“She begins her journey in blue canvas shoes”, 2013, soft pastel on pastel paper, 17.7 x 11.4 inches (45x29cm).
How relevant is The Odyssey today If it doesn’t tackle global issues like racism, feminism, immigration, the environment, colonialism, human rights, etc.? Can it be considered contemporary or international? Or is the work a legacy project from a bygone age, topical only for the guardians of the past–archaeologists and philologians—or attractive only to “local” Hellenic culture?
If you answered “Yes” to these questions, you have missed the point of the Homeric texts. These poetic “stories” are, in essence, a Manual of Life: a code of human psychosynthesis that not only recounts the various psychological problems but provides solutions for each one of them. And I say this having scraped only the surface of these texts through a series of seminars that I attended in Athens called “Tacit Mythology”.
Do you consider contemporary and of international concern, the following questions:
Do we often experience negative emotions in our daily life?
Do we have these negative emotions because of things that happened to us in the past?
Because of things that are happening in the present?
How do we transform these negative emotions into positive ones?
How do we attain a catharsis from our past?
Do we take responsibility for our life decisions?
Or we avoid making these decisions altogether, maybe?
Do we face up to the consequences of these decisions when we make them?
Do we prevent other people from making these decisions for us?
The Odyssey implicitly asks and answers those questions. You see, each one of us is a potential Odysseus. A hero. But not a hero in the Roman sense (as I found out in the seminars), i.e., someone who defeats an enemy through excessive strength or size. Instead, in the ancient Greek meaning: someone who remains faithful to themselves and their goals. This is heroic because many people and events will come along and pull us away from our goals and our journeys. These diversions existed in the past, and they exist now. A hero will suffer losses whether a decision is taken or avoided. Βut a hero will remain committed to reaching the final destination.
So let’s ask again:
How relevant is The Odyssey today? Or rather…
How much do we desire to reach the shores of our own Ithaca today?
Add a Comment