Stephen Powelson

Stephen Powelson (full name Stephen Van Nest Powelson , born November 11, 1917 in Syracuse , New York , † December 26, 1994 in Copenhagen ) was an American accountant and reciter of the Iliad . From the 1980s he recited sections of the epic (in ancient Greek) from memory, of which he had almost completely mastered over 15,000 verses towards the end of his life.

Education and career path

Stephen Powelson attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts , where he had his first contact with the Homeric epics. He graduated from high school as the best in his class and received the Jacob Cooper National Greek Prize in 1934 , which enabled him to study at Harvard University . During his undergraduate studies, Powelson also took a course on Greek drama, which was his last contact with ancient literature for decades. After completing his bachelor's degree (A. B.), Powelson completed a master's degree at New York University , which he completed in 1940 with a Master of Business Administration (M. B. A.).

After graduating, Powelson worked as an accountant in various consulting firms, first from 1940 to 1947 at Haskins & Sells in New York and Philadelphia , then for one year (1947–1948) in the Stuttgart branch of CARE International (as auditor and head of the purchasing department) . From 1948 to 1956 he was an accountant (controller) at the European branch of the United States Agency for International Development , from 1956 to 1958 Deputy Controller at the Panama Canal Company . In 1959 he moved to the American Standard Companies as head of international accounting . From 1971 to 1973 he was Vice President of the European branch of Alden self Transit Systems Corporation, from 1974 to 1977 auditor of the Questor Corporation in Paris . When the company closed its Paris office, Powelson retired, which he spent in Les Loges-en-Josas near Versailles . From 1980 to 1990 he was Finance Director at the Al TassHeel Litijara Company.

Iliad recitations

In retirement, Powelson resumed studying the Iliad as a hobby after not reading it for over 40 years. His former Greek teacher in Andover, Allen Rogers Benner , had given his students memorization sections of the Iliad, 21 verses in a week. Powelson completed this task in just an hour.

His decision to memorize the entire Iliad, with its more than 15,000 verses, came with early retirement in 1977. Powelson has since spent an hour a day memorizing parts of the Iliad. In doing so, he resorted to various methods of memory training : He read the Iliad chants aloud from the Loeb Classical Library and recorded them on audio cassettes . Then he repeated the reading several times, reading shorter sections until he could repeat them with closed eyes, and continued until he could recite the whole chant from memory. To consolidate it, he listened to his sound recordings and looked for associations for certain sections (for example similar English words, his own memories or objects around him).

From the 1980s, Powelson performed individual Iliad chants publicly, especially in colleges and high schools. In 1983 he recited Canto 9 (the embassy of Ulysses , Phoinix and Aias to Achilles ) at the Classics Department of New York University; at that time he knew 15 of the 24 Iliad chants (about 10,000 verses) by heart. In 1994 Powelson undertook extensive lecture tours through the USA and Europe. As a rule, he asked his hosts to choose a particular chant the evening before the recitation. At that time he mastered almost all chants (14,800 verses) and also performed any part on demand at his lecture evenings. Before he died in Copenhagen at the age of 77, he had just mastered the 23rd Canto of the Iliad, the last one still missing.

literature

Press reports

• Jeff Donn: Epic Feat: Retiree Memorizes Nearly All of Homer's 'Iliad' . In: Associated Press . April 12, 1994 ( AP News Archive )
  • Repeated in: Old Wildcats . April 13, 1994 ( E-Text )
  • Repeated in: The Daily Iowan . April 18, 1994, p. 2a ( digitized version )
• Retire regales audience with vivid memory . In: Daily Kent Stater . Volume 75, No. 47, April 14, 1994 ( digitized version )
• Yesteryears . Volume 3, No. 23, May 10, 1994 ( PDF ; with photo)
• Never-Evers: A Feeling of Significance . In: Santa Cruz Sentinel . July 30, 1994, p. 47 ( newspapers.com )

Web links

• Entry on Stephen Powelson in the Database of Classical Scholars, written by Ward W. Briggs (English)