From what I’ve been led to understand, Eva Brann is THE scholar—I’ve heard her name mentioned in quite a few different contexts, and specifically of late in the context of Homer. According to Dr. Thomas, Dr. Brann knows more about Homer than “any other three people alive,” which seems to me to make her eminently qualified to talk about…well, anything really, but especially Homer.
Everybody knows that Dr. Brann was at Mercer a few nights ago, talking about “Achillean Armor and Odyssean Time.” While I found her discussion to be fascinating—seriously, it had about enough content for a semester-long class—I’d like to address a parallel topic.
Dr. Brann spent a great deal of time talking about the passage of time, both in the context of the character and the text itself. But, and I don’t THINK Dr. Brann mentioned this—it isn’t in my notes—but I could be wrong, to what extent does the passage of time change Odysseus? To put it another way, I don’t think that Odysseus really has a character arc within the text.
The reader gets to see Odysseus travelling around, either from the stories he tells or from Homer’s narration. But through the whole thing, Odysseus never actually matures, or changes, or seems to learn anything, save information on how to overcome his next challenge. Is this significant? Is it important that Odysseus at the beginning of the story is fundamentally the same as the Odysseus at the end? For that matter, is it important that the other members of the cast remain the same? Is Homer trying to make some sort of statement that who were are is who we will always be? That perhaps we can make superficial changes to ourselves, but deep down, we’re the same at the beginning of our story as we will be when we plant the oar in the ground?
Homer didn't have the concepts of the story that you describe. There are no texts from this time period that involve the hero changing because of his journey. The hero has certain virtues and certain flaws and these get him into certain situations, but there is no need for the Hero to change. These are not moral stories in which we realize our wrongs in ourself by hearing about Odysseus and change our character. That is a convention of a much later time. Epic heroes don't change.
ReplyDeleteKris,
ReplyDeleteYou're going to have to throw some evidence on that one, Kris. Achilles seems to take at least two big turns in the Iliad: first, in book one, when his anger takes him out of the fighting and causes the tide of war to turn and secondly in book 24 when Priam seems to bring him back to his senses. I might be willing to argue that there's some development in Bk 9, too, based on Phoenix's speech, but that's a harder case to make. And, I don't think you can make the case that Achilles is the same man at the end of the epic as he is in the beginning (even though he changes twice).
Odysseus is a different case; and, in my view, a very interesting one.