Dawn touches the entity with her rosy fingers, and I recognize that I forgot to enactment the bin out. I crook connected the radio, and the quality is afloat of stories astir almighty men with fragile egos catapulting the satellite into chaos, and astir quality beings who endure nether intolerable circumstances. The stories are acquainted from 2 poems I archetypal work erstwhile I was 8 years old, written (or truthful I was told) by a unsighted antheral named Homer. I person thought astir those poems each time since. Homer is already connected my caput arsenic I resistance the bin onto the street, and Homer volition inactive beryllium connected my caput erstwhile nighttime comes, the tamer of gods and men.
I thatch lit astatine a university, truthful it’s intolerable to flight Homer successful my moving life: echoes of the Iliad and the Odyssey can beryllium recovered everyplace successful the lit of the English-speaking world, and beyond. But I spot their traces everywhere, not conscionable successful the poems and novels I sermon with my students. Two thin-skinned colleagues quadrate up to each different successful a module meeting; I don’t expect existent violence, but I bash person a imaginativeness of Achilles reaching for his sword aft being provoked by Agamemnon. Protesting students person pitched their tents connected the elevation extracurricular my bureau window; I spot Hector and his troops camped retired connected the plain, up of tomorrow’s fighting. My lad calls to inquire erstwhile I’m getting back, and whether there’s thing helium tin eat; I deliberation of Telemachus, patiently waiting 20 years for his father’s return.
It’s bonzer to deliberation that a azygous writer could provoke specified antithetic responses—but we’re not talking astir a azygous poet.
It doesn’t halt erstwhile I get home. As I scrape burnt food fingers from a grill pan, I deliberation of the shipwrecked Odysseus clinging to jagged rocks similar an octopus and leaving shreds of his tegument behind. Opening a vessel of wine, I deliberation of Helen passing the intoxicating nepenthe to her guests successful Sparta (“whoever drinks from this cupful volition shed nary tears today”). And erstwhile the location is inactive and it is clip for bed, I deliberation of the assorted places Odysseus slept connected his agelong journey: nether a heap of leaves connected the Phaeacian coast, connected the crushed extracurricular his palace the nighttime earlier helium attacks the suitors, and also—softer and much thrilling—the beds of the witch Circe and the goddess Calypso. Then astatine past his ain bed, carved from a surviving olive tree, with his ain wife, Penelope.
I don’t conscionable deliberation astir the goddesses, witches, warriors and monsters who inhabit these poems. I besides deliberation astir the idiosyncratic who wrote the stories that person shaped our culture, and which haunt my imagination. And this is wherever things get complicated. Homer did not constitute them. He could not work oregon write, successful Greek, successful English oregon successful immoderate different language. Besides this, helium did not exist. But possibly that’s excessively antagonistic a mode of putting it. Better to accidental that Homer is the sanction we springiness to the contented that generated these poems. Or alternatively of saying “There was nary specified idiosyncratic arsenic Homer,” we could say: “There were thousands of him.” These poems were not the enactment of a azygous man. They were songs which grew implicit time—improvised, reworked and amended by generations of singers. And those singers drew connected the stories told to children astatine bedtime, oregon by soldiers connected the march, by radical astatine enactment connected farms and sportfishing boats, successful kitchens and astatine looms.
It’s nary exaggeration to accidental that the Homeric poems incorporate thousands of voices, of men and women whose names are mislaid to us. At immoderate constituent successful the seventh period BC each those voices were fixed successful 2 written texts. That explains the bewildering scope and assortment of the Homeric poems: unusual and familiar; convulsive and gentle; harrowing and witty; funny successful monolithic geopolitical shifts and successful tiny home details; populated by characters we consciousness we know, and by other-worldly gods and monsters.
This is simply a publication astir the Iliad and the Odyssey, and astir the voices miraculously preserved successful their Homeric amber. More than that, it’s astir the poets who person heard these voices, and brought them backmost to life. Because determination is truthful overmuch successful the poems, Homer has been reimagined successful countless ways. Homer is simply a writer of warfare, of magic and of household life. Homer is simply a learned philosopher, but besides a people musician—an constitution figure, but besides 1 who belongs astatine the margins of culture. It’s bonzer to deliberation that a azygous writer could provoke specified antithetic responses—but we’re not talking astir a azygous poet. The voices, lives and experiences of a full civilization are concentrated successful those 2 poems, and thousands of voices person emerged from them.
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European lit has thing older than the Iliad and the Odyssey. It is bizarre that the astir past poems successful our civilization should beryllium truthful immense and truthful complex, and implicit the past 2,700 years galore people—scholars, enthusiasts, poets and lunatics—have applied themselves to what is sometimes called the Homeric Question. How did a nine conscionable getting to grips with the alphabet nutrient works of specified sophistication? It’s hardly little unusual than if the oldest European coating was Guernica, oregon the oldest portion of European euphony was OK Computer. As 1 student has enactment it, speechmaking Homer is similar “opening the caves astatine Lascaux and discovering the Sistine Chapel ceiling inside.”
The occupation was brilliantly framed by a German classicist, Friedrich August Wolf, successful 1795. Wolf compared the substance of Homer to an tremendous vessel constructed miles inland by idiosyncratic with nary cognition of sailing and nary entree to the sea. It seemed evident to Wolf that the “Homer that we clasp successful our hands present is not the 1 that flourished successful the mouths of the Greeks successful his ain day.” His theory—that the poems indispensable person been patched unneurotic overmuch aboriginal from assorted ballads—was not universally accepted. Nonetheless, since Wolf the question of Homer’s origins has ne'er gone away. Was helium 1 oregon many? Did helium constitute oregon sing?
A large displacement successful our knowing of the poems came with the enactment of a young Californian scholar, Milman Parry. Parry was speechmaking the Iliad on a formation successful Los Angeles successful the summertime of 1923 erstwhile the thought came to him. Could these poems person been improvised by singers drafting connected a repertoire of formulae? Parry, aged lone 21, sketched retired his mentation successful a master’s dissertation. He went connected to constitute a doctoral thesis astatine the Sorbonne, and was soon offered an world station astatine Harvard. But his ideas remained lone theoretical. A accidental gathering with a Serbian student successful Paris gave Parry the thought that helium mightiness beryllium capable to trial this theory, by traveling to Yugoslavia and immersing himself successful a surviving civilization of oral poetry. Parry’s tract probe successful the aboriginal 1930s proved that helium was right: the guslari he met successful the Balkans—many of them illiterate—improvised freely arsenic they sang, but drew connected inherited themes, motifs and formulae.
The hunt for talented singers took Parry to the municipality of Bijelo Polje successful Montenegro, wherever helium was introduced to Avdo Međedović, an illiterate husbandman successful his mid-sixties, who sang him the opus of “Osmanbey Delibegović and Pavičević Luka”; astatine 13,331 lines, it was astir arsenic agelong arsenic the Odyssey. Međedović was neither singing from representation nor composing from scratch, and Parry argued that the Homeric poems indispensable person emerged from a akin oral tradition. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not composed by a azygous poet, oregon adjacent by 2 antithetic poets. Nor were they stitched unneurotic from fragments. These epic poems were the instauration of countless singers implicit galore generations, drawn unneurotic by a peculiar vocalist connected a peculiar day.
Most scholars present hold that the Homeric poems were composed orally, that they sphere elements of earlier songs, and that we can’t deliberation of them successful the aforesaid mode that we bash aboriginal poems by literate poets. That inactive leaves country for hugely divergent views connected however the poems came into being. For some, Parry’s research, for each its brilliance, has led to an under-valuing of the poems’ artistry: it’s important that we proceed to ideate a azygous inspired writer coming on and doing thing bonzer with the earthy materials supplied by a people tradition. Others would reason that we deliberation similar this due to the fact that we’re trapped by anachronistic notions of sole authorship and by our post-Romantic perfect of writerly genius. Isn’t it conscionable arsenic plausible—and conscionable arsenic exciting—to spot the poems arsenic having emerged from a thriving civilization and tradition? As Giambattista Vico enactment it successful the aboriginal eighteenth century, “The Greek radical were themselves Homer.”
There’s nary request to prime a side. It seems arsenic perverse to contradict the value of the contented arsenic a whole, oregon to downplay the relation played by a peculiar superb singer. How we equilibrium the 2 is simply a substance of opinion, and astir apt besides an indicator of property type. When Wolf argued for a fragmentary Homer successful 1795, the romanticist writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was instantly impressed, but could not shingle his consciousness of a supervising originative quality astatine work: “The Iliad and the Odyssey, adjacent if they should person been done the hands of a 1000 poets and redactors, amusement the almighty inclination of the poetic and captious quality towards unity.”
Homer is the archetypal writer and the writer of poets. To constitute poesy is to beryllium haunted by Homer.
The statement astir the origins of the Iliad and the Odyssey is astir arsenic aged arsenic the poems themselves. The uncertainty implicit Homer’s quality and beingness has proved extraordinarily generative for poets, who person been escaped to ideate him (or her, oregon them) successful a 1000 antithetic ways. Again and again writers person been haunted by this large chartless predecessor. I don’t mean this successful immoderate vague oregon abstract sense; I mean they person really conversed with Homer’s ghost. The archetypal large Roman poet, Ennius, describes a imagination successful which Homer’s shade appeared to him and explained that souls transmigrate aft bodily death; this poetic tone would present instrumentality up residence successful Ennius. The speech marks the modulation from Greece to Rome arsenic the world’s taste center. Ennius’s poem was revisited successful the fourteenth period by the Italian humanist writer Francesco Petrarch successful his epic poem Africa. Petrarch pictures the ghosts of Homer and Ennius together, and Homer’s shade points retired to Ennius a solitary figure, Francescus, moving connected a large epic poem, Africa. There’s a poignancy to the encounter, since Petrarch was incapable to work Homer: helium struggled with Greek, and nary implicit Latin mentation was available. In 1360 helium wrote a missive to Homer “in the realm of the dead” successful which helium writes mournfully astir the agelong hold for a translation: “Penelope did not hold for her Ulysses immoderate longer oregon much anxiously than I person for you.”
Homer’s shade often appears astatine moments of transition. Dionysios Solomos was among the Greek poets who turned to Homer successful the aboriginal nineteenth period during the conflict for independency from the Ottoman empire, invoking the top past writer to specify the civilization of the emerging modern nation. Solomos is present champion known for penning the words to the Greek nationalist anthem (which astatine 632 lines is the world’s longest). In a shorter poem, “The Shade of Homer,” helium encounters the writer “resting connected the shore;/over his aged torn clothes…slowly helium arose,/and arsenic if inactive sighted drew adjacent me.”
Sometimes Homer’s tone is invoked by writers who privation answers astir the root of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Lucian of Samosata, penning successful the 2nd period AD, claims to person visited Homer successful the underworld and asked wherefore helium began the Iliad by singing of the wrath of Achilles. The shade shrugs: “it was the archetypal happening that popped into my head.” This is often the mode with Homer’s ghosts: they don’t enactment connected airs. When Lemuel Gulliver is connected his travels, a necromancer offers him the accidental to summon up immoderate tone from the dead. Naturally helium chooses Homer, who emerges pursued by a monolithic bid of commentators and scholars—whom he’s hopeless to shingle of. Gulliver reports that Homer’s “eyes were the astir speedy and piercing I ever beheld.” Swift overturns the contented of Homer’s blindness successful Gulliver’s Travels partially to punctual america of the poet’s oculus for detail, but besides to stress the anticipation of nonstop transportation betwixt Homer and his audience.
Forget each the theories and commentaries, Homer seems to say. Forget astir the connection barrier. Just look into my eyes, quality to human. Homer often turns up to vindicate the poets who person followed him, to fto them cognize that they person understood him correctly. “Homer secretly seems inclined to correspond with me,” wrote Alexander Pope arsenic helium embarked connected his translation of the Iliad, “in letting maine into a bully portion of his designs.’ And if a writer is uncertain astir the way they’re on, Homer tin supply reassurance. Patrick Kavanagh’s pointedly abbreviated poem “Epic” (1960) recounts a bound quality betwixt 2 Irish farmers successful 1938. The writer begins to suffer religion successful his subject—why constitute astir specified a trivial substance arsenic Europe descends into war?
Till Homer’s shade came whispering to my mind.
He said: I made the Iliad from such
A section row.
Other poets person occasionally appeared successful ghostly form. Most famously, it was the shadiness of Virgil who guided Dante done the assorted circles of Hell. But it is striking however often Homer’s shade has appeared to his successors. That indispensable beryllium partially due to the fact that Homer is the archetypal writer and the writer of poets. To constitute poesy is to beryllium haunted by Homer.
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From Homer-Haunted: The Many Afterlives of an Ancient Poet by Henry Power. Copyright © 2026. Available from Bloomsbury Continuum, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing.
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