BIBLIOMANCY: THE ODYSSEY

While poking about in A Good Book of Sumner, Washington, I once again stumbled upon The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel by Nikos Kazantzakis (and translated into English by Kimon Friar). It was lying in wait for me, as it had been on my prior two visits. I cracked open its cover and randomly flipped to a couple of pages.

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This bit of bibliomancy told me that I needed to purchase this book right now.

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"Divination" number one:

Hunger and Eros prowled through mountain passes then
and softly slunk in hamlets, knocked on every door,
till boys and girls met slyly in delirious night
to tell each other lovers' tales, and shadows rolled
entangled on the ground, by lickerish night devoured.

—page 123

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"Divination" number two:

Ah, heavy-scented flowers I've smelled, brine of the sea,
earth's breathing after rain, the sour scent of sweat
from the deep armpits of friends who row in sun together,
and the sweet milky fragrance of a woman's breasts!
Neither the ears nor the eyes, not even the full lips,
can pierce the heart of mystery with such nakedness.
Smell, you're a thick memory—when you wake, dear God, 
you plunge down silently and plunder the head's castle.

—page 499

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With such lines in hand (and now in my head) how could I not free this book from its shelf?

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I flipped to the front of the book and perused the introduction by translator Kimon Friar, which provided the final "divination."

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"Divination" number three:

The critics now found themselves confronted by a huge tome of 835 pages (subsidized by a an American patron, Miss Joel MacLeod), 10 by 15 inches in size, handsomely printed in a special type, limited to an edition of 300 copies, written in 24 books (one for each letter of the Greek alphabet), and in 33,333 lines of an extremely unfamiliar seventeen-syllable unrhymed iambic measure of eight beats.

—page ix

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Sold!

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I went to the counter, paid my eight dollars for this 1958 Simon and Schuster English translation hardcover of an original 1938 Greek printing, and headed home with my new treasure.