When Sons Don't Recognise Their Fathers: Odysseus and Telemachus (The Odyssey Read-Along, 7)

Hello fellow-traveller,

Welcome to the Odyssey read-along. Here’s the schedule for you to navigate through this story.

This post, and the ones that will follow, are divided into sections so you can easily follow the text and re-read passages. It does not matter what translation you use — the lines should be the same, although translated differently.

This is the seventh post in the series, if you’re curious about what happened before, please feel free to read the previous weeks’ instalments.

In this journey, I am both an Odysseus and a Telemachus. I might get lost and get stuck on Calypso’s island, yet at the same time, like Telemachus, I need to awaken to act. These are the notes of a fellow-reader, not a scholar.

I’ve just released an interview with Emily Katz Anhalt, a Professor of Classics, discussing how we should read The Odyssey. You can listen to it here:

I hope you will enjoy it.

WEEK 7 · Books 15–16 · “The Beggar King”

Book 15 Athena appears to Telemachus in Sparta and warns him to hurry home, telling him his mother may remarry — Telemachus sails back, picking up the fugitive prophet Theoclymenus on the way — Theoclymenus reads an omen of eagles and promises that Odysseus is already on Ithaca plotting destruction — Telemachus lands quietly to avoid the suitors' ambush and goes straight to Eumaeus's hut

Book 16 Telemachus arrives at the swineherd's hut and meets the disguised stranger — Eumaeus is sent to tell Penelope her son is safely home — Athena appears to Odysseus alone, restores his true appearance for a moment, and he reveals himself to his weeping son — Father and son make their plan: Odysseus will re-enter his own palace as a beggar; Telemachus will bear the humiliation without giving the secret away; the weapons will be hidden — Eumaeus returns; Athena transforms Odysseus back into rags

Proofread by Lisa Statler

Dear reader,

In each exploration of The Odyssey and The Divine Comedy before that, I tried to use, or better to say, to practice a different kind of writing and structure.

I am inspired by Nabokov’s wisdom that true writing comes not just from ‘what story’ do you tell, but also ‘how’ you tell it.

I am telling you this because what will follow is going to be structured a bit differently from the previous posts. In the next few books I would like to employ what Nabokov did in Pale Fire — the wisdom of a story told not through linear narration but through annotation, through the margins, through the footnote that quietly contains more than the main text.