Interview with Gregory Nagy on Epic and Grief

0. Introduction

Johnathan Bi: Greetings from Ithaca, where I’ve been rereading Homer’s Odyssey while retracing the journey of Odysseus over land and sea. And on this reread, a specific scene jumped out to me that I think will transform your understanding of this epic. So it’s been a few years since the fall of Troy. Odysseus is in disguise in a foreign court, and he hears a poet sing tales about the Trojan War, specifically sing tales about Odysseus. The poet sings about Odysseus’s genius of the Trojan Horse, how he led their best men, and how his genius and guile eventually led to the fall of Troy. This should be Odysseus’s moment of great glory, because every hero dreams of being immortalized in song. And yet, Odysseus does not glory. He starts weeping uncontrollably. Why? It turns out that by answering this question, not only will you gain a better understanding of who Odysseus is, but the very genre of epic. Even stronger, it’s going to teach you the unique and interesting relation…