Odyssey

Odyssey: No task is a bridge too far
Odyssey [1190 BC] by Homer the immortal Greek poet, one of the twin sequels to the great epic poem of Iliad [the other being Aeneid by Virgil], a  magnificent diamond of heavenly radiance that dazzles forever in the cosmicscape of Western Literature, wouldn’t be constrained by a very ordinary human-invented concept called regular sequence or chronological order of events common to major bulk of works of literature.

“Think of me in the future, whenever any person who has much experience comes here and asks you, ‘Girls, which man sings most sweetly of the bards who come here, and whom do you like most to hear?” You must answer all together: ‘A blind man, who lives in stoney Chios, and whose songs will always be the finest.”
Homer to the girls who serve the Temple of Apollo on Delos
[What do you think Homer wanted following his death?]

[Why do you think the NASA Project designed to to land humans on the Moon and bring them safely back was titled ‘Apollo Program’ 1963-1972]? bunpeiris

Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first humans on the Moon, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on July 20, 1969	Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in  Greek and Roman mythology.
Delphi is both an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece on the south-western spur of Mount Parnassus in the valley of Phocis.	Homer singing at the Temple of Apollo on Delos

The name Delphoi comes from the same root as “womb” and may indicate archaic veneration of Gaia at the site. Apollo is connected with the site by Delphinios, “the Delphinian”. The epithet is connected with dolphins (Greek in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo (line 400), recounting the legend of how Apollo first came to Delphi in the shape of a dolphin, carrying Cretan priests on his back.

Homer takes aims and hits at immortality rendering the the mortal concept asunder. Odyssey doesn’t begin in the beginning. Then again, Odyssey, doesn’t begin in the end to present us with a total flashback either. Homer begins near the end of the great Greek epic poem. In other words, the narration of The Odyssey begins with in medias res, in the middle of the overall story, with prior events narrated through flashbacks or storytelling. The literary device, in media res, later on picked up by authors of literary epics, such as Virgil in the Aeneid, Luís de Camões in Os Lusíadas and Alexander Pope in The Rape of the Lock.

Beginning of Homer’s narration
The narration of the decade-long torturous and miserable voyage of home opens with 20 year old Telemacus leaving home to the nearby islands in search of his long-lost father, Odysseus.

Then the scene shifts: Odysseus, who has been the captive and lover of the bewitchingly beautiful nymph Calypso for the last seven of his ten lost years, is released by the grace and intercession of his patroness Athena. Calypso promises Odysseus the gift of immortality and agelessness among other things. Odysseus refuses: he wants to go home to his wife and son. Odysseus departs, but his raft is destroyed by his divine enemy Poseidon, father of the one-eyed cannibalistic giant Polyphemus who was made drunk and then blinded by Odesseus in self-defence. Poseidon, the divine enemy would make no allowance for the action taken in self defence.

The god damned voyage
The Odyssey, among other things, is a god damned voyage following the fall of Troy circa 1190 BC. Damned by Poseidon.  Now, the heart of the matter is it took  no less than a decade, and all within almost an inland-sea, Mediterranean sea [Latin mediterraneus: “inland” or “in the middle of the land”; medius, “middle” and terra, “land”]. If not for the Strait of Gibraltar, the opening to the Atlantic Ocean, that is only 14 km wide, Mediterranean sea would well have been an inland sea.

Now, where is the rest of the narration?
When Odysseus washes up on Scherie, home to the Phaeacians, he is assisted by the young princess Nausicaa and is treated hospitably. In return, he satisfies the Phaeacians’ curiosity, telling them, and the audience then and the readers today, of all his adventures since departing from Troy.
So, in fact, no less than nine years plus out of ten, is accounted for in a retrospective narrative in the form of the words of Odysseus himself. Odysseus himself narrates his nine years of hazardous voyage home so far though making it well connected yet rigorously subordinated to the main action. And the occasion arose with Odysseus being obliged to reveal his identity following the games and banquet in the palace of Phaecian king Alcinous. The king has taken notice how Odessyes is moved by the poems on the episodes of the epic war in Troy sung by his blind bard Demodocus, the alter-ego of no less a personage than Homer. Demodocus brings in pathos [emotionally moving quality appealing to the feelings of sorrow, pity, and compassionate sympathy] and irony.

Nine years of hazrdous voyage
Odysseus narrates his adventures: his encounters with Lotus-eaters and the Cyclops; his visit to Hades; the Sirens; Scylla and Charbdis; the oxen of the Sun and Calypso in the caves of Ogygia.

Home, sweet home
The prospect of divinity offered by Calypso and the life of pleasure offered by Circe couldn’t move the steadfast heart of the man who loved his family and his land above all.

The Last 45 days
The period of 9 year+ span being one of perfect storms and eyes of the needles, the rest of the decade cuddling the central episode of the epic poem is concentrated in a time capsule of little more than 40. It is therein the narration of homecoming of Odysseus & re-reigning of Odysseus in Ithaka flows out.

Perfect storm: Poseiden takes revenge- all except Odesseus are killed.	Perfect storm: Poseiden takes revenge once again- Odesseus survives
Eye of the needle: Odysseus & his men, having speared & blinded the single eye of cannibalistic giant escapes hiding under the belly of sheep.	Eye of the needle: between Scylla, the six-headed rock shoal cannibalistic sea-moster & Charybdis a black hole like whirpool in Strait of Messina between Sicily & the Italian mainland.

Odysseus opted to pass by Scylla and lose only a few sailors, rather than risk the loss of his entire ship in the whirlpool. In the Homeric episode of “Between Scylla and Charybdis”, we find origin of the idioms “between a rock and a hard place”; “having to choose between two evils”; “on the horns of a dilemma”, “between the devil and the deep blue sea”. Incidentally, the choice of the route “between Scylla & Charybdis” was suggested to Odysseus [Having returned from Hades, the land of the dead in search of advice on how to return home from Teiresias, the sole ghost whose mental powers are as lively as he was living] by the nymph Circe [She-hawk] who kept him a prisoner and lover for a year. The other route available was “Wandering Rocks”: two rocks that clap together without warning when a ship is trying to sail in between them.

The urgency of the presence of the hero in his home, following nearly a couple of decades [a decade of war at Troy, a decade of voyage], has suddenly become a matter of paramount importance. The  homecoming being at a critical moment at his home – his wife has been pestered by the suitors who have made camp at his home and eating out his wealth; his son sailing off home to nearby islands in search of him- brings in action securing supreme concentration of the audience then and the readers today with the unity of action of the all the characters involved.

The Insider Knowledge
Odysseus, all alone now, all his comrades being killed, wouldn’t crash land at his home without the inside knowledge of the status of his home. He finds an insider in the form of swineherd Eumaeus, meets Telemachus, who returns in time to his homeland. Odysseus kills the 108 suitors, reunites with his faithful wife, Penelope and regains his household. Fortune favours the bold.

This map of Odysseus‘ journey
This map shows Odysseus‘ journey after he left Troy. While his encounters were fictional — there were no Lotus Eaters, Sirens, or Cyclopes in the ancient Mediterranean — his ports of call were real. As you can see from the names of the modern nations, the bards who sang of Odysseus sent him to very real places in the Greek world. At a time when little of the world was fully mapped, it was not so far-fetched to believe that in some unknown corner of Italy or Tunisia there might be wonderful and terrible creatures waiting to catch the unwary traveler.

 

Influences on the Odyssey

Scholars have seen strong influences from Near Eastern mythology and literature in the Odyssey. Martin West has noted substantial parallels between the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey. Both Odysseus and Gilgamesh are known for traveling to the ends of the earth, and on their journeys go to the land of the dead. On his voyage to the underworld, Odysseus follows instructions given to him by Circe, a goddess who is the daughter of the sun-god Helios. Her island, Aeaea, is located at the edges of the world, and seems to have close associations with the sun.
Like Odysseus, Gilgamesh gets directions on how to reach the land of the dead from a divine helper: in this case, the goddess Siduri, who, like Circe, dwells by the sea at the ends of the earth. Her home is also associated with the sun: Gilgamesh reaches Siduri‘s house by passing through a tunnel underneath Mt. Mashu, the high mountain from which the sun comes into the sky.
West argues that the similarity of Odysseus‘ and Gilgamesh’s journeys to the edges of the earth are the result of the influence of the Gilgamesh epic upon the Odyssey.

The Cyclops’ origins have also been surmised to be the results of Ancient Greeks finding an elephant skull, by paleontologist Othenio Abel in 1914. The enormous nasal passage in the middle of the forehead could have looked like the eye socket of a giant, to those who had never seen a living elephant.

Main Theme
The main theme of Odyssey is its hero’s return to his homeland and re-establishment  of order of his ow house.

The Moral message of Odyssey
The Odyssey is a cosmic version of a parable that no realm is beyond the reach, no task is a bridge too far to those who have set their sights and get going with their courage of convictions. It is the way we should live: fighting to the fullest, to the last tear, to the last drop f blood, no matter the gods, karma, will of the god arrayed against us. The epic form offers a narrative the lion-heart, the brave-heart will eventually win out. That’s one of its appeals. That’s what appeals to me. bunpeiris
What’s in Odyssey appeal to you?

However the epic poem can be interpreted as an adventure story, a moral tale, the personification of an all round man, the undying courage that wouldn’t go unnoticed by the divine powers, the precursor of romance, picaresque fiction or the very first realistic novel.

How do you interpret it?   I’ll be back