The Unknown Odysseus: Alternate Worlds in Homer's Odyssey

by Thomas Van Nortwick

Overview

The Unknown Odysseus is a study of how Homer creates two versions of his hero, one who is the triumphant protagonist of the revenge plot and another, more subversive, anonymous figure whose various personae exemplify an entirely different set of assumptions about the world through which each hero moves and about the shape and meaning of human life. Separating the two perspectives allows us to see more clearly how the poem's dual focus can begin to explain some of the notorious difficulties readers have encountered in thinking about the Odyssey. In The Unknown Odysseus, Thomas Van Nortwick offers the most complete exploration to date of the implications of Odysseus' divided nature, showing how it allows Homer to explore the riddles of human identity in a profound way that is not usually recognized by studies focusing on only one "real" hero in the narrative. This new perspective on the epic enriches the world of the poem in a way that will interest both general readers and classical scholars.

". . .an elegant and lucid critical study that is also a good introduction to the poem."
—-David Quint, London Review of Books

"Thomas Van Nortwick's eloquently written book will give the neophyte a clear interpretive path through the epic while reminding experienced readers why they should still care about the Odyssey's unresolved interpretive cruces. The Unknown Odysseus is not merely accessible, but a true pleasure to read."
—-Lillian Doherty, University of Maryland

"Contributing to an important new perspective on understanding the epic, Thomas Van Nortwick wishes to resist the dominant, even imperial narrative that tries so hard to trick, beguile, and even bully its listeners into accepting the inevitability of Odysseus' heroism."
—-Victoria Pedrick, Georgetown University

Thomas Van Nortwick is Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics at Oberlin College and author of Somewhere I Have Never Travelled: The Second Self and the Hero's Journey in Ancient Epic (1992) and Oedipus: The Meaning of a Masculine Life (1998).

Jacket art: Head of Odysseus from a sculptural group representing Odysseus killing Polyphemus in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Sperlonga, Italy. Photograph by Marie-Lan Nguyen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780472116737
Publisher:	University of Michigan Press
Publication date:	12/04/2008
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Thomas Van Nortwick is Nathan A. Greenberg Professor of Classics Emeritus at Oberlin College.

Read an Excerpt

THE UNKNOWN ODYSSEUS

Alternate Worlds in Homer's ODYSSEY

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By Thomas Van Nortwick

The University of Michigan Press

Copyright © 2009 University of Michigan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11673-7

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Chapter One

THE HERO EMERGES

"Odysseus" exists in the minds of modern readers as a finished character: we know all about him. But of course we are seeing the hero from the far end of a long tradition. Any particular realization evolves as part of a larger fictive construct and in that sense exists only within that work. Although Odysseus' earliest appearance in Western literature is in the Iliad, and the portrait in the Odyssey can be understood against the background of that work, the character we encounter in Homer's later epic is finally and primarily the creation of that poem.

The making of Odysseus in the Odyssey occurs on more than one level. He comes into being for us, like any fictional character, as we look on from outside the frame of the story. At the same time, he also becomes himself within the frame of the story, reappearing after a long absence. He has been, of course, "Odysseus" at Troy, doing all the things that establish and guarantee his identity as a warrior. This persona draws on the Odysseus of the Iliad, and we also hear something about it from Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen. But the Odyssey is not a warpoem. The centripetal hero of its story must be a different version of Odysseus, one whose identity is grounded in Ithaka. And because his return is problematical, so is his identity: he does not become himself again, in the fullest sense, until he is home, reinhabiting the roles of king, husband, father, and son.

For all of these reasons, the making of Odysseus is fundamental to the meaning of the Odyssey. As he comes into being on various levels, we may reflect on the terms of his existence, asking in particular what they can tell us about how the poem is articulated and how it reflects the riddles of human identity.

BOOK 1: ABSENCE

The Odyssey begins with its hero missing. Indeed, the first four books-and to some extent the first twenty-two books-are informed by the absence of Odysseus, with all the dire consequences this lacuna entails. The centripetal plot of the poem is driven from start to finish by the imperative to fill the void, political and familial, left by the king's departure to Troy from Ithaka twenty years before, either with his triumphant return or with the installing of one or more surrogates. The narrative is, in this sense, comic in form, shaped by the need for restoration: nothing in the story, human desire or human suffering, divine anger or even divine love, can override this primary impulse.

Who will restore order and how are the principal questions the poem dramatizes for us. And because the disorder has multiple dimensions, full or partial restoration might occur in various ways. Odysseus has left empty four crucial roles: king of Ithaka, husband to Penelope, father to Telemachus, and son to Laertes. Only the first two could be filled by anyone but Odysseus, and they are not necessarily compatible. Succeeding Odysseus as Penelope's husband would not automatically imply succession either to the kingship in Ithaka or the estates of the king. What we are told seems to suggest that if Odysseus were to be given up for dead Penelope could return to the home of her father, who would marry her to another man (e.g., 1.291-92; 2.114-15; 16.74-77; 20.334-37). Telemachus, meanwhile, when he reaches manhood, would appear to be the obvious heir to his father's estate and the office of king, but could not serve as a new husband for his mother.

These distinctions are not brought before us as the story opens, perhaps because the original audience would be presumed to understand them without explanation. In any event, the poet blurs them early on: we learn by the end of book 4 (663-72) that the suitors are plotting to murder Telemachus, which would clear the way not only for Penelope's remarriage but also, presumably, for someone outside the royal family to seize Odysseus' wealth and office. As for Laertes, we may imagine what would be in store for him with both Odysseus and Telemachus dead.

Even before we learn of the nefarious intentions of the suitors toward Telemachus, the moral paradigms embedded in the story make it clear that none of them would be worthy to replace Odysseus as Penelope's husband. And while Telemachus' basic decency is established immediately, he is not yet ready to succeed his father as king. Although the complexity of the situation as we find it leaves open many possible resolutions for the disorder in Ithaka, and it serves the storyteller to keep these potential outcomes alive, we are made to feel strongly the necessity for only one denouement, the triumphant return of Odysseus.

To return, Odysseus must survive at any cost. For this task he appears admirably equipped. The proem (1.1-11) highlights his versatility (polytropon, 1.1), intelligence, and self-control; he has wide experience, won through suffering, and has labored in vain to save his companions from death. The next hundred lines or so tell us much of what we need to know about his situation. He alone is still on his return journey, stranded on Calypso's island; all the rest of the Greeks have either made it home or died or-in the case of Agamemnon-both. Though alone in one sense, Odysseus is nevertheless a favorite of the gods-all except Poseidon, who holds a grudge against the hero for blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemus. Athena, his special protector, prevails on her father Zeus to let her send Hermes with orders for Calypso to release the hero. She, meanwhile, will go to Ithaka and rouse Telemachus, Odysseus' son. He must confront the suitors who are besieging Penelope, then go to Pylos and Sparta to learn about his father's homecoming and win his own kleos, "fame." Athena arrives in Ithaka, disguised as "Mentes," to find Telemachus unable to control the loutish suitors, who feast and make merry at Odysseus' expense. Though impotent in his own home, the hero's son immediately takes the moral high ground by welcoming the stranger, offering rest and refreshment. Hospitality will be a major vehicle for displaying moral qualities in the poem, and the suitors' neglect of Mentes further blackens their collective character.

By its focus on Telemachus in the midst of the suitors, this opening scene reflects the essence of what Odysseus' absence means for the story. Male authority is lacking in Ithaka, and the result is chaos on several levels: the kingdom, household, and wife of Odysseus are all in a state of rudderless disorder. The suitors range over the palace unopposed. Telemachus complains ineffectually, certain that his father's bones are bleaching in the sun but unable himself to fill the void. Laertes, we will discover, is exiled to the country. When Penelope descends the stairs to object to the bard Phemius' rendition of a song about the homecoming of the Achaeans-it is too sad, she says, reminding her of her famous husband-Telemachus rebukes her and she withdraws in tears to her bedroom. Odysseus' wife has been reduced to ineffectual weeping by his absence.

Before granting Odysseus' release, Zeus muses on the flawed nature of mortals and offers a significant paradigm by which we may keep our bearings in the story (1.32-43):

Oh my, how mortals blame the gods! Their troubles come from us, they say. But they have pains beyond measure because of their own blind folly; look how Aegisthus, rash beyond measure, seduced the wife of Atreus' son, then killed him when he came home; and yet Aegisthus knew this meant death for him, since we gave warning-sent Hermes the keen-sighted slayer of Argos-not to kill the man or take his wife. For retribution would come from Orestes, Agamemnon's son, whenever he would come of age and yearn for his homeland. With kind intention, Hermes told Aegisthus all this, but did not persuade him. Now he has paid the price.

Here again we see how a lack of male authority causes chaos. Zeus attempts to step in for the missing king, but Aegisthus does not have the requisite self-control to keep away from Clytemnestra, acting hyper moron, "beyond proper measure." Agamemnon's murder reflects the original failure of authority, which is corrected when Orestes is old enough to step in and restore order.

The story shapes what we know about Ithaka like a magnet passed over metal filings. Odysseus must return but with great caution. Telemachus, meanwhile, must be worthy of his father, ready to fill the vacuum in male authority if necessary. Beyond its immediate application to the family of Odysseus, the story of Aegisthus and Orestes points more generally to the crucial importance of self-control to the maintenance of right order. Now we are in position to recognize the extent of the threat to Odysseus' return. He must guard against Poseidon and the suitors but also, perhaps, against his wife. His shipmates-whose failings are described with the same word that Zeus uses to characterize the failings of mortals generally, atasthalian, "blind follies"-are another potential liability: like Aegisthus, they are not able to control themselves and butcher the cattle of the sun; like Aegisthus, they pay for their lapse with death. And finally we note that the journey home is going to be not only dangerous for Odysseus but also lonely.

PREVIEW: TELEMACHUS AND THE TELEMACHIA

The adventures of Telemachus in books 2-4 are necessary in order to get him ready to help his father. Doing so requires two things: first, he must learn what he can about Odysseus, where and who he is, so that he can be ready to do his part if his father returns; second, he must grow up. The two tasks are interrelated in that Telemachus must learn about his father so as to have a model for his own maturation and he must grow up in order to complete the journey successfully. The necessity for change is, then, built into this part of the story. But the change that occurs must still function within the narrative's larger goal of restoring Odysseus to his former status. That is, Telemachus must change in order to help block change in Ithaka. He must become ready to take over as head male in Ithaka so that he can make sure he doesn't have to do so. The paradox here comes to rich fruition in the contest of the bow in book 21. Telemachus is about to string the bow when Odysseus shakes his head. Telemachus then pretends to fail, and when the tension goes out of the bow we feel an analogous slackening in the plot, as father and son avert the generational collision that has been building since the beginning of the poem. Odysseus "returns" to at least one of his definitive roles here, as father, and Telemachus enters into his inheritance as a son worthy of Odysseus.

In Pylos and Sparta, Telemachus encounters friends of his father who begin to tell both him and us more about Odysseus. From Nestor, he learns that Odysseus was unequaled among the Greeks in metis, "intelligence," and the master of doloi, "tricks" (3.120-22). A boy as articulate as Telemachus could only be, vows the old man, the son of Odysseus, the great speaker. In this, Nestor avers with customary modesty, Odysseus and he were alike, and this was the basis for a close bond: never did they disagree in advising the Greeks in council (3.126-29). The picture of Odysseus from the first book is both confirmed and enlarged here. His intelligence, experience, and ability to persuade through speech are familiar. Now we learn that his intelligence can be used in the service of trickery, a morally slippery quality that might seem to complicate the original portrait. But for the moment, at least, Nestor's admiration and declaration of like-mindedness head off any qualms we might have.

At Sparta Odysseus reemerges yet further. He was, says Menelaus, the man the Spartan king loved most. When others inside the wooden horse (including Menelaus himself) were about to give in to desire and answer Helen's seductive voice, Odysseus held out and kept them silent (4.269-89). Of the many tales she might tell of what Odysseus "endured" (tlenai), Helen remembers, with admiration and a certain fondness, his clandestine raid on Troy. Disfiguring himself and assuming the disguise of a beggar, he infiltrated the city unrecognized by all except Helen, who apparently overcame his cautious nature by bathing him, dressing him in better clothes, and swearing an oath of secrecy. He told her about the Achaeans' plans, then slipped out of the city, killing Trojans along the way (4.242-58).

This prophetic episode reinforces again the implied approval of Odysseus' deceptions we have seen earlier. He will enter two more royal strongholds, on Scheria and Ithaka, before his journey ends, and in both he will bring suffering and death. In neither case are his secrecy and manipulation presented to us in anything but a positive light: he must do whatever he can to survive.

Menelaus goes on to tell the story of his confinement in Egypt and escape through the kind intervention of a nymph (4.351-592). Pinned onshore by the gods, he arouses pity in Eidothea, a sea nymph. Her father Proteus, she says, is a prophet who can tell him how to get home safely. On her instructions, he and three of his men ambush Proteus, who has the power to shift shapes at will, and by holding him fast force him to tell them what they want to know. There is much here that will also appear in Odysseus' trials: rescue by a friendly nymph, the necessity to overpower a monstrous "shepherd" by both trickery and force, prophecy of the hero's death far in the future.

The import of these congruities for the portrait of Odysseus is significant. The episode once again marks with approval the use of deception and disguise in the service of getting the hero home safely. The nymph contrives a dolon, "trick," for her father (4.437): Menelaus and his men hide under sealskins to get close to Proteus; to mask the stench of the skins Eidothea rubs ambrosia under the men's noses. Menelaus' destiny, to live forever in the Elysian Fields, free from care amid the gentle breezes of the Zephyr, is contrasted pointedly with the plight of Odysseus. Menelaus has been freed by a nymph; Calypso holds Odysseus captive. Menelaus will enjoy a godlike existence simply because he is the son-in-law of Zeus; Odysseus, noble and beloved by the gods, must suffer and struggle even to reach home.

This last contrast is part of a larger theme in the Telemachia, the continuing struggle of Odysseus when all of his fellow Greeks have moved on either to death or to a comfortable postwar existence. The stories told by Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen all have the effect of distancing us from the events they describe, as if we were viewing them through the wrong end of a telescope. For these people, the Trojan War is definitely over, something to look back at from a comfortable remove of time and space. The denatured quality of Menelaus' story of Helen and the wooden horse is especially marked. The king, now complacently regal, reminisces about his wife's former treacheries with amusement (4.274-89). Menelaus' apparent indifference can perhaps be ascribed to the fact that Helen has drugged the wine to mask the pain of remembering-the past may not be so distant after all. In any event, the need for anesthetization darkens our evaluation of the heroes in their new lives. They are not strong enough to face the pain of the war even buffered by time and circumstance. Odysseus, by contrast, fights on. For him, the war is not yet over.

Because the values consistent with the urgency of Odysseus' return have been established in our minds by the poet, the comfort of Nestor, Menelaus, and Helen begins to look like complacency. Odysseus must keep moving, must fight against the forces that would strand him away from his proper place in the world. In this light, the future promised for Menelaus, which might seem to mark him out as especially worthy, appears somehow suspect, a kind of mindless oblivion. This perspective will be confirmed and strengthened in the next book by the Calypso episode.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

1 The Hero Emerges....................3
2 Odysseus at Work....................24
3 Subversive Anonymity....................45
4 Constructed Lives....................65
5 The Ward of Hermes: Odysseus as Trickster....................83
6 Sleepers Awake: The Return of the Beggar....................98
Epilogue: Wor(l)ds....................121
Notes....................127
Reference List....................135
Index....................141