Readers of all ages do all-night “Odyssey” reading in New York
by Dimitri C. Michalakis
My daughter and I were readers number 25 at the marathon all-night reading of The Odyssey by lovers of Homer from all walks and of all ages on a cold November night at New York’s 92nd Street Y.
“Do you want to do it?” I had asked my daughter Alexis, who is 25 and game for anything.
“Sounds like fun,” she said.
It seemed a perfect thing to do together: a little slice of Homer’s dark and briny voyage after the bloat of the Thanksgiving holiday and in the twinkling allure of Circe’s island of Manhattan.
But even my daughter the trouper (she had done plays in school) and me the old trouper (I had done plays) were a little nervous about reading in such a prestigious setting and after the fanfare of these same readings being done everywhere from the island of Chios (Homer’s birthplace of legend) to Alexandria to Montevideo and now to New York by the international non-profit literary group dedicated to the reading of the poet, The Readers of Homer.
And despite the busy Thanksgiving weekend, I was told that Liam Neeson (a philhellene) might be among the readers, and Tina Fey, and possibly Arianna Huffington, and Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, the Marine hero who had safeguarded the remaining artifacts of the Iraq Museum after the fall of Baghdad and was a passionate classicist.
“Are you nervous?” my wife asked me.
“Thanks for reminding me,” I said.
We braved the chill of the streets, but then walked into the lobby of the Y to a sunny scene: the 200 readers of the evening collegially sporting their numbers and mingling with friends and family who were drifting in and out of a nearby room spread with a veritable Homeric banquet: a roast lamb head anchoring a feast of mulled wine, and olives and sweet goat cheese, of leeks and black bread and chick pea spread, and of honey yogurt and nuts and pomegranate for dessert, while people of all walks talked eagerly about the night’s proceedings.
A woman at our table said she had been everywhere at the readings, including Montevideo and Kos. “It was wonderful,” she said. “We were pretty bleary-eyed by the morning, but then we woke up to the sun coming out and to the words of Homer, so who can beat that?”
A man and a woman across the table, who were spooning their chick pea spread on black bread, breathlessly compared their expectations for the reading.
“It’s so beautiful to share it with everybody,” she said.
“It’s something communal out of ancient Greece,” he said.
And then the feasting ended in appropriate Homeric fashion with three members of the Lyravlos musical ensemble from Greece marching to the center of our dining room and blowing their turtle shell and goat horns—an unearthly sound in the middle of Manhattan--and summoning the assembly to the adjoining Kaufmann Hall for the start of our reading.
“Thank you for coming out and trying to do this rather challenging, long and different experience,” Professor Kathryn Hohlwein greeted us from the podium of the stage. She is the founder and president of The Readers of Homer and a lifelong academic who admits “in the teaching and sharing of the Iliad and Odyssey, I came to find my profession of teaching and I’ve gone on to understand better the power and significance and relevance of these two poems.”
In this time of war, she said, “these poems have a stunning immediacy and relevance to the experience of young people who are either in combat and have suffered trauma: whatever side they’re on, whatever war they were in and then trying to reintegrate into civilian society and come home.”
She introduced Yannis Simonides, the internationally-acclaimed actor of the classics and both a founder and the managing director of The Readers of Homer, who laid down the ground rules for the evening: “We don’t comment. We don’t apologize. We don’t use our name. We just come up and follow the flow. We just use the microphone the best we can in the different languages of the world. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Enjoy the long wonderful evening.”
And then the reading began with Professor Holhwein intoning “…Lift the great song again…” as the English translation of the poem by Stanley Lombardo was projected on a screen and Professor William Mullen of Bard College mounted the stage to read the first passage: a balding man in a business suit, until he reared his head back, closed his eyes, and began to read from Homer, from the heart, in ancient Greek, in a voice that rang throughout the hall and thrilled us all, with his face lit up by the light of the podium, like some ancient bard before the fire of a royal banquet hall.
And then a blonde woman read also in ancient Greek, in such rhapsodic devotion, and after her so many others in so many languages: Spanish, and French, and modern Greek, and what sounded like Danish, and an African tongue. Kids, and seniors, and whole family groups, solemnly taking their turn on the stage and at the podium, their faces glowing in its light.
Lyravlos provided musical interludes between “rhapsodies” on period instruments such as the “Pan” pipes, and on lyres, and sea shells, and goat antlers, all the devoted handiwork of Panagiotis Stefos, the distinguished musician and favorite of composers such as Hadjidakis and Theodorakis, and a specialist in modern music, until twenty years ago he acquired a passion for ancient Greek music and instruments and he founded Lyravlos, which has performed ancient Greek music in concerts and lectured on it to groups throughout the world.
There were also dance interludes by the Choreo Theatro Company in choreography by Irina Constantine Poulos, the performers in stark and powerful tableaus set to music by the Slovenian group Silence: ”Penelope’s Solo on the Balcony”…”Odysseus and the Sirens”…”Odysseus and Calypso”…”Odysseus and Poseidon…” Haunting dances of primitive beauty and choreographed struggle—some with masks—that made them even more haunting.
And then it was the turn of my daughter and me to mount the stage and get ready for our reading. We stood and waited for the woman before us to finish, and then we walked forward to the light of the podium and shared our passage on Odyssey’s great sorrow: Odysseus’ heart sank and his knees grew weak, began my daughter. With a heavy sigh he spoke to his own great soul. And then I read, Ah, Zeus has let me see land I never hoped to see, and I’ve cut my way to the end of this gulf, but there’s no way to get out of the grey saltwater…
As our voices rang over the tribal darkness of the hall and the sound echoed back to us, I could hear and sense as never before the primal despair of Odysseys’ voice in his unforgiving world of magic, and fate, and gods and heroes.
We finished our reading fairly early in the night and unfortunately had to leave. But devotees stayed till the break of rosy-fingered dawn and closure to the evening with Mark Latham’s original composition of Four Meditations on War under the poster for the evening by Laura Hohlwein.
The reading now moves on to the Getty Villa in Malibu, California on April 30 and will continue its odyssey throughout the world on its stated mission to revive the ancient art of public reading, recognize “the eternal immediacy of Homer,” and provide a “multilayered audiovisual experience” for people of all ages and nationalities and from all walks of life.
It certainly provided a memorable experience for us in New York on that cold winter night in Manhattan.
“A night that will not be forgotten,” wrote the Greek newspaper Kathimerini of the reading in Greece, and we certainly agree.
