Homer's Odyssey (L'Odyssée)

Overview

The Odyssey is one of the two Greek epics attributed to Homer (usually dated to the 8th century BC), telling Odysseus's ten-year return from Troy. Together with the Iliad it was the centre of the classical reading Marie pursued (see Homer's Iliad).

Marie and this work

9 April 1875 (031.0140–0145): at dinner the talk turns to Homer and her father tells her she does not know what the Iliad is. She flares up and challenges him to say what is left of Homer besides the Iliad. "Rien, il n'y a que l'Iliade !" he answers, and she nearly chokes with triumph: "Et l'Odyssée ? ... qu'en faites-vous ?" He replies "il n'y a pas d'Odyssée", and she adds the "poème héroï-comique", the Batrachomyomachia (see Batrachomyomachia). She laughs so hard that her cousins laugh too and "grand-papa s'est fâché"; the girls run away. The RSR note on 031.0140 adds that in the same entry she weeps over historical figures (Alexander, Napoleon, Nero, Alcibiades).

In 082.0442 (1878-09-23) she lists Homer among the Greeks: "Homère, je le connais très bien".

12 February 1880 (087.0471): among the curiosities in a friend's room she notes "un livre de Homère en grec avec une préface latine et sa photographie avec ces mots: souvenir bien respectueux et dévoué du souffleur à la baronne" (a Greek Homer with a Latin preface; the work, Iliad or Odyssey, is not specified).

22-28 March 1883 (098.0554-0555, 098.0594, 098.0609): while modelling her Douleur de Nausicaa she retells the parting of Nausicaa and Odysseus (Odyssey VI-VIII) and, on 22 March, sides with Ouida, who "voudrait étrangler la vieille Pénélope et marier Ulysse avec cette idéale jeune fille appuyée à la colonne de marbre rose du palais de son père". The line is from Ouida's novel Ariadnê (1877), vol. 1, ch. X, p. 265: "For me, I always wish, sinfully perhaps, to strangle Penelope in her own web, and wed Ulysses to the sweet Phaeacian maid" (see Ariadnê). On 27 March she goes back to the poem itself: "Mais je viens de chercher dans l'Odyssée, Homère ne donne pas la scène que j'ai imaginée", though Ulysses's speech of praise on meeting Nausicaa "a dû inévitablement monter à la tête de celle-ci"; on 28 March "J'en reviens à Homère."

Identification note

Supersedes the author-named stub `people/mentioned/ODYSSEY.md` (and the related author stubs HOMER/HOMERE, which are people entries and remain). Which translation Marie read is not recorded. The Wikisource page for the French text lists Eugène Bareste (1842), Leconte de Lisle (1893) and others; only Bareste's predates her reading.

References in Diary

Sources