Masterpieces of Western Literature
| Unit 4 |
|
English
201:
Masterpieces of Western Literature |
| .Unit 4 Reading | Course Reading | Entry Page |
| Introduction | Background | .Explication | Questions | Review |
Explication:
Reading: W&H:
275-332, The Odyssey, books 1-4.
This is unit 1/5 on The Odyssey. Several themes are set in motion.
The Greek word for "skilled" is arete. We will see that the queen of Phaiakia is named Arete. The art we are concerned with is the art of weaving or nurturing the polis. AK destroyed civilization. OD struggles to build civilization.
Many of the themes in ODY will be familiar
to you from The Iliad. For example, Zeus talks about sophrosyne
or the wisdom to accept fate:
1.45 how mortals take the
gods to task!
All their afflictions come from us, we hear.
& what of their own failings? Greed & folly
double the suffering in the lot of man.
Notice the demeanor of the Olympians.
They do not appear as awesome & terrifying powers. They offer
counsel & advice. They do not compel people. Consequently,
the quality of human life is entirely in our hands. There is no one
to blame but us.
1.51 Aigisthos
knew that his own doom lay in this [killing AG]. We gods
had warned him, sent down Hermes . . . .
Friendly advice -- but would Aigisthos take it?
Like AK, who told Thetis, "you cannot make me listen," Aigisthos also refused to listen & paid with his life. OD is the model of the man who listens, not just to those who possess the power to get his attention, but to little girls: Ino, Nausikaa, the awesome one in pigtails.
The ODY begins with OD's success.
Athena says her heart is broken for OD because he is missing, he seems
destined to be forgotten. Zeus himself says:
1.83 My child, what
strange remarks you let escape you.
Could I forget that kingly man, OD?
There is no mortal half so wise
This is as good as it gets in the ancient
world. Imagine Zeus looking down from the clouds on the anthill
of our world. Thousands of years zoom by & the ants scurry.
Is any one of them memorable? If Zeus remembers you because he respects
your accomplishments . . . well there is no higher possibility. What
we want to know is how OD achieved this status.
There is now a break in the dramatic scene. We find ourselves
in Ithaka, at OD's house when Mentes knocks on the door (1.129).
Two things happen. Homer associates dreaming with reason & we
learn about the first requirement for the polis: hospitality.
1.139 Long before anyone
else, the prince Tel
now caught sight of Athena--for he, too
was sitting there, unhappy among the suitors,
a boy, daydreaming.
1.146 he who dreamed in
the crowd gazed out at Athena
Perhaps this seems strange. Daydreaming
seldom gets your homework done. Consider 2 things. The suitors
are corrupt. They pursue the hard realities of the world, primarily
money. They are blind to the divine. Secondly, there is a nerd
theme. The math or physics nerd is typically ostracized from the
"cool" crowd, perhaps playing with models of the world in something that
resembles dreaming. How surprising that Al Einstein, who apparently
never owned a comb, is on familiar terms with Reason herself.
1.147 irked with himself
to think a visitor had been kept there waiting.
Again, 2 things are going on here.
First, we notice the law of hospitality. This is not a Christian
virtue. Underlying the offer of hospitality is a muted display of
power. When a notable man knocks at your door, you invite him in,
thereby demonstrating that you are not afraid. In fact you have such
power that you can afford to be vulnerable & entertain this man.
Of course there is also an invitation to have this man respect your power.
It is pretty much the same game that we saw played out in The Iliad,
without the overt violence. The second thing that is going on is
that TEL is playing "man of the house." He is irked & jumps up
to take command. We will see TEL oscillating between being a child
& becoming a man. Like the man he hopes to be, TEL confides to
Mentes:
1.192 they have an easy
life,
scot free, eating the livestock of another
Mentes/Athena agrees, commenting:
1.263 How arrogant they
seem,
these gluttons . . . .
A sensible man would blush to be among them.
Mentes then advises TEL:
1.309 If I were you,
I should take steps to make these men disperse
1.312 call the islanders
to assembly
to invite their support in kicking the suitors out.
Mentes gives voice to TEL's adolescent feelings:
1.333 You need not
bear this insolence of theirs,
you are a child no longer. Have your heard
what glory young Orestes won
Tel immediately acts on Mentes advice trying to expel the suitors:
1.406 Insolent men . .
. no more shouting
1.411 At daybreak we shall
sit down in assembly
& I shall tell you--take it as you will--
you are to leave this hall
Just as PEN was shocked by TEL's manly tone, now the suitors find:
1.421 TEL's bold speaking
stunned them
Consider Eurymakhos' inquiry. He hopes to mollify the child who
wants to be a man ("keep your property, & rule your house" 1.442),
then gets to the point:
1.446 a question or two
about the stranger
What does Eurymakhos want to know? (This will be asked again in the Chat session).
Book 1 ends with TEL reverting to childhood. His old nanny (Eurykleia)
puts him to bed:
1.482 There he sat down,
pulling his tunic off,
& tossed it into the wise old woman's hands.
where TEL dreams of:
1.488 the course Athena
gave him.
The next morning TEL tries to be a man again, addressing the assembly
of Ithaka, hoping to shame these men (dike) into standing up to
defend OD's property:
2.49 My distinguished
father is lost,
who ruled among you once, mild as a father.
You went over this section in the Introduction
under the heading of "the Polis." TEL asks:
2.68 Where is your indignation?
Where is your shame [dike]?
The answer is not they have
no shame or morality, but that they have no courage. Thus one of
the suitors mockingly asks:
2.254 Will this crowd risk the
sword's edge over a dinner?
Mentor echoes TEL::
2.242 It is so clear that
no one here remembers
how like a gentle father OD ruled you.
2.249 What sickens me is
to see the whole community
sitting still, & never a voice or a hand raised
against them--a mere handful compared with you.
Ironically, TEL (a boy) has identified the problem. What is needed are not children to express gratitude to a powerful father who does everything for them. What is needed (in the polis) are men willing to suffer for justice. Men who are proud that their power is dedicated to justice. The prototype of that citizen is, of course, OD.
Before we leave the suitors, notice their express contempt for all values.
They sound like Polyphemos (9.286 "We Kyklopes care not a whistle for your
thundering Zeus or all the gods in bliss"):
2.207 we fear no one,
certainly not TEL, with his talk;
& we care nothing for your divining [religion], uncle,
useless talk.
Perhaps the polis can afford to tolerate a few such uncivilized
delinquents when they destroy only their own lives. They cannot be
mothered & indulged or even ignored until they imperil civilization.
Narcissist delinquents don't need more approval from mom. They don't
need a mild father. They need to be held accountable to the objective
(& universal) standards of civilized behavior. If you were not
outraged by the suitors earlier, this scene should make you angry:
2.314 Antinoos came straight
over, laughing at him [Tel] . . . .
High-handed TEL, control your temper!
Come on, get over it, no more grim thoughts,
but feast & drink with me, the way you used to.
At least 3 things are going on here. First, we feel outrage that
Antinoos would presume to act as TEL's father. Secondly, his intent
is to corrupt. ANT advises TEL to forget his troubles & get drunk.
Thirdly, we wish for AK to have a little talk with ANT. There is
a place for power & even violence in a just world. Perhaps Zeus
knew what he was talking about in The Iliad when he said of AK:
(Iliad) 24.186 He is no
madman [as the suitors clearly are]
no blind brute, nor one to flout the gods
Book 2 ends with TEL put to bed by Eurykleia. Again he has failed
to be a man after grimly threatening ANT:
2.328 Now that I know,
being grown, what others say,
I understand it all, & my heart is full.
I'll bring black doom upon you if
I can--
Obviously TEL cannot. He lacks the power, which is painfully obvious
in the mockery & counterthreats of the suitors:
2.338 Well, think of that!
TEL has a mind to murder us.
2.345 Well now, who knows?
He might be lost at sea, just like OD
The title for book 2 is "a son awakens" to be a man. This means
facing your own troubles instead of letting dad or mom handle them. Strangely,
mothers would keep their sons children forever. Thus Eurykleia laments:
2.381 Dear child, whatever
put this in your head? [to grow up]
Why do you want to go so far in the world--
2.386 Stay with your own
[family], dear, do. Why should you suffer
hardship & homelessness on the wild sea?
The answer to both questions is, I want my own name, my own identity,
which is obtained only by facing trouble & overcoming it. Thus
the book ends with the suitors sleepily unable to "hold their cups" (2.415)
while TEL is wide awake, making:
2.453 libation to the gods,
the undying, the ever-new . . . .
& the prow sheared through the night into the dawn.
In books 3 & 4, TEL sees the world & shops for alternatives
to the squalor he knows at home. Nestor's palace is too stiff &
formal & geriatric. Menalaos' palace is a bordello kept by Helen.
Even before Nestor learns who is guest is, he asks him to pray:
2.3.46 Friend, I must ask you
to invoke Poseidon:
you find us at this feast, kept in his honor.
Nestor's advice (remember he is an old man) is to stoically endure the
suffering that is life:
3.249 as for death, of
course all men must suffer it:
the gods may love a man, but they can't help him
when cold death comes to lay him on his bier.
He is haunted by the failure of the struggle in The Iliad to
establish piety & justice. He cannot forget AG's disastrous homecoming.
Finally he advises TEL to:
3.341 call on MEN
he being but lately home from distant parts [Egypt]
How rich is MEN?
4.71 TEL could not
keep still, but whispered,
his head bent close, so the others might not hear:
My dear friend [speaking to Nestor's son, Peisistratos], can you believe
your eyes?--
the murmuring hall [big enough for echoes], how luminous it is
with bronze, gold, amber, silver, & ivory!
Did piety & reverence & tradition produce the good life for
Nestor? We just read his philosophy: "the gods may love a man, but
they can't help him." We want something more than grim, Spartan endurance.
Does MEN's money produce the good life?
4.102 How gladly I should
live one third as rich
to have my friends back safe at home!
Helen (beauty/money) is the cause of all these deaths. MEN is
either crying or drugged into hazy forgetfulness:
4.106 nothing but grief
is left me
While I sit at home
sometimes hot tears come, & I revel in them.
MEN goes round & round this cycle:
There is almost an explosion of associations emanating from this light.
We can smell her perfume before we hear or see her. She is Grace,
a frequent epithet for Aphrodite; but our expectation (with the perfume)
is confuted. She seems to be innocence, Artemis. She is a shaft
of golden sunlight arrowed into our dark & shadowy world. But
she is a shaft, like that of an arrow, that can kill in an instant.
Skip ahead to see how ANT perishes:
22.9 the cup was in his
fingers:
the wine was even at his lips: & did he dream of death?
ANT anticipated drinking beauty. How shocking to find the taste
of blood & an arrow through his throat. Perhaps the greatest
danger is that beauty is self-deprecating, suggesting that it offers nothing
but enjoyment. Helen says, in effect, "what, little ol' me.
I am not that important. Or if I was, I shouldn't have been":
4.153 that year the Akaian
host made war on Troy--
daring all for the wanton that I was.
Ironically, Helen's beauty does not bring joy. Everyone weeps:
4.191 grief rose up in
everyone,
& Helen of Argos wept, the daughter of Zeus,
TEL & MEN wept,
& tears came to the eyes of Nestor's son
Beauty cannot cure the cause of our suffering, which is time & death.
But, like liquor, it can cause us to forget:
4.229 it entered Helen's
mind
to drop into the wine that they were drinking
an anodyne [to grief], mild magic of forgetfulness.
Whoever drank this mixture in the wine bowl
would be incapable of tears that day--
4.338 The opiate of Zeus's
daughter [beauty] bore
this canny power.
Now let's see MEN run around his pathetic circle. Helen hopes
to "cheer the time with stories" & tells about the time OD snuck into
Troy to reconnoiter. Helen boasts that she alone recognized him &:
4.266 in the end I bathed
him & anointed him.
She boasts that:
4.270 He spoke up then,
& told me
all about the Akhaians, & their plans--
then sworded many Trojans through the body
on his way out with what he learned of theirs
The Trojan women raised a cry--but my heart
sang--for I had come round, long before,
to dreams of sailing home
Why doesn't she follow OD out of Troy then? This speech does not
quite contain as many first person pronouns as AG's homecoming speech:
(p. 632) 795 I
salute my Argos & my gods,
my
accomplices who brought me
home & won
my
rights
Nonetheless, Helen also makes it obvious that all the violence whirls
around her beauty; that beauty that cannot be controlled. Drugged
& drunk, MEN still smolders, remembering his version of Helen &
the one man should could entice, OD:
4.288 inside the hollow
horse, where we were waiting
. . . for the Trojan slaughter,
when . . . you came by . . .
& Deiphobos, that handsome man, came with you.
3 times you walked around it, patting it everywhere,
& called by name the flower of our fighters,
making your voice sound like their wives.
Does Helen know that Akhaians are inside the horse? Of course
she does. What is the point of this story? That the fate of
Troy & the lives of every man on both sides are in whose hands?
AK, AG, ODY -- none of them, but in the hands & in the whimsy of Helen.
If she decides to tell the Trojans that there are Greeks inside the horse,
the Greek cause perishes. If she says nothing, Troy perishes.
Languorous & limp Beauty triumphs over raw power. & what
is MEN's feeling about this; about Helen then married to Deiphobos as she
strolls around the horse with him, knowing her husband is inside.
MEN is a satellite to Helen. Proteus
tells him:
4.585 As to your own destiny,
prince MEN,
you shall not die in . . . Argos
rather the gods intend you for Elysion . . .
where all existence is a dream of ease.
4.595 For the gods hold
you, as Helen's lord, a son of Zeus
MEN's greatest accomplishment is being a frequent escort for Helen! Pathetically, he asks TEL to remember him (4.619). What is there to remember? MEN has no identity. He is money & a mirror for Helen's beauty.
Book 4 ends with the threat of murder to TEL. If MEN is an addict
who has lost control of his life, TEL might be another victim of Beauty,
murder by men who will stop at nothing to possess PEN.
4.731 They plan to drive
the keen bronze through TEL
Go to the top & click on the next section: Questions.