Odyssey

Many millions of people throughout the ages have marveled at the poetic masterpiece Odyssey, by the ancient Greek Homer. But for all of my reading, I had never consumed this treasure before finishing it today.

What a wondrous tale of war, separation, determination and finally redemption. It is as beautiful and passionate as any modern love story, as exciting and thrilling as any Spielberg spectacle and as brutal and violent as anything Hollywood could conjure. No doubt its these very merits that have kept it in our human conscientiousness for so many millennia.

I was fortunate enough to read a fantastic translation by Stanley Lombardo, who is a professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. His treatment of the Odyssey retained the poetic cadence that I would imagine the original Greek verse to possess while using language that is consistent with the modern vernacular.

That I read it while at the shores of Leech Lake make it all that much more memorable for me.