Odysseus in Kabul: the death of epic?

Those of you who have read the Odyssey no doubt remember Odysseus' journey into Hades. Among his many meetings there is one with Tiresias, the ancient prophet, who tells Odysseus he has another journey to undertake after he arrives in Ithaka:

[G]o overland on foot, and take an oar,
until one day you come to where men have lived
with meat unsalted, never known the sea,
nor seen seagoing ships, with crimson bows
and oars that fledge light hulls for dipping flight.
The spot will soon be plain to you, and I
can tell you how: some passerby will say,
"What winnowing fan is that upon your shoulder?"
Halt, and implant your smooth oar in the turf
and make fair sacrifice to Lord Poseidon . . .
(trans. Robert Fitzgerald)

Of the Odyssey's many wonders, this one, a description not of gods or monsters but of a very human place, has been the one that most give me pause: what would such a place look like? How long would it take to get to such a place? This place, wherever it might be, seemed more fantastic, all because, paradoxically, it was a place of human culture that I had great difficulty imagining.

I was reminded instantly of Odysseus' journey-to-come when I heard a story this morning on NPR about an enterprising Afghan giving boat rides to people, many of whom had never even seen a boat in person before, much less ridden in one. "Odysseus has finally arrived!" I thought . . . though, things being what they are in Kabul these days, I wasn't certain how smoothly that sacrifice to Poseidon would go.

What happens in such moments? This is analogous to, say, the experience of a Kansas girl eating Indian food for the first time in her life, as happened when Mrs. Meridian and I visited an Indian restaurant here in town a couple of weeks ago. Surely the Afghans recognize the boat's ancientness, that it after all has an existence within their linguistic memory if not in their personal recollection.

The image you see at the beginning of this post might provide a clue. It doesn't depict Odysseus' journey inland but, rather, his arrival on Calypso's island; the caption on the original document reads, "Odysseus finds an oar on the island of Calypso and remembers that he is a human being." The Afghans clearly know they are human beings; I think it fair to say, though, that the boat's presence in their midst expands their knowledge of what it means to be human. That is, the boat compels them to imagine other places, other peoples, where boats are not novelties but a matter of course.

Which leads me to this abstract of an essay (MUSE subscription, which I don't have, required) in which the writer argues that Odysseus' inland journey foretells the end of the (Homeric) epic tradition. Perhaps that is because Odysseus' erecting an altar to a sea god in a place that doesn't even use salt on its food is analogous to a leaving behind of the world as known by the Greeks; that is, though epic's vision is cosmic, that vision is filtered through the lens of a culture--and even in the world of the Odyssey, we learn through Nestor that an older, still-more-ancient world is passing from the Greeks' collective memory. Similarly, Afghani culture will, sooner or later, no longer have a memory of a time when boats were unknown to them, except, perhaps, among a Nestor or two, whose long, long memory might inspire a Homer in their midst.

Perhaps it is the (ever-)impending death of culture that leads to the birth of epic?

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Epic, the Odyssey, Homer, Odysseus, Afghanistan