From Nolan’s Odyssey to Cavafy’s Ithaka

ΕΑΝ ΠΡΟΤΙΜΑΤΕ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΑ ΠΑΤΗΣΤΕ ΤΗ ΣΗΜΑΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΚΑΤΩ ΜΕΡΟΣ ΤΗΣ ΟΘΟΝΗΣ

How Nolan Brought Homer Back to the World—and Why Cavafy Still Explains the Journey Best

By Nick Stamatakis

Yes, I saw Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey about a month ago, and I have little to add to the countless critiques already published, many of them here on Helleniscope, except to say that the film is unquestionably a work of art and, as such, must be granted the artist’s prerogative to interpret Homer through his own imagination. Let’s not forget that this is not the first film titled “Odyssey” and that at least 25-30 modern cinematic works are based on Homer…  We Greeks may object to this or that choice—and understandably so, because over more than three thousand years we have formed powerful images of Odysseus in our collective consciousness—but no final or definitive visual version of the Odyssey can ever exist, because the archetype is simply too large.

Whatever one thinks of Nolan’s interpretation, his achievement in bringing Homer back into popular consciousness is undeniable: in Britain, print sales of the Odyssey jumped 1,400% during the four weeks ending July 25 compared with the same period last year, while in the United States sales across all editions have risen 76% so far this year. A poem composed over 3,000 years ago is once again being bought, read and discussed by hundreds of thousands of people who might otherwise never have opened Homer.

For Greeks, however, Odysseus has never been simply a literary character, because he inhabits a deep chamber of our historical imagination: the restless traveler, the survivor, the man of metis—intelligence, cunning and adaptability—who crosses seas, encounters strangers, suffers catastrophe after catastrophe and nevertheless continues toward home. Especially among Greeks of the Diaspora, it is difficult not to recognize something of ourselves in him, because generation after generation has left home, crossed oceans, learned foreign languages, built new lives among unfamiliar people and yet carried somewhere within an Ithaka.

A few years ago, my sister was visiting Frankfurt with family and friends when she called me in astonishment because, while crossing the famous Eiserner Steg bridge, she suddenly saw an ancient Greek line written across it:

ΠΛΕΩΝ ΕΠΙ ΟΙΝΟΠΑ ΠΟΝΤΟΝ ΕΠ’ ΑΛΛΟΘΡΟΟΥΣ ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟΥΣ

“Sailing upon the wine-dark sea toward people of another tongue.”

What an extraordinary choice, and what a magnificent description of one essential dimension of the Greek experience: sailing across the sea toward people whose language we do not understand, not merely confronting the unknown but meeting it, trading with it, learning from it, and inevitably returning transformed by the encounter.

PHOTO: Homer’s line from the Odyssey on the Eiserner Steg (Iron Bridge) in Frankfurt.

For us Greeks, the sea was never simply a boundary; it was also a road, leading outward toward danger and uncertainty but also toward commerce, knowledge, friendship, discovery, and cultural exchange. This is why the Odyssey has never grown old, because although its geography belongs to the ancient Mediterranean, its psychology belongs to every human being who has ever left the familiar behind in search of something beyond the horizon.

And this, for me, is ultimately more important than whether Nolan got a costume, a ship, an island, or even a particular Homeric episode exactly right, because the enduring meaning of the Odyssey is not contained in archaeological details but in the Journey itself.

Odysseus believes that his purpose is to reach Ithaka, yet everything that makes him Odysseus happens before he gets there, through the storms, shipwrecks, temptations, monsters, losses, humiliations, loves and encounters that continually strip away the man who left Troy and slowly create the man who finally returns home. We too begin our lives believing that some destination—success, wealth, recognition, love, homeland, family, achievement—will finally complete us, only to discover, if we are fortunate enough to acquire some wisdom along the way, that the obstacles we thought were preventing us from reaching our destination were often the very experiences creating us.

The journey was never the interruption; the journey was the meaning.

And this is precisely where Homer, across almost three thousand years, passes the torch to Constantine P. Cavafy, because if Homer gave us the greatest journey in Greek literature, Cavafy gave us perhaps its most profound modern interpretation. And here is the poem’s most powerful reading by Sean Connery:

In Ithaka, Cavafy takes Homer’s immense external voyage and turns it inward: the Cyclopes, Laistrygonians and angry Poseidon become not merely creatures waiting beyond the horizon but fears and demons we may carry within ourselves, while Ithaka itself ceases to be merely an island in the Ionian Sea and becomes whatever distant dream persuades each of us to leave the safety of the harbor.

Cavafy does not tell us that Ithaka is unimportant; on the contrary, we need Ithaka because without a destination we might never begin the voyage, but he warns us against becoming so obsessed with arriving that we fail to understand that our life is happening along the way, in the strange ports, the people of another tongue, the knowledge acquired, the beauty discovered, the loves experienced, the disasters survived and the unfamiliar harbors into which we sail.

These are not distractions from Ithaka.

They are Ithaka’s gifts.

Perhaps, then, the deepest connection between Homer’s Odyssey, Nolan’s Odyssey and Cavafy’s Ithaka is that each, in a different language and a different age, asks us to consider the same eternal truth: What if Ithaka exists mainly so that we will undertake the journey?

So, before reading Cavafy’s immortal poem, listen to Sean Connery give these words the gravity they deserve, and as you listen, think not only of Homer’s Odysseus or Nolan’s ships and monsters but of your own harbors, your own storms, the strangers of “another tongue” whom you met along the way, and the distant Ithaka that gave you perhaps the greatest gift any destination can give:

a reason to begin the journey.

PS.  I would like to kindly request that some supposedly “educated” and even more supposedly “patriotic” Greek-Americans stop ridiculing themselves by constantly using “Hellenes” instead of “Greek”.  Both terms are fine.  And both names are 100% Greek. The word “Greek” comes from the Latin Graecus, which ultimately traces back to the Ancient Greek Graikoi (Γρεκοί). So please stop with the “Hellenes” – do not force me to call your names.

PS2. Yes, we Greeks have been sailing the globe for thousands of years to meet, befriend, or trade with people whose tongues we do not understand… We were not sailing to exploit them, turn them into slaves, and take their properties… We sailed to share our culture and learn from theirs. And this essence of our identity will forever distinguish us from the various criminals of Western Judeo-Christian Colonialism and Imperialism, who, still today, hopefully for the last time, are performing their crimes against humanity. Yes, those who two years ago were kicked out of Niger for stealing the country’s wealth for a mere 5% “fee”!… Those same people that one American president, JFK, did everything he could to “disempower”… But they managed to assassinate him first…

PS3.  In my many business trips in remote Caribbean islands, I encountered many times a fellow Greek, a true descendant of Odysseus living among the “natives”, married to a local woman, his Circe… Yes, as a matter of principle, we never created “ghettos” as others did – and this will forever distinguish our civilization and put it many steps ahead… One of the many ways we fertilized humanity with our truly ecumenical culture…

(You can read Cavafy’s poem in English, and the original Greek is at the bottom of the text. It is required reading in all English Literature classes globally).

September 8, 2026, www.helleniscope.com, n.stamatakis@aol.com

DISCLAIMER: The views and statements expressed in this article constitute constitutionally protected opinions of this author.

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