Odyssey Books 4-6

[cahn]

Onwards!

Book 4: Telemachus visits Menelaus, which I found fascinating!

Menelaus... umm... let's say, he did not strike me as the most intellectual of the people we see in this book. Wants to be nice to his bros, though!

Menelaus on Odysseus:
I always thought
that I would greet that friend with warmth beyond
all other Argives, if Zeus let us sail
home with all speed across the sea. I would have
brought him from Ithaca, with all his wealth,
his son and people, and bestowed on him
a town in Argos, driving out the natives
from somewhere hereabouts under my rule.
We would have constantly spent time together.
Nothing would have divided us in love
and joy, till death's dark cloud surrounded us.

I really like this passage as a... somewhat horrifying ode to friendship? I mean, it's so heartfelt and I feel for the guy! But also "I loved this guy so much I'd want to take him from his actual home and also displace my own people and make them homeless so that we could hang out more!"

Odysseus: I think maybe I'll hang out with Calypso some more after all.

Meanwhile, Helen shows up. I was agog to know if the narrative would mention about how she had been the reason that there was this ten-year war and all, but it only glancingly did so, and Menelaus himself didn't mention it either. Anyway, Helen decides she will drug everyone so that they aren't sad. Okay, cool? Then she tells a story about how Odysseus visited Troy, and no one saw through his cunning disguise except for her. She ends the story like this:

--by then I wanted to go home.
I wished that Aphrodite had not made me
go crazy, when she took me from my country,
and made me leave my daughter and the bed
I shared with my fine, handsome, clever husband.

So Helen herself is openly bringing up that she Aphrodite cuckolded her husband! I was very curious to see what Menelaus would have to say to that:

And Menelaus said,
"Yes, wife, quite right.
I have been round the world, and I have met
many heroic men and known their minds.
I never saw a man so resolute
as that Odysseus."

So... I guess he's all cool with that. He goes on to talk about his bro Odysseus some more, and also about capturing the Sea God Proteus, who told him a bit about Odysseus but quite a lot about -- wait for it -- Aegisthus killing Agamemnon. (Major mention #3 so far!)

Anyway, of course Menelaus wants to keep Telemachus for eleven or twelve days (though at least he does not offer to empty out a village for him), but Telemachus very diplomatically says he needs to leave. Meanwhile, Penelope has noticed he's gone and the suitors are coming after him...

Book 5:
So I did not know that Homer was the origin of the phenomenon of how you get different chapters from different POVs but right before you switch, you make sure your protagonist of the old POV is in a cliffhanger so that you are eager to get back to it. That is to say, hey, FINALLY we get Odysseus POV (now that I'm invested in how Telemachus escapes from the suitors)!

Calypso to Hermes:
"Dear friend, Lord Hermes of the golden wand,
why have you come? You do not often visit.
What do you have in mind? My heart inclines
to help you if I can, if it is fated."

Hedging your bets there, I see, Calypso...

It's interesting to me that, in a culture where there's a lot of rape of captives by men, here's the one instance where it seems pretty clear that Calypso is basically raping Odysseus, who is her captive.

Calypso, being catty to Odysseus:
But if you understood
how glutted you will be with suffering
before you reach your home, you would stay here
with me and be immortal -- though you might
still wish to see that wife you always pine for.
And anyway, I know my body is
better than hers is. I am taller too.
Mortals can never rival the immortals
in beauty.

Odysseus's response:
So Odysseus, with tact,
said, "Do not be enraged at me, great goddess.
You are quite right. I know my modest wife
Penelope could never match your beauty.
She is a human; you are deathless, ageless.
But even so, I want to go back home,
and every day I hope that day will come.
If some god strikes me on the wine-dark sea,
I will endure it. By now I am used
to suffering -- I have gone through so much,
at sea and in the war. Let this come too."

Is it my imagination, or is Odysseus very subtly throwing shade while doing his best on the surface to flatter Calypso? I like this guy!

Anyway -- after a half chapter's worth of suffering, he gets to the Phaeacians, and we get to Book 6.

Book 6:
This is a short book and I don't have much to say about it. Odysseus meets Princess Nausicaa (!) of the Phaeacians, and she gives him advice on meeting her family.

Comments

[jenett]

I found the Menelaus visit so fascinating. (because yes, he's completely over the top about the friendship, all the stuff with Helen is apparently entirely resolved, and *gesture* all the implied drugging.)

[selenak]

Menelaos: tends to baffle the ancient world and today's readers, because he doesn't follow the patriarchy script with Helen. He doesn't kill her. He doesn't punish her by humiliation (for example, making her a slave). He doesn't exile her. Of all the members of the House of Atreus, with its constant chain of bloody revenge stories triggering the next bloody revenge (reminder that Aigisthos himself is the son of Thyestes, Atreus' brother, and avenged his father and siblings on the cousins, while Clytemnestra avenged her daughter Iphigenia), Menelaos is the odd man out, who with the one big sizable exception of going after Helen to Troy to begin with (and even there, it's his brother Agamennon who is leading the troops) does seem to be weirdly non into revenge for an Achaen King. Note also what he didn't do these last ten years: go to Mycenae and avenge brother Agamennon. I mean, he could have done. Orestes is still a kid growing up in exile elsewhere, meaning Menealos is Agamemnon's closest male relative, so technically, avenging duties are his. But no. In Euripides' version of the tale, Orestes and Electra give him grief for that, and Menealos is all, peace out!

I think the sole reason why Greek writers don't shame for him for lack of manliness is that Paris is the one getting shamed for lack of manliness and therefore, Menealos by contrast has to be manly. But Menealos and Helen -who is Clytemnestra's sister - ending up at peace with each other and living their best lives into old age while everyone else goes through tragedy after tragedy just defies every narrative convention then and now.

Emily Wilson in her translation notes points out that many previous translations have Helen slut shame herself and call herself a whore, but the Greek original text doesn't use any such term. Reflecting perhaps the need of the translators to somehow bring back some "proper" shaming. I find Helen in the Iliad and in the Odyssey more interesting than in many modern retellings, where she's some frivolous featherbrain.

Calypso and Odysseus: "I am taller, too" just cracks me up. (Wilson points out in her notes that Homer being funny at times often gets lost in translation.) And yes, I think he's treading a fine balance in his diplomatic reply. Not least because he's essentially saying that he'd rather face more untold suffering on the sea, complete with potential drowning, than stay around with her.

On Calypso's side, she does have a point when telling Hermes that the male gods never get asked to let their captives go. (Not just the gods. See also the Iliad starting with Agamemnon's fit over having to hand over his "prize") But in terms of characterisation, it's interesting that Odysseus is shown in relations with women more powerful than he is (Calypso and Circe, though of course in the later case he isn't imprisoned, but they are both immortal goddesses and rulers of their respective islands, and he's a mortal man depending on them for his continued survival), which is the standard hierarchy reversed.

This is a short book and I don't have much to say about it. Odysseus meets Princess Nausicaa (!) of the Phaeacians, and she gives him advice on meeting her family.

What no comment on Athena providing Odysseus with a glow up so he really impresses the princess? BTW, this is the chapter on which the "the Odyssey was written by a woman, not a man" theorists are building their case. Their argument? All that business about Nausicaa using the excuse of having to do the washing on the beach as an excuse to go to said beach. A male poet, so the argument goes, would not know how women do their washing. (I think Robert Graves of "I, Claudius" fame was a fan of the "the Odyssey was written by a woman" theory.)

[watersword]

I have a headcanon (that I can easily discard, because nine and sixty tribal lays and every one of them is right) that Helen drugs Menelaus a lot and that is why he is so chill.

I'm surprised you don't have a lot to say about Book VI! That's one of the ones that I love.

[hidden_variable]

I’m enjoying following along with these posts. Last time I read the Odyssey was in high school (Fitzgerald translation), and I know I’ve forgotten a lot. But relatively recently I’ve encountered at least two extended Odyssey riffs in other books. One, which obviously you know, is Mycroft’s journey in Perhaps the Stars. The other is in The Shortest Way to Hades, one of the Hilary Tamar mysteries by Sarah Caudwell–don’t know whether you’ve read those, but I definitely recommend them. Two characters, Selina and Sebastian, are sailing around the Mediterranean on a route inspired by the Odyssey, even though “Sebastian, as a respectable classical scholar, felt obliged to maintain that hardly a word of [the Odyssey and the Iliad] was true.” He gets some pushback on this from famous (fictional) Greek poet Constantine Demetriou, who argues that the Odyssey must be literally true because Homer clearly didn’t have enough imagination to invent it. And he specifically references the scene of Nausicaa doing her washing on the beach: “Wouldn’t you think, though, with all that imagining, that he could imagine some better reason for a princess to go down to the seashore in the morning? Something sublime and majestic and suitable to be mentioned in a great epic? But no, it’s to do her washing, just like a peasant girl… Perhaps if you go to Palaeocastritsa and search carefully you’ll find the Princess Nausicaa’s laundry list.”