The Odyssey ...

The Odyssey: The Guardian

Excellent to a fault, The Guardian explores the Odyssey with consummate grace and respect, showing Homer's genius in depicting a story detailing the first modern man dealing with the vagaries of reality at deep level.

I have a feeling that the bard’s performance in this dark hall might have been a more thrilling and overwhelming experience even than that created by Nolan’s cinematic imagination. Had we been there, in that shadowy hall, we might now be weeping together at the emotional force of the stories of the bard. I think this is the case because within the Odyssey – a poem that is so knowing and alert about its own status as an artwork that, at times, it can feel more postmodern than ancient – there are several scenes in which bards in palace halls tell stories, and these stories are sometimes stitched seamlessly into the epic itself. And, hearing these stories, the listeners-in-the-poem weep to hear their own experiences – or experiences they fear, or long, to have – turned into song.

This same kind of epic scope lies in Joyce's Ulysses,
especially with Molly Bloom's soliloquy of lust, heartbreak and longing.

I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish Wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Picture of first edition of Joyce's Ulysses. Public Domain.