III.

We now come to a new division of the Book, which forms in itself a

complete little poem, yet is derived directly from the preceding

divisions, and is harmonious with them in thought, development and

structure. Undoubtedly there is a difference here, but the difference

means not absolute separation but a connected unfolding of parts. The

present division has been assailed more violently by the critics and

torn out of its place with greater unanimity than any other portion of

the Odyssey, with the possible exception of portions of the last two

Books. Let us confess, however, that our tendency is to reconcile, if

this can be done, the discords and to knit together the rent garment,

by threads not always on the surface, but very real to any eye which is

willing to look underneath.

Unquestionably a punitive element enters now, there is guilt and

punishment in Hades. But who has not felt that in the preceding

division the three Greek heroes were under the inevitable penalty of

their own deeds? Very natural is the transition. Indeed the three

divisions of the Book show a gradual movement toward a penal view of

Hades: the first (Tiresias and the Famous Mothers) has a slight

suggestion of the penalty; the second (the three Greek heroes) has the

idea of punishment implicit everywhere; the third makes the idea

explicit and organizes itself upon the same.

Again, there is a change of style, which now is strongly tinged with

the Orphic, initiatory, symbolical manner, in marked contrast with the

clear-flowing narrative which has just preceded. But we noticed the

same characteristic before, in the first division of the Book, where

the sacrificial rites and the part of Tiresias were given. Homer has

many styles, not each style has many Homers, nor is there a new Homer

needed for each change of style. Note the great varieties of style in

the two Parts of Faust by way of illustration. Moreover we here pass

into the dim Pre-Trojan epoch, as was the case in the first division,

but guilt is now flung into that time and with it the penalty. Hoary,

gigantic shapes of eld do wrong to the Gods, and are put into the

punitory Hades. Thus this third division returns to the first with its

own new principle. In truth one may say that Homer herein shows

features akin to Hesiod; well, Homer is Hesiod and many more.

We hold, therefore, that this third division is an organic part of the

Book both in idea and structure; it carries to completion the thought

of a world-justice, which Tiresias has already declared in his speech

to Ulysses, and which is exemplified in the three Greek heroes. Thus it

unfolds what lies in the first two divisions, and links them together

in a new and deeper thought. For this realm of Hades, hitherto a

distracted spot without any apparent order, now gets organized with its

own Justiciary and its own Law. Yet here too we shall find a solution

and a parallel; just as Ulysses was the true hero at Troy, standing

above all the others and solving their problems, so Hercules is the

great Pre-Trojan hero, saving himself at last and rising to Olympus.

Finally the two careers of Ulysses and Hercules are affirmed to be

identical. This division, therefore, falls of itself into three

portions: (1) the Judge, (2) the condemned, (3) the redeemed. Thus the

whole forms a complete little cycle within itself.

1. Minos, the Judge, was the ancient king of Crete, where he was

lawgiver and suppressed wrong-doing on sea and land. Here he continues

his vocation, which demands the assigning of the just penalty to the

guilty. He is manifestly the type of Justice, both punishing and

rewarding; as punisher he has been transferred by Dante to the Inferno.

Later Greek legend united with him two other judges, his brothers,

Rhadamanthys and AEacus.

2. We have next four instances of punishment, though this is apparently

of different degrees. The wrong, however, is not stated except in the

case of Tityos, which probably hints the general nature of the misdeeds

of the three others. The poet takes for granted that his hearer could

fill out each legend for himself. In every case there was evidently

some violation done to the Gods, not to men--some crime against

Olympus. The period is thrown back into the Pre-Trojan time, into the

age of the demigods and of the free intercourse between mortals and

immortals; thus it is parallel with the first division of the Book. But

now judgment has entered the Houses of Hades along with the penalty.

The guilt of Orion is that of love between a mortal and a Goddess,

Aurora, which violation was punished by the "soft bolts" of Artemis,

protectress of chastity. This legend has already been alluded to by

Calypso. (Book V. line 121.) Jealous are the Gods of that mortal man

with whom a Goddess falls in love, and with good reason. Orion's

punishment is an eternal chase, the hunter is compelled to hunt

forever, repeating what he did in life. Perhaps not a heavy punishment

for one who is fond of hunting; yet a tremendous burden, if never

interrupted with rest; indeed it becomes a labor quite like the labor

of Sisyphus, ever repeated. Of Tityos both the guilt and punishment are

indicated; the legend is similar to and yet in contrast with that of

Orion; in the one the Goddess approaches the mortal and in the other

the mortal approaches the Goddess; hence, too, the severer punishment

in the latter case. The second legend ought to be completed here by a

fact derived from the story of Prometheus: the liver grows as fast as

the vultures rend or consume it; thus again rises the idea of infinite

repetition, now of suffering, not of action, for Orion is active.

The next two forms, Tantalus and Sisyphus, have also a kinship. Both

had known secrets of the Gods and had betrayed them; Tantalus is also

reported to have taken away nectar and ambrosia from the Olympian table

after being a guest there; Sisyphus revealed to the river-god Asopus

the secret that Zeus had spirited away the latter's daughter, AEgina.

The penalty is that Tantalus remains perpetually hungry and thirsty,

with sight of food and drink always before his eyes; he cannot reach

them when he strives. The finite, with an infinite longing, cannot

compass the infinite; the man loses it just when he grasps for it--a

truly Greek penalty for a sin against the Greek world, which rests upon

the happy harmonious unity of the spirit with the body and with nature.

The Christian or Romantic longing and grasping for the Beyond is to the

Greek soul a punishment of Hades. Tantalus with his hunger and thirst

seems to represent more the striving of the intellect to attain the

unattainable; while Sisyphus suggests the effort of the will--practical

endeavor, the eternal routine of mechanical employment, which always

has to begin over again. Etymology brings also a suggestion. Both names

are reduplicated; in Tantalus is the root of the word which means to

suffer; in Sisyphus, lurks the signification of craft; it hints the

wise or crafty planner (_sophos_) who always pushes the act to a point

where it undoes itself or must be done over again. Note the effect of

this reduplication of the first syllables, which means repetition; over

and over again, in an infinite series must the matter be gone through,

in suffering and in doing; the very words are in labor.

Indeed this indicates the common element in these four punishments: the

endless repetition of the struggle of finitude. The first two, Orion

and Tityos, reached out for Goddesses, being mortals; the second two,

still mortals, but in communion with deities, attempted to bring down

divine secrets to earth; the one set strove to make the finite

infinite, the other to make the infinite finite. Both were contrary to

the nature of the Greek mind, which sought to keep the happy balance

between the two sides, between body and spirit, between the temporal

and eternal. Now the punishment of these people is to give them their

infinite, but in the form of an infinite repetition of their finite

act, which is just the spirit-crushing penalty. The power of these two

types, Tantalus and Sisyphus, is shown by the fact that all ages since

Homer have adopted them and wrought them over into many forms of art

and poetry.

Here then is the unsolved problem of the Greek world, a problem which

the Christian world has met and answered. Tantalus and Sisyphus are in

pain and toil simply through themselves; man, however, must have the

power to reach the apples, and roll the stone up hill, he must assert

himself as limit-transcending, as infinite, for once and for all, and

not caught in an infinite series, which is a veritable mill of the

Gods, that is, of the Greek Gods. Now this strange fact comes to light:

Homer, seer that he is, has a dim consciousness of this solution, and

faintly but prophetically embodies it in a new figure, namely, that of

Hercules, which we shall now consider.

3. The Homeric solution is to divide the man, or to double him, into

his shade (eidolon) and his self. The former belongs to Hades and

appears now; it is the finite Hercules with his striving and labors; he

still has his bow and arrow, is ready to slay beasts, snakes, and

birds. He is in quite the same punishment as Orion or even Sisyphus,

the penalty of all finitude is upon him. Yet the other side is given,

that of victory. "I, though the son of the highest God, Zeus, had to

endure boundless tribulation." Strangely Christian does this sound. "I

was put under service to a far inferior man to myself, who laid upon me

bitter labors." The higher must serve and save the lower. "Then the

mightiest labor I performed, I came down hither to Hades alive and

dragged thence the dog Cerberus"--conquered the great terror of the

Underworld. Thus Hercules has really transcended Hades, and so we read

here that "he himself is among the immortal Gods, in bliss," that is,

his infinite nature is there, while the finite part is still below in

Hades. Such is the old poet's far-cast glance, reaching deep into the

future and beyond the Greek world.

Still another significant word is spoken. "O Ulysses, unhappy man! Thou

dost experience the same hard fate which I endured upon the earth."

Thus does Hercules identify the career of Ulysses with his own--the

same striving and suffering, and the same final victory, the peace of

Olympus. Who cannot attain the latter is a Tantalus, seeking but never

reaching the fruit. Such is the outcome and culmination of Hades; after

Hercules has spoken, no further word is heard by Ulysses.

Dante, whose poem on so many lines grows out of this Eleventh Book, has

also the same duplication of the person in his Paradise. The soul is in

its special planet, Venus, Mars, etc., and also it is in the highest

Heaven, enjoying the Vision of God. But Dante universalizes the Greek

view, making it truly Christian; all men are children of God and can

attain the seats of the Blessed, not merely the one man, the Hero

Hercules. Still even here the inference is that Ulysses must also be

transferred to Olympus, though no such declaration is made.

We hope the reader feels how inadequate Hades would be, and how

incomplete the experience of Ulysses would be, if this last division of

the Book were cut out. The wanderer has now gone through the total

cycle of the Underworld, not only outwardly, but inwardly; he is just

ready to step out of it, because he is beyond it in spirit. This last

step is now to be given in Homeric fashion.

There is a danger at present rising strongly into consciousness, a

danger inherent in this too-long contemplation of Hades; it is the

danger of the Gorgon, the monster whose view turns the spectator into

stone, taking away all sensation, emotion, life. The Greek sooner or

later must quit Hades, and flee from its shapes; the supersensible

world he must transfuse into the sensible, else the former will rush

over into the fantastic, the horrible, the ugly. The Gorgon is down in

Hades too, having been slain in the terrestrial Upperworld by a Greek

Hero, Perseus, who slew the monster of the Orient which once guarded

the fair Andromeda, a kind of Pre-Trojan Helen, chained in captivity,

whom the heroic Hellenic soul came to release. Ulysses has now reached

the Greek limit, Oriental phantasms will rise unless there be a speedy

return to the reality, to the realm of sense. Hades has furnished its

highest image in Hercules, beware of its worst. Already the Underworld

has been in danger of running into the fantastic; then Beauty, the

Hellenic ideal, would be lost. The figures of Homeric Hades hitherto

have all been men and women, but the monsters are ready to come forth.

So they did come forth in the later Greek world under the spur of

Oriental influence; witness the Revelations of St. John in the Island

of Patmos, joint product of Greek and Hebrew spirit, showing truly the

dissolution of the Hellenic ideal.

Thus Ulysses, the supreme spiritual Hero of the Greeks, is shown

running away from the Underworld, fearing to look upon coming shapes in

Hades; about which fact two reflections can be made: first, Ulysses had

to do this in order to remain a Greek; secondly, the poet clearly

announces, in such an action, that there is another world lying beyond

his world, that underneath the Greek Hades is another Hades, which

threatens to rise into view. That Hades will burst up hereafter and

become the Christian Hell. Ulysses confesses that there is a realm

beyond him there, which he has not conquered, has not even dared to

see, and thus he significantly points to the future. The Gorgon is a

shadowy anticipation of fiends, of devils, of the infernal monsters of

the Romantic Netherworld of Dante, who is to be the next great Hero,

passing into the dark world beyond with a new light. To be sure, Virgil

sends AEneas into Orcus, and makes such descent a Book of his poem, but

Virgil too speaks of a realm beyond his Orcus, which his Hero does not

enter. Thus the Roman poet shows substantially the same limits as the

Greek poet, whom he has for the most part copied.

Here again we find a conception embodied in song, on which the human

mind has moved through many ages. Poetry, Art, Theology, have taken

from this Eleventh Book of the Odyssey many creative hints: it is truly

an epoch-making work in the history of man's spiritual unfolding. As

already stated, Virgil repeats it, Dante grows out of it and makes it

over, in accord with the spirit of Christendom, which has many a root

running back to this Homeric Hades. The present Book may be called the

Greek prophecy heralding medieval Art, and shows old Homer

foreshadowing Romanticism. Did he not see the limits of his world? The

particular connecting link between two Literary Bibles, Homer and

Dante, is just the present Book, even if Dante never read Homer. For

the study of Universal Literature it is, therefore, a specially

important document. A many-sided production also; its poetic, its

religious, its artistic, its philosophical sides are all present in

full activity and put to test the spiritual alertness of the reader.

Wherein does the negative nature of Hades lie? The question rises from

the fact that Ulysses in Fableland has been declared to be passing

through various negative phases; such is the expression often used

already. First of all, it is a negating of the sensible world and a

going into the supersensible, a seeking of the spirit without the body.

Hades was quite the opposite of the Greek mind, which demanded

embodiment, and hence was inherently artistic. Still the Greek mind

created a Hades, and finally went over into the pure Idea in Plato and

the philosophers. Even Homer seems to feel that philosophy is at last a

needful discipline, that the abstract thought must be taken from its

concrete wrappage, that the Universal must be freed from the

Particular.

Ulysses has to pass through Hades in order to complete the cycle of his

experience, and realize what is beyond the senses; he must know the

spirit apart from the body in this life; he must see the Past as it is

in its great disembodied minds; he must behold the famous heroes of

Troy as they are in reality, not as they are in the glamor of poetry.

As tested by their life and deeds he sees them below in the

Netherworld; Greek souls stark naked in Hades he beholds, and then

rises out of it.

_Retrospect._ Very important, in our judgment, is this Eleventh Book;

it is really one of the sacred documents of Universal Religion, as well

as a great creative idea in the World's Literature, But it has fared

badly as to its friends; for interpretation it usually falls into the

hands of the negative, merely critical Understanding, which has the

unfortunate habit of turning Professor of Greek, commentator on Homer,

and philologer generally. In order to grasp and connect its leading

points more completely, we shall look back at the thought and structure

of the Book once more.

First of all, there must be felt and seen the necessity of taking this

journey to the Netherworld on the part of the Hero, the complete person

of his time. The very conception of the universal man must include the

visit to the realm of the Idea; the passage from the sensible to the

supersensible, is the deepest need of his soul. Homer can give this

spiritual movement only in a mythical form, hence it occurs here in

Fableland. So Ulysses has to make the transition from Circe to Hades.

Having the entire Book now before us, we observe that it shows a

threefold movement; that is, one movement with three leading stages.

These take the shape of three communications from the realm of the

dead, which includes all past Time, imparted to the living who are now

present, namely the Phaeacians, through Ulysses, who has had this cycle

of experiences and now sings them. But that which is true in past Time

must be seen to be true in all Time--Past, Present and Future. So there

unfolds the idea of a World-Order, foretold at first by the Pre-Trojan

prophet Tiresias, illustrated by the fate of the three Greco-Trojan

heroes in Hades, and finally realized and active in the realm of Minos.

The whole has, therefore, the secret underlying thought of a

world-tribunal, which works through all human history; it is a kind of

Last Judgment to which the deeds of men are appealed for final

adjudication; it most profoundly suggests in its movement the ethical

order of the Universe. Let us briefly sum up its three stages.

I. The first communication from the Hades of the Past to the real world

of the Present through Ulysses is that of the prophet Tiresias, "whose

mind is whole;" he may be called the pure Idea (as subjective) uttering

the Idea (as objective, as principle of the world). For he beholds the

truth of things as they are in their essence, he himself being the

impersonation of Truth. Thus he looks through the Future and foretells;

he knows that Neptune will avenge the deed done to Polyphemus, that the

Oxen of the Sun constitute a great danger, that Ulysses will punish the

Suitors; then he prophesies the peace and final harmony of Ulysses

after his long conflict and separation from home, country, and the

Divine Order.

So speaks Tiresias and is therein a kind of world-judge, prefiguring

Minos of the last stage of Hades. For he prophesies according to the

law of the deed; what you have done is sure to return upon you, be it

good or bad. Hence he can tell what will happen to Ulysses for acts

already committed (the wrath of Neptune); he can give a warning

concerning things which Ulysses may do (the slaying of the Oxen of the

Sun); he can affirm the certain punishment of guilt (the case of the

Suitors). Thus the prophet voices a world-justice, which inflicts the

penalty unflinchingly, but also bears within itself reconciliation.

Such is the prophetic Idea, appearing in advance, not yet ordered and

realized.

II. The second communication from Hades to the Phaeacians through

Ulysses comes from the Trojan Past, and is voiced by the three most

famous heroes of the Iliad--Achilles, Agamemnon, Ajax (the last one,

however, does not speak, but acts out his communication). All three are

tragic characters, are the victims of fate, that is, of their own fatal

limitations. Such is the world-judgment here, it is really pronounced

by themselves upon themselves in each case. Agamemnon states his own

guilt, Achilles shows his limit by his complaint, Ajax does not need to

speak. Ulysses simply listens and sees; now he tells the story of Troy

and its heroes anew to the Present, indicating how they have put

themselves into Hades.

The intimate connection between this part and the preceding part of

Tiresias is plain. The prophet has forecast the law which rules these

heroes also; they are truly illustrations of his prophecy, or of its

underlying principle. They expose the heroic insufficiency of that

Trojan time; they are the negative, tragic phases of greatness, which

have also to submit at last to the law of compensation. Thus is the

illustrious Trojan epoch judged and sent down below; but mark! Ulysses,

of that same epoch, survives, is present, and is singing the judgment.

III. The world-justice which ideally underlies the prophecies of

Tiresias in the first part of the present Book, and which is the secret

moving principle in the fates of the three Greco-Trojan heroes in the

second part, becomes explicit, recognized and ordered in the third

part, which is now to be given. There is first the world-judge, Minos,

famous for his justice during life, distributing both penalties and

rewards in the Netherworld. Secondly we see the condemned ones, Orion,

Tityus, Tantalus, Sisyphus (mark the significant reduplication of the

root in the names of each one of them). All four are represented as

having wronged the Gods in some way; they have violated the Divine

Order, according to the Greek conception; hence the tribunal of

world-justice, now organized and at work in Hades, takes them in hand.

To be sure, the text of Homer does not say that they were sentenced by

the decree of Minos, but such is certainly the implication. These four

had a common sin, to the Greek mind: they sought to transcend the limit

which the Gods have placed upon finite man, hence the image of their

penalty lies in the endless repetition of their acts, which is also

suggested in their names. Orion has always to pursue and slay the wild

beast, never getting the work done; the liver of Tityus grows and

swells afresh (root from _tu_, meaning to swell, Latin _tumor_) though

being consumed by the vultures; in like manner Tantalus and Sisyphus

have ever-repeated labors. Such is the glimpse here of the Greek Hades

of eternal punishment. Now comes the curious fact that the heroic man

through labor and suffering can rise out of this Hades of finitude; he

can satisfy the demand of world-justice, and rise to Olympus among the

blessed Gods. Such was Hercules, and such is to be Ulysses, who now

having seen the culmination of Hades and heard its prophecy of his

future state, leaves it and returns to the Upperworld.

Undoubtedly these thoughts of future punishment and reward are very dim

and shadowy in Homer; still they are here in this Eleventh Book of the

Odyssey, and find their true interpretation in that view of the life to

come into which they unfolded with time. The best commentary on this

Book, we repeat, is the _Divine Comedy_ of Dante, the grand poem of

futurity, which carries out to fullness the order, of which we here

catch a little glimpse.

_BOOK TWELFTH._

Ulysses flees from the Underworld, there is something down there which

he feels he cannot master, something which he has not seen but of which

he has a vague presentiment. The Gorgon stands for much, dimly

foreshadowing a Hades beyond or below the Greek Hades, with which,

however, it is not his call to grapple. Hence the poet puts upon his

Hero a limitation at this point, strangely prophetic, and sends him in

haste back to the terrestrial Upperworld. The bark crossed the stream

of the "river Oceanus," then it entered "the wide-wayed Sea" in which

lay the island of Circe, "where are the houses of the Dawn, and her

dances, and the risings of the Sun." Verily the Hero has got back to

the beginning of the world of light, in which he is now to have a new

span of existence after his experience in the supersensible realm.

From the brief geographical glances which we catch up from the voyage,

as well as from a number of hints scattered throughout the Odyssey (for

instance, from what is said of the Ethiopians in the First Book), we

are inclined to believe that Homer held the earth to be round. We like

to think of the old Poet seeing this fact, not as a deduction of

science, not even as a misty tradition from some other land, but as an

immediate act of poetic insight, which beholds the law of the physical

world rising out of the spiritual by the original creative fiat; the

Poet witnesses the necessity by which nature conforms to mind. Homer

knew the spiritual Return, this whole Odyssey is such a Return, whereby

the soul is rounded off to completeness, and becomes a true totality.

Why should he not apply the same law to nature, to the whole Earth, and

behold it, not indefinitely extended as it appears to the senses, but

returning into itself, whereby the line becomes a circle and the plain

a globe? Some such need lay deep in his poetic soul, to which he had to

harmonize the entire universe, visible as well as invisible. Not

science is this, but an immediate vision of the true, always prophetic,

which observes the impress of spirit everywhere upon the realm of

matter. The old Greek sages seem to have known not merely of the

rotundity of the Earth, but also of its movement round the Sun and upon

its own axis, both movements being circular, returns, which image mind.

Did they get their knowledge from Egypt or Chaldea? Questionable; if

they looked inwardly deep enough, they could find it all there. Indeed

the sages of Egypt and Chaldea saw the fact in their souls ere they saw

it or could see it in the skies.

So these Homeric glimpses into the realm of what is to become science

are not to be neglected or despised, in spite of their mythical,

ambiguous vesture. Moreover they are in profound harmony with the

present poem, to which they furnish remote, but very suggestive

parallels, making the physical universe correspond to the spiritual

unfolding of the Hero.

Ulysses, accordingly, comes back to the sensible world and there he

finds Circe again. Indeed whom else ought he to find? She is the bright

Greek realm of the senses reposing in sunlight; she has been

subordinated to the rational, she is no longer the indulgence of

appetite which turns men to swine, nor is she, on the other hand, the

rigid ascetic. Hence we need not be surprised at her bringing good

things to eat and drink: "bread and many kinds of meat and sparkling

red wine." Moreover, she is still prophetic, she still has the outlook

upon the Beyond, being spirit in the senses. Her present prophecies,

however, will be different from her former one, she will point to the

supersensible, not in Hades, for that is now past, but in the

Upperworld of life and experience. Such is the return of the Hero to

Circe, the fair, the terrestrial, who makes existence beautiful if she

be properly held in restraint; beautiful as sunlit Hellas with its

plastic forms she can become, in striking contrast to the dark shapes

of the sunless Underworld which leads to the Gorgon, the realm of

spooks, shades, fiends, in general of romanticism.

So much for Circe in her new relation in the present Book; how about

Ulysses? It is manifest that he too is prepared for a fresh experience.

He has been in the Underworld and great has been the profit. There he

has seen the famous men and women of old and beheld the very heart of

their destiny; the Trojan and the Pre-Trojan worthies sweeping backward

through all Greek time he has witnessed and in part heard; he has

become acquainted with the prophet Tiresias who knows Past, Present and

Future, who is the universal mind in its purity from all material

dross; he has beheld the Place of Doom and its penalties, as well as

the supreme Greek Hero, the universal man of action, Hercules. Nor must

we forget that he has run upon a limitation, that Gorgon from whom he

fled. Truly he has obtained in this journey to Hades a grand experience

of the Past, of all Greek ages, which is now added to his own personal

experience. So this Past, with its knowledge, is to be applied to the

Future, whereby knowledge becomes foreknowledge, and experience is to

be transformed into prophecy. Mark then the transition from the

previous to the present Book: when Ulysses comes back to the world of

sense, he will at once see in it the supersensible, which he has just

behold; he must hear in the Present a prophetic voice, that of Circe

proclaiming the Future.

Thus Ulysses is now ready to listen to the coming event and to

understand its import. It is to be observed that up to the Eleventh

Book he has had experience merely; he took everything as it came, by

chance, without knowing of it beforehand; he simply happens upon the

Lotus-eaters, Polyphemus, Circe, though the careful reader has not

failed to note an interior thread of connection between all these

adventures. As to Hades, it is pointed out to him in advance by Circe,

though all is not foretold him; but in the Twelfth Book, now to be

considered, he has everything in detail laid open to him beforehand. A

great change in manner of treatment; why? Because Ulysses must be shown

as having reached the stage of foreknowledge through his journey to

Hades; hitherto he was the mere empirical man, or blind adventurer,

surrendering himself to hazard and trusting to his cunning for getting

out of trouble. But now he foresees, and Circe is the voice thereof; he

knows what he has to go through before he starts, here in the

Upperworld, to which he has come back, and through whose conflicts he

is still to pass, for life has not yet ended. Such, we think, is the

fruit of that trip to the Underworld, the supersensible is seen in the

sensible, and the Future becomes transparent.

Accordingly Circe foretells, and Ulysses foreknows; the two are

counterparts. Then he simply goes through what has been predicted, he

fills up the outline with the deed.

This is the essential fact of the Book, which is organized by it into

two portions, namely the prophecy and the fulfillment; Circe has one

part, Ulysses the other. Moreover each part exhibits the same general

movement, which has three phases with the same names: the Sirens, the

Plangctae on the one hand with Scylla and Charybdis on the other, and

the Oxen of the Sun.