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“What I Thought I Would Do, and What I Actually Do”

Rotary Club of Fayetteville, Arkansas USA

March 1, 2012.

Daniel B. Levine (Professor of Classical Studies, University of Arkansas)

In college at the University of Minnesota, when I had to choose a major and considered Classics, I wondered what it would be like to learn Latin and Greek well. I had images in my head of sitting in a remote tower, poring over old manuscripts and keeping this arcane learning alive. If we don’t keep producing people who can read these ancient languages, I reasoned, in a generation or two there will not be anyone around who can read them in the original. I had a mission. I studied hard and made two trips to Greece.

When I was a graduate student I spent even more time in the library, and, in the words of Dan Ferritor, I read and read and read -- until my lips got so tired I couldn’t read any more. When at the age of 26 I got an invitation to come to Fayetteville to interview for a job at the University of Arkansas, I had to look on a map to see where this state was. Now, I could read the Odyssey in the original Greek, plus I had lived in five different states, but still I had no idea where Arkansas was. Now, of course, after 32 years, I consider it the absolute best place to live.

I had no idea what life as a professor would be like. I thought I would be teaching Greek and Latin and talking about great works of literature and art with students. When I got ambitious, I would dream of publishing and traveling over the world to lecture.

I had no idea about the other ways I would use my skills, like translating phrases into Greek -- for students’ tattoos, translating phrases into Latin and Greek for wedding ring inscriptions, checking the Latin for inscriptions on the new Pi Beta Phi gate on the north side of campus, helping a factory in Oklahoma determine whether the Latin notes one employee passed to another were examples of sexual harassment, helping an elderly man in Harrison, Arkansas to find distant Greek relatives on the island of Samos whom he had never met. I had no idea that I would teach a two week summer course to gifted Arkansas high school students in Newton County, or to grade-school students at Leverett School, or that I would visit high schools in Fort Smith, Little Rock, Rogers and Fayetteville to share another perspective on the ancient Greeks and Romans with them. I had no idea that I would take students to Greece and share its treasures with young minds. I had no idea that I would write forty letters of recommendation a year.

Well, I have managed to publish results of my research on the Odyssey and other ancient literary works, but also on Modern works, like those of Rita Mae Brown and Michael Chabon, and V. T. Hamlin’s comic strip Alley Ooop. The great thing about classics is that it is a field that exists in a continuous continuum. It always lives on -- in other forms -- and is part of our civilization’s collective memory. It’s all around us all the time.

I have learned that the Classics speak to everyone. In the early 1980’s a woman came up to me after class with tears in her eyes and said, “My husband has been Missing in Action in Vietnam for years. I know just how Penelope must have felt.”

When I was a student at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, I found a baby by the side of a mountain road, with a note inside her blanket: ΣΑΣ ΠΑΡΑΚΑΛΩ. ΕΙΝΑΙ ΑΒΑΠΤΙΣΤΟ ΚΑΙ ΑΠΟ ΠΟΛΥ ΦΤΩΧΙΑ ΟΙΚΟΓΕΝΕΙΑ. ΑΓΑΠΗΣΤΕ ΤΟ (Please. It is unbaptized and from a very poor family. Love it). It gives me chills still today. How could I not think of Moses, Oedipus, Romulus and Remus?

In 1943, at the height of World War II, the Frenchman Jean Anouilh wrote and produced a version of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone, whose female hero stands up in courageous opposition to an unreasonable dictator -- with tragic results. It spoke to a generation of opponents of the Nazis -- and still speaks to us all today. Antigone represented the French Resistance and King Creon represented the Vichy Government.

Gonda Van Steen has just written a book called Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands, which recounts productions of ancient Greek plays by political prisoners -- many of them Communists incarcerated during the Greek Civil War of 1945-1949 who saw their own aspirations and tragic fates embodied in these ancient works.

Last night I went to a play at the University of Arkansas, written by a Japanese woman, on the contemporary “relevant” subject of war refugees, immigration and modern America. The work, Anon(ymous), based on Homer’s Odyssey, played to a full house of mostly undergraduates, who gave it a standing ovation. Why the Odyssey? Well, like most “classical” works, it deals with timeless subjects: family separation, death, missing, war, vengeance, and overcoming adversity through persistence, hard work and cleverness — not to mention the cool monsters.

I just read and wrote a long review article on Edith Hall’s recent book The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer’s Odyssey, which shows the many and astounding ways that this one epic has shaped subsequent cultural creations all over the world: in film, poetry, fiction, opera, movies, television and visual arts. How many of us realize that the films O Brother Where Art Thou, Ulee’s Gold, Cold Mountain, and Sommersby -- all set in the American South -- are all based on Homer’s Odyssey?

This morning I picked up the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and found on the editorial page an essay entitled “What Would Pericles Do?” -- a piece comparing approaches to the fiscal problems of golden-age Athens to some proposed solutions to Greece’s current economic woes.

After 9/11 and the debates on whether to rebuild the World Trade center Towers or leave their ruins as mute testimony to the terror, many recalled that the ancient Greeks had the same debate after the Persian destruction of the sanctuaries in Athens and many other Greek cities.

Aristophanes’ Lysistrata is a 2400-year-old Greek comedy about women taking over the Acropolis in Athens in order to control the treasury and thereby end the Peloponnesian War and “save Greece.” Many modern folks who see in this play an “anti-war” message, also produce this play -- in spite of the fact that its original author and audience were not pacifists. Still, it speaks to us in the 21^st century, because we see it through the lens of our own experiences. Last fall, for example, a New York theater company produced LYSISTRATA: OCCUPY WALL STREET, with this description:

“Fed up with all of the political fighting in Washington D.C. an American woman named Lysistrata comes up with a plan to get everyone’s attention and help bring Republicans, Democrats, and the nation together. Please join us for this modern adaptation of Aristophanes’ classic Greek comedy as the women of America join Lysistrata’s cause, Occupy Wall Street and eventually find a way to save America.”

Even American prisons have invited classicists to talk about ancient parallels to modern challenges. The Medea Project, for example, takes it name from the mythological Medea who committed terrible crimes in reaction to her abandonment by her husband Jason. In the San Francisco County Jail, Rhodessa Jones conducted classes for female inmates including a performance piece inspired by the Medea, "Big Butt Girls, Hard Headed Women," based on the lives of the incarcerated women she encountered. During the work's creation, Jones and jail officials were made aware of issues that were specific to female inmates, such as guilt, depression, and self-loathing, which arose in response to feelings of failure in the face of community. These issues directly contribute to recidivism among female offenders. Based on this observation, Jones founded The Medea Project: Theater for Incarcerated Women to explore whether such an arts-based approach could help reduce the numbers of women returning to jail.

The Classics also relate to War Veterans. And this is my main point here today. Psychiatrist Jonathan Shay wrote two books Achilles in Vietnam and Odysseus in America, which resulted from his treatment of Vietnam War veterans with PTSD and his reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey. His basic point is that the same kinds of combat trauma related in these epics still affect soldiers today in relation to soldiers’ interactions with their families and their officers, and in the realms of trust, loyalty and betrayal. Also relevant is the fact that the same issues that returning veterans still face are evident in the homecoming stories of ancient Greek warriors.

Shay’s observations have met with active responses. Take for example the recent project named after a mythical abandoned Greek soldier: Theater of War, The Philoctetes Project, meant to speak to American war veterans. Peter Meineck writes,

“Theater of War: The Philoctetes Project is the brainchild of Brian Doerries, a young theater director who uses [the ancient Greek tragedies] Ajax and Philoctetes to create what he calls “town meetings” aimed at veterans, current service personnel, their families, and support groups… [One such meeting] … was a directed reading of several key scenes from both plays followed by incisive and astute comments from a panel of military officers, veterans, representatives from veteran’s organizations, and classicists. But the most striking aspect of the event occurred at the end, as one by one the audience members stood up and started to relate their own experiences of war to the plays they had just witnessed. In attendance were veterans from the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Gulf War, Vietnam, and Korea. There was a large group from a shelter for homeless veterans in Long Island City, family members of veterans, and even a group of young ROTC students. As spectators they were both active and vocal, as the events portrayed in the plays on stage resonated with their own experiences. In the discussion that followed many were shocked that drama, any drama, let alone ancient Greek drama, could so aptly reflect their own thoughts and feelings. Their responses were confessional, poignant, and moving. One got the distinct impression that much of what was being shared had never been uttered before and certainly not in public.”

And here in Fayetteville, we are planning our own “Ancient Greeks/Modern Lives” project right now. This summer the Fayetteville Public Library will sponsor several events based on the Odyssey and on Greek tragedies that deal with combat veterans’ experiences and homecoming stories as part of a nationwide program in which 100 libraries in the United States will present local scholars who will lecture, lead reading groups and facilitate discussion of ancient Greek works that are directly relevant to modern American experiences. Films and Staged Readings will present other artistic expressions of the series theme.

The tale of Odysseus’ return to Ithaca after the Trojan War has much to tell us about the perennial problems that returning warriors face both en route and at home. The tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were written and performed by combat veterans— for audiences consisting mostly of combat veterans. Such documents deserve our attention always, and especially this year as we welcome American soldiers who are returning from faraway wars.

It is the aim of this program, in the words of Peter Meineck, "to bring the veteran community and public together to contribute to something truly important and profoundly moving -- a way to understand and appreciate our veterans, to learn from their experiences in the context of these classical Greek works, and to come together as an active audience, reading, watching, listening, and discussing as a shared experience."

This spring, on May 16, I will introduce the Library’s Returning Warrior program with a lecture “Combat Veterans’ Experiences in Greek Poetry,” and during the summer lead bi-weekly reading group discussions of The Odyssey and several Greek tragedies, including Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Ajax, Women of Trachis and Philoctetes, and Euripides’ Trojan Women and Heracles Gone Mad. Later in July, I will introduce the film “Ulee’s Gold” and lead a panel discussion with veterans and other community members. Finally, professional actors from the Aquila Theatre Company (New York City) will present staged readings from Greek epic and tragedy that deal with issues facing war veterans, followed by a moderated discussion.

[See: http://www.faylib.org/content/combat-veterans-experience-ancient-greek-lit-lecture]

The Classics are all around us. They teach us. They engage us. They help give us perspective.

Thanks for listening.