Homer's Sun: The Iliad

Continuing the lecture series on literature

Many of us have a volume by Homer, Dante, or Tolstoy on our shelf that we keep promising to read “someday.” We often treat the classics as a compulsory test of education that we will have to pass sooner or later. And that’s exactly why we put great books off for years. But classical literature is not a checklist of mandatory works and not a reason to feel guilty about unread books.

July 1 at the Auditorium

We invite you to the second lecture in the “Summer Reading” series, led by Sonya Minina — a philologist (Saint Petersburg State University), specialist in classical languages and literature, and a Latin teacher. https://t.me/notabene_bookclub

Homer's Sun. “The Iliad”.

Sing, O goddess, the anger... The anger that lasted ten days, and the song we have been rereading for almost three thousand years.

A song of rage, colossal strength, human weakness, true valor, and the readiness to fulfill one’s fate before the eyes of gods devoid of pity.

We will talk about the most significant work of European classicism — Homer’s "Iliad".

Is eternal fame worth a life, and beauty — of a ruined city? What is more important: to be a magnanimous person or a powerful king? What does it mean to be valiant and beautiful? And why know your fate? How can a poem in which rivers of blood are shed be filled with the force of life and light? We will discuss this and much more.

We will examine the intricate structural order of the "Iliad," where at the very center of descriptions of bloody conflict stands an astonishing praise of peaceful life, and where the opening songs mirror the closing ones.

We will talk about the role of the catalogue of countless ships, the system of epithets, and the lulling rhythm of dactylic hexameter.

We will also turn to the reception of the "Iliad" in later ages and try to understand why the questions Homer raises continue to move us today.

The lecture will conclude with an open discussion.

• 🗓 July 1 (Wednesday) 7:00 PM
• 🎫 Price: 1500 RSD
• 📍 Vojvode Dobrnjca 48, Belgrade