Reading Homer's Odyssey

Kostas Myrsiades

• Éditeur: Bucknell University Press
• Année: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781684481323
• Sujet: Literature
• Sous-sujet: Literary Criticism

Homer's Odyssey is the first great travel narrative in Western culture. A compelling tale about the consequences of war, and about redemption, transformation, and the search for home, the Odyssey continues to be studied in universities and schools, and to be read and referred to by ordinary readers. Reading Homer's Odyssey offers a book-by-book commentary on the epic's themes that informs the non-specialist and engages the seasoned reader in new perspectives. Among the themes discussed are hospitality, survival, wealth, reputation and immortality, the Olympian gods, self-reliance and community, civility, behavior, etiquette and technology, ease, inactivity and stagnation, Penelope's relationship with Odysseus, Telemachus' journey, Odysseus' rejection of Calypso's offer of immortality, Odysseus' lies, Homer's use of the House of Atreus and other myths, the cinematic qualities of the epic's structure, women's role in the epic, and the Odyssey 's true ending. Footnotes clarify and elaborate upon myths that Homer leaves unfinished, explain terms and phrases, and provide background information. The volume concludes with a general bibliography of work on the Odyssey, in addition to the bibliographies that accompany each book's commentary.Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide byRutgers University Press.

PART I

FROM ITHACA TO WONDERLAND

CHAPTER 1

TELEMACHUS’ JOURNEY (OD. 1–4)

BOOK 1

The Odyssey of Homer (seventh-century B.C.E.) is a long oral narrative poem of 12,109 lines that emerges out of the Iliad’s warrior society (patriarchal, polytheistic, monarchical, and slaveholding), in which losing one’s honor is tantamount to losing one’s worth as a warrior. Once its hero, Odysseus, leaves Troy, however, he enters a different world with different moral values.

The epic begins with a unit of four books usually referred to as the Telemachia, or the books of Telamachus, Odysseus’ son. In these books, the young prince matures and learns the lessons of kingship in order to aid his father upon his return to regain his kingdom from his mother’s suitors. The poem, like the Iliad, opens with an invocation (the proem) in which the poet seeks inspiration from the Muse, a goddess,1 to assist him in reciting his tale, but it is not narrated chronologically. It begins with Telemachus in Ithaca at the same time that Odysseus prepares to leave Calypso’s island (in Od. 5; his eleventh of twelve adventures), where he spends seven years. From Calypso, he sails to his twelfth adventure on Scheria (Od. 6–8), where he recites his earlier adventures (Od. 9–12), and from there is conveyed to Ithaca after an absence of twenty years (Od. 13–24). Thus, Homer begins his narrative in Ithaca (Od. 1–4) and ends it in Ithaca (Od. 13–24), using this geographically real locale to frame a mythic one (Od. 5–12).

Od. 1 covers the first day of the Odyssey narrative (de Jong, Narratological, 588), which for the present reading is divided as follows:2

I. Introduction (21%)3

A. Proem

B. Odysseus’ aborted homecoming

C. Council of the gods

II. Ithaca (79%)

A. Athena visits Telemachus in Ithaca

B. Telemachus with the suitors

I. Introduction

I.A. Proem, 1–10. By invoking the Muse to tell the story through him, Homer alerts his audience that he cannot recite his tale uninspired. The oral tradition from which the Odyssey emerged concretizes the abstract (inspiration/Muse). The author becomes an intermediary between the goddess and the audience, a special individual through whom the tale is told. The epic’s first word, andra (man), highlights the epic’s overall theme,4 the story of a warrior returning home after a twenty-year absence. Homer does not say, “Tell me, Muse, of Odysseus,” but rather, “Tell me, Muse, of the man,” implying a more inclusive journey of man in general, one who through endurance, courage, and an agile mind weathers life’s storms to reach his destination. Odysseus is such a man, “the man of many ways” (polytropos), a term that stresses the hero’s ability to change with the changing times, and one who considers all options before choosing the best one. Versatility (polytropia) enables him to return home, whereas his companions and other returning veterans who lack it perish.

Homer first inquires how Odysseus’ homecoming was detained after he sacked Troy’s sacred citadel (1.1–2).5 In other words, Odysseus is punished for plundering a god’s temple. The killings he committed in Troy during the ten-year-long siege are not mentioned, nor are his affairs with Circe and Calypso. Like Jehovah, who does not tolerate disobedience in the Old Testament, the Homeric gods punish those who trespass against them, but Odysseus’ trespass is not as heinous as that of his companions, who devoured the oxen of Helius.6 The hero’s suffering then lasts until his debt to the gods is paid, whereas his companions die for their greater crime. Thus, it is not Odysseus’ fault that he returns without his companions to Ithaca; rather, his companions’ fate is the result of their own “wild recklessness” (1.7). Odysseus tries to prevent their deadly action but cannot, although he tries, and thus Zeus takes away their day of homecoming. It is at this point that Homer’s Muse begins the tale of Odysseus’ nostos (1.9–10).

One wonders why Homer refers only to the companions who devoured the sun’s oxen, since most of Odysseus’ men are lost in the Laestrygonian episode (eleven of his twelve ships; see Od. 10); another seventy-two men die in the Cicones episode (Od. 9), and six men are devoured by the Cyclops (Od. 9). By the time Odysseus reaches Thrinacia, the sun’s island (Od. 12), only one ship remains. Perhaps Homer isolates that adventure in the proem because Odysseus finally finds himself completely alone to make his way to Calypso’s island, from where his homecoming is assured, as tradition requires. Further, the Thrinacia adventure stresses death to those who transgress against the gods, whereas Odysseus’ other mythic adventures do not.

I.B. Odysseus’ Aborted Homecoming, 11–26. The invocation over, three questions are posed:

1. Where is Odysseus?

2. Why was his homecoming aborted?

3. How is his homecoming to be achieved?

First, Odysseus is the last warrior to reach his destination alive and is detained by Calypso, who wants to make him her husband. Second, his aborted homecoming is due to his archenemy, Poseidon (the sea), who refuses to give him the necessary weather. Third, Poseidon, away visiting the Ethiopians, gives the other Olympians the opportunity to force him to abort his anger; alone and against the will of all the gods, Poseidon cannot utterly destroy Odysseus.

In his absence, the Olympians meet at the insistence of Athena. But why is Odysseus to be released now? Why did the goddess not ask for his release earlier? There are two possible answers. First, Athena’s wrath against the Greek warriors has only now run its course. Homer never quite explains what caused Athena’s anger other than to suggest that Hermes made it clear to Calypso that, on their voyage home, the Greeks offended her, and she let loose an evil tempest against them (5.108–109). Her anger finally abated, Athena requests Odysseus’ release from captivity. Second, her request coincides with the visit by Odysseus’ archenemy, Poseidon, to the Ethiopians, an opportune moment to end the hero’s wanderings, which, out of respect for her uncle, the sea, who hampers Odysseus’ return, she was unable to achieve earlier.

I.C. Council of the Gods, 27–95. At the council, Zeus questions why mortals blame the gods for their ills when it is their own recklessness that is responsible for the evils they suffer (1.32–34). The gods, then, are not completely responsible for mortals’ actions. Mortals are not mere puppets; fate alone is not responsible for their actions, but rather their “own recklessness” earns them sorrow beyond what fate grants. As illustration, Zeus turns to the House of Atreus.7 In Homer’s version, Aegisthus marries the wife of his first cousin Agamemnon once he leaves for Troy and then has Agamemnon and his men killed at a banquet honoring their return. Although Aegisthus is warned not to kill him or court his wife (1.39), he ignores the gods’ warning, and Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, later kills him in turn. This myth, referenced in six of the epic’s twenty-four books (Od. 1, 3, 4, 11, 13, and 24),8 serves as an example to those who fail to heed the gods’ advice. Although the gods point out the right path, ultimately the decision rests with the individual. Second, the myth sets up parallels between Odysseus’ family (Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus) and Agamemnon’s (Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes). In Homer’s view, agreement and like-mindedness (homophrosunē) between husband and wife lead to prosperity and unity, whereas disagreement between a couple leads to disaster, not only for the couple but for the entire nuclear family. Clytemnestra’s infidelity, which leads to her husband’s murder, also affects their son Orestes, who, according to custom, is required to avenge his father’s death. The Atreus myth not only contrasts positive and negative family units but serves as a warning for Penelope and Telemachus, whose situation could lead to disaster for Odysseus. Will Penelope remain faithful to her husband and resist pressure to marry one of the suitors? Will Telemachus assist his father upon his return and, like Orestes, avenge him should his mother falter?

Athena agrees that Aegisthus’ death was merited; anyone acting as he did should suffer the same fate. But she feels sorry for Odysseus because he is still languishing at Calypso’s, who is using her feminine charms to hold him against his will (although he shares her bed for seven years). Calypso is identified as the daughter of Atlas, the “malignant” (oloōphron) who, tradition says, led the Titans (rulers of the universe before the Olympians) in a rebellion against Zeus. Oloōphron is used for two other characters in the epic: Aietes (10.137), Medea’s father and Circe’s brother, and Minos (11.322), a Cretan king and Zeus’s son who judges the dead in the underworld. Perhaps the association of oloōphron with three dangerous characters with ties to Circe and Calypso underscores the quandary Odysseus finds himself in, which requires divine intervention.

Athena queries Zeus (1.62) concerning Odysseus’ delayed homecoming, which surprises the father of the gods, since he admires both Odysseus’ intelligence and his devotion to the gods (1.65–67). He points to Poseidon as the cause of his delayed homecoming, citing his grudge against Odysseus for blinding the Cyclops, his son (a brief digression intervenes again to identify the Cyclops’ father and mother and the circumstances of his birth [1.70–73]). However, Odysseus was pursued by Poseidon even before the Cyclops’ blinding (9.67–69, 80–81). It would seem Homer prefers to blame Poseidon rather than Athena’s wrath for the delayed homecoming. The choice of Poseidon, the sea, not only is a more realistic one but also negates a lengthy explanation for Athena’s change of heart. Nevertheless, the gods’ council (1.27–95) clarifies four points:

1. Odysseus is held captive, and his relationship with Calypso is forced.

2. Zeus’s fondness for Odysseus is due to his intellect and his respect for the gods (emphasizing mētis [mind] over biē [strength]).

3. Odysseus’ homecoming is deterred because he plundered Troy’s citadel and incurred the gods’ anger.

4. Odysseus’ nostos is due to Olympian unity, which overrides Poseidon’s single objection.

Once Odysseus’ release is enabled, Athena turns to Telemachus. She will go to Ithaca to bring about his journey to seek news of his father, which will give him the confidence he lacks as a prince and enable hi...

Table des matières

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Part I: From Ithaca to Wonderland
• Part II: From Wonderland to Ithaca
• Afterword
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• General Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author