We soon find that Ulysses has been thrown back to Calypso's Isle from
Fableland, of which in a certain sense it is the continuation. The
circle which he has passed through is, therefore, the following:--
1. Fableland.
2. Ogygia.
3. Phaeacia.
This is, then, the movement of the individual, in contrast with the
previous sweep of the poem as a whole, which represents the movement of
the world. Both are bound together, both pass through the same stages,
though in a different order. The process of social development begins
with the state of Nature, with Ogygia, unfolds into a simple
institutional life, into Phaeacia, which then enters into certain
negative phases, such as are seen in Fableland. But the man from Troy,
Ulysses, begins with the last, and is whelmed back into the first, and
finally rests in the second before going to Ithaca. Let us note this
personal movement in a little more detail.
1. Ulysses passes into Fableland, having wantonly done a deed of
violence against civilized life and order by destroying the city of the
Ciconians (Book IX), as he was returning from the Trojan War. Such is
the negative element in him, which has been engendered by that war, and
which now appears in various manifestations, such as his doings with
Polyphemus and Circe, till his career in Fableland winds up with
destroying the Oxen of the Sun. This is the extreme negative act which
throws him back beyond Circe's into Calypso's realm. He assaults really
his own will in this last act, he undermines his own power of recovery,
he puts out his own light. Circe would have sent him forward again,
leaving intact his will-power; Calypso detains him lulled in the
sensuous delights of her bower. He denies his own reason; how then can
he rise after a fall? Indeed what use is there of rising? So he sinks
down into Ogygia, the Dark Island.
2. It is no wonder, therefore, that he remained with Calypso seven
years and more, draining to the dregs the cup of that life. Still he
has desire to return home, must have it, he must possess reason to deny
reason. He longs for what he has not, sensuous charms cannot drown his
aspiration; such is the Hell in which he has placed himself. Still even
here when he has passed his probation, he must be released by a decree
of the Gods, who, formerly favorable to Neptune, the divine foe of
Ulysses, have now become friendly to Minerva, the Hero's protectress.
Why this change in the everlasting powers? When Ulysses is ready to
leave Ogygia, the Gods cannot keep him there, they have to change; the
divine Order must help him escape, if it be divine. This is just what
happens; Zeus, voice of the Olympian law, commands his departure, and
Calypso must obey.
3. Ulysses, then, comes to Phaeacia, an institutional land with social,
domestic, and political life. From the grot of Calypso he passes to the
home of Arete; both woman and man are in an ethical relation. He sees a
world of peace and harmony, he witnesses the corrective of his own
negative Trojan experience. He, having taken Phaeacia into himself, has
a remedy for distracted Ithaca; he has beheld an ideal to which he can
adjust his own land. He was not the man to bring civil order to Ithaca
just after the destruction of Troy; now he has passed through his own
destructive phases, has become conscious of them, has told them to the
Phaeacians, which long account has in it the character of a confession.
All is given in a mythical form, but it is none the less an
acknowledgment of error from first to last. He is the poetical
confessor of himself, and the Phaeacians are contemplating the grand
experience in the mirror of art.
We may now see the reason why the poet began the story of Ulysses with
the stay at Calypso's Isle. Thus the poem unfolds in the order of
society, starting with the state of nature, passing thence to a
civilized condition, and showing finally the conflicts of the same with
the negative forces which develop in its own bosom. Homer could have
landed Ulysses at Phaeacia, and could have made the Ulyssiad start in
that sphere, placing Calypso's Book just after the account of the
slaughter of the Oxen of the Sun. But what a loss would that have been!
No social development would thus be suggested in the movement of the
poem, and the individual Ulysses would have to pass, not from
institutional Phaeacia, but from savage Ogygia to the reformation of
Ithaca. In this way we realize to ourselves the true instinct, or
perchance the profound thought which underlies the structure of this
portion of the poem.
Thus we conceive the double movement of the Ulyssiad through its three
main stages, in which we feel strongly emphasized the idea of
development, of a genetic process. These lands and peoples are
generated by the wanderer's own spirit, though they all exist in their
own right and are carefully set down in Homeric geography. Ogygia is
the product of Ulysses himself, and so he goes thither to the reality.
The misfortunes in these lands are the very deeds of the offenders
returning upon them. As the Gods are both subjective and objective, so
are these poetic places and persons; they are both in Ulysses and
outside of him, they are the inner change of the individual and the
outer development of the world. Each, however, fits into the other, is
inseparably intertwined with the other; both together form the double
movement which is the fundamental structural fact of the present
division of the Odyssey.
Of course our unfolding of the subject must follow the movement of the
poem, but we shall not neglect the movement of the individual.
Accordingly Calypso's Island, Ogygia, is the realm which is to be first
considered.
_BOOK FIFTH._
In this Book the reader will observe two distinct parts, which are so
often found in Homer and constitute the deepest distinction in his
poems: these two parts are the Upper World of the Gods and the Lower
World of Man, both of which are shown in action and counteraction. The
grand dualism between the mortal and the immortal is fused into a
living narrative and makes the warp and woof of Homeric poesy. The
general purport of both parts is seen to be the same at bottom: it is
to remove the obstacles which stand in the way of the Return of Ulysses
to home and country. These obstacles arise from the Gods above and from
Nature below--the divine and the physical, though the latter also is
presided over by deities. Thus the Greek hero, with the aid of the
higher Gods, is to put down the lower ones, or convert them into aids
for his advancement towards the grand end, which is his institutional
life in Family and State. In this way only can Ulysses, from his
alienation, attain unto harmony with himself and with the Divine Order.
The first part of the Book gives the Council of the Gods and its
consequences reaching down to the mortal who is the subject of
deliberation. We shall note three stages in this movement from Olympus
to Earth: (1) Zeus to Hermes, (2) Hermes to Calypso, (3) Calypso to
Ulysses. Thus from the highest the decree is brought below and opens
the providential way.
The second part deals with the mortal, who is brought into relation
with three Gods, all representing phases of the physical element of
water: (1) Neptune, the great deity of the sea, (2) Ino Leucothea, a
lesser deity of the same, (3) the River-God, through whose channel
Ulysses comes at last to land. It is manifest that he must rise beyond
these water-divinities with their uncertain fluctuating element, and
attain to the fixed earth with its life, ere he can find repose. We
shall now develop these two parts of the Book with their subdivisions
in the order stated above.