Homer's Odyssey Part 5

Accordingly the affairs of Ithaca are introduced, as they happened after the departure of Telemachus. This thread is picked up from the Second Book, where he had his final conference with the Suitors and told them his mind. We must recall that Ithaca is the abode of conflict and disorder; the Suitors and Household of Penelope are the two antagonistic elements; upon both the secret departure of Telemachus explodes like a bomb, and brings the characters of each side to the surface.

Telemachus stands in relation to the Suitors as well as to his mother; both are putting their restraints upon him which he has broken through and a.s.serted his freedom, his new manhood. One, however, is the restraint of hate, the other is the restraint of love; both stand in the way of his development. He must get his great education in defiance of Suitors and of mother. The att.i.tudes of these two parties are described, and form the two divisions of this second part of the Fourth Book.

1. The Suitors, when they hear of the deed of Telemachus, are not only surprised but startled, and they at once recognise that a new power has risen which threatens to punish their misdeeds. The youth has plainly become a man, a man showing the skill and courage of his father, and with the sense of wrong burning in his breast. Already he has declared that he would wreak vengeance upon them, the day of reckoning seems to have dawned. Previously they despised his warnings as the helpless babble of a mere boy; now they have to meet him, returning, possibly, with help from his father's friends.

What will the Suitors do? The most audacious one, Antinous, is ready with a proposal. The boy will prove a pest, we must waylay him on his return and murder him. Such is their final act of wrong, which is now accepted by all, and the proposer gets ready to carry out his plan.

Hitherto it may be said the Suitors had a certain right, the right of suit, which, however, becomes doubtful through the uncertainty about the death of the husband, and through the unwillingness of the wife.

But now their guilt is brought out in strong colors, there can be no question about it. They man a boat and lie in wait for their prey on a little island which the youth has to pa.s.s in coming home.

2. The mother Penelope hears of the daring act of her boy, done without her consent or knowledge. The news is brought to her, just as she is recounting the goodness of Ulysses and the wrongs of the Suitors. This new misfortune, for so it seemed to her, is quite too great a burden to bear; she breaks out into lamentations find recites her woes: a husband lost and now a son in the greatest danger. But she is to get both human and divine consolation. Eurycleia, the old nurse, confesses to her part in the affair, and advises the queen "to put on fresh garments and to pray to Pallas, ascending to the upper chamber."

Pallas sends to the distressed mother a refres.h.i.+ng sleep and a consoling dream, which we may consider to have been suggested by the words of Eurycleia. Her sister who dwelt far away, appears to her and says that her son, guided by Pallas, will surely return. Doubtless we see here an expression of the deepest instinct of Penelope; the outer suggestion of the nurse and her own unconscious faith fuse together and form the phantom and give to the same an utterance. The youth who can plan and carry out such an expedition will probably be able to take care of himself. Penelope of course has some doubt, since the good Ulysses has had to suffer so much from the G.o.ds. About him, too, she will know and so inquires of the phantom. Doth he live? But the shadowy image can tell nothing, the act of Ulysses lies not in its field of vision, it declines to speak further and vanishes.

Thus Telemachus has broken through the two restraints which held him in bondage at his Ithacan home, both keeping down his manly endeavor. The first comes from the Suitors and is the restraint of hate, which would give him no opportunity in the world of action, and in addition is destroying his possessions. The second restraint springs from love, and yet is injurious. The solicitude of the mother keeps him back from every enterprise; having lost her husband, as she deems, by his too adventuresome spirit, she is afraid of losing her boy for the same reason, and is in danger of losing him anyhow, by making him a cipher.

Such are the two obstacles in Ithaca which Telemachus is shown surmounting and a.s.serting therein his freedom and manhood. The whole is a flash of his father's mettle, he is already the unconscious Ulysses; no wonder that he inquires after his parent in Pylos and Sparta. The poet will now carry him forward to the point where he will actually meet and know Ulysses himself; the son is to advance to direct communion with his great father.

Here the Fourth Book, or rather the Telemachiad, reaches out and connects with the Ithakeiad, which begins in the Thirteenth Book.

Ulysses returns to Ithaca and steals to the hut of the swineherd Eumaeus; Telemachus comes back from Sparta, and, avoiding the ambush of the Suitors, seeks the same faithful servant. Thus father and son are brought together, and prepare themselves for their heroic task.

But before this task can be accomplished, the grand experience of Ulysses is to be told in the eight following Books (V-XII); that is, we are now to have the Ulyssiad, just as we have had the Telemachiad.

Father and son are now separated from home and country; both are to return through a common deed of heroism.

_General Observations._ Looking back at the Telemachiad (the first four Books) we observe that it const.i.tutes a very distinct member of the total organism of the Odyssey. So distinct is it that some expositors have held that it is a separate poem, not an integral portion of the entire action. The joint is, indeed, plain at this place, still it is a joint of the poetic body, and not a whole poetic body by itself. Only too easy is it for our thought to dwell in division, separation, scission, a.n.a.lysis; let us now turn to the opposite and more difficult habit of mind, that of uniting, harmonizing, making the synthesis of what seems disjointed. In other words let us find the bonds of connection between the last four Books and the coming eight Books, or between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad.

1. We have already noticed the three grand Returns, rising one above the other to the culmination--that of Nestor, of Menelaus, of Ulysses.

Now the first two are told in the Telemachiad; but they openly lead up to the third, which is the complete Return, and which is just the theme of the Ulyssiad. Nestor makes the immediate Return, without conflict, through Greece, but he points directly to Menelaus, and foreshadows the coming of Ulysses. Menelaus, however, prophesies the third Return, and thus directly joins his account with the Ulyssiad. In this manner we see and feel the intimate bond between these two grand divisions of the total Odyssey.

2. We notice the same general movement in the Telemachiad and in the Ulyssiad; the same fundamental scheme underlies both. There is the real Present, in the one case Ithaca, Pylos, Sparta, in the other ease Phaeacia; then there is in the same heroic Past the Trojan war and its deeds of valor; thirdly there is a movement in both to an ideal world, to a Fableland, outside of h.e.l.las and beyond even Troy; finally there is a Return in both to Greece and to the Present. Setting the stages of this movement down in definite numbers, we have, first in the Telemachiad: (1) h.e.l.las, the Present; (2) back to Troy, the Past, in the reminiscences of Nestor, Menelaus, Helen; (3) forward to the Fairy World in the account of Proteus; (4) return to Ithaca at the end of the Fourth Book. Secondly in the Ulyssiad we may here note in advance the same general movement: (1) Phaeacia, the Present; (2) back to Troy in the strains of Demodocus; (3) forward to the Fairy World of Polyphemus and Circe; (4) return to Ithaca in the Thirteenth Book. Thus we reach down and grasp the fundamental norm according to which the poet wrought, and which holds in unity all the differences between these two divisions of the poem. The spiritual basis of this movement, its psychological ground, we shall endeavor to unfold more fully hereafter.

3. In correspondence with the preceding, we can distinguish in both divisions the same kinds of style: (1) the symple Idyllic Tale of the Present; (2) the Heroic Tale recounting the Past and specially the Trojan war; (3) the Fairy Tale which introduces a supernatural realm.

Each of these styles is poetic, yet with its own coloring and character. Here again we should observe the author employing his fundamental norm of composition a second time, and thus re-a.s.serting himself as the same person in both divisions of the poem--in the Telemachiad as well as in the Ulyssiad.

4. In each division, again, there is a supreme woman at the center of domestic life--Penelope in the one, Arete in the other, each being wife and mother, each supremely faithful to her inst.i.tution, the Family.

This predominance and glorification of the married woman and the home const.i.tute a common characteristic of both divisions, and show the same fundamental conception of her worth, as well as of her position in the social order. It may be doubted if Modern Literature has improved upon this Homeric representation.

5. Then the contrasts between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad link them together. Disturbed Ithaca, peaceful Phaeacia; the theoretic education of the son, the practical discipline of the father; Telemachus, the son of his father, Nausicaa, the daughter of her mother, the Ithacan boy and the Phaeacian girl--such are a few of these contrasts. Finally father and son, strongly contrasted, yet having their unity in this family of which they are members, suggest the unity of the poem of which they are characters.

These bonds of connection are so strong that they overbalance all discrepancies of single pa.s.sages, interpolations, and inconsistencies of detail. Still, if the mind of the critic refuses the general sweep, and insists upon prying asunder the joints, and upon looking through its microscope at the little things, it will find only separation, discord, and many small Homers instead of a single great Homer. The particular always divides, but the general unites; so the Homeric poems will have two sets of reader, the dividers and the unifiers.

_The Education of Telemachus._ This is another name, which we have frequently used, for the Telemachiad. The Homeric youth is also to get his training for life; he is to find and to take possession of his inheritance transmitted from the Past. The general statement of this educational fact occurs frequently in the work: Telemachus wishes to know about his father. That is his immediate inquiry, which will extend to knowing something about the fathers and what they did; then his investigation will go beyond the fathers and the Greek world, reaching over into Egypt and the East. The function of education is to put into possession of the coming man the wisdom of the Past, and specially the means for acquiring this wisdom; then he can transmit the intelligence of the race to those who are to follow him. So Telemachus has attained the age when he must know ancestral wisdom. Such is his strong instinct, he feels his limitation, he is penned up in a narrow life at Ithaca, whose barriers cramp his free spirit. This intense desire for education, for finding out something about the world in which he is placed, is the starting point for the boy. He shows his spirit by breaking through the restraint of the Suitors and his mother in order to get an education. Like many a youth to-day, he has to leave home, has to run away, in fact, that he may have his opportunity. What does he get? Or, what is the content of this education! Let us see.

1. We find that he gets a fair amount of religious training. He has been led through the misfortunes of his House to question the goodness of Providence and the superintendence of the G.o.ds. But Minerva gives him a strong lesson, so does Nestor. He obtains a glimpse of the Divine Order, and feels the necessity of keeping in harmony with the same. The outcome of his visit must impress him with the providential side in human action.

2. He sees new countries, talks with famous men, and partakes of their wisdom. Chiefly, however, he hears of the grand Return in its manifold phases; he learns the story of those who failed, of those who reached home, like Nestor and Menelaus. Great is the lesson; this Return images the movement of the soul, the breach within and the restoration. It is remotely his own inner life outlined, and that of every man; Telemachus has just made a separation from home and country, to which he must come back and be reconciled. His own soul-form he must dimly feel in the great Return of the Heroes from Troy, and their various destinies he must recognize to be his own possibilities.

3. Telemachus the aspiring youth, is trying to recover his patrimony, which is of two kinds, physical and spiritual. The Suitors are destroying the one, and keeping it out of his hands; with them is one conflict, that of justice. But he must also inherit his father's mental riches; he has to separate from home and his mother to find this form of wealth or even to learn of its nature. So Telemachus has his Trojan expedition, not so great in itself, yet, adventurous enough for a boy.

He is moving on the lines of his father when the latter went to Troy--a national affair; but his deed is a breaking loose from boyhood--the breach out of which he is to come back a man.

4. The form of this educative process of the Odyssey is very different from ours. It seizes hold of the mythical element in man, and the reader of to-day is to penetrate to the meaning by something of an effort. Telemachus is to see Helen; what does that signify in education? He is to hear the Tale of Proteus and feel its purport in relation to his own discipline. One asks: Is not this imaginative form still a vital element of education? The Odyssey has been and is now a school-book of the race.

_THE ULYSSIAD._

We have now reached the second grand division of the poem, the Odyssey proper, which we have named under necessity the Ulyssiad, and which gives an account of the adventures of Ulysses before he comes to Ithaca and joins Telemachus. If the division which we have just had may be called the education of a youth, this division may be called the discipline of a man through experience of the world. The whole embraces eight Books, fifth to twelfth inclusive, with a little of the thirteenth. There is no doubt that this is the most subtly constructed piece of writing in existence, transparent in the highest degree, and yet profound as thought itself. We may therefore, look a little at the structure in advance.

The first thing to be noticed is that there are two very distinct movements in the present division. On the one hand the action moves through three separate localities--Ogygia or Calypso's Island, Phaeacia, Fableland. This external movement of the poem has its inner counterpart, which the reader is to penetrate. On the other hand there is the movement of the individual, the Hero Ulysses, who begins with Fableland, pa.s.ses through Ogygia and comes to Phaeacia. This movement also has its corresponding internal significance. As the first movement is that of the poem, or of the world, we may call it objective; as the second movement is that of the individual man, we may call it subjective. The two together, accordingly, spin the two strands of the world and of man into the one thread of existence. Both we shall consider.

I.

The objective sweep with its three localities is coupled with geographical names which have given to the erudite guild a great deal of trouble, with very small reward. In general these names of places may be deemed to be mythical, yet with certain far-off gleams of actual lands. Much more distinct and real is their spiritual significance. The objective movement shadows forth the movement of society, the rise of civilization, the becoming of the inst.i.tutional world, which is here unfolded through three stages in the following order:--

1. Ogygia.

2. Phaeacia.

3. Fableland.

1. Ogygia is the pure product of nature without cultivation or with very little. It is the place where the natural man must conquer his appet.i.tes, and long for, and finally seek for, a realm of order.

Calypso is the concealer, she who conceals spirit in the jungle of nature. Here, then, occurs the primordial breach between the physical and spiritual, out of which an inst.i.tutional world can rise.

2. Phaeacia now appears, in which we behold the fundamental inst.i.tutions of man, Family and State, in their primitive idyllic condition, yet transcendently pure and beautiful. The evolution of this new order from the savage Cyclops is hinted in the poem. Only after Calypso is put aside, do Arete the wife and Nausicaa the maid become possible. Upon such a foundation a social system can be developed, with commerce, navigation, etc. Still further, Phaeacia can begin to mirror itself in art, as it does here in the songs of the bard, and also in games.

3. Fableland comes next, really a product of self-conscious art. In it are set forth the struggles which arise between man and the civilized order. Phaeacia is the simple condition of peace; man is in complete harmony with himself and his inst.i.tutional environment. But what if he falls out with both? That will be a new stage, represented by a new set of beings, who are to indicate not so much the conflict with nature as the conflict with spirit. The world of reality is transcended, marvelous shapes sweep into view, Polyphemus, Circe, the Sirens, even the supersensible realm of Hades--all of which, however, must await a special exposition. Still we should note that after this ideal realm of struggle and desperate enterprise comes the real world of strife, Ithaca, which is to be harmonized by the man who has pa.s.sed through this Fableland, and has reached an ideal harmony in Phaeacia.

II.

We soon find that Ulysses has been thrown back to Calypso's Isle from Fableland, of which in a certain sense it is the continuation. The circle which he has pa.s.sed through is, therefore, the following:--

1. Fableland.

2. Ogygia.

3. Phaeacia.

This is, then, the movement of the individual, in contrast with the previous sweep of the poem as a whole, which represents the movement of the world. Both are bound together, both pa.s.s through the same stages, though in a different order. The process of social development begins with the state of Nature, with Ogygia, unfolds into a simple inst.i.tutional life, into Phaeacia, which then enters into certain negative phases, such as are seen in Fableland. But the man from Troy, Ulysses, begins with the last, and is whelmed back into the first, and finally rests in the second before going to Ithaca. Let us note this personal movement in a little more detail.

1. Ulysses pa.s.ses into Fableland, having wantonly done a deed of violence against civilized life and order by destroying the city of the Ciconians (Book IX), as he was returning from the Trojan War. Such is the negative element in him, which has been engendered by that war, and which now appears in various manifestations, such as his doings with Polyphemus and Circe, till his career in Fableland winds up with destroying the Oxen of the Sun. This is the extreme negative act which throws him back beyond Circe's into Calypso's realm. He a.s.saults really his own will in this last act, he undermines his own power of recovery, he puts out his own light. Circe would have sent him forward again, leaving intact his will-power; Calypso detains him lulled in the sensuous delights of her bower. He denies his own reason; how then can he rise after a fall? Indeed what use is there of rising? So he sinks down into Ogygia, the Dark Island.

2. It is no wonder, therefore, that he remained with Calypso seven years and more, draining to the dregs the cup of that life. Still he has desire to return home, must have it, he must possess reason to deny reason. He longs for what he has not, sensuous charms cannot drown his aspiration; such is the h.e.l.l in which he has placed himself. Still even here when he has pa.s.sed his probation, he must be released by a decree of the G.o.ds, who, formerly favorable to Neptune, the divine foe of Ulysses, have now become friendly to Minerva, the Hero's protectress.

Why this change in the everlasting powers? When Ulysses is ready to leave Ogygia, the G.o.ds cannot keep him there, they have to change; the divine Order must help him escape, if it be divine. This is just what happens; Zeus, voice of the Olympian law, commands his departure, and Calypso must obey.

3. Ulysses, then, comes to Phaeacia, an inst.i.tutional land with social, domestic, and political life. From the grot of Calypso he pa.s.ses to the home of Arete; both woman and man are in an ethical relation. He sees a world of peace and harmony, he witnesses the corrective of his own negative Trojan experience. He, having taken Phaeacia into himself, has a remedy for distracted Ithaca; he has beheld an ideal to which he can adjust his own land. He was not the man to bring civil order to Ithaca just after the destruction of Troy; now he has pa.s.sed through his own destructive phases, has become conscious of them, has told them to the Phaeacians, which long account has in it the character of a confession.

All is given in a mythical form, but it is none the less an acknowledgment of error from first to last. He is the poetical confessor of himself, and the Phaeacians are contemplating the grand experience in the mirror of art.

We may now see the reason why the poet began the story of Ulysses with the stay at Calypso's Isle. Thus the poem unfolds in the order of society, starting with the state of nature, pa.s.sing thence to a civilized condition, and showing finally the conflicts of the same with the negative forces which develop in its own bosom. Homer could have landed Ulysses at Phaeacia, and could have made the Ulyssiad start in that sphere, placing Calypso's Book just after the account of the slaughter of the Oxen of the Sun. But what a loss would that have been!

No social development would thus be suggested in the movement of the poem, and the individual Ulysses would have to pa.s.s, not from inst.i.tutional Phaeacia, but from savage Ogygia to the reformation of Ithaca. In this way we realize to ourselves the true instinct, or perchance the profound thought which underlies the structure of this portion of the poem.

Thus we conceive the double movement of the Ulyssiad through its three main stages, in which we feel strongly emphasized the idea of development, of a genetic process. These lands and peoples are generated by the wanderer's own spirit, though they all exist in their own right and are carefully set down in Homeric geography. Ogygia is the product of Ulysses himself, and so he goes thither to the reality.