The Art of Manliness - Why Homer Matters

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.740 even though the legendary poet homer wrote the iliad and odyssey thousands of years ago

00:00:15.300 my guests would say that these epic poems are just as relevant and significant today

00:00:19.240 and even represent a kind of scripture his name is adam nicholson and he's the author of why homer

00:00:24.620 matters today on the show adam makes the case that the iliad is really the story of a collision

00:00:29.280 between a more rooted civilized way of life represented by the character of hector and a

00:00:34.020 nomadic honor-bound gang ethos represented by achilles we talk about how this collision birthed

00:00:38.980 the character of odysseus who is both great warrior and subtle diplomat and the whole greek

00:00:43.640 consciousness and we discuss how that consciousness is also our consciousness as we're still wrestling

00:00:48.320 with the warring impulses dramas and dilemmas and big questions of human experience homer gave life

00:00:53.500 to after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is homer

00:00:59.280 all right adam nicholson welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so several years

00:01:17.720 ago you wrote a book called why homer matters where you explore the world of homer the odyssey

00:01:23.760 the iliad you really took a deep dive so what was going on in your life where you decided to take

00:01:28.560 a deep dive into this ancient poet homer well i'd been really intrigued by homer for a long time i

00:01:39.460 tried to get that book off the ground about 10 years before i actually did so maybe 20 25 years ago now

00:01:46.400 and the reason being well i uh of course had been exposed as many people like me were to homer at

00:01:56.900 school in greek it was incredibly difficult i never really understood it i never got the point

00:02:02.740 it was like i always thought sort of hearing from people who don't know very well what their previous

00:02:09.600 night's dreams had been about and and i kind of just was not into it and picking through this

00:02:16.360 this difficult greek it's not even classical greek it's pre-classical greek it's you know if you if you

00:02:23.020 were familiar with you know the great playwrights of fifth century athens this was like reading anglo-saxon

00:02:30.900 to their english and so i had been alienated from it when i was a boy but then i uh in the middle of

00:02:41.020 my life as they say when i was about 40 i think i went on a long sailing trip with a friend of mine

00:02:48.740 up the wild west coast of the british isles on the outside the atlantic side of cornwall ireland the

00:02:58.320 scottish islands and then right up into the north into the pharaohs and nearly to iceland and it had

00:03:04.260 been a a very big exciting sea adventure with a friend of mine and on that trip i took with me a

00:03:13.400 copy of robert fagels's translation of the odyssey i thought well why not i'd i threw it in my rucksack

00:03:20.780 almost casually you know not really thinking much reading was going to be done and then uh after a

00:03:28.100 really rather grievous passage from the southwest of england to the southwest of ireland so to 200 i

00:03:34.120 think 250 miles of big atlantic and things have gone wrong as they do on sailing trips and eventually

00:03:41.040 we got into a little harbor there baltimore the original baltimore and then lying in my bunk there

00:03:47.720 kind of recovering from this bruising two or three day journey i started reading fagels's account of

00:03:55.100 the odyssey and suddenly had a had a revelatory moment i i suddenly saw in it somehow an account

00:04:05.660 of what it was to be alive what it was to void through the world the world is a kind of place full

00:04:13.480 of hazard and temptation and struggle and violence and love and all the dimensions of life seem to be

00:04:26.700 animated in the story of this this man odysseus who you know he has these wonderful qualities he

00:04:35.320 he he's kind of he's strong but he he buckles he bends he he's resilient he he he doubts himself there's

00:04:45.460 one point which odysseus compares himself to a sausage being turned on a grill amazingly you know that

00:04:53.680 he tosses to and fro he doesn't know what to do he doesn't know where he is he's besieged by by life

00:05:00.980 and destiny and so it it was just miraculous exposure to a kind of set of ancient explorations

00:05:10.660 of the human condition and and that really really set my mind on fire so in midlife you finally heard

00:05:16.980 the the song of the muses i suddenly heard it and and thought how very odd this is isn't it that this is

00:05:25.360 something written well when it was written is a question but or composed but i mean a very very long time

00:05:32.080 ago and certainly three thousand years ago with roots going a thousand years earlier than that maybe

00:05:39.680 and yet and yet yet despite that amazing distance and the whole you know how different a worldview could

00:05:48.960 you imagine than me uh 20th 21st century englishman and a greek adventurer three thousand years ago and

00:05:56.940 yet amazingly these questions of who you are and who you need to be are as alive in that text as any

00:06:07.040 i'd ever encountered i mean that was what dazzled me how come homer matters so there's a lot of debate

00:06:14.320 about the figure of homer himself like did he actually exist were his poems written by a bunch

00:06:18.660 of different people what are the common theories about homer and is there one that you subscribe to

00:06:24.220 yes well i mean obviously these epic poems were made by people i mean they didn't kind of emerge from

00:06:33.580 the atmosphere or weren't found inscribed on a rock they are human artifacts and the basically the

00:06:41.800 theories about it divide into first of all that they are a sort of compendium of lots of different

00:06:53.060 folk tales all pushed together and made into these grand long epic stories another version of course is

00:07:00.980 that there was a great man a poet mysterious poet called homer who composed them both

00:07:06.760 there is a kind of an amalgam of those things which is that there is a long inheritance of stories

00:07:15.420 which a great man called homer made these poems out of there were other epics that other poets made

00:07:23.180 other epics out of and my own feeling about it is that they are so clearly made and shaped and

00:07:35.040 subtle in their architecture and psychology that it they the iliad and the odyssey can only have been made

00:07:44.920 by a great poet almost certainly there are two homers the homer of the iliad and the homer of the odyssey

00:07:55.440 and both of them drawing on ancient stories but each of those two homers homer one and homer two

00:08:03.820 separated maybe by a generation or so and the odyssey poet the later because the odyssey clearly knows

00:08:14.540 the iliad very well quotes the iliad uses you know chunks of lines from the iliad and yet never

00:08:23.320 kind of repeats or is is boring about what the iliad had to say it knows it and it assumes that

00:08:32.600 its audience knows it and so can play against it and it is like the kind of uh almost the ironical

00:08:40.440 sequel to the iliad and so that is my picture that these poems have very very deep roots

00:08:47.560 going back to 3000 bc and maybe earlier to places far away from greece and the mediterranean

00:08:56.760 but they they were both made by people of genius perhaps in about 750 bc 700 600 650 that kind of thing

00:09:11.060 just when writing was appearing in the greek world for the first time an import from the near east from

00:09:17.820 the phoenicians and so as they were made these two poems they were written down having not been

00:09:26.500 written down before they were clearly in their earlier forms oral and composed orally and there are many

00:09:34.180 many signs in both poems that the original conception and the form of composition was what

00:09:42.020 the scholars call composition in performance you stand you before your audience you know the story

00:09:48.820 you need to tell you have lots of ingredients lots of phrases and so the both texts that we now have

00:09:56.340 are in a way like uh flash frozen versions of that very dynamic very liquid very performative origin

00:10:08.260 so a long long long spoken sung probably accompanied with a lyre poems which at some point

00:10:16.980 so nobody knows when 650 600 bc became the text that we know okay so around that time there was

00:10:26.100 maybe one maybe two individuals who composed uh the iliad and then later the odyssey but you were

00:10:32.660 saying that these stories go back thousands of years three thousand but you even you even go deeper you

00:10:38.100 say that the the stories and the motifs in the iliad in the odyssey go back even before the greeks were

00:10:45.620 greeks yeah tell us about the world of these pre-greeks and then how did it influence the poems in the

00:10:52.660 iliad and the odyssey yes i mean this is all highly speculative and i got into terrible trouble for

00:10:59.060 saying this in the book with the uh the people i like to refer to as the grown-ups but my picture

00:11:06.420 of this is okay take the iliad in the iliad you the basic situation and the the poetic power of the

00:11:14.420 thing the reason that the story grips you is that you have two warring parties one the trojans are

00:11:24.340 based in the city they live a sophisticated life all their women are with them the women weave 0.98

00:11:32.180 constantly it's a weaving and the woven is incredibly important to the whole atmosphere of troy it is the

00:11:40.820 great instituted uh familial world where priam the great old father of the city presides over his

00:11:50.180 family and the young princes their wives and their children and it is a deeply settled and deeply

00:11:57.060 organized world which is not unlike one of the great cities of the near east the near east in in

00:12:06.180 the bronze age which is what we're talking about was a place of highly organized city life in

00:12:12.580 mesopotamia and and in egypt and in canaan on the shores eastern shores of the mediterranean

00:12:19.460 it was a world where the city and the monarchical city the with the great king presiding over everything

00:12:27.220 that went on in them was was the basis on which life was organized that is on the one side

00:12:33.460 on the other side in the poem of the iliad on the on the far side of the plain of troy a big wide open

00:12:43.860 consistently windy place and i don't know if you've ever been there but the north wind blows relentlessly

00:12:51.700 across the trojan plain you need you look for shelter you look for somewhere away from this sort of 1.00

00:12:58.900 terribly exposed place and on that plain in the iliad you find a camp of warriors

00:13:10.100 living in uh sheds built up against their ships that are drawn up on the beach there their ships are

00:13:18.660 rotting the rigging is rocking rotten the uh the sheds themselves are not good there are dogs that crawl

00:13:26.020 across the battlefield eating the corpse it is a bleak homeless disorganized place in which the

00:13:35.620 leaders of the bands of greek this is not the greeks as the great sort of champions of classical

00:13:41.620 civilization one has to banish that idea from one's mind these are a kind of ruthless gang of marauders

00:13:49.940 trying to get at the city and all its riches they're arguing amongst themselves there's no sense of real

00:13:56.740 authority they are harboring resentments they're foul-mouthing each other they're threatening violence

00:14:03.860 to each other they are a gang of nomadic warriors and so this sort of deep poetic and psychic structure of

00:14:14.020 the iliad seemed to me and does seem now to me still not to reflect something that is uh going on

00:14:22.660 in sort of seventh eighth ninth century bc but something much earlier which is when uh people from

00:14:29.140 the steps the uh the great uh grasslands of asia that stretch all the way from the black sea from the

00:14:37.460 ukrainian step all the way through to to tibet a great kind of swathe of grasslands in which

00:14:45.860 mobile warriors and not great cities were the people living there in in the early bronze age and those

00:14:52.980 people who buried their kings in great mounds with masks and gold where they had it those people are the

00:15:02.980 ancestors of the greeks archaeologically and the great remains found for example in my senior are

00:15:10.420 clearly descendant of step rituals social practices social structures and so it seemed to me that this

00:15:20.740 story this iliad story is the story of those stepland warriors arriving in the land of the great cities

00:15:31.940 the mediterranean the greeks actually had no word for sea their word for sea is not a greek word nobody

00:15:41.060 knows where that word came from they did not know the sea and uh so the iliad is a picture of what

00:15:48.980 happens when greek nomadic warrior band arrives in its sort of dangerous and fissive condition 0.98

00:15:58.340 at the gates of the great city whose riches they want to acquire and that is why i think it has this

00:16:07.780 very very deep root and what the case you make is that this what we're seeing here this collision of

00:16:14.660 the nomadic greek with the the eastern city world is you're seeing a collision of these two ways of

00:16:21.860 being and you're seeing the birth of what you call the like greek the greek consciousness yes i mean i

00:16:29.540 think yes it is it's a very it's very interesting now that that in some ways the easiest way to see

00:16:35.540 this i think is to think of the great emblematic heroes so on the greek side you have achilles who is a

00:16:44.500 completely unaccommodated uh highly idealistic wild beautiful terrifying man capable of really

00:16:56.100 terrifying violence in the iliad a man undoubtedly of the steppe he is not a man of cities and then

00:17:06.180 opposed to him you have hector the great champion of the trojans he is his father's son his wife's

00:17:15.540 husband his son's father he is absolutely of the city completely bound in with that kind of social

00:17:25.140 world and in some ways hamstrung by it that achilles kills him achilles who knows no limit to the violence

00:17:34.900 seal rig ends up chasing hector round and round the walls of troj with the whole city on the walls his

00:17:41.460 family's father watching this most horrifying scene and if you have so so you have achilles opposed to

00:17:50.340 hector man of the steppe man of the plain against man of the city man of the family that's the kind 0.81

00:17:55.300 of deep opposition of the iliad but the third term of those is a disuse

00:18:02.660 disuse is also a great warrior but he's also a subtle diplomat he is a man of obviously of

00:18:11.940 adventuring of being out there on the sea but also a man who endlessly longs for home for his wife and

00:18:20.180 so a disuse i see this as a kind of dialectic you know if achilles meets hector the outcome of that

00:18:28.340 meeting is actually a disuse and a disuse is stands right at the heart of greek consciousness

00:18:37.700 both city-based and the kind of rootless adventurer and so in that way the two poems take the story on

00:18:46.580 if you have the kind of root original meeting in the iliad the odyssey is about so ask the question

00:18:53.540 what happens if you fuse these categories what actually becomes of the man when he is both achilles

00:19:01.860 and hector you get odysseus we're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:19:06.980 and now back to the show well i think that you make the point when you're describing the characters

00:19:19.220 of the iliad so i'm talking about achilles and agamemnon i think i don't know for some reason

00:19:24.500 whenever i imagine these characters i think of like classical greeks like plato or aristotle or

00:19:30.580 you know wearing you know wearing hoplite greek hoplite armor they're kind of sophisticated but

00:19:36.420 they're warriors but i don't know why i do that i maybe it's just kind of pop culture has done that to

00:19:41.700 me but the way you describe these homeric characters in the iliad it's something much

00:19:47.460 more primitive it's more like the epic of gilgamesh than the plays of classical greece how

00:19:55.220 would you describe the world view of these homeric characters and like you know what what role did

00:19:59.940 violence play in their lives well i mean it's not as if you know the great tragedies are without

00:20:07.140 violence i mean there are some terrifying things go on in there but i think this is right i think

00:20:13.220 that you have to rid your mind of those wonderful statues you know you've got to rid your mind of

00:20:20.820 the parthenon or any sense of civility actually although of course troy is itself an emblem of civility and

00:20:32.260 so and the iliad kind of looks to troy almost with envy and the end i mean the end of the iliad is

00:20:41.540 such an incredible thing which i think the end of the iliad does does speak to your to your question

00:20:46.900 you know that so achilles has killed hector and it is a horrifying moment for for priam his father

00:20:55.220 the king of troy and he and there's terrifying terrible scenes of of grief uh in troy at the

00:21:04.900 death of their their beloved son and achilles achilles has threatened to eat hector i mean his

00:21:14.740 achilles promises cannibalism really as a sign of the sort of depths to which he has sunk he's

00:21:23.060 driven there by grief over over the death of his own lover friend of patroclus and so you have it

00:21:31.700 as polarized as it ever is in the entire poem almost at the very end but then then this incredible scene

00:21:41.620 where priam gets some carts organized and fills carts with all the most beautiful cloths that

00:21:52.740 that troy can weave the woven as the heart of the trojan idea the bringing together of things

00:22:00.980 and at night guided by hermes crosses the trojan plain at night and comes secretly and quietly to the greek

00:22:12.340 camp and to the uh tent of achilles and kneels down in front of achilles and begs achilles for

00:22:21.940 his son for hector's body which is lying there and the two of them the old king of troy and this

00:22:28.580 unaccommodated ferocious gangster really the man of violence whose entire value system at this point is

00:22:38.260 bound up with unforgiving violence and whose only sense of justice is revenge against the killer of his

00:22:48.420 friend at this point at this point at the end of the iliad violence stops and the two of them

00:22:56.820 gaze into each other's eyes and hold each other's hands and it's always achilles is always described as

00:23:04.980 one of these these formulaic descriptions which kind of fit into the verse he's always described as having

00:23:11.220 man slaughtering hands and it says even now even at that point where priam is is kneeling in front of

00:23:18.980 him he holds achilles's man slaughtering hands and they are reconciled in a kind of love and it's it's like

00:23:29.380 it's like the whole of human civilization is bound up in this moment this poem the iliad which is a poem of

00:23:37.780 violence and a poem of violence and a poem of force does not in the end arrive at the point where

00:23:43.460 force or violence is endorsed the very opposite actually that at the end of it all violence is some

00:23:53.300 kind of neutralized or kind of almost blended out by that scene that love scene between

00:24:03.300 prime and achilles and so i think that that that transition which you only get to obviously after

00:24:12.340 thousands and thousands of lines of kind of terrifying blood spilling but that end is in a way what the

00:24:21.620 iliad means that this is a very kind of grievous world that we live in you know at some point i think

00:24:29.460 one of the trojan warriors says do you not see that huge drag net that is sweeping across the world and 1.00

00:24:38.100 sweeping the whole of humanity in front of it kind of terrifying vision of of really of pain

00:24:44.660 just dragging across the plains of the world in the end that is redeemable by the meeting of of these

00:24:53.220 these these two and so i think you know we can say primitive but i hate that word that it's kind of

00:25:00.580 there's nothing primitive about that understanding it's as wise a recognition as has ever been made

00:25:08.660 and it only of course means what it does because you have been you've waded through the blood for book

00:25:16.420 after book you know if it just said an old man you know met a young warrior and and they looked in each

00:25:22.580 other's eyes it wouldn't count for anything it means it because the you know i think this is the core

00:25:29.540 virtue of homer actually that homer looks at the pain of the world without cavil or fear nothing

00:25:39.780 is unlookable at in homer it really really hurts and yet having been there and known that

00:25:48.820 it can establish a kind of scene like that is no wonderful to me and i love how you did a great job

00:25:56.660 in helping make the world view of these greeks in the iliad relatable was you you kind of you compare

00:26:04.180 them to like a modern day gang and you know like like modern day gangs like it was very they were

00:26:11.540 very honor bound like honor was like the coin of the realm for them um there was no like set leaders

00:26:18.180 right it was like the leadership kind of came from who was the most charismatic who could just sort of

00:26:23.460 get people going to follow them like agamemnon was kind of a sort of a leader but not much it was

00:26:30.100 wasn't like he was elected to that it was more like well we'll just follow you because

00:26:34.900 you're getting this thing going so we'll follow you and yeah that's how modern day gangs are there's

00:26:39.300 not like a a set leader it's just sort of whoever can get people to follow them that's who they're

00:26:44.900 going to follow and then if you fall out of favor well then you're going to get you're going to get

00:26:48.660 knocked out it is i think that's absolutely true and and there are lots of kind of implications

00:26:55.540 that ripple out of that the one of the things that works as a leader of that kind is obviously

00:27:01.300 not instituted authority you're not depending on a on an election contested or not you're depending on

00:27:08.260 whether you can do it there then and one of the things that makes you capable of doing it there then

00:27:14.740 is your ability to talk it's actually very very verbal that that you you know trash talking goes on

00:27:23.380 in the iliad as it does in modern gangs there are curious parallels between that sort of constant

00:27:32.980 testing of authority the constant sense that authority is not valid unless it has been reproved

00:27:40.900 there and then also this sense that revenge is the only justice that there is no justice beyond the

00:27:48.420 acts that you then perform yourself to bring the balance up right that there is actually no law

00:27:56.660 the only law is winning i know that sociologists who have made close studies of gang cultures have recorded

00:28:06.500 that you know the gangs will talk about the great acts that were done 20 30 40 years before even

00:28:13.860 and in a way you could see these epic poems as incredibly uh high versions of that that only by knowing only by

00:28:25.940 sensing the perpetuation of honor from the act into the future does the honor itself have validity

00:28:35.060 that is actually the lastingness of honor in greek it's deathless athion kleos is deathless glory

00:28:44.980 is that despite death being an ever present fact in this sort of provisional world it's where everything

00:28:55.060 is provisional almost the only thing that is not provisional or things not provisional are death and

00:29:01.300 honor death is a constant and honor is the only conceivable denial of it and so i think that these

00:29:09.380 sort of saying earlier that that you know this is not a description the iliad is not a description of a

00:29:17.300 historical moment it's a description of a particular human predicament which does not have a time

00:29:25.460 associated with it it is what happens when that is the structure of life and i think that that that

00:29:34.740 is a reason that homo matters now that we mustn't put it in some sort of as you say kind of hollywood 0.98

00:29:44.180 category of the over this isn't over this is the situation that develops when you do have no law law

00:29:53.700 it's the only thing that prevents the conditions the gang conditions of the iliad from prevailing

00:30:00.420 what i find interesting about the iliad when i read it even though i'm i've grown up in this you

00:30:06.020 know the 20th century 21st century where there's laws and i've controlled myself whenever i read about

00:30:12.660 achilles getting really upset that agamemnon stole his war treasure and his war bride i i get the indignation

00:30:22.420 of it like it's like it's not actually about i understand it's like it's not about the thing that

00:30:26.580 he stole it's like the respect and i think all of us had those instances where someone does something

00:30:31.700 to us and it's not really the thing that happened doesn't matter right it's not so much like we don't

00:30:37.460 we could care less if they gave us our money back it was just the indignation and like the resentment

00:30:43.940 you feel because you're you feel like you you you lack respect and then i you might get all hot and

00:30:49.620 bothered about and get oh you're stomping around like i'm gonna get that guy but then eventually

00:30:54.100 hopefully this is what happens you become achilles at the end of the iliad where you don't succumb to

00:31:01.540 those i don't know we'll call them baser human emotions yeah i mean i think the great actor there

00:31:07.700 is not achilles achilles is the recipient of it priam is the great actor priam takes it into some other

00:31:15.540 place and yeah the nature of forgiveness you know they say the only thing you have to forgive is the

00:31:21.860 thing you can't and and i think that it's an absolutely dazzling you know copernican revolution

00:31:31.220 what happens at the end of the iliad suddenly this entire value system that you've been living in for

00:31:37.220 this long long long poem is turned on its head and it's uh it's phenomenal and it's as you know

00:31:46.820 it's as deep a transformation that as i think is the the difference between the old and the new

00:31:51.380 testament you know it is not about vengeful justice it is about the coherence of love and

00:31:59.220 and it's extraordinary that that should have been written then or conceived of then who do you

00:32:06.020 relate with more achilles or odysseus oh i'm an odysseus man all through yeah same here achilles

00:32:12.820 is living in this sort of almost like existential nowhere he's sort of unbound he's just does not

00:32:20.740 have boundaries he doesn't have location almost he's a you know he's a he's burning like a star

00:32:26.420 and says this is kind of terrifying like like the dog star this kind of flame and light that burns from

00:32:32.420 him he says this brilliant uh translation of one phrase someone says looking into the the eye slits

00:32:42.020 of achilles's helmet is like looking into a furnace door ajar you know when you have a furnace and the

00:32:51.220 door is just slightly open and that absolutely unlookable at hot light in there and that that's

00:33:00.100 achilles is scarcely of this world he's not human really but uh odysseus is marvelously human and

00:33:11.700 beautifully human yeah i think i forgot who it was there was someone some literary critic in the 20th

00:33:17.860 century described he said odysseus is the complete man achilles is just a one-dimensional character

00:33:23.700 there is a humanity to achilles there is a humanity to him it isn't true he is not a person but

00:33:32.100 he embodies that bit of us which perhaps it's like us when we're young you know that we are

00:33:38.180 uncompromising we do believe in what we believe in we will not be put upon by you know stuffy old

00:33:45.860 agamemnon figures but we will stand up for we will defend the ones that we love and take revenge on 0.99

00:33:52.420 those who hurt them and so on it is part of uh the the human being i think it is yeah you're right

00:33:59.860 to say he is nothing there is nothing complete about achilles but he is the kind of radiant

00:34:08.180 burning aspect of what it is to be alive and odysseus is more of a middle age like if once you

00:34:14.020 get to middle age you relate to odysseus more i just want to survive man i do i'm old i'm old now

00:34:18.980 i'm in my 60s now and so uh i do i uh i love odysseus's nifty cleverness i love but also i love

00:34:29.540 his emotionality you know when uh when he goes and visits the the people in sceria the phaiacians this

00:34:37.780 beautiful palace and they have a great banquet to welcome him and they have a bard so homeric bard who 1.00

00:34:46.100 who begins to tell stories and the bard in the in the palace of akinos in uh in sceria begins to tell 0.73

00:34:55.060 the story of troy of the battle and then of the journeys home of all the warriors which you know

00:35:02.420 this is has failed yet to get home and as the bard tells the story achilles sits there and he at home

00:35:10.260 says he pulls over his head his sea blue cloak because he can't bear he cannot bear to weep in

00:35:20.020 front of these people as he remembers all the suffering he's witnessed it's wonderful you know

00:35:25.620 there is the idea that these are primitive scenes is kind of ridiculous because that's as lovely and

00:35:31.700 subtle a bit of psychology this great world straddling hero actually kind of shuddering with grief at his

00:35:39.700 memories when when surrounded by everyone looking at him at a party you know marvelous so homer shows

00:35:46.260 us characters who they revel in violence they're full of hubris avarice duplicity they're not great

00:35:53.380 people to model your life after so why should we pay attention to these guys like why does why does

00:35:58.100 homer matter in the 21st century i think homer matters because it models many different ways of what

00:36:06.740 it's like to be alive and there is an extraordinary and strange ability that we all have if we if we

00:36:14.740 read it carefully and generously to empathize with these these figures that we can in some ways actually

00:36:22.260 become these figures who you know we all know in obviously less heroized less dramatized ways

00:36:32.900 what it is to suffer what it is to lose what it is to long for you know what it is to be portrayed you

00:36:39.940 know we all know these things and this is really a drama of the landscape of human experience

00:36:48.340 and because it is expressed in this i mean it's a word i'm quite anxious about in a way but is there

00:36:56.740 something extremely noble in the way in which homer deploys these different predicaments that there is

00:37:05.780 a kind of grand dignity to the pain and and the longing that it is like for me it is like a form of

00:37:17.620 scripture actually which is not dependent on an all-powerful all-seeing all-determining god

00:37:27.620 but a scripture that is actually about the nature of the human heart

00:37:33.300 you know wordsworth famously said uh wrote in the in the prelude that uh there is a grandeur in the

00:37:41.540 the beatings of the heart and i think that could stand as a motto i'm curious for those who are

00:37:49.060 listening to this like i want to start reading homer are there translations you recommend

00:37:53.300 i really love robert fagel's translation i mean it's uh mid-20th century there have been many others

00:38:02.180 but i love his understanding that this should not be kind of dressed up in you know a hollywood kit

00:38:11.540 it is about human beings that are like us and yet at the same time requires a sort of epic distance in

00:38:21.940 the language a certain largeness of language it isn't everyday language but it isn't sort of

00:38:29.380 endless breastplates and helmets it's about living people but seen in this very enlarging way and i

00:38:37.540 would vote robert fagels well adam this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn

00:38:42.820 more about the book and your work well the book was published in the states by henry holt i think it's

00:38:50.740 still around i think it's in paperback and um that's that's the place to go okay all right well

00:38:57.380 adam nicholson thanks for your time it's been a pleasure me too thank you so much brett thank you

00:39:03.300 my guest is adam nicholson he's the author of the book why homer matters it's available on amazon.com

00:39:08.180 check out our show notes at aom.is homer where we find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

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The Art of Manliness - December 14, 2022

Why Homer Matters

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