Carmen retired at 62 years old. She is a professor of Physiology and ceased to teach at the Faculty of Medicine of the Autonomous University of Madrid and Cádiz after four decades. Five years ago he enrolled in Classical Philology. Went from the living organs to the dead languages. After learning classical Greek found in the original text of the Odyssey parts that had disappeared or had been given attention in the translations. “What has come are the adventures of Odysseus and however, women have a very important role that has been lost in the way. Called attention because the society mycenaean was very misogynistic and this is a book that today we would call feminist,” says Carmen Estrada, that with this premise forced his son to illustrate the journey of all those characters.
And to the son, the cartoonist Miguel Brieva (Seville, 45 years) had no other choice but to stop for a few months the lashes, the anti-capitalists of their bullets, and devote himself to the mythology. “A mother you can’t say no,” he says ironically. “We have not made an Odyssey to Hollywood. The rest happens in the culture mycenaean, pre-classical, and we have observed that aesthetic, in which everything seems more amateurish, like grass. We have done archaeology to be very faithful to that reality,” says Brieva.
The cyclops Polyphemus and Odysseus as the hand of Miguel Brieva.
In The Odyssey: Illustrated (Malpaso) there are no winks to the present, and the characters don’t even speak. The beings of Brieva are convicted of a verb, but here we do not say or mu. “I don’t consider myself a good illustrator, I have other urgent matters that count. Although the image I work a lot, for me it is subordinate to the message. But here it is upside down and the message is the book. That has been my odyssey. It is something similar to what was done by Robert Crumb with The Genesis,” says the cartoonist.
that, To me, humanity is the humility with which Odysseus faces hardship
Miguel Brieva, illustrator
despite that, he sees in Odysseus a reflection of the migrants, who travel and play life for years, “they live about incredible and they have the absence of rancor”. “That, to me, is the humanity, the humility with which Odysseus faces hardship. And that he was protected by some gods,” he adds.
Brieva coincides with his mother in that the story’s original shows how Odysseus is surrounded by women who excel in intelligence on the men. Athena, Circe, Calypso, Penelope, Euriclea, Nausica… “The guys are more than screwing up and angering the gods,” he says. For the authors of this epic poem illustrated by focusing on women, the work varies and the protagonist also. In their transit through multiple identities, it is women who help Odysseus to perform the mutations. “They have to carry their narrative. Then, who is the protagonist? They are essential,” says Estrada.
They have to carry the narrative of Odysseus. Then, who is the protagonist? They are essential
Carmen Estrada, philologist
Until Polyphemus is another. It was not just that giant, monstrous and merciless. The interpreter of the classic work sees it and describes it as a very methodical and orderly, with their routines of giant, which dealt with a lot of affection for his sheep. It is one more proof of the original aspects that had been lost over the centuries, and the reinterpretations. That is why Estrada is convinced of the findings of the traits that had gone unnoticed until now, as the reading of gender that has made the classic among the classics. “It is a book that has infinite readings, because it is a reflection of those who read it. Now we can do this reading, because we women have been overlooked for many years. Margaret Atwood wrote an epic of Penelope in the first person. In fact, why do we think that has not been written by a woman the Odyssey? I see it as a possibility,” responds Estrada.
Encounter between Athena and Odysseus, in the mountains of greece.
