Lina

I'm just a student of philology with love for Greek mythology

[thegeyeria]

Head cannon time.

What if Helen is a metaphor for natural resources that were in Troy? And the Greeks wanted it so they attacked and the Trojans were lowkey confused at who these short ass bitches were?

[linawhitelily]

just believe that "If it were not for Helen/What would Troy alone be to you, Achaean men?/And the sea and Homer — all is moved by love"

[nilo05]

save a horse

[starweaverblog]

Here me out, Dionysus would 100% be that dad who hosts "Princess tea parties" for his daughter and her friends

Okay hear me out also 👀

Having her on his back like she's riding a panther and everyone shouts that she's their ruler clapping and cheering. Truly princess treatment 😌✨

[deceasedcardinal]

Brothers in the Iliad

[sapocipo]

Yes I doodled that quote again because I LOVE IT

Sthenelus my underated diva

[mushyooms]

"His destiny was suffering, and mine the endless pain of missing him."

[sapocipo]

[kazimir29]

Can we have more sharpwolf please 🥺

Have a warm up sketch

[mushyooms]

iliad book 11 my beloved

[linawhitelily]

I'm just messing around

son and father

[ithacantrickster]

messing around with iliad characters again

[linawhitelily]

🤫, the sweet prince is listening to smb lovingly and attentively

[deceasedcardinal]

[pyndr0p]

Some silly Antinous and Telemachus alt designs! Mostly more Mycenaean accurate since I wanted to give myself a little bit of a design challenge

[aimless-adventurer]

thinking about how:

odysseus is used to home, and diomedes helps him get through the war

all diomedes knows is war, and odysseus is the closest he'll feel to home

[linawhitelily]

A little about «Odysseus to Telemachus» by J. Brodsky and «The thread of golden honey flowed from the bottle...» by O. Mandelshtam

From Brodsky

I don’t know where I am or what this place

can be. It would appear some filthy island,

with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs.

A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other.

Grass and huge stones . . .

When I read this before, I thought first about Circe and Aeaea because of «pigs» and then about Calipso and Ogygia too because:

To a wanderer the faces of all islands

resemble one another.

(we can also remember the islands of the Cyclopes and Laestrygonians, of course, but then we should more generalize the image)

But. IT'S ABOUT ITHACA TOO.

Penelope is a queen in the full sense, not Circe or Calypso (although they can be called queens in a sense (like: of their islands), I suppose). «The pigs» refers to Eumaeus. We also have «huge stones» and Ithaca is a quite rocky island, but it's probably not much of an argument.

And Odysseus didn't recognise Ithaca at first (fog and etc but anyway)

(Maybe it's obvious, but I hadn't thought about this option before, because Odysseus in the poem hasn't returned to Ithaca yet)

Next, adding the Mandelshtam's poem. These texts connected here, for example

Mandelshtam:

full of space and time, Odysseus came home.

Brodsky:

While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon,

it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

The comparison of two images of Odysseus, the romantic, heroic, returning and filled one, and the tired, lost and almost broken one, in whose consciousness time and spase and everything is mixed up and

Only the gods know if we'll see each other

again

— just breaks my heart

(by the way, there is also later «Ithaca» by Brodsky, where the meeting occurs, but not at all like Homer, more biographical for the author himself, a myth lowered to «reality», as here)

Also there is a memory motive (and maybe allusion again)

Mandelshtam:

Remember, in that Greek house, the much loved wife —

Not Helen — the other wife — how long she embroidered?

Brodsky:

I can't remember how the war came out;

even how old you are — I can't remember.

My main thought here about Brodsky's Odysseus. He doesn't remember war and exactly how many years have gone, but

You've long since ceased to be that babe

before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.

— These lines seem like an anchor, like something that Odysseus clings to and really remembers, last episode of his life before sailing off to war and life in general in a sense, because the next twenty years are not a life, but a wasted life, wasted years, wasted time

(I just do like these texts)

So, read full poems; if you can, read originals! (used translations by Farrar, Straus & Giroux / Peter France)

[linawhitelily]

well now I think that it was a little bit inconsistent post, so (here's another one, ahah)

«Odysseus to Telemachus» by J. Brodsky

I'm writing an essay about reinterpretation of myth and epic in this poem

In the post above I wrote about what features of Ithaca appear in the description of the island, now I've found another one:

a garden

I didn't find any mention of a garden on the islands of Circe and Calypso, but there's a garden on Ithaca. The same one that Laertes takes care of. And in Homer's poem it's emphasized that Laertes keeps the garden in order, but in Brodsky's text it is overgrown.

And here is another interesting point :)

Odysseus's thoughts in Brodsky's poem are on the one hand quite clear (the episode with Palamedes and Telemachus), and on the other hand confused (the description of the war and the island). I don't really like these lines in the English translation, I would (literally, but) translate it like this:

... the brain/mind

is stumbling, counting waves;

the eye, sore from horizon,

is crying

(«sore from» I took from translations because I'm not sure what is better here. It's hard + I'm not so good in English)

That is: the personality literally disintegrates and collapses from grief and exhaustion, perception is disrupted (by choice of words and enjambments), thoughts are mixed up, and now the garden on Ithaca seems overgrown because so much time has passed

and it's interesting that Calypso's island appears here not through some signs in the landscape, but through Odysseus's state. Because it's on her island that he spent years, being on the shore, looking at the sea and crying.

Do you feel this confusion yet? A mixture of what the lyrical hero supposedly sees (or imagines?) and what he feels? Ahaha

(I think it conveys possible Odysseus' state on Ogygia in a way)

(There's no logical conclusion, I'm leaving to continue writing my essay)

[linawhitelily]

I believe that the main couple in Dante Alighieri's Inferno is not Francesca and Paolo, but these guys:

🤭☺️💋

Canto 26, translator: Rev. H. F. Cary