3. Calypso imparts the decree to Ulysses, who soon sets about doing his
part.
In this brief outline we see the descent of the divine influence from
Zeus the Highest, through Hermes messenger of the Gods, to Calypso, a
local subordinate deity, down to the mortal Ulysses who is to get the
benefit thereof. Thus the poet makes his world-order ready for the deed
of the man, who is now to act with all the energy of his being, and not
lie back expecting the Gods to do everything for him. Such is the
situation between the divine and human sides, of which we shall
elaborate the former a little more fully.
1. The council of the Gods in which the matter is now discussed, seems
somewhat like a repetition of the one at the beginning of the First
Book, which indeed starts the whole poem. At present we may suppose
that the poet wishes to recall that first council and its decree to the
mind of the reader, inasmuch as the latter is now to begin the second
grand division of the poem, the Odyssey proper, or Return of Ulysses.
Pallas takes up the complaint and arraigns Providence on an ethical
ground: the good king is forgotten and the good man suffers. To the
face of the Supreme Ruler she draws the conclusion: "Let not any
sceptered king henceforth be kind to his people and recognize justice,
but always let him be harsh and work unrighteousness." Then she cites
the unhappy lot of Ulysses. But Zeus throws the charge back upon
Pallas, for she already had laid the divine plan that Ulysses was to
take vengeance on wrong-doing suitors, and Telemachus she could save
"by her skill," if so she chose. Here Pallas again hints as she did in
the First Book, the two lines on which the poem moves (Telemachus and
Ulysses), and she also notes the two present obstacles (Calypso and the
sea) in the way of the Return of Ulysses.
The divine activity begins work at once: Zeus sends Hermes to Calypso
with the Olympian decree. Ulysses, however, is to reach home "without
any escort of the Gods or of mortal men;" that is, he must exercise his
own free-will tremendously, there is to be no special intervention of
the Gods without the corresponding human effort. Note this passage as
indicating the consciousness of the poet respecting divine help; it is
not to take the place of free agency, but to complement the same. The
Hero will have to sail on a raft, "suffering evils;" but he will reach
"the land of the Phaeacians, near of kin to the Gods," where he will be
"honored as a God," and will be sent home with abounding wealth, "more
than he would ever have received at Troy, returning unharmed with his
share of the booty." Such is the promise of the world-governor to the
self-reliant man; this promise is not fate but foresight on the part of
the Supreme God. "Thus is the Hero destined to see again his friends,"
namely by means of a small raft or float, which he alone must control
in his own strength, without the help of God or man. Such is the reward
of heroic endeavor, proclaimed by Zeus himself.
2. The messenger Hermes begins his flight down to Calypso, holding his
magic wand, with which he puts men to sleep or wakens them, imparting
the power of vision or taking it away. He reaches the wonderful island
with its grot, the account of which has been a master-stroke in
literature, and shows that the description of nature was not alien to
the Greek poet, though he rarely indulges in it. One thinks that the
passage contains a suggestion of much modern writing of the kind.
It is to be noted that this island is mostly a wild product, it has had
very little training from its resident. A natural house and garden we
see it to be in the main; the senses, especially sight and smell, are
gratified immediately by physical objects. There is little indication
of Art, possibly a beginning in the singing and weaving; rude nature
may have been transformed somewhat in the four fountains and in the
trailing grape-vine. But this description is not made for its own sake,
as are many modern descriptions of nature; the whole is the true
environment for Calypso, and suggests her character.
Her name means the concealer, concealed herself in that lone sea-closed
island, and concealing others. Undeveloped she is, like nature, yet
beautiful; sunken still in the life of the senses, she dwells in her
little paradise without any inner scission. But it must be recollected
that Ulysses is not native to the island, he has come or rather fallen
hither, from a higher condition. He, therefore, has the scission in
himself, he longs to leave and be restored out of this realm of mere
nature.
With such a longing the Gods must coincide, for they are the Gods of
culture, of the rise out of the physical. The long Journey of Hermes
hints the distance between Olympus and Calypso's isle--a distance which
has its spiritual counterpart. The command of the Olympians is borne to
this lower Goddess; Hermes is the voice of the higher ethical divinity
to the lower one of mere nature. But even the higher God has his
physical counterpart, is not yet wholly a spirit; so Hermes eats his
ambrosia and drinks his nectar set before him by Calypso in true Greek
fashion and misses the smoke of sacrifices along his barren route.
It is curious to see how Hermes plays with polytheism, hinting ever so
slyly the contradiction in the Greek Pantheon. "Why dost thou a God ask
me a God why I come?" It is indeed an absurd question, for a God ought
to know in advance. In numerous places we can trace a subtle Homeric
humor which crops out in dealing with his many deities, indicating a
start toward their dissolution. Then with a strong assertion of the
supremacy of one God, Zeus, Hermes utters the unwilling word: Ulysses
must depart from this island.
The answer of Calypso is significant, she charges the Gods with
jealousy; "Ye grudge the Goddesses openly to mate with men," which
proposition she nails by several examples. But the Gods reserve to
themselves the privilege of license with mortal women. A complaint
still heard, not in the Olympian but in our Lower World; men are not
held to the same code of morals that women are! But Calypso yields up
her lover whom she "thought to make immortal and ageless." What else
can she do? It is true that she saved him once and has preserved him
till the present; she is, however, but a stage which must now be
transcended. Appetite may preserve man, still he is to rise above
appetite.
3. Now Ulysses is brought before us. The first fact about him is, his
intense longing to return home; he is found "sitting on the shore, and
his eyes were never dry of tears" as he looked out on the sea toward
his country; "for the nymph was no longer pleasing to him," whatever
may have been the case once. Surely the hero is in bonds which he
cannot break, though he would; a penitential strand we may well find in
his sorrow; thus he is ready for release.
Calypso, therefore, announces to him the divine plan: he must make a
raft and commit himself to the waters. She has to obey, for is she not
really conquered by Ulysses? Certainly the divine order requires her to
send the man away from her island. Yet the return is by no means made
easy, but is to be won by hardest effort; he must grapple with the
waves, with angry Neptune after leaving Calypso. No wonder that Ulysses
shuddered at the proposition; truly he has the choice between the devil
and the deep sea, and he manfully chooses the latter. First, however,
the Goddess has to take the great oath "by Earth, by Heaven above and
Styx below," the sum total of the physical universe, from whose
presence the perjurer cannot escape, though a God, that she is not
practicing any hidden guile against her much-desired guest. Always the
doubter, the skeptic Ulysses will show himself, even toward a divinity.
He must test the Gods also, as well as man. Very beautiful and humane
is the answer of the Goddess: "Such things I plan and deliberate for
thee as I would devise for myself, were I in so great straits. For I
too have a righteous mind, and the heart within my breast is not of
iron, but compassionate."
Has a change come over the Goddess through this visit from Olympus?
Hardly could she have felt this before, else she would have sent away
Ulysses of her own accord. Her adjustment to the divine decree seems
now to be internal, and not simply a yielding to an external power.
Still the separation costs her deep pangs, and she wonders how Ulysses,
a mortal, can give her up, who is immortal, with all her beauty and the
pleasures of her paradise.
The answer of Ulysses reveals the man in his present stale of mind. He
recognizes Calypso as beautiful, deathless, ever young; still he must
have something more than sensuous life and beauty; though it last
forever, it can never satisfy. Not to be compared with the Goddess in
grace and stature, is his wife Penelope, still he longs for his home;
"yea, though some God wreck me on the wine-dark deep, I shall endure."
But there is no doubt the other side is also present in Ulysses; he has
within himself a strong sensuous nature with which is the battle, and
the poem does not disguise the matter, for he is again ready to enjoy
all the pleasures of Calypso's bower, after this paroxysm of
home-sickness.
Such is the deep struggle of the man; such is also the divine obstacle,
which has to be removed by an Olympian interference before he can
return. We see that Ulysses in spite of all blandishments of the
Goddess and momentary weakness of himself, was ready for its removal;
in his heart he has overcome Calypso, and wishes to get back to his
institutional life in Family and State. Such a man must return, the
Gods must be on his side, else they are not Gods. According to the
Greek conception, Calypso is a subordinate deity who must be put down
by the Olympians; appetite is not a devil, but a lower good, which must
be adjusted to the higher. Note, then, that the external stream, or the
world-movement represented by the Gods, now unites with the internal
stream, the spirit of the individual, and brings forth the great event.
As stated often before, these two streams run through all Homeric
poetry.
Ulysses now makes his raft; the hero is also a ship-builder, being the
self-sufficient man, equal to any emergency, in whom lie all
possibilities. The boat, still quite primitive, is constructed before
our eyes; It is the weapon for conquering Neptune, and prophesies
navigation. Calypso aids him in every way, she even supplies him with
tools, the axe, the adze, the augur, which imply a more advanced state
of civilization than has hitherto appeared in the Dark Island. Whence
did she obtain them? No special answer is given; hence we are thrown
back upon a general answer. Calypso is the original wild state of
nature; but her transformation has begun, she helps Ulysses in her new
character. These tools are themselves formed from nature into means for
subduing nature; the instrument of bronze in the hands of the
wood-cutter is the master of the tree. At present Calypso is also such
an instrument; she, the wild product of nature, is herself transformed
into a means for helping Ulysses conquer the mighty physical element
before him; an implement she has become in the hand of the Gods for
restoring the heroic endurer, and hence she can emblematically hand him
these material implements, for they are one with her present spirit.
Indeed we may carry the analogy one step further, turning it inwardly:
Calypso, though once the inciter to sensuous desire, now helps the man
put it away and flee from it; ethically she is converted into an
instrument against her former self. In like manner nature is turned
against nature by the thinking artificer.
Also food and drink and raiment the Island Goddess furnishes for the
voyage; with rare skill she tells him how to direct his course by the
stars; she is mistress over the winds, it seems, for she sends the
right one to blow. Wonderful indeed is the change; all those forces of
nature, formerly so hostile, have been transformed into helpers,
Calypso herself being also transformed. Thus we catch the outlines of
the Fairy Tale or marvelous story, which tells, in a supernatural way,
of man's mastery of the physical world, once so destructive, now so
obedient.
Cloth for his sails she brought him, but we must recollect that she was
a weaver at the start of the story. At last Ulysses pushes his raft
down into the fair salt sea; Ogygia, the place of nature's luxuriance
and delight, is left behind; he must quit the natural state, however
paradisaical, and pass to the social order, to Ithaca, though the
latter be poor and rocky. Still we may well recall the fact that the
island and Calypso once saved Ulysses, when wrecked elsewhere, on
account of the slaughter done to the Oxen of the Sun; this wild spot
furnished him natural shelter, food, gratification; nay, it gave him
love.
To be sure, the other side is not to be forgotten: it had to be
transcended, when it kept him away from the higher institutional life.
Ulysses, the wonderful, limit-transcending spirit, unfolds within even
while caught in this wild jungle; he evolves out of it, as man has
evolved out of it, thus he hints the movement of his race, which has to
quit a cave-life and a mere sensuous existence. Such is the decree of
the Gods, for all time: the man must abandon Calypso, who is herself to
be transformed into an instrument of his progress.
We may now begin to see what Calypso means, in outline at least. The
difficulty of comprehending her lies in her twofold character: at one
time she is nature, then she is the helper against nature. But just
therein is her movement, her development. She is Goddess of this
Island, where she rules; but she is a lesser deity who has to be
subordinated to the Olympians, as nature must be put under spirit. The
Greek deified nature, not being able to diabolize it; still he knew
that it must be ruled and transmuted by mind. Thus Calypso is a
Goddess, inferior, confined to one locality, but having sensuous beauty
as nature has. She, without ethical content, as purely physical, stands
in the way of institutions, notably the Family; she seduces the man,
and holds him by his senses, by his passion, till he rise out of her
sway. On this side her significance is plain: she is the female
principle which stands between Ulysses and his wedded wife, she not
being wedded. Thus she is an embodiment of nature, from the external
landscape in which she is set, to internal impulse, to the element of
sex. So it comes that she is represented as a beautiful woman, but
beauty without its ethical content can no longer chain Ulysses. That
charm is broken, in spite of passing relapses.
Then comes the other side of Calypso's character, as already indicated:
she changes, she turns and helps Ulysses put down herself and get away
from her world, furnishing him quite all the means for his voyage. Not
without a certain regret and parting display of her charms does she do
this; still the change is real, and at the last stage we must imagine a
Calypso transformed or partially so.
The enchantress on her magic island is a favorite theme with the Fairy
Tale, and the situation in itself rouses curiosity and wonder. The bit
of land floating on the sea in appearance, yet withstanding wave and
tempest, is, to the sailor, the home of supernatural beings. The story
of Calypso has the tinge of nautical fancy. In like manner the story of
Robinson Crusoe is that of a sea-faring people. We see in it the
ship-wrecked man, the lone island, the struggle with nature for food
and shelter. But Defoe has no supernatural realm playing into his
narrative--no beautiful nymph, no Olympian Gods. That twofold Homeric
conception of an Upper and Lower World, of a human and divine element
in the great experience, is lost; the Englishman is practical,
realistic, utilitarian even in his pious observations, which he flings
into his text from the outside at given intervals.
Ogygia, the abode of Calypso, means the Dark Island, upon which Ulysses
is cast after the destruction of the Oxen of the Sun. Calypso, in
harmony with the name of her abode, signifies the concealer--and that
is what has happened to Ulysses, his light is hidden. She is the
daughter of Atlas, who has two mental traits assigned to him; he is
evil-minded and he knows all the depths of the sea. A demonic being
endowed with his dark knowledge of things out of sight; he has a third
trait also, "he upholds of himself the long pillars which keep Heaven
and Earth apart" (Book I. 53). Naturally under such a burden he is not
in good humor. Calypso is the daughter who, along with her grot, may be
conceived to have risen out of the obscure depths of the sea, with
something of her father's disposition. Doubtless Greek sailors could
behold in her image the dangerous rocks which lurked unseen beneath the
waters around her island. The comparative mythologist finds in her tale
the clouds obscuring or concealing the Sun (here Ulysses) till the
luminary breaks out of his concealment and shines in native glory.
Something of truth lies in these various views, but the fundamental
meaning is not physical, but ethical.