Part 10

1. Ulysses passes into Fableland, having wantonly done a deed of violence against civilized life and order by destroying the city of the Ciconians (Book IX), as he was returning from the Trojan War. Such is the negative element in him, which has been engendered by that war, and which now appears in various manifestations, such as his doings with Polyphemus and Circe, till his career in Fableland winds up with destroying the Oxen of the Sun. This is the extreme negative act which throws him back beyond Circe's into Calypso's realm. He assaults really his own will in this last act, he undermines his own power of recovery, he puts out his own light. Circe would have sent him forward again, leaving intact his will-power; Calypso detains him lulled in the sensuous delights of her bower. He denies his own reason; how then can he rise after a fall? Indeed what use is there of rising? So he sinks down into Ogygia, the Dark Island.

2. It is no wonder, therefore, that he remained with Calypso seven years and more, draining to the dregs the cup of that life. Still he has desire to return home, must have it, he must possess reason to deny reason. He longs for what he has not, sensuous charms cannot drown his aspiration; such is the Hell in which he has placed himself. Still even here when he has passed his probation, he must be released by a decree of the Gods, who, formerly favorable to Neptune, the divine foe of Ulysses, have now become friendly to Minerva, the Hero's protectress. Why this change in the everlasting powers? When Ulysses is ready to leave Ogygia, the Gods cannot keep him there, they have to change; the divine Order must help him escape, if it be divine. This is just what happens; Zeus, voice of the Olympian law, commands his departure, and Calypso must obey.

3. Ulysses, then, comes to Phæacia, an institutional land with social, domestic, and political life. From the grot of Calypso he passes to the home of Arete; both woman and man are in an ethical relation. He sees a world of peace and harmony, he witnesses the corrective of his own negative Trojan experience. He, having taken Phæacia into himself, has a remedy for distracted Ithaca; he has beheld an ideal to which he can adjust his own land. He was not the man to bring civil order to Ithaca just after the destruction of Troy; now he has passed through his own destructive phases, has become conscious of them, has told them to the Phæacians, which long account has in it the character of a confession. All is given in a mythical form, but it is none the less an acknowledgment of error from first to last. He is the poetical confessor of himself, and the Phæacians are contemplating the grand experience in the mirror of art.

We may now see the reason why the poet began the story of Ulysses with the stay at Calypso's Isle. Thus the poem unfolds in the order of society, starting with the state of nature, passing thence to a civilized condition, and showing finally the conflicts of the same with the negative forces which develop in its own bosom. Homer could have landed Ulysses at Phæacia, and could have made the Ulyssiad start in that sphere, placing Calypso's Book just after the account of the slaughter of the Oxen of the Sun. But what a loss would that have been! No social development would thus be suggested in the movement of the poem, and the individual Ulysses would have to pass, not from institutional Phæacia, but from savage Ogygia to the reformation of Ithaca. In this way we realize to ourselves the true instinct, or perchance the profound thought which underlies the structure of this portion of the poem.

Thus we conceive the double movement of the Ulyssiad through its three main stages, in which we feel strongly emphasized the idea of development, of a genetic process. These lands and peoples are generated by the wanderer's own spirit, though they all exist in their own right and are carefully set down in Homeric geography. Ogygia is the product of Ulysses himself, and so he goes thither to the reality. The misfortunes in these lands are the very deeds of the offenders returning upon them. As the Gods are both subjective and objective, so are these poetic places and persons; they are both in Ulysses and outside of him, they are the inner change of the individual and the outer development of the world. Each, however, fits into the other, is inseparably intertwined with the other; both together form the double movement which is the fundamental structural fact of the present division of the Odyssey.

Of course our unfolding of the subject must follow the movement of the poem, but we shall not neglect the movement of the individual. Accordingly Calypso's Island, Ogygia, is the realm which is to be first considered.

BOOK FIFTH.

In this Book the reader will observe two distinct parts, which are so often found in Homer and constitute the deepest distinction in his poems: these two parts are the Upper World of the Gods and the Lower World of Man, both of which are shown in action and counteraction. The grand dualism between the mortal and the immortal is fused into a living narrative and makes the warp and woof of Homeric poesy. The general purport of both parts is seen to be the same at bottom: it is to remove the obstacles which stand in the way of the Return of Ulysses to home and country. These obstacles arise from the Gods above and from Nature below--the divine and the physical, though the latter also is presided over by deities. Thus the Greek hero, with the aid of the higher Gods, is to put down the lower ones, or convert them into aids for his advancement towards the grand end, which is his institutional life in Family and State. In this way only can Ulysses, from his alienation, attain unto harmony with himself and with the Divine Order.

The first part of the Book gives the Council of the Gods and its consequences reaching down to the mortal who is the subject of deliberation. We shall note three stages in this movement from Olympus to Earth: (1) Zeus to Hermes, (2) Hermes to Calypso, (3) Calypso to Ulysses. Thus from the highest the decree is brought below and opens the providential way.

The second part deals with the mortal, who is brought into relation with three Gods, all representing phases of the physical element of water: (1) Neptune, the great deity of the sea, (2) Ino Leucothea, a lesser deity of the same, (3) the River-God, through whose channel Ulysses comes at last to land. It is manifest that he must rise beyond these water-divinities with their uncertain fluctuating element, and attain to the fixed earth with its life, ere he can find repose. We shall now develop these two parts of the Book with their subdivisions in the order stated above.

First then is the divine obstacle, which has to be removed by the Gods in Homer, when the individual is ready to have it removed. This obstacle is at present centered in the Goddess Calypso, the marvelous concealer and extinguisher of the Hero in her island Ogygia. Neptune is not here spoken of, though his element, the sea, is mentioned as something which must also be met and transcended; the Hero through his own will can surmount this difficulty. Verily Calypso is the grand spiritual hindrance of Ulysses, and, to help him get rid of it, the Olympians assemble and start the movement, the conditions being that he is internally prepared to be helped by the Gods. Of the latter fact we shall note a number of indications hereafter.

Of this divine activity in removing the first obstacle we may distinguish three phases:--

1. The council of the Gods on Olympus under the presidency of Zeus, and the decree there.

2. Hermes is sent by the supreme deity to Calypso, with the decree.

3. Calypso imparts the decree to Ulysses, who soon sets about doing his part.

In this brief outline we see the descent of the divine influence from Zeus the Highest, through Hermes messenger of the Gods, to Calypso, a local subordinate deity, down to the mortal Ulysses who is to get the benefit thereof. Thus the poet makes his world-order ready for the deed of the man, who is now to act with all the energy of his being, and not lie back expecting the Gods to do everything for him. Such is the situation between the divine and human sides, of which we shall elaborate the former a little more fully.

1. The council of the Gods in which the matter is now discussed, seems somewhat like a repetition of the one at the beginning of the First Book, which indeed starts the whole poem. At present we may suppose that the poet wishes to recall that first council and its decree to the mind of the reader, inasmuch as the latter is now to begin the second grand division of the poem, the Odyssey proper, or Return of Ulysses.

Pallas takes up the complaint and arraigns Providence on an ethical ground: the good king is forgotten and the good man suffers. To the face of the Supreme Ruler she draws the conclusion: "Let not any sceptered king henceforth be kind to his people and recognize justice, but always let him be harsh and work unrighteousness." Then she cites the unhappy lot of Ulysses. But Zeus throws the charge back upon Pallas, for she already had laid the divine plan that Ulysses was to take vengeance on wrong-doing suitors, and Telemachus she could save "by her skill," if so she chose. Here Pallas again hints as she did in the First Book, the two lines on which the poem moves (Telemachus and Ulysses), and she also notes the two present obstacles (Calypso and the sea) in the way of the Return of Ulysses.

The divine activity begins work at once: Zeus sends Hermes to Calypso with the Olympian decree. Ulysses, however, is to reach home "without any escort of the Gods or of mortal men;" that is, he must exercise his own free-will tremendously, there is to be no special intervention of the Gods without the corresponding human effort. Note this passage as indicating the consciousness of the poet respecting divine help; it is not to take the place of free agency, but to complement the same. The Hero will have to sail on a raft, "suffering evils;" but he will reach "the land of the Phæacians, near of kin to the Gods," where he will be "honored as a God," and will be sent home with abounding wealth, "more than he would ever have received at Troy, returning unharmed with his share of the booty." Such is the promise of the world-governor to the self-reliant man; this promise is not fate but foresight on the part of the Supreme God. "Thus is the Hero destined to see again his friends," namely by means of a small raft or float, which he alone must control in his own strength, without the help of God or man. Such is the reward of heroic endeavor, proclaimed by Zeus himself.

2. The messenger Hermes begins his flight down to Calypso, holding his magic wand, with which he puts men to sleep or wakens them, imparting the power of vision or taking it away. He reaches the wonderful island with its grot, the account of which has been a master-stroke in literature, and shows that the description of nature was not alien to the Greek poet, though he rarely indulges in it. One thinks that the passage contains a suggestion of much modern writing of the kind.

It is to be noted that this island is mostly a wild product, it has had very little training from its resident. A natural house and garden we see it to be in the main; the senses, especially sight and smell, are gratified immediately by physical objects. There is little indication of Art, possibly a beginning in the singing and weaving; rude nature may have been transformed somewhat in the four fountains and in the trailing grape-vine. But this description is not made for its own sake, as are many modern descriptions of nature; the whole is the true environment for Calypso, and suggests her character.

Her name means the concealer, concealed herself in that lone sea-closed island, and concealing others. Undeveloped she is, like nature, yet beautiful; sunken still in the life of the senses, she dwells in her little paradise without any inner scission. But it must be recollected that Ulysses is not native to the island, he has come or rather fallen hither, from a higher condition. He, therefore, has the scission in himself, he longs to leave and be restored out of this realm of mere nature.

With such a longing the Gods must coincide, for they are the Gods of culture, of the rise out of the physical. The long Journey of Hermes hints the distance between Olympus and Calypso's isle--a distance which has its spiritual counterpart. The command of the Olympians is borne to this lower Goddess; Hermes is the voice of the higher ethical divinity to the lower one of mere nature. But even the higher God has his physical counterpart, is not yet wholly a spirit; so Hermes eats his ambrosia and drinks his nectar set before him by Calypso in true Greek fashion and misses the smoke of sacrifices along his barren route.

It is curious to see how Hermes plays with polytheism, hinting ever so slyly the contradiction in the Greek Pantheon. "Why dost thou a God ask me a God why I come?" It is indeed an absurd question, for a God ought to know in advance. In numerous places we can trace a subtle Homeric humor which crops out in dealing with his many deities, indicating a start toward their dissolution. Then with a strong assertion of the supremacy of one God, Zeus, Hermes utters the unwilling word: Ulysses must depart from this island.

The answer of Calypso is significant, she charges the Gods with jealousy; "Ye grudge the Goddesses openly to mate with men," which proposition she nails by several examples. But the Gods reserve to themselves the privilege of license with mortal women. A complaint still heard, not in the Olympian but in our Lower World; men are not held to the same code of morals that women are! But Calypso yields up her lover whom she "thought to make immortal and ageless." What else can she do? It is true that she saved him once and has preserved him till the present; she is, however, but a stage which must now be transcended. Appetite may preserve man, still he is to rise above appetite.

3. Now Ulysses is brought before us. The first fact about him is, his intense longing to return home; he is found "sitting on the shore, and his eyes were never dry of tears" as he looked out on the sea toward his country; "for the nymph was no longer pleasing to him," whatever may have been the case once. Surely the hero is in bonds which he cannot break, though he would; a penitential strand we may well find in his sorrow; thus he is ready for release.

Calypso, therefore, announces to him the divine plan: he must make a raft and commit himself to the waters. She has to obey, for is she not really conquered by Ulysses? Certainly the divine order requires her to send the man away from her island. Yet the return is by no means made easy, but is to be won by hardest effort; he must grapple with the waves, with angry Neptune after leaving Calypso. No wonder that Ulysses shuddered at the proposition; truly he has the choice between the devil and the deep sea, and he manfully chooses the latter. First, however, the Goddess has to take the great oath "by Earth, by Heaven above and Styx below," the sum total of the physical universe, from whose presence the perjurer cannot escape, though a God, that she is not practicing any hidden guile against her much-desired guest. Always the doubter, the skeptic Ulysses will show himself, even toward a divinity. He must test the Gods also, as well as man. Very beautiful and humane is the answer of the Goddess: "Such things I plan and deliberate for thee as I would devise for myself, were I in so great straits. For I too have a righteous mind, and the heart within my breast is not of iron, but compassionate."

Has a change come over the Goddess through this visit from Olympus? Hardly could she have felt this before, else she would have sent away Ulysses of her own accord. Her adjustment to the divine decree seems now to be internal, and not simply a yielding to an external power. Still the separation costs her deep pangs, and she wonders how Ulysses, a mortal, can give her up, who is immortal, with all her beauty and the pleasures of her paradise.