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
Other matters may also be noticed. Pallas, the Goddess of Wisdom,
appears to him in the midst of the tumult, and gives him her
suggestion. She will remain with him ever afterwards, manifesting
herself to him in like emergencies till the end of the Odyssey.
Telemachus is mentioned in this Book of the Iliad. The distinction
between Ulysses and the aged Nestor is drawn: the latter has
appreciative wisdom, that of experience, while Ulysses has creative
wisdom, that of immediate divine insight, coming directly from Pallas.
This distinction also will show itself in the Odyssey. Ulysses is the
real hero of the Second Book of the Iliad; he appears in other Books
with the same general character, but never so prominently again.
In the Post-Iliad, or that portion of the Trojan war which lies between
the Iliad and Odyssey, Ulysses will become the chief hero. After the
death of Achilles, there will be a contest for the latter's arms
between him and Ajax; Ulysses wins. That is, Brain not Brawn is to
control henceforth. Under the lead of Intelligence, which is that of
Ulysses, Troy falls.
The Odyssey, then, deals with the return of Ulysses from the Trojan
War, and lasts ten years, as the account runs. But the poet is not
writing a history, not even a biography, in the ordinary sense; he does
not follow step by step the hero's wanderings, or state the events in
chronological order; we shall see how the poem turns back upon itself
and begins only some forty days before its close. Still the Odyssey
will give not merely the entire return from Troy, but will suggest the
whole cycle of its hero's development.
The first half of the cycle, the going to Troy and the stay there,
lasted ten years, though some accounts have made it longer. The Iliad,
though its action is compressed to a few days, treats generally of the
first half of the cycle and hence it is the grand presupposition of the
Odyssey, which takes it for granted everywhere. The Iliad, however, is
a unity and has its own center of action, which is the wrath of
Achilles and his reconciliation also; it is in itself a complete cycle
of individual experience in the Trojan War.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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