In this short section, a goddess and a god do the one thing Odysseus can’t: they go home. Calypso, “When she had shown him where the tall trees grew, / Calypso, queen of the goddesses, went home.” (V.241-2), and Poseidon, “He spurred his fine-maned horses, / and went to Aegae, where he had his home.” (V.380-1). Each goes home quietly, with ease and without fanfare. One after assisting Odysseus’ departure as much as she’s willing to, the other after he’s decided the “sea of sufferings” (V.301) he’s again inflicted upon Odysseus will suffice for now.
Here is the central conceit of the entire epic: to suffer is to be human. This ease of returning home versus Odysseus’ twenty-year heartache shows us a magnificent contrast between the gods and humans and is the yarn that weaves the entire poem together. Odysseus chooses to relinquish a deathless existence, to continue suffering, to remain mortal, to return home. There are a host of reasons you can ascribe to why he made his fateful choice, as the poem is careful to never give us a definite answer. Ego, love, power, family, destiny, heroism… there’s an argument for all of these and more. However you wish to see it, the poem allows.
A fascinating comparison, the suffering of humans vs. the indifferent gods. Makes me remember that Homer was ultimately reciting/creating for a human audience. We don’t want to be alone in our own perceived suffering and are also drawn to stories of someone making human choices.
Will humans ultimately feel the same again in an AI driven/led world? Will we respond like Odysseus or will the knowledge of our powerlessness drive us to despair?
Though also the gods suffer, Calypso does not get to keep Odysseus, Poseidon grieves the blinding of his son and can’t get over his grudge. But they do get to go home.
The de Chirico is amazing! The sea like an area rug, the two very different chairs, de Chirico’s work on one wall, and how he sees there for us to see out the window.
Yes! Loved the painting links too. I was particularly captivated by the Ofili, and its imagining of the implicit nature of Calypso's and Odysseus's "entwining."
I found the paintings helpful as well! The Ofili depiction of entwining Calypso and Odysseus fits especially well with Emily Wilson’s notes for Book 5 about the entwining use of the name Calypso in the last image, as if she is still protecting Odysseus.
In a comment the other day Kristen mentioned the Brueghel Calypso which I really enjoyed too! My students said I need to listen to Epic: the Musical which is a musical theater style concept album about the odyssey.
Odysseus leaving the paradise of Calypso's island with all its sensual pleasures reminds me of Adam and Eve choosing the mortality, toils and suffering of earthly life over the Garden of Eden.
Like Adam and Eve choosing knowledge and mortality over innocent immortality, Odysseus chooses the complexity and pain of human life over divine simplicity. He builds his own raft to leave paradise, preferring human agency and effort over divine provision.
Both stories suggest that a fully human life, despite its hardships, is more worthwhile than an easy, immortal, but less complete existence.
I've also been thinking of the parable of Jacob wrestling with the angel. In the end, he succeeds, carries a wounded hip as a result of the battle (Hephaestus, worker in the dark earthly arts of ironworking, is lamed too), and is renamed Israel, "wrestled with God"
Fascinating that the all-powerful deathless gods offer only modest help: a raft, clothes and wine for the journey, more winds to spur him on, a magic scarf, less winds when he needs to see his way, a bit of insight to keep him going, a soporific at the end of the day. It’s always just enough help to keep him just barely on this side of mortality. But what stops them from just plucking him out of the water and rescuing him entirely? There wouldn’t be a story any more if it were too easy, and the gods, whom I’m convinced need their entertainment, know this.
“What now? What will become of me?” are such enduring human questions, but you wouldn’t have reason to ask them if life were too easy. Self-knowledge only comes from the crucible of suffering and uncertainty.
Poseidon: “ This is outrageous! So it seems the gods have changed their plans about Odysseus while I was absent!” Typical bureaucracy. Life as an immortal sometimes reads like an episode of The Crown—or my office, for that matter. Make changes when the boss is out!
Continuing the idea of Odysseus' joy reference by SH, I also noticed Odysseus is “happy” after he creates his lair beneath the thorns and olive bushes. This last image in Book 5 stays with me in part because all four elements come together beautifully. Odysseus goes from being “broken” by the sea to burying himself beneath the olive and thorns (earth) to protect against the winds. The final analogy of a lone farmer maintaining coals to keep a flame going adds fire. Perhaps Homer’s calling up of the elements is a reflection of the pantheon and Odysseus’ happiness a form of gratitude? Or just plain relief!
In response to several observations about the "choice" to be human rather than immortal -- for most of us it's not a choice any more (or less) than the various sufferings and errors are (yes a choice and no not a choice, that strange human mixture) -- I think it's not so much that there wouldn't be a story if Odysseus right away became a god, it's that there wouldn't be a human story -- and it's the human story that matters (so completely that we're reading this and recognizing human feeling thousands of years later).
I love imagining the "man who lives / out on a lonely farm that has no neighbors..." as all the gods / and all the buried seeds of fire ("to keep a source") as all us glowing mortals.
Odysseys, reasoning against the advice of the goddess " I will do this " #360 endears himself to the gods " You seem intelligent" they in turn reason he should be saved.
The poem is introducing a new type of Hero into the Greek world/cosmos!!!
Aha, I just realized that I wasn't supposed to read all of Book 5 yesterday.
Calypso has been on my mind, and I've been feeling a bit heartbroken for her. Sure, she's a goddess, and, yes, perhaps it would be in her power to ensure a safer journey for Odysseus. I think Wilson's translation does far more than others, especially Fagles, to emphasize the humanity of her reaction to the situation, to put her in a more sympathetic light than gods typically receive. Ironic, considering the whole of Book 5 questions balances of power—gods vs goddesses, greater vs lesser gods, immortal vs mortal, masculine vs feminine (again, something Wilson's translation emphasizes more strongly.) As an immortal, rather than representing a particular archetype, Calypso reacts to Hermes and then Odysseus with rage dissolving to obedience (within a single stanza), feigned benevolence and tenderness ("scalawag"!!), and then back to a rage that's full of hurt and more than a little human pettiness ("And anyway, I know my body is / better than hers is. I am taller too"), promising on one hand not to cause Odysseus harm, but then quickly threatening that terrible harm will come to him if he leaves. Her emotions turn on a dime. All of this is prefaced by some provocative choices on Wilson's part, like "hollow cave" and twice "the fruitless sea." In the end, this translation puts a finer point on the fact that, while Calypso no longer pleases Odysseus, she did once upon a time. Regardless of the fact that it's by Zeus's decree, she's a jilted lover, on the receiving end of being dumped.
Ahhh, such thoughtful, thought-provoking, and human/humane insights! Are there really such distinct differences between the gods/goddesses and humans? You leave me pondering the very real tension between emotion, reason, desire, and status/power. Something with which (I believe) we all grapple. Particularly (perhaps?), those who seek to embody/perform god/goddess/god-adjacent" status.
Yes, tension is a great word for what I feel in her rapid-fire shifts, and, I agree, an unexpected place to see complex human emotions reflected. There's tension, too, in her claims of having no more agency to send Odysseus away than he has to escape. Yet, there was a time when he more or less chose to be with her or, at least, didn't mind her attention.
In Book 5, in addition to finally spending some time with Odysseus, albeit much of it in the throes of an unforgiving ocean, we see that it takes a village to manage the Heavens and the Earth. The book opens with the gods in council, settling the fate of Odysseus, wherein Athena repeats the characterization of Odysseus she had offered in Ithaca—
“Father, and all immortal gods,” she said. ”No longer let a sceptered king be kind,/or gentle, or pay heed to right and wrong./Let every king be cruel, his acts unjust!/Odysseus ruled gently, like a father,/but no one even thinks about him now.”
When Hermes visits Calypso, “the splendid goddess knew the god on sight:/the deathless gods all recognize each other/however far away their homes may be.” Is it a secret handshake or simply a smaller universe than our’s? Regardless, the same rules of hospitality apply among the gods and the humans: before Calypso and Hermes discuss their business, they first must share a banquet.
Poseidon is a mean villain, swearing he will goad Odysseus to suffer “till he is sick of it.” What a douche!
One endearing moment for me occurred when Calypso petulantly rebukes Odysseus, why won’t you stay with me and be immortal rather than “wish to see that wife you always pine for./And anyway, I know my body is/better than hers is. I am taller too.” His reply is “tactful”: “You are quite right, I know my modest wife/Penelope could never match your beauty./She is human; you are deathless, ageless./But even so, I want to go back home.”
At the outset, it was pointed out that the Greek word Wilson translates as "complicated" was "polytropos". I'm no Greek scholar, but a quick examination of the roots of that word seem to indicate that it means literally "many ways". Odysseus is a man of many ways, never stuck on one interpretation or one course. He was apparently open to entertaining the "way of the deathless goddess Calypso" for instance. In this book's instance, even though he entertains the possibility that Ino might just be fooling with him, he sets out with a Plan B, which he has to deploy almost immediately when Poseidon destroys his raft. I noted that Odysseus wasn't punished for having entertained the two notions.
Thank goodness we can all come at this fresh, "in media res" ourselves, in the middle of our own lives. It was helpful (and will probably prove helpful again) to be reminded of that first description of Odysseus, and maybe think of how NOT being complicated, not being open to many turns or ways, (which I think we do to avoid suffering), leads us away from human reality.
I love the word too - 'though I always thought it was scallywag! My Dad used to often call us children 'a bunch of scallywags' when were were running around making too much noise - and threaten to tickle us to death - he was a great tickler - and of course that would make us shriek all the more! This is back in the 60s - in South West Ireland. I wonder what the origin of the word scallywag/scalawag is...
My mother used it as well, and she grew up in Connecticut, I bet it was more common then. Another good word to bring into common usage, as we seem to have a lot of them!
I love the image of Odysseus riding the log of the ripped-apart raft like a horse 🐎
We’ve been reading book I of the Aeneid (Roman epic after Homer) in class and today we had Aeneas‘s first speech which directly references Odysseus’s, and also takes place during a storm at sea.
Aeneid I.94 “oh, three and four times blessed are those who died before their fathers’ eyes under the high walls of Troy…”
Odyssey V.306 “those Greeks were lucky, three and four times over, who died upon the plain of Troy”
We had a class discussion about why dying at sea was so particularly tragic—not having the correct burial rites dooms one to eternal (or, according to Vergil, 100 years of) wandering the banks of the Styx. Also Ino the white goddess was originally a human who according to some myths dove into the ocean to kill herself and was turned into a goddess.
In modern parlance the influence of the gods can be a substitute for what we call inspiration, fate, or luck.
Odysseus had been struggling with how to extract himself from the ocean when considering and rejecting one unworkable idea after another.
—-
His skin would have been ripped away, and his bones smashed, had not Athena given him a thought.
—-
Substitute Athena gave him a thought with “suddenly out of nowhere an idea popped into his head” and you'd have a modern reading. As much as we don't think the gods are literally putting ideas in our head, we often talk about ideas or inspiration coming from outside us.
In this short section, a goddess and a god do the one thing Odysseus can’t: they go home. Calypso, “When she had shown him where the tall trees grew, / Calypso, queen of the goddesses, went home.” (V.241-2), and Poseidon, “He spurred his fine-maned horses, / and went to Aegae, where he had his home.” (V.380-1). Each goes home quietly, with ease and without fanfare. One after assisting Odysseus’ departure as much as she’s willing to, the other after he’s decided the “sea of sufferings” (V.301) he’s again inflicted upon Odysseus will suffice for now.
Here is the central conceit of the entire epic: to suffer is to be human. This ease of returning home versus Odysseus’ twenty-year heartache shows us a magnificent contrast between the gods and humans and is the yarn that weaves the entire poem together. Odysseus chooses to relinquish a deathless existence, to continue suffering, to remain mortal, to return home. There are a host of reasons you can ascribe to why he made his fateful choice, as the poem is careful to never give us a definite answer. Ego, love, power, family, destiny, heroism… there’s an argument for all of these and more. However you wish to see it, the poem allows.
“However you wish to see it, the poem allows.” Perspectives. I love this.
A fascinating comparison, the suffering of humans vs. the indifferent gods. Makes me remember that Homer was ultimately reciting/creating for a human audience. We don’t want to be alone in our own perceived suffering and are also drawn to stories of someone making human choices.
Will humans ultimately feel the same again in an AI driven/led world? Will we respond like Odysseus or will the knowledge of our powerlessness drive us to despair?
Yes, sigh, the gods can't go home. Maybe things would be better if they could?
Though also the gods suffer, Calypso does not get to keep Odysseus, Poseidon grieves the blinding of his son and can’t get over his grudge. But they do get to go home.
Is it true suffering if it’s deathless?
I think yes, there is a lot of suffering that happens without death.
SH: I am THRILLED by your painting links. Please keep them coming!
The de Chirico is amazing! The sea like an area rug, the two very different chairs, de Chirico’s work on one wall, and how he sees there for us to see out the window.
the painting evokes for me the experience of reading/literature as psychic transportation
Yes! Loved the painting links too. I was particularly captivated by the Ofili, and its imagining of the implicit nature of Calypso's and Odysseus's "entwining."
I found the paintings helpful as well! The Ofili depiction of entwining Calypso and Odysseus fits especially well with Emily Wilson’s notes for Book 5 about the entwining use of the name Calypso in the last image, as if she is still protecting Odysseus.
In a comment the other day Kristen mentioned the Brueghel Calypso which I really enjoyed too! My students said I need to listen to Epic: the Musical which is a musical theater style concept album about the odyssey.
Ok yes my daughter mentioned this to me!
There's a reproduction of the Brueghel painting in the Wikipedia page on 'Ogygia'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogygia. VERY lush...
I didn’t get a sense that they were surrounded by others from the text. Did I miss something?
I enjoyed the epic similes in this section that SH points out. They are so over the top.
A great comparison to tumble weed rolling through the prairie
I like the octopus simile.
Odysseus leaving the paradise of Calypso's island with all its sensual pleasures reminds me of Adam and Eve choosing the mortality, toils and suffering of earthly life over the Garden of Eden.
Like Adam and Eve choosing knowledge and mortality over innocent immortality, Odysseus chooses the complexity and pain of human life over divine simplicity. He builds his own raft to leave paradise, preferring human agency and effort over divine provision.
Both stories suggest that a fully human life, despite its hardships, is more worthwhile than an easy, immortal, but less complete existence.
I've also been thinking of the parable of Jacob wrestling with the angel. In the end, he succeeds, carries a wounded hip as a result of the battle (Hephaestus, worker in the dark earthly arts of ironworking, is lamed too), and is renamed Israel, "wrestled with God"
Fascinating that the all-powerful deathless gods offer only modest help: a raft, clothes and wine for the journey, more winds to spur him on, a magic scarf, less winds when he needs to see his way, a bit of insight to keep him going, a soporific at the end of the day. It’s always just enough help to keep him just barely on this side of mortality. But what stops them from just plucking him out of the water and rescuing him entirely? There wouldn’t be a story any more if it were too easy, and the gods, whom I’m convinced need their entertainment, know this.
“What now? What will become of me?” are such enduring human questions, but you wouldn’t have reason to ask them if life were too easy. Self-knowledge only comes from the crucible of suffering and uncertainty.
Poseidon: “ This is outrageous! So it seems the gods have changed their plans about Odysseus while I was absent!” Typical bureaucracy. Life as an immortal sometimes reads like an episode of The Crown—or my office, for that matter. Make changes when the boss is out!
Yes, I was struck at how hapless these all powerful “deathless” gods come across in the story. They are no better than our own ridiculous leaders
Continuing the idea of Odysseus' joy reference by SH, I also noticed Odysseus is “happy” after he creates his lair beneath the thorns and olive bushes. This last image in Book 5 stays with me in part because all four elements come together beautifully. Odysseus goes from being “broken” by the sea to burying himself beneath the olive and thorns (earth) to protect against the winds. The final analogy of a lone farmer maintaining coals to keep a flame going adds fire. Perhaps Homer’s calling up of the elements is a reflection of the pantheon and Odysseus’ happiness a form of gratitude? Or just plain relief!
In response to several observations about the "choice" to be human rather than immortal -- for most of us it's not a choice any more (or less) than the various sufferings and errors are (yes a choice and no not a choice, that strange human mixture) -- I think it's not so much that there wouldn't be a story if Odysseus right away became a god, it's that there wouldn't be a human story -- and it's the human story that matters (so completely that we're reading this and recognizing human feeling thousands of years later).
I love imagining the "man who lives / out on a lonely farm that has no neighbors..." as all the gods / and all the buried seeds of fire ("to keep a source") as all us glowing mortals.
Odysseys, reasoning against the advice of the goddess " I will do this " #360 endears himself to the gods " You seem intelligent" they in turn reason he should be saved.
The poem is introducing a new type of Hero into the Greek world/cosmos!!!
Aha, I just realized that I wasn't supposed to read all of Book 5 yesterday.
Calypso has been on my mind, and I've been feeling a bit heartbroken for her. Sure, she's a goddess, and, yes, perhaps it would be in her power to ensure a safer journey for Odysseus. I think Wilson's translation does far more than others, especially Fagles, to emphasize the humanity of her reaction to the situation, to put her in a more sympathetic light than gods typically receive. Ironic, considering the whole of Book 5 questions balances of power—gods vs goddesses, greater vs lesser gods, immortal vs mortal, masculine vs feminine (again, something Wilson's translation emphasizes more strongly.) As an immortal, rather than representing a particular archetype, Calypso reacts to Hermes and then Odysseus with rage dissolving to obedience (within a single stanza), feigned benevolence and tenderness ("scalawag"!!), and then back to a rage that's full of hurt and more than a little human pettiness ("And anyway, I know my body is / better than hers is. I am taller too"), promising on one hand not to cause Odysseus harm, but then quickly threatening that terrible harm will come to him if he leaves. Her emotions turn on a dime. All of this is prefaced by some provocative choices on Wilson's part, like "hollow cave" and twice "the fruitless sea." In the end, this translation puts a finer point on the fact that, while Calypso no longer pleases Odysseus, she did once upon a time. Regardless of the fact that it's by Zeus's decree, she's a jilted lover, on the receiving end of being dumped.
Ahhh, such thoughtful, thought-provoking, and human/humane insights! Are there really such distinct differences between the gods/goddesses and humans? You leave me pondering the very real tension between emotion, reason, desire, and status/power. Something with which (I believe) we all grapple. Particularly (perhaps?), those who seek to embody/perform god/goddess/god-adjacent" status.
Yes, tension is a great word for what I feel in her rapid-fire shifts, and, I agree, an unexpected place to see complex human emotions reflected. There's tension, too, in her claims of having no more agency to send Odysseus away than he has to escape. Yet, there was a time when he more or less chose to be with her or, at least, didn't mind her attention.
In Book 5, in addition to finally spending some time with Odysseus, albeit much of it in the throes of an unforgiving ocean, we see that it takes a village to manage the Heavens and the Earth. The book opens with the gods in council, settling the fate of Odysseus, wherein Athena repeats the characterization of Odysseus she had offered in Ithaca—
“Father, and all immortal gods,” she said. ”No longer let a sceptered king be kind,/or gentle, or pay heed to right and wrong./Let every king be cruel, his acts unjust!/Odysseus ruled gently, like a father,/but no one even thinks about him now.”
When Hermes visits Calypso, “the splendid goddess knew the god on sight:/the deathless gods all recognize each other/however far away their homes may be.” Is it a secret handshake or simply a smaller universe than our’s? Regardless, the same rules of hospitality apply among the gods and the humans: before Calypso and Hermes discuss their business, they first must share a banquet.
Poseidon is a mean villain, swearing he will goad Odysseus to suffer “till he is sick of it.” What a douche!
One endearing moment for me occurred when Calypso petulantly rebukes Odysseus, why won’t you stay with me and be immortal rather than “wish to see that wife you always pine for./And anyway, I know my body is/better than hers is. I am taller too.” His reply is “tactful”: “You are quite right, I know my modest wife/Penelope could never match your beauty./She is human; you are deathless, ageless./But even so, I want to go back home.”
And so the journey finally begins.
Total douche canoe!
Some psychologists say that we expect others to behave the way we behave. Odysseus asked himself
"Some deity has said leave the raft.
But what if the gods are weaving tricks again?
I will not trust her yet; with my own eyes
I saw the land she said I should escape to,
and it lies far away"
Odysseus had, it seems to me, an inherent distrust of what gods and people say. Could this be because he is a "complicated man" himself.
At the outset, it was pointed out that the Greek word Wilson translates as "complicated" was "polytropos". I'm no Greek scholar, but a quick examination of the roots of that word seem to indicate that it means literally "many ways". Odysseus is a man of many ways, never stuck on one interpretation or one course. He was apparently open to entertaining the "way of the deathless goddess Calypso" for instance. In this book's instance, even though he entertains the possibility that Ino might just be fooling with him, he sets out with a Plan B, which he has to deploy almost immediately when Poseidon destroys his raft. I noted that Odysseus wasn't punished for having entertained the two notions.
I am no any sort of scholar.
Thank goodness we can all come at this fresh, "in media res" ourselves, in the middle of our own lives. It was helpful (and will probably prove helpful again) to be reminded of that first description of Odysseus, and maybe think of how NOT being complicated, not being open to many turns or ways, (which I think we do to avoid suffering), leads us away from human reality.
Scalawag is my new favorite word.
I love the word too - 'though I always thought it was scallywag! My Dad used to often call us children 'a bunch of scallywags' when were were running around making too much noise - and threaten to tickle us to death - he was a great tickler - and of course that would make us shriek all the more! This is back in the 60s - in South West Ireland. I wonder what the origin of the word scallywag/scalawag is...
My mother used it as well, and she grew up in Connecticut, I bet it was more common then. Another good word to bring into common usage, as we seem to have a lot of them!
I love the image of Odysseus riding the log of the ripped-apart raft like a horse 🐎
We’ve been reading book I of the Aeneid (Roman epic after Homer) in class and today we had Aeneas‘s first speech which directly references Odysseus’s, and also takes place during a storm at sea.
Aeneid I.94 “oh, three and four times blessed are those who died before their fathers’ eyes under the high walls of Troy…”
Odyssey V.306 “those Greeks were lucky, three and four times over, who died upon the plain of Troy”
We had a class discussion about why dying at sea was so particularly tragic—not having the correct burial rites dooms one to eternal (or, according to Vergil, 100 years of) wandering the banks of the Styx. Also Ino the white goddess was originally a human who according to some myths dove into the ocean to kill herself and was turned into a goddess.
In modern parlance the influence of the gods can be a substitute for what we call inspiration, fate, or luck.
Odysseus had been struggling with how to extract himself from the ocean when considering and rejecting one unworkable idea after another.
—-
His skin would have been ripped away, and his bones smashed, had not Athena given him a thought.
—-
Substitute Athena gave him a thought with “suddenly out of nowhere an idea popped into his head” and you'd have a modern reading. As much as we don't think the gods are literally putting ideas in our head, we often talk about ideas or inspiration coming from outside us.