Notes to Homer's Odyssey 5-8 .
Notes to Book V.
The beginning of this book is
like a repeat of the first book -- there is the same discussion among the
gods about Odysseus' fate, as though the decision had not been made
in book 1.The point of this book is to get Odysseus off the island of Kalypso
and back to the borders of the real world. Thus now Zeus sends down
Hermes, the messenger of the gods, as well as the one who takes your soul
to Hades, to tell Kalypso to give up Odysseus. In the grove of Kalypso,
the images of black alder and cypress signify death, which may be one reasons
Hermes the escorter of souls is sent to her. Kalypso seems to know why
Hermes has come, and that is why she initially violates epic standards
of hospitality by questioning Hermes immediately, instead of offering first
a drink and a chair. But she remembers herself, and offers hospitality,
and then Hermes can deliver his message. She is quite upset, and declares
that the male gods are jealous of female gods who have love affairs with
mortals.There is an interesting catalogue of goddesses who have taken up
with mortals, who have come to a bad end. Again, as noted, Kalypso is one
of the typical female goddesses who take mortal consorts, a nicer version
of Circe. She is being legalistic when she says she cannot 'send' Odysseus,
since she has no ships. When Hermes leaves, Kalypso finds him on the shore,
still weeping for home. But notice that when Odysseus first gets the message,
he does not quite believe it and makes the goddess swear she will do him
no harm. One of the important characteristics of Odysseus is his suspiciousness.
Kalypso does swear, and tries once more to tempt Odysseus to forget his
homecoming and stay with her. (page 87.) After all, can Penelope be more
beautiful than she? Odysseus is ever the master of the diplomatic answer.
He says of course she isn' t, but nevertheless he longs for Penelope, and
prefers to endure the trials to come. Again, we think of how Odysseus here
compares with Menelaus, who is going to spend a quiet eternity with
Helen the goddess, because he does not have the courage to break out of
his ease and comfortable life. Menelaus' palace is a gilded cage.
Note too that Odysseus is throwing away the sort of immortality that Gilgamesh
would have gladly accepted. Odysseus prefers both freedom, including, I
think, the freedom of death, as well as the embrace of a world were life
has purpose and meaning, rather than being something that just goes on
and on, for no particular reason. Soon Odysseus shows a rather unhomeric
practicality as he builds his own ship. Somehow I cannot imagine Achilles
involved in carpentry. Then Kalypso gives Odysseus a bath, (just as Telemachus
got a bath at Sparta) to signify the new stage of his life. So Odysseus
bids farewell to Kalypso and comes nearly to the border between fairyland
and the real world, the island of Skheria, the land of the Phaikians. He
is almost there .....until Poseidon sees him and sends a terrific storm.
Odysseus is nearly drowned, but he is aided by a magic helper, the once-human
Ino, who gives him her veil as a type of life preserver. But Odysseus still
doesn't trust the god's advise to swim for it, and stays with his ship
until is was shattered by Poseidon's storm. The days he spent in the sea
after his ship was destroyed by Zeus probably have made him leery of just
swimming. But the ship finally breaks up and Odysseus must be in the water
for days before he reaches Skheria, and even then he is nearly foiled by
the steep cliffs. He finds the outlet of a small river, and swims up it,
tosses back the magic veil as he promised, and gets on land, and, covered
in leaves, goes to sleep.
Notes to Book VI.
Odysseus near return to the real world marks the time when
Athena, (in disguise or indirectly) begins to help him. She is no help
at all during his journeys in fairyland, for that was part of another epic
cycle (probably the story of Jason and the Argonauts) which may have involved
the adventures of a trickster figure. So Athene goes and makes Nausicaa
think of her marriage and her need for clean clothes. This is a double
set-up. One, it will get Nausicaa out of town so she can meet and help
Odysseus, and it will put Nausicaa in a marrying frame of mind so that
she will be even more ready to help Odysseus. This episode will be used
and expanded in Apollonius Rhodius when Medea falls in love with and helps
Jason. This whole episode, of course, also has its antecedents in folk-tale
and fairy tale -- the shipwrecked sailor who is discovered, and helped
and falls in love with and wins the beautiful daughter of the king. This
scene is also a wonderful mixture of contemporary humbleness and epic grandeur.
In Homer's day, kings were poor enough that their daughters could be expected
to do washing -- certainly not the daughter of so grand a king as Alcinoos.
So, with her father's permission, she loads up the mule cart with clothes
and washes them in a convenient stream and, while the clothes are drying,
plays ball with her friends. Their noise finally wakes Odysseus who is
still suspicious. He, after all, does not really know where he is. He must
use all his resources of cleverness and smooth talk in this very delicate
situation. Homer uses somewhat inappropriate epic language - Odysseus advances
out of the brush like a mountain lion -- a simile better suited to a warrior's
advance in battle. And, like in a battle, the inferior soldiers (in this
case Nausicaa's friends) flee away, but Nausicaa herself, like a stalwart
soldier, stands her ground.
Odysseus' words to her are skillful. He first praises her beauty,
and hints at how suitable a marriage partner she might be. Of course, this
corresponds exactly to her own thoughts about marriage, and perhaps suggests
his own interest. He is playing, gently, with her. She offers him aid and
clothing, and Odysseus acts prudently, and Athene, while he is bathing,
beautifies him so make him more alluring to Nausicaa. At 106 Nausicaa,
in speaking to her companions, is clearly thinking of Odysseus as a possible
future husband, as does her advice to Odysseus. Notice that she tells him
not to first seek her father, but that her mother (Arete = Mrs. Virtue),
who will influence her father. It is interesting that, in fairy land, women
(Kirke, Kalypso, Arete) have an unusual amount of power. Now notice here
that, in all this, Odysseus does not mention his name, nor does she demand
it. In fact, Odysseus will not tell who he is until book 9, days later.
It is characteristic of the politeness of these hyper-civilized Phaikians
that they are willing to wait until their guest is good and ready to talk.
But the reason that Odysseus is silent has to do with the process of his
regaining his identity. Remember, he has come stripped both of clothes
and crew, having been hidden with Kalypso seven years. He is nobody. In
the following episodes among the Phaikians he will gradually regain some
of the elements of his identity, and then he will be able to reveal himself.
The Phaikians, however civilized, pose a threat to Odysseus. First, they
are children of Poseidon, who still hates Odysseus. And, as Nausicaa points
out, they are not too happy about the presence of strangers. Finally, Odysseus
must avoid marrying Nausicaa (and thus being trapped in the obscure gilded
cage again, away from humanity) and yet not insult Nausicaa's family, whose
help Odysseus needs to get home. A touchy situation. Notice too the
presence of black poplars, a tree symbolic of death, which we saw on
Kirke's and Kalypso's island. The Phaikians, for all their glory, are a
people on the border between life and death. Indeed, there is a bit of
evidence. that the Phaikians are a type of mythic people whose original
task was to convey souls from this world into the world of the gods with
their magic boats, again like the boatman of Utnapistim.
Notes on Book VII.
At the beginning of the book
Nausicaa comes home, and is accepted in the bosom of her family, while
Odysseus comes toward the palace. Like Telemachus in front of Menelaus'
palace, Odysseus is amazed (again this amazement may well reflect the type
of story Homer is borrowing from, where the shipwrecked sailor is more
like Telemachus) at the palace, with all its utopian features, and he makes
his away into the main hall to meet Queen Arete. Notice that Athene meets
him in disguise (just as she has helped Telemachus in the guise of Mentor)
and gives him a subtle warning about how Alcinoos is related to Poseidon,
and therefore he must get the favor of Arete. Odysseus suddenly appears
in the palace at the knees of Arete (just as, in the Aeneid, Aeneas
will suddenly appear before Dido) and then waits their response to his
plead for help. The King and Queen are astounded at first, but one of the
elders insists that the suppliant be given protection and honor. While
Odysseus is drinking King Alcinoos ( = Mr. Sharp Mind), while he does not
violate the rules of epic hospitality by demanding to know who the stranger
is, does hint that he wonders, due to Odysseus' sudden materialization,
whether he is a god. Odysseus must be careful, for this is Nausicaa's father.
Odysseus reassures him that he is mortal, and puts off further conversation
with a plea about his belly. As noted before, Homer rarely has an important
feature or episode appear only once. The starving sailor concerned for
his belly here is a preparation for the act Odysseus will put on when he
plays the beggar in his own household. He pleads again to be taken home,
and they agree. But now comes another threat, as Arete investigates him,
noticing that he is wearing clothing that comes from the palace. Remember
that Nausicaa has warned him about the problems of gossip that the princess
is having an affair with a stranger. Think about the thoughts that could
be in Arete's mind -- why did her virgin daughter give this strange man
clothes? What else might she have given this attractive sailor?
Again, another very delicate situation for Odysseus, but he is the master
of the situation, and speaks of Nausicaa in a very paternal way (which
befits his age), assuring Nausicaa's mother that he does not think that
way about her. When Alcinoos (who is always careful to seem super hospitable)
says that his daughter should have led him to their home herself, Odysseus
shows again that he is a man of great tact, concerned for the reputation
of their daughter. In fact, Odysseus almost does too well, for Alcinoos'
speech at the end of the books suggests that he too would like Odysseus
to marry his daughter. But Alcinoos does also promise him a return home.
This makes Odysseus very happy, but he still has yet to make sure that
Alcinoos knows that he does not want to marry his daughter without insulting
him. The day ends, and tomorrow Odysseus will take major steps in the restoration
of his identity.
Notes on Book VII.
As dawn breaks an assembly meets to consider Odysseus'
request, and Athene makes sure that all the right people show up. Alcinoos
addresses them, and note how he openly admits the stranger whose fate they
are considering has not even told them his name. Again, the delay Odysseus
takes among the Phaikians in telling his name parallels the delay of Odysseus
in revealing himself to Penelope when he arrives at his own house. Even
though they do not know his name,the Phaikians prepare a ship. This done,
it is time to feast and sacrifice, and there occurs the first of three
songs sung by the poet Demodokos. The portrait of Demodokos is so lovingly
drawn (including his blindness) that some critics have said this is a portrait
of Homer himself. These songs (at least two of them) are a very important
part of the process of Odysseus regaining his identity. Notice the first
song tells about the Quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles. It reminds
Odysseus about his Trojan past, about what he was. The quarrel was probably
over how to take Troy once Hector was dead. Achilles advocated an all-out
assault, and Odysseus was in favor of trickery, which Achilles found cowardly
and unmanly. But trickery worked, and the use of such tricks is an
important feature of the character of Odysseus. The tears which Odysseus
shed at this point are like the tears Telemachus shed learning
about his father, and thus also involve the question of his identity. At
this point the Phaikians take a break to play sports. This whole episode
may be patterned after the story of the ship-wrecked sailor who gets the
princess. Here the young men are her potential suitors, who, naturally,
want the stranger to compete in game that will prove who is the most fitting
suitor. These pseudo-suitors, of course, to some extent foreshadow the
suitors of Penelope in Ithaka and Odysseus' competition with the suitors
of Penelope. A particularly rude (for the Phaikians) suitor insults and
challenges Odysseus, and this causes Odysseus to show his epic prowess
by hurling the discus far further than anybody and by boasting that he
was one of the best competitors at Troy. Again, this is an important
step in the process of regaining his identity. Now Odysseus is doing the
sort of deeds the old Odysseus is known for. Further, by mentioning the
Greek heroes at Troy, Odysseus is at least letting them know that he, whoever
he is, was one of the famous Trojan heroes. Thus he is getting some of
his old fame back. To soothe this small scene of ill-temper Demodokos tells
the comic tale of how Hephaistos catches his wife Aphrodite with Ares in
bed. While this is comic relief, the tale has two important elements. One,
notice how Poseidon makes Hephaistos lets go of his anger. This may hint
that Poseidon knows it is important to forgive and perhaps will forgive
Odysseus one day -- as he in fact will. Further the deceitfulness
of Aphrodite is a warning to Odysseus, as the story of Klytemnenstra, Agamemnon's
wife, will be. And, to promote forgiveness in Odysseus, Alcinoos
orders more presents to be given to Odysseus. This is part of the restoration
of his identity, for Odysseus must have goods, the visible sign of his
status. And, now, in preparation for another great transition, Odysseus
is given another bath. Then they can return to feasting, where Odysseus
has an honored place. Notice how Odysseus, as indicative of his news status,
give the meat-portion of honor to Demodokos, who sings the third song,
which is of the Trojan Horse and the sack of Troy, which is the defining
deed of Odysseus. Of course, this further helps him regain his identity.
Now, finally, after a couple of days, Antinoos feels it is the correct
time to ask his identity. Odysseus has listened to various stories telling
who he is, and has done the deeds and gained the gifts that give him epic
identity, And soon, in the next book, he will identify himself.
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