The Odyssey

Literary Responses - Penelope 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

Ovid | Spenser | Cowper | H.D. | Millay | Parker | Fallon | Stevens

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Telemachus and Penelope (vase painting)

from Ovid's Heroides

Translated by James M. Hunter (follow link to ongoing e-Text)

by Publius Ovidus Naso [Ovid] (43BC-18AD)

I: Penelope to Ulysses

Your Penelope sends you these words, truant Ulysses; 
It is of no use to write back to me: come yourself! 
Troy has certainly fallen, hated by the daughters of the Greeks; 
But Priam and all of Troy were hardly worth so much to me. 
Oh would that, when his fleet made for Lacedaemon, 
The adulterer had been obliterated by the raging sea! 
I would not have lain, cold, in my lonely bed, 
Nor, deserted, would I complain of the days' slow passing; 
Nor would the hanging web weary my widowed hands 
As I seek to cheat the endless night. 

When did I not fear dangers greater than the real ones? 
Love is a thing which is filled with restless fear. 
I imagined the violent Trojans rushing upon you;
I was always pale at the name of Hector. 
If someone told of Antilochus* vanquished by the enemy, 
Antilochus was the cause of my fear; 
Or if the son of Menoetius* was killed in borrowed armor, 
I wept that guile could be without success. 
Tlepolemus* warmed the Lycian's spear with his blood: 
So Tlepolemus' death renewed my care. 
In short, whoever was butchered in the Achaean camp, 
Your lover's heart became colder than ice. 

But a favoring god looks after chaste love. 
Troy is turned to ashes, with my husband safe. 
The Argive leaders have returned, and the altars smoke; 
The barbarian spoils are laid before our fathers' gods. 
The young women bear gifts of thanks for their husbands' safe return; 
The husbands sing of the fates of Troy defeated by their own. 
Just-minded old folk and trembling girls admire; 
The wife hangs on the words of her husband's tale. 
And someone at the table shows the fierce conflict, 
And paints all of Pergamum* with a little wine: 
"Here the Simois* flowed; this is Sigeian land;* 
Here stood the lofty palace of old Priam.* 
There Aeacus' grandson was camped, and there Ulysses; 
Here Hector's mangled corpse terrifies the galloping horses." 

For old Nestor told all of this to your son, whom I sent 
To look for you, and he told it to me. . . . 
My heart trembled constantly with fear, until it was reported that you rode
Victorious, with the horses of Ismarus,* among friendly troops.
But what did it profit me that Ilium lies ruined by your arms,
And that what once was a wall is now level ground,
If I remain as I remained while Troy stood,
And my husband is kept from me to the very end?
Pergamum is destroyed for others; for me alone it still remains,
Though the victor settles and plows the earth with a captured ox.
Now there is grain where Troy was, and crops ripe for the scythe
Thrive in soil enriched by Phrygian* blood.
The half-buried bones of men are struck by the curving plow,
And growing plants hide the ruined homes.
Although the victor, you are still gone, and I am not allowed to know
The cause of the delay, or where in the world you hide, cruel one. 
Whoever turns his wandering ship to these shores,
Is asked by me many questions about you before he departs,
And he is given the letter written by these fingers,
To give to you if he ever even sees you anywhere. . . .
It would be better if Phoebus' walls* stood even now -
Alas! I am angry with my own inconstant prayers!
I would know where you fought, and would fear only war,
And my complaint would be joined with many others.
What I fear I do not know - nevertheless, half-crazed, I fear all things,
And a wide field lies open for my fears.
Whatever dangers the ocean has, whatever the land,
I suspect to be the cause of your long delay.
While I foolishly fear these things, such is your appetite
That you may be captive to a foreign love.
And perhaps you tell what a country wife you have,
That only her wool is not coarse.
May I be wrong, and may this crime vanish in thin air,
And may it not be that, free to return, you wish to remain away. 

My father Icarius drives me to leave my widowed bed,
And rebukes me continuously for my long delay.
Let him rebuke me; I am yours - it behoves me to be called yours:
Penelope will always be Ulysses' wife.
But he is subdued by my loyalty and my chaste prayers. . . .
A dissolute crowd, rush to demand my hand;
In your hall they rule, with no one to forbid them.
My heart, your wealth they tear apart.
Why should I tell you of Pisander, Polybus, and the terrible Medon,*
Of the greedy hands of Eurymachus and Antinous,
And of others, all of whom, because of your shameful absence,
You nourish with the wealth of your blood?
Irus the beggar, and Melanthius who drives the flocks to be eaten,
Add the final shame to your ruin. 

We are three in number, unwarlike: a wife without power,
And the old man Laertes and the boy Telemachus.
The boy was almost taken from me by ambush not long ago,
While he prepared, against all their wishes, to go to Pylos.*
I pray that the gods command that, our fates coming in order,
He is the one to close my eyes, and to close yours.
The keeper of the cattle and the aged nurse aid us,
And the faithful caretaker of the foul pig-sty is a third.
But Laertes, who is useless in arms,
Cannot wield power in the midst of enemies;
Telemachus will come, if only he lives, to stronger age,
But now he should have the protection of a father's help.
Nor do I have the strength to drive the enemies from our halls.
Come home quickly, refuge and altar for your own!
You have - and will have, I pray - a son, who in his tender years
Should have been trained in his father's skills.
Consider Laertes: he holds off the final day of fate
So that you may be the one to close his eyes.
At all events I, who was a girl when you left,
Will seem to have become an old woman, even if you come without delay.

Notes

Antilochus - Nestor's eldest son.
Menoetius's son - Patroclus, Achilles friend who is slayed in Achilles' armor by Hector.
Tlepolemus - a son of Hercules killed in the Iliad by Sarpedon a son of Zeus who comes from Lycia to aid the Trojans.
Pergamum - the citadel at Troy.
Simois - a river near Troy, the river god with which Achilles battles.
Sigeian land- near Troy, possible burial sight of Achilles, although the Odyssey has his ashes returned an urn to his homeland.
Priam - King of Troy, father of the Trojan's greatest hero Hector, whose body is dragged around the walls of Troy after he is slain by Achilles.
Aeacus - a son of Zeus, grandfather (technically great grandfather?) to Achilles.
Ismarus - the land of the Cicones.
Phrygian - allies of Troy.
Phoebus' walls - Troy, whose wall was said to have been erected by Phoebus Apollo.
Pisander, Polybus, and the terrible Medon - Curiously, although Pisander, Polybus, Eurymachus, and Antinuous, lead the fight for the suitors against Odysseus, Medon is generally seen favorably in the Odyssey and is spared.
Pylos - where Telemachus sees Nestor.

from Amoretti

by Edmund Spenser (1552-1599)

XXIII

Penelope for her Ulysses' sake,
Devised a web her wooers to deceive;
In which the work that she all day did make
The same at night she did again unreave.
Such subtle craft my Damsel doth conceive,
Th'importune suit of my desire to shun:
For all that I in many days do weave,
In one short hour I find by her undone.
So when I think to end that I begun,
I must begin and never bring to end:
For with one look she spills that long I spun,
And with one word my whole year's work doth rend.
Such labour like the spider's web I find,
Whose fruitless work is broken with least wind.

Penelope

by William Cowper (1731-1800)

The suitors sinn'd, but with a fair excuse
whom all this elegance might well seduce
Nor can our censure on the husband fall,
Who, for a wife so lovely, slew them all

At Ithaca

by H.D. (Hilda Doolittle 1886-1961)

OVER and back,
the long waves crawl
and track the sand with foam;
night darkens, and the sea
takes on that desperate tone
of dark that wives put on
when all their love is done.

Over and back,
the tangled thread falls slack,
over and up and on;
over and all is sewn;
now while I bind the end,
I wish some fiery friend
would sweep impetuously
these fingers from the loom.

My weary thoughts
play traitor to my soul,
just as the toil is over;
swift while the woof is whole
turn now, my spirit, swift,
and tear the pattern there,
the flowers so deftly wrought,
the borders of sea blue,
the sea-blue coast of home.

The web was over-fair,
that web of pictures there,
enchantments that I thought
he had, that I had lost;
weaving his happiness
within the stitching frame,
weaving his fire and frame,
I thought my work was done,
I prayed that only one
of those that I had spurned
might stoop and conquer this
long waiting with a kiss.

But each time that I see
my work so beautifully
inwoven and would keep
the picture and the whole,
Athene steels my soul.
Slanting across my brain,
I see as shafts of rain
his chariot and his shafts,
I see the arrows fall,
I see the lord who moves
like Hector lord of love,
I see him matched with fair
bright rivals, and I see
those lesser rivals flee. (1923)

An Ancient Gesture

by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,--a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Penelope

by Dorothy Parker (1893-1967).

In the pathway of the sun,
  In the footsteps of the breeze,
Where the world and sky are one,
  He shall ride the silver seas,
    He shall cut the glittering wave.
I shall sit at home, and rock;
Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock;
Brew my tea, and snip my thread;
Bleach the linen for my bed.
    They will call him brave.

Another Penelope poem, Padraic Fallon's "Kiltartan Legend," can be found in New Oxford Book of Irish Verse. Trans.and ed.Thomas Kinsella. New York: Oxford UP, 1986. 339.

Fallon describes Penelope, "of all sirens the most dangerous" and calls the suitors "curious wonders, the ventriloquial voices." It includes an image of her in her garden where "Apollo (the sun) runs before/ Touching the blossoms, her unborn sons." The poem can be found on a number of "personal pages" on the Internet (we will not point you there due to dubious copyright permissions).

The World As Meditation (click link to read poem) by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) is from "The Rock" and is Stevens in a contemplative mood. Includes the lines:

"But was it Ulysses? Or was it only the warmth of the sun
On her pillow? The thought of it kept beating in her like her heart".

Responses to the Odyssey