The Odyssey

Literary Responses - Telemachus 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

Odysseus to Telemachus (click link to read e-Text)

by Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)

A somewhat befuddled and worn down Odysseus finds that "the faces of all islands
resemble one another"

My dear Telemachus,
                   The Trojan War 
is over now; I don't recall who won it. 
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland. . .

In the next stanza Brodsky alludes to one of the "hidden" legends of Odysseus.

You've long since ceased to be that babe
before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks.
Had it not been for Palamedes' trick
we two would still be living in one household.

Odysseus like the other Greek Captains had sworn the oath of The Oath of Tyndareus, making him obligated to sail with Agamemnon and Menelaus to Troy to bring Helen back to Sparta. Odysseus' wants to escape this obligation because an oracle had predicted all that would happen to him. Odysseus tries to pretend to be insane but Palamedes, who has come for him along with Nestor and Menelaus, tricks the master of guile by placing the new-born Telemachus in front of Odysseus when he is plowing. Odysseus, afraid for his son's life, "reined in the plowing bullocks"; admitting his ruse, he agrees to go to war. A vengeful Odysseus is said to have framed Palmedes for treason at Troy. (Some would say that Homer issues the final insult to Palmedes by omitting him from both epics.)

Responses to the Odyssey