Commandeered a class: Homer.

My one Czech literature professor friend gave a popular talk at a lunch function in my division, then since she was teaching a gen ed class on the Odyssey next, she asked me to come recite the 1st lines to her class.

I said no at first, because I don't know Homeric Greek, but then I relented.

As we walked over to her class, which was right after the lunch function, I asked if I could make brief remarks about Homer 1st to all the wide-eyed freshmen.

She said yes, so after I introduced myself, I told the kids that everyone wants to read Homer because of cultural baggage.

"How many of you feel like you should read Homer?", I was like.  "And, like, the Bible?  Like it's something you should know."

Like all the kids raised their hands.

"Okay," I was like, "I want to tell you that there is no Homer out there, and that though people have been reading him for a long time, they've understood him in very different ways, so it's not like you're going to read this once and know it, or even know it the way people across time have known it."

Then, I said I was going to call attention to three points in time.

First, I told them that because of comparative literature studies with Balkan bards, they think these epics were oral compositions spun out along themes where people made use of repetitive formulas, and that it wasn't even a book at some point, then, but more like something you went and enjoyed, "It wasn't HOMER," and that it was more like a really good improvised rap performance, only longer.

Second, I told them about during the time of the Library in Alexandria, people saw Homer as written by a single person who was the end-all and be-all and put everything in the world in the text.

"You like know those New Age people who are like, 'I follow quantum physics'?", I was like.  "Like the other day, I saw an interview with Madonna, and someone emailed in a question what science she follows, and she was totally like, 'I follow quantum physics,' and she sees stuff like, 'Stuff isn't what it seems,' embedded into all of society and the universe.  Back then, these scholars totally thought Homer was up on philosophical theories of science, and told all about this stuff in his text, and you could find that out through allegory, because he was HOMER."

Then, lastly, I told them that after the American Revolution, people debated the utility of knowing Latin and Greek, and many said you shouldn't learn Homer or any other ancient text, since any knowledge in them had since been superceded in individual disciplines, and that it was better to learn a living language anyhow.

"So it's not like there was this one Homer that people read and thought about the same way for the past 3000 years," I was like.

I was then going to tell them that it was better to forget Homer and always question tradition and burn the libraries down, but my Czech literature professor friend gave me the eye and I stopped and read the first several lines of the Odyssey, and she thanked me and said she had a lot of things to cover in class today.

Later, I realized, too, that I meant to tell the kids that Homeric Greek was a jumble of odd words and forms, kind of like easier than Chaucer but harder than Shakespeare (to use English comparisons), so even when you read a translation, you get no sense of the specialized knowledge you had to have to read it, for much of the text's history.