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Patterning in the Wanderings of Odysseus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 July 2014

John D. Niles
John D. Niles*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

Almost as soon as Odysseus sets sail from the terra firma of Troy in the direction of Ithaka, once the sacred citadel has been burnt to ashes, he seems to enter a Never-Never land of giants, monsters, witches, demigods and demigoddesses, strange beasts, fabulous kingdoms, and the dead. One adventure follows on the heels of another in a sequence as bewildering as any which ever occurred in the murky woods of Arthurian legend. Odysseus travels south, north, east, and west to the limits of the known earth. He spends seven years languishing on the island of Ogygia ‘at the navel of the ocean’ (1.50). At different moments he is threatened with tempest, armed attack, cannibalism, dismemberment, sorcery, and several sorts of seduction. He captures magnificent booty, receives fabulous gifts, enjoys the love of two goddesses, and is offered the hand of a king's daughter in marriage — and by the time that he finally arrives on the shore of Ithaka and sets out to reclaim his kingdom, he is utterly alone, bereft of all companions, his appearance that of a ragged beggar.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ramus , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , 1978 , pp. 46 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Aureal Publications 1978

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References

1. In the present essay, all quotations and line numbers refer to the two-volume edition by Stanford, W. B., 2nd edition (New York 1967).Google Scholar

2. Taylor, Charles H., Jr., ‘The Obstacles to Odysseus’ Return,’ The Yale Review 50 (1961), 569–80Google Scholar, rpt. in Taylor, , ed., Essays on the Odyssey (Bloomington 1963), 87–99Google Scholar; Segal, Charles P., ‘The Phaeacians and the Symbolism of Odysseus’ Return,’ Arion 1:4 (1962), 17–64Google Scholar; and Austin, Norman, Archery at the Dark of the Moon: Poetic Problems in Homer’s Odyssey (Berkeley 1975), 132–62.Google Scholar

3. Austin, 132–33. I should add that unlike Austin, I do not see that these categories are ‘distinguishable from each other by their increasing complexity,’ although clearly some individual adventures are more complex than others.

4. Whitman, Cedric, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (Cambridge, Mass. 1958), 288CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is little new under the sun, particularly in Homeric criticism, and Whitman’s remarks on the Odyssey are no exception: Woodhouse, W. J. earlier pointed out the ‘two plus one’ rhythm of the wanderings in The Composition of Homer’s Odyssey (Oxford 1930), 43–44Google Scholar, while on p. 333 of his Genèse de I’Odyssée (Paris 1954Google Scholar), Gabriel Germain diagrams the central place of the Nekyia in the scheme of the wanderings.

5. On the importance of Elpenor, note however Lord, Albert B., The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass. 1960), 167–68.Google Scholar

6. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Ulrich, Homerische Untersuchungen (Berlin, 1884), 116.Google Scholar

7. In his article, ‘Dread Goddess Endowed with Speech’, Archaelogical News 6 (1977), 77–85Google Scholar, Michael Nagler sums up the power and the essential ambiguity of these goddesses: ‘Their deinotēs [dread power] is eros itself: it can be “deceitful,” a treacherous and ultimately destructive influence, or it can both teach and help, depending on whether man masters it or is mastered by it’ (p. 80). I would like to express my thanks to Professor Nagler for having offered several suggestions for the improvement of the present essay.

8. On the parallelism between the episodes at Thrinakia and at Aeolia, see Fenik, Bernard, Studies in the Odyssey, Hermes Einzelschriften 30 (Wiesbaden 1974), 159–61Google Scholar, and Lidov, Joel B., ‘The Anger of Poseidon,’ Arethusa 10 (1977), 236 n. 17.Google Scholar Fenik offers a penetrating discussion of the doubling of characters and themes in the Odyssey (particularly in Books 13–24) throughout Part Two of his monograph (131–230).

9. Dimock, George E., Jr., stresses this aspect of Calypso in his essay ‘The Name of Odysseus,’ The Hudson Review 9 (1956), 52–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, rpt. in Taylor, Essays on the Odyssey (n. 2 above), 54–72. To Dimock, ‘Calypso is oblivion.’ She offers Odysseus ‘an immortality of oblivion, of no kleos, of nonentity’ (Taylor, 60).

10. Geographically, the Lotus-Eaters live in the south, the Laestrygonians appear to live in the extreme north, the World of the Dead lies to the extreme west, and Circe’s isle and the isle of Thrinakia lie in the extreme east, while Ogygia lies in the center of the sea.

11. See Pound, ‘Hell,’ in The Criterion, April 1934, rpt. in Literary Essays of Ezra Pound, ed. Eliot, T. S. (London 1960), 212Google Scholar; and Lord, George deF., ‘The Odyssey and the Western World,’ Sewanee Review 62 (1954), 406–27Google Scholar, rpt. in Essays on the Odyssey (n. 2 above), 36–53. Pound returns briefly to the same theme in The Fisan Cantos (New York 1948), canto LXXIX, p. 63.Google Scholar

12. See Dimock: ‘As has been well observed, the Sack of Ismarus is the Sack of Troy in its predatory essentials, with the glamor stripped off’ (Taylor, n. 2 above, 56).

13. In The Myth of Return in Early Greek Epic (New Haven, forthcoming 1978Google Scholar), Douglas Frame points out in detail the connection between noos (‘mind, awareness’) and nostos (‘return’) in the Odyssey, thus reinforcing the line of interpretation which has existed from antiquity to the present which reads Odysseus’ adventures as a kind of allegory of spiritual growth.

14. Kirk, G. S., The Songs of Homer (Cambridge 1962), 364–65.Google Scholar

15. ‘The Odyssey and the Western World’ (n. 11 above). Lord acknowledges his debt to Denton J. Snider, who stresses the spiritual evolution of Odysseus in his book Homer’s Odyssey: A Commentary, 3rd edition (St. Louis 1922). Dimock (n. 9 above) also sees the Odyssey as a tale of spiritual evolution in that he sees the hero as gaining his own identity through a gradual process of coming to terms with pain. Lidov (n. 8 above) takes note of the fact that we know of Odysseus’ spiritual evolution only through the wanderer’s own words: ‘… we do not see Odysseus change in the Odyssey, we only hear the report of the older, a wiser man on how he used to behave, and we can understand that a change has taken place’ (231). That the spiritual evolution of Odysseus takes the form of a growing awareness and acceptance of justice (dikē) is argued by Bradley, Edward M., ‘“The Greatness of His Nature”: Fire and Justice in the Odysey’ Ramus 5 (1976), 137–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. See Taylor, ‘The Obstacles to Odysseus’ Return,’ in Essays on the Odyssey (n. 2 above), 87, and Whitman (n. 4 above), 296.

17. One specific example of the survival value of piety in the world of Odysseus perhaps deserves particular mention. When Odysseus outwits the Cyclops, he does so thanks to the potent wine which he has persuaded the Cyclops to drink. This wine, Homer specifies (9.196–201), Odysseus obtained from Maron, a priest of Apollo from the city of Ismaros. When Odysseus sacked Ismaros, he spared Maron out of piety, and the wine which the grateful Maron gave him now helps to save his life.