Blood and Iron: Stories and Storytelling in Homer’s Odrssey by S. Douglas Olson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS S. DOUGLAS OLSON. Blood and Iron: Stories and Storytelling in Homer's Odrssey. Mnelnosyne Supplement 148. Leiden/ New York: Bril , 1995. Pp. x + 260. ISBN 0169-8958. This ambitious study deals with most major aspects of present-day criticism of the Odyssey. from narratology to the representation of time in the poem. book-divisions. formulas. theology. and questions of kingship in the Homeric poems. Amidst all these interests. its central claim is that the Odyssey. in accomplishing the return of Odysseus. lends "temporary coherence to a world which does not otherwise make sense" (x). This message is forcefully repeated at the end. in slightly messianic terms. and capitalizing on Odysseus' traditional new departure after his successful nostos. which is hinted at in various places in the text: "the father. king. and god was once among us and will come again; indeed. he has already returned very briefly as a guarantee of this.leaving us now to wait again" (223; cf. 203 "salvation myth"). One might wonder at first sight to what extent the creation of "temporary coherence" is specific for the Homeric Odyssey is not all successful storytelling. all great literature. a temporary forgetting of the present. and amental displacement to an order that does not otherwise obtain (cf. Hes. Th. 55. 102-3)? What saves the book from being vacuously true in this way. however. is its author's insistence on the relation between the numerous stories in the tale and the matrix story itself. Olson shows. for example. that Telemachus' and Eumaios' interest in storytelling mirrors that of the Odyssey as a whole. thus providing both a sense of direction to the main story and a justification for the represented narratives. Both characters need storytelling as an active engagement, to make sense of a world gone awry (e.g. 78. 120). But storytelling not only applies to the past; it also opens perspectives to the future. In line with current trends in Homeric criticism. Olson provides narrative explanations for what older Analysts condemned as ill-adjusted additions to the text. Many discrepancies can be shown. Olson argues. to be deliberate eHorts on the part of the narrator to mislead his audience and throw them oH balance in order to stimulate further interest in the tale (e.g. 142-148). Again. the rela- BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS tion with the inset stories is instructive. In an illuminating discussion (Ch. 2). Olson shows that the stories of Agamemnon serve the purpose of sensitizing the audience to plot sequences that are different from Odysseus' traditional home-coming (41 -42. "the poet uses the secondary narrative to remind them that they cannot control or predict what he will tell them next"). The stories of Agamemnon's unhappy nostos are thus allomorphs that reflect possibilities of the encompassing tale. sometimes even through the role of their very teller (as in the case of Helen. whose performance raises the question as to Penelope's possible rolds) to come l37]). The book starts (Ch. 1) with a detailed survey of the use of KAEoc in the Odyssey. Olson resists the "vertical" conception of KAEoc as "epic fame conferred by poetry" (see also Appendix A. 224-227). and focuses instead on the more mundane. "horizontal" meaning "oral report" or "local gossip." Olson rightly and usefully stresses the essential tendency of KAEoC to move in space through the activities of travelers and beggars (I 1). a process that may eventually culminate in song (14). though I am less convinced that "Achaian society" as such (e.g. 16) is a factor here. Rather than reflecting any historical reality. it would seem that this functioning of KAEoc pertains to a specifically Odyssean poetics. which links the truth of the epic tradition to the unreliability of travelers' tales, using the one to qualify the other. Even though it serves only a subsidiary function. the discussion of the representation of time in the poem (Ch. 5) is arguably the book's most important contribution. The author takes issue with Edouard Delebecque's well-known theory of temporal progression. according to which time moves forward inexorably. for all characters at the same pace. so that, for example. Telemachus...