Ralph Hutchison Brings The Words Of Homer To Lakewood Public Library
As Book I of Homer’s "The Odyssey" begins, Odysseus is being held captive after failing to return home from the Trojan War. Penelope, his ever-patient wife, awaits his return in a palace overrun with suitors. With vengeful gods, invocations to muses, bloodshed, and disasters, "The Odyssey"is filled with adventure and mayhem.
Odysseus’ struggles were immortalized by Homer, a traveling bard. Lakewood has its own traveling bard in the person of Ralph Hutchison. From the fjords of Denmark to the jungles of India, Hutchison has shared his dramatic reading of "The Odyssey" all over the world. Now he gets the opportunity to share Homer’s words with a hometown crowd.
Ralph Hutchison presents "In the Words of Homer" at Lakewood Public Library on Sunday, November 22 at 2:00 p.m. in the Main Library Auditorium when he reads from "The Odyssey: Book I: A Goddess Intervenes." But before his performance, he takes the time to answer a few questions. Inevitably, responses from Lakewood’s own bard often take the form of poems.
LPL: Who wrote "The Odyssey"?
RH: Technically, the answer's "Homer," but who or what this Homer is, who knows? He might have been a woman or an alien. It might be hymns or songs found in the mountains. It rides through an ancient world in the hearts of poets.
LPL: How old is the poem?
RH:The age of the poem is really hard to imagine. It was written five or seven generations before the Golden Age of civilization. A poem from seventh century B.C. is as old as a redwood tree and older even than certain pyramids and jars of clay.
LPL: What did you like about Denmark and India?
RH: I like to see things having been through time, old songs and aging buildings, wrinkled skin, to put my feet down on the Earth and feel the breath of those who came to Earth before. In Copenhagen, city of fairy tales, the language of time can reach a thousand years, but India is older than time itself.
LPL: Which do you prefer, "The Iliad" or "The Odyssey"?
RH: 1. The first poem gets your passions rising up with tympani drums and councils of war, a clash of empires, the generations of leaves. But don't neglect to hear "The Odyssey"
and hear it as a song in living voice, adventure journalism, travel writing, something personal and just for you.
2. "The Odyssey" lives up to its reputation. No one goes wrong by honoring longing for Homer. I'll take "The Iliad" and "Odyssey" and even the odes of Homer however they come.
But if I must choose between the hell of warrior love of women and travel and song and hear
what I want, I think I'd choose "The Odyssey."
LPL: What about Fitzgerald's translation speaks to you?
RH: Just take a fist of change and let it jingle, feeling in the pocket where the feet fall, feeling where the heartbeats care to catch the syncopation of Fitzgerald's verse. Then listen to the stars about translation. Ask if there's a way to lower lines from dreaming ancestors to living Earth.
Ralph Hutchison’s performance of "The Odyssey: Book One: A Goddess Intervenes" takes place on Sunday, November 22 at 2:00 p.m. in the Main Library Auditorium. Admission is free and open to all.