by Homer
In an extremely moving scene with his mother he also learns about death itself – he tried to embrace her but she evaded his grasp:
. . . thrice she vanish’d like a sleep,
Or fleeting shadow, which struck much more deep
The wounds my woes made, and made ask her why
She would my love to her embraces fly.
She who gave him life shows him the insubstantiality and irreversibility of death. This lesson is strengthened by Achilles (who in the Iliad is obsessed by heroism, the risking of death for eternal glory) saying
‘I rather wish to live in earth a swain,
Or serve a swain for hire, that scarce can gain
Bread to sustain him, than, that life once gone,
Of all the dead sway the imperial throne.’
Human life looks different from the Underworld; only Telamonian Ajax is intransigent, keeping enmity in death as he did in life.
Book 12
The Underworld divides the two parallel sets of Odysseus’ adventures, the latter informed by his experiences there. In the Underworld Odysseus gains knowledge and sense of self; he also gains distance on the heroic ethic that powered the society in Troy. Instead, he can see punishment and retribution at work; from Books 11–14 we see him put what he has learned into sometimes harsh practice.
As Odysseus approaches each new world there is the challenge and danger of what customs, what practices, will be current there. The later set of adventures are a darker version of the earlier: the Sirens of Book 12 offer not just happy forgetfulness of self and home, as the lotus eaters did, but access to the record of the hero’s doing that only the Muses, who can see and record everything, hold:
‘Come here, thou worthy of a world of praise,
That dost so high the Grecian glory raise,
Ulysses! Stay thy ship, and that song hear
That none pass’d ever but it bent his ear,
But left him ravish’d, and instructed more
By us, than any ever heard before.
For we know all things whatsoever were
In wide Troy labour’d; whatsoever there
The Grecians and the Trojans both sustain’d
By those high issues that the gods ordain’d.
And whatsoever all the earth can show
T’inform a knowledge of desert, we know.’
To turn that down is to turn down all remaining access to the [now lost] heroic world of Troy. Odysseus the all-experiencing does not turn anything down easily – following Circe’s warning he has blocked up his men’s ears but allowed himself, lashed to the mast, to hear the blandishments. His men are oblivious both of the Sirens and Odysseus’ pleas to be freed, and all survive. In this second set of adventures Odysseus asserts his cunning and uses experiences gained in the Cyclops’ cave to cheer his crew through; he conceals the human ‘toll’ Scylla will extort and, despite Circe’s advice, he arms himself to do battle with her on their behalf. His comment on his pain at their death shows the emotional range he now possesses:
Six friends had Scylla snatch’d out of our keel,
In whom most loss did force and virtue feel.
When looking to my ship, and lending eye
To see my friends’ estates, their heels turn’d high,
And hands cast up, I might discern, and hear
Their calls to me for help, when now they were
To try me in their last extremities.
And as an angler . . . for surprise
Of little fish. . . hoists them high
Up to the air, then slightly hurls them by,
When helpless sprawling on the land they lie:
So easily Scylla to her rock had rapt
My woeful friends, and so unhelp’d entrapp’d
Struggling they lay beneath her violent rape,
Who in their tortures, desp’rate of escape,
Shriek’d as she tore, and up their hands to me
Still threw for sweet life. I did never see,
In all my suff’rance ransacking the seas,
A spectacle so full of miseries.
The adventures end with Charybdis stripping Odysseus of his last remaining companions, leaving him clinging to a fig tree. He is described as waiting for the whirlpool to vomit back a spar from his wrecked ship like a judge listening to civil cases:
At length time frees him from their civil wars,
When glad he riseth and to dinner goes:
So time, at length, releas’d with joys my woes.
Stripped of his last warrior companions, experienced, cunning and vengeful from his various adventures, he moves now to civil rather than heroic life.
After finishing the long story of his adventures, Odysseus accomplishes the final part of his journey swiftly and painlessly, with gifts and in a ship provided by the Phaeacians. The transition is almost magical; as at other crucial times he falls asleep ‘bound so fast it scarce gave way to breath . . . next of all to death’ but this time the punishment falls after his safe landing – Poseidon turns the Phaeacian ship to stone.
Books 13–14
Telemachus at Menelaus’ court was told of his father’s heroic world and Odysseus’ stature within it. But what will Odysseus’ stature be in the non-heroic world of barren, suitor-infested Ithaca? How will his son, or anyone else, recognise the man who left nearly twenty years ago? And in what sense, if at all, can he be identified (and identify himself) as the same man?
Pallas Athene’s first act is to disguise his homeland, to complicate and delay Odysseus’ recognition and announcement of his identity:
. . . to make strange the more
His safe arrival, lest upon his shore
He should make known his face, and utter all
That might prevent th’event that was to fall.
Which she prepar’d so well that not his wife,
Presented to him, should perceive his life –
No citizen, no friend, till righteous fate
Upon the wooers’ wrongs were consummate.
Odysseus’ first contact on Ithaca is with the disguised Athene; checking his immediate joy that he is home he conceals his identity in a long ‘Cretan’ tale (the Cretans were famous for their lies). Athene is overjoyed at his tricksiness, his subtlety, his alikeness to her, his desire to test Penelope rather than rush to her arms :
‘Thou of men art far,
For words and counsels, the most singular,
But I above the gods in both may boast . . .
Another man, that so long miseries
Had kept from his lov’d home, and thus return’d
To see his house, wife, children, would have burn’d
In headlong lust to visit . . . ’
Athene tells him that Penelope is constant and equally cunning in keeping herself free from the suitors; that Telemachus is safely returned from a journey that has won him renown on his own account. She will help and glory in the bloodletting of the suitors that Odysseus will initiate:
‘I hope the bloods
And brains of some of these that waste thy goods
Shall strew thy goodly pavements. Join we then . . . ’
Athene disguises him as an old beggar and sends him off to an elderly, faithful swineherd, Eumaeus, who receives him with the simple hospitality due to wanderers.
From Eumaeus’ words we get a stark (Dark Age?) account of the suitors’ offences – they are eating too much in a poor country with not enough food – literally eating up Telemachus’ inheritance. In this world Odysseus’ fluency can be turned to good account – his lying tale succeeds in begging a cloak, but he is warned that news of Odysseus, such as that for which beggars have up till now been rewarded, will no longer be
believed or recompensed at the palace.
Book 15
Athene goes to Sparta to bring Telemachus home – the trap set in Book 4 by the suitors, who have gone unchecked while Telemachus was a boy and Odysseus absent, is now gradually closing in on the suitors themselves. Athene represents to the newly-mature Telemachus that his mother may not always remain locked in the past – with his adulthood comes the possibility of her independence; she may choose to reward the most persistent of her suitors . . . Telemachus skilfully negotiates his departure and his parting gifts (including a robe from Helen for his future bride). He arrived like a boy but leaves as hero among heroes.
On his return journey he accepts the supplication of a fugitive: he is now able, in his own right as the man in charge, to offer sacred guest-friendship and his protection.
Meanwhile Odysseus has asked Eumaeus for news of his mother and father – news he already has from the Underworld is now told to him on earth. This elicits memories of Eumaeus’ childhood, which Odysseus asks him to tell properly. In a vivid reference to the world of those who listened to Homer’s stories, Eumaeus agrees – there’s nothing else to do in the long evenings other than listen to stories or sleep the clock round. Besides, tales are a way of turning pain to good – the suffering is metamorphosed into pleasure as the story is recounted for men’s delight.
We two . . . will our bosoms cheer
With memories and tales of our annoys.
Betwixt his sorrows every human joys,
He most, who most hath felt and furthest err’d.’
After Eumaeus’ life story, the narrative shifts back to Telemachus, who avoids the suitors’ trap and makes his way to Eumaeus – a return elevated by portents and by Athene’s guidance.
Book 16
Eumaeus’ is the halfway house between shore and palace, the intermediary between father and son. There is no simple coming together between this boy who has had to grow up without a father and this man whose identity and qualities have been those of an individual hero – they have to negotiate a relationship while learning to establish their new identities on Ithaca.
The first sign of Telemachus’ place is the fawning of Eumaeus’ dogs (the dogs that were ready to attack Odysseus). Telemachus belongs here; he calls Eumaeus ‘Atta’ – a respectful and intimate term. Similes in Homer are used frequently to point to an unusual yet striking similarity (Odysseus clinging to the rocky shore in Phaeacia like an octopus). But when Eumaeus greets Telemachus Homer says:
There breath’d no kind-soul’d father that was fill’d
Less with his son’s embraces, that had liv’d
Ten years in far-off earth, now new retriev’d,
His only child too, gotten in his age,
And for whose absence he had felt the rage
Of griefs upon him . . .
The point of this simile is that it is a simile – Eumaeus is not Telemachus’s adoring father; the simile wonders at the gap between the emotions of the biological father, who demonstrates none of the natural sentiment of the simile and who observes his son coolly from the shadows, and the kind, tearful old man who has served as his emotional base all these years.
Looking after Odysseus is a problem for Telemachus, aware that the household structures of his youth are disintegrating and that events at the palace are moving too fast for him to be able to receive and protect a guest. Odysseus questions him about his helplessness and almost reproaches him (a very acute and timeless exchange between aging father and fully-grown son: ‘I could have done something about it at your age . . . ’). Athene intervenes by rejuvenating him, to Telemachus’ astonishment: he now thinks Odysseus to be a visiting deity. This Odysseus brusquely denies, abruptly revealing who he is:
‘I hold
No deified state. Why put you thus on me
A god’s resemblance? I am only he
That bears thy father’s name.’
Odysseus, the all-enduring, is suddenly overwhelmed at the suffering his absence has caused Telemachus, and weeping tries to embrace him. Telemachus keeps his distance, still taking him to be a god in disguise come to test him – in his wariness showing himself truly to be his father’s son. When he does finally believe, they weep together like birds whose fledglings have been stolen away from them by man – shedding common tears for the loss of the years spent separately.
Those years are lost, but they can establish a bond of common purpose: to rid the palace of the suitors and to bring the household to trial. Odysseus answers Telemachus with ‘the truth’ about his journey (as distinct from the Cretan tales he tells everyone else, even Athene!) and sends him back to the palace to put the first part of their secret plan into action. Here he must endure, as his father has had to do, whatever ill-treatment the suitors mete out.
The narrative switches to the suitors, whose ambush of Telemachus has been unsuccessful. They too talk of things coming to a crisis: Telemachus’ coming-of-age brings the need for Penelope to finally make a choice.
The book ends with Eumaeus’ return from the palace. A great deal has happened in his absence, although Athene reverses Odysseus’ rejuvenation so the scene in the hut appears the same. Telemachus and Odysseus are now bound in common secret knowledge – Eumaeus is uncertain about the figures he has seen in the ‘ambush’ ship:
The prince smil’d, and knew
They were the wooers, casting secret view
Upon his father.
Book 17
Book 17 starts with Telemachus’ return to Penelope who has been worrying about him – an emotional return vividly anticipated from the adolescent’s point of view: he must go, he says to
‘My mother . . .
. . . who, till her eyes
Mine own eyes witness, varies tears and cries
Through all extremes . . . ’
Penelope does indeed create the ‘scene’ Telemachus feared:
Her kind embraces, with effusion
Of loving tears; kiss’d both his lovely eyes,
His cheeks, and forehead; and gave all supplies
With this entreaty: ‘Welcome, sweetest light . . . ’
Telemachus uses his new assurance to hold her off (‘Move me not now’), telling her to collect her womenfolk to see to the ritual thanksgiving while he goes to call an assembly and see to his suppliant, the seer Theoclymenus. He does relent later, telling her the high points of his trip and assuring her that Odysseus is alive but detained. Theoclymenus reinforces this message, saying that Odysseus is not only alive but already on Ithaca. For the first time, Penelope does not turn down the possibility.
The theme of the avenger in disguise occupies the centre of this and the next book. In incident after incident Odysseus is abused and ill treated, although his bodily strength beneath the shabby disguise causes many a suitor to rue the insult. The motif of the poor stranger who appears in a household and who eventually throws off the disguise, rewards the worthy and generous and punishes the uncivil, is a common folk motif; the stranger is often (as Telemachus and one of the suitors suspected) a god in disguise. Odysseus’ real qualities of cunning, endurance and bodily strength can be displayed as a beggar as much as a king – this is a different world from the Iliad, where the noble are all brave and all beautiful, and only the low-born, foul-mouthed Thersites is ugly. In this world, Odysseus can harp on a commonality between the highest and the lowest in both being subservient to the needs of the belly. Here Odysseus is recognisably himself whether fighting a beggars’ duel, standing up to the suitors’ blows or begging his food with cunning stories.
The folk story of the disguised judge is interwoven with the narrative of the double process of recognition: of Odysseus being recognised as himself and of Odysseus learning who he now is, in the non-Iliadic world of Ithaca. On his first journey into town he sees his old dog, Argus, whom he t
rained for the chase before leaving for Troy, now lying on a dunghill dying of old age and neglect. The mistreatment of the once fine, prized hunting dog is distressing, a symbol of the waste by the suitors of Odysseus’ royal goods, and points to the sort of treatment anyone helpless will receive at their hands. Infinitely moving is the old dog’s summoning of his very last energy to wag his tail and prick his ears in recognition of his long absent master, before dying. For the dog, the recognition is simple, the relationship stable – no words or explanation are needed; the relationship between master and hound unchanged by twenty years. For others, Odysseus has to establish himself, to be recognised not as anything but for what he now is.
The centrepiece of Books 17–20 is the private meeting between Penelope and the still disguised Odysseus – a meeting prefigured by the nurse’s recognition of Odysseus from a scar that marked him from childhood. As with Argus, the recognition is simple – Odysseus for her is in some sense the same as the boy she suckled, who went on his first boar hunt, the scar a witness to the continuity. Odysseus prevents her from telling Penelope. Penelope’s recognition will be fuller, more complex and more difficult to achieve.
At the end of Book 17 the long-awaited meeting between Penelope and Odysseus is anticipated but is then, dramatically, postponed for a whole book. In the meantime there is a mock duel between Odysseus and Irus for the position of ‘official’ beggar, with the suitors putting forward Irus as their ‘champion’. Irus, like Argus, is an illustration of the rottenness of the palace as now infested by the suitors; his downfall is welcomed as just, prefiguring the more general punishment Odysseus will mete out, and the episode is a lively burlesque of a heroic encounter.