Homer's Odyssey Part 9

Undoubtedly fabulous threads are spun through this description. Quite too lavish a use is made of the precious metals in the house of Alcinous, as in some fairy tale or romantic ballad; so much gold is found nowhere outside of wonderland. In the garden fruit is never wanting, some of it just ripe, some still green, some in flower. No change of season, yet the effect of all seasons; surely a marvelous country it appears; still we learn that in Campania are some sorts of grapes which produce thrice a year. A mythical garden is indeed the delight of human fancy. Eden has its counterparts everywhere. Indeed a significant parallel might be drawn between Greek Phaeacia and the Hebrew Paradise; in the one, man unfolds out of savagery, in the other he is created at once by a divine act. Can we not see Orient and Occident imaging themselves in their respective ideal products? The one from below upwards, the other from above downwards; both movements, the Greek and the Hebrew, belong to man, and have entered into his civilization. The next world-poet, Dante, will unite the two streams.

III.

Ulysses now comes to the internal element of Phaeacia, to its soul as it were, manifested in the inst.i.tutional life of Family and State. From this indeed is derived the beautiful world which we have just witnessed; Art builds up a dwelling-place, which images the spirit of the people to themselves and to others.

In accord with his instructions from both. Pallas and Nausicaa, he first goes to Arete and clasps her knees in supplication, begging for an escort to his country. But behold! She hesitates, notwithstanding his strong appeal to her domestic feeling and her sympathy with suffering. What can be the matter? Another Phaeacian, not of the royal house apparently, but of the n.o.bles, is the first to speak and command the stranger to be raised up and to be hospitably received. An old religious man who sees the neglect of Zeus in the neglect of the suppliant, a man of long experience, "knowing things many and ancient,"

is this Echeneus; him at once the king obeys, the queen still remaining silent.

Soon, however, we catch the reason of her conduct in the question: "Stranger, where did you get those garments?" She noticed Ulysses wearing the mantle and tunic "which she herself had made with her servants," and which Nausicaa had given him. Surely this is a matter which must be accounted for before proceeding further. Herein the woman comes out in her own peculiar province; no man would ever have noticed the dress so closely; Alcinous did not, and wise Ulysses in this case did not forecast so far out of his masculine domain. But the poet had made the subtle observation and uses it as a turning-point in his little drama. Now we see the queen before us: imagine a pair of dark eyes shooting indignation upon the man clothed with garments intrusted this very morning to the daughter.

Nor should we fail to scan her second question: "Do you not say that you have come hither a wanderer over the deep?" Verily the case is suspicious. Ulysses sees his plight, and at once offers the most elaborate explanation, going back and giving a history of himself for the last seven or eight years. Now we know why the poet specially praised the mind of Arete, and why her husband so honored her, and why she could be judge of disputes among men. She shows the keenest observation united with reasoning power; she stands out in contrast with the Phaeacian men, who follow impulse more readily than she, as she keeps the judicial balance, though a woman, and demands evidence of truth from the uncertain stranger.

We may draw from this scene certain traits of the Phaeacians, as we see here a man, a typical man probably who is outside of the royal family.

An ideal humanity seems to live in them; they will receive the unfortunate wanderer and succor him to the fullest extent. More impressive still is their religious faith; they live in intimate communion with the G.o.ds, who appear in person at the feast "sitting among us;" nor do the deities conceal themselves from the solitary wayfarer; "since we are as near to them as are the Cyclops and the wild tribes of Giants." So speaks Alcinous, hinting that kins.h.i.+p, which has been previously set forth; both himself and Arete are the descendants of savages, who were children of the G.o.ds of nature. But they have risen into fellows.h.i.+p with the higher G.o.ds of Olympus. The words of the king seemed to be tinged with sarcasm at those inferior deities, parents of savagery, from whom, however, they themselves are sprung. He cannot forget the Cyclops, the men of violence who once did his people wrong.

In these mythical allusions, obscure enough just here, we have already traced the rise of Phaeacia into an ethical existence. The wors.h.i.+p of the higher G.o.ds is the emotional side of such a condition, and the treatment of the suppliant marks an advance toward the conception of an universal humanity. Still Phaeacia, has its spiritual limits, genuine Greek limits, of which hereafter something will be said.

It is sufficient to state that the speech of Ulysses has its effect, it contains a great deal which appeals to the character of Arete; his leaving Calypso and his desire to return to his home-life must be powerful motives towards winning her sympathy. Then she cannot help recognizing and admiring his skill; there is an intellectual bond between them, as well as an ethical one. Not much does she say hereafter, her part being finished; her husband takes the lead henceforth. She has tested the wanderer, Alcinous can now preform the ceremonies.

We soon see that the king needs a counterpart in such a wife, he being impulsively generous; he blames his daughter for her backwardness in not coming to town with Ulysses, whereat the latter frames one of his smallest fibs in excuse of the maiden. Still further, the king in a surprising burst of admiration, wishes that Ulysses, or "such an one as thou art," might stay and be called his son-in-law. Altogether too sudden; Arete would not have said that, though the woman be the natural match-maker. Still Alcinous, in a counter-outpouring of his generosity, promises to send Ulysses to his own land, though "this should be further off than Euboea, the most distant country." Thus overflows the n.o.ble heart of the king, but he clearly needs his other half, in the th.o.r.n.y journey of life.

Thus has Ulysses reached the heart of Phaeacia and found its secret beat; he has felt its saving power, not simply externally but also internally; it rescues him from dangers of the sea and of himself too.

The truly positive side of life begins to dawn upon him again, after his long career of struggle with dark fabulous shapes. Well may he pray Zeus for Alcinous: "May his fame be immortal over the fertile earth"--a prayer which has been fulfilled, and is still in the process of fulfillment. Arete gives the order to the servants to spread his couch for the night's repose, she has received him.

In the sweep of the present Book, many origins are suggested. The genealogy of the king and queen and people is significant, it might be called the genealogy of civilization. The woman is placed at the center; out of her springs the family, and with it come society, state, the inst.i.tutional world.

Of such a world the external environment is seen in the garden, palace, and city of the Phaeacians, which are built by the spirit for its dwelling-place and reflect the spirit. The Greek world of Beauty is born, and its course is foreshadowed; this ideal Homeric realm is prophetic of what Greece is to become. The plastic arts and the industrial arts are suggested, and to a degree are realized.

The artistic soul of h.e.l.las is fully felt in Homer's Phaeacia. The formative impulse is everywhere alive and at work; the instinctive need of shaping and transforming nature and life is here in its first budding, and will bloom into the greatest art-people of all time. Those two supreme Fine Arts of mature Greece, Architecture and Sculpture, are present in examples which foretell plainly Phidias and the Parthenon.

King Alcinous; thy fair palace has had fairer offspring, Thou art ruling the world still by the beautiful form; Out of thy mansion majestic was born in a song the Greek Temple, Sentineled round with a choir--t.i.tans columnar of stone, Bearing forever their burden to hymns of a Parian measure, Wearing out heaviest Fate to a Pindaric high strain.

Look! those boys of thy garden with tapers are moving to statues, Seeming to walk into stone while they are bringing the light; h.e.l.las springs out of thy palace all sculptured with actions heroic, Even the G.o.d we discern turning to marble by faith.

Such is the originative, prophetic character of Phaeacia, which the reader must take profoundly into his soul, if he would understand the genetic history of Greek spirit. Verily the poet is the maker of archetypes and reveals in his shapes all that his people are to become.

Thou, old Homer, wert the first builder in Greece, the first carver, Afterward she could but turn fancies of thine into stone; Architects followed thee, building thy poem aloft into temples, Sculptors followed thee too, thinking in marble thy line.

Nor must we forget the Industrial Arts here suggested--weaving, s.h.i.+p-building, the working of metals; in general, there is hinted the varied transformation of nature, which begets a civilized life.

Agriculture is present, also horticulture, which the garden of Alcinous presupposes. Such, then, is the grand frame-work for the social order as here portrayed.

But the chief art of the Homeric world has not yet been given, though it is at work now, and is just that which has reproduced Phaeacia with all its beauty. This is the poet's own art, which having set forth the other arts, is next to set forth itself. Accordingly we are to see the poet showing the poet in the following Book, which may, therefore, be named the Book of the Bard. Thus we pa.s.s out of the industrial and plastic arts of Phaeacia, into the supreme art, the poetic, as it manifests itself in the Phaeacian singer.

_BOOK EIGHTH._

We observe a decided change in the present Book; it has a character of its own quite distinct from the preceding Books. Yet it is on a line of development with them, we note a further spiritual evolution which must be looked into with some attention. In general, Phaeacia is now seen as an art-world, in true correspondence with h.e.l.las, of which it is a kind of ideal prototype. In the two previous Books we saw portrayed chiefly inst.i.tutional life in Family and in State. But in this Book inst.i.tutional life, though present and active, is withdrawn into the background, and becomes the setting for the picture, yet also is the spirit which secretly calls forth the picture. A poetic art-world now pa.s.ses before us in entrancing outlines, a world filled with song, dance, games, with all the poetry of existence.

Such an artistic development follows from what has gone before. Man, having attained culture, civilization, and a certain freedom from the necessity of working for his daily bread, begins to turn back and look at his career; he observes the past and measures how far he has come.

The image of himself in his unfolding he beholds in art, specially in the poetic art, whose essence must at last be just this inst.i.tutional life which has been described in Phaeacia. He attains it and then steps back and portrays his attaining of it; having done the heroic deed, he must see himself doing it forever, in the strains of the bard. Art is thus the mirror of life and of inst.i.tutions; it reflects the grand conflict of the times and the people; it seizes upon the supreme national event, and holds it up in living portraiture along with its heroes.

Now the great event which lies back of Phaeacia at the present time, in fact lies back of all Greece for all ages, perchance lies back of all Europe, is the Trojan War. It was the first emphatic, triumphant a.s.sertion of the Greek and indeed of the European world against the Orient. The fight before Troy was not a mere local and temporary conflict between two quarrelsome borderers, but it cuts to the very marrow of the World's History, the grand struggle between East and West. Family and State are most deeply concerned in it, the restoration of the wife is the main object of the Trojan War, which the chieftains of Greece must conclude victoriously or perish. A new world was being born on this side of the aegean, and the Greeks were its first shapers and its earliest defenders. This occidental world, whose birth is the real thing announced at Troy in that marvelous cradle-song of Europe, called the Iliad, has already begun its career, and shows its earliest period in Phaeacia. It is no wonder, then, that the Phaeacian people wish to hear the Trojan song, and it alone, and that the Phaeacian poet wishes to sing the Trojan song, and it alone.

Thus we behold in the present Book a quiet idyllic folk on their island home out in the West listening to the mighty struggle of their race, with dim far-off antic.i.p.ations of all that it involved. Nor were the women indifferent. Arete, the wife and center of the Family, is not henceforth to be exposed to the fate of Helen; think what would Phaeacia be without her, or she without Phaeacia; think what she would be in Troy, for instance. Strong emotions must rise in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of all the people at hearing such a song.

But still stronger emotions well out of the heart of Ulysses. He is one of the heroes of the Trojan War not yet returned, a living image of its sacrifices. Of course, he is the main hero sung of by the bard in the present Book; such is the artistic adaptation of the Homeric work, clearly done with a conscious design. Ulysses has already pa.s.sed through several stages--Calypso, Nausicaa, Arete; now he has reached the poet, Demodocus certainly, and perchance Homer himself, who is to sing not only of the Trojan War, but also of its consequences--this rise of man's spiritual hierarchy as here unfolded, from Nature, into Inst.i.tutions, and thence into Art. After hearing Demodocus, Ulysses picks up the thread and becomes his own poet, narrating his adventures in Fairyland with the free full swing of the Homeric hexameter. Thus he acquires and applies in his own way the art of Phaeacia; the arch of his life spans over from the heroic fighter before Troy to the romantic singer before the Phaeacian court.

It is plain, therefore, that this Book is distinctively the Book of the Bard. In the experience of Ulysses, Demodocus is placed on a line with the three leading figures in the last three Books--they being women, while the singer must be a man. One reason is, possibly, that a Phaeacian woman could not be permitted to sing such a strain as the story of Venus and Mars. At any rate, he is fourth in the row of shapes, all of which are significant. We catch many touches of his personality; he is blind, though gifted with song; "evil and good" he has received, and is therein a typical man. It is in every way a beautiful loving picture, painted with strong deep undertones of sympathy; no wonder is it, therefore, that Demodocus in all ages has been taken as a portrait of Homer by himself, showing glimpses of the man, of his station in life, and of his vocation. Later on we shall consider this point in more detail.

The three songs of the bard furnish the main landmarks for the organism of the Book. All of them will be found more or less intimately connected with the great event of the immediate Past, the story of Troy. Phaeacia shows an intense interest in that story and the bard approves himself its worthy singer. Indeed the three songs stand in direct relation to the Iliad; the first deals with an event antecedent to the Iliad; the second has the theme of the Iliad, though in a changed form, inasmuch as the seducer, the wife and the husband are here G.o.ds (Mars, Venus, Vulcan) instead of mortals (Paris, Helen, Menelaus); the third deals with an event subsequent to the Iliad. Yet the singer carefully avoids repeating anything in the Iliad. It is almost impossible not to think that he had not that poem in mind; or, rather, we are forced to conclude that the present author of the Odyssey knew the Iliad, and we naturally think that both were by the same man. Demodocus is the singer of the Trojan War, yet he shuns singing what has already been sung about it. Herein we may catch another faint reflection of Homer, the organizer, the transfigurer of old legends into his two poems. Note also that he hovers around the Iliad, before and after it, yet never into it, here and elsewhere in the Odyssey; specially in the Third Book have we observed the same fact.

In the present Book, however, is another strand; besides these songs of the bard belonging to the past are the doings in Phaeacia belonging to the present, which doings have a connection and a correspondence with the songs. Thus we observe three divisions in the Book, and two threads which run through these divisions. The following outline may serve to show the general structure:--

I. There is the representation of the struggle between the physical and mental in what may be called Phaeacian art; skill and strength have an encounter shown in two ways:

1. Past, heroic, ideal; the contest between Ulysses and Achilles at Troy; intelligence vs. mere courage. Sung by the bard. Pre-Iliad.

2. Present, real, not heroic; the games in which there is a contest also, and in which both skill and strength are involved, with the preponderance of the physical.

II. Now we drop to the sensuous inactive side of the Phaeacian world, the luxurious, self-indulgent phase of their life, which is also imaged in their art doubly:

1. Past; an Olympian episode, a story of illicit love among the G.o.ds, corresponding to the story of Helen on earth. Sung by the bard.

2. Present; hints concerning the sensuous life of the Phaeacians who love the feast, the song, the warm bath and bed, along with dance and music, showing their pleasure in art. Return of the men from the market-place to the palace and into the presence of Arete.

III. We pa.s.s to what may be called the triumph of intelligence and the recognition thereof,--Phaeacian art is again introduced, Ulysses is revealed.

1. Past, heroic, ideal; Troy is taken by skill, by the Wooden Horse, not by the physical might and courage of Achilles. Sung by the bard. Post-Iliad. This may be considered also a triumph over Venus who favored Troy.

2. Present; Ulysses weeps, his tears are noticed by Alcinous, who demands his name, country, travels. Ulysses has already in a number of ways discovered himself as connected with the past, with the Trojan War. In the next Book he tells his name, country, character, adventures.

If we scan the sweep of this outline, we observe that it opens with the conflict between Brain and Brawn, or between Mind and Might, and ends in the victory of Mind in the grand Trojan conflict. Similar has been the movement hitherto, from Calypso onwards, which, however, shows the ethical conflict. Still the intellectual and the ethical spheres have to subordinate the natural, and mind is the common principle of both.

As an introduction to the Book we have an account of the men a.s.sembling in the marketplace, where "they sat on polished stones near one another." Pallas has, of course, to be employed, though in a pa.s.sing and very subordinate way; she acts as herald to call the a.s.sembly together, and thus stamps it with a divine import. We must grant to the poet his right, but the G.o.ddess seems almost unnecessary here, as the herald could have done the same work. Once more Pallas interferes: "she sheds a G.o.dlike grace upon the head and shoulders of Ulysses,"

imparting to him majesty and beauty, "that he might be dear to all the Phaeacians," those lovers of the beautiful in art and life. Thus, like a visible deity, he was "to be feared and to be revered;" strength also the G.o.ddess gave him, "that he might accomplish all the contests which the Phaeacians would try him with." Thus is the Hero prepared divinely.

Alcinous makes a speech to the a.s.sembly, touching the wanderer, who is again promised an escort to Ithaca; the king chooses the crew, and the s.h.i.+p is launched. Meanwhile, however, there is to be a sacrifice with festival, the bard is led in and his harp adjusted, his portion of food and drink not being omitted, for he is not a hired musician, but an equal at the feast.

We are now to witness two kinds of entertainment, both of which according to the Greek conception, belong to the sphere of art. The one is an heroic song, and is thrown into the past; the other is a trial of bodily skill and strength, and belongs to the present. Both kinds show contest, and this contest is mainly between the physical and the spiritual elements in man. Which is paramount? Each is necessary, yet one must be subordinate.

1. Note, first of all, the theme of the bard: "The Muse inspired him to sing the strife between Ulysses and Achilles, the fame whereof had reached high Heaven." The Trojan War lies manifestly in the background of the quarrel. When did it take place, at what period during the struggle? There is nothing to settle the question decisively, such a dispute might have arisen almost at any time. But as it is the antecedent trouble in the Greek army, a dualism which this army brings with itself in its leaders, we may reasonably put it somewhere towards the beginning. This is also the opinion of Nitzsch (_Com. ad loc._), who places the scene of the dispute on the island of Tenedos, in sight of the walls of Troy and who cites the old _Cypria_ in support of his opinion. Other ancient authorities place it after the death of Hector; not long before the fall of the city.

Concerning the subject of the dispute there is little difference of opinion. The Greek commentator, Eustathius (died about 1200 A.D.) cites the following legend in reference to it: "Agamemnon, having consulted the Delphic Oracle about the result of the Trojan War, received the answer that Troy would be taken when the best men of the Greeks would begin to quarrel. At a feast a dispute arose between Achilles and Ulysses, the former maintaining that Ilion would be captured by bravery, the latter by skill and cunning." Hence the joy of Agamemnon at what would otherwise be regarded as a ground for sorrow.

The response of the Oracle was ambiguous, yet even out of its ambiguity we may read something. Achilles, the man of courage, was regarded as the hero of the Greeks, but this opinion must be contested, and wisdom must also have its place in the management of the war, before the hostile city can be taken. These two principles are represented by Achilles and Ulysses respectively. The G.o.d of Wisdom, Apollo, responds, therefore, in accord with his character, carefully, doubtfully, not taking a decisive stand on either side, uttering an oracle which itself needs interpretation. Still we can see that it means a protest against mere brute courage--a protest which Ulysses voices. The Trojan Horse, the grand successful stratagem, may be considered as the outcome.