and the American West as Odyssey…

That last leads me to the American West as a comparable setting to the Mediterranean for an adaptation of the Odyssey. Dare I propose an Australian odyssey along similar lines, an outback odyssey perhaps?

Arguably, Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey film was an American Odyssey along those thematic post-war lines, while O Brother Where Art Thou was more explicitly an American Odyssey, albeit set in the American South rather than the West.

Finally, I’d argue that the United State is the most Odysseyan modern nation, perhaps even the most Homeric one. No, I will not elaborate…

 

(17) APOCALYPTIC ODYSSEY

 

Okay, yes, this was partly me wanting to combine my two favorite classical works of mythic literature – Homer’s Odyssey and the Book of Apocalypse.

But it’s more than that – I’m joking and I’m serious.

Firstly, it wouldn’t take too much to adapt the Book of Apocalypse to tell it as the Odyssey (or vice versa) – just have St John as Odysseus, Patmos as Calypso’s island of Ogygia, the supernatural visions as mythic wanderings, and so on.

Secondly, there have been serious arguments for Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey as literary models for the Gospel of Mark, albeit as something of a fringe theory by Dennis MacDonald.

Thirdly, it wouldn’t take too much to adapt the Odyssey to a post-apocalyptic setting – Odysseus as Mad Max, perhaps? Indeed, there’s something of a parallel with Max losing his crew (the Main Force Patrol, particularly Goose) and Pursuit Special vehicle, ending up a wandering stranger.

 

(18) SPACE ODYSSEY

 

Well, this one was obvious, wasn’t it – what with the subtitle of the film and book series (written by Arthur C. Clarke) of which the best known is the original Kubrick film 2001: A Space Odyssey?

However, this goes beyond the metaphorical use of odyssey in that film (whether for space exploration or the arc of human evolution) to space as a potential setting for an SF adaptation of the Odyssey. Indeed, the French-Japanese animated series Ulysses 31 did just that.

 

(19) FUNK ODYSSEY

 

I couldn’t resist this one, what with Jamiroquai borrowing from 2001: A Space Odyssey for the title of his (best) album, 2001: A Funk Odyssey.

There’s also the play on phonetic resonance between folk odyssey and funk odyssey. However, it’s more than just a play on similar sounding words – the folk odyssey of oral poetry was a funk odyssey, in that it was bardic performance. That’s right – the original Odyssey was…a musical? Where are the modern musical Odyssey adaptations – the rock operas and rap concept albums?

Yes – they had better feature an adaptation of John Denver’s Calypso – “aye Calypso, I’ll sing to your spirit” (even if it was more for Jacques Cousteau’s ship).

And yes – I know there are classical operas adapted from the Odyssey.

 

(20) NYMPHODYSSEY

 

As usual, I like to reserve my final (twentieth) special mention for my kinky (or kinkier) entry, so I give you…the Nymphodyssey!

Except…the original Odyssey is, was, and has always been something of a nymph odysseyt. I mean, Odysseus spends eight of his ten years of odyssey-ing shacked up with literal nymphs Calypso and Circe. (Now, if there was only some way to get a menage a trois with both of them…)

And there’s hints at more – Nausicaa for example – as well as a distinct s€xual subtext throughout the Odyssey, particularly in female figures such as the Sirens.

It doesn’t take too much to write the Odyssey with that subtext made explicit. The Roman writer Ovid essentially did – focusing on his romantic involvements with Circe and Calypso, and recasting him as, in Harold Bloom’s phrase, “one of the great wandering womanizers”.

And yes – there’s already adult film versions of Nolan’s film because of course there are.