Review 13: Finally! The Odyssey, a Modern Sequel!
17/09/07 15:33 Filed in: Books
What
dread at even attempting this! Nearly 800 pages of poetry,
Kazantzakis’ The
Odyssey: A Modern Sequel is a travel narrative about Odysseus, set
immediately at the end of the Odyssey, at which point he has
arrived home, slaughtered the suitors around his wife and kingdom
and set his household straight. Domestic bliss, however, just
isn’t his thing after a life on the seas, so he forms a small
crew and leaves Ithaca, never to return. Just as a travel narrative
this book is pretty intense: Odysseus sees and tastes everything,
and the book ends with him at the furthest limits of the earth,
dead upon an iceberg at the south pole. The thinking behind the
book is so much broader than the journey, with a philosophical
scope stretching from the pursuit of hedonism, to uber-menschian
transcendence of values, virtues and vices, to the foundation of a
new way of life after casting off these shackles, the death of god,
to nihilism and back again to Kazantzakis’ and
Odysseus’ goal — pure and total freedom.
This book was hard, and not in a tricky, I don’t get it sort of way like the other big Homerian book, Ulysses. Page after page of poetry is tough going and Kazantzakis can be a little long winded at times. There is one 30 page digression in the middle that made me stop reading for a couple months because I wasn’t interested. On the other hand, page after page of Odysseus reflecting on the best sort of existence really challenged my own feelings about birth, death, and how to spend the interim. I would read certain passages and close the book, thinking, “What the fuck am I doing, sitting here reading and surfing the internet? Is this life? How do I want to die? The book is hard because Odysseus isn’t an ubermensch like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: he makes mistakes and he changes his mind. This makes him much more sympathetic and at the same time, makes his exhortation to live life and pursue freedom, to give up hoping for another day, life after death, a reward for your toils, to acknowledge that all is passing and transient. Unlike the Buddhist notion of transience, which causes monks to withdraw to avoid both pain and too sweet pleasure, Odysseus swallows everything while he can and moves on, unsated.
So, the book had a profound effect upon me. Whether any of you scant readers will every pick it up is highly questionable: I know of few books that are more intimidating in their density and as challenging in their ethos. 33,333 lines of poetry rewritten 7 times over — I sure hope I can do something that cool.
It’s almost impossible to give you the best of the book in a short passage, but here is one I liked. Odysseus and his crew fell in with a rebellion in Egypt only to be imprisoned. The Pharaoh is a simpering weakling, but as the crew await execution, there is a request among the prisoners for a witchdoctor to soothe the nightmares and melancholy of the Pharaoh. Odysseus, with a mask of his totem god strapped to his back, offers to go and perform a dance.
He shuffled through the first steps of the sacred dance
holding his hands outstretched as though he begged for bread,
then slowly passed with mournful grace from lord to lord.
A strident whining bubbled in his quivering throat
as though small orphans wept with far, convulsive sobs,
and his mud-tattered rags flapped in the scented air.
The smiling archons marveled at the stranger’s skill
in aping the uncaressed small orphans softly sobbing,
the sickly tramp who went from door to door and begged.
Then like a tiger crouched to spring, he clenched his fists,
raised one foot high in air like a curved twisted paw,
and as his neck grew taut and his teeth flashed in darkness,
the carved mask of his god thumped on his back and groaned.
His feet leapt as in a rage and drummed on the hard ground,
his savage hands pulled tightly at invisible bows
and unseen arrows whizzed with speed in the moon’s glow.
This was no simple dance: war sprang in the rose shrubs,
black crows perched on the feasting boards and hoarsely cawed,
and the king gasped and leapt, by shadowy arrows struck.
The archer’s rage calmed down, his throat relaxed, and sobs
pierced through the night like wailing maids who tore their hair.
The slow dance dragged and crawled, and now lean cripples roamed
and limped upon the earth, for the cruel war had stopped,
and blind men fiercely groped the ground with their bent staffs.
The lords laughed unabashed; in their mind’s eye they saw
their maimed slaves coming from the slaughter, stooped with spoils;
only amid moon-shadows, far in the dense grove,
a girl recalled her lover and softly began to weep.
The lone man fell and bowed down low at the king’s feet
then slowly, slowly mounted like the ascending sun
so that when the court dames and revelers finally saw him
they shrieked out, terror-struck, for on the archer’s face
was tightly wedged his grinning god’s fierce, hideous mask!
The king screamed and reeled backward in his archons’ arms:
“Ah! That’s the seven-times-reborn sun-demon’s face
that struck me in my sleep! Help me or I’ll go mad!”
But when the steward charged with wrath to seize the dancer,
the quailing king shrieked out again and stopped him short,
for as Odysseus fixed God’s mask on his fierce brow
six pairs of flames leaped from his arm-joints, head and feet.
Then all minds crashed, veins swelled with fear, the whole world shook,
and the man-killer, seizing his black hilted sword,
leapt in a frothing dance about the monarch’s tables.
A wide-eyed, tall intoxication blazed in his head
as his feet whirled him on beyond both life and death
where he no longer whined, or fought, or wept, or begged
but touched the black soil like a god till the stones smoked.
Then all at once he stood stock-still before the king,
broke in harsh laughter and fixed him with his mud-filled eyes.
The startled youth, conceived in an orgy, reached his hands,
but with a thundering cavern-roar the sly man yelled:
“Good is the quail, the blackbird, and the turtle-dove,
but of all birds I like the eagle, the cross-eagle, best,
and most of all when it holds a king’s head in its claws!”
This book was hard, and not in a tricky, I don’t get it sort of way like the other big Homerian book, Ulysses. Page after page of poetry is tough going and Kazantzakis can be a little long winded at times. There is one 30 page digression in the middle that made me stop reading for a couple months because I wasn’t interested. On the other hand, page after page of Odysseus reflecting on the best sort of existence really challenged my own feelings about birth, death, and how to spend the interim. I would read certain passages and close the book, thinking, “What the fuck am I doing, sitting here reading and surfing the internet? Is this life? How do I want to die? The book is hard because Odysseus isn’t an ubermensch like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: he makes mistakes and he changes his mind. This makes him much more sympathetic and at the same time, makes his exhortation to live life and pursue freedom, to give up hoping for another day, life after death, a reward for your toils, to acknowledge that all is passing and transient. Unlike the Buddhist notion of transience, which causes monks to withdraw to avoid both pain and too sweet pleasure, Odysseus swallows everything while he can and moves on, unsated.
So, the book had a profound effect upon me. Whether any of you scant readers will every pick it up is highly questionable: I know of few books that are more intimidating in their density and as challenging in their ethos. 33,333 lines of poetry rewritten 7 times over — I sure hope I can do something that cool.
It’s almost impossible to give you the best of the book in a short passage, but here is one I liked. Odysseus and his crew fell in with a rebellion in Egypt only to be imprisoned. The Pharaoh is a simpering weakling, but as the crew await execution, there is a request among the prisoners for a witchdoctor to soothe the nightmares and melancholy of the Pharaoh. Odysseus, with a mask of his totem god strapped to his back, offers to go and perform a dance.
He shuffled through the first steps of the sacred dance
holding his hands outstretched as though he begged for bread,
then slowly passed with mournful grace from lord to lord.
A strident whining bubbled in his quivering throat
as though small orphans wept with far, convulsive sobs,
and his mud-tattered rags flapped in the scented air.
The smiling archons marveled at the stranger’s skill
in aping the uncaressed small orphans softly sobbing,
the sickly tramp who went from door to door and begged.
Then like a tiger crouched to spring, he clenched his fists,
raised one foot high in air like a curved twisted paw,
and as his neck grew taut and his teeth flashed in darkness,
the carved mask of his god thumped on his back and groaned.
His feet leapt as in a rage and drummed on the hard ground,
his savage hands pulled tightly at invisible bows
and unseen arrows whizzed with speed in the moon’s glow.
This was no simple dance: war sprang in the rose shrubs,
black crows perched on the feasting boards and hoarsely cawed,
and the king gasped and leapt, by shadowy arrows struck.
The archer’s rage calmed down, his throat relaxed, and sobs
pierced through the night like wailing maids who tore their hair.
The slow dance dragged and crawled, and now lean cripples roamed
and limped upon the earth, for the cruel war had stopped,
and blind men fiercely groped the ground with their bent staffs.
The lords laughed unabashed; in their mind’s eye they saw
their maimed slaves coming from the slaughter, stooped with spoils;
only amid moon-shadows, far in the dense grove,
a girl recalled her lover and softly began to weep.
The lone man fell and bowed down low at the king’s feet
then slowly, slowly mounted like the ascending sun
so that when the court dames and revelers finally saw him
they shrieked out, terror-struck, for on the archer’s face
was tightly wedged his grinning god’s fierce, hideous mask!
The king screamed and reeled backward in his archons’ arms:
“Ah! That’s the seven-times-reborn sun-demon’s face
that struck me in my sleep! Help me or I’ll go mad!”
But when the steward charged with wrath to seize the dancer,
the quailing king shrieked out again and stopped him short,
for as Odysseus fixed God’s mask on his fierce brow
six pairs of flames leaped from his arm-joints, head and feet.
Then all minds crashed, veins swelled with fear, the whole world shook,
and the man-killer, seizing his black hilted sword,
leapt in a frothing dance about the monarch’s tables.
A wide-eyed, tall intoxication blazed in his head
as his feet whirled him on beyond both life and death
where he no longer whined, or fought, or wept, or begged
but touched the black soil like a god till the stones smoked.
Then all at once he stood stock-still before the king,
broke in harsh laughter and fixed him with his mud-filled eyes.
The startled youth, conceived in an orgy, reached his hands,
but with a thundering cavern-roar the sly man yelled:
“Good is the quail, the blackbird, and the turtle-dove,
but of all birds I like the eagle, the cross-eagle, best,
and most of all when it holds a king’s head in its claws!”