The Odyssey: “they denied us life together in our prime and flowering years”

Painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein.

1/ As I picked up the Odyssey, I jokingly said to friends, let’s see what literature was like before the human’s invented (yes, I’m a Harold Bloom hater—why do you ask?).

I doubt anyone could read the Odyssey and think Odysseus is a two-dimensional character or has a flat personality. He’s an ingenious man, but sometimes brings trouble to himself and his men because of curiosity, or because of pride. He cleverly finds a way to escape from the Cyclops, but has to name himself, only to get cursed and wander for 10 years before he can return home. He is a great storyteller and a sharp-witted man, but can sometimes be dishonest. He loves his wife Penelope, but happily stays with the sorceress Kirke (or Circe) for a year. He wants to test Penelope, but gets insulted when she doesn’t immediately trust him. And in revenge he is brutal and savage. 

Most interestingly, Odysseus is the one narrating his own adventures—how much is true and how much is embellished? 

2/ Many people have talked about Homer’s use of epithets—”grey-eyed Athena”, “Odysseus, raider of cities”, “the great tactician”, “clear-headed Telemakhos”, and so on—which help with the metre of the poem and which also aid readers in keeping track of characters. 

I think this is something Tolstoy learnt from Homer when he had to work with hundreds of characters: Tolstoy may not use epithets, but he pins down a physical trait or a detail for each character and repeats it throughout the novel, so you can remember and follow the characters.  

Speaking of Tolstoy, he wrote in his essay on Shakespeare: 

“… However distant Homer is from us, we can, without the slightest effort, transport ourselves into the life he describes, and we can thus transport ourselves because, however alien to us may be the events Homer describes, he believes in what he says and speaks seriously, and therefore he never exaggerates, and the sense of measure never abandons him. This is the reason why, not to speak of the wonderfully distinct, lifelike, and beautiful characters of Achilles, Hector, Priam, Odysseus, and the eternally touching scenes of Hector’s leave-taking, of Priam’s embassy, of Odysseus’s return, and others—the whole of the “Iliad” and still more the “Odyssey” are so humanly near to us that we feel as if we ourselves had lived, and are living, among its gods and heroes. Not so with Shakespeare. From his first words, exaggeration is seen: the exaggeration of events, the exaggeration of emotion, and the exaggeration of effects. One sees at once that he does not believe in what he says, that it is of no necessity to him, that he invents the events he describes, and is indifferent to his characters—that he has conceived them only for the stage and therefore makes them do and say only what may strike his public; and therefore we do not believe either in the events, or in the actions, or in the sufferings of the characters. Nothing demonstrates so clearly the complete absence of esthetic feeling in Shakespeare as comparison between him and Homer.” 

(translated by V. Tchertkoff) 

I don’t think I need to comment on Tolstoy’s remarks on Shakespeare, but it’s fascinating to see that he loves Homer. Homer’s characters are indeed distinct—even the suitors don’t all speak one voice—and lifelike—I actually had more trouble trying to understand the characters in The Tale of Genji (about 1,000 years old) than the ones in the Odyssey (about 2,700 years old). 

Can’t wait to read the Iliad and compare it to War and Peace. 

3/ The Odyssey is in many ways a very masculine/ male-dominated book: it’s not only about Odysseus’s return home and destruction of the suitors, but also about his son’s coming-of-age. 

But Homer gets you to have sympathy for the women. Especially Penelope: 

“She answered:

“Eurýmakhos, my qualities—I know—

my face, my figure, all were lost or blighted

when the Akhaians crossed the sea to Troy,

Odysseus my lord among the rest.

If he returned, if he were here to care for me,

I might be happily renowned!

But grief instead heaven sent me—years of pain.

[…] The years he spoke of are now past; the night

comes when a bitter marriage overtakes me, 

desolate as I am, deprived by Zeus

of all the sweets of life.” 

(Book 18) 

(translated by Robert Fitzgerald) 

Here is a good woman, an intelligent woman, separated from her husband and unable to ward off the unwanted suitors. 

When she and Odysseus final reunite and she has to test him, she says: 

“… Think

what difficulty the gods gave: they denied us

life together in our prime and flowering years,

kept us from crossing into age together.” 

(Book 23) 

Homer may not tell Penelope’s story, but he gets us to think about her, to feel for her desolation and sorrow as her husband gets sent off to war for 10 years and goes missing for another 10 years, without any signs that he’s alive, let alone that he would ever return. How long had they even been married before he left? 

Homer clearly has lots of compassion for Penelope, but she’s not just a virtuous woman—she is intelligent—her cleverness matches Odysseus’s. 

And it’s not just Penelope. Nausikaa, though she appears briefly, seems like an intelligent girl. Kalypso has me interested—I mean, yes, she detains Odysseus against his will, but what after all is wrong with wanting a husband? And the scene of Odysseus meeting the ghost of his mother is one of the most moving scenes in the poem: 

“I bit my lip,

rising perplexed, with longing to embrace her,

and tried three times, putting my arms around her,

but she went sifting through my hands, impalpable

as shadows are, and wavering like a dream.

Now this embittered all the pain I bore,

and I cried in the darkness…”

(Book 11) 

4/ In the Postscript, Robert Fitzgerald argues—and I think makes a good case—that Penelope suspects the beggar and tests him long before he reveals himself to her. She asks him questions. She says things that sound like things she wants Odysseus to hear. 

Fitzgerald says: 

“During the day, before the evening, Penélopê has been told first that her husband is alive, second that he is on the island, and third that he is coming soon. She has been waiting for ten years with no such authentic news and no such startling expectations and had made the suitors wait for nearly four. Are we, the audience, to believe that she wouldn’t wait a few days longer to see if her husband turns up? Is it conceivable that, instead of waiting, the woman so distinguished for tenacity would this very evening give up the waiting game and seriously propose to marry the next day? How could she come to this abrupt decision in the course of her evening scene with Odysseus unless she realized that the stranger before her was indeed her husband?” 

And when Athena gives her the idea about Odysseus’s bow, Penelope is the one who comes up with the idea of a contest—she is the one who supplies Odysseus with a weapon to kill the suitors. 

5/ Homer also gets us to care about the slaves, especially Eumanois the swineherd, and Odysseus’s old nurse Eurykleia. Does he have to tell us their backstories? No, it doesn’t advance the plot. But he tells their stories and gets us to care about all these characters, and it makes the Odyssey a much vaster, richer world. 

I have now finished reading the Odyssey, after nearly 2 weeks. It is magnificent.