The Odyssey

Literary Responses - Odysseus as topic

gathered by John McIlvain

Pre-Trojan War Odysseus Penelope Telemachus Other Women Elpenor Demodocus Argos Bibliography

Image source: http://www.beloit.edu/~classics/main/courses/classics100/museum2/art_museum2.html

Over the centuries Odysseus has been viewed in numerous ways ~ heroic, misguided, sinful, adventuresome, exhausted. Like many of the other poems in this collections, the ones focused upon Odysseus often tell us more about the poet than Odysseus/Ulysses himself.

Dante | Tennyson | Graves | Ulysses and the Siren | Cavafy | T.S. Eliot | W.S. Merwin

---

Blake - Ulysses and Diomed Swathed in the Same Flame (illustration)

From Dante's Inferno (Longfellow Translation)

by Dante Aligheri (1265-1321)

"Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
For my old father, nor the due affection
Which joyous should have made Penelope,

Could overcome within me the desire
I had to be experienced of the world,
And of the vice and virtue of mankind;

But I put forth on the high open sea
With one sole ship, and that small company*
By which I never had deserted been.

Both of the shores I saw as far as Spain,
Far as Morocco, and the isle of Sardes,
And the others which that sea bathes round about.

I and my company were old and slow
When at that narrow passage we arrived
Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,

That man no farther onward should adventure.
On the right hand behind me left I Seville,
And on the other already had left Ceuta.*

'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West,
To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole
The night beheld, and ours so very low
It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched
Had been the splendor underneath the moon,
Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim
From distance, and it seemed to me so high
As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,
And smote upon the fore part of the ship.

Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,

Until the sea above us closed again."

Notes

small company - in the Odyssey, Odysseus has no "company" remaining when he lands on Ithaca.
Ceuta - Mt. Acha in Ceuta with Gibraltar is one of the Pillars of Hercules.

Unlike Tennyson (see below), Dante places Odysseus deep in Hell. He finds what Homer admires (Odysseus' craftiness [the Trojan Horse] and his pride) worthy of damnation.

Ulysses

Original illustration for the poem

by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel; I will drink
life to the lees. All times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
that loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades*
Vexed the dim sea. I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known---cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honored of them all---
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, my own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle---
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labor, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail;
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me -
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads - you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honor and his toil.
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.*
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
the sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths*
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;*
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,*
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

(1842)

Notes

"Ulysses was written soon after Arthur Hallam's death, and gave my feeling about the need of going forward, and braving the struggle of life perhaps more simply than anything in In Memoriam" (Tennyson).

Hyades - the sisters (or daughters) of Hyas who died while hunting; they mourned his death until turned into the stars called Hyades which are in the constellation of Taurus. The Hyades, still weeping, appropriately ascend in the rainy season.
my friends - Tennyson, like Dante, gives Odysseus back his crew.
the baths - the place where the western stars - Odysseus is sailing west into the sunset and toward the unknown Atlantic - seem to drop into the sea.
wash us down - this image, similar to the one in Dante, parallels the post-Homeric oceanography of Plato's Phaedo: "There are four principal ones [rivers of the world], of which the greatest and outermost is that called Okeanos ... The fourth river goes out on the opposite side, and falls first of all into a wild and savage region, which is all of a dark-blue color, like lapis lazuli; and this is that river which is called the Stygion River, and falls into and forms the Lake Styx, and after falling into the lake and receiving strange powers in the waters, passes under the earth."
the Happy Isles - this suggests that Odysseus might be rewarded with a "pleasant afterlife" in a version of the Elysian fields. Note, there is no suggestion of this possibility in the Odyssey, where a wretched Achilles says, "By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over the breathless dead." Note also how differently Dante (Tennyson's obvious source) sees Odysseus ultimate fate.

Odysseus

by Robert Graves (1895-1985)

His wiles were witty and his fame far known,
Every king's daughter sought him for her own,
Yet he was nothing to be won or lost.
All lands to him were Ithaca: love-tossed
He loathed the fraud, yet would not bed alone.

Ulysses and the Siren

Odysseus, the Sirens and his men (vase painting)

Another view from a Greek Vase Painting

by Samuel Daniel (1562-1619)

SIREN.

COME, worthy Greek ! Ulysses, come,
Possess those shores with me !
The winds and seas are troublesome,
And here we may be free !
Here we may sit and view their toil
That travail in the deep,
And joy the day in mirth the while,
And spend the night in sleep.

ULYSSES.

Fair nymph ! if fame or honor were
To be attained with ease,
Then would I come and rest with thee,
And leave such toils as these.
But here it dwells, and here must I
With danger seek it forth :
To spend the time luxuriously
Becomes not men of worth.

SIREN.

Ulysses, O be not deceiv'd
With that unreal name,
This honour is a thing conceiv'd,
And rests on others' fame.
Begotten only to molest
Our peace, and to beguile
The best thing of our life—our rest,
And give us up to toil.

ULYSSES.

Delicious Nymph, suppose there were
No honour, nor report,
Yet manliness would scorn to wear
The time in idle sport ;
For toil doth give a better touch
To make us feel our joy,
And ease finds tediousness as much
As labour finds annoy.

SIREN.

Then pleasure, likewise, seems the shore
Whereto tends all your toil,
Which you forego to make it more,
And perish oft the while.
Who may disport* them diversely, (*amuse themselves)
Find never tedious day,
And ease may have variety,
As well as action may.

ULYSSES.

But natures of the noblest frame
These toils and dangers please ;
And they take comfort in the same
As much as you in ease ;
And with the thought of actions past
Are recreated still :
When Pleasure leaves a touch at last,
To show that it was ill.

SIREN.

That doth Opinion only cause,
That's out of Custom bred,
Which makes us many other laws
Than ever Nature did.
No widows wail for our delights,
Our sports are without blood ;
The world we see by warlike wights * (*creatures)
Receives more hurt than good.

ULYSSES.

But yet the state of things require
These motions of unrest ;
And these great Spirits of high desire
Seem born to turn them best :
To purge the mischiefs that increase,
And all good order mar,
For oft we see a wicked peace
To be well chang'd for war.

SIREN.

Well, well, Ulysses, then I see
I shall not have thee here :
And therefore I will come to thee,
And take my fortune there.
I must be won, that cannot win,
Yet lost were I not won ;
For beauty hath created been
T' undo, or be undone.

Ithaka (click link to read entire poem)

by Constantine P. Cavafy (1863-1933)

The poem begins -

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
(1911)

A student of mine, Vanessa Diameteris, who read the poem for my class in Greek said that the translations couldn' do justice to Cavafy's language, which she found beautiful and extraordinary because of the poet's choice of words. This is nevertheless a different take on the importance of adventure.

Sweeney Erect

by Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965)

And the trees about me, 
Let them be dry and leafless; let the rocks
Groan with continual surges; and behind me,
Make all a desolation.  Look, look, wenches!* 

               Paint me a cavernous waste shore  
                     Cast in the unstilled Cyclades,* 
               Paint me the bold anfractuous rocks 
                    Faced by the snarled and yelping seas. 

               Display me Aeolus above 
                     Reviewing the insurgent gales 
              Which tangle Ariadne's hair 
                    And swell with haste the perjured sails.* 

              Morning stirs the feet and hands 
                  (Nausicaa and Polypheme), 
               Gesture of orang-outang* 
                  Rises from the sheets in steam. 

               This withered root of knots of hair 
                   Slitted below and gashed with eyes, 
               This oval O cropped out with teeth: 
                   The sickle motion from the thighs 

               Jackknifes upward at the knees 
                   Then straightens out from heel to hip 
               Pushing the framework of the bed 
                   And clawing at the pillow slip. 

               Sweeney addressed full length to shave 
                   Broadbottomed, pink from nape to base, 
               Knows the female temperament 
                   And wipes the suds around his face. 

               (The lengthened shadow of a man 
                    Is history, said Emerson*
               Who had not seen the silhouette 
                   Of Sweeney straddled in the sun). 

               Tests the razor on his leg 
                  Waiting until the shriek subsides. 
              The epileptic on the bed 
                  Curves backward, clutching at her sides. 

              The ladies of the corridor 
                  Find themselves involved, disgraced, 
              Call witness to their principles 
                  And deprecate the lack of taste 

              Observing that hysteria 
                  Might easily be misunderstood; 
              Mrs. Turner intimates* 
                  It does the house no sort of good. 

              But Doris, towelled from the bath, 
                  Enters padding on broad feet, 
              Bringing sal volatile* 
                 And a glass of brandy neat. 
				(1920)

Notes:

In The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Aspatia, tells the tapestry makers to depict the tale of Ariadne, who like herself has been betrayed by love, in a way that mirrors the misery she herself feels.

unstilled Cyclades: Greek islands that "floated" until Zeus tied them down. Homer is rumored to be buried on one of the Cyclades.

perjured sails - After abandoning Ariadne, who had helped him escape the labyrinth, Theseus sailed on to his home (Athens) forgot to change his black sails (a signal that he had died in defeat) which lead to his father's suicide.

orang-outang: an allusion to Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," where murders are discovered to have been committed by an orang-outang with its owner's razor. Sweeney is described in another Eliot poem as "apenecked."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), states in "Self Reliance" that "an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man."

Mrs. Turner - character in Jonson's The Alchemist who owns a "bawdy house" and is hung for a murder her employer engineers. The setting of Odysseus' emergence with Nausicaa seems to have been turned upside down. "Doris" appears in Eliot's later "Sweeney Agonistes" as a disconsolate Sweeney's companion.

sal volatile: used in smelling salts.

Odysseus (follow link to read the complete poem)

This poem pictures a somewhat jaded Odysseus. Below is an exerpt.

by W.S. Merwin (1927- )

. . . .Behind him on the receding shore
The identical reproaches, and somewhere
Out before him, the unravelling patience
He was wedded to. . . .

Responses to the Odyssey