Christopher Hitchens Explains Why Homer’s Odyssey Still Matters to Our World (2000)

At the moment, the answer to the ques­tion of why we should read Home­r’s Odyssey seems rather straight­for­ward: so we can more intel­li­gent­ly voice our opin­ions on Christo­pher Nolan’s new block­buster film adap­ta­tion. A quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago, the mat­ter was some­what less clear. Still, an occa­sion had pre­sent­ed itself in the form of a new Eng­lish trans­la­tion, by Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas clas­sics pro­fes­sor Stan­ley Lom­bar­do. That book, and the work of Homer in gen­er­al, was the sub­ject of a live two-hour round­table dis­cus­sion aired on C‑SPAN’s Book TV in the fall of 2000, which, with the Odyssey back in the zeit­geist, appeared on YouTube just days ago.

Apart from Lom­bar­do him­self, the par­tic­i­pants include Joseph Bot­tum, then lit­er­ary edi­tor of the Week­ly Stan­dard; jour­nal­ist and mil­i­tary vet­er­an Debra J. Dick­er­son; and Christo­pher Hitchens, who clear­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed not just because he hap­pened to be liv­ing in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., but also out of a gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion for the Odyssey and an under­stand­ing of its rel­e­vance in the mod­ern world. Ear­ly on in the text, he explains, Homer intro­duces the con­cepts of hubris and neme­sis, which “we can­not do with­out in ordi­nary dis­course. There are cer­tain pun­ish­ments that appear to fall on peo­ple, for orig­i­nal arro­gance or con­ceit, that we can’t con­ceive of relat­ing grand sto­ries with­out.”

There’s the “caprice of the gods,” with which every reli­gion has had to deal, as well as the even more uni­ver­sal feel­ing of nos­tal­gia, “a very overused and sen­ti­men­tal­ized term now, which lit­er­al­ly means — and can only real­ly mean — the yearn­ing to go home.” Adduc­ing such re-inter­pre­ta­tions by writ­ers from Alexan­der Pope to James Joyce, Hitchens declares that we think of the Odyssey as “the orig­i­nal nar­ra­tive of the striv­ing of human­i­ty — and of the need, also, to beware of what you want, in case you ever do, as Cavafy says, final­ly get home to Itha­ca. It may turn out that it’s bet­ter to trav­el hope­ful­ly than to arrive.”

The mat­ter of virtue also aris­es in the con­ver­sa­tion, and specif­i­cal­ly whether the range of virtues of which Homer sang (up to and includ­ing luck) would be rec­og­nized in our Chris­t­ian or post-Chris­t­ian world. To the avowed­ly athe­ist Hitchens’ mind, of course, we should already have been post-reli­gious. Home­r’s deities are “anthro­po­mor­phic gods; they are invent­ed by us, as all gods are.” But what­ev­er your reli­gion or lack there­of, “if you don’t know some­thing about clas­si­cal Greece, then you won’t be able, with much prof­it, to read Shake­speare, or Mil­ton, or Shel­ley, or Keats, or even Chaucer. It would be like not know­ing what the bible sto­ry was and then won­der­ing how you puz­zle your way through Shake­speare as well. It’s part of the under­lay; it’s part of the com­mon her­itage.” The trans­la­tions and re-inter­pre­ta­tions have kept com­ing, but Homer him­self still patient­ly awaits each of us.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Walk Through Homer’s Odyssey: A Guide to the Epic Before See­ing Christo­pher Nolan’s Film

Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a Revised List of the 10 Com­mand­ments for the 21st Cen­tu­ry

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Ail­ing Christo­pher Hitchens Cre­ates a List of Essen­tial Books for an 8‑Year-Old Girl to Read

Albert Ein­stein Explains Why We Need to Read the Clas­sics

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.