Homer's Odyssey Part 17

Wherein does the negative nature of Hades lie? The question rises from the fact that Ulysses in Fableland has been declared to be pa.s.sing through various negative phases; such is the expression often used already. First of all, it is a negating of the sensible world and a going into the supersensible, a seeking of the spirit without the body.

Hades was quite the opposite of the Greek mind, which demanded embodiment, and hence was inherently artistic. Still the Greek mind created a Hades, and finally went over into the pure Idea in Plato and the philosophers. Even Homer seems to feel that philosophy is at last a needful discipline, that the abstract thought must be taken from its concrete wrappage, that the Universal must be freed from the Particular.

Ulysses has to pa.s.s through Hades in order to complete the cycle of his experience, and realize what is beyond the senses; he must know the spirit apart from the body in this life; he must see the Past as it is in its great disembodied minds; he must behold the famous heroes of Troy as they are in reality, not as they are in the glamor of poetry.

As tested by their life and deeds he sees them below in the Netherworld; Greek souls stark naked in Hades he beholds, and then rises out of it.

_Retrospect._ Very important, in our judgment, is this Eleventh Book; it is really one of the sacred doc.u.ments of Universal Religion, as well as a great creative idea in the World's Literature, But it has fared badly as to its friends; for interpretation it usually falls into the hands of the negative, merely critical Understanding, which has the unfortunate habit of turning Professor of Greek, commentator on Homer, and philologer generally. In order to grasp and connect its leading points more completely, we shall look back at the thought and structure of the Book once more.

First of all, there must be felt and seen the necessity of taking this journey to the Netherworld on the part of the Hero, the complete person of his time. The very conception of the universal man must include the visit to the realm of the Idea; the pa.s.sage from the sensible to the supersensible, is the deepest need of his soul. Homer can give this spiritual movement only in a mythical form, hence it occurs here in Fableland. So Ulysses has to make the transition from Circe to Hades.

Having the entire Book now before us, we observe that it shows a threefold movement; that is, one movement with three leading stages.

These take the shape of three communications from the realm of the dead, which includes all past Time, imparted to the living who are now present, namely the Phaeacians, through Ulysses, who has had this cycle of experiences and now sings them. But that which is true in past Time must be seen to be true in all Time--Past, Present and Future. So there unfolds the idea of a World-Order, foretold at first by the Pre-Trojan prophet Tiresias, ill.u.s.trated by the fate of the three Greco-Trojan heroes in Hades, and finally realized and active in the realm of Minos.

The whole has, therefore, the secret underlying thought of a world-tribunal, which works through all human history; it is a kind of Last Judgment to which the deeds of men are appealed for final adjudication; it most profoundly suggests in its movement the ethical order of the Universe. Let us briefly sum up its three stages.

I. The first communication from the Hades of the Past to the real world of the Present through Ulysses is that of the prophet Tiresias, "whose mind is whole;" he may be called the pure Idea (as subjective) uttering the Idea (as objective, as principle of the world). For he beholds the truth of things as they are in their essence, he himself being the impersonation of Truth. Thus he looks through the Future and foretells; he knows that Neptune will avenge the deed done to Polyphemus, that the Oxen of the Sun const.i.tute a great danger, that Ulysses will punish the Suitors; then he prophesies the peace and final harmony of Ulysses after his long conflict and separation from home, country, and the Divine Order.

So speaks Tiresias and is therein a kind of world-judge, prefiguring Minos of the last stage of Hades. For he prophesies according to the law of the deed; what you have done is sure to return upon you, be it good or bad. Hence he can tell what will happen to Ulysses for acts already committed (the wrath of Neptune); he can give a warning concerning things which Ulysses may do (the slaying of the Oxen of the Sun); he can affirm the certain punishment of guilt (the case of the Suitors). Thus the prophet voices a world-justice, which inflicts the penalty unflinchingly, but also bears within itself reconciliation.

Such is the prophetic Idea, appearing in advance, not yet ordered and realized.

II. The second communication from Hades to the Phaeacians through Ulysses comes from the Trojan Past, and is voiced by the three most famous heroes of the Iliad--Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax (the last one, however, does not speak, but acts out his communication). All three are tragic characters, are the victims of fate, that is, of their own fatal limitations. Such is the world-judgment here, it is really p.r.o.nounced by themselves upon themselves in each case. Agamemnon states his own guilt, Achilles shows his limit by his complaint, Ajax does not need to speak. Ulysses simply listens and sees; now he tells the story of Troy and its heroes anew to the Present, indicating how they have put themselves into Hades.

The intimate connection between this part and the preceding part of Tiresias is plain. The prophet has forecast the law which rules these heroes also; they are truly ill.u.s.trations of his prophecy, or of its underlying principle. They expose the heroic insufficiency of that Trojan time; they are the negative, tragic phases of greatness, which have also to submit at last to the law of compensation. Thus is the ill.u.s.trious Trojan epoch judged and sent down below; but mark! Ulysses, of that same epoch, survives, is present, and is singing the judgment.

III. The world-justice which ideally underlies the prophecies of Tiresias in the first part of the present Book, and which is the secret moving principle in the fates of the three Greco-Trojan heroes in the second part, becomes explicit, recognized and ordered in the third part, which is now to be given. There is first the world-judge, Minos, famous for his justice during life, distributing both penalties and rewards in the Netherworld. Secondly we see the condemned ones, Orion, t.i.tyus, Tantalus, Sisyphus (mark the significant reduplication of the root in the names of each one of them). All four are represented as having wronged the G.o.ds in some way; they have violated the Divine Order, according to the Greek conception; hence the tribunal of world-justice, now organized and at work in Hades, takes them in hand.

To be sure, the text of Homer does not say that they were sentenced by the decree of Minos, but such is certainly the implication. These four had a common sin, to the Greek mind: they sought to transcend the limit which the G.o.ds have placed upon finite man, hence the image of their penalty lies in the endless repet.i.tion of their acts, which is also suggested in their names. Orion has always to pursue and slay the wild beast, never getting the work done; the liver of t.i.tyus grows and swells afresh (root from _tu_, meaning to swell, Latin _tumor_) though being consumed by the vultures; in like manner Tantalus and Sisyphus have ever-repeated labors. Such is the glimpse here of the Greek Hades of eternal punishment. Now comes the curious fact that the heroic man through labor and suffering can rise out of this Hades of finitude; he can satisfy the demand of world-justice, and rise to Olympus among the blessed G.o.ds. Such was Hercules, and such is to be Ulysses, who now having seen the culmination of Hades and heard its prophecy of his future state, leaves it and returns to the Upperworld.

Undoubtedly these thoughts of future punishment and reward are very dim and shadowy in Homer; still they are here in this Eleventh Book of the Odyssey, and find their true interpretation in that view of the life to come into which they unfolded with time. The best commentary on this Book, we repeat, is the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the grand poem of futurity, which carries out to fullness the order, of which we here catch a little glimpse.

_BOOK TWELFTH._

Ulysses flees from the Underworld, there is something down there which he feels he cannot master, something which he has not seen but of which he has a vague presentiment. The Gorgon stands for much, dimly foreshadowing a Hades beyond or below the Greek Hades, with which, however, it is not his call to grapple. Hence the poet puts upon his Hero a limitation at this point, strangely prophetic, and sends him in haste back to the terrestrial Upperworld. The bark crossed the stream of the "river Ocea.n.u.s," then it entered "the wide-wayed Sea" in which lay the island of Circe, "where are the houses of the Dawn, and her dances, and the risings of the Sun." Verily the Hero has got back to the beginning of the world of light, in which he is now to have a new span of existence after his experience in the supersensible realm.

From the brief geographical glances which we catch up from the voyage, as well as from a number of hints scattered throughout the Odyssey (for instance, from what is said of the Ethiopians in the First Book), we are inclined to believe that Homer held the earth to be round. We like to think of the old Poet seeing this fact, not as a deduction of science, not even as a misty tradition from some other land, but as an immediate act of poetic insight, which beholds the law of the physical world rising out of the spiritual by the original creative fiat; the Poet witnesses the necessity by which nature conforms to mind. Homer knew the spiritual Return, this whole Odyssey is such a Return, whereby the soul is rounded off to completeness, and becomes a true totality.

Why should he not apply the same law to nature, to the whole Earth, and behold it, not indefinitely extended as it appears to the senses, but returning into itself, whereby the line becomes a circle and the plain a globe? Some such need lay deep in his poetic soul, to which he had to harmonize the entire universe, visible as well as invisible. Not science is this, but an immediate vision of the true, always prophetic, which observes the impress of spirit everywhere upon the realm of matter. The old Greek sages seem to have known not merely of the rotundity of the Earth, but also of its movement round the Sun and upon its own axis, both movements being circular, returns, which image mind.

Did they get their knowledge from Egypt or Chaldea? Questionable; if they looked inwardly deep enough, they could find it all there. Indeed the sages of Egypt and Chaldea saw the fact in their souls ere they saw it or could see it in the skies.

So these Homeric glimpses into the realm of what is to become science are not to be neglected or despised, in spite of their mythical, ambiguous vesture. Moreover they are in profound harmony with the present poem, to which they furnish remote, but very suggestive parallels, making the physical universe correspond to the spiritual unfolding of the Hero.

Ulysses, accordingly, comes back to the sensible world and there he finds Circe again. Indeed whom else ought he to find? She is the bright Greek realm of the senses reposing in sunlight; she has been subordinated to the rational, she is no longer the indulgence of appet.i.te which turns men to swine, nor is she, on the other hand, the rigid ascetic. Hence we need not be surprised at her bringing good things to eat and drink: "bread and many kinds of meat and sparkling red wine." Moreover, she is still prophetic, she still has the outlook upon the Beyond, being spirit in the senses. Her present prophecies, however, will be different from her former one, she will point to the supersensible, not in Hades, for that is now past, but in the Upperworld of life and experience. Such is the return of the Hero to Circe, the fair, the terrestrial, who makes existence beautiful if she be properly held in restraint; beautiful as sunlit h.e.l.las with its plastic forms she can become, in striking contrast to the dark shapes of the sunless Underworld which leads to the Gorgon, the realm of spooks, shades, fiends, in general of romanticism.

So much for Circe in her new relation in the present Book; how about Ulysses? It is manifest that he too is prepared for a fresh experience.

He has been in the Underworld and great has been the profit. There he has seen the famous men and women of old and beheld the very heart of their destiny; the Trojan and the Pre-Trojan worthies sweeping backward through all Greek time he has witnessed and in part heard; he has become acquainted with the prophet Tiresias who knows Past, Present and Future, who is the universal mind in its purity from all material dross; he has beheld the Place of Doom and its penalties, as well as the supreme Greek Hero, the universal man of action, Hercules. Nor must we forget that he has run upon a limitation, that Gorgon from whom he fled. Truly he has obtained in this journey to Hades a grand experience of the Past, of all Greek ages, which is now added to his own personal experience. So this Past, with its knowledge, is to be applied to the Future, whereby knowledge becomes foreknowledge, and experience is to be transformed into prophecy. Mark then the transition from the previous to the present Book: when Ulysses comes back to the world of sense, he will at once see in it the supersensible, which he has just behold; he must hear in the Present a prophetic voice, that of Circe proclaiming the Future.

Thus Ulysses is now ready to listen to the coming event and to understand its import. It is to be observed that up to the Eleventh Book he has had experience merely; he took everything as it came, by chance, without knowing of it beforehand; he simply happens upon the Lotus-eaters, Polyphemus, Circe, though the careful reader has not failed to note an interior thread of connection between all these adventures. As to Hades, it is pointed out to him in advance by Circe, though all is not foretold him; but in the Twelfth Book, now to be considered, he has everything in detail laid open to him beforehand. A great change in manner of treatment; why? Because Ulysses must be shown as having reached the stage of foreknowledge through his journey to Hades; hitherto he was the mere empirical man, or blind adventurer, surrendering himself to hazard and trusting to his cunning for getting out of trouble. But now he foresees, and Circe is the voice thereof; he knows what he has to go through before he starts, here in the Upperworld, to which he has come back, and through whose conflicts he is still to pa.s.s, for life has not yet ended. Such, we think, is the fruit of that trip to the Underworld, the supersensible is seen in the sensible, and the Future becomes transparent.

Accordingly Circe foretells, and Ulysses foreknows; the two are counterparts. Then he simply goes through what has been predicted, he fills up the outline with the deed.

This is the essential fact of the Book, which is organized by it into two portions, namely the prophecy and the fulfillment; Circe has one part, Ulysses the other. Moreover each part exhibits the same general movement, which has three phases with the same names: the Sirens, the Plangctae on the one hand with Scylla and Charybdis on the other, and the Oxen of the Sun.

I.

As soon as Ulysses, after coming back from Hades, had performed the last rites over the corpse of Elpenor, Circe appears and makes a striking address: "O ye audacious, who still living have gone down to the house of Hades--ye twice-dead, while others die but once." Such is one side of Circe, now rises the other: "But come, eat food, drink wine the whole day;" let us have a Greek festival ere new labors begin. Then Circe holds a private conference with Ulysses, she asked each thing "about the journey to Hades," which, it seems, she must know ere she can foretell the remaining part.

One cannot help feeling in this pa.s.sage that the poet hints that these prophecies of Circe have some connection with what Ulysses imparts to her concerning Hades. Indeed she repeats what Tiresias had already foretold in reference to the Oxen of the Sun--a matter which she probably heard from Ulysses. Cannot the other two adventures be derived in a general way from the experiences of the Underworld? The Past seems here to furnish the groundwork for the predictions of the Future, and Circe, knowing what has been in the pure forms of the supersensible, becomes the voice of what is to be.

1. First come the Sirens, whom Ulysses will have to meet again, as he has often met them before. Indeed Circe herself was once a Siren, a charmer through the senses. The present Sirens are singers, and entice to destruction through the sense of hearing, inasmuch as "heaps of bones lie about them," evidently the skeletons of persons who have perished through their seductive song. Pa.s.s them the man must; what is to be done? He will have somehow to guard against his sensuous nature and keep it from destroying itself. Yet on the other hand he must enjoy, which is his right in this world of sensations; each good music must be heard. So Circe tells of the scheme of putting wax into his companions' ears, while he is bound to the mast. Already Tiresias warned Ulysses in the Underworld to hold his appet.i.te in check and that of his companions, if he wished to return home. This warning Circe now repeats, indeed she repeats in a new mythical form her own experience, for she, the Siren, has also been met by Ulysses and mastered. Yet these later charmers seem to have been more dangerous. When they are pa.s.sed, a new peril rises of necessity.

2. Next we behold an image, or rather two sets of images, of the grand dualism of existence. That escape from the Sirens is really no solution of the problem, it is external and leaves the man still unfree, still subject to his senses. There must be somehow an inner control through the understanding, an intellectual subordination. But just here trouble springs up again. The mind has two sides to it, and is certain to fall into self-opposition. Two are the ways after parting from the Sirens, says Circe: "I shall tell thee of both."

One way is by the Plangctae (rocks which clasp together); here no bird can fly through without getting caught, even the doves of Zeus pay the penalty. "No ship of men, having gone thither, has ever escaped"--except the G.o.d-directed Argo: surely a sufficient warning. Then the second way also leads to two rocks, but of a different kind; at their bases in the sea are found Scylla, the monstrous sea-b.i.t.c.h, on one side, and Charybdis, the yawning maelstrom, on the other; between them Ulysses must pa.s.s with his ship and companions.

It is manifest that here are two alternatives, one after the other; the first is that of the Plangctae, the Claspers, which mean Death, unless they be avoided, yet this avoidance does not always mean Life. We can trace the connection with the Sirens: the absolute resignation to the senses is license, is destruction; we may say the same thing of the opposite, the absolute suppression of man's sensuous being is simply his dissolution. Hence the extremes appear; the moral and the immoral extremes land us in the same place; they are the two mighty rocks which may smite together and crush the poor mortal who happens to get in between the closing surfaces. If we understand the image, it holds true of excess on either side; excessive indulgence is overwhelmed by its opposite, so is excessive abstinence; they co-operate, like two valves, for the destruction of the one-sided extremist. Truly Greek is the thought, for the Greek maxim above all others was moderation, no over-doing. Such then are the Plangctae, which Ulysses must avoid wholly, if he wishes to escape. Still, even the danger is by no means over.

There is the second way which introduces a new alternative; the path of moderation has its difficulty, it too forks and produces perplexity and peril to the voyager. Here is the point where Scylla and Charybdis appear, a new set of extremes, between which the mean is to be sought, then the pa.s.sage can be made. Yet even thus it costs, Ulysses will lose six of his companions; the penalty has to be paid, just the penalty of moderation. _Es racht sich alles auf Erden._ Two sets of extremes always; if you shun one set and take the middle path, just this act of shunning produces a second set; cut the magnet in twain with its two poles, then each part will at once have two poles of its own. Such is indeed the very dialectic of life, the dualism of existence, which the heroic voyager is to overcome with suffering, with danger, with many penalties.

Fault has often been found with this duplication of the alternative, but when rightly seen into, it will show itself as the central fact of the entire description. It casts an image of the never-ceasing differentiation both in the mind and in the world; it hints the recurring contradiction in all thought and in all conduct, always to be solved, yet never quite solved. What else indeed has man to do? To master the contradiction gives him life, movement, energy, and it must be mastered every day. The old poet is going to the bottom of the matter. The above mentioned repet.i.tion of the alternative has its correspondence with the repet.i.tion which we have seen to be the fundamental form into which the whole Book is cast.

Plainly the Double Alternative here mythically set forth, springs out of the conflict with the Sirens, and is a deepening of the same to the very bottom. Indulgence kills, abstinence kills, in their excess; and the middle path bifurcates into two new extremes with their problem.

Prophetic Circe can tell all this, for does it not lie just in the domain of her experience, which has also been twofold? Pure forms of spirit, wholly non-natural, are these figures representing the Double Alternative, created by the Imagination to express Thought.

3. The final warning of Circe is mainly a repet.i.tion of what Tiresias had told Ulysses already in the Underworld; from the latter she heard it and puts it here into its place. Beware of slaying the cattle of the Sun, oxen and sheep in two flocks, over which two bright nymphs keep guard. There can scarcely be a doubt concerning the physical basis of this myth. The seven herds of oxen, fifty to the herd, suggest the number of days in the lunar year (really 354); the seven herds of sheep suggest the corresponding nights. Lampelia (the Moon or Lamp of Night) is the keeper of the one; Phaethusa (the Radiant one) is the keeper of the other--namely the Sun as the day-bringer. Seldom has the old Aryan form of the myth been so well preserved; the whole reads like a transcript out of the Vedas.

Still stronger than the physical side is the spiritual suggestion. The slaughter of these cattle of the Sun points to the supreme act of negation in the intellectual man, to the sin against light. Ulysses and his companions now know the way to reach home, having had the grand experience with the Sirens and then with the Double Alternative; moreover the leader has heard the warning twice. If they now do wrong, it will be a wrong against the Sun, against Intelligence itself.

A certain critic finds fault with Circe because she repeats the warning of Tiresias, and he holds that some botcher or editor, not Homer, transferred the pa.s.sage from one place to the other. Yet this repet.i.tion is not only an organic necessity of the poem, but gives an insight into the character of Circe: she cannot foresee of herself the great intellectual transgression, but Tiresias can; the Sirens and the Double Alternative, however, lie within her own experience. So she copies where she cannot originate, and in this way she is decidedly distinguished from Tiresias, though both are prophetic.

Such is the outlook upon the Future given by Circe, in the way of warning, whereby the warned know what is coming. In the three adventures we feel a certain connection, in fact an unfolding of one out of the other, beginning with the primary conflict of the Senses, which soon rises into the Understanding, and finally ends in a revolt against Reason itself, the source of Light. They have the character of typical forms, derived from the Past, yet they are certain to recur again, and hence can be foretold.

II.

We now have reached the second portion of the Book, which is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the first portion; moreover we see how the forewarnings are heeded. Ulysses and his companions enter their vessel and start once more upon the sea, leaving the island of Circe, who sends them a favorable wind. We note also that Ulysses always repeats the warning to his companions, and tells to what they are coming next; they are to share in his knowledge. Three times he does this, just before each incident, and thus prepares them, though he does not tell everything. The experience with the Bag of Winds has taught him much; his companions through ignorance of its nature opened it and the fatality followed. So he received the penalty of not sharing his knowledge with his fellows; now he avoids that mistake, for his conduct at present shows that he regards his failure to impart his information as a mistake. He was the cause of the ignorance of his companions, which was brought home to him by their deed. Now he tells them, still he will not be able to save them; the fault is theirs when they transgress, and they will receive the penalty.

1. In accord with the plan already foretold, the ship approaches the island of the Sirens, Ulysses fills the ears of his men with wax and enjoys the song, being tied firmly to the mast. It is evident that he cannot control himself from within, he wishes to be loosed, but is only fastened the more tightly by his deafened a.s.sociates. Foreseeing his own weakness he guards against it, yet brings out the more strongly his lack of self-mastery. He gives up his freedom in order not to perish through enjoyment. Herein we find suggestive hints concerning the natural man; he must be governed from without, till he become self-governable. Truly this is the first stage both in the individual and in history, and Ulysses is the typical personality representing both.

The song of the Sirens is given, which we did not hear in the previous prophetic portion. We may note in it touches of flattery, of enticement, of boundless promises, even of wisdom for the wise man.

Then that favorite theme, the Trojan War, they claim to know, "and all that has ever happened upon the foodful earth." Such are the gorgeous promises to the man thirsty for knowledge; but mark in their meadow the bones and decaying bodies of dead men. Evidently their sweet song, promising all, lures only to destroy. Their power, however, lasts but for the moment, while the senses are tingled; when the fit is over, Ulysses is set free and he makes no attempt to return to them. Indeed another problem is upon him; he sees "a great wave and mist," to which is added a loud sound of rushing waters. Again he exhorts his companions and tells them all that he dares about the approaching dangers.

2. Now we are to witness a practical dealing with the Double Alternative, which was theoretically set forth in the previous portion.

But the first Alternative, those bi-valvular rocks called Plangctae, which clasped the sea-faring man between their valves and crushed him to death, is wholly avoided, is not even mentioned in the present pa.s.sage, though it is possibly implied in one place. At any rate the grand stress is laid upon the second Alternative, Scylla and Charybdis, between which the ship is to pa.s.s.

Here again Ulysses shows his limitation. In spite of Circe's warning, he puts on armor, takes two spears, and goes on deck, like a Homeric hero, to fight Scylla. He tries to solve his problem externally, as he did in the case of the Sirens. In vain; he could not see his foe anywhere, and his eyes grew weary, peering about at the mist-like rocks.

Not thus was Scylla to be met, a monster not of mortal mould, hardly attainable by the senses. Still she was present somehow, and made herself valid. The whirling waters roared and seethed, all were intent upon the maelstrom, Charybdis, the other side; "we looked at her, fearing destruction," and destruction came just from the direction in which they were not looking. Scylla, watched, remains invisible; unwatched, she appears and snaps up six companions; external weapons can effect nothing against her. Still Ulysses gets through, scotched somewhat; he has failed to see both sides at one and the same time; mind, intelligence alone can rise out of the particular thing of the senses, and grasp the two things in opposition. As we read the story here, it suggests the man, the life-faring man, who is so drawn to one part that he neglects the counterpart, which has equal validity and soon makes itself felt by the penalty. Not the Alternative, then, Scylla _or_ Charybdis, but the combined Scylla _and_ Charybdis is the word of mastery. The two kept in separation destroy, the two held in unity are conquerable. Under all difference of Nature lies the Thought's oneness, which is the true synthesis of every Scylla and Charybdis. Such is the experience of Ulysses now; the Sirens, the creatures of the senses, may be thwarted by a species of external force; but not the present monsters can be so treated. The dualism exists doubtless, and we can be caught in it, but the function of mind is to overspan it, and so transform all difference, discord, diabolism into unity, harmony, deity.