Sorry I haven’t written lately; I’ve been spending the last few weeks in Ancient Greece. Oh, and what a lovely venture it has been, transporting me to a distant past when I can envision a clear picture of where I stand today.
I began my journey, ironically, by staying in one place–Aeaea (pronounced eye-ay-uh)–the island where Circe, title character of Madeline Miller’s novel of the same name (2018), meets the heroic Odysseus. According to Miller’s recasting of this ancient tale from the perspective of the goddess nymph, Circe has been banished to this island by her father Helios for all of eternity. Yet, I don’t think I recognized the static nature of her punishment until I saw her story set in a relief against that of Odysseus as his own story is retold and explicated by Classics professor and author Daniel Mendelsohn in An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic (2017). Set side by side, and read contiguously, I find both books highlight how and why our ancient tales, by and about men, can still teach me something profound about my own mortality and the need to travel and explore within “this mortal coil.”
I listened to both these books, which means I don’t have vivid memories of the words on the page, but I enjoyed the readers’ voices as they captured a layer of storytelling that we inevitably miss in reading an epic on paper. Actress Perdita Weeks reads Circe, and her mellifluous voice helped me connect with the nuances of this amazingly complex character who explains her immortality by connecting with famous mortal characters who’ve ironically become immortalized by Homer’s epics. Bronson Pinchot (yes, the actor who played Balky on Perfect Strangers) reads Mendelsohn’s book, and I delighted in his voice of Daniel’s father with a pitch perfect Queens accent and his comedic timing that captured a touch of sarcasm as this son-turned-professor suffers the commentary from both his freshmen students and his father. I have listened to quite a few books this summer, and the experience has grown on me when I find the time to really listen. I think it’s rather fitting given The Odyssey‘s roots in oral storytelling that I got to re-experience this tale from different perspectives and different voices than the ones I create in my head when reading the written word.
While Miller’s Circe is immortal, she uses this character trait to explore what it means to be human, to be mortal, to have an expiration date on your life. Circe faces the concerns of any girl-turned-woman as she fights with her siblings, disagrees with her father, and comes to terms, as every mother does, with the mortality of her son who has been fathered by Odysseus. At first, Circe welcomes her exile, a chance to work on her witchcraft and to escape the drama of the gods at court. But in contrast to the mortals that visit her, her life lacks meaning and purpose as she faces the prospect of unending, read unchanging, life. When she becomes enlisted in the struggles of mortals, just as Prometheus does when he opts to bring them fire, she makes a crucial decision that suggests a life of meaning comes from adventure and movement–something Odysseus famously pursues but is denied Circe–not the staid comforts of home.
In an interesting parallel, Mendelsohn’s father, the focus of his memoir, also relishes a chance to journey, to encounter something novel, while his wife prefers to stay home. Mendelsohn explores how we come to terms with our own mortality by sharing his journey to teach Odysseus’ story to his students and to his father. While the inevitable death of his father seems to enshroud the story, Dan (as his father calls him) captures the timelessness of the epic, of The Odyssey, and of our ongoing relationship between teacher and student. Mendelsohn accomplishes for his father what Homer did for Odysseus–telling his tale of mortal struggle and inexplicable dangers for the purpose of keeping his memory and his story alive for always. Dan’s father seems most alive when he’s seeking something, whether it’s knowledge or adventure in Greece or meeting someone new. Their journey together to understand The Odyssey forms an even better understanding of the relationship between father and son, teacher and student, storyteller and listener.
Both books make me wonder about the nature of timelessness, whether it has been achieved in the perpetuity of Odysseus’ tale or ultimately elusive as we futilely attempt to keep our memories alive via story. Mendelsohn lands on this idea that in reading and exploring the classic epic, he and his students (which certainly includes his father) participate in a timeless tradition, that of teaching others, of passing on those stories from one generation of parents (or even professors) to another. Additionally, the fact Miller takes up Homer’s oft-told story, something that many writers before her have done, illustrates our need to carry on the stories that sustain us, to find new ways to retell them while honoring what they mean at their core.
Mendelsohn, thus, helps me recognize how we continually attempt to look back as a means of making sense of who we are. He and Miller revisit The Odyssey in different ways but with the same seeming purpose: to capture some glimmer of what the past means for them in the present. Mendelsohn wants to understand his father, and thus himself; Miller explores the strength of women in a patriarchal culture to see our own role today. Both prove for me that while the rearview mirror helps, we will never capture it all. Instead, looking forward to the adventures and experiences where we pass on our knowledge, share those stories, journey into the unknown, with the ones who come after us, THAT marks our opportunity to forge a new distillation of what we mean to the world.