Homer's Odyssey Part 13

Not without significance does the exhilarated Cyclops laud this civilized wine in contrast to that of the wild grapes of his own land.

But the third scheme of Ulysses is the most subtle of all, and touches the heart of the whole problem, though it be merely a pun. He calls himself n.o.body to Polyphemus, who, without sight or insight, is the victim of a word. For a complete man must have not only a double sight from his eyes, but a double insight from his mind, seeing before and after in the latter case especially. The result is when the other Cyclops, roused by the cries of Polyphemus, ask him from outside the cave: What is the matter? he answers, n.o.body is killing me. Whereat off they go, dropping a word or two of cold advice, or perchance of sarcastic humor.

We should, however, reach down to the essence of what appears on the surface as a mere trick of speech. It may seem far-fetched to say, but it is none the less the actual fact, that Ulysses is a n.o.body, and a very active one to Polyphemus. That is, he has shown himself the negative power which overwhelms the giant, who is now himself quite reduced to a n.o.body by Mr. n.o.body. Or, in abstract terms, Ulysses has negated the negation and has here suggested the subtle work of the process in doing so. Has he not negatived Polyphemus, who was himself a negative, so carefully and fully defined by the poet at the start?

Thus we come upon the deepest pun ever made, or possible to be made, a literary form which the greatest geniuses have been fond of sporting with; we can find puns in Dante, Goethe, and notably in Shakespeare.

The pun of Ulysses rests upon the duplicity inherent in the negative; no-man is the man, especially to Polyphemus, whose brain cannot span the two sides of the punning idea, who is not two-eyed but one-eyed by nature, and this one eye is soon put out by the man with two eyes. Such is the earliest instance of what may be called the Play of the Negative, which is still subtly ensconced in the spoken and written word, and winds in an elusive game of hide-and-seek through all Literature. Many men, both writers and readers, are its victims, like Polyphemus.

And all these floating metaphysical gossamers are found in Homer! Yes, but not in a metaphysical form; Homer's organ is poetic, he lived in the age ere philosophers had dawned. Still he too had before him the problems of the soul and of the world. Nor would he have been a true Greek unless he had grappled with this Play of the Negative, which had some marvelous fascination for the Greek mind. It is the leaven working in the Sophists with their subtle rhetoric, in Socrates with his negating elenchus, in Plato with his confounding dialectic. Homer, as the prophet of his people, foreshadowing all forms of Greek spirit and of Greek literature, bring to light repeatedly this Play of the Negative.

The modern German, in more respects than one the spiritual heir of the ancient Greek, has not failed to give evidence of his birthright in the same direction. Kant's Critique, and Hegel's Logic are the most desperate efforts to grasp this slippery, double-doing and double-thinking Negative, infinitely elusive, verily the old Serpent.

But the supreme attempt is the modern poetic one, made by Goethe in his Faust poem, in which is embodied anew the mighty Negative, who is now none other than the devil, Mephistopheles. Thus the last world-poet reaches across the ages and touches elbows with the first world-poet in a common theme.

Thus Ulysses nullifies the Cyclops, inflicting three deprivations through his three means: the charred stick takes away vision, the strong wine takes away strength, the ambiguous pun prevents help. The pun also announces covertly to Polyphemus the nature of the power which is undoing him, but he does not and cannot understand that. But the problem of Ulysses is not at an end with simply nullifying the Cyclops; he and his companions are not yet outside of the cave. Herewith we come to a new stage of process.

3. This is the escape, to which the strong giant must be made to contribute, he is skillfully turned against himself. The great stone is removed by him from the mouth of the cave, but he places himself there at the entrance, and no human being can pa.s.s. Still, the herds have to go out to their pasture. Ulysses dexterously binds three large sheep together, fastens a companion under the middle one, while he clings beneath a huge ram, and out they move together. But the giant stops just this ram and talks to it, being his favorite of the flock. The man of nature is again outwitted by the man of intelligence, allowing his enemy to slip through his very fingers. The conversation of the blind Cyclops with the dumb animal is pathetic; his one solitary friend apparently, the only creature he loved, is compelled to silent service against its master. "Why art thou last to leave, who wast always first?

Dost thou long to see the eye of thy ruler, which has been put out by that vile wretch, n.o.body?" So the Cyclops speaks, without seeing or knowing, yet with a touch which excites sympathy for his misfortune.

The special characteristic of this scene is that Ulysses does not now destroy, but employs Polyphemus and his property. Nature must be used by intelligence to overcome nature; the strength of the giant must be directed to rolling away the big stone; his herds are taken to bring about the escape of his foes, and he is turned into an instrument against himself. Thus he is no longer negated as in the last scene, but utilized; having been subdued, he now must serve.

Ulysses and his companions are outside the cave, having gotten rid of those dark and fearful limits which walled them in with a monster.

Mind, thought has released them; soon they are on their ship in a free element. But the end is not yet; even Polyphemus, the natural man, must come to know who and what has subjected him, he too is in the grand discipline of the time.

4. Two things Ulysses is now to tell to the Cyclops in the distance.

The first is the wrong and the penalty thereof: "Amply have thy evil deeds been returned to thee," namely, his treatment of men. "Zeus and the other G.o.ds have punished thee," there is a divine order in the world, which looks after the wrong-doer. Thus Polyphemus the anarchist, atheist, and cannibal gets a short missionary sermon on justice, religion and humanity. But he does not receive it kindly, he "hurls a fragment of a mountain peak," and almost strikes the ship. The line of danger is not yet pa.s.sed.

Still Ulysses must tell something else though his frightened companions try to dissuade him. But he must, he cannot help it: "If any one ask thee, say it was Ulysses, the city-destroyer, who put out thine eye." A great light this word brings to the poor blind Cyclops, almost the light of self-consciousness. He recalls, he knows his conqueror, and therein begins to know himself, to recognize his error. "Ah, woe is me!

the ancient oracles about me are fulfilled!" Of old there had been prophecies concerning his destiny, but he did not understand them, seemingly did not regard them. How could he, with his bent toward the G.o.dless? The prophet Telemus had foretold "that I would lose my sight at the hands of Ulysses." How shall we consider this prophecy? A dim, far-off presentiment among the Cyclops themselves that they were to be subjected to a higher influence; their limited, one-eyed vision was to vanish through a more universal, two-eyed vision. Such a presentiment nature everywhere shows, a presentiment of the power beyond her, of the spiritual. What else indeed is Gravitation? A longing, a seeking which even the clod manifests in its fall earthward, a prophetic intimation; so the Cyclops, the natural man, had his prophet whom he now begins rightly to recognize; truly he is getting religious, quite different is his present utterance from his previous blasphemy: "we are better than the G.o.ds." Nay, he offers to intercede with his father Neptune, praying the G.o.d to give a sending of the stranger over the sea. Moreover he recognizes his divine father as the only one who can heal him in his present distress. Possibly the words are spoken to beguile, but Polyphemus here offers to do his duty to the stranger on his sh.o.r.es, and he recognizes the G.o.ds.

Manifestly we witness in this pa.s.sage a striking development of the rude Cyclops under the tough discipline of experience. He acknowledges first his mistake in regard to the prophecy: "I expected to see a man tall and beautiful and of vast strength, not this petty worthless weakling who has put out mine eye." A hero of visible might, a giant like himself, not a man of invisible intelligence, he imagined he was to meet; great was his mistake. The conflict between Brain and Brawn was settled long ago before Troy, and has been sung of in the preceding Book. Here then is certainly a confession of his mistake, and, if his words are sincere, an offer to undo his wrong.

5. At this point there is a change in Ulysses, his victory has begotten insolence, he becomes a kind of Cyclops in his turn. Such is the demon ever lurking in success. Listen to his response to the confession and supplication of his wretched victim: "Would that I were as sure of taking thy life and sending thee down to Hades, as that the Earth-shaker shall never heal thine eye." The implication is that the G.o.d cannot do it--an act of blasphemy which the G.o.d will not be slow to avenge. But how true to human nature is this new turn in Ulysses, how profound! No sooner has he escaped and experiences the feeling of triumph, than his humanity, nay his religion vanishes, he sweeps over into his opposite and becomes his savage enemy. What follows? The law must be read to him too, his own law; he will hear it from the mouth of Polyphemus, and it is essentially this: As thou hast done to me, so shall it be done to thee.

Accordingly we have next the curse of the Cyclops denounced upon the head of the transgressor. This curse is to be fulfilled to the letter, the poet has fully shown the ground of it, Ulysses has really invoked it upon himself, it lies in his deed. Possibly Polyphemus, when he offered to give the dues of hospitality and to send the guest home, was merely using the words of deception, which he had just had the opportunity of learning, and was trying to get possession of his enemy's body. Doubtless it was well for Ulysses to keep out of the giant's hands. But that does not justify his speech, which was both cruel and blasphemous.

Hear then the curse of the Cyclops, which hints the great obstructing motive to the return of Ulysses, and marks out the action of the poem; "Give Ulysses no return to his home; but if he returns, may he arrive late and in evil plight, upon a foreign ship with loss of all his companions, and may he find troubles in his house." Of course Neptune heard the prayer, had to hear it, in the divine order of things. The curse lay inside of Ulysses, else it could not have been fulfilled; he himself could drop from his humane and religious mood in adversity and become a savage in prosperity. His chief misfortunes follow after this curse. But for the present he escapes to Goat Island, though another portentous rock is hurled at him by the Cyclops. There he sacrifices to the Highest G.o.d, Zeus, who, however, pays no heed--how is it possible?

Such is this far-reaching Fairy Tale, certainly one of the greatest and most comprehensive ever written. It shows a movement, an evolution both of Polyphemus and Ulysses; this inner unfolding indeed is the main thing to be grasped. It is worth the while to take a short retrospect of the five leading points. (1) The completely negative character of the Cyclops as to inst.i.tutions, religion, and even the physical man.

(2) This negative being is negated by the man of intelligence, who puts out his eye, nullifies his strength by drink, and thwarts all help for him by a punning stratagem. (3) He is made to help his enemies escape from his cave by the skill of Ulysses who turns the force of nature against nature. (4) The Cyclops reaches self-knowledge through Ulysses, who tells his wrong and its punishment, who also tells his own name: whereat the Cyclops suddenly changes and makes a humane offer. (5) Ulysses changes the other way, becomes himself a kind of Cyclops and receives the curse.

This curse will now follow Ulysses and drive him from island to island through Fableland, till he gets back to Ithaca with much suffering and with all companions lost, where he will find many troubles. In this manner the return of Ulysses becomes intertwined with Polyphemus and this Fableland, which furnish an underlying motive for the third Part of the Odyssey (the last 12 Books). The curse here spoken is still working when Ulysses reaches home and finds the suitors in possession.

Verily his negative spirit lies deep; in cursing Polyphemus, he has cursed himself.

Thus the impartial poet shows both sides--the guilt as well as the good in Polyphemus and in Ulysses. The man of nature has his right when he offers to transform his conduct, and it shows that Ulysses still needs discipline when he scorns such an offer. Polyphemus too is to have his chance of rising, for he certainly has within himself the possibility.

Has not the poet derived the n.o.ble Arete and Alcinous and inst.i.tutional Phaeacia from the savage Cyclops? But Ulysses negatives Polyphemus just at the start upward. The character which he showed in sacking the city of the Ciconians is in him still, he is not yet ready to return.

The Ninth Book has thus run through its three stages and has landed us in pure Fableland. These three stages--the attack on the Ciconians, the Lotus-eaters, the adventure with the Cyclops--may now be seen to be parts of one entire process, which we may call the purification of the spirit from its own negative condition. The man, having become destructive-minded (_oloophrn_) must be put under training by the G.o.ds, and sent to battle with the monsters of Fableland.

So we advance to the next Book with the certainty that there is still some stern discipline in store for the wandering Ulysses.

_BOOK TENTH._

At the first glance we can observe a certain similarity between this Book and the last one. There are in each three distinct portions or adventures, two very short and simple, and one very long and intricate.

Each Book culminates in a fabulous being with whom the Hero has a wrestle for supremacy, and in both cases he comes out victorious. We are still in Wonderland, we have to reach into the ideal realm in order to find out what these strange incidents mean. The two central figures are Polyphemus and Circe, respectively, each of whom imparts the dominating thought to the Book in which he or she appears.

The first thing we ask for is the connection, the inner thread which joins these Books together. It was stated that Polyphemus was the negation of the inst.i.tutional world, he was individualistic, he belonged to neither Family nor State. No laws, no councils, no civil polity; he is a huge man of violence, hostile specially to man's social life. Circe on the contrary, is the woman hostile to woman's domestic world, the Family, first of all; she is the grand enchantress, representing the power and seductiveness of the senses; she is the enemy of what we call morals. To be sure, we shall find in her something more, whereof the full unfolding will be given hereafter.

Ulysses is the one who is to meet those negative forces and put them down. His companions give him special trouble in the present Book, they seem to represent the weaker phases of man, possibly of Ulysses himself. Already he has suppressed Polyphemus, or the inst.i.tutional negation; now he is to subordinate Circe or the moral negation. The latter is a woman because she must have sensuous beauty and all the charm of pa.s.sionate enticement; the former is a man because he must show strength and violence rather than the allurement of pleasure.

Nor should we forget that these forms are in Ulysses himself, and were really generated out of his Trojan life; that spirit of his, shown at the start by the attack on the Ciconians, has all these phases in its process. He is traveling through an Inferno, seeing its entire demonic brood, which he has begotten, and which he has to fight and subject. At the same time these fantastic shapes are typical, and shadow forth the universal experience of man, belonging to all countries and all ages.

As already stated, there are three different localities to which Ulysses is brought. Three islands, bounded, yet in a boundless sea, through which he moves on his ships; such is the outermost setting of nature, suggestive of much. No tempest occurs in this Book; the stress is upon the three fixed places in the unfixed aqueous element.

I. First is the island where dwells aeolus with his Family; hither Ulysses comes after putting down Polyphemus who was hostile to domestic life. In this spot the bag of winds is given into the possession of the navigator, whose companions, however, release them, and he is driven to the starting-point, with the winds at large. aeolus refuses to receive him the second time.

II. Next is the city of the Laestrigonians, where is a civil life, a State, to which Ulysses can come after subjecting the Cyclops, who had no polity of the sort. But the State is verily a giant, a cannibal to him now, with all the winds loose. Hence he has to flee for his life.

Whither now does he go?

III. Not to Penelope and Ithaca, but to Circe, and her isle. She is the form which next rises before Ulysses, banished from the domestic world of aeolus, and fleeing from the civil life of the Laestrigonians.

We shall try to bring the threads of connection to light, for it is our emphatic opinion that these three islands with their shapes are spiritually bound and wound together. Still further, they reach back and interlink with the forms of the previous Book, which furnish antecedent stages of the grand total movement of Fairyland. Separated in image are these islands and their inhabitants, but they have to be united in thought. Not a more accident is the sequence, but a necessity, a strict evolution. The work here, according our best belief, is organic, and the reader must not rest contented with his understanding of it, till he moves with the poet from place to place by the interior path of the spirit.

I.

The first fact about the aeolian Isle is that it was afloat in the waters of the sea, as Delos and other islands of antiquity were reported to be. Not stationary then; the king of it, aeolus, has a name which indicates a changeable nature, veering about like the winds, of which he is king. The second fact pertaining to this Isle is that a wall of bra.s.s encircles it not to be broken through; "and the cliff runs up sheer from the sea." Manifestly two opposite ideas are suggested in this description: the fixed and the movable; the island within itself is bound fast, and cannot be driven asunder; yet it floats in the most unstable of elements, in the sea and winds. Such is the physical environment, clearly mirroring the meaning. Something permanent in the midst of all that is mutable we may expect to find here.

On the island dwell the King of the Winds and his wife, along with six blooming sons and daughters. He gave his daughters to his sons for wives; a custom not elsewhere found in Homer outside of the realm of the G.o.ds; yet is claimed to have been a very ancient custom, which the Ptolomies revived in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the bra.s.s-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world and given a dwelling-place.

At this point we begin to catch a glimpse of the significance of the story. The Family is the first power which seizes the emotions and pa.s.sions and caprices of men (the winds of his soul) and starts the taming of them; the marriage tie is fixed, is not for a day; thus the Family makes itself permanent, and makes the human being stable through feeling and duty. None but married people are here; very different will it be hereafter in the island of Circe. The king of the winds is not only aeolus, but also his inst.i.tution, the Family, rules here, for there is no State to be governed. Not polygamy, but monogamy, as the great Homeric principle of domestic life, do we witness--the mutual devotion of one man and one woman. Externally we found the fixed and the floating; internally also we discover the fixed and the floating, or rather, that principle which fixes the floating, and makes the world stable. Thus we see the reason why Homer puts the Family upon the Isle of the Winds.

It is no wonder, therefore, that in such a place is held up before us a picture of happiness and plenty. "All feast from day to day with endless change of meats;" why ask whence the viands come? The inner peace provides them. Even the sound of flutes is heard round about, according to one way of translating the pa.s.sage; music attunes the everlasting festival. Not mere gratification is this, but happiness, the outer again mirroring the inner; domestic harmony is the matter set forth.

Hither Ulysses comes with his companions, "to the city and beautiful houses" of aeolus. A city is here, but no civil life is introduced into the story. "A whole month the monarch entertained me;" what was again the interest? "He asked me about Ilium," the eternal theme, which lies always in the background of Fairyland as well as of Historic h.e.l.las.

The Trojan war and also "the Return of the Greeks" were recounted, we may say, sung by Ulysses; the Iliad and the Odyssey, delighted also those domestic aeolians. Was not Troy destroyed because of a wrong done to the Greek Family? Finally Ulysses was gotten ready to be sent home by his host.

aeolus, the ruler of the winds, gives them into the might of Ulysses; he confines them in "a bullock's bladder," which, tied by a silver chain, he places in the ship. It is manifest that the sea, deprived of these windy powers, cannot hinder the pa.s.sage. Again we behold the main fact of the island: the unstable, uncertain, capricious, is held by the fixed, the permanent; during his sojourn with aeolus, Ulysses has obtained an inner hold, an anchorage of the moral kind, which he sorely needed. This was given him by his view of the Family, which was the real security of the island. All the conditions of his return (but one) are placed in his hand, tied up in a bag. "Only the west-wind was allowed to blow," which sent him homewards.

Still the supreme condition was not, could not be given by aeolus or by anybody else, could not be tied up in a bag. The free man must be alert, he must watch, and win his own salvation; his prime duty is to keep the bag tied, and therein to exercise his will. This is just what he failed to do at the last moment. He went to sleep when in sight of Ithaca; his companions, led by curiosity and avarice (two blasts of the soul) open the bag, expecting to find gold and silver, and find the rushing winds. Of course all are driven back to the starting-point, to the island, on which they soon land.

What will Ulysses do in such extremity? "Shall I drop into the sea and perish, or shall I still endure and stay among the living?" Suicide will not solve his problem: "I remained and suffered." Herein also we trace the stamp of the hero, whose special call it is to master fate.

So Ulysses tries again to get the bladder of winds from aeolus, confessing that it was equally the fault of himself and his companions.

But the opportunity is gone; the sum total of conditions, all bagged and tied up, and put into his hands, presents itself only once.

Moreover the sleep of Ulysses, just at the nick of destiny, showed an internal weakness; he became careless, almost insolent under such circ.u.mstances; he manifested a similar trait to that which led to the curse of the Cyclops. Again he hears a malediction, now uttered by his former host: "Get thee out of my island quickly, most guilty of men, hated by the G.o.ds!" Thus aeolus regards the man before him, and reinforces the curse of Polyphemus. But if Ulysses had to fall asleep by sheer fatigue (which construction the pa.s.sage hardly demands), then he did not look properly after his companions, making them the sharers of his knowledge. A foolish question has been asked here and much discussed: How did Ulysses know what his companions said during his sleep? Easily enough; but the answer is not worth the candle.