Transcription
Even 2,000 years ago, people were missing the point of the Odyssey. That's the argument that Seneca, who's not just a Stoic philosopher, but a playwright himself, wanted us to understand how obnoxious and annoying it is that everyone is missing the point of the Odyssey. They were doing then what we are doing right now.
He said that people would get in these debates about where Odysseus got lost, about whether Penelope was faithful the whole time, whether Homer was the first of the great poets, whether Achilles was older than Patroclus. Seneca said, "None of this matters, not even a little bit." He says, "Homer isn't telling you about Odysseus's wandering, he's showing you how to stop wandering yourself." He says, "The argument isn't about whether Penelope was pure." He says, "Teach me what purity actually means and how to live it."
Seneca is pushing back on all those pedantic, obnoxious English teachers, those classicists for whom the geography, the timeline, the trivia is what matters, but that isn't what matters. The story of the Odyssey is what it's doing to you right now while you're reading it. Odysseus isn't some guy who gets lost in the Mediterranean, he's you right now getting knocked off course by something you didn't see coming. The monsters in the Odyssey are not literal monsters, they are parts of yourself, they are things out in the world that you are fighting. The Sirens are the temptations you are facing in your life, the distractions, the things that are pulling you off the path that matters, that you're supposed to be on. The storms are setbacks. Ithaca is whatever you are trying to become, whatever destination you are trying to reach.
Seneca is saying that memorizing the poem and breaking it down into little pieces isn't the point. The point is, what does it teach you? How does it change you? How does it make you braver? How does it make you craftier? How does it make you more cunning? How does it get you to face what you have been avoiding? How does it make you more loyal? How does it make you more determined? How does it make you a better host and a better guest? How is it pushing you to complete your own Odyssey? That's the question Seneca says we should be asking about the Odyssey. Not what happened to Odysseus, but what is this story asking of me and am I answering? What is life asking of me and am I answering? He thinks that this is the story that's supposed to help us slay our own monsters, sail through our own storms, get back to our own Ithaca. That's what the Odyssey is all about. That's what people keep missing.