until on the eleventh day they build a grave barrow over the bones.
And so horse-taming Hector’s rites gave up his soul to rest.
Introduction to the Odyssey
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse have I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific – and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
John Keats
The Odyssey is the story of all-experiencing Odysseus (Ulysses as Chapman, following Latin usage, called him) who insisted on hearing the Sirens sing – the adventurer among monsters, the lover of goddesses, the traveller flung on foreign shores, the teller of tales. It is the story of Odysseus’ travels, his visits to every sort of human and monstrous society, from those who eat fruit dropping from the trees to those who work a double agricultural shift; from the Aeolians who give divine gifts to their guest – Aeolus’ bag of winds to get them home – to the Cyclops whose guest gift is to eat the guest last. It is also the story of the hero’s return from Troy, being gradually stripped of his men and his standing, the victim of fate and the gods. He is driven to return home not because home is better than the delights of the Lotus eaters or of Calypso – Ithaca is rocky, only good for goats – but because it is where he belongs. Odysseus is stripped even of his name, but he still has a wife, son and father on Ithaca.
Calypso is blunt about their inferior charms – she is a divinely beautiful goddess who can offer him immortality and lordship of her domain; Odysseus agrees that his wife
‘In wit is far inferior to thee,
In feature, stature, all the parts of show,
She being a mortal, an immortal thou,
Old ever growing, and yet never old.
Yet her desire shall all my days see told,
Adding the sight of my returning day,
And natural home.’
Odysseus, gone nearly two decades, may still see Ithaca as his ‘natural home’ but the opening books show that he is on the edge of being displaced. His son is no longer a child but is coming into man’s estate; his wife, pursued by suitors presuming on his death, is being forced to give up her status as his wife and create an independent identity for herself. Odysseus’ identity is not sitting for him back home, waiting with his wife and son to be reclaimed; it must be forged anew in his relationships with an adolescent son and a newly independent, courted woman. The major part of the Odyssey is not about one-eyed monsters and clashing rocks, it is about the recognition of others and by Odysseus of who he is.
That recognition is complex and subtle – only for the old dog on the dungheap is recognition easy, only for him is his master the same person as he was twenty years ago. The idea of ‘the return home’, the nostos (the word that gives us nostalgia – the pain of longing for home and the past) which runs through the poem is rendered complex by setting it against questions of identity and of stability of personality. Odysseus is self-conscious; there are levels of thought, acuity and strategy in his projection of himself that deepen everything he does, every speech he makes, every tale he tells. His story is that of the ultimate story-teller (his actions at Troy and the accounts of his travels are nearly all presented within the narrative, by himself or a bard). The Odyssey is full of archetypal stories: various societies that are mirror images of the norm; various women who seduce or bewitch men; sailors’ tales – whirlpools and clashing rocks, nine-headed monsters and sacred cattle, wicked witches and
And so horse-taming Hector’s rites gave up his soul to rest.
Introduction to the Odyssey
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse have I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific – and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise –
Silent upon a peak in Darien.
John Keats
The Odyssey is the story of all-experiencing Odysseus (Ulysses as Chapman, following Latin usage, called him) who insisted on hearing the Sirens sing – the adventurer among monsters, the lover of goddesses, the traveller flung on foreign shores, the teller of tales. It is the story of Odysseus’ travels, his visits to every sort of human and monstrous society, from those who eat fruit dropping from the trees to those who work a double agricultural shift; from the Aeolians who give divine gifts to their guest – Aeolus’ bag of winds to get them home – to the Cyclops whose guest gift is to eat the guest last. It is also the story of the hero’s return from Troy, being gradually stripped of his men and his standing, the victim of fate and the gods. He is driven to return home not because home is better than the delights of the Lotus eaters or of Calypso – Ithaca is rocky, only good for goats – but because it is where he belongs. Odysseus is stripped even of his name, but he still has a wife, son and father on Ithaca.
Calypso is blunt about their inferior charms – she is a divinely beautiful goddess who can offer him immortality and lordship of her domain; Odysseus agrees that his wife
‘In wit is far inferior to thee,
In feature, stature, all the parts of show,
She being a mortal, an immortal thou,
Old ever growing, and yet never old.
Yet her desire shall all my days see told,
Adding the sight of my returning day,
And natural home.’
Odysseus, gone nearly two decades, may still see Ithaca as his ‘natural home’ but the opening books show that he is on the edge of being displaced. His son is no longer a child but is coming into man’s estate; his wife, pursued by suitors presuming on his death, is being forced to give up her status as his wife and create an independent identity for herself. Odysseus’ identity is not sitting for him back home, waiting with his wife and son to be reclaimed; it must be forged anew in his relationships with an adolescent son and a newly independent, courted woman. The major part of the Odyssey is not about one-eyed monsters and clashing rocks, it is about the recognition of others and by Odysseus of who he is.
That recognition is complex and subtle – only for the old dog on the dungheap is recognition easy, only for him is his master the same person as he was twenty years ago. The idea of ‘the return home’, the nostos (the word that gives us nostalgia – the pain of longing for home and the past) which runs through the poem is rendered complex by setting it against questions of identity and of stability of personality. Odysseus is self-conscious; there are levels of thought, acuity and strategy in his projection of himself that deepen everything he does, every speech he makes, every tale he tells. His story is that of the ultimate story-teller (his actions at Troy and the accounts of his travels are nearly all presented within the narrative, by himself or a bard). The Odyssey is full of archetypal stories: various societies that are mirror images of the norm; various women who seduce or bewitch men; sailors’ tales – whirlpools and clashing rocks, nine-headed monsters and sacred cattle, wicked witches and
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