Afleveringen
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Odyssey 5.424-93 (end)
When Odysseus escapes the surge and clings to the rugged cliff faceâat Athenaâs prompt!âbut is then ripped off and tossed back by the undertow, Homer sings:
As when from an octopus, dragged out from her bedroom,
The pebbles cling on thickly upon her suckers,
So from the man upon the rocks, off his strong hands
The skin was stripped away âŠ
The first strange thing is the octopus itself. There are of course very many strange life forms in the world, many of whom we cannot imagine being. It must be of some comfort to certain vegetarians that they cannot imagine the consciousness, and breath, of plants. But there is no lack of imagination in children when it comes to the octopus. I think most everyone imagines at some point what it would be like to have the eight arms (or legs). All the same, the octopus must seem like a freak to mammals generally, as well as fish, not to mention their fellow mollusks lugging shells. She combines a tactile relatableness with an otherworldly otherness. An octopus in a simile must therefore be somewhat surreal, for she is about as incomparable as things get.
But Odysseus isnât the octopus! Read it again. This is what Iâm calling an Odyssean simile, which turns things upside down and unsettles as much as it clarifies. If the Odysseyâs Homer is after a peculiar kind of impression or reaction, it is not with the broad brush and canvas of an Iliadic simile, but a surgeonâs knife for some reason fitted with barbs. The pebbles stick to the octopusâs suckers, Odysseusâ skin sticks to the cliff face. The man is the rock, who has his pebbles stripped like so many bits of skin! What on earth (or above it) is the octopus? Once again the simile is slightly dizzying.
Just a few lines earlier, we hear,
There heâd have been stripped of his skin, bones broken to pieces,
If she had not put in his mindâs vessel, the goddess, Owl-Eyes Athena:
âRush with both arms and grab at the rock!â
Well, Odysseusâ bones appear to remain intact, but his skin, not so much. The formula, âthen such and such would have happened [beyond fate] unless the god had not suggested to the hero âŠâ, a suspenseful trope in the Iliad, seems here to be somewhat brutally mocked. The goddessâ advice is precisely what leads to one of the narratorâs feared outcomes. We are directly challenged to question the power of Athenaâs protectionâMother Mary, you done me in!âas surely as the octopus may begin to question the safety of her bedroom when the fisherman finds it. Ah, the fisherman. Is he a part of the simileâperhaps the undertow that pulls Odysseus off the rock? In which case Odysseus is the octopus. Or rather, is he unmentioned because he is the unmentionable, who haunts the whole figure like a deathâs head wielding a hunting spear?
Similes depend on at least one part of the comparison, tenor or vehicle, being familiar. Often it is the vehicle that is familiar, so that it can illuminate a narrative happening that may be hard to convey vividly to an audience. Such a happening is Odysseus being scraped off the rocks by the receding wave. Hence we may assume an audience would at least be familiar with the vehicle: the difficulties of hunting octopus, of finding the nest in the first place, what the whole thing looks like when you drag the intelligent animal with knowing eyes out of its secret refuge, her boudoir.
The deceptive bedchamber and the doubtful protection of Athena, both energising motifs of the story, seem to set us up for the remarkable scene which closes Book 5.
He walked into the wood, the one he found nearest the water
In a place visible right round: there were twin bushes he came under,
Planted from the same root: one of wild stock, one of olive.
These neither the strength of the winds got through, when they blew wet,
Nor did ever the blazing sun strike them with its rays,
Nor did the thunderstorm use to penetrate right the way through; for tight indeed
To one another did they grow, intertwined in a give-and-take: under these, Odysseus
Entered.
Many have celebrated this passage for its poetry, and claim it for their favourite bit of the Odyssey. âTwin bushes ⊠planted from the same rootâ: the Greek ΔÌÏÎ±ÎŒÎżÎčÎČαΎίÏ, âintertwined in a give-and-takeâ, filling up the backwards turn in the hexameter dance between caesura and diaeresisâits accent stressing the weakest part of the dactylic footâmimes in the mouth the interlacing of the branches from different directions. The olive is Athenaâs gift to the Greeks. Ancient Americans credit mysterious redheads from across the sea with the knowledge of agriculture which has given us the potato, the non-poisonous tomato, and the chilli pepper, without whose varieties the world would be absent much of its taste. Similarly, Greek speakers credit the cultivation of the olive to Athena; it seems our ancestors did not feel they could have come up with these things on their own. The fruitful olive in particular is usually grown by graft; a hardy if unfruitful wild root stock provides the security for an abundant scion, cut and pasted to itself. These twinned trees on the edge of nowhere show the hand of human effort, guided by Athena, and it is likely that Odysseus recognises this.
In many ways this is a recognition scene, though there is no other human being present. After all his struggles, even injury from following that godâs advice, Odysseus seems reassured by what he sees in the tableau. Indeed, he rejoices. My question is, what is it that makes him rejoice? In the first instance, the referent seems to be the fall of leaves with which he proceeds to make both bed and blanket. That is referent enough for a man who is naked, freezing, and half dead, a pile of leaves which would do for two or three men caught out in winter.
But it seems the whole vision is inspiring. The twinned trees could be thought of as a symbol of marriage; a couple united in oneness of mind, brains intertwined as though sharing neurons, is a theme Odysseus will later extol to Nausicaa. (Between Odysseus and Penelope, which one is the graft?) Greek allows for a âdualâ subject, distinct from singular and plural. They handily exclude what is without, and protect what is within their sphere of domicile, while still drawing nourishment on the sly from the radiant sun and the penetrating rain. The mere presence of the cultivated olive (áŒÎ»Î±ÎŻÎ·) is a sign of humanity somewhere hereabouts, just as for some, pyramidal stones and cyclopean walls are signs that there must have been giants.
And, of course, every room is a womb. This crib of cultivated nature at the edge of the woods is indeed to be the scene of the barely living Odysseusâ rebirth. The closing image surely takes the breath away, whether it is your first encounter or your latest:
As when a fellow hides a firebrand in the black ash,
At the farthest farm, who has no other neighbours by,
Saving the seed of fire, that he need not get a light from who knows whereâ
So Odysseus hid himself in leaves âŠ
âSaving the seed of fireâ (ÏÏÎÏΌα ÏÏ ÏÏÏ)ââthereâs a double meaning in that!â I was wrong to say there is no other human being present, at least in the vision that the poetry energises. Thereâs the fellow (or two!) who might have shared his leaf-bed. But the predicament of this lonely farmer, managing on the edge of human habitation to preserve a seed for the morrowâs work, so as to avoid the trouble of hunting down a light, must be an image full of sympathy for both Odysseus and his author. Politicians annoy with their âkeep hope aliveâ. In saving the seed of human rekindling, Homer gives us the real thing. In using such an image, the author seems to commit to his hero; there is a promise of something salvific of humanity, it would seem, in the idea of Odysseus. And Athena herself comes in at the end, unannounced but not unexpected, almost to give a benedictionâwith the impression given somehow that she had been there the whole time. Athena belongs in scenes where mere humans come to recognise something.
She sheds sleep upon his eyes, but the last line-and-a-halfâ
⊠that he might the soonest rest
From his hard labour and exhaustion, once sheâd covered those dear eyelids round.
âmake it seem like she is treating a corpse newly dead. The closing of the eyelids, by someone else, leaves an impression that canât be erased once it occurs to one.
Yes there is an undertow, even in this scene of hope and refuge. Recall Odysseusâ deliberation at the river bank: either he would risk dying of exposure in the morning chill by the river, or risk becoming prey for some wild animal if he retired to the nearby woods. And what does Homer describe when Odysseus chooses (b)? The image of the twinned trees with an empty pile of leaves within seems very much to suggest that it has functioned as a predatorâs lair, and likely does now. The passage describing the boarâs lair, which sprung the fearsome creature who scarred Odysseus for life, is very like this one, and though its description comes many books in the future, there is no question but that it recalls this hallowed moment under the trees at the end of Book 5. This poet has a way, an art, of hinting all around at imminent death. Itâs even there in Athenaâs cosmic spear left behind in Odysseusâ spear rack. It is the unmentioned unmentionable. A friend describes the affect such a lurking unnoticed presence creates as the âuncannyâ, which I recognise through a feeling in the pit of my stomach, familiar since childhood, that infuses passage after passage when I read the Odyssey all grown up.
Home? Itâs an octopusâs bedroom. Hope? Itâs pebbles in your suckers. Yet Odysseus rejoices.
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Odyssey 5.327-423
We know this experience when dealing with the Department of Motor Vehicles, or on the phone with the cable company, of finding a sympathetic agent on the other end: âFinally, a human voice!â This saying does not only occur to us when one is dealing with machines, or âmachine learningâ; in dealing with any bureaucracy, there is the simple relief of stress when someone talks back. You are a hapless petitioner; they are a chaotically interconnected hierarchyâa contradiction in termsâwho hold all the levers, look up all the by-laws, and make all the decisions, with authority, in your case. This relief in âthe thick of itâ is what comes to mind as a goddess, Ino, comes to our heroâs aid when his situation is dire. This episode is not the first; earlier, Eidothea, Proteusâ daughter, took pity on Menelaus, comes to him when he is alone without his men, and betrays her father by instructing the man how to overpower a shapeshifter. (Hold him tight, even when he turns to water!) It is all too clear that these mid-tier ladies are doing what they can inside the system: âif it was up to me âŠâ
Now here is Odysseus, in straits and on deathâs precipice, a tumbleweed on the wind, on a self-made raft, in dark and surging seas. Ino comes to him, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmony. Or else sheâs just a petrel who lands on his raft. But either way, she âwas mortal, once upon a time, speaking human language.â Odysseus has been completely alone for eighteen days. Finally, a human voice! Someone who can understand and sympathise! Ino was once a mortal, who suffered at the hands of the gods; among other things she was a nurse for her nephew Dionysus, a transformative figure in the development of religion, a son of her sister Semele by Zeus (the Holy Spirit). One does not know if it is a thing to note or ignore about Homer, that Dionysus only receives scant or tangential mention in his poems. But it seems each of the divinities in Homer knows their place. Even as far from Olympus as Calypsoâs Isle, when they are all alone and intimate, Hermes asserts his office as Zeusâs message man, and bullies Calypso when she dares to complain. She rescued Odysseus all by herself, when no one else (not even Athena) seemed to care. But no, sheâd better not hook up with a human guy.
Ino is also Leucothea, the White Goddess, a saviour of mariners. I suspect that modern mariners still believe in Her, though they are no longer so foolish as to admit it. The White Goddess embodies a highly local and, we might say, superstitious experience of the divine. Homer merely mentions the name, we donât exactly know what allusions he understands to be entangled in its aura. But he is explicit that, âofficiallyâ as it were, she has ânow in the salt-water depths ⊠got her portion of honour from the gods âŠâ In other words, sheâs been assigned a job in the basement. It seems consonant with this comic world that the gods are in amongst it, plugged into an hierarchy where some of them work the kitchen. It helps make plausible their occasional sympathy, when there is an actual sense in Homer that weâre all in this together, witches, warlocks, angels and saints. Even Zeus often comes across not so much as an omnipotent, as a lame duck still henpecked in office. In the Odyssey, it seems we are always looking forward to retirement.
It helps to know someone inside the system, even if they work in a basement cubicle. It is extraordinary to me that Homer understands this intensely modern and bureaucratic mode of connection, where it becomes salient that one is talking in sympathy to someone who was once a mortal human being, before they became a corporate official. She speaks our language. This poetâs society has vanished, but it must have known intimately the experience one has when assigned a job (a âportionâ) in a bureaucracy, so much so that it defines the experience of what came to be called âfateâ, but is also projected onto the imagined life-experience of the gods. We know this condition (and this comedy) from the necessary bureaucracies of modern societies and infrastuctures. How does Homer know this?
A teacher once told me that the most relatable thing Odysseus ever did was ignore Inoâs advice and the gift of her immortal veil, and stick to his raft, until his rational empirical judgement forced the issue. Cling to the protection you yourself have made, the evidence of your own eyes about its sturdiness, and your sighting of the promised land; trust your eyes and hands, before some divine trickery! And trust in Calypsoâs clothes to keep you warm and free from harm. But her magic island is now far distant. At the crunch he bestrides a plank like a racehorseâwhat an image!âand strips himself naked, except for Inoâs veil tied beneath his breastbone.
Inoâs veil is áŒÎŒÎČÏÎżÏÎżÎœ, âimmortalâ. One wonders if it may work like ambrosial food, and make him immortal too. If he keeps it he could walk around like Bilbo with his ring, with this veil tied round his sternum, hidden under his shirt. But without a comment about his deliberations or hints at thoughts about the subject, when the time comes, he follows Inoâs instructions and throws the powerful object backwards into the brine. Odysseus always chooses mortality, it seems.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Odyssey 5.228-326
Is it a man on a raft, or the man on a raft; or is it this man, long-suffering Odysseus, adrift on a raft on the wilful, monstrous, god-driven ocean, or Manâmankindâon a raft of his own artifice riding upon the turbulence and violence of nature? The Odyssey may intend all four, but I donât think the last one is quite right, as temptingly romantic and bleak as it is. I canât help but feel that there is something masculine about Homerâs image. The opening word of the poem, áŒÎœÎŽÏα, is decidedly male. But all the same, that picture, of Odysseus braving the stormy sea on a raft, is iconic in the worldâs imagination, like the astronautsâ photo of earthrise over the moon, or the crucifix. Penelope at her loom weaving and unpicking a web to keep her options open, by contrast, seems decidedly feminine, but equally tempting to see as an image of Manâs situation. The same word, ጱÏÏÏÏ, a thing stood upright, is translated either mast or loom in context.
Much of the present passage is descriptive narrative, Homer going solo rather than filling his mask with speeches or dialogue. He positively immerses in the building of the raft; one feels the connections between segments of his crafted hexameters like the morticing of Odysseusâ craft. I wrote the following in my first book:
⊠the works of art represented within the Odyssey itself bespeak an aesthetic of construction, wholeness, unity, form, and function. Three wondrous artefacts buttress the story: Penelopeâs web, Odysseusâ raft, and the coupleâs marriage bed of denatured olive. All three depend upon a frame: all three must therefore be conceived at some level as wholes before they are executed. All three involve transformations of various kindsâfrom vertical to horizontal (web to shroud, trees to planks, trunk to bed); from raw material to finished, humanly purposive artefact. All three are unadorned: they are each perfect marriages of form and function.
By contrast again, the art works represented in the Iliad point to a different aesthetic. Two exemplars come to mind. Helenâs web (3.125â8) is a Bayeux Tapestry; episodes of the struggle between the Achaeans and the Trojans on her account appear to be embroidered (áŒÎŒÏÎŹÏÏΔÎčÎœ) upon a web already woven. In the case of the great shield as well, the artwork is an adornment, superadded upon a highly functional implement. One is made to feel this rather vividly when the shield is penetrated by Aeneasâ spear. A nightmare for the art crowd. In the distinction between art as a perfect marriage of form and purpose, and art as an adornment superadded, gracing the necessary and the useful, and perhaps also transforming them, I believe we have as real a distinction as can be made between the aesthetic sensibilities of the poet of the Odyssey and the poet of the Iliad. Achillesâ lyre is extravagantly silver-bridged; Demodocusâ lyre is merelyâand resonantlyâhollow.
Homerâs evocation of the storm is also vocal miming, of a bravura kind. One thinks of King Learâs storm. Much energy is often spent on visual and sonic effects in the staging of that play; but just as in Homer, the storm comes to torrential life in the consonants, vowels, and rhythms of the poetâs words. The performerâs breath is the breath of the four winds.
The consummation of the vision, to my mind, comes from the godâs view. The gods are Homerâs genius and his arsenal. Poseidon is returning from his festival in the land of the Aethiopians, and spots the little man on the limitless sea. Boy is he pissed! Mostly, it seems, at the other gods going behind his back. But one cannot but feel the visceral venal energy of the jealous sibling, stumbling on his useless brotherâs turreted sandcastle, and kicking it to oblivion. From the distance the godâs-eye-view gives us, Odysseusâ vessel of tall treesâ timber proudly jointed, becomes a speck, a tumbleweed upon the immense briny swell. He himself becomes a no-man. Calypsoâs pines become toothpicks, Odysseusâ daysâ long labour and shipwrightâs engineering, so much broken Legoâą and wasted hexameter verses.
As flies to wanton boys are we to thâ gods;
They kill us for their sport.
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Odyssey 5.116-227
Odysseus does not explain himself. He just says it. When Calypso asks him the obvious thingâhow can he choose an ageing Penelope and his own mortality over herselfâand himself not ageing? With his only job, protecting her isolated house? The man acknowledges the facts of the case, and then just states the facts of his case: âBut even so, I wish and I long, through all the days, / To get myself home and see my day of restoration.â Athena had been moved to real and felt poetry, outside her own experience, in Book 1: Odysseus, she said, âeager to make out just the hearth-smoke leaping up / From his mother land, longs to die a death.â I think precisely in not trying to explain or otherwise describe this longing, Odysseus renders it most purely and unfiltered for the rest of us, without psychoanalysis or the special pleading of a moral lesson.
Why does one long to be home? It almost feels a tautological question. What is âhomeâ? That is a word which cannot be translated back into the Greek, and yet it dominates the way we experience the pull of the Odyssey in English. The Greek word in its place is ÎżáŒ¶ÎșÎżÏ, more âhouseâ or âhouseholdâ than home. The word âhomeâ, of such peculiar power in English, arises in translation mostly from the notion of ÎœÏÏÏÎżÏ, âreturnâ or ârestorationâ, as being implicit in the latter idea. Is there something to be made of the âseeingâ, in the longing to see the day of oneâs return? We ourselves are certainly drawn to the spectacle when hostages return, or lost siblings are reunited. In Proteusâ story, Agamemnon kissed his native earth in passion, upon his doomed return. There is a concentrated joy in such moments, which overflows even upon its disinterested witnesses. Less interesting are the moments that follow, the being home and doing the dishes.
I think Yeats has perhaps done Homer one better, in capturing this inexplicable longing, although for most of his auditors, as with Homerâs, the images do not belong to oneâs own surroundings or experience. To be sure, the Irish poet says he will arise and go, as though away from home. But what he discovers at the lake seems to be a universal human apprehension, that in fact we all are hostages, displaced, with our every step on the pavement, from âthe deep heartâs coreâ:
The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnightâs all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnetâs wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heartâs core.
Mind you, what is not at all in Yeatsâs vision is the coupling that seems to define Odysseusâ longing. Yeats will âlive aloneâ. In a sense Odysseus has already found his Innisfree on Calypsoâs isle; perhaps heâd have stayed there if heâd had a copy of Yeats to enchant him. But he wants to return to Penelope, whoever she is nowadays, and he cannot explain this to his jealous interlocutor. âFor she is mortal, but you âŠâ All the same, his brief and simple expression of longing seems to have the effect of seducing Calypso. His predicament, from the moment she found him half dead, bestriding a shipâs keel, has made her want to rescue and protect him. Her very name, Calypso, suggests hiding or concealing; Homerâs Greek for âveilâ derives from the same root. Her love, perhaps, is driven precisely by his loneliness and longing. And couple they do, goddess and man, as soon as he expresses it. Homer had earlier described their sexual encounters as âhe who does not want, alongside she who wantsâ (ÏαÏâ ÎżÏ ÌÎș ΔÌΞÎλÏÎœ ΔÌΞΔλοÏÏηÎč). I rendered âa man unwilling next a woman all too.â But at the end of this passage, they do really seem to come together, without any qualification, in her hollowed caveâs deep core. Would we describe Odysseus as âunfaithfulâ?
The conjunction of God and man was a subject Michelangelo attempted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Homerâs version is Odyssey 5.
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Odyssey 5.1-115
I suppose the second council of the gods, echoing the opening one in Book 1, is a bit of a concession from Homer. Now weâre getting back to the main plot. Even Zeus expresses his exasperation at Athenaâs posing the question of Odysseus again, and he seems to allude to the fact that theyâd already decided a plan of action. Remember how hush hush and strategic that meeting had been, taking advantage of the absence of Poseidon. Evidently heâs still gone. But in this way Homer rather forces the question: what has the Telemachy, the story of Telemachusâ journey and the stories told by Nestor and Menelaus and Helen along the way, served the tale he himself means to tell? I for one find immense richness in the encounters we have witnessed, and I cannot imagine being without them. I am still thinking about Proteus counting his seals. But what do you think? We havenât even heard from Odysseus yet, the man in question from line 1. But we have heard about him, broad strokes and little hints. Does the Odyssey need the Telemachy (Books 1-4)?
The same phrase and prosodic figure, ÎœáżŠÎœ αᜠÏαáżÎŽâ áŒÎłÎ±ÏηÏ᜞Μ, with three straight circumflexes, occurs twice in Penelopeâs speeches at the end of Book 4, and then again immediately at the beginning of Book 5, this time in the mouth of Athena at the council of the gods (5.18). In such a context it is impossible not to hear Athenaâs use as a quotation and an evocation, of Penelopeâs recent and peculiar prosodic usage. Athena also is speaking of Telemachus, but makes no further allusion to Penelope. All the same her evocation is unmistakable, not only in her same words but their distinctive prosodic music. It is Penelopeâs emotive motif surfacing in Athenaâs voice.
Surely the echoing of the consecutive circumflected contonations, the prosodic inflection we observe and register here, reflects a real connection by design between the characters of Penelope and Athena, and indeed the Homeric performer himself. Breath and harmony unite these characters with a tactile immediacy that seems only possible at the musical level of the representation of the psyche. One cannot see bottom for the significance of this signature echoing for oneâs assessment of the composer and the composition, and the kind of mimesis they are trying to achieve. The three straight circumflexes take you there, immediately, in the way a distinctive line of melody invokes every time in history that it has ever been sounded or sung. Such unities of representation seem only to be possible through music, and it is essential that Homerâs composition be recognised at last for its musical art and intention.
One could wish for a true Homeric voice, rather than mine, for this passage. Might as well listen to my Greek all the same. The descriptive poetry around Calypsoâs cave means to take you there, to hear her singing, to breathe the aromas. Homer has not attempted anything like that in the preceding books. Perhaps as Odysseus finally comes on stage, some effort is needed to transport us and convince us. The world of Telemachus, by contrast, has been altogether too realistic, uncannily familiar, a transactional world that needs no special effects to ring true to our modern, post- (or inter-) catastrophic experience.
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Odyssey 4.742-847
Homer compares Penelopeâs state of mind, before she falls asleep, to that of a male lion encircled craftily by huntsmen; her thoughts start, it would seem, like the lionâs feints at the menâs shifting perimeter. The comparison of Penelopeâs mind to the lionâs is not the last cross-dressed simile in the Odyssey. We shall note them! Do such similes bear with them a claim or a thesis? That the natures and experiences of the sexes can be compared in such a way as to bring insight and truth? Strange, then, that the famous similes of the Iliad do not explore this transgressive technique. Such cross-comparisons are Odyssean territory.
To ease her mind Athena sends Penelope a phantom in the shape of her sister Iphthime, long since married and moved far away. We are not troubled by the impossibility of ghostly emissaries who can slip through door latches, be conscious and engage in meaningful conversation, and still look like the human beings theyâre supposed to be. Art makes âAIâ look like a joke. Athena does such things, as Iphthime says, âbecause she can!â We indulge this storyteller the power of his wand.
But her reassuring apparition rather makes me focus on what is truly impossible: that Penelope can somehow turn to her own sister in her grief and anxiety. Women, at least of a certain class it seems, do not move, except when they are transported to their wedding and the household they will join and preside over. That is, such women are born, move once forever away, and then become fixed local features of the earth. Helen, by contrast, is the woman who moves, and in so doing becomes the cause of war, separation, chaos, and bereavement. Penelope is only the first of the high-born women in the Odyssey who stays put, and when she appears, she descends and stands by a pillar, like an immovable axis. Calypso the nymph, Odysseusâ concealer, is the daughter of Atlas himself, the Titan who holds the very pillars that keep apart the earth and the heaven. Such pillars, of course, connect the two of them as well.
Once again I am confronted by the predicament of women. I do not suggest that Homer has an agenda other than being a telling observer in his way of telling the tale. But it does seem extraordinarily poignant that so intimate a companionship as that between childhood sisters, something I have had the joy to observe in my mother and daughters, is a companionship routinely sacrificed without acknowledgment in Homerâs society, except perhaps by Homer. Loss and separation are clearly not uniquely feminine experiences, but the appearance of her sister must take Penelope back to the time when they both were unmarried, and âbestiesâ, as they say; everything on Penelopeâs mind now causing her unbearable pain, both her husband and the son they produced, can perhaps still seem to lie in the future, while she is in her sisterâs company. This is a way in which the appearance of Iphthime can be construed to be a Freudian wish-fulfilment by way of the gates of dream. The relief that Iphthime brings her, I would suggest, is not only by her presence, or the opportunity it gives Penelope to vent her frustrationsâroundly taken, replete with a repeat of her anguished, circumflected, tonal motifâbut also the fulfilled wish of the unthinkable thing, that she is virgin again with neither husband to mourn nor foolish son to fret over.
And that is not such an outlandish state of mind for her to be in. Nurse Eurycleia tells her to bathe and freshen up, and Penelope obeys. Eurycleia says, wishfully, âsomewhere there will still be one who can keep / The house of the lofty roof, and in the distance the fatting farms.â It is not altogether clear who this mysterious saviour will be. Thereâs plenty of suitors! A principal motive of Telemachusâ secrecy about his voyage was supposed to be to prevent Penelope from weeping, and thereby marring her beauty. It would seem that both these members of the household see Penelopeâs thirty-something comeliness as a bit of an asset in their predicamentâwhich needs to be preserved. Penelope herself asks her sister about Odysseusâ situation, alive or dead. Of course the ghost (the storyteller) has some fun at our expense, keeping us in suspense. No doubt Penelope needs to know, for her psychic health. But she also needs to know, as a pragmatic fact. There really are suitors for her, control over whom is crucial for the well-being of her house; and therefore whom she needs to keep aroused in their pursuit, whenever she appears to them. Bathing is not optional. Penelope needs to know Odysseusâ fate, so she can see what her options really are. May the best man win, sister.
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Odyssey 4.625-741
Noemonâs charming cameo in Odyssey 4, when he walks in among the suitors who are throwing the discus and hurling javelins, was my first clue that it was okay to laugh at what was being said and what was going on. The notion that this poem of Homerâs is an âepicâ can create obstacles to registering a number of modes that seem very dear to this storyteller, from irony to wistfulness to downright satire. To be sure, the hexameterâs rhythms, inflections, and ethos are a constant and omnipresent enchantment, which do indeed create a modus or state of mind which deserves a name; and âepicâ will do. The Iliad everywhere demonstrates the power of this rhythmic consciousness in depicting war and its wounds, physical or otherwise, achieving a measure of distance from its protagonists and their expressed experience which can only be called sublime. But the Iliad also reminds us in the Catalogue of Ships that this rhythm most originally was the vehicle and setting for memorial lists, like genealogies, danced out in a space that conjured the names of the past to the present. In other words, the epic rhythm was something that proved adaptable to singing such a song as the Iliad; it was not necessarily born for such tragic sublimity. In light of this, I would suggest that comedy also both represents and induces a distinctly felt state of mind, one which profoundly affects oneâs registration of words, people, and events. One can laugh at certain things in comedy, for example, which it would be impossible, or insufferable, to laugh at in tragic circumstances. One fellowâs trip-up is anotherâs calamity. The only argument against the idea that the epic rhythm cannot be adapted to comedy, is perhaps the fact that the Odyssey does not generally register in this way, as a comedyâwhether in the ancient world or the modern. All the same, one does not want to be one of those people who are not in on the joke; thatâs a very awkward place to be. My own experience teaches me to try to help people get in on it, even if theyâre classical scholars, rather than snub them because they donât âget itâ, as one is often tempted to do; because for me the Odyssey came extraordinarily to life when I realised I was sitting at a comedy, rather than an âepicâ. It is very important to know, in ways that are hard to defineâbefore one sits down in oneâs seatâthat one has come to see a comedy, and not a tragedy or a horror show. Are the suitors comic villains, or truly evil ones? Would their deaths count in the same way, one way or the other?
When I began this substack I would post Samuel Butlerâs translation of the Odyssey with my Greek recitations; it is readily available in the public domain. He rendered Homer into English proseâand so do Iâbut that both is and is not the reason for his translationâs greatness. On the one hand, prose does rather break the spell of epic rhythm and music. That can seem a deficit; in my case at least I have kept to Homerâs lines and as much as possible his word order, so you get his lines treated as semantically timed units, if you will, albeit not rhythmic ones. But what Butler captures also is the prosaic quality of what is being said: and this is a revelation. Butler opened my eyes to the fact that comedy was happening, all around. But translation is not decoding. Other prose translations do not achieve what Butlerâs does, for all that they also sidestep the hexameter rhythm and ambience. Most feel they must strike a reverential, King James posture if theyâre going to sound epic in prose. The comic modus, however, requires a peculiar sympathy between poet and audience, and poet and translator. Butler translating the Odyssey is someone who seems like heâs speaking to us from the other side, where Homer is, distilling his authorâs verses and versified speeches back into their original, deadpan, Victorian prose.
That it is Butlerâs sympathy for Homerâs own comic disposition, in the texture and subtext of the Odysseyârather than his skill at decoding the wordsâwhich leads to his translationâs insight, is evidenced by Butlerâs translation of the Iliad. Clearly Butlerâs philological acumen is everywhere the same. But his translation of the Iliad has never seemed anything special to me. There is not the same sympathetic resonance with the ethos of that work.
Noemon is a comic superstar. He comes out of nowhere, asking for his boat back, the one he had lent to Athena in disguise as Telemachus. Noemon (âMinderâ) has been having mules bred across the water, and he wants to fetch one and break him in. So he sidles up to to the mean suitor Antinous (âCounter-Mindâ) and asks after his ship. And so Telemachusâ game is up. But the real nod and wink here is Noemonâs amazement at having seen Mentor locally yesterday morning; because heâd already gone on board ship with Telemachus, as the captain! That, of course, had been Athena playing Mentor. The joke is one for the solo performer to ham up, because itâs he who has been playing all these people, including Athena becoming Mentor. Mentor in particular, I would suggest, is the performerâs special stand-in to break the fourth wall with the audience. You see, Mentor, who will keep turning up, including in the last line of the whole poem, is [wink wink] the performerâs alter ego. Thatâs the joke when Noemon says the man he saw yesterday was either âMentor or a godâhe looked the very same man in every way.â Thatâs a limitation of a solo actor playing all the parts: heâs only got one face and body. Wink wink.
âIn sooth I know not why I am so sad.â Sadness is no stranger to comedy. The constant crying and wailing among the men already, to which Odysseus will make a plentiful contribution, and which Helen resorts to drugging them to curtail, certainly seems a bit funny. But in womenâs tears I think we find a refuge of seriousness which comedy protects. Penelope gets the best poetry, and that is the mark of a heroine. That she could not even sit on a chair, for all that the house had plenty round, and that she sat on her bedroomâs wooden threshold, is an image speaks a thousand words. She is guarded about Odysseus: no âpersonalâ feelings are disclosed, only the outward fact that he was a man and a husband with a tremendous reputation. But when it comes to her son, she bursts out in a way captured by Homerâs art, which has arranged her words to utter three straight circumflexes: ÎœÏ ÍÎœ αáœÍ ÏαÎčÍÎŽâ αÌγαÏηÏÎżÌÎœ αÌΜηÏΔίÏαΜÏÎż ΞÏΔλλαÎč / αÌÎșλÎα ΔÌÎș ÎŒÎ”ÎłÎŹÏÏÎœ, ÎżÏ ÌÎŽâ ÎżÌÏΌηΞÎÎœÏÎżÏ áŒÌÎșÎżÏ Ïα. âBut again now, my son, belovedâtheyâve snatched him up, the storm winds, / An unknown out of these rooms, and I didnât even hear of his setting off.â Rhythm usually arises from the alternation of stressed and unstressed beats. Here we have three straight emphases, three full Greek contonations, like Learâs four cries, âHowl, howl, howl, howl!â This utterance of three straight circumflexes turns out to be a motif of Penelopeâs. The genuineness of her feeling is scripted in the score, as is the bitterness at her apparent betrayal at the hands of her servants, who had kept her in the dark about Telemachusâ adventure.
The Odyssey captures an aching sadness, it seems to me. It is a kind of feeling wholly absent in tragedy, but which seems very much at home in Shakespeareâs comedy, a kind of undertow to the fun that is only hinted at in the notion of âmelancholyâ. Intimations of paradise are full of heartbreak. Am I wrong, or is it unhelpful somehow, to connect this sadness to comedy?
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Odyssey 4.464-624
In the Iliad, Homerâs narrator addresses Menelaus in the second personâhim and Patroclus. The hapless-seeming, cuckolded brother of the Warlord Agamemnon, without whom all the superheroes would not have had a cause to fight, may well have endeared himself to an audience (and the narrator) as someone perhaps relatable amongst the human titans. At any rate, Homer gives him a special sendoff.
When the time comes, says Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, heâs not going to die in Argos, but the deathless ones will escort him to the Elysian plain, where itâs always summer with a cool breeze. This may mean that he will never die; but it may also just mean that heâll be moved somewhere where the âway of life comes out easiest for mankind.â That is, life will become storm- and winter-free, but it is not clear if that is like moving to Florida, or whether he will actually become immortal as well. But either way, this final journey is due him because heâs got Helen, so that âyouâre Zeusâs son-in-law!â
Menelaus leads a charmed life, it seems. Of course having Helen to wife, has been, and continues to be, a mixed blessing. On his circuitous return with her, Menelaus failed entirely to save his brother from Aegisthusâ treachery, as Proteus again reminds him. Now he lives a life grieving comrades, lost or absent because of the ten-year combat to steal Helen back. Letâs hope she has a decent stash of nepenthe for their happy hours. Proteus also says that in the Elysian plain, there is a âblonde Rhadamanthys.â I do not know if this is an unusual way to describe the Cretan figure, who belongs, for Homer as well, to the realm of what we call âmythâ. Hesiod also uses âblondeâ of Rhadamanthys, but he may have been aping Homer. âBlondeâ, âtawnyâ (ΟαΜΞÏÏ) is, however, a frequent Homeric epithet for Menelaus. There also, perhaps, is a hint of a mixed blessing. The shared epithet may imply some sympathy among gingers; but it seems also to be suggested that in a Rhadamanthys, Menelaus will face his last judgement.
Has Menelaus done anything wrong? When he substitutes the gift of a mixing bowl, because Telemachus and rocky Ithaca have no use for horses, Menelaus says he got the piece from the Sidoniansâ king, when his house protected him on his return there. Apparently Sidon among the Phoenicians had been a kind of base for Menelausâ activities. From whom did he need protection? Other Phoenician operators, or the very Egyptians from whom he managed to source his wealth? âProtectedâ translates ÎŹÎŒÏΔÎșÎŹÎ»Ï ÏΔΜ, âenfoldedâ, âhid [him] on both [or all] sidesâ.
But there are hintsâperhaps comicâof Menelausâ own divinity, not only by marriage. Telemachus, at any rate, seems ready to worship him. When he refuses the gift of horses, he says heâll leave them here as an offering (áŒÎłÎ±Î»ÎŒÎ±) to Menelaus himself. Such a thing, an áŒÎłÎ±Î»ÎŒÎ±, might be dedicated at an altar. Telemachus goes on to describe Menelaus as lord of a wondrous plain, and gives us several lines of real botanical poetry describing its horse-friendly flora. Proteus tell Menelaus that heâs destined for the Elysian plain: Telemachus thinks heâs already there.
Once again Homer takes an interest to portray Telemachusâ wide-eyed inexperience, seemingly at the boyâs expense. He thinks the forecourt of Menelausâ palace must be the sort of fancy digs that Zeus himself has. Heâs never known life beyond Ithaca: he sees the plain of Argos and thinks Menelaus is the king of Elysium. There is a disconnect between the imagination of Telemachus and the suitorsâ generation, and the experience of Helen, Menelaus, Odysseus.
Most uncanny is a kind of future echo in Menelausâ wish for a beautiful cup he means to gift Telemachus: âIâll give you a gorgeous chalice, so you may pour it out to the gods ⊠in memory of me, every day that you do it.â âWhenever you do this, do it in memory of me.â The foreshadowing of the lines from the synoptic gospels, now at the heart of Catholic ritual, is difficult to make sense of. Was the covenant in wine already something for Homer to parody, long before it took its place in Christian sacrament? The pouring of wine is for memory and memorial, it would seem, at least when it is free of nepenthe.
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Odyssey 4.306-463
There is a great non sequitur in Telemachus plea to Menelaus. When he says âthatâs why Iâve come to these your knees,â we expect him to ask for military help to solve the problem of his overrun household. (Peisistratus had earlier made clear his companionâs need for real allies.) At Nestorâs Pylos, there was a whole army camped on the beach, ready to be doing! Yet we never hear this plea from Telemachus, for the aid of manpower, which is surely no more than what the suitors themselves are expecting from Telemachusâ adventure. It will later become clear how pitifully small are the human resources available on Ithaca itself for the scouring of the Shire and the salvation of Toad Hall. No, the plea is for Menelaus to âtell the tale of that manâs grievous obliteration.â He asks for the eyewitness account of his fatherâs death, whose premise in fact precludes any source of aid for Telemachusâ own predicament.
When he hears about Telemachusâ situation at home, Menelaus wishes that Odysseus would appear âin the shape he was once,â when back on the campaign he won a wrestling match in front of everybody. âIn that shape may Odysseus come have a chat with the suitors.â This wish says an awful lot about what is delusional in the human notion of return or restoration or rebirth (ÎœÏÏÏÎżÏ), to which Odysseus and his admirers aspire. If only Joe Biden would tackle Trump the way he did back in 2020. Time, to which Homer never seems to refer abstractly as we do, moves onward inexorably. Everyone and everything move on. Clytemnestra and Helen move on. Is Penelope alone in staying put? No amount of weaving and unweaving can mask the fact of aging, however. Aging is, after all, a motion as well, though not in place. For Odysseus to be of any use nowadays in purging the suitors from his domain, he would therefore have to be, by Menelausâ tacit admission, a shapeshifter.
In his answer to Telemachus, Menelaus gives us the original shapeshifter, the protean Proteus, the Old Man of the Seaâyet another Aegyptian wonder. Again, men of war are put into situations where their strength, prowess, and weaponry are all but useless. Yet Menelaus describes their ambush of Proteus as their âmost terrible ⊠ever.â After all those years of war and lying in wait, this one was the worst: âfor it stressed us dreadfully, / The most deadly smell from the seals fed in the brine.â These manly men, the bravest for âevery mission,â couldnât stomach a fishy odour.
The menâs strength and endurance is expressed by their ability, not to tackle or fight their victim, but to keep on squeezing him (ÏÎčÎζΔÎčÎœ) though he changes form and shape. The verb recalls Odysseus âsqueezingâ (ÏÎčÎζΔÎčÎœ) the throat of the warrior crouched inside the Trojan Horse, who wanted to answer Helenâs seductive call. I suppose it is the strength of a wrestler, to squeeze. But squeezing a throat, or clinging on, are not typical postures of masculine heroism. Although, it must be said, Homer achieves a picture here beyond the reach of Hollywood special effects, or even the logic of the imagination: Proteus turns into water, a liquid incompressible. And yet Menelaus and his men give him a good squeeze, and Proteus does not run through their fingers.
The shape shifter Proteus is a substance shifter; this seems to be one point of his becoming water. And yet he maintains his identity, as something separable from his matter and form. He embodies a germ, a protean germ, for later thinkersâ speculation into ontology and epistemology. Proteus himself performs one action: he counts (áŒÏÎčΞΌΔáżÎœ). Why does he do this? Does counting his seals reassure him in some way? Does counting oneâs things do this generally? I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I gotâBruce Springsteen.
But Proteus the substance shifter is himself tricked by a mere skin. Things must be sorted, as apples and oranges, before they can be counted. In effect, Proteus only counts appearancesâskinsânot substances. Have the men invalidated Proteusâ count, or earned their place in it? They have, after all, through the sacrifice of their briny surrogates, attained an audience with the god.
The four seals, for Menelaus and his three men, have been newly flayed. The otherwise charming Eidothea has apparently gone underwater and dispatched and skinned these poor creatures. I am reminded of our first encounter with the suitors, in Book I (108), where they are described as seated on âthe hides of cattle they themselves killed.â The skins of things are their appearances, but detached they are also substances which clothe and blanket us. We remember also the opening lines of the poem, where Odysseusâ comrades are said to have lost their return home for killing and eating the cattle of the sun. These solar cattle appear to be the days of a year. It does seem that for Homer, the fact of animal sacrifice is not somehow in the cultural background, a given or assumed thing, but rather a matter much within his consciousness and contemplation.
One presumes that Helius likes to count his cattle, and Proteus his seals, just as we count, name and variously number our days. Both would get extremely upset if any go missing. We ourselves quite absurdly believe in all kinds of dating schemes from various self-styled sciences, and would be very upset if this was not actually the 2,024th year CE, or if the world had never had a beginning (in a âbig bangâ!) or was only a few hundred years old. I shall have more to say about counting and storytelling, but does it not seem that Homer is entertaining an idea here about being counted as well as counting; that there is, behind and beneath all the feasting, and the stealing our days and our timeâand our skinsâa cosmic reckoner, and a cosmic reckoning?
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Odyssey 4.155-305
I have translated ΜηÏΔΜΞÎÏ âanti-depressantâ, which is a depressing thing to do. The mere sound of some of Homerâs words conjures sensations and intimations that make semantic translation seem like butchery. But I have gone for a modern medicinal property, rather than to âcease upon the midnight with no pain.â
Helen and Menelaus have lived life on a grand scale. Now they have âcome down to earth,â a multivalent sort of movement in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. They have settled into retirement in the gated suburbs. The inevitable talk of the past leads to uncontrollable tears of regret and longing. Helen has an Aegyptian remedy, her little helper, to fortify the wine. Nepenthe is strong stuff: youâd sit there unmoved even if your mother or father dropped dead in front of you, if your brother or your own child were slaughtered before your eyes. It would seemingly get you through torture. At least, while the drug lasted. But despite the scale of the events this fatefully married couple have set into motion, they are surely not the only couple, or the only people, living into later years haunted by their memories, losses, and regrets. Drug use, even to literal oblivion, pervades modern societies and households. Our euphemism of the âhappy hourâ bespeaks a general need to drown or distract from our predicament, at a certain time of day. Poor Peisistratus says he doesnât like to get all sad around dinner time. Perhaps he speaks for himself. Tell him he buys the next round.
Homer describes Helenâs Aegyptian drugs as ΌηÏÎčÏΔΜÏα, filled with mÄtis, âintelligenceâ, âkenningâ, âcunningâ, the quality for which Odysseus is famous. She chooses the perfect painkiller to heal her parlour evening. But the narrator also describes the Egyptian drugs (pharmaka) as being ÏÎżÎ»Î»áœ° ÎŒáœČÎœ áŒÏΞλᜰ ΌΔΌÎčÎłÎŒÎΜα ÏÎżÎ»Î»áœ° ÎŽáœČ Î»Ï ÎłÏÎŹ, âmany of quality when mixed, but many mischievous.â The perfect balance of the Greek phrasing, however, with âmixedâ in the middle, perhaps suggests that these drugs are both at once, like a number of double-sided objects in the Odyssey. We could certainly testify ourselves that painkillers are a mixed bag.
âShe turned her thought to other things, Helen, Zeusâs begotten âŠâ It was Athena who had earlier âthought of other things,â directing from behind the scenes the preparations for Telemachusâ trip. Here it is Helen who earns the line of the divine directrix. In the nepenthe passage she is twice addressed as Zeusâs daughter, like Athena. But the divine power she exerts over the scene comes from an Egyptian drug, a gift from an Egyptian wife. This is curious.
What is Homerâs (the narratorâs) purpose in his allusions to Aegypt? Talking of coming down to earth, the Achaean world seems well impressed with Menelausâ wealth, but the narrator tells us the very richest houses are actually in Aegypt. That is where Menelaus spent his time acquiring all his stuff somehow, while his brother back home was assassinated. Telemachus gapes in awe at Menelausâ palace, but the narrator makes it clear that he himself knows better. Sparta ainât all that. Itâs no Aegypt.
Helen of course is virtually a goddess among Greek speakers. But here we find her well domesticated. All the best drugs, for good or ill, are to be found over in Aegypt, not here; everyone there is a healer, who understands more than all other men. Helenâs technology, intimating her divine superpower, is borrowed from superiors overseas. Her finest implements, her golden distaff and wheeled silver basket, all hail as gifts from a non-epic, but fabulous, household in the Aegyptian Thebes. Later, at the end of the visit, Telemachus refuses Menelausâ parting gift of horses, because, he says, theyâre no use in Ithaca. The epic, chivalric, noble animal has no place there; sheâs a rocky country best fit for goats.
There is something funny and affecting about this narratorâs perspective on things, amidst the shifting perspectives of his characters, which he delimits and diminishes with his Aegyptian asides. The comedy of the Odyssey often seems to thrive on (gently) cutting the pretensions of Greek-speaking epic, and its protagonists, down to size.
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Odyssey 4.1-154
Just like Helen, the fading beauty queen, there is a sense of expectations cheated as theyâre met, of things being cut down to size in the same breath that they are exalted. Menelaus is supposed to be fabulously wealthy, at least in local terms. His house positively gleams. Nestor had attempted to fob his visitors off on Menelaus, because, it would seem, he had rather more resources at his disposal for taking care of guests. After speaking at them all day, he somewhat rudely insists that they go on to Sparta. But when Mentor (Athena) and Telemachus actually head off to go sleep on board ship, Nestor protests rather too much, and boasts about his blankets and towels. Let us hope Athenaâs late blessing brings some late prosperity to the old man, who came home in such a rush âŠ
Menelaus himself boasts that there may be some other mortal could compete with his acquisitions, but Homer himself lets us know that the richest houses are in Egyptian Thebes, where in fact Menelaus and Helen have mooched their finest stuff. Menelaus was a traveller, all right, but not exactly the man who comes to know the cities and the thought of men (see line 3 of the Odyssey). No, heâs on a mission to accumulate their goods. The bounteous Libyan sheep, born horned, impress him because they erase a key difference between the rich and the poor: over there, the shepherd as well, not just the king, gets all the cheese, mutton and lovely milk he wants.
Meanwhile, Telemachus gawps and gapes at the shine of Menelausâ precious metals, and thinks this must be what Zeusâs front room looks like. The boyâs naĂŻvetĂ© contrasts with Menelausâ worldliness, but both display aggrandisement and self-aggrandisement. One wonders what Homer is up to in shifting the perceived size of things as he changes the beholderâs eyes.
But Menelaus also is clearly racked with regret and loss. Heâd keep a third (!) of his goods if he could get his dead friends back. I suspect weâre supposed to note such a valuation, as one does the â of a man from the U.S. constitution. Menelaus would never lose everything to get his friends back.
And out comes Helen. What a simply awful household. We get a starter course right away: Helen says, in her inimitable way, that all those men died for my sake, the bitch, in their brave little war. âNah,â says Menelaus (to paraphrase): âit was for me.â I bet that sort of exchange gets old pretty fast. Doesnât everything.
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Odyssey 3.330-497 (end)
The sacrifice of the heifer, with the women of Nestorâs house ululating in ecstasy, seems to demand a symbolic reading; what do you make of it? The men encamped on the beach like an invading army were sacrificing quantities of bulls, exclusively male animals. The object seemed to be placating or thanking Poseidon. Here, Nestor calls for an unbroken heifer to honour Athena, the Virgin. The sexual metaphor is made quite explicit in Nestorâs request, quoted in the title above. It seems the honouring of Poseidon involves the sacrifice of male animals, whereas the honouring of Athena calls for the sacrifice of a female, and in particular, a âvirginâ.
But there are levels upon levels. It would seem the return home of the Pylian men from Troy involves a kind of acknowledgment of sin, to be atoned vicariously (in the wishful supplicantâs reasoning) through the sacrifice of bulls. Much of this transgression is in fact involved in the violation of women. A line that rather sticks out from Nestorâs description of his breathless escape from Troy, is this about the loading of his cargo: âAnd we loaded in our acquisitions, along with the women in their plunging girdles (ÎČÎ±ÎžÏ Î¶ÏÎœÎżÏ Ï ÏΔ ÎłÏ ÎœÎ±áżÎșαÏ) âŠâ Nestor in particular is remembered in the Iliad for some particularly unsavoury calls to the men for what to do with the Trojan women when they are captured. He is a nasty old man always up for a boast about his youthful prowess and for ginning up the youngsters to be ruthless and rapine in battle. âLoosening the veil,â an event for the wedding night, can also be a metaphor for rape, applied to the sacking of a citadel, but here to the opening of a vintage wine. Now that Nestorâs home, restored it seems to a revered wife Eurydice, who doesnât get a mention in the Iliad, and whom he pointedly invokes in his prayer to Athenaâis there a need for atonement, and perhaps abasement on his part, toward the domestic reality of life? It seems likely that coming home in the Odyssey involves a restoration of a balance, if that is possible after war, between the needs and predilections of men and the dignity of women. What has happened, one wonders, to all those low-girdled women shipped in the hold with other commodities? Are they now the slave women preparing the feast for after the virgin sacrifice?
In turn the sacrifice of the heifer seems to embody the sacrifice of women for the sake of the Trojan misadventure, and masculine fantasy generally. It is conducted by Nestorâs sons who stayed home, who missed or never knew their warrior brother Antilochus; and it seems to be consummated by the guttural cry of the women of Nestorâs household. I find both a dignity and an unspoken acknowledgement in this wordless ululation (áœÎ»ÎżÎ»ÏζΔÎčÎœ) of the women. The price that women pay is perhaps more than can be acknowledged in words. No amount of gilding can adorn this. One really feels the passing of this heiferâs ghost. It feels like a release from suffering.
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Odyssey 3.201-329
Why does Homer introduce a singer and poet into the story of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra? In Nestorâs telling, Agamemnon left behind a singer, like the ones Homer depicts. and perhaps is, with the order to âprotect my wifeâ. How is it that an artist could do that? What sort of song would preserve her virtueâkeep her on the straight and narrow? (What language is there any more to speak of this sort of mission?) We know that Nestor had his disagreements with Agamemnon, so that in the aftermath of the Trojan war, he led or joined a faction which fled home rather than try to appease Athena with sacrifice. The army was split fifty-fifty. Odysseus changed his mind and made Agamemnonâs contingent a democratic majority. Is Nestor perhaps mocking Agamemnonâs judgement over his provision for securing his marriage while he was away, busily deserting it? The poor singer meets a terrible fate at Aegisthusâ hands, abandoned to become food for vultures on a desert island. What might Homer himself be saying about the inefficacy of his own art to guide human behaviour and morality? Is there a criticism here of moralising poets? âHe wants itâshe wants it!â Erotic passion and lust for power conquer in real life, and even win a seven-year term.
[I shall be taking a brief hiatus for some emergency travel. Will be back soon!]
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Odyssey 3.1-200
Meeting Nestor is like watching a reunion special for a 20-year-old show. There is that same awkward sense that things will never be the same. Giants walked the earth back then. There is the slightly prurient interest in how old and overweight the cast have got.
Here we are, camped on the beach in companies like an invading army, leaving the WAGs down the road at home, as though weâd never left Troy. But itâs our own beach. There is an uneasy incompleteness about Nestorâs return, even now, after many years. There is consciousness of guilt: something needs to be expiated by sacrifice. It was apparently Athena whom the Achaeans offended in the sacking of Troy. Now it is Poseidon they are appeasing, perhaps in gratitude for their passage home? The wind never failed him, says Nestor. One wonders what the strange festival means for Peisistratus, his youngest son, for whom, like Telemachus, the whole Trojan expedition is a thing of story, full of glorified models of male conduct in war. âDad, why are we all sitting around in groups in our armour, on beach towels, on the beach?â I well remember from my own youth the looming shadow of World War II, still the source of our playground games (along with cowboys and Indians) and the subject of solemn movies with nary a deadpan. It was always an event for me to speak with veterans of that war, from teachers to students in Chicago. Nestor is quite honest about his own actions, as Athena foretells: it was a pirate raid, following Achilles around Troyland, looting stuff and women, before they finally got round to besetting the Trojan city of Ilium.
But there seems also a lot concealed. It seems he may have come home with less than a full share of the loot, for example. This may have been a price of breaking with Agamemnon, and possibly a reason why Odysseus began as an ally of his breakaway faction, but then changed his mind and went back to Agamemnon. There are hints that unlike Menelaus, whom we are yet to meet, Nestor is living under diminished circumstances. Telemachus avoids going back there on his way home. Neither Nestor nor Menelaus are a transparent window in their memories of Odysseus: he was a character who aroused the most mixed of mixed feelings.
They are honouring Poseidon, but Athena is actually present as Mentor, Homerâs (the performerâs) alter ego (I suggest). âMentorâ joins in the prayer, that glory come to Nestor and his sons, but the performer cannot resist breaking his guise, to tell us that actually Athena fulfilled the whole prayer herself. These half-line asides are precious kinds of connections ⊠But the suggestion is that this visit of Athena (and Telemachus) may result in a kind of healing for Nestor and his people, at least at the material level. But one reads the psyche from the material in Homer. Clearly there had been a real break with Odysseus, after which Nestor and he never met again. Perhaps there is some resolution in the next generation, with this visit.
There is genuine depth of feeling, an embodiment of real distance and loss, in Nestorâs litany of the comrades buried at Troy: There lies Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus ⊠And his own beloved son Antilochus, who beat Menelaus (under dispute) in the chariot race at the funeral games set up by Achilles (Iliad XXIIIâI mention this because it will figure when we meet Menelaus in the next book). It is marvellous how these lines conjure those men like so many waxworks. One is made conscious of distance and time precisely by our distance from that first encounter with the Iliad. One wonders if the poet himself joins in the affect of Nestorâs loss and evocation: the world of the Iliad, perhaps, with all the figures in whom he or she had invested all her art, belongs to this poetâs younger years and can never return.
The figure of Odysseus, however, yet remains, and Homer is not done with him. He is well remembered by Plato, the Odysseus of the Odyssey: Socrates seems to admire him. But the Athenian tragic stage remembers a different man, perhaps independently of Homerâs telling. There he is the original Machiavel, an unprincipled opportunist, spin doctor and henchman. Advisor to the Prince. Nestor knew this guy. He more than once emphasises Odysseusâ brilliance in the sense of his cunning, his skill with âall manner of deceitsâ (ÏαΜÏοίοÎčÏÎč ÎŽÏλοÎčÏÎč). Their final parting was clearly not amicable, and likely a prime example of Odysseus cheating expectations.
It is possible that Athenaâs intention, an authorial intention in the highest sense, is some redemption for this shadowy and brutally efficient figure. Perhaps this possibility was always there in his youthful and fruitful love for Penelope, seemingly abandoned for the Trojan high life. But Athena had been his enemy, before the sudden change of heart at the council of the gods in Book 1. She had been the enemy of all the Achaeans attempting to return home after the desecration of Ilium. The opening of the Odyssey on Olympus is shown to be a moment of opportunity: Poseidon, Odysseusâ motivated persecutor, is absent. But nothing would have happened unless Athena had changed her mind. Why does she do this? What is it about him, or what is missing within or for Odysseus, that makes her move?
In Greek:
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Odyssey 2.323-434 (end)
Since I started again after my illness, Iâve now spent two years without performing past Book 4 of the Odyssey. Now, I have translated the whole thing in that time, to be fair; and I am a self-confessed Homerist, so there is endless fascination for me in every part of every line. But this does mean that I have not yet encountered Odysseus himself. Homer does not make you wait two years, but he does make you wait four books, a pretty long time. An ongoing question, raised by modern criticsâthe ancients seem not to have complainedâis does the Telemachy (Books 1-4) cut it? Does Telemachus sustain our interest? Why does Homer delay the introduction of his hero? Or does he in fact? Subscribers, do please respond in comments or over in Chat.
I shall admit it is hard to square the master fabulist of Books 5-12, and the Hollywood storyteller of 16-24âmeant in a good wayâa novelist who writes a real page-turnerâwith the relaxed buildup of Telemachusâ situation in Ithaca at the beginning of the Odyssey. There is also an apparent lull when Odysseus first arrives in IthacaâBooks 13-15âfilled with conversations, and many lies, in the lowly dwelling of Eumaeus the swineherd. Coming up in Book 3, Nestor will literally talk until the sun goes down. How does one understand these two apparent lulls, one which sets in right at the beginning, and the other which interrupts sequences of (to us) intense mythic and dramatic interest? The Tale of Odysseusâ Wanderings and the Plot Against the Suitors and the Reunion with Penelope?
The oral theory of Homeric composition allows us to shunt all aesthetic questions to a mysterious primitive realm beyond our ken or ability to participate. Let us avoid this ungrounded laziness. Platoâs world was not infected with the fascination for orality. It was, however, keenly insightful into the qualities of poetry and aesthetic craft, and it does not seem to register a problem with any parts of the Odyssey on these grounds. Perhaps occasional doldrums are a part of the rhythm of sea journeys and travellerâs tales? But it may be our own predilections for mythic tales of (super)heroes, or for the dramatic dovetailing of storylines to a climax, which are distorting our sense for those parts of Homerâs art which do not aim to satisfy those kinds of arousal.
I do love the ship cleaving through the water. It is such a release, felt in the rhythms, when the journey finally gets underway. By itself that is a clue to how effectively Homer has conjured the feeling of adolescent inertia and its privileged frustrations, the invisible bonds that tie young men to their dice and tables, and leave the loyal, experienced men, and all the women, with a choice of service also to their appetites, or to a now distant memory of an ideal from their youth which may or may not be dead forever. Bring me a travellerâs wind!
In Greek:
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Odyssey 2.157-322
This episode marks the firstâand I believe, onlyâin-person appearance of Mentor, Odysseusâ appointed estate manager, in the whole Odyssey. But he appears twice in this passage, the second time as Athenaâs disguise. She then appears as Mentor on multiple occasions in the course of the telling. Indeed, the line,
ÎÎÎœÏÎżÏÎč ÏΔÎčÌÎŽÎżÎŒÎΜη ηÌΌΔÌÎœ ÎŽÎÎŒÎ±Ï Î·ÌÎŽÎ”Ì ÎșαÎčÌ Î±Ï ÌÎŽÎźÎœ
Seeming to be Mentor, not just in build but in her voice as well
which appears in this passage before Athenaâs speech to Telemachus, is also the last line of the whole poem. Of course in this guise Athena is to be a âmentorâ to Telemachus in the first part of the Odyssey. But it almost seems as if the performer hits on an idea here that gives him some flexibility and comic potential. For one thing, the announcement about the voice means he doesnât have to keep doing Athenaâs voice, however that was handled, but the voice of a regular sort of male. And as we shall see, this figure of Mentor allows the performer to engage in some âfourth-wallâ comedy. Mentor in this way becomes a very thin mask for the performer himself, who, as a matter of course, has to imitate a variety of people ânot just in build, but in their voice as well.â
It seems to me to be pointed that the Odyssey ends by pointing to this fourth wall, or rather to the performer himself. The Iliad performer seems rather to aim for transparency, to get out of the way of the simile or the scene. That poemâs last line is an evocation of Hector Horse-Tamer at his funeral, to which we are made witnesses or auditors. Such a name-and-epithet evocation raises the question what Hector has become, now that he has been burnt to ashes and bones. The scene is the thing, not the artist. But throughout the Odyssey, the teller seems to get involved in the telling, trying on his guises with a sense of fun, and participatory fun at that. Let me suggest this as an hypothesis, at any rate, which you are invited to test or try on as we proceed.
Also in Greek:
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Odyssey 2.1-156
Spread the word! Weâre editing, translating, and performing Homerâs Odyssey, in English (on the podcast) and Greek (in Substack), all for free! Subscribers and sponsors welcome! Weâre now on Book 2, catch up on previous episodes of the Odyssey on Singing Homer with âHomer in Englishâ in the title.
Antinous, the most villainous suitor, openly complains about Penelopeâs wiles and duplicity, but wow! What a woman. Neither he nor his fellows had ever seen or heard of her equal:
áŒÏγα Ïâ áŒÏÎŻÏÏαÏΞαÎč ÏΔÏÎčÎșαλλÎα Îșα᜶ ÏÏÎÎœÎ±Ï áŒÏΞλΏÏ
ÎșÎÏΎΔΏ Ξâ, ÎżáŒ·â Îżáœ ÏÏ ÏÎčÎœâ áŒÎșÎżÏÎżÎŒÎ”Îœ ÎżáœÎŽÎ” ÏαλαÎčáż¶Îœ,
ÏÎŹÏÎœ Î±áŒł ÏÎŹÏÎżÏ áŒŠÏαΜ áŒÏÏλοÎșαΌáżÎŽÎ”Ï âÎÏαÎčαί,
Î€Ï ÏÏ Ïâ áŒÎ»ÎșÎŒÎźÎœÎ· ÏΔ áŒÏÏÏÎÏαΜÏÏ ÏΔ ÎÏ ÎșÎźÎœÎ·Î.
ÏÎŹÏÎœ Îżáœ ÏÎčÏ áœÎŒÎżáżÎ± ÎœÎżÏÎźÎŒÎ±Ïα Î Î·ÎœÎ”Î»ÎżÏΔίηÎč
ÏጀÎčΎη Î 2.117-22
To know how to make gorgeous works, and excellent brains
To profit by them, the like of no other woman we hear aboutâ
not even among the ancients,
Those women who once upon a time were the Fair-Tresses,
Achaean alumnae,
Tyro and Alcmene, and Mycene of the beautiful coronal:
None of these knew thoughts like those Penelope
Knows.
The accentuation of the sequence ÎșÎÏΎΔΏ Ξâ, ÎżáŒ·â Îżáœ ÏÏ ÏÎčÎœâ, in the new technical parlance, follows a short oxytone released by an elided enclitic with a circumflex and two long oxytones. Never mind the jargon; if you inspect the Greek text, you will notice the phrase with bolded syllables contains consecutive pitch accent marks, unlike most of the rest of Homerâs phrases (or the stress patterns in English poetry). Most likely this sequence climaxed at a peak of pitch. As genuinely bitter as Antinous seems to be about Penelopeâs behaviour, the thought of her bursts in on him and sends him into a reverie about the skilful intelligences of the past, to whom she seems, to him, superiorâthe women Antinous had heard about from story and song. That there is such evident transport in the feeling of Antinous, conveyed by the harmony and rhythm of his poetry, seems to me to do essential work for Homer, who by the mere letter of his poem could be thought to present a barely two-dimensional character in Antinous, and almost comic villains in the suitors generally. The musical breakout transforms a moment with a lasting effect outside the work done by words and dramatic premises: there is, it seems, a real longing in these villains, and with this apparent outburst of harmonic energy, which seemingly escapes the speakerâs mouth, through Antinousâ eyes Penelope is shown to be a real and worthy object for such longing. This is an instance where the prosodic transport cuts through any poses or rhetorical hypocrisy on the part of the speaker, to project an immediacy of awareness and feeling. Penelope is evidently far more a causal agent, an αጎÏÎčÎżÎœ, in the speakerâs consciousness, than the object of blame Antinous is attempting to make of her.
In Greek (only on Substack):
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Odyssey 1.306-444 (end)
What are Telemachusâ redeeming qualities? Let me know in chat about the way he treats his mother.
We have already seen Telemachus daydreaming when he first appears in the Odyssey. He is seeing his absent father in his âmindâs eyeâ, as Shakespeare famously put it. Homer seems interested in what we think of as a psychological space, and one part of his depiction of the gods seems to be as an internal, psychological phenomenon. Telemachusâ experience in the aftermath of his encounter with Athena, in disguise as a mentor named Mentes, seems to speak to a kind of encounter that seems familiar in life, the way one remembers a conversation that somehow changed everything. Only in retrospect do we realise that something inexplicable has happened; the world doesnât look the same any more, that particular conversation brought something home that forever changed us. That couldnât have just been who it seemed to be, talking to us or playing that song: that was a god!
In Greek:
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Odyssey 1.136-305
One of the reasons I included Samuel Butlerâs translation in earlier posts, is that he alone, I feel, has captured the comic tone of the Odyssey. There is something deadpan about his Victorian prose and sensibility that reveals something real about the Odyssey, cutting through all the trappings of the hexameter rhythm and epic expectations. I also have translated into prose but Iâve done it line for line, to be a helpful prompt to students of the Greek. I am painfully conscious that there is something about what Butler renders that is beyond the scope of my attempt. Sometimes translators can be revelatory; there is more to the business than decoding. Once in a while there is a translation of souls, so that you feel the Greek author is behind the English authorâs eyes, anticipating his phrases. I could never manage the denser parts of Thucydides without the help of Thomas Hobbesâ English. There was a real meeting of souls. I feel something only slightly less extraordinary in the meeting of Samuel Butler with the composer of the Odyssey.
Try listening to the Odyssey as if it were playing as a comedy. I think you will find the experience transformative. Think of the performer, having to pretend to be Athena, having to pretend be some Mentes or other, a âkingâ among Taphian pirates. Itâs almost as if sheâs making it up as she goes along. Wait a minute, what about my ship ⊠oh letâs just say we parked it so far away that you canât see it, off in the country. Iâm a Lord!
In Greek:
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Odyssey 1.1-135
We begin the great tale of the Odyssey again, with articulated breath. All recordings will be free, but let me encourage subscribers to become paid members to support my work. I would like to offer paid subscribers the opportunity to participate in a chat about the passages I cover in each instalment. I shall begin the chat with a question, which will always be a question which is alive to me. I like leading seminars, and prefer that my own plentiful opinions earn their way into a conversation, rather than I privilege them by delivering them from a lecturerâs podium. I also only like real questions, not leading ones, so donât expect in me a ready-made answer man for my own questions; I hope that subscribers will react and interact, and that I shall learn something on the way. Look for a chat notification at some point after each post. I also hope that participants will have helpful and critical things to say about the translation, my English impression in linear prose. I do hope to improve it as a result, and perhaps see if someone would like to publish it. The Greek text is my own, based on the edition by M. L. West. It has been published in six volumes on Amazon, complete with my translation on the facing page. They are available at these links, for $9.99 each:
https://a.co/d/gdd3Hm2
https://a.co/d/b1HL789
https://a.co/d/0cqP26l
https://a.co/d/dtveMin
https://a.co/d/j7cb0uf
https://a.co/d/j61s9Ug
Needless to say, purchasing any of these volumes would also be an excellent way to support my work. If you are interested in the Greek performance, they will give you a complete text to follow along. I shall send along the whole set by mail to founding members. If you are a student, e-mail me and I can arrange to ship them to you at cost.
I am disabled but recovering from a transplant, and am grateful that thereâs still air enough in my lungs to sing Homer. Aside from my disability, my findings have proved too controversial for me to be licensed to teach in professional Classics. Hence any financial support for my efforts is deeply appreciated.
Below is my recording of the Greek for Homerâs Odyssey, 1.1-135:
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