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Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 23:35:50 -0800
To: classics@u.washington.edu
From: David Lupher <dlupher@ups.edu>
Subject: RE: Musical Homer

Dan Tompkins writes:
>O Brother Where Art Thou, the new Coen Bros film "based on" the Odyssey--they
>admit they've never read it-- [snip]

This admission is a topos among those who work with Homeric material
these days.  In ch. 56, sect. 3, of Walcott's "Omeros," the persona
of the poet dares to tell the Dead Greek Guy himself re. his "Odyssey":

				"I never read it,"
		I said, "Not all the way through."

Also, the poet who made the greatest of all post-classical contributions
to the "Ulysses theme" never, apparently, read a single word of the one
he called "poeta sovrano" (Inf. 4.88).  Of course, he had an excuse.
(And there are moments I wonder how familiar he was with the second
half of the "Aeneid," apart from casual references to Lavinia,
Euryalus, Camilla, etc.)

David Lupher
Classics Dept.
Univ. of Puget Sound





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