Homer's Papa

The “dumb English” controversy about Nolan’s Odyssey—people calling Odysseus “dad” instead of father in the movie—reminded me of the only passage in Homer’s Odyssey where dad, or rather papa, is used:

ἡ δὲ μάλʼ ἄγχι στᾶσα φίλον πατέρα προσέειπε·
πάππα φίλʼ, οὐκ ἂν δή μοι ἐφοπλίσσειας ἀπήνην...
(Od. 6.56–7)

That's the teenaged princess Nausikaa talking to her father king Alkinoos, kittenish, since she's asking a favor that involves some shame (she's a maiden thinking of getting married). Homer (or the Muse) calls the king “dear (beloved) father”—then in the very next line the girl says “dear dad (papa)”—it's a rare tender moment in the poem (“papa” knows what she really wants), so there's also the opportunity to notice the difference of tone between narration & character.

You can read the story easily online, look at the Greek, too, on my friend John Boyer’s website (all free, of course).

Papa is undignified, of course—Telemachos shouldn't be talking that way. A lot of his drama is, he never knew his father, he finds it almost impossible to believe Odysseus's still alive, so he can't get himself to do anything about a situation that increasingly humiliates him (& endangers his life). He shouldn't be talking this way.

Papa—you find it in Aristophanes a few times, since that's comedy, low speech, but not in tragedies or odes. Herodotus, however, does use it once in a funny way: Zeus (the father) is worshiped by the Skythians as Papa (iv.59). They're childish people (if savage). He calls the name appropriate: These people don't have any need for Zeus to have a character & stories, like you get in the Greek poets—they get straight to the point, it's just papa.

“Dumb English” makes it impossible to notice things, your experience is flattened, you can't have access to Homer anymore, who can describe all these different things for you. You end up, in short, like the Skythian savages.