The Subtlety of Homer

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The Subtlety of Homer presents a collection of readings of passages from the Iliad and the Odyssey. The thrust of the readings is that these poems were thought out more carefully than even their most ardent admirers have realized. One aspect is that certain apparent flaws, including poorly motivated actions of Achilles in the Iliad and of Odysseus and Penelope in the Odyssey, disappear when one grasps the subtlety of Homeric plot development. The other aspect is that some of the inconsistencies in the poems appear to have been intentionally created by the poet. This seemingly inexplicable behavior on the part of the poet can be understood if the Iliad and the Odyssey are specimens of what G. I. Gurdjieff called objective art, and it is argued that Gurdjieff himself thought that they are.