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<\/a>Are you as numb to news of war as I am?<\/p>\nWe the American public are so used to hearing that our country is acting militarily in yet another place on the globe that we don\u2019t even question whether we should be arming the Saudi Arabian forces in Yemen or \u201csupporting\u201d Syrian so-called moderate rebels.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re still fighting (and killing civilians in wedding parties and now even a hospital) in Afghanistan. And, incredibly, we\u2019re back in Iraq: \u201ctraining\u201d (yet again) government forces. Aren\u2019t they trained by now?<\/p>\n
At least there\u2019s a bit of public outrage over the recent disclosures about our drone \u201ckill lists\u201d in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan\u2026<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve heard that the U.S. military is involved right now in from seventy-five to a hundred thirty wars, depending on how you define \u201cinvolved\u201d and \u201cwar.\u201d This was the context for my recent re-reading of Virgil\u2019s\u00a0Aeneid<\/em>, in Robert Fitzgerald\u2019s fine translation. As I read, I couldn\u2019t help but be struck by the similarity of my country\u2019s militaristic sense of mission to that of Augustan Rome. \u201cHeadlong we rush to bite the desert dust\u201d is how Fitzgerald\u2019s iambic pentameter puts it.<\/p>\n Fitzgerald\u2019s\u00a0Iliad<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0are also on my shelf. With warring so much the rage these days, you\u2019d think I\u2019d turn next to\u00a0The Iliad<\/em>. But instead it\u2019s\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0that I reached for\u2014since it\u2019s about how we\u00a0should<\/em>\u00a0live instead of how we\u00a0do<\/em>.<\/p>\n Restoration is\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u2018s theme. Though the title word has come to mean adventurous wandering, the poem\u2019s whole thrust is really toward restoring Odysseus to his rightful place at home.<\/p>\n In Book Six of\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>, Odysseus is shipwrecked on the coast of the island of Scheria. Nausikaa and her handmaidens go to the seashore to wash clothes. Awakened by their games, Odysseus emerges from the forest naked and begs Nausikaa for help. He articulates what \u201chome\u201d means in a famous speech.<\/p>\n I actually cried when I read that speech. Odysseus does his share of crying in the poem, so I was in noble company. He\u2019s weeping with longing for home when we first see him; he weeps later with grief when the minstrel sings of the Trojan War. My tears at his words to Nausikaa, though, were of gratitude\u2014for the human fulfillment they picture:<\/p>\n And may the gods accomplish your desire: \u201cThe best thing in the world\u201d isn\u2019t in the Greek, which literally says \u201cthere\u2019s nothing more excellent or better than.\u201d But Fitzgerald was brilliant to bring the world in via the English idiom. Because the Homeric household is very much in the world. The domestic concord for which Odysseus claims prime value isn\u2019t a private peace cut off from the cruel world. Quite the opposite: The harmonious households visited throughout\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0make the world a better place by spreading their blessings.<\/p>\n They do this mainly by extending hospitality. Strangers wandering in receive a welcome fit for the gods. The creed of good homes is the line graciously used to welcome Odysseus at two different times when he shows up looking particularly bedraggled: \u201cStrangers and beggars come from Zeus.\u201d<\/p>\n Nausikaa is the first to welcome Odysseus with these words. She does so, in fact, in response to her guest\u2019s assertion of the value of domestic concord. From her parents\u2019 supremely peaceful household, she has learned the right order of things: that hospitality is the natural extension of the harmonious home.<\/p>\n What all the harmonious households in the poem are doing when either Telemachus or Odysseus drop in is feasting. The amount of food consumed in the poem could feed an army\u2014though the whole point is that peace, not war, is now being nurtured.<\/p>\n My husband and I were recently musing about this. He commented that\u00a0The Iliad<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0together are Homer\u2019s\u00a0War and Peace<\/em>. I see them also as Homer\u2019s tragedy and comedy: comedy in its largest sense, as the celebration of life. While the defining activity of\u00a0The Iliad<\/em>\u2018s tragic vision is fighting (from the battlefield slaughter to the squabbling among the gods), the defining activity of\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u2018s comic vision is feasting.<\/p>\n A feast, especially for a marriage, has always been the symbol for comedy\u2019s celebration of human concord and continuity. All the singing, dancing, and athletic games that go on at\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u2018s feasts are collective body language expressing exuberant harmony. And the remarkable amount of joking among characters\u2014the fun we commonly think of as comic\u2014is a manifestation writ small of the larger vision of joy.<\/p>\n Comic and tragic visions are essentially inseparable, though. Just as at the instant a warrior in\u00a0The Iliad<\/em>\u00a0bites the dust in gory death, a brief glimpse is often given of the peaceful world being lost, so does\u00a0The Odyssey<\/em>\u00a0repeatedly recall the terrible waste of the Trojan War, giving a sense of precious value to the time of joy. Homer couldn\u2019t bear the thought of war without the possibility of people living in harmony, and we can\u2019t either.<\/p>\n At least I can\u2019t. That\u2019s why, while our political world is behaving tragically, I need the balance and restorative hope that comedy brings.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Peggy Rosenthal<\/a>\u00a0is director of\u00a0Poetry Retreats<\/a>\u00a0and writes widely on poetry as a spiritual resource. Her books include\u00a0Praying through Poetry: Hope for Violent Times <\/em>(Franciscan Media), and\u00a0The Poets\u2019 Jesus\u00a0<\/em>(Oxford). See Amazon<\/a>\u00a0for a full list. She also teaches an online\u00a0course, \u201cPoetry as a Spiritual Practice,\u201d<\/a> through\u00a0Image<\/em>\u2019s Glen Online program<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
\na home, a husband, and harmonious
\nconverse with him\u2014the best thing in the world
\nbeing a strong house held in serenity
\nwhere man and wife agree.<\/em><\/p>\n