This is a repeating event12 January 2022 2:00 pm
The Iliad Unhurried
Event Details
A slow reading of Homer’s tragic poem of the Trojan War – Book 5 and onwards
SALON DETAILS:
- Facilitated by Mark Cwik
- Ongoing weekly study sold in 12-week subscriptions (projected to end summer 2023)
- 12-week virtual study via Zoom, Wednesday afternoons, 2.00-3.15 pm GMT, 5 January to 23 March 2022
- £150 for twelve-week subscription
- Recommended editions: The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles, introduction by Bernard Knox (Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN-13: 978-0140275360), and The Iliad, by Homer, translated by Caroline Alexander (Vintage, 2017, ISBN-13: 978-1784870577).
Of the many books we read in a lifetime, some small percentage – maybe just one or two, certainly no more than a handful – strike us in such a way that we long to go back and really read them. By the time we reach the end, we know there was so much more there than we realized when we first began.
The Iliad is one of those books. What starts out as a story of seemingly petty men and even pettier divinities builds slowly over its 24 books into a profound meditation on some of the most basic questions of human existence – how do we find meaning in a world we don’t control? What is worth living for? What is worth dying for? The Iliad is one of the few, almost miraculous, works of art that grows richer and deeper with every visit.
The Iliad Unhurried study will make a slow, close reading of the Iliad, beginning-to-end. Iliad Unhurried takes a serial approach: once-a-week instalments of a manageable 75 minutes, with no advance reading – something to add to your week without displacing other activities. We’ll sip-and-savour our way through, in small weekly tastings.
FORMAT
The pattern for each meeting of Iliad Unhurried is simple: read-discuss, read-discuss. We read aloud a small section of text – somewhere between a paragraph and a page – stop to sift through what’s happened, then read on. We ask ourselves what we see in the narrative and imagery, what we hear in the language of the characters and the voice of the poem, where the poem leads our feelings and how it shapes our sensibilities. Slow reading allows us to savour the nuances of character, social and political dynamics, and the deep psychological and philosophical undercurrents running through this finest of epics.
The study reads from two translations of the Iliad: the Robert Fagles translation is to be our primary version, supplemented by Caroline Alexander’s.
Each weekly meeting of Iliad Unhurried lasts 1hr 15min. At a planned pace of 4-6 meetings per book of the poem, we’ll relish the joy in the journey!
Registration for Iliad Unhurried is in subscriptions of 12-weeks at a time. The study is now in its third subscription cycle. We’ll be beginning the year with Book 5 of The Iliad, and we welcome new readers to join in at any point.
If you have any questions about this study, please contact the facilitator, Mark Cwik.
