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Homer's Odyssey.

A Commentary

Denton J. Snider

The Sigma Publishing Co. 10 Van Buren St., Chicago, Ill. 210 Pine St., St. Louis, Mo.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE

INTRODUCTION 5

I. FIRST TWELVE BOOKS.

TELEMACHIAD 21

ULYSSIAD 121 (1) OCYGIA 129 (2) PHÆACIA 156 (3) FABLELAND 231

II. SECOND TWELVE BOOKS.

ITHAKEIAD 396 BOOKS 13-16 (PREPARATION) 407 BOOKS 17-24 (EXECUTION) 461 (1) WRONG (17-21) 468 (2) PUNISHMENT (22) 495 (3) RECONCILIATION (23-4) 500

SUMMARY 511

HOMER'S ODYSSEY.

BOOK FIRST--INTRODUCTION.

The Odyssey starts by organizing itself; it maps out its own structure in what may be called a General Introduction. Herein lies a significant difference between it and the Iliad, which has simply an Invocation to the Muse, and then leaps into the thick of the action. The Iliad, accordingly, does not formulate its own organization, which fact has been one cause of the frequent assaults upon its unity. Still the architectonic principle is powerful in the Iliad, though more instinctive, and far less explicit than in the Odyssey. It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the poet has reached a profounder consciousness of his art in his later poem; he has come to a knowledge of his constructive principle, and he takes the trouble to unfold the same at the beginning. To be sure, certain critics have assailed just this structural fact as not Homeric; without good grounds, in our judgment.

The First Book, accordingly, opens with an Introduction which belongs to the entire poem, and which embraces 95 lines of the original text. This portion we shall look at separately in some detail, as it throws a number of gleams forward over the whole action, and, as before said, suggests the poetic organism. It has three divisions, the Invocation, the Statement of the Obstacles to the return of the Hero, and the Assembly of the Gods, who are represented as organizing the poem from Olympus. The Divine thus hovers over the poem from the first, starting with one grand, all-embracing providential act, which, however, is supplemented by many special interventions of deities, great and small.

The Invocation. The first line speaks of the man, Ulysses, and designates his main attribute by a word, which may be translated versatile or resourceful, though some grammarians construe it otherwise. Thus we are told at the start of the chief intellectual trait of the Hero, who "wandered much," and who, therefore, had many opportunities to exercise his gift. In the second line our attention is called to the real starting point of the poem, the taking of Troy, which is the background of the action of the Odyssey, and the great opening event of the Greek world, as here revealed. For this event was the mighty shake which roused the Hellenic people to a consciousness of their destiny; they show in it all the germs of their coming greatness. Often such a concussion is required to waken a nation to its full energy and send it on its future career.

Note that Ulysses is here stated to be the taker of Troy, and this view is implied throughout the Odyssey. Note Achilles is the final Greek hero; he perished without capturing the city, and in his hands alone the Greek cause would have been lost. The intellectual hero had to come forward ere the hostile town could be taken and Helen restored. Herein the Odyssey does not contradict the Iliad, but is clearly an advance beyond it.

But Troy is destroyed and now the second grand question of the Greeks arises: How shall we get back! Only one half of the cycle is completed by the conquest of the hostile city; the second half is the restoration. For this disjunction from Hellenic life, brought about by war, is not only physical but has become spiritual. The theme, therefore, deals with the wise man, who, through his intelligence, was able to take Troy, but who has now another and greater problem--the return out of the grand estrangement caused by the Trojan expedition. Spiritual restoration is the key-note of this Odyssey, as it is that of all the great Books of Literature.

Here at the start we note two things coupled together which hint the nature of the whole poem: "He saw the cities of many men and knew their mind." Not alone the outer habitations of people Ulysses beheld, but also their inner essence, their consciousness. This last faculty indeed is the very vision of the sage; he looks through the external sensuous appearances of men into their character, into their very soul. The poem will describe many incidents, wanderings, tempests, calamities; but in them the poetic glance is to behold a great spiritual experience. The reader of the Odyssey must himself be a Ulysses, to a degree, and not only "see the cities of many men," but also he must "know their mind." Then he, too, is heroic in his reading of this book.

But not merely knowledge the Hero is to acquire, though this be much; the counterpart to knowledge must also be his, namely, suffering. "Many things he suffered on the sea in his heart;" alas! that too belongs to the great experience. In addition to his title of wise man, he will also be called the much-enduring man. Sorrow is his lot and great tribulation; the mighty sea will rise up in wrath and swallow all, except that which is mightier, namely his heroic heart. Knowledge and suffering--are they not the two poles of the universal character? At any rate the old poet has mated them as counterparts in his hero; the thirst to know drives the latter to reach beyond, and then falls the avenging blow of powers unseen.

Furthermore, there is a third trait which is still higher, also mentioned here: he sought to save not only himself but also his companions. That wisdom of his was employed, and that suffering of his was endured, not for his own good merely, but for the good of others. He must think and suffer for his companions; a suggestion of vicariousness lies therein, a hint of self-offering, which has not yet flowered but is certainly budding far back in old Hellas. He must do for others what he does for himself, if he be truly the universal man, that is, if he be Hero. For is not the universal man all men--both himself and others in essence? So Ulysses tries to save his companions, quite as much he tries to save himself.

But he did not do it, he could not do it; herein lies his limitation and theirs also, in fact, the limitation of the entire Greek world. What did these companions do? "They perished by their own folly;" they would not obey the counsel of their wise man; they rejected their Hero, who could not, therefore, rescue them. A greater wisdom and a deeper suffering than that of Ulysses will be required for their salvation, whereof the time has not yet come. He would bring them home, but "they ate of the oxen of the sun;" they destroyed the attribute of light in some way and perished. The fact is certainly far-reaching in its suggestion; a deep glance it throws into that old heathen world, whose greatest poet in the most unconscious manner hints here the tragic limitation of his people and his epoch. It is a hint of which we, looking back through more than twenty-five centuries can see the full meaning, as that meaning has unfolded itself in the ages. Time is also a commentator on Homer and has written down, in that alphabet of his, called events, the true interpretation of the old poet. Still the letters of Time's alphabet have also to be learned and require not only eyesight but also insight.

The Invocation puts all its stress upon Ulysses and his attempt to save his companions. It says nothing of Telemachus and his youthful experience, nothing of the grand conflict with the suitors. Hence fault has been found with it in various ways. But it singles out the Hero and designates three most important matters concerning him: his knowledge, his suffering, his devotion to his companions. Enough; it has given a start, a light has been put into our hand which beams forward significantly upon the poem, and illumines the mazes of the Hero's character.

Mark again the emphatic word in this Invocation; it is the Return (nostos), the whole Odyssey is the Return, set forth in many gradations, from the shortest and simplest to the longest and profoundest. The idea of the Return dominates the poem from the start; into this idea is poured the total experience of Ulysses and his companions. The two points between which the Return hovers are also given: the capture of Troy and the Greek world. Not a mere book of travels or adventure is this; it contains an inner restoration corresponding to the outer Return, and the interpreter of the work, if he be true to his function, will trace the interior line of its movement, not neglecting the external side which has also a right to be.

The Obstacles. Two of these are mentioned and carried back to their mythical sources. All the returning heroes are home from Troy except the chief one, Ulysses, whom Calypso detains in her grot, "wishing him to be her husband;" she, the unmarried, keeps him, the married, from family and country, though he longs to go back to both. She is the daughter of "the evil-minded Atlas," a hoary gigantesque shape of primitive legend, "who knows the depths of all the sea,"--a dark knowledge of an unseen region, from which come many fatalities, as shipwreck for the Greek sailor or earthquake for the volcanic Greek islands; hence he is imagined as "evil-minded" by the Greek mythical fancy, which also makes him the supporter of "the long columns which hold Heaven and Earth apart"--surely a hard task, enough to cause anybody to be in a state of protest and opposition against the happy Gods who have nothing to do but enjoy themselves on Olympus. Sometimes he refuses to hold the long columns for awhile, then comes the earthquake, in which what is below starts heavenward. Of this Atlas, Calypso is the offspring, and possibly her island, "the navel of the sea," is a product of one of his movements underneath the waters.