The first portion of the Book, as above given, is by all means the
greatest in conception and in execution as well as the longest. As
already indicated there are three kinds of writing in it, yet fused
together into unity, which makes it a most varied, yet profoundly
suggestive piece of Art. The simple idyllic, domestic strain of
ordinary real life we hear at the start in the reception and
recognition of Telemachus at Sparta; the scene lies in the sunshine of
a serene existence, yet after mighty tempests. Thence we pass into the
heroic world of Troy out of Greece and the Present, and listen to an
epical story of heroism told by Menelaus and Helen, of the Hero
Ulysses; finally we are brought to Egypt, and hear a prophecy
concerning the same Hero, who is now the subject of the Fairy Tale. In
other words, in this portion of the Fourth Book we observe a change of
scene to three localities--Greece, Troy, Egypt, which correspond to
Present, Past, and Future, and which attune the soul respectively to
Sorrow, Reminiscence, Prophecy. In accord with this variety of place
and circumstance is the variety of literary form already noted: the
ordinary Descriptive Tale of the Present, the Heroic Story of the Past,
and the Fairy Tale imaging what is distant in space and time.
1. As Telemachus arrives, he notes the outer setting to this noble
picture of Menelaus and Helen. There is the magnificent palace with
many costly ornaments of "bronze, gold, silver, amber and ivory;" it
has the ideal of Greek architecture, not yet realized doubtless, still
it suggests "the Hall of Olympian Zeus" to the admiring Telemachus. The
new-comers happen upon a wedding-festival, which connects the place and
the occasion with the Trojan war and its Hero Achilles, whose son is
now to marry Helen's daughter, betrothed to him while at Troy. Moreover
it is a time of joy, which brings all before us at first in a festal
mood.
Nor must we pass by that astonishing utterance of Menelaus to his
servant who proposed to turn away the guests: "Thou prattlest silly
things like a child, verily have we come hither partaking of the
hospitable fare of other men." Therefore we ought to give that which we
have received. One likes to note these touches of humanity in the old
heathen Greek; he too knew and applied the Golden Rule. The wisdom of
life here peers forth in the much-traveled Menelaus; suffering has
taught him to consider others; sorrow he has experienced, but it has
brought its best reward--compassion. This sorrow at once breaks forth
in response to the admiration of Telemachus for the outward splendor of
his palace and possessions.
The Spartan king takes a short retrospect of life as it has been
allotted him; the sighs well out between his words as he tells his
story. Eight years he wandered after the taking of Troy; for he passed
across the sea, to Egypt, even to AEthiopia and Lybia, which he portrays
as a wonderland of golden plenty. But while he was gone, "gathering
much wealth," his brother Agamemnon was slain; "therefore, small joy I
have bearing rule over these possessions." But chiefly he laments the
loss of one man, on account of whom "sleep and food become hateful to
me when I think upon him." That man is Ulysses, who has suffered more
than any other Greek. Thus a strong deep stream of sympathy breaks
forth from the heart of Menelaus, and the son, hearing his father's
name, holds up the purple mantle before his eyes, shedding the tear. A
strong unconscious bond of feeling at once unites both.
How can we fail to notice the clear indication of purpose in these
passages! The Poet brings Menelaus, as the culmination of his story, to
strike the chord which stirs most profoundly the soul of Telemachus.
The son is there to inquire concerning his father; without revealing
himself he learns much about the character and significance of his
parent. The same artistic forethought is shown, when, at this sad
moment, Helen enters, the primal source of all these calamities, in a
glorious manifestation of her beauty. Telemachus sees or may see,
embodied in her the very essence of Greek spirit, that which had to be
restored to Hellas from Asia, if Hellas was to exist. The Poet likens
her to a Goddess, and places her in surroundings which are to set off
her divine appearance. In her case, too, we notice the distant
background: Egyptian presents she has, as well as Menelaus, "a golden
distaff and a silver basket bound in gold." Mementos from far-off
wonderland are woven into the speech and character of the famous pair.
Now for a true female trait. Helen at once recognizes the young
stranger as the son of Ulysses, wherein she stands in contrast to her
husband Menelaus, who, in spite of his thinking about his friend just
at that moment, had failed to see before him the son of that friend.
But no sooner had the woman laid eyes upon Telemachus than she
personally identified him. When the wife had spoken the words of
immediate insight and instinct, the wise husband sees the truth and
gives his reasons. When the fact has been told him, he can easily prove
it.
Supremely beautiful is this appearance of Helen in the Odyssey; she is
the completion of what we saw and knew of her in the Iliad. Now she is
restored to home and country, after her long alienation; still she has
lurking moments of self-reproach on account of her former deeds. Though
she has repented and has been received back, she cannot forget, ought
not to forget the past altogether. The conduct of the husband is most
noble in these scenes; he has forgiven her fully, never upbraiding,
never even alluding to her fatal act, excepting in one passage
possibly, in which there is a gentle palliation of her behavior: "Thou
camest to the place, moved by some divinity who wished to give glory to
the Trojans." The husband will not blame her, she acted under the
stimulus of a God. The fallen woman restored is the divinest of all
pictures; we wonder again at the far-reaching humanity of the old bard;
to-day she would hardly be taken back and forgiven by the world as
completely as she is in the pages of Homer. She is indeed a new Helen,
standing forth in the purest radiance within the shining palace of
Menelaus. Long shall the world continue to gaze at her there.
Telemachus is to see and to hear Helen; that is, indeed, one of his
supreme experiences. But it is not here a matter of superficial staring
at a beautiful woman; all that Helen is, the total cycle of her
spirit's history, is to enter his heart and become a vital portion of
his discipline. It is probable that the youth does not realize every
thing that Helen means and is; still he beholds her, and that in itself
is an education. Helen is not merely a figure of voluptuous beauty,
which captivates the senses; she bears in her the experience of
complete humanity; she has erred, she has transformed her error, she
has been restored to that ethical order which she had violated. All of
which the young man is to see written in her face, and to feel in her
words and conduct, though he may not consciously formulate it in his
thought. This is the true beauty of Helen, not simply the outer
sensuous form, though she possesses that too. She could not be the
ideal of the Greek world, if she were merely an Oriental enchantress;
indeed it is just the function of the Greeks to rescue her from such a
condition, which was that of Helen in Troy.
Already the heart of Menelaus is full at the thought of his friend
Ulysses, and he warms toward the latter's son now present. He again
utters words of sympathetic sorrow. All are touched; all have lost some
dear relative at Troy; it is a moment of overpowering emotion. The four
people weep in common; it is but an outburst; they rally from their
sorrow, Menelaus commands: "Let us cease from mourning and think of the
feast."
It is at this point that Helen again interposes. Her experience of life
has been the deepest, saddest, most complete of all, she has mastered
her conflicts, inner and outer, and reached the haven of serenity; she
can point out the way of consolation. In fact it is her supreme
function to show to others what she has gone through, and thereby save
them, in part at least, the arduous way. For is not the career of every
true hero or heroine vicarious to a certain degree? Assuredly, if they
mean any thing to the sons and daughters of men. Helen can bring the
relief, and does so in the present instance.
She fetches forth that famous drug, the grand antidote for grief and
passion, and all life's ills, the true solacer in life's journey. It
had been given her by an Egyptian woman, Polydamna, whom she had met in
her wanderings, and it had evidently helped to cure her lacerated soul.
Again Egypt lies in the background, as it does everywhere in this Book,
the veritable wonderland, from which many miraculous blessings are
sent. Moreover it is the land of potent drugs, "some beneficial and
some baneful;" its physicians too, are celebrated as excelling all men.
Still more curious is the fact that women possess the secret of
medicine as well as men, and Polydamna may be set down as the first
female doctor--she who gave the wonderful drug to Helen. Surely there
is nothing new under the sun.
This marvelous drug, often called Nepenthe from one of its attributes,
has naturally aroused much curiosity among the many-minded readers of
Homer down the ages. Some have held that it was an herb, which they
have pointed out in the valley of the Nile. Others hold it to be opium
literally, though it does not here put to sleep or silence the company.
On the other hand allegory has tried its hand at the word. Certain
ancients including Plutarch found in it an emblem hinting the charm of
pleasing narrative. As Helen at once passes to story-telling about
Ulysses at Troy, changing from sad reminiscences of the dead to
stirring deeds of living men, we may suppose that this has something to
do with her Nepenthe, which changes the mind from inward to outward,
from emotion to action. The magic charm seems to work potently when she
begins to talk. Through her, the artist as well as the ideal, we make
the transition into the Heroic Tale of the olden time, of which she
gives a specimen.
2. Very naturally the Trojan scene is next taken, that greatest deed of
the Greek race, being that which really made it a new race, separating
it from the Orient and giving it a new destiny. Helen now tells to the
company myths, particularly the labors of Ulysses. She narrates how he
came to Troy in the disguise of a beggar; none knew him, "but I alone
recognized him," as she had just recognized Telemachus. Thus she
celebrates the cunning and bravery of Ulysses; but she also introduces
a fragment of her own history: "I longed to return home, and I lamented
the infatuation which Venus sent upon me." She wished to be restored to
her husband who was "in no respect lacking in mind or shape." We must
not forget that the husband was before her listening; she does not
forget her skill. Also Telemachus was present and hears her confession
of guilt and her repentance--important stages in her total life, which
he is to know, and to take unto himself.
Menelaus has also his myth of Ulysses at Troy, which he now proceeds to
tell. It brings before us the Wooden Horse, really the thought of
Ulysses, though wrought by Epeios, by which the hostile city was at
last captured. Here the Odyssey supplies a connecting link between
itself and the Iliad, as the latter poem closes before the time of the
Wooden Horse. Ulysses is now seen to be the Hero again, he is the man
who suppresses emotion, especially domestic emotion in himself and
others for the great end of the war. It suggests also the difficulty of
Ulysses; he had so long suppressed his domestic instincts, and done
without the life of the family, that he will have great trouble in
overcoming the alienation--whereof the Odyssey is the record. In this
story of Menelaus, Helen has her part too; she came to the Wooden
Horse, "imitating in voice the wives of all the Greek leaders," who
were deeply moved, yet restrained themselves except one, Anticlus,
"over whose mouth Ulysses clapped his powerful hands, and saved the
Greeks." Truly a strong image of the suppression of feeling in himself
and in others.
But why did Helen do thus? Was it a hostile act on her part? Menelaus
hints that it was at least very dangerous to the Greeks, though he
delicately lays the blame of it on some God, "who must have inspired
thee." She was testing the Greeks whom she supposed to be inside the
horse. Will they answer the call of their wives? Do they still retain
their affection for their families? Above all, does Menelaus love me
still? Such was her test, in which we witness another of her many
gifts. At any rate, she is not yet free, she is still married in Troy,
though the hour of her release be near.
With these two stories, the note changes; the sad turn of the talk is
transformed into a quiet earnest joy, the sorrows of the present vanish
in the glorious memories of the past. The moment Troy is introduced,
the narrative becomes an Heroic Tale, a sort of Iliad, with its feats
of arms. Thus we hear the story of Ulysses while at Troy, giving two
instances of his craft and his daring. Next we are to hear of him after
his Trojan experience, this now theme will give the new poem, the
Odyssey, which, however, is seen to interlink at many points with the
Iliad.
But this is sufficient, night has come on, Telemachus has heard and
beheld enough for one day. Helen disappears from the scene, she has
contributed her share, her own selfhood, to the experience of the young
man. Telemachus has seen Helen, and thus attained one supreme purpose
of Greek education. Never can that face, beautiful still, yet stamped
with all the vicissitudes of human destiny, pass out of his mind; never
can that life of hers with its grand transformation pass out of his
soul. The reader, too, has at this point to bid good-bye to Homer's
Helen, the most lasting creation of a woman that has yet appeared upon
our planet. A power she has, too, of continuous re-embodiment; every
poet seeks to call her up afresh, that is, if he be a poet. It may be
said that each age has some incarnation of Helen; the Greek myth for
two thousand years, Medieval legend, even Teutonic folk-lore have
caught up her spirit and incorporated it in new forms. The last great
singer of the ages has in our own time, evoked her ghost once more in
the shining palace of Menelaus at Sparta. Farewell, Helen, for this
time, but we shall meet thee again; yesterday thou didst show thyself
in a new book under a new garb, to-morrow thou art certain to appear in
another. Thine is the power to re-create thyself in the soul of man
with every epoch and in every country. Great is that discipline of
Telemachus, which we still to-day have to seek: he has seen Helen.
3. The preceding story was the Heroic Tale, which goes back to the
Past, especially to Troy, as the grand deed done by the united Hellenic
race, whereof the Iliad is a sample. But now we enter a new field, and
a new sort of composition, which, in default of a better name, we shall
call the Fairy Tale. Helen is not now present, nor is her struggle the
theme; Menelaus, the man, is to recount his experience in his return to
Hellas.
The story is inspired by the desire of Telemachus to know about his
father. As that father is not present the question arises, Where is he?
Menelaus will undertake to answer the question by a tale which shadows
forth the Distant and the Future--a prophetic tale, which casts its
glance through the veil of Time and Space.
A mythical figure appears, Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, who is to
foretell to the inquiring mortal what may be needful for his safety.
Not an Olympian God is Proteus, yet a supernatural shape standing
between man and deity and mediating the two, the human and the divine.
For it is Proteus who sends Menelaus back to the Gods whom he has
neglected and offended.
The Fairy Tale which we are now to consider, is not to be looked upon
as an allegory; it is a story with incident, movement, character, all
in their own right, and not for the sake of something else. But we must
not, on this account, imagine that it has no thought; in fact, the
Fairy Tale is just the way in which primitive peoples think. It has
thought, often the profoundest thought, which darts through it, not
steadily, but fitfully in flashes at the important links, like electric
sparks. This thought we are to catch and hold, and not rest satisfied
with the mere outer form of the story.
Persons we can always find who are strongly prepossessed against seeing
any meaning in the Fairy Tale, or in the Mythus. Modern usage of these
literary forms, doubtless, justifies such an opinion. Still we must
remember that Homer was not playing, but thinking with his Fairy Tale;
he had no technical terms, and almost no abstract language for
expressing thought; the day of philosophic reflection had not yet
dawned upon Greece. Homer has a great and deep thought to utter, but
his utterance is and must be mythical. His problem, too, he has, and it
is spiritual; the Mythus is his statement, honest, earnest, final. No,
he was not playing at story-telling, though it must have given him
pleasure; nor was his object merely to delight somebody, though he
certainly has delighted many by his song. He was the true Poet,
upholding his own worth and that of his vocation; he was loyal to the
Muse whose word he must sing whether it find listeners or not. Homer
built his legendary structure to live in, not to play in; with all his
sportiveness, he is a deeply earnest man; if his Zeus sometimes takes
on a comic mask, it is because Providence is a humorist. Homer, when he
mythologizes, is thinking, thinking as profoundly as the philosopher,
and both are seeking to utter to men the same fundamental thought. The
reader is to think after the poet, if not in the immediate mythical
form, then in the mediate, reflective way.
The present Tale seeks to give an answer to the two main questions of
Telemachus: Where is my father now? And, Will he return home? To answer
the one question requires a knowledge of what is distant in Space; to
answer the other question requires a knowledge of what is distant in
Time. Can we not see that herein is an attempt to rise out of that
twofold prison of the spirit, Space and Time, into what is true in all
places and times? In other words, Menelaus unfolds in a mythical form,
the Universal to his young pupil, and we may now see in what manner he
gives the lesson.
He leaps at once into the middle of his theme; he was in Egypt and
detained there by the Gods, "though longing to return home." Such is
the great initial fact, he did not do his duty to the Gods. Without
their aid or without their adequate recognition, he seeks to come home.
This indicates the spiritual difficulty; he is indifferent to or a
disbeliever in the Divine. The Gods are the upholders of the
world-order, they are the law and the spirit of the reality. Clearly
Menelaus could not or did not fit himself into the providential system.
Neglect of the Gods--that detains him, must detain him. The result is,
he and his companions are wasting away on an island, without any chance
of return.
The question of the hour is, How shall I get out of the difficulty?
Only in one way: Acknowledge the Gods, put yourself into harmony with
their order, then the outer world and the inner man will be one, and
must bring about the deed, which is the return. We are now to witness
the process whereby this reconciliation between man and the Gods takes
place--surely the supreme matter in life. It is told in the form of the
Fairy Tale or Marvelous Legend, which shifts and changes; we, however,
must cling to the essence else it will escape us, Proteus himself we
must hold fast, and not be misled by his many appearances.
Menelaus begins to feel sorrow, which is a penitent condition
antecedent to all help. Moreover he wanders alone, he has gone apart
from his companions; behold, the Goddess steps out of the air and
speaks. She reproaches him with folly, and turns him to the deity who
can assist him. Who is this Goddess?
It is Eidothea, the Goddess of Appearance, yet the daughter of Proteus,
the old First One, to whom she directs Menelaus, as the only means of
salvation. Mark how she designates Proteus: "he is the true, the
immortal; without error, without death; he knows the depths of all the
sea"--the great sea of Time and Space, which envelops the poor mortal.
But he must be snared and held--surely not an easy task it is to catch
him.
The etymology of the names of these two deities indicates their meaning
and relation. The grand dualism of the world is clearly suggested:
Appearance and Substance, the Transitory and the Eternal, that which
seems and that which is. Menelaus had gone astray, he had neglected the
Gods, he had followed Appearance, Delusion, Negation; the result could
only be death. But even Appearance points to something beyond itself,
something true and eternal. So Eidothea suggests Proteus, who is her
parent; that is, she is the manifestation of his being. She is the
many, he is the one underneath and in the many; she is change, he is
the permanent in all change. He may well be designated as her father,
whose transformations she knows and declares. These transformations are
called his tricks or stratagems, the shapes he puts on in the world of
Appearance; they are indeed Eidothea herself along with her voice
telling what is higher than herself.
When this one first principle is clearly revealed, then all is
revealed; the future becomes transparent, and the distant becomes near.
But you must hold fast to the one true Proteus; he will turn to
fire--hold fast; he will become running water--hold fast; he will
change to tree, beast, reptile--hold fast. Then he will show himself in
his right shape, and will speak the fact. Hold fast; the One is under
all, and is a God, who will lift the veil of Space and Time from the
visage of Truth. But unquestionably the man in his desperate struggle
must never forget the injunction. Hold fast to old Proteus.
We must note, too, that the poet has shown Menelaus as prepared to
receive this divine revelation; the Greek wanderer has been brought to
contrition by manifold sufferings. "I surely must have sinned against
the Immortals," is his penitent outcry. Thus he is ready for the new
truth, and the voice of the Goddess speaks, when he is internally in
condition to hear it. The divine word is not forced upon him; he must
do his share even toward creating the same within himself. Now, along
the shore of the sea, "he prays the Gods fervently," ere he goes to his
task. Egyptian Proteus he seeks to catch and to hold, for it is Proteus
who is to point out to him the way of reconciliation with Zeus and the
Olympian Gods.
Stress is strongly laid by the poet upon the fact that Proteus is of
Egypt. Evidently, in the mind of Homer, the thought of this Fourth Book
connects with the land of the Nile. What hint lies in that? The highest
wisdom of Egypt, indeed, of the Orient, is just this grand distinction
between Appearance and Substance, the Transitory and the Eternal, the
Many and the One. What Egypt gave to Hellas is here suggested, nay,
said directly. In fact, the first great step in wisdom, is still to
make the above distinction, which in many ways has been handed down to
us from the East.
But the Greeks united the two sides--that which appears and that which
is, or the world of sense, and the world of spirit--and thereby
produced art, the plastic forms of Gods and Men. Hellas brought forth
to the sunlight Beauty, which Egypt never could. Even here Egyptian
Proteus leads Menelaus to the Greek Gods, and becomes himself a kind of
antecedent Hellenic deity. Egypt means to Greek Menelaus two things:
first, it is a land of error, of alienation, of darkness; secondly, it
has its light, its wisdom, which, when he finds, points him homeward to
Hellas, to his own Gods.
Deeply suggestive become all these mythical hints, when we once are in
touch with their spirit. We naturally pass to the Hebrew parallel,
since that other great world-historical people of antiquity, the
Israelites, had their experience also with Egypt. For them, too, it was
a land of darkness, slavery, divine estrangement. They also sought a
Return, not dissimilar to the Greek Return, to their true home. It was
a long, terrible time, a wandering not on the water, like the
sea-faring Hellene, but in the wilderness and desert, like the
sand-faring Semite. All the companions (but two) were lost, and the
leader also; moreover that leader was learned in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians, but had to get out of it and away from it, and lead his
people into their own possessions. Much light Egypt with all its
darkness furnished to Moses and Judea; much to Menelaus and to Hellas.
So the two chief streams of human culture, the Greek and the Hebrew,
are traced back to the Egyptian source in the earliest books, or Bibles
of the two peoples themselves.
Moreover we find the form of the two grand experiences quite the same;
there is a going into Egypt, the land of dazzling riches and power and
civilization; there is the misfortune and trial in that land after a
time of prosperity, finally, there is the Return home, with many
wanderings and sufferings. Both peoples bring with them what may be
called the Egyptian idea, yet each transforms it into its own spirit
after its own fashion.
Still further we may follow this thought and behold it as universal.
The form of separation and return is fundamental in human spirit; this
is its inherent movement, and the shape which it imparts to the great
works of literature. The very destiny of man is cast into this mould;
there is, first, his estrangement, the fall from his high estate; then
is his return to harmony with the divine order. The Hebrew Bible begins
with the Fall of Man; that is the first chapter; the rest of the book
is his rise, and marks out the path of his Return which, of course,
shows many sinuosities. Such is the deepest fact of the human soul, and
to image it, there springs into existence the corresponding literary
form. Not that it was taken consciously by the poet or maker after much
ratiocination; he has to take it, if he sees the universe as it is.
This form is the form of the everlasting reality, of which he has the
immediate vision, it is also the form of very selfhood, of the Ego.
Though different in many things, the Odyssey and the Bible are both, at
bottom, Returns. They restore the man after alienation. Indeed we may
behold the same form as fundamental in all Great Literary Books--in
Homer, in Dante, in Shakespeare, in Goethe.
Many things connected with this catching and holding of Proteus are
suggestive, but they are the flash of the poet into the depths, and
must be seen with the poetic glance, for they bear with much loss the
heavy translation into thought. How this Eidothea, the Goddess of
Appearance, turns against her own father, and helps to make him reveal
himself in his true shape; how Menelaus and his three comrades put on
the skins of the sea-calves, and deceive the deceiver, applying the
latter's art of transformation to himself, and destroying appearance
with appearance; how the poor mortals almost perish through the odor of
the skins of the sea-calves, thus showing their human weakness and
limitation, till ambrosia, the food of the Immortals, is brought by the
Goddess, which at once relieves them of their mortal ailment--these and
other incidents have their subtle, far-reaching hint of the
supersensible world. The whole story is illumined with one thought, how
to master the material show of things and reach their spiritual
inwardness.
But the chief duty of these people, now disguised to destroy disguise,
is to hold the Old Man fast when they have once caught him, that
shifty, ever-changing Old Man of the Sea. Let him turn to water, to a
snake, to a lion, to a tree--hold him fast; he is the One under them
all and will at last reveal himself. Very necessary, indeed, is it to
hold fast, and never let go in the grand play of Appearances; the
strength of the man is shown by his ability to hold fast, amid the
fleeting shadows of Time.
Menelaus holds the Old Man fast, and asks: What God detains me from my
return? The answer comes home strong: Thou hast neglected the sacrifice
due to Zeus and the other deities; thou hast not recognized the Gods.
Verily the heart of the difficulty; Menelaus has not placed himself in
harmony with the divine order, in which he must act. What then? Go back
to the beginning, back to Egypt, and start aright; commence thy return
again with the new light, recognize Zeus and the Gods by sacrifice
there, and thou shalt see home. Thus the Egyptian estrangement is
removed, the Greek hero of wisdom must reach beyond the experience of
Egypt and be restored to the Greek Gods.
At once Menelaus was ready to obey, though "his heart was broken" at
the thought of recrossing the sea to Egypt, for the "way was long and
difficult." Still he will do it; and next he is given a look into the
Distant and Future, a glance into the soul of things separated from him
by Space and Time. He will know concerning the Returners, in deep
accord with the spirit of the poem. He hears of the awful death of
Ajax, son of Oileus, he hears of the sad fate of his brother Agamemnon;
also the Old Man of the Sea tells him a few words concerning Ulysses,
who is still alive but cannot get away from the isle of Calypso. News
just good enough to give hope to the son who is eagerly listening, and
hears that his father still lives.
Finally, Menelaus learns of his own future existence from the Old Man,
who is in person the very embodiment of what lies beyond the senses, of
immortality. "The Gods have decreed thou shalt not die, O Menelaus, but
shalt dwell in the Elysian Plain, at the ends of the earth." He is the
husband of Helen, and coupled forever with her destiny; he is, through
her, of the divine family of Zeus. Such is the promise, has it not been
fulfilled?
The poet thus brings to an end his Fairy Tale, with its deep-reaching
glances into Egypt as one of the antecedent sources of Hellenic
civilization. We find therein hinted a double relation: first, Egypt
was the giver of much wisdom to Greece especially the distinction into
Appearance and the one First Principle; secondly, it was hostile to
Greek spirit, which had to pass through the Egyptian stage to reach its
own destiny. Homer spins, in this Book, a thread which connects the
culture of Hellas with that of Egypt, So much we dare find in the
present legend without much straining. The distant background of this
entire visit of Telemachus to Sparta is Egyptian and Oriental, as we
see from the talk of both Helen and Menelaus.
We may now be certain that Homer, the poet, had before him a thought of
this kind: the inner soul of things and the outward manifestation. The
story of Proteus we may call not merely a Fairy Tale, but the Fairy
Tale, which images its universal self in setting forth its special
theme; it has the one meaning, which, however, takes on many varieties
of external shape; it is the essence of all Fairy Tales. Still you have
to catch the Proteus and make him tell his secret; I can only advise
you to hold fast, and finally the true form of the Old Man will reveal
itself, and speak the truth of many appearances, nay, of all. In
reading this poem of Homer we are only following the poet, if we seek
to lay hold of its essence under its varied manifestations. The whole
Odyssey is a Proteus, ever changing, assuming new forms, which will
utterly bewilder the reader until he reaches its first principle. Homer
probably suggests that his own Fairy Tale, nay, his own poem, is a
Proteus, which must be grasped and held by the one central thought. In
fact, does not the modern reader, like ancient Menelaus, in his
wanderings need an Eidothea, an interpreter, to point out the Old Man
of the Sea, the First One, and to tell how to catch him? In the very
names of Proteus and Eidothea we feel the intention, the conscious
etymology which borders on personification. Yet around this simple
substrate of thought are woven so many wonders, so many suggestions,
far-hinting and deep-glancing, that it becomes truly the Tale of Tales
(_Maerchen aller Maerchen_).
The Fairy Tale will appear again in the Odyssey, and take possession of
the whole poem for a time when we come to the wanderings of Ulysses.
Now it is but a slight bubbling-up of what will be a great stream. At
present it turns to the East and unfolds the Greek relation thereto;
hereafter it will turn to the West, and unfold the Greek relation
thereto. Both have their wise men, and the Return is from each
direction to Greece. The distinction between them we may suggest in
advance: the one has more of the speculative, of the spirit; the other
has more of the active, of the will, though neither side excludes the
other. Both men return to Hellas as the common destination; hence, we
find in this Book everywhere expressed the intimate brotherhood between
Menelaus and Ulysses.
It is of great interest to see the poet build his Fairy Tale, which is
but one form of his mythical procedure. Instinctively he builds it, as
the bee does the honey-cell. He places the God or Goddess at the center
of every movement or event; by divine will it is all brought about. The
sea which stands in the way of the return of Ulysses is a deity,
Poseidon; Eidothea is a person, the voice of the world of Appearance,
and she leads to Proteus, the Primal One. To Homer personality is at
the heart of this universe. Such is truly the mythical mind; all
phenomena are the product of an intelligent will, not of blind law. Not
a long chain of cause and effect hovers before Homer's soul, thus his
work would be prose; but he sees self-cause at once, and so cannot help
being poetical, as well as religious. The culture of to-day tends too
much to divest us of the mythical spirit--which is not altogether a
gain. Homer, if rightly studied, will help restore that lost gift of
the early ages.
But now we must turn our look to the youth for whom the tale has been
told--the learner Telemachus. He hears of the Orient and its principle;
the antecedents of his people, their origins, separations, their
advance upon the older nations are significantly hinted. All this is an
education. For its function is to bring together the scattered wisdom
of the Past and to give it to the youth who is coming upon the stage of
life; thus he is made the spiritual heir of all that his race has
achieved in word and deed. Telemachus has learned about the history of
Troy, the great event of the early Greek world; he has heard the
Returns of the Heroes, and he has seen Helen. But, chiefly, he has been
taught the grand distinction between Appearance and Substance; he has
come to know, if he has learned his lesson, the One in the Many; he has
been shown how to reach beyond the sensuous appearances of things and
enter the realm of spirit. Such is still the best education to-day,
though the manner of it be so different. There were no books in those
days, no schools but the lips of the aged; every Greek youth, to a
degree, was a Telemachus, and had a similar discipline. Tradition,
song, folk-lore are also means of education; we cannot do without the
mythus even now, and we are in many ways seeking to restore it to its
place in the training of the child, and of the grown man too.
Telemachus has graduated, he can now go home; so he asks to be
permitted to depart for Ithaca, where the hardest practical problem of
life is awaiting him. But mark, he carries with him the grandest of all
hospitable presents: the knowledge of the true and eternal in contrast
to the unreal and transitory.
In these four Books of the Odyssey the education of the Homeric youth
has been given. Next we are to have the experiences of the man--those
of the typical man Ulysses, as he works out his own problem. Menelaus
could not tell that tale; the man himself must be seen doing,
overcoming his obstacles by the deed. He will present a phase of life
not known to the East, not known to Egyptian Proteus. Thus the Odyssey
will be an entire book, a veritable Bible for young and old, with its
complete cycle of human discipline.
The story of Proteus itself is Protean, and must be grasped in its
essence through all its appearances. The whole Odyssey is veritably a
Protean poem as already said, whose study is to seize the one truth
which is underneath all these shifting shapes and manifold events. What
are we doing now but trying to grasp Proteus in this exposition? There
is no mythus in Homer which has wound itself so deeply and so variously
into the literature of the world. It would be an interesting history to
trace its employment by later poets, and see how it has mirrored itself
in the consciousness of the ages. The last world-poet, Goethe, takes
the figure of Proteus from his eldest brother, the first world-poet,
and transplants it into the Second Part of Faust, where it has its
place in the development of the modern man. The Mythus of Evolution the
tale of Proteus becomes in Goethe's hands, and hints of Darwinism long
before Darwin.
Still the most significant historical fact of this Fourth Book is the
connection which it makes between Egypt and Greece. In another Greek
legend, that of OEdipus, the same connection is made through the
Sphinx, whose riddle the Greek hero solves, whereat the Egyptian
monster destroys itself.
The Sphinx, the grand symbol of Egypt and chief product of its Art, may
be taken as the Egyptian starting-point for both Greece and Judea. The
Sphinx is half human, half animal; the two are put together in stone
and thus stand a fixed, unreconciled contradiction. Such was just the
Sphinx-riddle of humanity to the old Egyptian: man is a beast and a
spirit, linked together without any true mediation. Both the Hebrew and
the Greek sought to solve this grand riddle, each in his own way. The
Hebrew attempted to extirpate the sensuous element; he would have no
graven image, no idolatry, he would worship only the pure spirit, and
obey only the divine law. The Greek reconciled the two sides, by making
the sensuous element the bearer and the revealer of the spiritual. The
animal must be subordinated to the spirit, then it can live, nay can
have a new and higher existence. Thus Art arose in Greece, and not in
Judea.
The interpretations which the story of Proteus has received are simply
infinite. Probably it appeals to every reader in a somewhat different
fashion; he pours into this marvelous form certain phases of his own
experience and is satisfied. Indeed Proteus is not only a Form, but a
Form of Forms for the human mind, hinting both the oneness and the
multiplicity of the Ego itself. We may go back to the Vedas and find
traces of it there in some sun-myth; we may go to the sea and find it a
miraculous legend in which the Greek sailor set forth his perils and
his escapes. It certainly connects Hellas with Egypt, and suggests the
movement of ancient civilization. Menelaus in his voyage transcends the
Greek world of the Trojan epoch, and brings back the story thereof to
his country. The tale of Proteus is said to have been carried back to
Egypt, where Herodotus, several hundred years after Homer, found it in
a new transformation, Proteus being a king of Egypt, who took Helen
from Paris and kept her till Menelaus arrived and received her from the
Egyptian ruler. Thus the Fairy Tale raised the Old Man of the Sea to
the royal dignity, changing sovereignty from water to land. (_Herodotus_,
II. 112-20.) Plato makes him typical of a sophist, Schlegel of a poet,
Lucian of a dancer.
We shall now take a glance backwards and give a short summary of the
story, that its inner development in the hands of the poet may be more
fully seen.
1. The desolation of Menelaus and his companions on the island of
Pharos; no Return possible, death from hunger imminent. Moreover,
disregard of the Gods, internal estrangement, a condition of separation
from the Divine, truly an Egyptian condition.
2. Eidothea appears to him, just the Goddess of Appearance, and points
him to a power beyond herself. Hitherto he was lost in the world of
Appearance; but when he thinks of it, he separates himself from it, and
sees its nullity. So the Finite points to the Infinite, the Fleeting to
the Permanent, the Sensible to the Supersensible, Eidothea to Proteus,
who is the First One, or the First Principle underlying all Appearance,
hence her father.
3. She tells also how to catch him. When he emerges from the water,
source of all Forms, indeed just the Formable (see Goethe's Faust, Part
II. in the _Classical Walpurgisnight_), he will count by fives all his
sea-calves, or sea-forms, offspring of the sea (Halosydna). This
counting by fives, is significant, hinting the earliest abstraction
from the sensuous through number, specially by means of the five-system,
though Homer knew well the decimal system (see _Od._ XVI, 245. _Iliad_
II. 126). Menelaus with his companions is to take on this sea-form, and
be counted with the rest, though in disguise; then when Proteus lies
down to sleep with his herds or Forms, he is to be seized; that is,
seized in repose, as he is himself, not in relation to his shapes. They
must continue to hold fast to this primal Form of Proteus, or the
archetype, through all his changes, till he resumes his first shape,
"the one in which thou sawest him in repose." Then they possess the
Essence as distinct from the Phenomenon; they know that their disguise
has torn off all disguise, and attained the real.
4. Proteus will now tell Menelaus the truth devoid of all delusive
shows; ere the latter can leave Egypt and return to Greece he must put
himself into harmony with the Greek Gods, Zeus and the rest. So he has
to go back to Egypt's river and start over again in the right way. Then
he will make the Return to Hellas.
5. Proteus also gives the fate of a number of Returners. Ajax he
specially speaks about--Ajax, son of Oileus (not the greater Ajax), the
blasphemer, who said he would return in spite of the Gods, and at once
perished. The account of the death of Ajax has its meaning for
Menelaus, who thought of getting home with paying due regard to the
Gods. Once more Agamemnon's dire lot is told with some new incidents
added. Thirdly Proteus has seen Ulysses in an ocean isle with the nymph
Calypso who detains him though eager to get away. Thus the son hears
the fact about his father. Finally Proteus prophesies the immortality
of Menelaus, for has not the latter reached beyond Appearance into the
Eternal already, just by catching and holding Proteus? So the Old Man
of the Sea cannot help giving this prophecy, which lives directly in
his own experience.
Though Telemachus is not told that his father is returning, still he
may draw such an inference from the story of Menelaus, who was also
detained on an island longing to get home. If the Gods, being duly
recognized, will give their help in the one case, they will in the
other; they too, will come to the aid of Ulysses, when he has placed
himself in harmony with them. This is what is about to happen.
As already set forth, there are three divisions of this first part of
the Fourth Book: the simple idyllic Present at Sparta, the disrupted
strifeful Past at Troy, the movement out of the latter by way of Egypt.
Taking the three divisions together, we note that they form the total
sweep of one great Return, that of Menelaus, from unity through
separation back to harmony. Thus Menelaus and also Helen are shown to
have solved their problem.
But there remains the harder and deeper problem of Ithaca, which is
that of Ulysses. Here enemies have possession of the man's home, and he
brings back no help, only himself. It is therefore, a natural
transition to introduce at this point the Ithacan condition which is
seen to be more difficult than the Spartan one, for Menelaus seems to
have had no enemies in his house to dispute his Return, as Agamemnon
had and also Ulysses has. But Agamemnon perished, Ulysses will not.