Literature, what power! Words of children of civilizations now extinct, pronounced millennia ago, continue to move us today. Cunning and stupidity, generosity and greed, courage and cowardice, love and heartbreak, patience and impatience... Nothing human is alien to Homer's Odyssey, which is not out of date, even though it was a choral story. possibly fixed in writing around the 8th century B.C.
Do you think that the freeloaders who get away when it's time to pay for meals with friends or who show up at lunchtime and without having been invited are a modern evil? Eating out of the throat (by the face or free et amore) was already a nightmare in classical antiquity. This is demonstrated by the 24 songs or rhapsodies of the Odyssey, which continue the feast of the Iliad, another jewel that would also accept a gastronomic critic.
But when it comes to food and mugs, the Odyssey wins by a landslide. Good (and evil) yantar preside over it from beginning to end. It all begins after the destruction of "the sacred citadel of Troy" (or Ilium, hence the name of the Iliad). Thanks to the author or authors (we are not even sure of the existence of Homer), we already know in the first verses that Odysseus (Ulysses, for the Romans) is alone, stranded on the island of a nymph.
All his companions have died. Gluttony killed them. Gluttony and divine wrath, of course. The crew ignored their boss and gobbled up part of Helio Hyperionida's cattle during their stay in Trinacia, perhaps present-day Sicily, where the oxen of the Sun grazed. They had already been warned: don't look at the cattle. But fatality and the lack of favorable winds anchored them on land for a whole month. And, you know, the stomach is weak.
Odysseus, who was naive, withdrew to implore the gods to allow them to return to their homeland, Ithaca, after having survived the war and a thousand dangers. His people took advantage of his absence and gave themselves a banquet. To appease their remorse, they said that they had sacrificed the animals to the Olympian Immortals, but in reality the most important thing they wanted to appease was their hunger. And they paid dearly for it.
When the dead calm disappeared and they were finally able to put to sea again, they verified the forcefulness of that expression that says Lightning strikes you. Zeus launched one that broke and sank the ship, furious at the audacity of humans. They all drowned, except Odysseus, the only one who kept his promise and did not indulge in a binge. Although for a binge, the one that they gave away at their expense very far from there...
Let us now leave Odysseus, who took longer to return home than Marcus to find his mother. After the shipwreck he stayed five years on the island of Calipso. It's not that he had a terrible time: the nymph was beautiful and they both went to the town hall many times. Not to the town hall, which didn't exist, but to the carnal town hall. The coyunda with her hostess, go. So much was the pitcher to the source that in the end they had a son, Nausítoo.
Odysseus, son of Laertes and Anticlea, was king of Ithaca and leader of the Cephalonians. Husband of Penelope and father of Telemachus, he was a great orator and warrior (his was the trick of the Trojan horse). His worth captivated the divine and virginal Athena, daughter of Zeus. She interceded so that our hero weathered all the storms that came his way. They called him a plunderer of cities, but they could also have called him a maker of children.
Nausítoo was not his only extramarital offspring. In the very long pilgrimage of years and years through those seas of God, Athena's favorite tronista also ended up in Aea, the island of the attractive sorceress Circe, with whom the poor man had no choice but to engender another lad, Telegono. We won't gut the plot, but watch out for this kid: when he grows up he will mean as much to Odysseus as Mordred does to another distracted father and king, Arthur.
While her husband was staggering and copulating around with dear friends, the faithful Penelope suffered in Ithaca before a cohort of suitors who urged her to choose one of them as a new partner. The choice should have been quick because the suitors were like a plague of locusts and settled with bread and knives in the palace of the object of her desire. But there are Greek women reluctant to dispatch husbands on the run...
Telemachus, who was already a tall boy and was unaware that he had two little brothers, wept for his absent father, but above all for the pantry and cellar of the house, which suffered daily from the famished onslaught of his applicants for stepfather. Ithaca's carpantas ended up discovering that Penelope gave them to them with cheese (with cheese, with wine, with ram and with "abundant food"), but she didn't care.
Penelope, who had promised her wedding with the final stitch, unweaved at night the cloak that she wove by day. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, her suitors would think, as Rhett Butler/Clark Gable said much later in Gone with the Wind (“Frankly, my dear, I do not give a damn”). Who cares about waiting, if the wait is as pleasant and entertaining as yours, expenses paid, with buffet and open bar.
"They played dice, lying on the skins of oxen sacrificed for them." "They drank wine from golden vessels." "Their tables were overflowing with numerous and chosen delicacies." Even Athena herself, who appeared to Telemachus to ask for less whining and more action, was shocked. “Is this a treat or a wedding? Because it is obvious that it is not a banquet paid for at the neckline”, exclaimed the goddess “in the midst of this shame”.
The pusillanimous Telemachus seems to have little confidence in his mother (who had assured him that he was the son of who he was, although he would not put his hand in the fire "because no one can say for himself who his father is"). Athena's words, however, encourage him to go in search of Odysseus. And not just the words of Athena. Especially the appetite of his unwanted guests, "who despoil my dwelling" and "shamelessly drink my wine."
Telemachus finally leaves, launching against the swallowers a black desire that will end up being a premonitory: "You will perish without remedy in my dwelling." Even many of those who have not read the Odyssey know that the prodigal king returns to Ithaca, dressed in the clothes of a beggar. Only his old dog, Argos, who died of joy, and an old slave, Eurycleia, who raised him first and then Telemachus, recognized him.
Wars, shipwrecks, hauntings, Cyclops and monsters are a nightmare. But worse is to finally arrive at your palace and find your wife's suitors "skinning goats and singeing fat pigs in the courtyard." Helped by Telemachus, Odysseus will be more fierce than in Troy and he will kill them all (all the suitors, that is). This is the Odyssey, among other things, the first great knock of literature against cheeky.
(All the quotes in the Odyssey come from the 2009 version by Nicasio Hernández for La esfera de libros)
