Homer
The Odyssey
Engraved after Gustave Doré
- 40 plates
- Gustave Doré
The book
Ten years getting home from a war that took ten years. Monsters, witches, a descent to the dead, a raft, and finally a house full of men eating a missing man's food, which he clears by killing all of them.
Why Gustave Doré
The half of Homer that is pure Doré: single sublime images with one figure against something impossible. Polyphemus, Scylla, the descent to Hades — these are structurally identical to his Dante plates and to the Rime.
Where the Iliad needed his crowds, the Odyssey needs his isolation, and he was better at isolation.
What to look for
The sea again, but lonelier than Moby-Dick's — one man on wreckage under a sky doing something enormous. And Hades, where he is on the ground he engraved best.
