Friday, June 1, 2012

My hero / Homer by Madeline Miller

Homer
Illustration by Triunfo Arciniegas

My hero: Homer by Madeline Miller


'From the very first sentence - "Sing, O goddess, the destructive rage of Achilles" - I fell completely in love'

 Madeline Miller
Friday 1 June 2012 22.55 BST

 I
first encountered Homer when I was five years old and my mother would read the Iliad and the Greek myths to me as bedtime stories. From the very first sentence – "Sing, O goddess, the destructive rage of Achilles …" – I fell completely in love. I was enthralled by the larger-than-life gods, the epic adventures and most of all by the noble and deeply flawed heroes.

When I got to high school, I was fortunate enough to have a Latin teacher who offered to teach me ancient Greek. Being able to read Homer's words in the original was a life-changing experience. I had always loved his stories and characters, but in the original I was struck by the beauty of his language. It was so poetic and powerful and expansive. No matter how many times I studied it, I was always surprised and delighted by something new.


I continued to study classics through college, and came to realise that I wanted to participate in the stories not just as a reader but as a teller. I returned to the same characters that had always fascinated me – Achilles and his beloved, Patroclus. And once again Homer inspired and surprised me. His rich and fully imagined world generously gave me the scope for my own.

We still don't know if Homer was one person or many people, whether he was truly the blind bard of legend or someone more prosaic. What we do know is that when these poems were written they were intended not just for an elite audience, but for everyone. Homer's eye is all-encompassing; every facet of human life is welcome. His insight into human nature, into such universal experiences as love, loss and war, remain relevant today. Whoever created these gorgeous poems, I owe them a huge debt of gratitude. Almost 3,000 years later they are as fresh as they ever were.
•
 The Song of Achilles (Bloomsbury), Madeline Miller's first novel, has been awarded the 2012 Orange prize.




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



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