The Odyssey: A Prelude

Finally, I’m going to watch Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. I never managed to read the classic though many characters have fascinated me time and again. Odysseus stayed with me right from my undergrad days when I read Lord Tennyson’s poem on him. The aging king, as presented by Tennyson, rejects a quiet, sedentary life in the palace. “I cannot rest from travel,” he says, “I will drink life to the lees…” I loved that passion for life, for adventure and the quest for wisdom. The line “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” has remained in my memory from the college classroom up to this day.

I know well that Nolan’s Odysseus is not Tennyson’s Ulysses. But I’m sure I’ll love the movie, a journey into the psyche of a man who ruled the mythological milieu of an ancient civilisation.

How much of the wars that Odysseus fought were historical? I don’t know.

Human beings were always driven by predatory expansionist drives. They wanted to extract the wealth that belonged to others. Even women could be part of that wealth. As Helen was in the case of the Trojan War. But wasn’t that war originally more about trade route controls?

Troy sat near the entrance of the Dardanelles/Hellespont. Controlling this strait allowed Troy to tax shipping traffic between the Aegean Sea and the Black Sea, making it incredibly wealthy.

Quite many of the wars that took place and still do in my own lifetime are about similar plunders of other people’s properties.

The Viking incursions across Western Europe, the raids of Mahmud of Ghazni into the Indian subcontinent, and the expansion of the Mongol Empire all operated under a model where military victory yielded immediate returns in gold, silver, livestock, and captured men. And women too.

There were many Helens in history. More in mythology, perhaps. Think of India’s own Sita. And Draupadi. When I watch The Odyssey, will I be seeing another Sita of Lanka in Helen of Troy? I mean, will I be watching the darkness of victory that every war produces inevitably?

Maybe, Nolan’s realistic lens will divert my attention from history and mythology to the guilt that he gives to the protagonist. I understand that unlike Homer’s hero whose hubris drives much of the poem, Nolan’s Odysseus is weighed down by deep remorse over the slaughter at Troy. Nolan’s hero learns that his cycle of violence cannot restore his home, I’m told. I’d love that, perhaps, more than the epic heroism founded on hubris.

Maybe, I’ll tell you more after watching the movie. I’m excited anyway.