Accordingly the affairs of Ithaca are introduced, as they happened
after the departure of Telemachus. This thread is picked up from the
Second Book, where he had his final conference with the Suitors and
told them his mind. We must recall that Ithaca is the abode of conflict
and disorder; the Suitors and Household of Penelope are the two
antagonistic elements; upon both the secret departure of Telemachus
explodes like a bomb, and brings the characters of each side to the
surface.
Telemachus stands in relation to the Suitors as well as to his mother;
both are putting their restraints upon him which he has broken through
and asserted his freedom, his new manhood. One, however, is the
restraint of hate, the other is the restraint of love; both stand in
the way of his development. He must get his great education in defiance
of Suitors and of mother. The attitudes of these two parties are
described, and form the two divisions of this second part of the Fourth
Book.
1. The Suitors, when they hear of the deed of Telemachus, are not only
surprised but startled, and they at once recognise that a new power has
risen which threatens to punish their misdeeds. The youth has plainly
become a man, a man showing the skill and courage of his father, and
with the sense of wrong burning in his breast. Already he has declared
that he would wreak vengeance upon them, the day of reckoning seems to
have dawned. Previously they despised his warnings as the helpless
babble of a mere boy; now they have to meet him, returning, possibly,
with help from his father's friends.
What will the Suitors do? The most audacious one, Antinous, is ready
with a proposal. The boy will prove a pest, we must waylay him on his
return and murder him. Such is their final act of wrong, which is now
accepted by all, and the proposer gets ready to carry out his plan.
Hitherto it may be said the Suitors had a certain right, the right of
suit, which, however, becomes doubtful through the uncertainty about
the death of the husband, and through the unwillingness of the wife.
But now their guilt is brought out in strong colors, there can be no
question about it. They man a boat and lie in wait for their prey on a
little island which the youth has to pass in coming home.
2. The mother Penelope hears of the daring act of her boy, done without
her consent or knowledge. The news is brought to her, just as she is
recounting the goodness of Ulysses and the wrongs of the Suitors. This
new misfortune, for so it seemed to her, is quite too great a burden to
bear; she breaks out into lamentations find recites her woes: a husband
lost and now a son in the greatest danger. But she is to get both human
and divine consolation. Eurycleia, the old nurse, confesses to her part
in the affair, and advises the queen "to put on fresh garments and to
pray to Pallas, ascending to the upper chamber."
Pallas sends to the distressed mother a refreshing sleep and a
consoling dream, which we may consider to have been suggested by the
words of Eurycleia. Her sister who dwelt far away, appears to her and
says that her son, guided by Pallas, will surely return. Doubtless we
see here an expression of the deepest instinct of Penelope; the outer
suggestion of the nurse and her own unconscious faith fuse together and
form the phantom and give to the same an utterance. The youth who can
plan and carry out such an expedition will probably be able to take
care of himself. Penelope of course has some doubt, since the good
Ulysses has had to suffer so much from the Gods. About him, too, she
will know and so inquires of the phantom. Doth he live? But the shadowy
image can tell nothing, the act of Ulysses lies not in its field of
vision, it declines to speak further and vanishes.
Thus Telemachus has broken through the two restraints which held him in
bondage at his Ithacan home, both keeping down his manly endeavor. The
first comes from the Suitors and is the restraint of hate, which would
give him no opportunity in the world of action, and in addition is
destroying his possessions. The second restraint springs from love, and
yet is injurious. The solicitude of the mother keeps him back from
every enterprise; having lost her husband, as she deems, by his too
adventuresome spirit, she is afraid of losing her boy for the same
reason, and is in danger of losing him anyhow, by making him a cipher.
Such are the two obstacles in Ithaca which Telemachus is shown
surmounting and asserting therein his freedom and manhood. The whole is
a flash of his father's mettle, he is already the unconscious Ulysses;
no wonder that he inquires after his parent in Pylos and Sparta. The
poet will now carry him forward to the point where he will actually
meet and know Ulysses himself; the son is to advance to direct
communion with his great father.
Here the Fourth Book, or rather the Telemachiad, reaches out and
connects with the Ithakeiad, which begins in the Thirteenth Book.
Ulysses returns to Ithaca and steals to the hut of the swineherd
Eumaeus; Telemachus comes back from Sparta, and, avoiding the ambush of
the Suitors, seeks the same faithful servant. Thus father and son are
brought together, and prepare themselves for their heroic task.
But before this task can be accomplished, the grand experience of
Ulysses is to be told in the eight following Books (V-XII); that is, we
are now to have the Ulyssiad, just as we have had the Telemachiad.
Father and son are now separated from home and country; both are to
return through a common deed of heroism.
_General Observations._ Looking back at the Telemachiad (the first four
Books) we observe that it constitutes a very distinct member of the
total organism of the Odyssey. So distinct is it that some expositors
have held that it is a separate poem, not an integral portion of the
entire action. The joint is, indeed, plain at this place, still it is a
joint of the poetic body, and not a whole poetic body by itself. Only
too easy is it for our thought to dwell in division, separation,
scission, analysis; let us now turn to the opposite and more difficult
habit of mind, that of uniting, harmonizing, making the synthesis of
what seems disjointed. In other words let us find the bonds of
connection between the last four Books and the coming eight Books, or
between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad.
1. We have already noticed the three grand Returns, rising one above
the other to the culmination--that of Nestor, of Menelaus, of Ulysses.
Now the first two are told in the Telemachiad; but they openly lead up
to the third, which is the complete Return, and which is just the theme
of the Ulyssiad. Nestor makes the immediate Return, without conflict,
through Greece, but he points directly to Menelaus, and foreshadows the
coming of Ulysses. Menelaus, however, prophesies the third Return, and
thus directly joins his account with the Ulyssiad. In this manner we
see and feel the intimate bond between these two grand divisions of the
total Odyssey.
2. We notice the same general movement in the Telemachiad and in the
Ulyssiad; the same fundamental scheme underlies both. There is the real
Present, in the one case Ithaca, Pylos, Sparta, in the other ease
Phaeacia; then there is in the same heroic Past the Trojan war and its
deeds of valor; thirdly there is a movement in both to an ideal world,
to a Fableland, outside of Hellas and beyond even Troy; finally there
is a Return in both to Greece and to the Present. Setting the stages of
this movement down in definite numbers, we have, first in the
Telemachiad: (1) Hellas, the Present; (2) back to Troy, the Past, in
the reminiscences of Nestor, Menelaus, Helen; (3) forward to the Fairy
World in the account of Proteus; (4) return to Ithaca at the end of the
Fourth Book. Secondly in the Ulyssiad we may here note in advance the
same general movement: (1) Phaeacia, the Present; (2) back to Troy in
the strains of Demodocus; (3) forward to the Fairy World of Polyphemus
and Circe; (4) return to Ithaca in the Thirteenth Book. Thus we reach
down and grasp the fundamental norm according to which the poet
wrought, and which holds in unity all the differences between these two
divisions of the poem. The spiritual basis of this movement, its
psychological ground, we shall endeavor to unfold more fully hereafter.
3. In correspondence with the preceding, we can distinguish in both
divisions the same kinds of style: (1) the symple Idyllic Tale of the
Present; (2) the Heroic Tale recounting the Past and specially the
Trojan war; (3) the Fairy Tale which introduces a supernatural realm.
Each of these styles is poetic, yet with its own coloring and
character. Here again we should observe the author employing his
fundamental norm of composition a second time, and thus re-asserting
himself as the same person in both divisions of the poem--in the
Telemachiad as well as in the Ulyssiad.
4. In each division, again, there is a supreme woman at the center of
domestic life--Penelope in the one, Arete in the other, each being wife
and mother, each supremely faithful to her institution, the Family.
This predominance and glorification of the married woman and the home
constitute a common characteristic of both divisions, and show the same
fundamental conception of her worth, as well as of her position in the
social order. It may be doubted if Modern Literature has improved upon
this Homeric representation.
5. Then the contrasts between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad link
them together. Disturbed Ithaca, peaceful Phaeacia; the theoretic
education of the son, the practical discipline of the father;
Telemachus, the son of his father, Nausicaa, the daughter of her
mother, the Ithacan boy and the Phaeacian girl--such are a few of these
contrasts. Finally father and son, strongly contrasted, yet having
their unity in this family of which they are members, suggest the unity
of the poem of which they are characters.
These bonds of connection are so strong that they overbalance all
discrepancies of single passages, interpolations, and inconsistencies
of detail. Still, if the mind of the critic refuses the general sweep,
and insists upon prying asunder the joints, and upon looking through
its microscope at the little things, it will find only separation,
discord, and many small Homers instead of a single great Homer. The
particular always divides, but the general unites; so the Homeric poems
will have two sets of reader, the dividers and the unifiers.
_The Education of Telemachus._ This is another name, which we have
frequently used, for the Telemachiad. The Homeric youth is also to get
his training for life; he is to find and to take possession of his
inheritance transmitted from the Past. The general statement of this
educational fact occurs frequently in the work: Telemachus wishes to
know about his father. That is his immediate inquiry, which will extend
to knowing something about the fathers and what they did; then his
investigation will go beyond the fathers and the Greek world, reaching
over into Egypt and the East. The function of education is to put into
possession of the coming man the wisdom of the Past, and specially the
means for acquiring this wisdom; then he can transmit the intelligence
of the race to those who are to follow him. So Telemachus has attained
the age when he must know ancestral wisdom. Such is his strong
instinct, he feels his limitation, he is penned up in a narrow life at
Ithaca, whose barriers cramp his free spirit. This intense desire for
education, for finding out something about the world in which he is
placed, is the starting point for the boy. He shows his spirit by
breaking through the restraint of the Suitors and his mother in order
to get an education. Like many a youth to-day, he has to leave home,
has to run away, in fact, that he may have his opportunity. What does
he get? Or, what is the content of this education! Let us see.
1. We find that he gets a fair amount of religious training. He has
been led through the misfortunes of his House to question the goodness
of Providence and the superintendence of the Gods. But Minerva gives
him a strong lesson, so does Nestor. He obtains a glimpse of the Divine
Order, and feels the necessity of keeping in harmony with the same. The
outcome of his visit must impress him with the providential side in
human action.
2. He sees new countries, talks with famous men, and partakes of their
wisdom. Chiefly, however, he hears of the grand Return in its manifold
phases; he learns the story of those who failed, of those who reached
home, like Nestor and Menelaus. Great is the lesson; this Return images
the movement of the soul, the breach within and the restoration. It is
remotely his own inner life outlined, and that of every man; Telemachus
has just made a separation from home and country, to which he must come
back and be reconciled. His own soul-form he must dimly feel in the
great Return of the Heroes from Troy, and their various destinies he
must recognize to be his own possibilities.
3. Telemachus the aspiring youth, is trying to recover his patrimony,
which is of two kinds, physical and spiritual. The Suitors are
destroying the one, and keeping it out of his hands; with them is one
conflict, that of justice. But he must also inherit his father's mental
riches; he has to separate from home and his mother to find this form
of wealth or even to learn of its nature. So Telemachus has his Trojan
expedition, not so great in itself, yet, adventurous enough for a boy.
He is moving on the lines of his father when the latter went to Troy--a
national affair; but his deed is a breaking loose from boyhood--the
breach out of which he is to come back a man.
4. The form of this educative process of the Odyssey is very different
from ours. It seizes hold of the mythical element in man, and the
reader of to-day is to penetrate to the meaning by something of an
effort. Telemachus is to see Helen; what does that signify in
education? He is to hear the Tale of Proteus and feel its purport in
relation to his own discipline. One asks: Is not this imaginative form
still a vital element of education? The Odyssey has been and is now a
school-book of the race.
_THE ULYSSIAD._
We have now reached the second grand division of the poem, the Odyssey
proper, which we have named under necessity the Ulyssiad, and which
gives an account of the adventures of Ulysses before he comes to Ithaca
and joins Telemachus. If the division which we have just had may be
called the education of a youth, this division may be called the
discipline of a man through experience of the world. The whole embraces
eight Books, fifth to twelfth inclusive, with a little of the
thirteenth. There is no doubt that this is the most subtly constructed
piece of writing in existence, transparent in the highest degree, and
yet profound as thought itself. We may therefore, look a little at the
structure in advance.
The first thing to be noticed is that there are two very distinct
movements in the present division. On the one hand the action moves
through three separate localities--Ogygia or Calypso's Island, Phaeacia,
Fableland. This external movement of the poem has its inner
counterpart, which the reader is to penetrate. On the other hand there
is the movement of the individual, the Hero Ulysses, who begins with
Fableland, passes through Ogygia and comes to Phaeacia. This movement
also has its corresponding internal significance. As the first movement
is that of the poem, or of the world, we may call it objective; as the
second movement is that of the individual man, we may call it
subjective. The two together, accordingly, spin the two strands of the
world and of man into the one thread of existence. Both we shall
consider.