The Son of Homer – Ezra Pound’s Odyssey Cover Image

The Son of Homer – Ezra Pound’s Odyssey
The Son of Homer – Ezra Pound’s Odyssey

Author(s): Gerson Schade
Subject(s): Applied Linguistics
Published by: Uniwersytet Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: multi-layered intertextuality; Alfred Tennyson; Andreas Divus Justinopolitanus; Palamedes.

Summary/Abstract: Ezra Pound was obsessed with Ulysses. He identified with him throughout his Cantos, a work Pound opensby stealthily reworking a passage from an obscure 16th-century Latin translation of Homer’s Odyssey. The sonof Homer Pound, Ezra led a Ulyssean life in various senses – leaving his home country only to return after hisadventures, simulating madness, telling lies. He shares the lying and the way of life with his contemporaryLawrence of Arabia. Both translated the Odyssey and both, like Ulysses, lost all their friends (or alienatednearly everyone). All three were much despised for their habits, Ulysses in general by the Greek classicaltragedians, Pound in particular by George Orwell, and Lawrence by practically everybody.

  • Issue Year: XXVII/2017
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 103-112
  • Page Count: 10
  • Language: English