Living History in Eaton’s Living Room
ñ Classics reads Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ aloud in a single day
At 8 a.m. Thursday, the low hum of students heading to their first classes mingled with an unexpected sound in the Eaton Humanities Lobby: the opening lines of a familiar epic.
Classics professorElspeth Dusinberre began the reading with the poem’s first invocation, drawing the attention of passersby: “Launch out on his story, Muse, daughter of Zeus.”
The ñ’s Department of Classics set out to read the entirety of Homer’s “Odyssey” aloud in a single day, passing the poem from reader to reader in 10-minute turns from 8 a.m. to a scheduled 9:30 p.m. finish, “or however long it takes,” saidLaurialan Reitzammer, associate professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies.
The idea began with a movie.’s film “” arrived this summer, and for classicists, Reitzammer said, “it’s kind of like our Super Bowl.” The department wanted to build on that momentum and show people how “fascinating and moving and poignant” the poem is to read, hear and experience.
Top left: Laurialan Reitzammer, associate professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies; Top right: Classics professorElspeth Dusinberre; Bottom left: David Chu, a classics lecturer; Bottom right: ProvostAnn Stevens
The date was no accident. Thursday was part of Odyssey Day, a national celebration. Reitzammer said the encouraged members to host public events in libraries and communities.
Reading aloud also returns the poem to how it was first experienced, Reitzammer said, “the way that people would have experienced the poem, you know, thousands of years ago.”
Dusinberre said that is exactly the point. “The poem was originally composed as an oral composition and so getting to hear it as we are now is very much how people would have experienced it in antiquity,” she said. Audiences then came and went, much like the students crossing the lobby. “I’m sure that people would pop in and out in antiquity also,” she said. “Some people would sit and listen for long stretches.”
The poem’s structure suits that kind of listening, she said. Beyond the 24 books later scholars divided it into, the story appears to have been conceived in chunks, as in “Here’s this story,” or “Here’s that part.” The department’s relay format, with a new voice every 10 minutes, echoes that tradition.
Hearing the poem also changes how it works, saidDavid Chu, a classics lecturer. The repetition and recurring epithets that can look tedious on the page land differently in the ear, and the artistry of figurative language can be lost when read silently.
“Think about it like a song chorus, where it’s the same words, but we jam to that! That’s because it’s connecting with us,” Chu said. He compared it to Shakespeare: Read in high school, the language feels strange and foreign, “and then you go and you see a Shakespeare play, and it’s an entirely different experience.”
Participants reading out loud to students in the ñ Eaton building.
The reading was free and open to the public, with refreshments provided. Participants signed up for 10-minute slots through an online spreadsheet, and friends could split a slot to read five minutes each. Guests were encouraged by department members to color and name their own “Circe’s Pig,” which hung at the entrance of the Eaton Living Room for passersby to see. Volunteer readers ranged in age from 18 to 87 and included professors, students and ProvostAnn Stevens.
Some students looking for a place to study stayed to listen. “The release of the new movie brought some relevance back,” said Quinlen Dow, an undergraduate who was passing through. “The relatable parts of the story do not change with time.”
Kaleb Wiggins, also an undergraduate, put it more simply: “The human condition never changes.”
For Dusinberre, the pull of the poem is its storytelling, “which is really complicated, but also just riveting.” She said she hopes even a 10-minute listener comes away with a sense of “how living, vibrant and applicable it is to us.”
She sees the Nolan film as part of the same tradition. Homer’s story, she said, has been retold for each new audience, and the movie does the same.
The popularity of the department also speaks to the enduring pull of the classics. We have an incredibly engaged group,” said Dusinberre. “Class sizes are large, and the undergraduate Classics Club is vibrant and dynamic.”
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