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Adrian Thorpe, Homer - Slightly Foxed Issue 30

How Homer Taught Me to Read

Late one Cambridge afternoon in the winter of 1945–6, when I was between 3 and 4, I was in bed beside my mother. It must have been winter because it was dark and the pink-shaded reading-light over the big double bed was on: at any other time of year I would by then have been packed off to my own bed. It occurs to me now that my mother had taken the two of us to bed in an attempt to keep warm in that winter of fuel shortages and rationing.

She was reading and I asked her what she was doing. After a moment’s hesitation she asked if I would like to hear the story. Of course I said yes, so she turned back to the first page and began.

I have seen the book so often since that I must be careful not to invent a memory of how it looked on that first occasion. But it was Professor E. V. Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey, the first volume of the Penguin Classics of which he was General Editor, bound in the all-over brown which was the initial livery of the series.

It must have seemed even then a strange choice of book to read to a small child, but it did not seem at all strange to me at the time. The story opened with a boy living at home with his mother, who had many cares running a house on her own. The boy’s father had been away for years, fighting in a great war. He had taken part in the final glorious victory; but unlike other boys’ fathers he had not yet returned home. That was entirely believable. The boy decided to mount an expedition to find out what had happened to his father. That too made obvious sense: if I had been a little older I would have wanted to do the same.

Then the story moved on to describe the father’s adventures since the war had been won. They were rather fantastical but entirely believable. The author, whoever he was, had understood the essential requirement in writing a story for children, or indeed for an

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Late one Cambridge afternoon in the winter of 1945–6, when I was between 3 and 4, I was in bed beside my mother. It must have been winter because it was dark and the pink-shaded reading-light over the big double bed was on: at any other time of year I would by then have been packed off to my own bed. It occurs to me now that my mother had taken the two of us to bed in an attempt to keep warm in that winter of fuel shortages and rationing.

She was reading and I asked her what she was doing. After a moment’s hesitation she asked if I would like to hear the story. Of course I said yes, so she turned back to the first page and began. I have seen the book so often since that I must be careful not to invent a memory of how it looked on that first occasion. But it was Professor E. V. Rieu’s translation of the Odyssey, the first volume of the Penguin Classics of which he was General Editor, bound in the all-over brown which was the initial livery of the series. It must have seemed even then a strange choice of book to read to a small child, but it did not seem at all strange to me at the time. The story opened with a boy living at home with his mother, who had many cares running a house on her own. The boy’s father had been away for years, fighting in a great war. He had taken part in the final glorious victory; but unlike other boys’ fathers he had not yet returned home. That was entirely believable. The boy decided to mount an expedition to find out what had happened to his father. That too made obvious sense: if I had been a little older I would have wanted to do the same. Then the story moved on to describe the father’s adventures since the war had been won. They were rather fantastical but entirely believable. The author, whoever he was, had understood the essential requirement in writing a story for children, or indeed for anyone: make the opening scenes credible and within the listener’s experience and what follows will be accepted without question – though I must confess I found Nausicaa, the princess who saves Odysseus’s life, rather a drip (and I regret to say still do). Nevertheless, if my father was having adventures like those I could imagine he was in no hurry to come home. But at last Odysseus did return, and with the tale of the Beggar in the Palace (as Rieu entitled that section) I was of course plunged into one of the greatest stories ever told. I can still remember hearing for the first time of his arrival in disguise; his recognition by his old nurse from the scars on his legs (born at a time when boys wore shorts, I already had some interesting scars of my own on my knees); the death of the dog Argus (a character inserted by Homer, with remarkable prescience, for the particular benefit of the English); the stringing of the bow and the great revelation and revenge. I expect my mother skipped the hanging of the maidservants – which does seem unnecessarily brutal – but I had no quarrel with the massacre of the suitors. I had interrupted my mother to ask where all the animals came from which were eaten in the palace at Ithaca, and it was soon plain to me that the suitors deserved what they got: they had been eating another man’s rations. Of course the Odyssey has been translated countless times, and Rieu’s version is not universally admired. It is held against him that he decided to use prose rather than find an English equivalent for Homer’s verse. But what splendidly muscular and rhythmic prose he developed for the purpose! The translation had its origins in improvised oral renderings of the Greek text intended to distract his family from the worries of the Blitz, and if Rieu did not imitate the verse he certainly copied the oral quality of the original. And the picture he created of Odysseus’s world was so vivid that when years later I visited Ithaca it was for me, as for so many others before me, a homecoming. I doubt if my mother read me every word of the text. But she gave me full measure of the wine-dark sea and rosy-fingered dawn, and any number of ‘as whens’. Many years later I was criticized by a much-respected superior for my habit of inserting what he called ‘purple patches’ into diplomatic reports: while accepting the rebuke I hardly felt able to tell him I had picked it up from Homer at the age of 3. I also became thoroughly at home with the gods and goddesses who involved themselves in the affairs of the human characters and appeared, in rather transparent disguises, to tell them at great length what to do. These well-differentiated personalities became a natural part of my internal life, and when a little later I was exposed to Christian mythology I found it pale and grey by comparison. Nor was I convinced by a prep-school Scripture master’s assertions that the Jewish invention of monotheism was an important human development. The bad-tempered God of the Israelites seemed a poor exchange for the colourful inhabitants of Olympus – an attitude reinforced from another angle when I later came to live among the 8 million gods and demons of Japan, and took my marriage vows before Inari, God of the Rice Harvest. In any case, one was allowed to choose a favourite. It seemed to me entirely right and very sensible that Odysseus’s family should have established a special relationship with Pallas Athene, Goddess of Wisdom. If I had been part of that family I should have done the same – and indeed in some degree do: a small statue of Athene, a gift from a sympathetic Greek friend, stands on a shelf in my bathroom. Athene of the Flashing Eyes was resourceful, brave and loyal: just the sort of girl any boy would be glad to have in his gang. She was stalwart in battle – I am looking forward here to the Iliad, of course – and if wounded did not blub, unlike the tiresome Aphrodite, the Violet Elizabeth Bott of Olympus. Like everyone else I had to wait a while for Professor Rieu’s version of the Iliad to appear. And like many first-time readers I was surprised at the great difference between the two works. The Iliad was hardly a prequel in the style of today. The Odyssey had left me drunk with the swell and smell of the wine-dark sea: now I was choked on the dust thrown up by the hooves of the long-maned horses and the wheels of the painted chariots as we hurtled into battle. The great Odysseus was no longer the main character – even though I knew from the account in the Odyssey how crucial his contribution had been to the Greek victory. Of course by then I was reading anything I could get my hands on. It was difficult to be gripped by the Iliad’s quarrels between arrogant commanders and combats between heroes who had trained all their short lives for such encounters only to be destroyed as casually as a conker on a string. Perhaps it is a book one grows into. While the Odyssey spoke at once to what I already knew or could imagine, it was only with much greater experience that I came to recognize the truth of the Iliad’s account of the problems of leadership, the threats to authority from ambitious lieutenants, and the constant need to soothe the feelings of subordinates upset by abrasive management. I already knew from other reading of the causes of the war, and my indignation at Paris was unbounded. Called to judge a beauty contest, how could he choose the simpering Aphrodite, and her bribe of stolen property, over my girl Athene? Later I came to see that he had been offered, through the participation of Hera in the line-up, the perfect way out, but had been too stupid to see it. No man ever suffers, in the long run, from giving reluctant preference to the boss’s wife. The parts of the Iliad I can still remember enjoying at first reading were the descriptions of Paris being rescued by Aphrodite (oh, not her again) from the need to do his job on the battlefield and being spirited off to an afternoon in bed with Helen. I could only sympathize with his brother Hector’s annoyance at this feeble behaviour and at being expected to do all the work. A. B. Cook, Professor of Classical Archaeology and Fellow of Queens’, was a family friend and was, I think, amused at my precocious interest in his subject. He gave me a handsome edition of Aesop’s Fables: from his neat inscription I see that I was 5 at the time. Of all my books it is the one I have owned longest. He also gave my parents a copy of his famous work Zeus, beautifully produced by the local University Press, ‘3 vols. in 5’ as a book-dealer would say, and I remember lying on the floor leafing through it. It was not easy to read, immense footnotes in four languages almost squeezing the text off the large pages; but I made enough of it to be upset that there seemed to be many varieties of Zeus depending on place and time – just when I thought I had got him neatly pigeon-holed. The main attraction was the illustrations, especially the large folding ones tucked into special pockets in the binding.

*

The blur of dark-grey print on the pale-grey ‘economy’ paper of the Penguin Classics Odyssey gradually began, as my mother read, to resolve itself into specific symbols. One in particular occurred so often that I interrupted her reading to ask what it was. She explained that it was the ‘Od’ of Odysseus; and then asked severely, ‘Are you paying attention?’ So I knew better than to interrupt again. But as I watched over her shoulder other islands of meaning began to emerge from the grey fog, to coalesce and then make extended sense. I could read. So Homer and Professor Rieu taught me to read. They not only unlocked the gate to the skill of reading: they opened it at the very beginning of Western literature. What more could one ask for at the age of 3?

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 30 © Adrian Thorpe 2011


About the contributor

Adrian Thorpe spent 37 years in the Diplomatic Service, and retired in 2002. He now lives in Dorset and runs his own publishing company, Traviata Books Ltd: www.traviatabooks.co.uk.

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