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[kidsal]

 
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April 29-----Book  XII:  First: The Sirens  

Odysseus ties himself to the mast so as to hear the Sirens call and live

The Sirens call

   



Some more appealing Sirens call

  

Discussion Leaders:  Joan K & ginny  

Ulysses leaves Troy  and sees the world! Note the position of the Sirens

Useful Links:

1. Critical Analysis: Free SparkNotes background and analysis  on the Odyssey
2. Translations Used in This Discussion So Far:
3. Initial Points to Watch For: submitted by JudeS
4. Maps:
Map of the  Voyages of Odysseus
Map of Voyages in order
Map of Stops Numbered
Our Map Showing Place Names in the Odyssey

Odysseus and the Sirens
Herbert James Draper
1909
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

Odysseus and the Sirens
Mosaic floor, Dougga, Africa

Odysseus and the Sirens
John William Waterhouse
c. 1891
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

INTRODUCTION TO ODYSSEY – ROBERT SQUILLACE

Hades represents an encounter with ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of endings – of the story, of the hero’s life, of human life.  The Homeric dead declare both directly and indirectly the final sovereignty of bodily existence.  The fact that they cannot speak without a fresh infusion of the blood they lack shows the utter dependence of the bodiless dead on the bodied living. In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being, in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial as memory.

For Homer the departed intervene in present life only as shades cast in the minds of those whose hearts still beat.  The way a poet envisions the afterlife reveals his sense of timeless, of what survives death.  In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation and lineage alone outlasting time.  

All the spirits Odysseus speaks to bear great names, children, or both.  The ordinary dead are not even acknowledged.  It reveals fame lacks the value from the perspective of finality that it carries in the living world; again, the alternative reality forces a reevaluation of cherished assumptions.

Meeting Achilles, Odysseus proposes that even death can make little difference to so mighty a hero; just as his fame was secure among the living, so must he be a king among the dead.  But the intangible reward of glory offers little consolation for an early death:  “Better to be the hireling of a stranger,” Achilles answers, “and serve a man of mean estate whose living is but small, than be the ruler over all these dead and gone.  The immortality of fame is an empty bubble.

A son is left as the sole means to continue a man’s existence.  The poem’s insistence on women’s fidelity takes on new meaning from this perspective, being revealed as the consequence of male fears of annihilation,.  A man’s children must positively have sprung from his own being if his real afterlife comes only through the continuation of his lineage, as both Agamemnon and Achilles affirm.  The long catalogue of famous women who great Odysseus at the gates of Hades all owe their fame to their role as lifegivers to male children.  Women’s power lies in their special connection to sexuality and birth.

 Odysseus talks to none of the famous women who have won a kind of immortality through the success or failure of their children.  

[Babi]

I didn't want to be tactless, but the quotes I've read here from Lombardo I found really
jarring.  They simply don't seem to fit with the time period and the characters. I assume
he was trying for a 'modern' version, but I don't at all care for the result.

  Depressing?  Yes, I  agree with that, JOAN.   The Greeks believed in ghosts; they called them 'shades’ and phantoms.  They believed that the dead still hungered for life and were drawn by the scent of blood.  Drinking blood gave them...what?   The ability to speak?  Not exactly;  perhaps the strength to speak at length. 
          What’s more,  Odysseus kept the shades away from the blood with a drawn sword.  What could the sword do?  Kill them?  Why did they care about his sword?  Odysseus would let none of them reach the pool of blood until Teiresias came.  I suppose he feared they would take it all and leave none for the seer.  His own Mother,  though he grieved, he held off from the blood until his purpose was finished.
      Elpenor comes, and explains what happened  to him.  Since O must return by the same route he came, Elpenor begs him to stop at Aiaia Island to burn his body and gear and build a cairn for him.  He is in  distress at being left, “unwept, unburied, to tempt the gods’ wrath”.  All in all,..yes, depressing.

[ginny]

Frybabe, I wonder if Book 11 will be the  turning point for some translations! I can't imagine reading Pope on this, but I will, since you mention finding it diffy and skipping parts,  I think I'll try.

This is the reason we have different translations!


Joan K:  "Don't try to sell me on death" Lombardo has Achilles saying. I find these passages in non-poetic language in Lombardo somewhat jarring. But when Lombardo was with us in the Iliad discussion, he said that they are very true to the spirit of the original. Homer's Greek is not high flown and poetical, but very down-to-earth. What do you all think?



hahaa, Babi: I didn't want to be tactless, but the quotes I've read here from Lombardo I found really
jarring.  They simply don't seem to fit with the time period and the characters. I assume
he was trying for a 'modern' version, but I don't at all care for the result.


If Lombardo does not appeal to you, it's not tactless to say so.  This is the reason why there are so many different translations.

I'm just putting in Lombardo because he's the primary one I'm reading. He,  like all the others,  is trying to put things in the modern medium of the time, that's all any of them are doing. Why not take one of those selections and put in the one you think is better?

I'd love to see it. Whose do you favor?

Lombardo's credentials are above discussion, I personally love him, but just for you I'll read  a more literal one. Let's hear from everybody on these passages cited, what do YOUR translations say on the key points of 11?

(What ARE the key points of 11?) hahahaha

But you sure whoever you are reading (I forget, sorry) have an understanding, several things I missed here which you honed in on, good for you!

  Depressing?  Yes, I  agree with that, JOAN.

What? DEPRESSING?

Joan K asks:

And what do you think of this version of life after death. Did this become part of the Greek religion? How depressing!

Yes it did.

Why is it depressing?

Do you all find it depressing?


Am I the only one who is awe struck at seeing there IS something after death portrayed 3,000 years ago except rumor and fame and fleeting glory?


And what do you think of this version of life after death? That's one of the
$ 24,000 questions in this book!

Why should there be ANY version of life after death 3,000 years ago?


 The Greeks believed in ghosts; they called them 'shades’ and phantoms.  They believed that the dead still hungered for life and were drawn by the scent of blood.  Drinking blood gave them...what?   The ability to speak?  Not exactly;  perhaps the strength to speak at length.

I agree. Drinking blood perhaps which is from a living being or one recently dead revives them? Kind of like vampires?


And then Babi asks the $124,000 question:


          What’s more,  Odysseus kept the shades away from the blood with a drawn sword.  What could the sword do?  Kill them?  Why did they care about his sword?

Oh Babi you're such a hoot, I laughed right out loud at that, because of course I totally missed that. Totally.

Swipe thru the air perhaps? Priceless. Perhaps it's symbolic?


 Odysseus would let none of them reach the pool of blood until Teiresias came.  I suppose he feared they would take it all and leave none for the seer.  His own Mother,  though he grieved, he held off from the blood until his purpose was finished.

Another fabulous point.  So here O is showing not so much personal desires, but more purpose, he's changing perhaps?

Man of Purpose instead of Man of Impulse? We need to watch the Man of bits, I'm thinking. What a close reader you are!!


      Elpenor comes, and explains what happened  to him.  Since O must return by the same route he came, Elpenor begs him to stop at Aiaia Island to burn his body and gear and build a cairn for him.  He is in  distress at being left, “unwept, unburied, to tempt the gods’ wrath”.  All in all,..yes, depressing.


Yeah well unless Lombardo is wrong, Elpenor is still back on Circe's floor one assumes having been dredged out of the water. How O is going to do this one has no idea.



And what do you think of this version of life after death? That's one of the
$ 24,000 questions in this book!

What do you all think?

[ginny]

Sally that quote, now in the heading,  is magic, where on earth did you come across that book?  This is fabulous:

Hades represents an encounter with ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of endings – of the story, of the hero’s life, of human life.  The Homeric dead declare both directly and indirectly the final sovereignty of bodily existence.  The fact that they cannot speak without a fresh infusion of the blood they lack shows the utter dependence of the bodiless dead on the bodied living. In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being, in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial as memory.

For Homer the departed intervene in present life only as shades cast in the minds of those whose hearts still beat.  The way a poet envisions the afterlife reveals his sense of timeless, of what survives death.  In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation and lineage alone outlasting time.

In that one introduction (everybody read it, it's in the heading?)  Squillace (who?) explains the purpose of 11 and what it means. It's fascinating to me. He also shows WHY ( which I had not noticed) that O does not speak to any of the women noted who have come forth who were unfaithful and why faithfulness is so important. That's absolutely brilliant!

A soul separate from the body, and how the dead live. This is right in keeping with the Romans and their feeding tubes for the tombs. And it neatly explains why Achilles, who did die for Kleos is there and unhappy. Brilliant.  Where is this Squillace? I need to read more of him.

But what can we make of this ourselves, beyond Squillace? I just remembered this morning about Jon Krakauer's  The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, another recent "Odyssey"  book.

 Joan K's question:  


And what do you think of this version of life after death?

I like it. What did we expect? Angels singing? A little early for that.  When you die you're like a tree? Gone?

At least there IS "life" of sorts, and the....shades of what were can see the future (and apparently the present), so there IS immortality. Imagine the effect this would have on the ancient listener.  Did we expect to see people reincarnated as worms? Or as other people?  Reincarnated in stages?

If you were a  Greek man living 3,000 years ago with such disease and perilous times  and very short life span, and you hoped there was something more, you hoped for or wanted immortality, or hoped to be remembered in some way,   just imagine the effect this would have on you! Electrifying. ? (Oh and what if you were a woman, what was your hope?)

We know this was a man's world, isn't it interesting how many women seem to be powerful tho. It almost suggests here that should Penelope not have been faithful that O would not be remembered thru his own son. Achilles goes away happy because of his son, the news of his son. If his wife had not been faithful then people might say I don't know if that's Achilles's son or not, just like Telemachus mused in the beginning, actually.

It would seem that O's getting home is very important suddenly, to all of them for more than one reason.

 HERE is "proof," in the form of the "gods" that immortality of a sort, for the seeking,  does exist and why one should try very hard to DO the hero thing,  (if a man), but Achilles and Agamemnon in their examples seem to say this path if likewise fraught and I can't figure out Hercules to save my life. He DID ascend, he IS with the gods, he's truly an Immortal, but here he is or his shade or...shadow is..... stalking thru Hades, why?

As Joan K asked  we all like a good Ghost Story, don't we?

The Romans sure did, they loved to tell ghost stories after dinner just like the boy scouts or girl scouts do now.  We've got vampires on TV, and in the movies, and in books, we've got any trip to Hampton Court Palace accompanied by tales of the Screaming Ghost, we've got Washington Irving,  and how many many haunted houses here in the 20th century, the Shining, the Amityville Horror, Ghost Busters,  and Disney World with a Haunted House ride, where are all those ghosts supposedly coming from? In the 21st century?


Where are the ghosts of today coming from? Do YOU actually believe in ghosts at all? And if you do, where are they coming from? Heaven? Hell?


A drachma for your thoughts.

[JoanK]

(Incidently, I just finished a mystery story in which the detective is a ghost. It's a series -- she's sent back from heaven to solve murders).

The Navaho, so I'm told, believe in ghosts -- spirits of the dead that hang around.

But in Homer, the ghosts don't hang around. Homer has to go to hell to find them. And this seems to be a rare, almost unheard of, event. It's not too clear to me what the dead do when he's not around with his blood.

[BarbStAubrey]

With these words I feel as if someone pulled loose one of the persistent weeds in Society - the role and historical limitation as the purpose of life for women - I will save these words - thank you Callie for bringing them to this discussion.

The long catalogue of famous women who great Odysseus at the gates of Hades all owe their fame to their role as lifegivers to male children. 

Women’s power lies in their special connection to sexuality and birth.

Odysseus talks to none of the famous women who have won a kind of immortality through the success or failure of their children.

[Dana]

Apparently the lines  following Ajax refusing to speak to Odysseus up until Herakles vanishes are thought to be an ancient interpolation or addition.  The issue being that the presentation of the underworld changes.  Odysseus has been standing on the edge of the world of the dead and the souls come to the trough he has dug and speak to him from there. Suddenly he is within the landscape "viewing heroes and giants in tableax, with significant objects in their hands, sometimes performing some action."  Also he sees them being punished which has not been the case up to then.  So my accompanying notes to Fitzgerald say that for these reasons scholars mostly agree that "this section is a later patch with a clearly different take on the underworld."  It is thought that making Herakles a phantom is "a rather obvious interpolation within the interpolation.  Someone realising that there was a major problem with a text that put Herakles in the underworld since he was known to have been taken up to Olympos, added this line to solve the problem, ie it is not really the dead herakles but a phantom of him."

Interesting!

[kidsal]

Robert Squillace edited and wrote the Intro and Notes in my 2003 prose edition of the Odyssey as translated by Palmer.  He teaches Cultural Foundation Courses in the General Studies Program of New York University.  He has published extensively on the field of modern British literature, most notably in his study Modernism, Modernity and Arnold Bennett (Bucknell University Press, 1997).  His recent teaching has involved him in the world of the ancients.  He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, the medievalist Angela Jane Weisl.

[Babi]

 Hmm, am I remembering incorrectly?  As I recall, Elpenor was up on the roof of Circe's
dwelling when O and his men were ready to go. In scrambling down, he fell and either broke
his neck or his head. The others had no idea what had happened, but apparently could not
stay longer to hunt for him.  Who knows what Circe might have done with the body.
 (So pleased to be providing you with some laughs, GINNY.   )

In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being,
in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial
as memory.

 
 That is good. One thing every 'ghost' story implies is the deep-seated instinct that
there is something that survives.  The idea of a total blank, a non-being, is more
unbelievable than soul/spirit survival.

 Interesting, indeed, DANA.  I haven't finished my reading of Book XI yet, but from a
quick perusal I find nothing about Ajax or Herakles. Fitzgerald may have also considered
that an interpolation and omitted it.  Can you give me the line numbers for that bit?

[Dana]

Well, its the end of book XI, BABI,  from line 674 to line 747 in Fitzgerald.  It made sense to me.  I was a bit puzzled when I read it first, why he was suddenly in Hades rather than outside it, but I just thought maybe I had misread it, until I read the notes.  And it answers GINNY'S question about Herakles.

[PatH]

I find the ancient Greek version of life after death quite depressing.  You drink the waters of Lethe, and forget almost everything, then you just wander around in a grey, pointless sort of way, evidently not even speaking unless someone gives you a chance to drink blood.

[BarbStAubrey]

Sounds like to the ancient Greeks someone's life force was blood and the evidence of life was the ability to speak - I wonder what someone who had no speech was labeled - anyhow in order for the dead to speak they had to have an activation of a life force.

However, I have read that breath is the life force for the ancient Greeks and it is called 'pneuma'  - Seems it was the Greeks in 300BC who discovered the difference between arteries and veins which were then seen as the natural highways for pneuma.

The stories of blind Bards - I wonder if they only had cataracts?

[bookad]

http://classics.mit.edu/Homer/odyssey.html
would you believe it, I misplaced my copy of Rieuand find it the easiest translation format for me to read The Odysseybut went to my 'online translation page for The Odyssey and found Butler's translation to read--what a chapter, rather gruesome I think, but interesting ...I think this chapter really caught my interest as I read it in one sitting; whereas other chapters were losing me --but this chapter    what a gripper!!!

was getting a bit muddled with all the character names of the dead living in 'Hades' but went to the site below and it really brought some clarity for me...if any new comer to this classic reading is having difficulty would really recommend this site that has been recommended by the group

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/odyssey/section6.rhtml


Deb

[bookad]

oh and and in answer to the question '

do you believe in ghosts'

a friend of mine apparently is involved in a group that meets several times a month, and goes on ghost outings where they spend nights in houses where ghosts are supposed to inhabit

they also will use a 'dowsing stick' as a means to determine whether a ghost is in proximity

fascinating as to what people are into these days...after spending years on shift work and on call, I prefer to spend my nights in my own bed thank you

Deb

[Frybabe]

I didn't care for Book XI, but Book XII is another story. I really liked the poetic flow of Pope's translation.

[Dana]

I don't see why we should imagine that the ancient Greeks, or any other civilization for that matter, should have any very different ideas about life after death than are prevalent today.  After all, our ideas are just human responses to that major question, "what happens after death?" We can't believe that we could just be snuffed out. Not us!  Not we humans !! (Animals, maybe....but are we really that much different?))  And we don't have any more answers today than anyone else has in the past.  We can't conceive that we might just cease to be, that the mind and the soul are tied up with life, the chemistry of being alive, we have to imagine, rightly or wrongly , that we go on in some way.  Perhaps the Greeks who sometimes seem to have believed that we just cease, so we can only go on through our progeny (male) or through our kleos, were more able to face reality !!  For sure the picture of Hades with these lost souls wandering about is pretty depressing, but so is our idea of all these lost souls burning in hell.

[Babi]

Thank you, DANA.  I see I am lagging behind now. In my quick scan yesterday, I mistakenly
thought the interruption by King Antinous marked the end of the story of the visit to
Hades. Must catch up today.
  I've heard some true-life 'ghost' stories from people I knew were truthful.  I also
knew a lady who personally had one of those near-death experiences. Her calm and serenity
were remarkable. I thought I was calm and serene; I was a pond compared to her sea.

 Now, where was I?  Oh, yes.  Odysseus and Teiresias.   So, after all this, what does Teiresias have to tell him?   First, that only one narrow way would take him safely home, and that was denial of himself and restraint of his shipmates.  Well, that is certainly good advice.  Secondly, he and his men should  NOT  raid the island and steal the cattle belonging to Helios.  Stealing from the god will mean the destruction of everyone but Odysseus himself.  They had to be warned not to steal from a major god?!!  duh... But considering that in the end, O’ is by himself,  I’m guessing they went to all that trouble for nothing.

[JoanK]

BABI: the classic fairy tale, where you're told you'll be fine if you only don't do -----. Of course you immediately know that they're going to do -----.

[JoanK]

DANA: :I don't see why we should imagine that the ancient Greeks, or any other civilization for that matter, should have any very different ideas about life after death than are prevalent today."

Right. I wonder if the idea of life after death is as old as humans. Of course, before written language, we don't know what humans believed. (unless early cave paintings give us an idea).

[BarbStAubrey]

hmmm I wonder - is that the question - LIFE after Death or the Death of Life?

[JudeS]

Hi! I've just resurfaced after four days of Family "doings". Still slightly tired but happy after seeing relatives,grandkids and greatgrand kids. I will clean up slowly and took a breather to return to the world of Odysseus.

I read chapt. 11 in one sitting and found it very different from the other chapters we have read. Could it have been written by a different person than the other ten chapters? I tried to analyze what was different. What I came up with is perhaps idiosyncratic to me or perhaps a different writer really wrote it or at least added to the contents.
First of all  there are some extremely deep ideas expressed. It is less of an adventure and more of a historical summary of Gods and heroes who have died. Odysseus is the listener and not the protagonist who stirs up events.
Secondly there are some really negative words about the place of womed especially when Agamemnon speaks:
"There's nothing more deadly, bestial than a woman
set on works like these......... But she
the queen hell bent on outrage-bathes in shame
not only herself but the whole breed of womankind.
even the ones to come, forever down the years!"
Odysseus adds: "Zeus from the very start, the thunder king
has hated the race of Atreus with a vengeance-
His trusted weapon women's twisted wiles.
What armies of us died for the sake of Helen....."

 I wonder if anyone else found a difference in the ideas found in this chapter?

[ginny]

Yes, I did, and I'm  not sure what to make of it. I did like Dana's mentioning that the Fitzgerald edition has a note on the Tantalus, the Tartarus punishment stuff that that, and the  Hercules is thought to be added by somebody else. That makes a lot of sense, because it's quite a shift.  But what if it's not true? What if Homer DID write this?

Why should there be punishment at all and if there IS why is Agamemnon not having any? What is there about the original deed each of these people did which caused the idea OF eternal punishment? Where are the others so famous in mythology as well being punished?

I really liked this, Jude: First of all  there are some extremely deep ideas expressed. It is less of an adventure and more of a historical summary of Gods and heroes who have died. Odysseus is the listener and not the protagonist who stirs up events.
Secondly there are some really negative words about the place of women especially when Agamemnon speaks:

I love this discussion and this book. I got up thinking about all the points you've all made and the book itself.

What a world we live in. It's so media driven. I was listening to HLN this morning the chirpy voice of the moderator, "why would you listen to an alarm clock when you can wake up to my voice," she chirps. Why indeed? Robin something. Chirp chirp chirp. We want our news chirpy. Our local anchors seem to be trying to strike a balance between chripy  and sanctimonious, resulting in chirpy sanctimonious pablum.


Most of us I assume here are over 50 and so the three score and 10 allotment is not exactly far from our minds.

I think that Homer that great psychologist, is that what you said, Dana,  a while back, is absolutely taking  a risk here but it's a risk that the ancient surely would have found fascinating. Short life span? Go off to war with Turkey, the  Trojans, no guarantees you'll ever get home, at ALL, no phone, no Skype, you'll hear almost nothing at all unless somebody brings back word...and here we find them ALL!

Here they are. Was the result of kleos (note all the heroes wanted was immortal fame, not a happy ever after ending, no clouds, no singing angels, that's the best a hero could have but look what Homer did). I just can't get over it.

Squillace again:

Hades represents an encounter with ultimate knowledge, the knowledge of endings – of the story, of the hero’s life, of human life.  The Homeric dead declare both directly and indirectly the final sovereignty of bodily existence.  The fact that they cannot speak without a fresh infusion of the blood they lack shows the utter dependence of the bodiless dead on the bodied living. In contrast to later theologies that regarded the soul as the true essence of being, in the Odyssey the soul survives as a mere reminder of real existence, insubstantial as memory.

For Homer the departed intervene in present life only as shades cast in the minds of those whose hearts still beat.  The way a poet envisions the afterlife reveals his sense of timeless, of what survives death.  In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation and lineage alone outlasting time.  

All the spirits Odysseus speaks to bear great names, children, or both.  The ordinary dead are not even acknowledged.  It reveals fame lacks the value from the perspective of finality that it carries in the living world; again, the alternative reality forces a reevaluation of cherished assumptions.

From the heading.

(I find that Squillace, his commentary, Sally's discovery, is available on ebook and I must have it) but here  Squillace says that Homer deliberately shakes things up and forces reevaluation of "cherished assumptions."

One can see the ancients with alternating delight (oh HERE comes Agamemnon, at last we find out what happened to him!) and dismay (OH!)..

Yes I agree with Jude, there's depth here. There's plenty of depth in the Iliad.  I wonder vaguely why we are surprised to see it in the Odyssey? Of course we've had 10 previous chapters of derring do from a somewhat cardboard hero figure and we  know he has to grow and change, will THIS do it?

I wonder why we can feel more at home with rage and anger, the anger of Achilles,  in 2011 than we can Homer's depiction of life  or what passes for it, after death?

Dana why does your source say this part, does it say the last part only, the Tantalus and the Hercules, In Edit: I just read your post again, makes perfect sense. Do your sources say only that bit or the entire chapter may be added? (I know Dana is traveling this week and may not be able to answer that). Do any of you have ANY notation at all on this or any part of this chapter?

I was startled at the sudden appearance of Tantalus, and Sisyphus, who obviously are being punished. This is a new and different thing than I expected, you'd think Agamemnon if anybody would be punished.

Let's look at those who are in danger there at the last and see what we can make of their inclusion?

Here's the Temple questions for this bit:

Book 11

Remember that O. is telling a story to an audience from whom he wants to obtain something, so pay close attention to how he shapes his story and their reaction to it. If you are unsure about the identity of some of those in Hades, look them up. In general, what does the journey to the Underworld symbolize?

249-60 Leaving Circe's island, O. sails to Hades. He performs the prescribed ritual, and meets:Elpenor, Tiresias, his mother, and a sequence of beautiful (of course) heroines, including Ariadne and Oedipus' mother, here called Epikaste. What does he learn from each? What impact do they have on him?

261-70 O. ceases his story to remind the Phaeacians of his eagerness to return home; they persuade (?) him to continue. The tone of the story changes: how? He tells of meeting Agamemnon, Akhilles, and Aias, Minos and Herakles. Alarmed, O departs. Consider why O. is there. Are his comrades from Troy the same? Which characters have the greatest effect on him, and why? Remember the importance of mortality.


What do these questions mean? Consider why O is there.

He's there because Circe sent him there, to find out from Tiresias his future, isn't he? Remember the importance of mortality. What does that mean? The living are more important than the dead because without them the dead don't live at all? But then how do the dead know the future and how do they know the present?

Everybody seems to agree that the Odyssey came after the Iliad.  I am having somewhat of a problem understanding why. Here we have the coda to the Iliad story, Agamemnon, the commander of the Greek fleet, who sacrificed his own daughter to the victory deliberately to a god and then found his wife, and her new husband killed him upon his return, she apparently thought little of that action of his and him.

But we have the end. And if the Odyssey came after the Iliad (or do I have that backwards) then we're finding out the end before the beginning.

I can't think of a modern book with this depth. He's hit on the very reason for  existence, and for them,their kleos and the first thing we hear is (well in my book anyway) Achilles saying don't try to sell me on death.

So what does THAT do to the canon of their belief?

Man what a book.

I know WE in 2011 don't like this chapter, it's quite a break, but is there no doubt Homer wrote some of it? The parts possibly added are the punishment theme and Hercules and his dark winged words? I can't figure out why Hercules would be there at all.

And as far as the women go and the negative thoughts on them, we can certainly see why Agamemnon would have them, but here's O chiming in, too? Why?

Everybody is blaming Helen, even in Troy.  But was she any more to blame than Odysseus? She appears to have had more choice then he did? She left Menelaus and her child, she says willingly, she doubts herself, to go with Paris after the judging...She at least stepped up and took the blame.

If punishment is the theme, where is Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra here?

And what are we to make of the ending of Book 11?

Why did O leave Hades? He didn't want to, why did he? And what does THAT mean?

And it looks like O just runs on out, no problem?  Is THIS (we really need some notes here) the first mention anywhere of  Hades?

What a great discussion you're making of this (suddenly) quite difficult and deep book!
more....

[ginny]

On the Zeus/ Odysseus question, Murnaghann says in the introduction to my book:

Odysseus is unusual among Homeric characters for the gods' clear endorsement of his cause, and for the steadiness of their support. Zeus' favor is clear form the divine council with which the poem opens. Although he seems to have forgotten about Odysseus at that point and has to be reminded  by Athena, his mind is on the terrible crime and just punishment of Aegisthus, the figure in the Agamemnon story who provide a parallel to Penelope's suitors. Before the suitors are even mentioned, then, they are cast by analogy into the role of villains and Odysseus into the role of divinely sanctioned revenge.

The point at which the Odyssey starts is, in fact, the moment in Odysseus  story at which Athena can first hope to get Zeus to grand Odysseus his full attention and support.

She also says, which I am not sure I realized fully:

Poseidon is  Zeus' brother,  who  received the sea as his not quite equal portion in a division of the universe in which Zeus gained the superior portion of the sky and a third brother, Hades, the Underworld. As a consequence, Poseidon is constantly jealous of his prerogatives and sensitive to any diminution of his honor and he is in a recurrent state of opposition to Zeus's favorite, Athena, an opposition that in  part symbolizes a conflict between untamed wildness and civilization.

She has almost nothing to say on Book 11.

Deb, that's a good reminder of the Spark Notes site.  From reading it I found that the quote by Achilles (given in Spark as "I'd rather slave on earth for another man/..../then rule here over all the breathless dead..." shows a dichotomy in the kleos idea.

On the one hand here Achilles delivers a caveat to the great bestowing of kleos or fame, on the other he goes away happy to hear that his own son has become a great warrior. Spark Notes says: "Kleos has thus evolved form an accepted cultural value into a more complex and somewhat problematic principle."

Good stuff. We're ALL having to think now.

Then they do make great points on the different things  and venues each character in Book 11 brings up and they bring up the interruption by the Phaecians. I have not understood that well. They say "The interruption seems to have no other function (that to remind us where he is now), and it doesn't make much sense within the context of the plot. It is hard to believe, for instance, that Odysseus would want to go to sleep before describing the most important conversations he had in Hades. ...The interruption is transparently used to break the long first- person narrative into smaller, more manageable chunks.

And Barbara mentioned: I wonder what someone who had no speech was labeled - anyhow in order for the dead to speak they had to have an activation of a life force. And in that statement we can see centuries even millennia of burial practices of the Greeks and Romans particularly and I'm not sure even today we've forgotten all of it.

Deb, and Babi, I think if we were really honest we'd find there are a lot of people who believe in ghosts, both now and in the past. So far as I know, they are spirits who are unhappy, how many ghost stories occur because they are not buried, not properly in their right place, that goes right back here to the Greeks, apparently.

The question I have is IF Elpenor is not buried, he's here among the shades, where does he go IF buried and happy?

??

This was interesting, PatH, , then you just wander around in a grey, pointless sort of way, evidently not even speaking unless someone gives you a chance to drink blood

Maybe you don't need to speak. Maybe you can communicate with the  mind, after all they knew what happened (but Achilles didn't, how come some of them know and a lot of them don't?)  Aren't they all pressing forward at the end TO hear of their loved ones on earth?

How did they know O was even there, if  they can't communicate? Maybe they communicate by the mind and to SPEAK to those alive they need something alive too, like blood. But without it apparently they have no problem communicating. Mind meld?

Making a bridge between stars, to speak to the humans they need first to take on something alive. Good thing it's not human blood.

I just read Dana's post again on the Fitzgerald note, that makes perfect sense because added on is a vision of punishment which is not present otherwise. It turns INTO Tartarus, or hell. Parts of it. Hercules, swinging through is fabulous, I don't understand him there, his soul or spirit here seems TO be later, TO be different from what the others are, but he's different too.

Babi, these are good points: So, after all this, what does Teiresias have to tell him?   First, that only one narrow way would take him safely home, and that was denial of himself and restraint of his shipmates.  Well, that is certainly good advice.  Secondly, he and his men should  NOT  raid the island and steal the cattle belonging to Helios.  Stealing from the god will mean the destruction of everyone but Odysseus himself.  They had to be warned not to steal from a major god?!!  duh

So he needs to change, develop denial of self, and the foreshadowing here about the cattle of the sun god Helios, you can't say he's not been warned. Nobody warned him about the Cyclops, now he's been warned. But what can he do about it? I mean he warned the men  about the bag of winds, tho I'm not sure he himself knew what was in the bag (Sally's old question) did he?

Want to go on to the last book O narrates? Book 12? Are we all caught up and now thoroughly depressed?  I am personally exhilarated by this unexpected trip into the future world of the dead.

Let's try for 12 if it's not too fast reading by Friday?

What would you say was the main lesson HE got out of his trip to Hades?

Why did he leave so fast?

[Babi]

 

In the Odyssey nothing of the individual remains when breath leaves the body, reputation
and lineage alone outlasting time. 

 
 This does a lot to explain the great need to gain fame and glory, doesn't it?  It's the
only form of immortality someone of this time and culture can hope to attain.

 In my version of the coming of the male shades,  Odysseus has not moved from his place by the pool of blood.  Some of what he saw were visions, but he remained where he was.  I read that Agamemnon sipped the back blood.  In other places I find phrases like, “And now there came before my eyes Minos”.,  or, “In my vision “.

 

Why did he leave so fast?

According to my translation, though there were other shades O' hoped to see, "..but first came shades in thousands, rustling in a pandemonium of whispers, blown together, and the horror took me that Persephone had brought from darker hell some saurian death's head."  Apparently there was a deeper hell with occupants that O' wanted no part of.

[Frybabe]

I always liked that Hades has different levels of Hell. My Dad was quite interested John 14:2, "in my Father's house there are many mansions...". He took that to mean that Heaven had different levels, just as the ancient concept of Hell did. If I remember correctly, the ancients didn't have a heaven. Everyone went to Hell. Correct me if I am wrong. 

[JudeS]

Frybabe
There are two other possibilities for resting places for the Greek dead that I know of-there may be more.

1)Elysian Field- There the mortal relatives of the Gods were transported without tasting death to an immortality of bliss.
This is such an important concept that every great literary figure (Schiller, Shakespeare etc.) used it to note  a paradise after death. The Champs Elysees in Paris is named for this concept. When Los Angeles was founded in 1781 the first park  established was called Elysian Park.

2)Asphodel-This is mentioned  a few times in the Odyssey. Here lesser spirits were led by Hermes "where the dead burnt out wraiths of mortals make their home".

[JoanK]

It's shocking to us nowadays, with the strong sense in our modern religions of a sharp difference between those who are rewarded in heaven and those who are punished in hell, to see these lines blurred in Homer's Hades. A few are punished and one, Hercules, is given a place among the gods. But most, including the great hero Achilles, have the same drab existance.

The sense of morality is radically different from the Judo/Christian ethic. No ten commandments here. Do one thing to disobey the gods (even in something trivial) and you're toast. But a good, godly or worthwhile life means nothing.

I can't believe that this is the ethic people lived by.

[JoanK]

We've skated over all of the stories that are told here. In a way, this chapter is a way to include a lot of miscellaneous stories that perhaps the audience expected to hear but didn't really fit.

That's ok. I'm for moving on. I do wonder if this is the only source for some of these stories (like tantalus). Does anyone know?

[Babi]

 One does spot immediately where the word 'tantalize' came from.  That story was particularly grim.  And the equally horrible story of the poor soul who spends eternity in
water, unable to drink a drop. Personally,  I think the idea of 'eternal' punishment is wholly
unjust.  The evil anyone could do in our brief life span would deserve punishment, but there
is no 'justice' in making it eternal.

Who was it complained of the long list of ‘magnificent’ women whose claim to fame was as someone’s daughter, wife or mother?  I’m with you, girl.  And amazing how many of them
bore sons to some god.  Excuse my cynicism here, ladies, but I can’t help wondering when exactly they announced the stupendous news to their husbands.  Did they tell him a god had honored them at the time of the grand event,  or did they make this known when they first realized they were pregnant?


 I was charmed when Achilles referred to O’  as “old knife”, after all the grand titles with which they all addressed each other.  See, people have always had nicknames bestowed by their friends and companions.   One thing Achilles said, tho’,  I have not been able to figure out.
    At the close of his second speech to O’,  he said “Were I but whole again, could I go now to my father’s  house, one hour would do to make my passion and my hands no man could hold hateful to any  who shoulder him aside.”    Does anyone have a different...hopefully clearer...translation?
 

[Frybabe]

I always get a big kick out of these when I seem them on an antiques show. Display your liquor in plain sight, but lock it so no one can get to it when you are not looking. I always thought the name diabolically appropriate.

http://www.danielsantiques.com/antique_furniture_details.asp?stockID=109

[PatH]

Babi, in Lombardo, Achilles calls O "you hard rover".  The other quote is clearer, though.  Achilles asks if his father Peleus is still respected in his old age.  If he's dishonored:

"And I'm not there for him up in the sunlight
With the strength I had in wide Troy once
When I killed Ilion's best and saved the army.
Just let me come with that kind of strength
To my father's house, even for an hour,
and wrap my hands around his enemies' throats.
They would learn what it means to face my temper.

He's expressing his frustration at not being able to protect his father, if needed.  Notice "up in the sunlight".  That gave me a shiver--a reminder of the greyness of Hades.

[PatH]

Frybabe, as a Sherlock Holmes fan, I am very familiar with Tantaluses.  I agree--most amusingly appropriate.

[Dana]

Here's what Fitzgerald does with Akilleus' wish re his father. 

Were I but whole again, could I go now
to my father's house, one hour would do to make
my passion and my hands no man could hold,
hateful to any who shoulder him aside.

I think  he's regretting again his choice of kleos over life, so to speak.  I wonder if Homer was ahead of his time--in pointing out that the most ordinary life is far better that the kleos of eternal recognition.  Perhaps it was not politically correct to express that belief at the time....who knows....!

[Babi]

 FRYBABE, I've never heard one of those called a tantalus. How very apt! 

 PATH, thanks so much! That version makes it all very clear. I'm going to re-read it
in my translation and see if I can make some sense of it, now.

  I didn’t know Achilles had a son; learned something new.  I also had to go find out more about asphodel.  (Would you believe after reading this the word turned up in a crossword puzzle yesterday?)  According to my source, “its general connection with death is due no doubt to the greyish colour of its leaves..."
  I also note that “Asphodelus is a genus of mainly perennial plants native to western, central and southern Europe, but now spread worldwide. Asphodels are popular garden plants, which grow  in well-drained soils with abundant natural light. " 

[sandyrose]

I did not find this book to be grim except a few things like Tantalus & Tityos--but they earned it.  I enjoyed it as O seemed at the ready of course, but more subdued, not foolhardy, and he seemed in awe of these people.   Sort of reminded me of all the questions I wished I had asked my relatives before they died.  Here he has had the opportunity to do that.  But I think Homer brings O to his senses abruptly, and O remembers where he is and gets out while the getting is good.  I would have been stuck there still asking questions as the way out slammed closed.

 

[JudeS]

Sandyrose
Do you think your relatives stories could compete with these peopl?. I hope not.

I must add the most chilling story Fagles tells of Tantalus.
Tantalus, who was a confidant and often invited guest of the gods, invites them to his palace for a feast and serve them the cooked fleash of his son Pelops, as a test of their divine powers of perception. They all refuse the meat except Demeter, who gnaws on a shoulder.  After Tantalus was dispatched to his everlasting punishment in Hades-doomed fittingly to eternal thirst and hunger-Pelops was put back together and brought to life: the missing part of his shoulder was replaced by a marble prothesis , which was on display centuries later at Olympus, the site of the games founded by Pelops.

[PatH]

Tantalus--you would think the Greeks would have learned not to try to trick the gods (or boast they were better).  It never ended well.

[roshanarose]

Jude - Great story of which I was unaware about Pelops.

[ginny]

Yes and today we're moving on, first with the Sirens, of whom you can see in the heading there are no end of representations. Actually the Sirens themselves have changed throughout history and I did not realize that until recently, actually.

We might enjoy this information from the new book The Classical Tradition by editors Grafton Most and Settis,  huge thing and it's on page 887 that the Sirens begin. In essence they say that Homer's mention in Book 12 was the first ever mention of them, and their emphasis is:

(1) Their physical form (part woman, part bird, part fish)
(2) their compelling song
(3) the means used to withstand their charms.

Greek vases from the 7th c BC show bird women.

Later the philosopher Adriana Cavarero argued that the classical tradition gradually transformed them from a bearer of voice  to a more purely feminine and eroticized  fount of pure voice and wordless song.

In the 14th c theological writings and musical treatises in bestiaries, the Siren was  depicted as part bird. In the Purgatorio Dante stresses the ugly reality thought to lie behind such charms.

The fish like Sirens are found back as far as Greek ceramics but the first verbal description did not appear till the 8th century. Through the Middle Ages, the wings and birds' feet became less common in images of the Sirens and the "purely aqueous Siren has prevailed since about 1600, intersecting with the various mermaid figures in world folklore.

Other ramifications appear in Goethe and Mendelssohn, Foque, ETA Hoffmann, Brenatano, Heine (Lorelei) and Pushkin, Schumann, Liszt, Wagner, Debussy, and  Dvorak.  Paintings by Moreau and Burne-Jones among many others, show them embedded in nature, indistinguishable from the water, rock, and vegetation from which they emanate.

James Joyce's Ulysses has them as slangy barmaids, Rilke and Kafka have Sirens who do not sing.  And on and on actually. Seems each century has its own medium,  and not to forget the Coen brothers in O Brother Where Art Thou where they are sensual beings who do sing.

I thought today of all days talking about tradition,  this information, which comes entirely from The Classical   Tradition,  (except for the  Coen brothers) might be interesting. I have always wondered where the mermaids came from, that's quite a long stretch from birds.

[ginny]

Babi, this was a good point: According to my translation, though there were other shades O' hoped to see, "..but first came shades in thousands, rustling in a pandemonium of whispers, blown together, and the horror took me that Persephone had brought from darker hell some saurian death's head."  Apparently there was a deeper hell with occupants that O' wanted no part of.



Lombardo has:

Heroes I longed to meet, Theseus and Peirithous,
Glorious sons of the gods--but before I could,
The nations of the dead came thronging up
With an eerie cry, and I turned pale with fear
That Perseophone would send from Hades's depths
The pale head of that monster, the Gorgon.


I thought Sandyrose made two good points and one of them was something I also thought of:  Sort of reminded me of all the questions I wished I had asked my relatives before they died.  Here he has had the opportunity to do that.

It's amazing, isn't it,  how many questions and things come up after someone dies that it's too late to ask them. If I had a dollar for every time I've said, well my mother would know that,  but we can't ask her, I'd be rich.  And here actually Odysseus gets to see his mother and talk to her even tho she has died and he didn't know it,  a double shock: she died, do I have this right, of sorrow for him?

So he gets to find that out and to express what he'd like to her and to find out from her what's going on with his father and his wife. This is really something, actually, when you think of it and I think Squillace is corect. I also found online a huge chunk of him at amazon talking about the return, so I am excited to keep that in waiting.

Frybabe, thank you for that tantalus thing, I had never heard of it and like PatH I also am a Sherlock Holmes fan, it's amazing how things you think you read take on more resonance once you know the background.


Dana what good points. I wonder if Homer was ahead of his time--in pointing out that the most ordinary life is far better that the kleos of eternal recognition.  Perhaps it was not politically correct to express that belief at the time....who knows....!

I don't but since it seems that Homer is doing a lot of interesting and unexpected things I wouldn't be surprised. I think Homer gets more and more impressive the more we read him, (and I loved your thoughts on him as philosopher.).


Jude, thank you for the information on the Elysian Fields and Pelops and Tantalus!

Pat H: Tantalus--you would think the Greeks would have learned not to try to trick the gods (or boast they were better).  It never ended well.

Yes what IS it about man that he doesn't seem to learn?  Possibly in any religious belief.

I liked Joan K's comparison to the Judeo- Christian concept of death or an afterlife and how could they live that way?


Here we go again with the cattle of Helios and how often have we heard mind what you are told. In the issue of Helios, nobody can blame O. He tries his very best, what more could he have done?  But Zeus again, Zeus has them stranded and almost starving, now why one wonders, would he do that? Finally they snap.  


I'm trying to keep track of what's O's fault and what is not and his development and any change in  character.

Book 12 is the last of Odysseus' narration. Never again does he speak directly to us.

What did you think of this book? I thought the descriptions of the ship, Odysseus on the ship there at the end were spectacular and very lyric.

What is it again that books 9-12 are called? The ones narrated by Odysseus in the first person? The first ones were the  Telemachy.

I noticve that O seems to express feelings for others, as in Book 12 somewhere around  262:

And stretched their hands down to me
In their awful struggle. (this is when Scylla grabs them) Of all the things
That I have borne while I scoured the seas
I have seen nothing more pitiable.

Now is that the first time that O has expressed pity for somebody? It really jumped out at me but I am not sure if it's the first. I am thinking we're seeing a real shift from hubris, the sort of metalized Hero to a  feeling thinking man, but I could be wrong.

Then I would really like to know on this type of ship we have here what the keel is. I would like to picture this accurately:

somewhere around line 432:

I kept pacing the deck until the sea surge
Tore the sides from the keel. The waves
Drove the bare keel on and snapped the mast
From its socket; the leather back stay
Was still attached, and I used this to lash
The keel to the mast. Perched on these timbers
I was swept long by deathly winds.

Now what are we seeing here?

Are you surprised (I was) that after going down into Hades and then back to Circe (now we see how he can bury Elpenor) and hearing HER (now she talks!) about what's to come, that there should even BE more crisis? Were you? And big series of crises they are.

We most recently saw Charybdis in the Pirates of the Caribbean and they did a good job of it. You don't see it much depicted, tho what I do have (have a fantastic Scylla) we'll put up, but that vortex, that whirlpool, they did beautifully. I can't wait for the new movie in I Max,   I started to say they should do him as the Odyssey but they actually are, aren't they? hahaha

Now here  are the questions on 12 from the Temple Questions, it seems difficult to me to ask any, what questions do you have on this segment? What did not make sense or did you wonder about?

Why are the Sirens' songs so seductive, especially to Odysseus?

 Why doesn't O tell his crew all of  Circe's  warnings?

 Does he follow all her advice himself?


 How is his crew like the suitors back in Ithaca?  ooo that's a good one!~

Has Odysseus' behavior changed after his experiences in Hades?

How many people has Odysseus killed up to this point? How responsible are the men for their own deaths?

OOO those are good! I think he IS changing.

At first O did not tell his men of Circe's warnings about Helios. I figured since he told them not to open the bag of winds and they did anyway, he thought he'd try another tactic. How did you all figure this one, it was quite blatant, he deliberately tried to avoid the island altogether and the men intervened. Again.

I like that last question: how responsible are they for their own deaths?

(I had not realized Odysseus killed men, other than in the war, do they mean? Can we count them?

What do you think? About these or anything else!~