Homer's Odyssey: A CommentarySnider, Denton Jaques
Philosophy
Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary
Snider, Denton Jaques
Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer. Odyssey; Odysseus, King of Ithaca (Mythological character) -- In literature
Ulysses, accordingly, comes back to the sensible world and there he
finds Circe again. Indeed whom else ought he to find? She is the bright
Greek realm of the senses reposing in sunlight; she has been
subordinated to the rational, she is no longer the indulgence of
appetite which turns men to swine, nor is she, on the other hand, the
rigid ascetic. Hence we need not be surprised at her bringing good
things to eat and drink: "bread and many kinds of meat and sparkling
red wine." Moreover, she is still prophetic, she still has the outlook
upon the Beyond, being spirit in the senses. Her present prophecies,
however, will be different from her former one, she will point to the
supersensible, not in Hades, for that is now past, but in the
Upperworld of life and experience. Such is the return of the Hero to
Circe, the fair, the terrestrial, who makes existence beautiful if she
be properly held in restraint; beautiful as sunlit Hellas with its
plastic forms she can become, in striking contrast to the dark shapes
of the sunless Underworld which leads to the Gorgon, the realm of
spooks, shades, fiends, in general of romanticism.
So much for Circe in her new relation in the present Book; how about
Ulysses? It is manifest that he too is prepared for a fresh experience.
He has been in the Underworld and great has been the profit. There he
has seen the famous men and women of old and beheld the very heart of
their destiny; the Trojan and the Pre-Trojan worthies sweeping backward
through all Greek time he has witnessed and in part heard; he has
become acquainted with the prophet Tiresias who knows Past, Present and
Future, who is the universal mind in its purity from all material
dross; he has beheld the Place of Doom and its penalties, as well as
the supreme Greek Hero, the universal man of action, Hercules. Nor must
we forget that he has run upon a limitation, that Gorgon from whom he
fled. Truly he has obtained in this journey to Hades a grand experience
of the Past, of all Greek ages, which is now added to his own personal
experience. So this Past, with its knowledge, is to be applied to the
Future, whereby knowledge becomes foreknowledge, and experience is to
be transformed into prophecy. Mark then the transition from the
previous to the present Book: when Ulysses comes back to the world of
sense, he will at once see in it the supersensible, which he has just
behold; he must hear in the Present a prophetic voice, that of Circe
proclaiming the Future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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