The two basic stitches of knitting are the knit stitch and the purl stitch, which take up equivalent space. Every short syllable is represented by a knit stitch, and every long syllable by two purl stitches. Because most feet are dactyls, this creates a pattern of k2 p2 rib, interrupted by purls where there are spondees. I didn't want my Odyssey to be a ridiculously long skinny scarf (it's over 12,000 lines!), so I have 15 lines of Odyssey per row of knitting.
Knit Odyssey
In the pandemic fall of 2020 I embarked on an epic venture - knitting the entirety of Homer's Odyssey. But what does it mean to knit the Odyssey?
The Meter
Greek poetic rhythm, or meter, is made of pattern of long syllables (-) and short syllables (u). The meter of the Odyssey, like all Greek and Latin epic poetry, is dactylic hexameter.
Each line consists of six feet, or metrical units. The first four feet can either be a dactyl (- u u) or a spondee (- -). The fifth foot is most often a dactyl, and the sixth foot is always a spondee. Because two shorts are equivalent to one long, every line is the exact same length even as they differ, which makes it ideal for knitting!
Translating to knit
(For the knitters in the audience, at the end of each line I knit a p2tg, yo on the right side to create the hole that divides lines. On the wrong side, I knit for longs and purl for shorts, and also go backwards in line numbers, starting 15 from where I left off on the right side.)
The dominant pattern of this project is translating the meter into a visual texture. But to have some extra fun with it, I also am using a different color for every book. I try to reflect the content of the book in the color chosen. Some big examples are that the Telemachus books use warmer colors, while all the Odysseus books in the middle are ocean shades. Check out that striking solid black for the journey to the underworld. I use variegated yarn because I appreciate how the changing colors interact with and obscure the metrical pattern, just as the word shapes do in the text itself.
I have a lot of thoughts about the artistic and interpretive side of what it means to translate meter and poetry in this way, but those will wait until I have finished and can put together a more complete artist's statement.