ABSTRACT
The first and fundamental shift is the transition from the culture of the hero to the culture of humanity fully brought back to itself and to its responsibilities. Robert Wilson’s Odyssey is very far from both the image of Odysseus presented by Homer’s heroic poem and the world of Odysseus as revealed by clues embedded in the poem and assessed by scholars as historically reliable. Some parts of the narrative are narrated by Odysseus, when he is shipwrecked and welcomed as a guest to the palace of Alcinous in the land of the Phaeacians; others are narrated by the poet. The narrative thread of Telemachus visiting the Greek courts seeking news of his father, as well as his own identity, secondary to and paralleling the journeying of Odysseus, is barely mentioned, being reduced to the sequence of the young man’s departure.
