Nolan's Odyssey

 So, Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is coming in a few days, and a  lot of the publicity and brouhaha has focused on the sheer scale of the production, the casting choices and visual authenticity. For me, what will be more interesting to see is whether the film will attempt to capture what lies beneath the swashbuckling adventures: an ancient civilization reflecting on what it means to be human. I don't expect that much of that philosophical layer to survive the journey to film, though I reserve the right to be pleasantly surprised. I do like Nolan.

For the ancient Greeks, the Iliad and the Odyssey were part of an education. Children encountered courage, cunning, loyalty, betrayal, hubris and mortality through these tales. They learned that even the best of their gods and heroes were flawed and imperfect. That whatever civilizational order comes, it is borne through human acts, not some divine order. That they cannot count on the Gods to be fair or just, and that any attempt to make the world a bit fairer was a human undertaking, with no guarantee of success.

Homer does not begin the epics with “God said”. He asks the Muse to sing. The poet does not claim to be delivering a final revelation. He gives form to inherited stories and offers them to human judgment. The only authority he has is poetic, rather than absolute. The myths could therefore be retold, across the ages, contradicted and turned against themselves. Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides could accuse the gods, dismantle heroes and offer different versions of the same stories, and it was all done without violating some fixed divine canon. Challenging the story was not only acceptable, it was part of the fabric of the story. Human beings listened and still had to judge for themselves.

Take the episode of the Cyclops, for instance. If you've ever had some passing interest in mythology, perhaps you still remember the story between Ulysses and his unfortunate crew and Polyphemus the Cyclops. In one of his lectures in the 1980s, speaking at EHESS in Paris, philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis, asks his students to notice what Homer points out before the killing in the cave begins. The Cyclopes have no laws, no assemblies and no common deliberation. Each of them rules his own household and cares nothing for the others. The Cyclops is monstrous, yes, but not only because of his size and demeanour. How he appears visually can also be interpreted as a metaphor for the fact that he inhabits a brutal, lawless world, a pre-human collective. He sees things only from one absolute perspective. He recognizes no law above his own appetite and power. 

Ulysses tries to appeal to hospitality and to Zeus, protector of strangers. Polyphemus replies that the Cyclopes are stronger than the gods and need not care about such trifles. His cave is a household despotism sealed inside stone. For Castoriadis, this is evidence of an early intuition of the political order. He proposes that a collection of human-like beings does not yet constitute a society. Society begins when people create something beyond themselves and between themselves: common laws, obligations and a public space in which decisions can be discussed. The opposite he says is Cyclopean existence, each household enclosed within the absolute authority of its master.

Another philosopher, Dimitris Liantinis, offers another interpretation of that same episode. Ulysses, Liantinis writes, introduces himself as Nobody. It is only when he escapes the ordeal that he reveals his true name. Liantinis reads this in a rather Nietzschean fashion, as the movement from anonymous existence to a realized self. He says this is actually the story of each and every one of us. We all begin our lives as “nobody” in a deeper sense, existentially untested and only partly awake. It is only through overcoming challenges, through dealing with our own life’s Odyssey, with attention, effort, and the recognition of our own mortality, that we may become someone with a name. But he notes that most of us will most likely remain anonymous and be lost in history, like the crew of Ulysses. So, for him, the episode with the Cyclops, this seemingly inescapable natural force, is also about our own personal confrontation with our own death.

Castoriadis sees the emergence of the political person. Liantinis sees the emergence of the existential person. Both perspectives can be made to meet at the point where a free individual cannot develop without a common world, and a common world worth living in cannot exist without individuals capable of sound judgment. Of course neither Castoriadis nor Liantinis are uncovering some secret code hidden in Homer’s writings. They are merely using the poem as food for thought, as was intended. 

As for Ulysses himself, he is far from perfect. He is both a hero and an anti-hero. His desire for recognition, his vanity, allows Poseidon to identify him and prolongs the suffering of his journey. The man clever enough to become Nobody when need arises, does not understand when it would perhaps have been wiser to remain silent for a little longer. Ulysses is clever, but not wise.

Almost all homeric heroes are admirable and deeply flawed in roughly equal measure. Achilles is magnificent and catastrophic. Agamemnon is kingly and contemptible. Ulysses is ingenious, resilient, deceitful and vain. The listeners are not given a perfect hero to imitate. They are required to judge for themselves, and to think about how to be better.

And this may be one of the deepest differences between myth and propaganda. Propaganda supplies pure friends and irredeemable enemies. Homer gives us mixed creatures acting imperfectly under pressure, ignorance and necessity. Nobody escapes this contradiction, not even the gods.

These were the stories that encapsulated the shared values of ancient Greek civilization. Values that were contestable, mutable, subject to human judgement. The stories were told as poems, they were not delivered as catechism. Hospitality becomes clearly visible when the Cyclops violates it. Measure becomes visible when our heroes exceed it. Political community becomes visible when we encounter beings without an assembly. The stories were educational because they presented moral dilemmas and refused to make life simple. And this is why they persisted through the ages. Because every age can see its own reflection in them.

Perhaps Nolan will understand these aspects and carry part of them in his retelling of this very old story. Perhaps his Cyclops will be more than just a formidable monster on the screen. Whatever he makes of it, the story will endure.

(For a quick, expert refresher before the lights go down, Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins' Instant Classics podcast has just the primer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMJj0SUREkk )