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EURYKLEIA'S SILENCE AND ODYSSEUS’ ENORMITY: THE MULTIPLE MEANINGS OF ODYSSEUS’ TRIUMPHS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 November 2015
Extract
At his greatest moment of triumph, Odysseus demands holy silence. The hero who has more to say about himself than any other Homeric character, who boasts that his fame resounds up to heaven, quiets his most ardent accomplice, the old, faithful nurse Eurykleia, as she is about to shout in joy at his victory over the suitors. Why this uncharacteristic circumspection, this apparent humility? Reaching an answer to this question will take us through several important topics in the critical study of the Odyssey. We will find greater nuance to Odysseus’ ethics than are usually allowed; certain words and phrases have underappreciated layers of meaning that are brought out by paying attention to other contexts and parallel episodes in which they are used; focalization can be deliberately obscured; several of Odysseus’ greatest triumphs turn out to have an ironic cast. The broader conclusion my investigation leads to is that, behind the surface, positive interpretation of his character, Odysseus casts a darker shadow connoting a more sinister evaluation. Odysseus recognizes the possibility of such a negative interpretation when he silences both Eurykleia and the darker, alternative evaluation of his character that her reaction ironically signifies. This conclusion should lead us to revise a prominent (perhaps even the prevailing) view that the Odyssey is essentially a univocal text. This study might best be thought of as an experiment in seeing how far we can take the possibility of multiple, countervailing interpretations of Homeric language. If my reading is even partly persuasive, the Odyssey will come to seem more sophisticated and more disturbing than we might have thought.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Ramus , Volume 44 , Issue 1-2: New Essays on Homer: Language, Violence, and Agency , December 2015 , pp. 52 - 74
- Copyright
- Copyright © Aureal Publications 2015
References
1. Unless otherwise noted, I follow von der Mühll's (1962) Greek text of the Odyssey and Allen's (1931) of the Iliad. All translations are my own.
2. See Fernández-Galiano (1992), ad loc., for a summary of such views.
3. Segal (1994), 221, emphasizes Odysseus’ development: ‘Odysseus does seem to have learned from his mistakes’ with this ‘gesture of moral restraint’. On Odysseus’ restraint and humanity at this point, see also Rutherford (1986), 160; Friedrich (1991), 28; Louden (1999), 84; Montiglio (2000), 275.
4. Buchan (2004a), 178. See also the equivocal remarks of Crotty (1994), 155f.; Saïd (2011), 214.
5. Bakker (2013), 159: ‘[T]he more specific a formula and/or the more restricted its distribution, the greater the possible awareness of its recurrence and of its potential for signaling meaningful repetition.’ This scale encodes the ‘specificity of the similarity of scenes to each other’.
6. Gasparov (2010), passim, esp. 8. Gasparov's ‘intertextual’ theory of speech builds both on the literary criticism of Bakhtin (1981, 1984, and 1986) and Kristeva (1980 and 1984) and on work in cognitive linguistics, esp. Langacker (1987), 154-65, who, influenced by Haiman (1980), has developed an ‘encyclopedic’ conception of semantics. Bakker's analysis is also indebted to cognitive linguistics, esp. Chafe (1994).
7. For instance, Muecke (1982), 33, quotes Chevalier (1932), 42: ‘a contrast between a reality and an appearance’; see also Booth (1974) and Booth (1961), 304, whose rhetorical definition of irony stresses the ‘collusion’ of the author and the reader. On irony in the Iliad, see Rabel (1997), 8 and passim; on the Odyssey, see Dekker (1965); Rutherford (1992), 10, 59; Louden (2011), 34, 258-82; Bonifazi (2012), 69-125.
8. On the instability of irony and the role of the interpreter (or auditor or reader), see Goldhill (2012), 13-37, on Sophocles; more generally, see de Man (1996), 163-84.
9. ἀτασθαλίαι has this same meaning in both the Iliad (4.409, 22.104) and the Odyssey (1.7, 34, 10.437, 12.300, 21.146, 22.317, 416, 23.67, 24.458), though it is much more important in the latter poem. Some important discussions include Jaeger (1933), 196f.; Clay (1983), 37, emphasizing an apologetic function; Friedrich (1987), 392, who adds (unnecessarily in my view) that there must be a ‘path for alternative action’; Finkelberg (1995); Danek (1998), ad 1.32-43; Cairns (2012), 35-49. Bakker (2013), 114-19 and 123f., has also examined the relationship among the various references to ἀτασθαλία in terms of their ‘interformularity’. I agree with most of his conclusions, though I take the implications of the link among these instances further.
10. Note how Laertes exclaims, ‘you gods still exist’ (ἔτ’ ἐστὲ θεοὶ), when he has learned that the suitors have paid for their ‘wanton outrage’ (ἀτάσθαλον ὕβριν, 24.351f.). See Burkert (1960), 141, and Krehmer (1976), 15. Note also that Helios threatens to undermine the fundamental natural order by leaving to take his light to the underworld, if the companions go unpunished (12.238-83). Cf. Anaximander fr. 1, which connects δίϰη of the cosmic/natural world and the social world: see Vlastos (1947).
11. The close juxtaposition in the proem of Odysseus’ desire and attempt to save his companions (1.5f.) with their death by their ἀτασθαλίαι (7) hints at the narrative and causal connections between the two. Buchan (2004a), 134 and 155-61, makes the provocative claim that Odysseus has a repressed desire to kill his companions. In the Thrinakia episode, Buchan draws out what he sees as malicious negligence on Odysseus’ part, who gives his companions ‘every opportunity to show their infamous atasthalia [sic]’ (157). Others have remarked on what they see as various shortcomings of Odysseus’ warnings—Fenik (1974), 212 n.126, Schadewaldt (1960)—but not appreciated their fundamentally circular irony.
12. The only other case of proleptic reference to ἀτασθαλίαι is at 21.146, but this might be best thought of as the narrator's retrospective indictment (like 1.7), despite the characterization of it by de Jong (2001), 12, as an instance of ‘embedded focalization’.
13. Odysseus’ reliability as a narrator of the apologoi has received much more attention recently: see Parry (1994), Zerba (2009), and Hopman (2012).
14. Schadewaldt (1960), esp. 867f.
15. Pucci (1987), 127-38; Louden (1999), 35-49; Bakker (2013), 153f.
16. To be clear, δάπεδον need not refer to indoor spaces exclusively: cf. 4.627, where it denotes a leveled, designated space for the athletic games of the suitors. Nonetheless, the important point is that such spaces are built for peaceful activities connected with the city and home, removed from the more natural landscape of Iliadic war. On the change of the scene of killing between the two poems from the wild spaces outside communities to the cultured spaces within communities, see Redfield (1983), 221f.; see Nagler (1990) more generally on the Odyssey's anxieties about violence within the household.
17. See Tsagalis (2008a), 30-43.
18. See Katz (1991), 3-6, 194
19. As Eustathius emphasized, inserting the gloss ἐν τῷ ἔτι ζῆν after ποθέοντες. Bakker (2013), 111, draws attention to line 388 to show a paradigmatic link between Odysseus and Helios. Following de Jong (2001), ad loc., Scott (2009), 115 and 231 n.90, notes that, compared to other fish similes, this simile alone does not show the fish speared or hooked—in other words, as still alive. But, pace Scott, the simile does not contrast with the gore of the scene. It emphasizes it.
20. See Bakker (2013), 72f.
21. de Jong (1987), 125, puts it this way, using her technical terminology: ‘Comparisons and similes produced by the NF1 reach the Ne1Fe1 only, the characters remaining unaware of the fact that they are compared to, say, a lion.’ She does allow for a few, rare occasions where a character, instead of the narrator, focalizes a simile. (And in de Jong [2001], ad loc., she says Eurykleia focalizes this simile.) But focalization is different from knowledge of content. And it is likely true that a character being compared is never aware of it; but the more salient question is whether a character focalizing a simile is aware of it. This question is rarely asked. See also Ready (2011), 150-57; Ready (2012), 80: ‘similes in the narrator-text are meant only for external narratees’.
22. See de Jong (1987), 38 and 101-48. On μέγα…ἔργον as evaluative, see below.
23. 45 and 48 match 22.401 and 402 almost verbatim. Some mss. omit 23.48, but see van der Valk (1949), 271.
24. Burkert (1972), 12; however, the meaning is debated. For further bibliography, see LfgE s.v. Apart from the two uses here (408, 411), it appears three other times in Homer, all explicitly ritual contexts (3.450, 4.767; Il. 6.301).
25. See OED s.v. The word is often used as a concrete noun for the etymologically related (but distinct) adjective ‘enormous’.
26. See Barker and Christensen (2008), 19-22, although I disagree with their interpretation of 22.408 as unambiguously positive. Hesiod also uses the collocation in this sense when he has Ouranos ridicule the crimes of the Titans (Theog. 209f.).
27. Chantraine (1999), s.v.; Bakker (2013), 63-73, uses the same etymology for a different but complementary interpretation.
28. On ἄχος, see Fernández-Galiano (1992), ad 21.412; Nagy (1979), 69-117.
29. Segal (1994), 85-109. Note how Alkinoos says ‘grief’ (ἄχος, 8.541) has gripped Odysseus after he heard Demodokos sing of his sacking of Troy.
30. Cf. the closing formula of Homeric hymns with the vocative addressing the god about whom the song was just sung (e.g., Hymn. Hom. Merc. 579f.); also Hesiod's hymn to the Muses (Theog. 1-115), esp. 36-52, where the Muses sing both about Zeus and to him. That is not to say there is not simultaneously also an audience of mortals for hymns.
31. Dougherty (1991), 98-100.
32. Buchan (2004a), 177, reaches a similar conclusion.
33. At the passive end, cf. Od. 24.93, where Achilles did not ‘lose his name’ (ὄνομ’ ὤλεσας) and renown after he died. At the active end, cf. Il. 8.498, where Hektor declares his desire to defeat the Achaian force: ‘having destroyed all the Achaians and their ships’ (νῆάς τ᾽ ὀλέσας ϰαὶ πάντας Ἀχαιοὺς); and cf. esp. Od. 2.330, where the suitors are worried that Telemachos will poison them and ‘kill us all’ (ἡμέας πάντας ὀλέσσῃ). Barker (2009), 109 n.74, also notes the ambiguity in 24.428.
34. 110-14 are identical to 12.137-41, apart from a slight and unimportant difference (in most mss.) in the opening of 12.138.
35. The second example is one of Odysseus’ lying tales, but his story sticks rather close to what happened in Book 12. To be clear, making Odysseus the subject of ὄλλυμι does not unequivocally mark Odysseus as the agent responsible: at 9.63, 566, 10.134, Odysseus and his surviving companions ‘lose’ (ὀλέσαντες) a part of their crew. But even on these occasions—the encounters with the Cicones, Cyclops, and Laistrygones—the survivors might bear some responsibility. The essential point is that the active aorist form of ὄλλυμι is ambiguous and thus potentially ironic.
36. See Clay (1983), 203f., though she underappreciates the irony of Athena's words, calling them only ‘cold comfort’.
37. Danek (2002), esp. 24f.; Bakker (2013), 132-34; see also Russo (1997) on Odysseus as an example of the Jungian trickster archetype.