Knit Odyssey

In the pandemic fall of 2020 I embarked on an epic venture - knitting the entirety of Homer's Odyssey. But what does it mean to knit the Odyssey?

The Meter

Greek poetic rhythm, or meter, is made of pattern of long syllables (–) and short syllables (∪). The meter of the Odyssey, like all Greek and Latin epic poetry, is dactylic hexameter.

Each line consists of six feet, or metrical units. The first four feet can either be a dactyl (– ∪ ∪) or a spondee (– –). The fifth foot is most often a dactyl, and the sixth foot is always a spondee. Because two shorts are equivalent to one long, every line is the exact same length even as they differ, which makes it ideal for knitting!

Translating to Knit 

The two basic stitches of knitting are the knit stitch and the purl stitch, which take up equivalent space. Every short syllable is represented by a knit stitch, and every long syllable by two purl stitches. Because most feet are dactyls, this creates a pattern of k2 p2 rib, interrupted by purls where there are spondees. I didn't want my Odyssey to be a ridiculously long skinny scarf (it's over 12,000 lines!), so I have 15 lines of Odyssey per row of knitting.                                                                                    

(For the knitters in the audience, at the end of each line I knit a p2tg, yo on the right side to create the hole that divides lines. On the wrong side, I knit for longs and purl for shorts, and also go backwards in line numbers, starting 15 from where I left off on the right side.)

 

The dominant pattern of this project is translating the meter into a visual texture. But to have some extra fun with it, I also am using a different color for every book. I try to reflect the content of the book in the color chosen. Some big examples are that the Telemachus books use warmer colors, while all the Odysseus books in the middle are ocean shades. Check out that striking solid black for the journey to the underworld. I use variegated yarn because I appreciate how the changing colors interact with and obscure the metrical pattern, just as the word shapes do in the text itself. 

I have a lot of thoughts about the artistic and interpretive side of what it means to translate meter and poetry in this way, but those will wait until I have finished and can put together a more complete artist's statement. If you have any thoughts on the project, let me know in the comments!

Acknowledgements

This project would take a lot longer if it weren't for the fabulous work of the people over at https://hypotactic.com/. For most of this project I have used their scansion of the Odyssey as my knitting pattern. The scansion is accurate, and the website interface makes it incredibly easy to use as a pattern like I am.  

 

 

Progress images

Wednesday, September 30th, 2020: Book one is done! A royal array or purple and red to herald the arriving of Athena to Telemachus in the grisly hall of suitors

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2020: Seven books in and I can knit with it wrapped around me. I got a lot of knitting done during these beginning months because my classes were all online and I would knit through them.

Sunday, March 21st 2021: Beginning the descent into the underworld...work got a lot slower as I got back to in person classes, but Odysseus still forges on! Fagles matches 1 and 4 quite nicely.

Monday, June 22nd, 2021: The Odyssey is now quite big enough to keep my lap nice and cozy while I knit.

Sunday, September 26th, 2021: One year in and I have completed 13 books. In theory, this means I could finish in two years. In actuality, the vast majority of the knitting got done when I was in online classes and I expect it will be at least three years before I see the thing finished.

Thursday, October 7th, 2021: When I started I had a dream of making this project into something wearable so that I could go around wearing the Odyssey. It's really going to be too big and squishy to be anything but a blanket ultimately, but here it is at optimal cloak size in my dimly lit dorm apartment.

Thursday, July 28th, 2022: I spent a long time knitting very little (on the Odyssey, see my vase hats for what I was working on), and taking pictures of my progress even less. In this time I picked up the harp and lyre, applied and got accepted to graduate school, went to lyre school in Italy, and loads more things, so I think it's pretty excusable. Still, progress was made, and here the Odyssey is serving as a great blanket on an overnight Amtrak.

Monday, December 12th, 2022: Telemachus and Odysseus have reunited at last in a stripe of rich purple. Now on to the crazy complicated end books, looking ahead to tense moments with Penelope and slaughter in the halls. Still keeping me cozy in my new place!

Friday, March 17th 2023: Finished book 17 at last and got a nice way's in to book 18 when I very prudently stepped on my needle and snapped it. This was actually already the second set of needles for this project because my first set arrived with a small crack which eventually snapped a few books in way back near book 3 or something. Ah well, now to wait on set 3 to arrive!

Tuesday, March 28th, 2023: new needles in, yarn bought for all of the books except for 24, and I have finished book 18 and started 19. This thing is looking huge! I have no idea how I am going to block it in the end (knitting thing, don't worry about it non-knitters).