/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.23172066]

Is it just me or is Homer's Odyssey... bad? I'm honestly starting to believe the whole theory that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by two completely different people. Here's something to consider real quick. When people praise the Iliad, they're praising the Iliad as a whole. When people gush about the Odyssey, they're really only talking about very specific, relatively brief moments in just a few of the 24 books which make it up. Admittedly, those moments are great, but the Iliad doesn't merely have high points. It is incredible from beginning to end.

[Anonymous No.23172079]

>>23172066
I read your stupid opinion in that other thread and I btfod it there. The slow scenes build up the tension and make sure that Athena, Telemachus and Odysseus have a consistent plan which they will follow through in unison.

[Anonymous No.23172086]

when i read homer i feel nothing
when i read shakespeare i feel nothing

[Anonymous No.23172089]

>>23172079
I think you might be delusional. Link me to that post you think I made, because this is the first time I've ever posted about the Odyssey. Nice to know I'm not alone in this opinion, though.

[Anonymous No.23172093]

>>23172086
you have asperger's

[Anonymous No.23172096]

My theory is the Homerids or Rhapsodes were a caste for human sacrifice, like the Flamines and Brahmins. Homer is just as fictional as Daedalus, supposed patriarch of the Daedalids

[Anonymous No.23172098]

>>23172066
>Is it just me
Yeah, it's just you.

[Anonymous No.23172102]

>>23172096
Why do you think that?
>>23172098
Clearly not, if that guy is having conniptions in my thread over what some other anon said.

[Anonymous No.23172104]

>>23172098
/thread

[Anonymous No.23172107]

>>23172086
R u asian or black?

[Anonymous No.23172108]

>>23172066
The Iliad is superior. Anyone telling you otherwise is retarded. The Odyssey is not even an epic, strictly speaking.

[Anonymous No.23172110]

>>23172093
>>23172107
no

[Anonymous No.23172115]

>>23172107
english

[Anonymous No.23172117]

>>23172089
It was a thread where the guy said the Odyssey sucks because it takes too long to build up to the conflict and too much of the dialogue consists of Odysseus talking to goatherds. I’m not going through the archive to find it but that was his argument.

[Anonymous No.23172119]

>>23172066
Nah.
I even like the Odyssey better than the Illiad.
So it's just you.

[Anonymous No.23172138]

>>23172117
>the Odyssey sucks because it takes too long to build up to the conflict and too much of the dialogue consists of Odysseus talking to goatherds.
Lol.
If he's going to say that, then why not point to the multiple scenes in the Illiad where they just say the most irrelevant things, like
>This dude is related to that dude by 50 generations, and blablablablablablabla.
Both the Illiad and the Odyssey have that shit.
So it's hypocritical to only do that to the Odyssey.

[Anonymous No.23172140]

>>23172138
That was actually my response to him on why I preferred the Odyssey.

[Anonymous No.23172142]

>>23172117
Yeah, I wouldn't make the same argument as he did. Neither of those reasons are what I'd say make the Odyssey bad. I actually enjoyed the Telemachi, and it seems the guy you're talking about didn't. What do you like about the Odyssey?

[Anonymous No.23172145]

isnt this kind of a stupid thing to debate over theres nothing wrong with liking the illiad more. why do you even care.

[Anonymous No.23172147]

>>23172145
We're on /lit/. It doesn't happen often, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to talk about books.

[Anonymous No.23172155]

>>23172142
I liked the entire thing but book 23 in particular struck a cord. The one dealing with Odysseus’s identity and the nature of love. Odysseus may as well have been a stranger to Penelope so long after he had left for Troy but the intimate feelings they had shared in the bed built into the live oak tree were what she used to test him and find his identity. No other man could be as intimate to Penelope in that way or to know those things, no matter how briefly they knew each other or how far away the memories of their love in that bed were to them; They still remained the key aspect which bound the couple in love. Book 23 alone makes the Odyssey superior to the Iliad in my eyes.

[Anonymous No.23172160]

>>23172140
Lol.
Well, it seems we have similar tastes then, as i also prefer the Odyssey over the Illiad.

[Anonymous No.23172261]

>>23172147
but you arent doing that you're attacking his character

[Anonymous No.23172408]

>>23172086
Do you have brown eyes?

[Anonymous No.23173802]

>>23172066
I can't comment on your enjoyment of the books, but I can comment on that author part. The odyssey and Iliad probably DID have different authors, or at least something bit happened because there's a clear shift in tone. In the Greek original text the Iliad begins by placing central value on the "divine" rage of Achilles. A goddess sings us about it, all in the first line. It's a tale of gods and men being subject to their whims with disastrous consequences. But the odyssey begins with "about the man, sing for me musa": the man and his struggles are now central, and not even a goddess is singing for us now, but an ethereal demi-creature of human inspiration.
The shift in tone is potent and leads to speculate whether the author is the same.

[Anonymous No.23173840]

>>23172066
>the whole theory that the Iliad and the Odyssey were written by two completely different people.
They were originally oral but them being from two different oral sources is less a theory and more basically a given among classicists.

[Anonymous No.23173842]

>>23172086
Don't goon for 3 months and then come back to them and try again. It'll be different.

Also quit typing lowercase like a faggot on twitter.

[Anonymous No.23173897]

>>23172155
I agree, book 23 is absolutely beautiful.
>Joy, warm as the joy that shipwrecked sailors feel
>when they catch sight of land—Poseidon has struck
>their well-rigged ship on the open sea with gale winds
>and crushing walls of waves, and only a few escape, swimming,
>struggling out of the frothing surf to reach the shore,
>their bodies crusted with salt but buoyed up with joy
>as they plant their feet on solid ground again,
>spared a deadly fate. So joyous now to her
>the sight of her husband, vivid in her gaze,
>that her white arms, embracing his neck
>would never for a moment let him go...
Note how Homer here compared Penelope's feelings to a shipwrecked sailor using nearly the same details as when Odysseus' raft was destroyed by Poseidon near Phaecia in book 5. The implication was that their bond was so deep Penelope could understand her husband's pains and struggles even before he told her anything. That whole book was full of similar moments, which was probably the reason why several ancient scholars argued that it was the real ending of the Odyssey.

[Anonymous No.23174267]

>>23172086
Then reading isn't for you
>>23172107
I'm both

[Anonymous No.23174362]

Maybe you got a bad translation?
I liked the Odyssey better.


>They were originally oral but them being from two different oral sources is less a theory and more basically a given among classicists.
Do they have any evidence of this or is it fanfiction by 19th century Germans like the "Gospels were written anonymous" theories?

[Anonymous No.23174561]

>>23172066
I dropped it after reading book 14. The part where he lies about his adventures to the goatherd. I wasn't really enjoying it overall because the bulk of the content was just describing stuff that happened with no real point beyond that.
As opposed to The Iliad which compellingly justified it's narrative and consistently explored its themes throughout the entire work. I understand why there's a list of names and ships, I understand why every time a major character gets killed there's a little accounting of their life.
In The Odyssey I don't understand why we need to go over every time Odysseus got fucked over on his way home. It's all may as well be the same shit that happens for the same reason.

[Anonymous No.23174563]

>>23173842
>Also quit typing lowercase like a faggot on twitter.
you must be really, really young

[Anonymous No.23174585]

>>23174561
>In The Odyssey I don't understand why we need to go over every time Odysseus got fucked over on his way home.
Because, that's the plot of the odyssey?
What a weird complain to have.
Like, what do you think, you could have done to create a narrative using odysseus without doing that, and not breaking his whole point of being lost in the ocean after Troy?
This is the weirdest "missing the whole point of the entire narrative" i ever seen.

[Anonymous No.23174599]

>>23172066
The first ~80 pages sucked but I loved the rest of it.

[Anonymous No.23174614]

>>23174585
If the point is simply describing things that happened on a journey, then why would anyone really give a fuck? That's clearly not the point, considering the entire journey is basically only 4 chapters in the middle of a 24 chapter story. I didn't even finish it and even I'm not so clueless as to think that the journey is the point.

[Anonymous No.23174621]

>>23172066
>When people gush about the Odyssey, they're really only talking about very specific, relatively brief moments in just a few of the 24 books which make it up.
It’s out of their depth.

[Anonymous No.23174634]

>>23172066
I too prefer the Iliad, but the Odyssey is a different kind of story, it's more about the adventure itself than just pure conflict like the Iliad is.

I do feel the Odyssey's pacing is a bit grating when you are coming from the non-stop death of Troy, but it's still a great poem.

[Keith from /FL/ !!rEkSWzi2+mz No.23174636]

>>23172066
Longinus put it best:

>When we turn to the Odyssey we find occasion to observe that a great poetical genius in the decline of power which comes with old age naturally leans towards the fabulous...And for the same reason, I imagine, whereas in the Iliad, which was written when his genius was in its prime, the whole structure of the poem is founded on action and struggle, in the Odyssey he generally prefers the narrative style, which is proper to old age. Hence Homer in his Odyssey may be compared to the setting sun: he is still as great as ever, but he has lost his fervent heat. The strain is now pitched to a lower key than in the “Tale of Troy divine”: we begin to miss that high and equable sublimity which never flags or sinks, that continuous current of moving incidents, those rapid transitions, that force of eloquence, that opulence of imagery which is ever true to Nature. Like the sea when it retires upon itself and leaves its shores waste and bare, henceforth the tide of sublimity begins to ebb, and draws us away into the dim region of myth and legend. 14In saying this I am not forgetting the fine storm-pieces in the Odyssey, the story of the Cyclops,20 and other striking passages. It is Homer grown old I am discussing, but still it is Homer. Yet in every one of these passages the mythical predominates over the real.

[Anonymous No.23175321]

>>23174563
If you're a genxer typing like a teenage girl that's even more embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.23175340]

>>23172408
most greeks had brown eyes, and probably so did shakespeare.

[Anonymous No.23175401]

>>23175321
>if you're a genxer typing like a teenage girl that's even more embarrassing.
it has nothing to do with everything being lowercase or not. your post still sounds just as faggy as before. listen to these two back to back and see if it's the punctuation here that really matters, or the content.
https://voca.ro/1lCF9tPDXw6p
https://vocaroo.com/1aGNVjwh3dK2

[Anonymous No.23175826]

>>23173897
That would be the perfect ending if it ended with Penelope and Odysseus in bed together during the long night of Athena. The Laertes part and the angry mob does feel a bit tacked on and Odysseus toying with Laertes’ emotions by not immediately coming clean as his lost son strikes one as a bit cruel.

[Anonymous No.23175838]

>>23174614
The Odysseu is actually about Odysseus’ reclaiming his kingdom and his woman from the usurpers. The movie adaptations always focus on the Cyclopes and Circe and other mythical monsters but that is a small bit of the book and it isn’t what the story is actually about. The story is about Odysseus reclaiming Penelope, it is not about PEW PEW bing bing wahoo action scenes.

[Anonymous No.23175880]

>>23172086
Who makes you feel something?

>>23172107
You're as stupid as he is.

[Anonymous No.23175896]

>>23172086
Sometimes it’s the writing style. I felt shock with the one where they baked the guy into a pie