On Mother’s feeling much depends; if she
looks on you kindly, you shall see your friends
under your own roof in your father’s country.”
Odysseus is probably coming to realize that were he to remain in Phaiákia he would find himself repeating his experience in Ogygia: living very well but submitting to the will of women.
He is made welcome and moves freely among these fortunate people, joining in their sports and revealing his heroic strength by casting the discus farther than anyone else, and listening to their minstrel making fine poetry of an episode during the Trojan war. Recalling his own sufferings there, he weeps, but to these people war is merely matter of an evening’s entertainment. Questioned by Alkinoos about his identity, he shows that he, too, possesses the minstrel’s art and relates the full story of his voyages, beginning by proudly naming himself, an essential step in his recovery:
“I am Laërtês’ son, Odysseus.
Men hold me
formidable for guile in peace and war:
this fame has gone abroad to the sky’s rim.
My home is on the peaked sea-mark of Ithaka …”
At this point Homer as it were hands the poem over to his hero, letting Odysseus himself tell the story of his voyages. They take him to strange regions, to the world of folktale and fable. Odysseus, however, belongs to a very different world and a very different genre, that of heroic saga and epic poetry with its own characteristic diction and meter. By letting Odysseus tell his story in first-person narrative, Homer goes a long way towards solving the problem of inserting into a heroic poem unheroic material that has no business there. Odysseus says that he met these outlandish figures and we are prepared to believe him. Once he gets back to Ithaka there is no reason for him to continue to assume the role of narrator, for by this point the action takes place on solid human ground even though here too the theme belongs to folklore, the widely diffused tale of a man who after many years returns home and finds that his wife has remained faithful to him.
Before he begins his story, Odysseus singles out two of his experiences. After naming his homeland he says:
“I shall not see on earth a place more dear,
though I have been detained long by Kalypso,
loveliest among goddesses, who held me
in her smooth caves, to be her heart’s delight,
as Kirkê of Aiaia, the enchantress,
desired me, and detained me in her hall.”
The poetic freedom of Fitzgerald’s translation misses something in the Greek. Homer says that Kalypso detained him in her caves desiring to make him her husband, in the same way that Kirke detained him in her dwelling desiring to make him her husband—the identical phrase is repeated. For whatever reason, he begins by naming two goddesses (Kirke is a goddess too) who both wanted the same thing, to make a husband of the man who is already a husband, Penelope’s. We don’t make much of this at the time, but it comes to mind later when we notice that a number of apparently unrelated episodes are linked in some way with each other.6
The first adventure, the attack on the Phaiákia, presents no problem, for they are a historical people living to the north of Troy in Thrace (modern Turkey) and are mentioned in Herodotus’ history. What Odysseus describes is the kind of buccaneering raid that the Akhaian heroes in The Iliad went in for when they were not fighting the Trojans, a foolish affair that nearly ends in disaster. The raiders collect some plunder, but the Phaiákia rally and attack, and Odysseus and his men are sent running back to their ships, suffering heavy casualties. They set sail across the Aegean intending to make for home, but winds drive them around Malea, the southeastern cape of the Peloponnese, and then way off course southwards to a coast inhabited by people who live on the Lotos flower. They are now right off the map into fabulous territory, but the Greek genius is little given to romance fantasy, and although the Lotos Eaters have no historical reality they are recognizable enough, members of our own society indeed, aimless folk who drift away their minds and memories as they munch their honeyed plant. Some of the crew are tempted by the life these feckless dropouts lead: “they longed to stay forever, browsing on/that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland,” and have to be driven forcibly back to their ships. The temptation the Lotos Eaters present, to sit back and relax the will, specifically to lose the desire to return home, the magnetic attraction that keeps Odysseus on the go, is one that will be found in several of these stories. He himself is untouched by what they offer; the indignity of vegetable repose can get no purchase on his iron will.
“‘In the next land we found were Kyklopês,’” he continues; among them dwells one Polyphemos (usually referred to as the Kyklops), a giant man-eating ogre with only one eye. The story that follows is adapted from a folktale found in many parts of the world. Typically it begins like this version from Serbia:
A priest and his scholar were once walking through a great mountainous region when night overtook them. Seeing a fire burning in a cave some way off, they made for it. On reaching the cave they found nobody in it except a giant with one eye in his forehead. They asked him if he would let them enter and he answered “Yes.” But the mouth of the cave was blocked with a huge stone, which a hundred men could not have stirred. The giant arose, lifted the stone, and let them in. Then he rolled back the stone into the mouth of the cave and lit a great fire. The travelers sat down beside it and warmed themselves. When they had done so, the giant felt their necks in order to know which was the fatter that he might kill and roast him …”
And so forth.7
Odysseus tells his story in the manner of an anthropologist describing some primitive people, though he doesn’t always sound sufficiently objective. He begins by calling them “‘giants, louts, without a law to bless them,’” but then gets down to the job and reports their soil to be so rich that
“In ignorance leaving the fruitage of the earth in mystery to the immortal gods,
[more literally “trusting in the immortal gods”]
they neither plow
nor sow by hand, nor till the ground, though grain—
wild wheat and barley—grows untended, and
wine-grapes, in clusters, ripen in heaven’s rain.”
That is, these loutish giants live as virtuous men did in the Golden Age. They hold no town meetings, Odysseus goes on professionally, nor do they have any common legal system, but each one deals out rough justice in his own home. They possess a good natural harbor, yet they make no use of it, knowing nothing of ships or seafaring. Clearly this is a place that should be developed—“‘seagoing folk would have annexed it.’” These words, it must be said, are not in the Greek; Fitzgerald is making a justifiable guess at what is in Odysseus’ mind. Greek colonialism was under way in the eighth century B.C., the probable period of the poem’s composition.
He and his men head for a cave that they have seen from shipboard. A prodigious man lives there alone, he says, a complete savage. Since they have only just arrived, we are bound to wonder how he knows this. They find the cave well provisioned with racks full of cheese and pens crowded with lambs and kids. Let’s grab this loot and run for it, the men say, but Odysseus wants to stay and have a word with the proprietor. The Kyklops appears and sits down to milk the ewes, obviously a skilled dairyman, since he makes a practiced job of it. Hardly what one expects of an oversized cannibal. Odysseus asks that he give them good treatment, reminding him that “‘Zeus will avenge/the unoffending guest.’” Since they have just been proposing to raid his stores, this is a piece of effrontery that the giant brushes aside. “‘We Kyklopês/care not a whistle for your thundering Zeus/or all the gods in bliss.’” Yet Odysseus has just told us that they trust in the immortal gods. A slip of the tongue? He knows, however, how to deal with characters of this sort:
“A wineskin full
I brought along, and victuals in a bag,
for in my bones I knew some towering brute
would be upon us soon�
��all outward power,
a wild man, ignorant of civility.”
Hardly the obvious means of defense against a towering brute.
The Kyklops—or let him sometimes have his name, Polyphemos—at once seizes a couple of the men and devours them raw. Appalled, Odysseus is about to draw his sword and run him through when he reflects that if he does so they will be unable to get out of the cave, since Polyphemos has blocked the entrance with a boulder too big for anyone but himself to shift. Never at a loss, Odysseus once again knows how to deal with the difficulty. Next morning when the brute, after having had a couple more men for breakfast, goes off to pasture his flock (reblocking the entrance), Odysseus takes a great wooden log—the Kyklops uses it as a cane, a cruel touch—and, cutting it down to size, hews it to make a stake with a pointed end. Back comes Kyklops in the evening and Odysseus plies him with the wine he has brought. Becoming more cordial in his cups, he asks the visitor’s name. “‘My name is Nohbdy,’” Odysseus replies, an old joke that will soon be put to good use.8 In high good humor, the Kyklops turns witty: Well, Nohbdy, he says, I’ve got a gift for you—I’ll eat you last! and then falls heavily asleep. This gives Odysseus the chance to put his plan into operation. He takes the log from the embers where he has hidden it—we are not told that the weather is cold, so why is there a fire in the cave, since the Kyklops doesn’t cook his victims? The story, however, needs a fire to heat the spiked log (Why? The log will serve its purpose as it is) to drill out the brute’s eye and allow Odysseus and his men to escape undetected. The nasty business of the blinding proceeds according to plan and the Kyklops yells in agony. His fellows come to ask him what the matter is, and now for the great joke:
“Why are you shouting? Has somebody hurt you?”
“Nohbdy has hurt me.”
“If nobody’s hurt you, why are you shouting?”
They make their escape next morning tied under the bellies of the rams with Odysseus clinging for dear life to the woolliest ram—another piece of Odyssean cunning. The flock leaves the cave, a handsome ram usually their leader in the rear. The Kyklops pats him and says, showing an affectionate side to his nature that we had not expected, “‘Sweet cousin ram, why lag behind the rest? … Can you be grieving/over your Master’s eye?’” Blindly he follows the men as they rush to their ships and get away—only just, for Odysseus is rash enough to taunt him by describing the trick he has played and to identify himself—he who was Nobody is now Somebody, Odysseus! This nearly leads to disaster, for the Kyklops tears off the top of a hill big enough to sink them, then prays to his divine father Poseidon to punish the man who has injured him. The god hears his prayer and will cause Odysseus a lot of trouble on his later voyages.
This celebrated episode reads well but has some odd features. How does Odysseus know that a prodigious man lives in the cave? Why does he take wine rather than a long spear to defend himself? The explanation must be that this is first-person narrative not quite perfectly handled, with the arch-narrator Homer making the fictional narrator Odysseus know things that he cannot possibly know, a fault that novelists were sometimes to be guilty of. It is Homer who knows about the inhabitant of the cave, adding this detail as a way of promising an exciting story to come. It is Homer not Odysseus who knows that the plot is going to require some wine.9 Some faults are due to Homer’s drawing on different versions of the story. “In the common folk-tale,” Professor Denys Page tells us, “the giant cooks his victims on a spit over the fire. When he is asleep the hero takes the spit, heats it in the fire, and plunges it into the giant’s eye. The Odyssey [almost] alone among all versions of this folk-tale, substitutes a log of olive-wood for the spit.”10 It may also be Homer, whose all-embracing humanity can reach beyond the human realm to the animal, who gives the Kyklops a pet ram, an affecting trait quite inconsistent with the way that Odysseus depicts him.
Some anomalies may be due not to Homer but to the fictional narrator whose account of Kyklopean culture is designed to show him in a good light. If we look through this account we see a very different picture, a pre-technological people who do not welcome intruders with designs on their land. To eat them is admittedly a bit much, but the story requires a man-eater, so Polyphemos’ cannibalism cannot be omitted. Perhaps the other Kyklopes do not have this bad habit. They enjoy a prelapsarian existence and trust in the immortal gods to grant them the fruits of the earth without labor. And yet Odysseus represents Polyphemos as saying that Kyklopes don’t give a damn for the gods.
Faults in this story there undoubtedly are, but frankly they don’t much matter. Most people never notice them. And before we blame Homer for being careless, we should bear in mind that this is only the second of the tales he puts into Odysseus’ mouth, and he has not yet quite mastered the difficult art of first-person narrative. He becomes more skillful as he goes on.
On next to the floating island of Aiolos the wind king. Islands of this sort are said to be a common feature of seamen’s yarns, but the picture that Homer presents (Odysseus hardly seems to be speaking here) suggests a more elevated source, certainly in Fitzgerald’s translation, which gives the description of this little realm a fragile grace hardly present in the Greek, which is more matter-of-fact:
Twelve children had old Aiolos at home—
six daughters and six lusty sons—and he
gave girls to boys to be their gentle brides;
now those lords, in their parents’ company,
sup every day in hall—a royal feast
with fumes of sacrifice and winds that pipe
’round hollow courts; and all the night they sleep
on beds of filigree beside their ladies.
Nowhere does the poem move so far from everyday reality; this sweetly ceremonious household is half fairy-tale enchantment, half ancient Egypt where son married daughter to preserve the purity of the line. Odysseus is kindly welcomed and Aiolos gives him a bag of winds to waft him safely home. His men, alas, thinking that the bag contains gifts for Odysseus but none for them tear it open, the winds break loose, and a storm drives them back to Aiolos’ island, where they are sent off in disgrace. They sail next to a land occupied by giant cannibals called Laistrygones, but having recently had a fine tale about a giant cannibal we are not very engaged and may be forgiven for thinking that Homer nods here. He includes this brief episode, it has been suggested, because the story was popular but had been associated with a different hero. The only positive contribution it makes to the narrative is that as Odysseus’ little fleet is desperately pulling away from land the Laistrygones bombard them with boulders (just as the Kyklops had done), sinking every ship except his own.
But if Homer nods here, he is wide awake when he comes to the story of Kirke. Some scholars have complained that she is merely a variation of Kalypso. It is better to see her, with Stephen Scully, as an example of deliberate doubling. In no sense, however, is this story repetitious, for Kirke is a stranger more sinister figure and this is a more complex story. Like other characters whom Odysseus meets, she belongs to folklore, a type of the witch who lures travelers to her home, transforms them into animals and sometimes eats them. (Hansel and Gretel provide the children’s version.) Yet if she is part witch, she is also a goddess, seemingly young and beautiful.
A day or so after arriving at her island, Odysseus climbs a hill to survey the territory and looks for signs of human habitation. Seeing smoke rise from a house in the woods, he sends a party of men to reconnoiter. Approaching the house, they come on lions and wolves ensorcelled, we are told, by Kirke. They are quite tame and fawn on the men. She welcomes them into her house where she gives them a drugged potion “to make them lose/desire or thought of [their] dear father land”—we seem to have heard of something like this before —then waves her magic wand and transforms them into pigs. The leader of the party, seeing no one come out, suspects mischief and goes back to report to Odysseus. He sets off to do what he can for his men and on the way meets Hermes disguised as a young m
an who gives him a plant called molü that has the power to render him immune from Kirke’s witchery. Odysseus goes in and she gives him a drink, first adding a pinch of her drug. It has no effect on him, thanks to the molü, we assume, but we would expect to be told what he did with the plant—break off a piece perhaps and put it in his cup. But Homer (here again we seem to be listening to Homer rather than Odysseus) has no taste for magic and is content simply to mention the plant as a way of describing Odysseus’ immunity. His interest is rather in Kirke’s words when she sees that she has failed to bewitch him: “Hale must your heart be and your tempered will.” Fagles’s rendering, “you have a mind in you no magic can enchant,” is closer to the Greek, but Fitzgerald, whose translation is as usual interpretive rather than literal, rightly sees that what saves Odysseus is his will.
Having failed to transform him, Kirke now proposes to use another weapon in her arsenal: she invites him into her bed. He rejects her offer until he has made her swear a great oath that she will not harm him, fearing that once she has him stripped she will take his manhood. This is most readily understood as referring to castration, but that is not the threat she poses and the Greek should be taken to mean “make me other than a man”—like the lions and wolves outside her house, transformed, we are told, by her evil drug?11 No, these must be victims of Kirke in her other aspect, not witch but goddess in search of human lovers whom she transforms once she tires of them, like the Babylonian Ishtar, who, Denys Page conjectures, “may well be the prototype of the Homeric Circe.”12 In the Near Eastern epic Ishtar seeks the love of Gilgamesh, who rejects her, reminding her of what happened to other mortals who succumbed to her advances:
The Odyssey: The Fitzgerald Translation Page 45