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
On this account she represents the place of Phaeacia in the Greek world
as well as in the present poem; perhaps we ought to add, in the whole
movement of civilization. That land may be called the idyllic one, a
land of peace and of freedom from all struggle; the borderland between
the natural and the civilized spheres. Man has risen out of the
grossness of mere sensuous individualism, such as we see in Polyphemus
and in other shapes of Fairyland; but he has not yet reached the
conflicts of higher forms of society resulting from a pursuit of
wealth, from ambition, from war. Here is a quiet half-way house on the
road from nature to civilization; a sweet reposeful realm, almost
without any development of the negative forces of society; a temporary
stopping-place for Ulysses in his all-embracing career, also for
individuals and nations in their rush forward to reach the great end.
The deep collisions of social life belong not to Phaeacia, nor to
Nausicaa, its ideal image.
It is the virgin land, the virgin world, which now has a young virgin
as its central character and representative, to mediate Ulysses with
itself, the universal man who must also have the new experience. Still
she is not all of Phaeacia, but its prelude, its introductory form;
moreover, she is just the person to conduct Ulysses out of his present
forlorn condition of mind and body into a young fresh hope, into a new
world. The Calypso life is to be obliterated by the vision of the true
woman and her instinctive devotion to the Family. We are aware that
Ulysses has not been contented with the Dark Island and its nymph, he
has had the longing to get away and has at last gotten away; but to
what has he come? Lost the one and not attained the other, till he
beholds Nausicaa, who grasps him by the hand, as it were, and delivers
him wholly from Calypso, leading him forth to her home, where he is to
witness the central phase of domestic life, the mother.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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