Homer's Odyssey Part 2

Often will the foregoing statement be repeated; every divine appearance in Homer, of any import, is but a repet.i.tion of the one fact, which must always be re-thought by the reader. That which Telemachus says is no longer his mere wish or opinion, but it is the reality, the valid thing outside of him, hence it is voiced by the G.o.ddess, and must take place. Thus the poet often compels his reader to rise with him into the sphere of the divine energy, where thinking and willing are one, and man's insight is just the word of the G.o.d.

The remaining circ.u.mstances of the Book group themselves around the two centers--Telemachus and Pallas--as the G.o.ddess orders them in advance: "Go thou home and get the stores ready, while I shall engage a ship and crew among the Ithacans."

1. Telemachus goes among the Suitors, evidently to avoid suspicion, which his absence might provoke. They taunt and deride him, whereof three samples are again given. He goes his way, conscious of his divine mission, not failing however to tell them: "I shall surely make the voyage, not in vain it will be." He obtains food and wine from the aged stewardess Eurycleia, who seeks to dissuade him. Then too his mother must not know of his plan, she would keep him still a boy in the house, whereas he has become a man.

2. Pallas in the semblance of Telemachus goes through the town to secure the ship and crew. Then she pours over the Suitors a gentle sleep after their revel; she takes away their wisdom, yet it is their own deed, which just now has a divine importance. Finally she brings all to the ship, seizes the helm and sends the favoring breeze. Or, as we understand the poet, intelligence brings about these things under many guises; even nature, the breeze, it takes advantage of for its own purpose.

Thus Pallas has the controlling hand in this second part of the Book, she is above man and nature. We can say that the controlling spirit is also Telemachus, who manifests Reason, controlling and directing the world. Note the various forms which she a.s.sumes, as Mentor, as Telemachus; then again she works purely through mind, in the natural way, as for example, when Telemachus goes home and obtains his food and wine for the voyage. The poet thus plays with her shape; still she is essentially the divine intelligence which seizes upon men and circ.u.mstances, and fits them into the order universal, and makes them contribute to the great purpose of the poem. Still the G.o.ddess does not destroy man's freedom, but supplements it, lifting it out of the domain of caprice. Telemachus willingly wills the will of Pallas.

Already it has been remarked that the G.o.ddess is made to command nature--the breeze, the sleep of the Suitors. It is the method of fable thus to portray intelligence, whose function is to take control of nature and make her subserve its purpose. The breeze blows and drives the ship; it is the divine instrument for bringing Telemachus to Pylos, a part of the world-order, especially upon the present occasion. The born poet still talks that way, he is naturally a fabulist and cannot help himself. In his speech, the hunter does not chase the deer, but brings it before his gun by a magic power; the mystic fisher calls the fishes; the enchanted bullet finds its own game and needs only to be shot off; the tanner even lays a spell upon the water in his vat and makes it run up hill through a tube bent in a charm. But back of all this enchantment intelligence is working and a.s.sumes her mythical, supernatural garb when the poet images her control of nature.

Thus in general the Mythus shadows forth objective mind, not subjective; it springs from the imaginative Reason, and not from a cultivated Reflection. In our time the demand is to have these objective forms translated into subjective thoughts; then we can understand them better. But the Homeric man shows the opposite tendency: he had to translate his internal thoughts into the external shapes of the Mythus before he could grasp fully his own mind. His conception of the world was mythical; this form he understood and not that of abstract reflection. We may well exclaim: Happy Homeric man, to whom the world was ever present, not himself. Yet both sides belong to the full-grown soul, the mythical and the reflective; from Homer the one-sided modern mind can recover a part of its spiritual inheritance, which is in danger of being lost.

It is therefore, a significant fact that the education of the present time is seeking to restore the Mythus to its true place in the development of human spirit. The Imagination is recognized to have its right, and unless it be taken care of in the right way, it will turn a Fury, and wreak treble vengeance upon the age which makes it an outcast. Homer is undoubtedly the greatest of all mythologists, he seizes the pure mythical essence of the human mind and gives to it form and beauty. Hence from this point of view, specially, we shall study him.

In the present Book the fact is brought out strongly that little or nothing is to be expected from the Ithacan people toward rectifying the great wrong done to the House of Ulysses. In part they are the wrong-doers themselves, in part they are cowed into inactivity by the wrong-doers. Corruption has eaten into the spirit of the people; the result is, the great duty of deliverance is thrown back upon an individual. One man is to take the place of all, or a few men the place of the many, for the work must be done. The mightiness of the individual in the time of a great crisis is thus set forth in vivid reality; the one man with the G.o.ds on his side is the majority. With truest instinct does the old poet show the G.o.ddess Pallas directing Telemachus, who partic.i.p.ates in the Divine and is carrying out its decree. This communion between man and deity is no mere mythologic sport, but the sincerest faith; verily it is the solidest fact in the government of the world, and the bard is its voice to all ages.

This Second Book has its import for the whole poem. It is now manifest that Ulysses, when he returns, is not to expect a grand popular reception; he must bring himself back to his own by his skill and prowess alone. The people will not help him slay the wrong-doers; rather the contrary will happen. Again the individual must work out the salvation of himself as well as of his family and his country.

Telemachus has shown himself the worthy son of the heroic father; the present Book connects him intimately with the return of Ulysses, and binds the entire Odyssey into unity; especially does this Book look to and prepare for the last twelve Books, which bring father and son together in one great act of deliverance.

If in the previous Book we beheld the depravity of the Suitors, we now witness the imbecility of the People. Still the spark of hope flashes out brightly in this Ithacan night; something is at work to punish the guilty and to redeem the land.

_BOOK THIRD._

In narrative, the present Book connects directly with the preceding Book. Pallas is still with Telemachus, they continue the voyage together till they reach Pylos, the home of Nestor. They have left Ithaca, and come into another realm; this change of place, as is often the case in Homer, carries with it a change of inner condition; the voyage is not simply geographical but also spiritual; indeed it must be so, if the young man is to derive from it any experience.

Great and striking is the difference between Ithaca and Pylos. The latter is the abode of religion primarily, the new-comers find the Pylians engaged in an act of worship, in which the whole people partic.i.p.ate, "nine rows of seats and five hundred men in each row."

Too large a number, cry some commentators, but they have not looked into the real meaning of such a mult.i.tude. Here is sacrifice, reverence, belief in the G.o.ds; while among the Ithacans is neglect of worship, religious paralysis, and downright blasphemy on the part of the Suitors. Furthermore, in one country order reigns, in the other is anarchy. Such is the contrast between the Second and Third Books, the contrast between Ithaca and Pylos. We can well think that this contrast was intended by the poet, and thus we may catch a glimpse of his artistic procedure.

The center of the picture is Nestor, a very old man, who, accordingly, gives soul to the Book. He is so near the world of the G.o.ds in the present life, that he seems already to dwell with them; age brings this serene piety.

No accident is it that this Book of Nestor begins and ends with a festival of sacrifice and prayer; that is the true setting of his character. What he says to the visitors will take color and meaning from his fundamental trait; we may expect in his words a full recognition of divinity in the events of the world.

But he has been a stout fighter in his time, he was in the Trojan War, though old already at that period. He will give the lesson of his life, not during that war, but afterwards. He was one of the heroes of the Iliad, which poem the Odyssey not only does not repeat, but goes out of its way to avoid any repet.i.tion thereof. Moreover he was one of those who returned home successfully, can he tell how it was done? This is the question of special interest to Telemachus, as his father, after ten years, has not yet reached home.

Herewith the theme of the Book is suggested: the Return. Physically this was a return from the Trojan War, which is the pre-supposition of the whole Odyssey; all the heroes who have not perished, have to get back to h.e.l.las in some way. These ways are very diverse, according to the character of the persons and the circ.u.mstances. Thus we touch the second grand Homeric subject, and, indeed, the second grand fact of the Greek consciousness, which lies imbedded in the Return (_Nostos_). A short survey of this subject must here be given. We have in the present Book several phases of the Return; Nestor, Menelaus, Ulysses are all Returners, to use a necessary word for the thought; each man solves the problem in his own manner.

Now what is this problem? Let us see. The expedition to Troy involved a long separation from home and country on the part of every man who went with it; still this separation had to be made for the sake of Helen, that she, the wife and queen, return to home and country, from which she had been taken. Her Return, indeed, is the essence of all their Returns. We see that through the war they were severed from Family and State, were compelled to give up for the time being their whole inst.i.tutional life. This long absence deepens into alienation, into a spiritual scission, from mere habit in the first place; then, in the second place, they are seeking to destroy a home and a country; though it be that of the enemy, and the act, even if necessary, brings its penalty. It begets a spirit of violence, a disregard of human life, a destruction of inst.i.tutional order. Such is the training of the Greeks before Troy. The wanton attack of Ulysses and his companions upon the city of the Ciconians (Book Ninth) is an indication of the spirit engendered in this long period of violence, among the best and wisest Greeks.

Still, in spite of the grand estrangement, they have the aspiration for return, and for healing the breach which had sunk so deep into their souls. Did they not undergo all this severing of the dearest ties for the sake of Helen, for the integrity of the family, and of their civil life also? What he has done for Helen, every Greek must be ready to do for himself, when the war is over; he must long for the restoration of the broken relations; he cannot remain in Asia and continue a true Greek. Such is his conflict; in maintaining Family and State, he has been forced to sacrifice Family and State. Then when he has accomplished the deed of sacrifice, he must restore himself to what he has immolated. A hard task, a deeply contradictory process, whose end is, however, harmony; many will not be able to reach the latter stage, but will perish by the way. The Return is this great process of restoration after the estrangement.

Many are the Returners, successful and unsuccessful in many different ways. But they all are resumed in the one long desperate Return of Ulysses, the wise and much-enduring man. In s.p.a.ce as well as in time his Return is the longest; in spirit it is the deepest and severest by all odds. The present poem, therefore, is a kind of resumption and summary of the entire series of Returns (_Nostoi_). In the old Greek epical ages, the subject gave rise to many poems, which are, however, at bottom but one, and this we still possess, while the others are lost. Spirit takes care of its own verily.

The true Returner, accordingly, gets back to the inst.i.tutions from which he once separated; he knows them now, previously he only felt them. His inst.i.tutional world must become thus a conscious possession; he has gone through the alienation, and has been restored; his restoration has been reached through denial, through skepticism, we may say, using the modern term. The old unconscious period before the Trojan war is gone forever; that was the Paradise from which the Greek Adam has been expelled. But the new man after the restoration is the image of the complete self-conscious being, who has taken the negative period into himself and digested it. Fortunate person! he cannot now be made the subject of a poem, for he has no conflict.

But the young man beginning life, the son Telemachus, is to obtain the same kind of knowledge, not through experience but through inquiry.

Oral tradition is to give him the treasures of wisdom without the bitter personal trial. It is for this reason that Pallas sends him to find out what his father did, and to make the experience of the parent his own by education; it is, indeed, the true education--to master the acc.u.mulated knowledge and wisdom of the race up to date. So we are now to have the school period of the son, who is thereby not merely the physical son (which, he remarks, is always a matter of doubt), but the spiritual son of his father, whereof there can be no doubt.

The Odyssey proper, toward which we may now cast a glance, contains the wanderings of Ulysses, and is the work of the grown man who has to meet the world face to face and conquer it; thus he obtains the experience of life. The two parts are always to be placed together--the education of the young man and the experience of the mature man; they const.i.tute a complete history of a human soul. Both are, indeed one--bud and flower; at bottom, too, both mean the same thing--the elevation of the individual into an ethical life in which he is in harmony with himself and with the divine order. True learning and true experience reach this end, which may be rightfully called wisdom.

So Telemachus the youth is to listen to the great and impressive fact of his time, containing the deep spiritual problem which is designated as the Return. Nestor is the first and simplest of these Returners; he is an old man, he has prudence, he is without pa.s.sion; moreover he has not the spirit of inquiry or the searching into the Beyond; he accepts the transmitted religion and opinions without question, through the conservatism of age as well as of character. It is clear that the spiritual scission of the time could not enter deep into his nature; his long absence from home and country produced no alienation; he went home direct after the fall of Troy, the winds and the waters were favorable, no tempest, no upheaval, no signs of divine anger. But he foresaw the wrath of the G.o.ds and fled across the wave in all speed, the wrestle with the deity lay not in him.

It is worth our while to make a little summary of these Returners in cla.s.ses, since in this way the thought of the present Book as well as its place in the entire Odyssey can be seen best. First are those who never succeeded in returning, but perished in the process of it; of this cla.s.s the great example is the leader himself, Agamemnon, who was slain by his own wife and her paramour. Second are those who succeeded in returning; of this cla.s.s there are three well-marked divisions, which are to be sharply designated in the mind of the reader.

(1). The immediate Returners, those who went straight home, without internal scission or external trouble; unimportant they are in this peaceful aspect though they were formerly heroes in the war. Four such are pa.s.singly mentioned by Nestor in his talk: Diomed, Neoptolemus the son of Achilles, Philoctetes, and Idomeneus. Nestor himself is the most prominent and the typical one of this set who are the Returners through h.e.l.las.

(2). The second one of those who have succeeded in getting home is Menelaus, whose sweep is far beyond that of Nestor and the immediate Greek world, taking in Egypt and the East. He was separated from Nestor, having delayed to bury his steersman; then a storm struck him, bore him to Crete and beyond, the wind and wave carried him to the land of the Nile. He is the Returner through the Orient.

(3). Finally is Ulysses, not yet returned, but whose time has nearly arrived. In comparison with the others he is the Returner through the Occident. But his Return gives name to the poem, of which it is the greater portion.

Still the universal poem is to embrace all these phases of the Return, and the son, through education, is to know them all, not by experience but by information. Thus his training is to reach beyond what the life of his father can give him; it must be universal, and in this way it becomes a true discipline. We must note too, that this poem reaches beyond the Return of Ulysses, beyond what its t.i.tle suggests, and embraces all the Returns, h.e.l.lenic, Oriental, Occidental, as well as the grand failure to return.

Such are some of the thoughts which gleam out the present Book and illuminate the whole Odyssey. We can now consider structure of the Book, which falls into two distinct parts, determined by the G.o.ddess.

When she makes ready to quit Telemachus, we enter the second portion of the Book, and Telemachus continues his journey without direct divine supervision. As the previous Book was marked by the coming of the G.o.ddess, the present Book is marked by her going. The intercourse of the youth with Nestor is the extent of her immediate guardianship; after such an experience, he must learn to make the rest of the journey through his own resources. Even the deity teaches that there must not be too much reliance upon the deity. The first portion of the Book extends to line 328, where Nestor ends his story of the Returns and suggests the journey to Menelaus for another phase thereof: "the sun set and darkness came on." The second portion embraces the rest of the Book. Again we must note that the fundamental Homeric division into the Upper and Lower Worlds is what divides the Book, thus giving to the same its organic principle.

I.

The religious setting of Nestor's world has been noticed already. Into it Telemachus comes, out of a realm of violence; it must indicate some cure for the ills of Ithaca. But he is now to show himself a man.

Pallas orders him to put aside his youthful modesty, and boldly make the inquiry concerning his father. And here the G.o.ddess utters a remark which the student may well ponder: "Some things thou wilt think of in thine own mind, but a G.o.d will suggest others." Again the Homeric dualism--the human and the divine--and also their harmony; the two elements must come together in every high thought or action. The double relation of the individual--to himself and to the G.o.d--is necessary for all worthy speech; his own activity and that of the deity run together in true discourse as well as in true action. So the whole poem is made up of man's self-determined energy and the interference of the G.o.ds; yet both are to be seen as ultimately one in the deed.

The new-comers are asked to pray, and we hear the famous utterance, which is characteristic of Nestor's world, "All men have need of the G.o.ds." This is said by one of his sons. Pallas makes the prayer, a happy one, which brings forth a feeling of harmony between the strangers and all the People. The sympathy is complete, and Telemachus can proceed to ask concerning his father, after he has told who he himself is, and whence he has come. In response, Nestor begins to tell the fateful story of the Returns after the fall of Troy. In his narrative we behold the starting-point of the calamities, the difference between Agamemnon and Menelaus, followed by a series of separations in succession. "Zeus planned for them a sad Return," which, however, was their own fault, "for all were neither wise nor just." It is clear that the Greek unity is utterly broken, a spiritual disruption sets in after the capture of the city. It is, indeed, the new problem, this Return to peace and inst.i.tutional order after ten years' training to violence. Such is the penalty of all war, however just and necessary; after it is over, the fighting cannot stop at once, and so the victors divide into two camps and continue the fight. Nestor gives the picture of these repeated divisions; once, twice, thrice the breach occurs; first he separates from Agamemnon, the second time from Ulysses, the third time from Menelaus. He will go directly home, and thus he has to leave the others behind; the scission is not in him as in them; he can be restored, in fact he restores himself. He has the instinctive pre-Trojan character still, being an old man; but Ulysses has lost that, and so separates from Nestor, though never before had they differed "in the Council of the Chiefs or in the a.s.sembly of the People." But Ulysses has to return by a far different road, and now each of the two wise men takes his own way, though both have to return.

Aged Nestor manifestly does not belong to the new epoch, he seems to have no sense of the deep spiritual struggle involved. He instinctively went home, shunning the conflict; the others could not. In the Iliad the relation between the two wise men, Nestor and Ulysses, is subtly yet clearly drawn; the one--the younger man--has creative intelligence, the other--the older man--has appreciative intelligence. In the Odyssey, the relation is plainly evolved out of that described in the Iliad; the one is the boundless striver, the other rests in the established order of things.

Nestor, therefore, cannot tell much about Ulysses, who lies quite out of his horizon, at least in the Odyssey. He can only give hope that the man of wisdom will yet return. This Telemachus doubts, dropping into one of his low human moods, even in the presence of Pallas, who rebukes him sharply. It is, indeed, the great lesson; he must have faith in the reality of the G.o.ds, this is the basis of all his future progress, the chief attainment of wisdom. The young man must not fall away into denial, he must be taught that there is a divine order in the world.

Old Homer, too, had his notions about religion in education, and the G.o.ddess herself is here introduced giving a lesson.

Nestor, though unable himself to give much information about the Return, can point to the second grand Returner, Menelaus, who has lately come from a distant land, and may have something to say. In fact Menelaus was the last to separate from Nestor, Ulysses had separated long before.

One other story Nestor tells with great sympathy, that of Agamemnon, who represents a still different form of the Return. The great leader of the Greeks can master the Trojan difficulty, can even get back to home and country, but these are ultimately lost to him by his faithless spouse. Still, after the father's death, the son Orestes restores Family and State. Therein Telemachus sees an image of himself, the son, who is to slay his mother's suitors; he sees, too, the possible fate of his father. Ulysses has essentially the same problem as Agamemnon, though he has not the faithless wife in addition; Telemachus beholds his duty in the deed of Orestes, according to Greek consciousness. We shall see hereafter how Ulysses takes due precaution not to be slain in his own land, as Agamemnon was. In disguise he will go to his own palace and carefully note the situation in advance, and then strike the blow of deliverance.

Several times Homer repeats in the Odyssey the tragic story of Agamemnon, the great Leader of the Greeks at Troy. An awe-inspiring tale of destiny; out of it aeschylus will develop his great tragedy, the Oresteia. Indeed the epos develops into tragedy with the full mythical unfolding of this story. aeschylus will deepen the motives into internal collisions; he will show the right and the wrong in Agamemnon, and even in Clytemnestra. Orestes, however beneficent his deed in avenging his father, will not escape the counterstroke; aeschylus will send after him the Furies for the guilt of having murdered his mother. Thus the double nature of the deed, its reward and its penalty, unfolds out of Homer into aeschylus, and creates the Greek drama as we know it at present.

Nestor has now told what lay in the immediate circle of his experience: the Return direct through h.e.l.las. Again he mentions the last separation; it was that of himself from Menelaus, when the latter was swept beyond the limit of h.e.l.las into Egypt, from which he has now returned. What next? Evidently the young man must be sent to him at Sparta in order to share in this larger circle of experience, extending to the Orient. So Greece points to the East in many ways; Nestor, the purely h.e.l.lenic soul, knows of that wider knowledge, though it be not his, and he knows that it should be possessed.

In this Book as elsewhere in the Odyssey the grand background is the Trojan war. The incidents of the Iliad are hardly alluded to, but are certainly taken for granted; the Post-Iliad is the field of interest, for in it the Returns take place. Thus the two great poems of Homer join together and show themselves as complements of each other.

II.

Now comes the separation which marks the second portion of the Book.

Pallas, in the guise of Mentor, coincides with Nestor in advising Telemachus to pay a visit to Menelaus, and then she departs, "sailing off like a sea-eagle," whereat great astonishment from all present.

That is, she reveals herself; all recognize the G.o.ddess, and probably that is the reason why she can no longer stay. She has become internal.