Preface.

A word about the genesis of "circumspect penelope regards ragged odysseus is, I think, in order. As an honors student at Howard University in the sixties, I studied the classics. Later on I re-read Lattimore's translation of Homer's two epics: The Iliad and The Odyssey.

In 1988 I returned to Iowa for a Writers' Fellowship. In a function held in Sambaugh Hall, the house of the Honors students, I got to talking to a bright Honors student by the name of Lori Brandt. I told her that many teachers of those classics miss Homer's main point. Whilst scholars seek the Golden Fleece, the then backward Trojans, trainers of horses, sought beauty and enlightenment--in short, civilization--their new generation leader-to-be, represented by Paris, went to Greece, and bodily carried away the Greeks' paragon of beauty, grace, and culture, Helen. On a symbolic level, the Trojans had sought, as early as then, to steal the fire of civilization from the Achaians, representing Western Europe. Had King Menelaus let Helen go, Eastern Europe would have been as well developed as Western Europe by now. So I promised Lori that I would develop that theme for a paper for her Honors magazine.

But when I started preparing the paper, I realized that there was an important sub-text to account for: the trials and tribulations of Penelope, Odysseus's wife. Married early, then left to tend little Telemachus, she, the wife of a soldier missing in action, was besieged by Athen's best suitors--the men who do not go to war but feast on heroes' wealth. The mold for telling this story grew whilst I was constructing the substance. Picture then the evening when Odysseus, his son Telemachus, and his shepherds have just killed all the suitors, including Antinoos, who was generous and would have been favored by Penelope. Imagine Odysseus that evening, tired from the carnage, sitting in the hall with his war gear and bloody hands. And also look at Penelope trying to reconcile herself to the inevitable: this stranger, whoever he is, who now has to be accepted as her Odysseus back from war. But she has a final test to put to the stranger, the test which will reveal to her if the man in front of her is an imposter or the real McCoy.

The whole piece is either an internal monologue, except for the small question-and-answer section, or a soliloquy, again with the short dialogue, in which I verbalize Penelope's silent thoughts. Now then, here we go, following the thread of Penelope's musings. You may call the piece "The Penelopey," if you'd like.

Taban Io Liyong, a native of the Southern Sudan, directs the Es'kia Mphahlele Centre for African Studies at the University of Venda in South Africa.