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 Goddess, and probably

that is the reason why she can no longer stay. She has become internal.

Telemachus is now conscious, as she disappears, and he has his own

wisdom; he has seen Pallas, and so he must go without her to Sparta.

Hardly does he need her longer, being started upon the path of wisdom

to know wisdom. At the court of Nestor, with its deeply religious

atmosphere, she can appear; but she declines to go with him in person

to Menelaus, though she advises the journey. All of which, to the

sympathetic reader, has its significance. Still Pallas has by no means

vanished out of the career of Telemachus; she at present, however,

leaves him to himself, as she often does.

Nestor, too, responds to the marvelous incident in true accord with his

character; he invokes her with prayer and institutes a grand sacrifice,

which is now described in a good deal of detail. Just as the Book opens

with a sacrifice to a deity, so it closes with one--the two form the

setting of the whole description. Thus the recognition of the Gods is

everywhere set forth in Nestor's world; he is the man of faith, of

primitive, immediate faith, which has never felt the doubt.

It is well that Telemachus meets with such a man at the start, and gets

a breath out of such an atmosphere. He has seen the ills of Ithaca from

his boyhood; he may well question at times the superintendence of the

Gods. His own experience of life would lead him to doubt the existence

of a Divine Order. Even here in Pylos he challenges the supremacy of

the Olympians. When Nestor intimates that his father will yet return

and punish the Suitors, with the help of Pallas, or that he himself may

possibly do so with the aid of the same Goddess, Telemachus replies:

"Never will that come to pass, I think, though I hope for it; no, not

even if the Gods should so will." Assuredly a young skeptic he shows

himself, probably in a fit of despondency; sharp is the reproof of the

Goddess: "O Telemachus, what kind of talk is that? Easily can a God, if

he wills it, save a man even at a distance." Thus she, a Goddess,

asserts the supremacy of the Gods, even though they cannot avert death.

But the youth persists at present: "let us talk no more of this; my

father never will return." But when Nestor has told the story of

AEgisthus punished by the son Orestes, the impression is strong that

there is a divine justice which overtakes the guilty man at last; such

is the old man's lesson to the juvenile doubter. The lesson is imparted

in the form of a tale, but it has its meaning, and Telemachus cannot

help putting himself into the place of Orestes.

Such is, then, the training which the young man, shaken by misfortune,

obtains at the court of Nestor; the training to a belief in the rule of

the Gods in a Divine Order of the World--which is the fundamental

belief of the present poem. It is no wonder that Telemachus sees Pallas

at last, sees that she has been with him, recognizing her presence. To

be sure, she now disappears as a personal presence, having been found

out; still she sends Telemachus on his journey to Sparta. Thus the

Third Book has a distinctive character of its own, differing decidedly

from the Book which goes before and from that which follows. Here is a

religious world, idyllic, paradisaical in its immediate relation to the

Gods, and in the primitive innocence of its people, who seem to be

without a jar or inner scission. No doubt or dissonance has yet entered

apparently; Pylos stands between Ithaca, the land of absolute discord,

and Sparta, the land recently restored out of discord. The Book hears a

relation to the whole Odyssey in its special theme, which is the

Return, of which it represents in the ruler Nestor a particular phase.

It prepares the way for the grand Return, which is that of Ulysses; it

is a link connecting the whole poem into unity. Moreover it shadows

forth one of the movements of Greek spirit, which seized upon this idea

of a Return from Troy to express the soul's restoration from its

warring, alienated, dualistic condition. It is well known that there

were many poems on this subject; each hero along with his town or land

had his Return, which became embodied in legend and song. All Hellas,

in a certain stage of its spiritual movement, had a tendency to break

out into the lay of the Return. One of the so-called cyclic poets,

Hagias of Troezen, collected a number of these lays into one poem and

called it the _Nostoi_ or Returns, evidently an outgrowth of this Third

Book in particular and of the Odyssey in general.

Thus Telemachus has witnessed and heard a good deal during his stay

with Nestor. He has seen a religious world, a realm of faith in the

Gods, which certainly has left its strong impression; he has been

inspired by the example of his father, whose worth has been set forth,

and whose place in the great Trojan movement has been indicated, by the

aged Hero. Still further, Telemachus has been brought to share in the

idea of the Return, the present underlying idea of the whole Greek

consciousness; thus he must be led to believe in it and to work for it,

applying it to his own case and his own land. Largely, from a negative,

despairing state of mind due to his Ithacan environment, he has been

led into glimpses of a positive believing one; this has sprung from his

schooling with Nestor, who may be called his first schoolmaster, from

whom he is now to pass to his second.

The reader must judge whether the preceding view be too introspective

for Homer, who is usually declared to be the unconscious poet, quite

unaware of his purpose or process. No one can carefully read the Third

Book without feeling its religious purport; an atmosphere it has

peculiar to itself in relation to the other Books of the Telemachiad.

To be sure, we can read it as an adventure, a mere diverting story,

without further meaning than the attempt to entertain vacant heads

seeking to kill time. But really it is the record of the spirit's

experience, and must so be interpreted. Again the question comes up:

what is it to know Homer? His geography, his incidents, his grammar,

his entire outer world have their right and must be studied--but let us

proceed to the next Book.

_BOOK FOURTH._

The transition from Book Third to Book Fourth involves a very

significant change of environment. In Sparta, to which Telemachus now

passes, there is occurring no public sacrifice to the Gods, but a

domestic festal occasion gives the tone; he moves out of a religious

into a secular atmosphere. Pylos allows the simple state of faith, the

world unfallen; Sparta has in it the deep scission of the soul, which,

however, is at present healed after many wanderings and struggles.

Nestor, as we have seen, is quite without inner conflict; Menelaus and

Helen represent a long, long training in the school of error,

tribulation, misfortune. Pylos is the peace before the fall, Sparta is

the peace after the fall, yet with many reminiscences of the latter.

This Fourth Book reaches out beyond Greece, beyond the Trojan War, it

goes beyond the Hellenic limit in Space and Time, it sweeps backward

into Egypt and the Orient. It is a marvelous Book, calling for our best

study and reflection; certainly it is one of the greatest compositions

of the human mind. Its fundamental note is restoration after the grand

lapse; witness Helen, and Menelaus too; the Third Book has no

restoration, because it has no alienation.

The account of the various Returns from Troy is continued. In the

preceding Book we had those given by Nestor, specially his own, which

was without conflict. He is the man of age and wisdom, he does not fall

out with the Gods, he does not try to transcend the prescribed limits,

he is old and conservative. The Returns which he speaks of beside his

own, are confined to the Greek world; that was the range of his vision.

But now in the Fourth Book we are to hear of the second great Return,

in which two Greeks participate, Menelaus and Helen. This Return is by

way of the East, through Egypt, which is the land of ancient wisdom for

the Greek man, and for us too. It is the land of the past to the

Hellenic mind, whither the person who aspires to know the antecedents

of himself and his culture must travel; or, he must learn of those who

have been there, if he cannot go himself. Egyptian lore, which had a

great influence upon the early Greek world in its formative period,

must have some reflection in this primitive Greek book of education. So

Telemachus, to complete his discipline, must reach beyond Greece into

the Orient, he must get far back of Troy, which was merely an

orientalizing Hellenic city; he must learn of Egypt. Thus he transcends

the national limit, and begins to obtain an universal culture.

But the moment we go beyond the Greek world with its clear plastic

outlines, the artistic form changes; the Hellenic sunshine is tinged

with Oriental shadows; we pass from the unveiled Zeus to the veiled

Isis. Homer himself gets colored with touches of Oriental mystery. The

Egyptian part of this Fourth Book, therefore, will show a

transformation of style as well as of thought, and changeful Proteus

will become a true image of the Poet. The work will manifest a symbolic

tendency; it will have an aroma of the wisdom of the East, taught in

forms of the parable, the apologue, with hints of allegory. The world,

thrown outside of that transparent Greek life, becomes a Fairy Tale,

which is here taken up and incorporated into a great poem. We shall be

compelled to look thoroughly into these strange shapes of Egypt, and,

if possible, reach down to their meaning, for meaning they must have,

or be meaningless. We shall find that this Fourth Book stands in the

front rank of Homeric poetry for depth and suggestiveness, if not for

epical lucidity.

What did not Telemachus see and hear at Sparta? That was, indeed, an

education. He saw the two great returned ones, the woman and the man.

Helen he saw, who had passed through her long alienation and was now

restored to home and country after the Trojan discipline. In her, the

most beautiful woman, the human cycle was complete--the fall, the

repentance, the restoration. Then the eager youth saw Menelaus, and

heard his story of the Return; he is the man who seeks the treasures of

the East, and brings them to Hellas in the Hellenic way. He finds them,

too, after much suffering, never losing them again in the tempests of

his voyage, for does he not spread them out before us in his talk? Both

the man and the woman, after the greatest human trials, have reached

serenity--an institutional and an intellectual harmony. The young man

sees it and feels it and takes it away in his head and heart.

The present Book falls easily into two distinct portions. The first is

the visit of Telemachus to Sparta and what he experiences there. Sparta

is at peace and in order; the youth to a degree beholds in it the ideal

land to which he must help transform his own disordered country. The

second portion of the Book goes back to Ithaca (line 625 of the Greek

text). Here we are suddenly plunged again into the wrongful deeds of

the suitors, done to the House of Ulysses. They are plotting the death

of Telemachus, the bearing of whose new career has dawned upon them.

Ithaca is truly the realm of discord in contrast to the harmony of

Sparta and the House of Menelaus, which has also had sore trials. Hence

Sparta may be considered a prophecy of the redemption of Ithaca.

Following out these structural suggestions, we designate the organism

of the Book in this manner:--

I. The visit of Telemachus at Sparta in which he beholds and converses

with two chief Returners from Troy, those who came back by way of the

East, Menelaus and Helen. This part embraces the greater portion of the

Book and falls into three divisions.

1. The arrival and recognition of the son of Ulysses by Menelaus and

Helen who are in a mood of reminiscence, speaking of and in the Present

with many a glance back into the Past. The Oriental journey to Cyprus,

Phoenicia, and specially Egypt, plays into their conversation, making

the whole a Domestic Tale of real life with an ideal background lying

beyond Hellas.

2. When the son is duly recognized and received, the father Ulysses

comes in for reminiscence; with him the background shifts from the

Orient to Troy, where he was the hero of so many deeds of cunning and

valor, and where both Menelaus and Helen were chief actors. The

literary form passes out of the Domestic Tale of the Present into the

Heroic Tale of the Past, from sorrowful retrospection to bracing

description of daring deeds. Helen and Menelaus, each in turn, tell

stories of Ulysses at Troy to the son, who thus learns much about his

father. As already said, the background of this portion is the Trojan

war which was the grand Hellenic separation from the Orient. The Iliad,

and specially the Post-Iliad are here presupposed by the Odyssey.

3. The Return of Menelaus is now told to Telemachus, which Return

reaches behind the Trojan war into the East and beyond the limits of

the real Hellas into Egypt. Thus the spatial and temporal bounds of

Greece are transcended, the actual both in the Present and Past goes

over into the purely ideal, and the literary form becomes a Marvelous

Tale--that of Proteus, which suggests not only Present and Past, but

all Time.

II. Such is the grand Return of Menelaus out of struggle and dualism

into peace and reconciliation with himself and the world, barring

certain painful memories. The poet next, in sharp contrast throws the

reader back to Ithaca, the land of strife and wrong, in general of

limits for young Telemachus, who is reaching out for freedom through

intelligence, and is getting a good deal thereof. Two phases:

1. The Suitors' limits, which he has broken through; their wrath and

their plan of murdering him in consequence.

2. The mother's limits, which he has also broken through; her paroxysm

in consequence, and final consolation.