Homer's Odyssey in Greece: one week immersion

sat30apr(apr 30)3:00 pmsat07may(may 7)10:00 amHomer's Odyssey in Greece: one week immersion(April 30) 3:00 pm - (May 7) 10:00 am(GMT+03:00) View in my time Event Organized ByToby BrothersType of studyClassical,Literature,Poetry,TravelDurationSeven daysAgistri, Greece

Event Details

Please note that this study was fully booked with participants who had previously registered for the postponed study originally arranged for May 2020. We hope to arrange a similar study in 2023, so if you are interested please visit our travel studies page to be alerted to future announcements.

Following the lifting of travel restrictions after the Covid pandemic, we are excited to again be able to expand the Salon studies by offering retreats to locales that reflect and expand the literature. We aim to offer a more intensive immersion in the book while opening the mind to a part of the world illuminated through the beauty of the language.

The Greek Odyssey study for April-May 2022 will use Homer’s epic poem to consider closely the guest-host relationship, the defining struggle of humans against overwhelming nature, the struggle to know ourselves in foreign spaces, our understanding of the heroic and the role of myth and epic in lived experience. Actor Jane Wymark and poet Caroline Hammond will join Salon Director Toby Brothers in leading this week-long study, sharing their insights into the spoken word, metre and translation. In an era where the epic poem is in eclipse (the novel and film having taken over as the preferred vehicles for  complex narratives) we will explore aspects of the Odyssey as a work in the oral tradition.

We have found the perfect site to host this study, providing the ideal combination of a local space run by someone who understands our mission and can provide us with room and board that offers both culture and adventure, as well as being easy to access. We will be staying at Rosy’s Village on the stunning Island of Agistri. The study is scheduled for the 30 April (arrival) to 7 May (departure) 2022.

SALON DETAILS

  • Facilitated by Toby Brothers, Jane Wymark and Caroline Hammond
  • 30 April-7 May 2022
  • Study programme will run for approximately five to six hours per day (one day open) leaving time for other activities (optional kayaking adventure and trip to the Pidavros theatre or Temple of Aphasia
  • Preparatory meeting (via Zoom) ?
  • Recommended editions: The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles and the Emily Wilson translation (see more details below)
  • £475 for the Salon study includes preparatory meetings, background materials and opening notes (you will receive details about payment after registration).

Room and half board (two meals per day) will be arranged with and paid directly to Rosy’s; after you register, you will receive details on payment.

Room prices per night stay (including breakfast and dinner):

  • Single – €98 per night (approximately £83)
  • Double – €70 per person per night (approximately £60)
  • Triple – €68 per person per night (approximately £58)

Other costs: flights, ferry to Agistri (usually 14 euro each way but may be 30 euro for arrival if the group chooses private water taxi), one meal a day and extra trips. For flight purchase, please make sure you can be in Piraeus by 3.00 pm on 30 April to make the ferry.  We will not be meeting on 7 May, so you have choices about your return; ferries are frequent (one hour travel from Agistri to Piraeus).

To register and pay for the study or if you would like further information, please use the booking and/or enquiry form below. Opening notes will be sent after registration; please read at least one of the translations before arriving on Agistri.

Primary texts edition recommended:

  • The Odyssey translated by Robert Fagles (Penguin Classics, various editions) November 1997 ISBN-13:978-0140268867
  • The Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson (W.W. Norton & Co., Nov. 2018) ISBN-13: 978-0393356250

Participant reflections from the Odyssey travel study in May 2019:

“And it was such stirring stuff! It transformed The Odyssey from ever so slightly a form of homework, the better to get to grips with Ulysses, into an unexpectedly powerful, truly immersive and poetic experience – a fascinating study in its own right.”

“The facilitators were great, particularly Jane, who is wonderful, for the readings. That was memorable, for me. I would love to be with you for next year so please book me in . . .” 

About the epic . . .   

The Salon has become a place to discover or rediscover the works that form the cornerstones of Western literary tradition. The Odyssey is a root feeding our understanding of ourselves as well as the words and ways of the ancients. How does it continue to shape our idea of the heroic? What do the dilemmas that Odysseus faces offer to us today? Can we still appreciate the lyric and narrative quality alongside a violent story filled with the suffering and death of nameless servants, slave girls and soldiers?

Many artists have used The Odyssey as an inspiration for their work, as Joyce does with Ulysses and the Coen brothers did for their film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (winning an Oscar for the best screenplay adaptation from Homer’s original) . . . the epic struggle to return home and exploration of the guest/host relationship remain relevant across time.

David Denby, in his work Great Books, describes his engagement with The Odyssey as an essential exploration of the formation of the self for the reader as well as for Telemachus and Odysseus:

“Even at the beginning of the literary tradition of the West, the self has masks, and remakes itself as a fiction and not as a guiltless fiction either. . .
The Odyssey is an after-the-war poem, a plea for relief and gratification, and it turns, at times, into a sensual, even carnal celebration.”

And here, from Jane Wymark, a brief summary of some of the contemporary novels inspired by the Homeric epics . . .

“All of these books contain major spoilers of the plots of both The Iliad and The Odyssey and so are to be avoided if you’d rather approach the Homeric Epics completely innocent. On the other hand, without some background knowledge of the Greek Pantheon you will soon be at sea, so you might consider sacrificing surprise for context . . .”

The Silence of the Girls

Pat Barker

 “An important, powerful, memorable book that invites us to look differently not only at The Iliadbut at our own ways of telling stories about the past and the present, an invitation to listen for voices silenced by history and power.”

Emily Wilson

Pat Barker is the author of the much respected award-winning Regeneration trilogy set during the First World War, and is thus very well qualified to retell the story of The Iliad in a style that displays its mythic universality. The first time that Achilles says ‘OK’ it lands as a shocking anachronism, but as you read on you realise that Barker is deliberately showing that the Trojan War has similarities to all wars in all times. Her central character, Briseis, is mentioned no more than a dozen times in Homer: she is an enslaved woman regarded simply as plunder.

The Song of Achilles and Circe

Madeline Miller

The Song of Achilles, Miller’s first book, became a major bestseller, published in 23 languages. It retells the story of the siege of Troy from the point of view of Patroclus, whose death Achilles avenged by the killing of the Trojan hero Hector and defiling the corpse by dragging it around the city walls behind his chariot. The book was less popular in some quarters: the New York Times described it as having ‘the head of a young adult novel, the body of The Iliad and the hindquarters of Barbara Cartland’ and there’s some truth in that criticism, despite its irritating snobbish tone. It’s certainly a very engaging read and Miller’s second book, Circe, is even more so. Circe is a nymph and witch on whose island home Odysseus and his men land. The book manages to weave in an enormous amount of Greek myth and legend in palatable form.

A Thousand Ships

Natalie Haynes

 ‘This subversive reseeing of the classics is a many-layered delight’.

Elizabeth Lowry

This is the most recent of the current crop of Homeric retellings. It is written in short chapters and covers the stories of many of the female characters, most of whom get fairly short shrift in Homer. Some are given more than one chapter – especially Penelope and the group Haynes calls The Trojan Women. Penelope’s chapters are written as letters to the absent Odysseus, a device taken from Ovid’s Heroides, but the dry witty tone echoes The Penelopiad, written by the great Margaret Attwood fifteen years earlier, which is definitely worth a read.


If you have any questions about this study, please contact us.

Organizer

Time

April 30 (Saturday) 3:00 pm - May 7 (Saturday) 10:00 am(GMT+03:00)

View in my time

Location

Agistri, Greece

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