The Odyssey

Author Essay

What Hugh MacDiarmid once said of poetry in general can be said of Homer’s Odyssey in particular: it is ‘human existence come to life;. And just as no amount of specialist learning can prepare one for the experience of life, no lack of background knowledge can prevent a reader from feeling the truth and vitality of Homer’s art. There is, however, something slightly overwhelming about the aura of greatness which surrounds this poet’s name, so a reader approaching The Odyssey for the first time is likely to feel daunted: here, after all, is a masterpiece which has retained its pre-eminence for more than two and a half thousand years. Yet the big surprise awaiting such a reader is Homer’s directness as a storyteller, his sheer accessibility and his gift for collapsing the distance between Bronze Age Greece and our own times.