Homeric Moments

Homeric Moments by Eva Brann

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I read this book after reading the Iliad and the Odyssey as part of the Online Great Books program. I think it worked better that way than trying the other way. By reading the primary texts first, I had a background that added to my appreciation of the observations made by Professor Brann. While reading this book first might have given me insights into the text, I think I might have found this book far too dry and acadmic. In addition, reading this book after the primary texts was an excellent review of those texts.

Brann's style is to skip around addressing different topics where she has insights after teaching Homer for years. All of the insights are well-worth considering. In some ways, reading this book is like having a conversation with an old friend about a subject she loves. Professor Brann clearly loves this material and finds it to be a vastly rewarding subject to consider.

This book is filled with tidbits. For example:

//Helen and Clytemnestra are indeed sisters, married to the brothers Menelaus and Agamemnon. They are the daughters of Tyndareus, who is, in turn, brother to Icarius, Penelope's father.//

Clytemnestra was the wife of Agamemnon. She was infamous for killing her husband on his return from Troy. Given that she figures prominently in the Orestiad, the connection of Helen, Penelope and Clytemnestra adds a dimension I did not pick up from reading Homer or the play.

Another insight answers a question about the Odyssey that came up during the OGB discussion of the book, namely, what did Telemachus get out of his journey to see Menelaus?

//Moreover, she had taken one look and asked her husband, “Do we know who among men these claim to be who have come to our house?” And she points to him: “that man,” he is the one who looks like Odysseus' young son. It may be the first time in his prolonged boyhood that he has been called a man, and by such a personage! I think that perhaps Helen is never more beautiful than when she gives this boy the recognition that makes him Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, a young man.//

Again, these insights work better after the reader has interacted with Homer's texts and tried to unravel them for himself.