Why the Odyssey Keeps Defeating Filmmakers
Key takeaways
- After ten years at war and ten more at sea, he is borne back to Ithaca by his gracious hosts the Phaeacians, who have feasted him and delighted in his tales.
- They heaped the thingsbeside the olive tree, so no one passingwould do them damage while their ownerwas sleeping.
- A tired warrior needs his goods, but most of all he needs sleep.
In preparation for the Sirens’ song, Aldo Pini ties Kirk Douglas to the mast in Mario Camerini’s 1954 schlockfest, “Ulysses.”Photograph from Cola Images / Alamy Save this story Save this story Save this story Save this story In Book XIII of the Odyssey, which is both the most familiar and the strangest of great epics, Odysseus comes home at last. After ten years at war and ten more at sea, he is borne back to Ithaca by his gracious hosts the Phaeacians, who have feasted him and delighted in his tales. They lay him in the stern of a ship, where he remains through the voyage in a sleep “like death,” and unload him with great delicacy:
They disembarked, and lifted from the shipOdysseus, wrapped up in sheets and blankets.They set him on the sand, still fast asleep.They unpacked all the presents he was givenby the Phaeacian lords to take back home,Thanks to Athena’s care. They heaped the thingsbeside the olive tree, so no one passingwould do them damage while their ownerwas sleeping. Then they rowed away back home.
A tired warrior needs his goods, but most of all he needs sleep. Homer’s homecoming epic is full of such lovely touches. The poem that precedes it, the Iliad, is a cruel and beautiful work, the ultimate story of war; the Odyssey has its warlike passages, but its central energies seem almost commonplace beside the merciless fury of Achilles. In Ithaca, Odysseus’ wife, Penelope, is besieged by insolent young men, freeloading suitors who want her to choose one of them. Homeless, his body torn, Odysseus needs to get back to her and Telemachus, his anxious son, and to clean up the mess. Along the way, when he’s lucky, he enjoys hot baths, a proper bed, carnal companionship, and gut-busting meals of spitted sheep, cow, stag, or pig. Few great works have been so devoted to physical pleasure and pain.