Ulysses flees from the Underworld, there is something down there which he feels he cannot master, something which he has not seen but of which he has a vague presentiment. The Gorgon stands for much, dimly foreshadowing a Hades beyond or below the Greek Hades, with which, however, it is not his call to grapple. Hence the poet puts upon his Hero a limitation at this point, strangely prophetic, and sends him in haste back to the terrestrial Upperworld. The bark crossed the stream of the “river Oceanus,” then it entered “the wide-wayed Sea” in which lay the island of Circe, “where are the houses of the Dawn, and her dances, and the risings of the Sun.” Verily the Hero has got back to the beginning of the world of light, in which he is now to have a new span of existence after his experience in the supersensible realm.

From the brief geographical glances which we catch up from the voyage, as well as from a number of hints scattered throughout the Odyssey (for instance, from what is said of the Ethiopians in the First Book), we are inclined to believe that Homer held the earth to be round. We like to think of the old Poet seeing this fact, not as a deduction of science, not even as a misty tradition from some other land, but as an immediate act of poetic insight, which beholds the law of the physical world rising out of the spiritual by the original creative fiat; the Poet witnesses the necessity by which nature conforms to mind. Homer knew the spiritual Return, this whole Odyssey is such a Return, whereby the soul is rounded off to completeness, and becomes a true totality. Why should he not apply the same law to nature, to the whole Earth, and behold it, not indefinitely extended as it appears to the senses, but returning into itself, whereby the line becomes a circle and the plain a globe? Some such need lay deep in his poetic soul, to which he had to harmonize the entire universe, visible as well as invisible. Not science is this, but an immediate vision of the true, always prophetic, which observes the impress of spirit everywhere upon the realm of matter. The old Greek sages seem to have known not merely of the rotundity of the Earth, but also of its movement round the Sun and upon its own axis, both movements being circular, returns, which image mind. Did they get their knowledge from Egypt or Chaldea? Questionable; if they looked inwardly deep enough, they could find it all there. Indeed the sages of Egypt and Chaldea saw the fact in their souls ere they saw it or could see it in the skies.

So these Homeric glimpses into the realm of what is to become science are not to be neglected or despised, in spite of their mythical, ambiguous vesture. Moreover they are in profound harmony with the present poem, to which they furnish remote, but very suggestive parallels, making the physical universe correspond to the spiritual unfolding of the Hero.

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.

Thus Ulysses is now ready to listen to the coming event and to understand its import. It is to be observed that up to the Eleventh Book he has had experience merely; he took everything as it came, by chance, without knowing of it beforehand; he simply happens upon the Lotus-eaters, Polyphemus, Circe, though the careful reader has not failed to note an interior thread of connection between all these adventures. As to Hades, it is pointed out to him in advance by Circe, though all is not foretold him; but in the Twelfth Book, now to be considered, he has everything in detail laid open to him beforehand. A great change in manner of treatment; why? Because Ulysses must be shown as having reached the stage of foreknowledge through his journey to Hades; hitherto he was the mere empirical man, or blind adventurer, surrendering himself to hazard and trusting to his cunning for getting out of trouble. But now he foresees, and Circe is the voice thereof; he knows what he has to go through before he starts, here in the Upperworld, to which he has come back, and through whose conflicts he is still to pass, for life has not yet ended. Such, we think, is the fruit of that trip to the Underworld, the supersensible is seen in the sensible, and the Future becomes transparent.

Accordingly Circe foretells, and Ulysses foreknows; the two are counterparts. Then he simply goes through what has been predicted, he fills up the outline with the deed.

This is the essential fact of the Book, which is organized by it into two portions, namely the prophecy and the fulfillment; Circe has one part, Ulysses the other. Moreover each part exhibits the same general movement, which has three phases with the same names: the Sirens, the Plangctae on the one hand with Scylla and Charybdis on the other, and the Oxen of the Sun.

I.

As soon as Ulysses, after coming back from Hades, had performed the last rites over the corpse of Elpenor, Circe appears and makes a striking address: “O ye audacious, who still living have gone down to the house of Hades ye twice-dead, while others die but once.” Such is one side of Circe, now rises the other: “But come, eat food, drink wine the whole day;” let us have a Greek festival ere new labors begin. Then Circe holds a private conference with Ulysses, she asked each thing “about the journey to Hades,” which, it seems, she must know ere she can foretell the remaining part.

One cannot help feeling in this passage that the poet hints that these prophecies of Circe have some connection with what Ulysses imparts to her concerning Hades. Indeed she repeats what Tiresias had already foretold in reference to the Oxen of the Sun a matter which she probably heard from Ulysses. Cannot the other two adventures be derived in a general way from the experiences of the Underworld? The Past seems here to furnish the groundwork for the predictions of the Future, and Circe, knowing what has been in the pure forms of the supersensible, becomes the voice of what is to be.

1. First come the Sirens, whom Ulysses will have to meet again, as he has often met them before. Indeed Circe herself was once a Siren, a charmer through the senses. The present Sirens are singers, and entice to destruction through the sense of hearing, inasmuch as “heaps of bones lie about them,” evidently the skeletons of persons who have perished through their seductive song. Pass them the man must; what is to be done? He will have somehow to guard against his sensuous nature and keep it from destroying itself. Yet on the other hand he must enjoy, which is his right in this world of sensations; each good music must be heard. So Circe tells of the scheme of putting wax into his companions’ ears, while he is bound to the mast. Already Tiresias warned Ulysses in the Underworld to hold his appetite in check and that of his companions, if he wished to return home. This warning Circe now repeats, indeed she repeats in a new mythical form her own experience, for she, the Siren, has also been met by Ulysses and mastered. Yet these later charmers seem to have been more dangerous. When they are passed, a new peril rises of necessity.

2. Next we behold an image, or rather two sets of images, of the grand dualism of existence. That escape from the Sirens is really no solution of the problem, it is external and leaves the man still unfree, still subject to his senses. There must be somehow an inner control through the understanding, an intellectual subordination. But just here trouble springs up again. The mind has two sides to it, and is certain to fall into self-opposition. Two are the ways after parting from the Sirens, says Circe: “I shall tell thee of both.”

One way is by the Plangctae (rocks which clasp together); here no bird can fly through without getting caught, even the doves of Zeus pay the penalty. “No ship of men, having gone thither, has ever escaped” except the God-directed Argo: surely a sufficient warning. Then the second way also leads to two rocks, but of a different kind; at their bases in the sea are found Scylla, the monstrous sea-bitch, on one side, and Charybdis, the yawning maelstrom, on the other; between them Ulysses must pass with his ship and companions.

It is manifest that here are two alternatives, one after the other; the first is that of the Plangctae, the Claspers, which mean Death, unless they be avoided, yet this avoidance does not always mean Life. We can trace the connection with the Sirens: the absolute resignation to the senses is license, is destruction; we may say the same thing of the opposite, the absolute suppression of man’s sensuous being is simply his dissolution. Hence the extremes appear; the moral and the immoral extremes land us in the same place; they are the two mighty rocks which may smite together and crush the poor mortal who happens to get in between the closing surfaces. If we understand the image, it holds true of excess on either side; excessive indulgence is overwhelmed by its opposite, so is excessive abstinence; they co-operate, like two valves, for the destruction of the one-sided extremist. Truly Greek is the thought, for the Greek maxim above all others was moderation, no over-doing. Such then are the Plangctae, which Ulysses must avoid wholly, if he wishes to escape. Still, even the danger is by no means over.

There is the second way which introduces a new alternative; the path of moderation has its difficulty, it too forks and produces perplexity and peril to the voyager. Here is the point where Scylla and Charybdis appear, a new set of extremes, between which the mean is to be sought, then the passage can be made. Yet even thus it costs, Ulysses will lose six of his companions; the penalty has to be paid, just the penalty of moderation. Es raecht sich alles auf Erden. Two sets of extremes always; if you shun one set and take the middle path, just this act of shunning produces a second set; cut the magnet in twain with its two poles, then each part will at once have two poles of its own. Such is indeed the very dialectic of life, the dualism of existence, which the heroic voyager is to overcome with suffering, with danger, with many penalties.

Fault has often been found with this duplication of the alternative, but when rightly seen into, it will show itself as the central fact of the entire description. It casts an image of the never-ceasing differentiation both in the mind and in the world; it hints the recurring contradiction in all thought and in all conduct, always to be solved, yet never quite solved. What else indeed has man to do? To master the contradiction gives him life, movement, energy, and it must be mastered every day. The old poet is going to the bottom of the matter. The above mentioned repetition of the alternative has its correspondence with the repetition which we have seen to be the fundamental form into which the whole Book is cast.

Plainly the Double Alternative here mythically set forth, springs out of the conflict with the Sirens, and is a deepening of the same to the very bottom. Indulgence kills, abstinence kills, in their excess; and the middle path bifurcates into two new extremes with their problem. Prophetic Circe can tell all this, for does it not lie just in the domain of her experience, which has also been twofold? Pure forms of spirit, wholly non-natural, are these figures representing the Double Alternative, created by the Imagination to express Thought.

3. The final warning of Circe is mainly a repetition of what Tiresias had told Ulysses already in the Underworld; from the latter she heard it and puts it here into its place. Beware of slaying the cattle of the Sun, oxen and sheep in two flocks, over which two bright nymphs keep guard. There can scarcely be a doubt concerning the physical basis of this myth. The seven herds of oxen, fifty to the herd, suggest the number of days in the lunar year (really 354); the seven herds of sheep suggest the corresponding nights. Lampelia (the Moon or Lamp of Night) is the keeper of the one; Phaethusa (the Radiant one) is the keeper of the other namely the Sun as the day-bringer. Seldom has the old Aryan form of the myth been so well preserved; the whole reads like a transcript out of the Védas.

Still stronger than the physical side is the spiritual suggestion. The slaughter of these cattle of the Sun points to the supreme act of negation in the intellectual man, to the sin against light. Ulysses and his companions now know the way to reach home, having had the grand experience with the Sirens and then with the Double Alternative; moreover the leader has heard the warning twice. If they now do wrong, it will be a wrong against the Sun, against Intelligence itself.

A certain critic finds fault with Circe because she repeats the warning of Tiresias, and he holds that some botcher or editor, not Homer, transferred the passage from one place to the other. Yet this repetition is not only an organic necessity of the poem, but gives an insight into the character of Circe: she cannot foresee of herself the great intellectual transgression, but Tiresias can; the Sirens and the Double Alternative, however, lie within her own experience. So she copies where she cannot originate, and in this way she is decidedly distinguished from Tiresias, though both are prophetic.

Such is the outlook upon the Future given by Circe, in the way of warning, whereby the warned know what is coming. In the three adventures we feel a certain connection, in fact an unfolding of one out of the other, beginning with the primary conflict of the Senses, which soon rises into the Understanding, and finally ends in a revolt against Reason itself, the source of Light. They have the character of typical forms, derived from the Past, yet they are certain to recur again, and hence can be foretold.

II.

We now have reached the second portion of the Book, which is the fulfillment of the prophecies of the first portion; moreover we see how the forewarnings are heeded. Ulysses and his companions enter their vessel and start once more upon the sea, leaving the island of Circe, who sends them a favorable wind. We note also that Ulysses always repeats the warning to his companions, and tells to what they are coming next; they are to share in his knowledge. Three times he does this, just before each incident, and thus prepares them, though he does not tell everything. The experience with the Bag of Winds has taught him much; his companions through ignorance of its nature opened it and the fatality followed. So he received the penalty of not sharing his knowledge with his fellows; now he avoids that mistake, for his conduct at present shows that he regards his failure to impart his information as a mistake. He was the cause of the ignorance of his companions, which was brought home to him by their deed. Now he tells them, still he will not be able to save them; the fault is theirs when they transgress, and they will receive the penalty.

1. In accord with the plan already foretold, the ship approaches the island of the Sirens, Ulysses fills the ears of his men with wax and enjoys the song, being tied firmly to the mast. It is evident that he cannot control himself from within, he wishes to be loosed, but is only fastened the more tightly by his deafened associates. Foreseeing his own weakness he guards against it, yet brings out the more strongly his lack of self-mastery. He gives up his freedom in order not to perish through enjoyment. Herein we find suggestive hints concerning the natural man; he must be governed from without, till he become self-governable. Truly this is the first stage both in the individual and in history, and Ulysses is the typical personality representing both.

The song of the Sirens is given, which we did not hear in the previous prophetic portion. We may note in it touches of flattery, of enticement, of boundless promises, even of wisdom for the wise man. Then that favorite theme, the Trojan War, they claim to know, “and all that has ever happened upon the foodful earth.” Such are the gorgeous promises to the man thirsty for knowledge; but mark in their meadow the bones and decaying bodies of dead men. Evidently their sweet song, promising all, lures only to destroy. Their power, however, lasts but for the moment, while the senses are tingled; when the fit is over, Ulysses is set free and he makes no attempt to return to them. Indeed another problem is upon him; he sees “a great wave and mist,” to which is added a loud sound of rushing waters. Again he exhorts his companions and tells them all that he dares about the approaching dangers.

2. Now we are to witness a practical dealing with the Double Alternative, which was theoretically set forth in the previous portion. But the first Alternative, those bi-valvular rocks called Plangctae, which clasped the sea-faring man between their valves and crushed him to death, is wholly avoided, is not even mentioned in the present passage, though it is possibly implied in one place. At any rate the grand stress is laid upon the second Alternative, Scylla and Charybdis, between which the ship is to pass.

Here again Ulysses shows his limitation. In spite of Circe’s warning, he puts on armor, takes two spears, and goes on deck, like a Homeric hero, to fight Scylla. He tries to solve his problem externally, as he did in the case of the Sirens. In vain; he could not see his foe anywhere, and his eyes grew weary, peering about at the mist-like rocks.

Not thus was Scylla to be met, a monster not of mortal mould, hardly attainable by the senses. Still she was present somehow, and made herself valid. The whirling waters roared and seethed, all were intent upon the maelstrom, Charybdis, the other side; “we looked at her, fearing destruction,” and destruction came just from the direction in which they were not looking. Scylla, watched, remains invisible; unwatched, she appears and snaps up six companions; external weapons can effect nothing against her. Still Ulysses gets through, scotched somewhat; he has failed to see both sides at one and the same time; mind, intelligence alone can rise out of the particular thing of the senses, and grasp the two things in opposition. As we read the story here, it suggests the man, the life-faring man, who is so drawn to one part that he neglects the counterpart, which has equal validity and soon makes itself felt by the penalty. Not the Alternative, then, Scylla or Charybdis, but the combined Scylla and Charybdis is the word of mastery. The two kept in separation destroy, the two held in unity are conquerable. Under all difference of Nature lies the Thought’s oneness, which is the true synthesis of every Scylla and Charybdis. Such is the experience of Ulysses now; the Sirens, the creatures of the senses, may be thwarted by a species of external force; but not the present monsters can be so treated. The dualism exists doubtless, and we can be caught in it, but the function of mind is to overspan it, and so transform all difference, discord, diabolism into unity, harmony, deity.

Thus Ulysses disobeys Circe’s command not to attempt to fight Scylla with weapons; the reason of her injunction becomes plain. Not a sensuous thing to be slain is Scylla, in spite of her animal figure; the poet hints that she is to be encountered by mind, which must here see both sides at once and so assert its supremacy over both. To be intent upon the one and disregard the other that is the grand human danger. Hence the thought of Scylla and Charybdis has passed into the literature of the world, nay into the proverbs of the people, to express the peril of one-sidedness, as well as the inherent dualism in all conduct. Moreover the golden mean is suggested, that principle of action so familiar in later Greek philosophy. Deeper than this golden mean, however, runs the idea here; the dialectic of existence, the twofoldness which must be made one, the higher synthesis over all analysis are dimly intimated in the marvelous tale.

3. Having escaped through the two rocks, Ulysses and his companions come to “the flawless island of the Sun,” the all-seeing luminary of Heaven. It is the total light beholding the totality. Is it not manifest that we have passed out of dualism into unity, out of strife into harmony? The island is represented as pastoral, peaceful, idyllic, with its herds reposing in sunlight; certainly a decided contrast to the noise and struggle in the region of Scylla and Charybdis. Or we may give the matter a psychological turn and say: Such is the transition from the Understanding with its finitude to Reason with its universality, to the all-seeing light within. Ulysses, having transcended the limit he showed in his last experience, has gone forward to the clear sunlit realm which illumines all limitations.

But just at this point danger arises. On the island are pasturing herds of oxen and sheep sacred to the Sun, things of light consecrated to light. The temptation will be to use them for the gratification of appetite, perhaps under some strong stress. Already both Tiresias and Circe have given the warning, which Ulysses now repeats to his companions and even exacts an oath from them not to harm the holy flocks. But hunger pinches, Ulysses again goes to sleep at the wrong moment, and the oxen of the Sun are slain by his men. It is true that the test is a hard one, death by starvation is impending, and they yield, not only violating their oaths but their light. Then they defiantly repeated their deed, “for six whole days they feasted, selecting the best of the Sun’s oxen.” When Ulysses awoke, he chid them sternly, but did not, or could not, stop them. The result was, they perished.

Already we have touched upon the physical basis which underlies this tale. The symbolism we may consider somewhat more closely. The sin against light on the part of the companions is double: they knew better because they had been forewarned, they were not ignorant as when they opened the Bag of Winds. Secondly, they destroyed objects sacred to the grand luminary, they assailed the very source of light. Ulysses has shared in the act also, he too must take his part of the penalty. He is saved, for he forbade the wrong, yet he went to sleep at the critical moment. To be sure the companions were hungry; but that is just the test; if they had had plenty to eat, there would have been no real trial of their fidelity to principle.

The ancient poet, throwing deepest glances into the soul and into the world, beholds the supreme negative act of man, and seeks to clothe it in a symbol. Mind turns against mind, when the man does what he knows is wrong, and the destructive side is doubly re-inforced when he assails light itself, and knowledge slays knowledge. When a person who knows affirms in word and deed that his knowing is a lie, his light puts out a light, he destroys the Oxen of the Sun. What then? It is no wonder that the great luminary threatens “to go down to Hades and there shine among the dead,” unless the full penalty is exacted for such a deed. In fact, he is already extinguished mentally for these men, and Zeus, voicing the world-order, can only hurry them off into darkness. Very wonderful is the thought lurking in the symbolism of the old seer: intellectual negation, skepticism, denial, culminating in the negative deed, will at last drive the Sun himself out of Heaven and send him below into the Underworld. It is highly probable, however, that the negative man will be sent down there first, as is done in the present case.

After slaying the Oxen of the Sun and repeating the offense many times, Ulysses and his companions must again meet life, and accordingly they set sail upon the sea, bound for home and country. But such men have not in them the elements of the Return. Storms arise, winds blow, the helmsman is killed by the falling mast, and the ship is struck by lightning. The destructive powers of nature seem to concentrate upon these destroyers; such is the decree of Zeus, carrying out his promise to the Sun; verily the Supreme God could not well do otherwise. Ulysses alone barely saves himself upon a fragment of the mast and keel; manifestly there is a difference between him and his companions, who disobeyed his order. The text says that “the companions feasted for six days,” it would seem that he did not; still he is involved in their calamity, though not fully in their guilt. Here is, then, a distinction of importance, since upon it is based the saving of Ulysses, who is yet to have a career.

While Ulysses may not have personally participated in the guilty deed, he was not active against it, he did not apparently seem to restrain the repetitions of it, he was paralyzed in energy. It was his will which was defective, not his intellect; he did not commit the offense, but he did not stop it, and try to conciliate the wrath of the Gods by sacrifices, by what we now call repentance. Hence, while he does not perish, he is still unfinished, incomplete, with a limit to be removed. A training of the Will is to be gone through next, till it be able to do what Reason commands. A new discipline therefore is in store for the Hero after the loss of his ship and his companions.

What will this discipline be? To a degree his entire career must be worked over again from the beginning. Upon his fragment of wood he floats back to Scylla and Charybdis; he falls into the old dualism in one of its phases, for he cannot stay upon the Island of the Sun, the place of unity and rest and light. Indeed have we not just seen him in the fierce conflict between knowing and doing, which he has not been able to unify in the last adventure? So he drops back between the grinding mill-stones of two opposites; one of these opposites, the maelstrom Charybdis, is sucking him in, but he clutches the branches of a large fig-tree overhanging the whirlpool, and holds fast till his mast and keel return to the surface of the water, upon which he escapes.

One cannot help feeling that the poet in this description has a conscious meaning underneath, it is more or less allegorical. The will of Ulysses was paralyzed in the Island of the Sun, he is helplessly carried forward on the sea, till the yawning gulf of Charybdis (Despair) threatens to swallow him, when he puts forth a mighty effort of will, represented in his clinging to the branches of the fig tree, which extends Hope to him, and thus he rescues himself. Now he rows his raft “with both his hands,” it is indeed time to exert anew his volition. Charybdis could not take him, on account of a saving germ in him still; she has to let him pass. Whither?

Naturally the next station rearward is that of the Sirens, and this in a general way is what Ulysses reaches in his relapse. He comes to the realm of the senses, for the fact is that this was the source of the great trouble in the Island of the Sun. The companions, pressed by appetite and the needs of the body, yielded up their conviction, their intelligence; they had not reached that strength of the spirit which prefers the death of the body to a surrender of the soul. Ulysses at last acquiesced, the problem was too great for him and so he also is cast out of the Island of the Sun back into the region of the senses. But it is a new region of the senses, not that of the Sirens, not that of Circe, both of which he has transcended by an effort of will-power; it is the realm of Calypso, the Concealer, which has been reached through the collapse of the will after the sin against light. There is unquestionably an affinity between Circe, the Sirens, and Calypso, yet there is also such a difference between them that the poet has assigned to them distinct domains, It is plain, too, that Ulysses in his present paralysis will remain long with Calypso, not at once will he recover his power after such a negation. He is hidden, as it were, in her Dark Island Ogygia after that undoing of light; he passes from the sun-world of Reason to its opposite. Calypso, therefore, is reached through the grand Relapse, not through the progressive movement, which we have seen him going through hitherto.

Still Ulysses has in him the germ of betterment, of salvation. He longs to reach home and country, to return to his institutional world; that spark of aspiration has a saving power; it will not be extinguished even in the sensuous delights of Calypso’s bower.

Observations. In looking back at the Twelfth Book and thinking it over as a Whole, the reader will always feel that he has not fully sounded its depths. It has not exercised so great an influence upon mankind as the Eleventh Book, but it is probably profounder. It lures specially the thinker and the psychologist, it seems not only to set forth thought but the thought of thought. Very difficult is the poetic problem in such a case, the imaginative form really is driven to its utmost limit in order to express the content.

I. The first thing to be fully grasped and thoroughly studied is the structure of the Book. For structure is the primordial fact of any work, and especially of any great work, structure has always its own meaning and far-reaching suggestiveness, and it points directly to what the Book signifies, being its inner vital organism. In the Twelfth Book we shall ponder a little the three essential facts of its structure.

(1) There is the twofold division of the Book, while the other Books of Fableland have distinctly a threefold division. Herewith is coupled the duplication of its content; the second part repeats what is contained in the first part; or the first part tells in advance what is to be done in the second part. Thus the structure images dualism: Thought and Action, Word and Deed, Idea and Reality, Prophecy and Fulfillment. Yet it also hints the oneness in the dualism.

(2) The next point in structure is the threefold subdivision of each of the two parts. That is, now the structural principle falls back into that of the preceding Books of Fableland. Each part has its three main adventures with their respective environments and shapes, quite as each Book hitherto has had. What does this suggest to the reader this duplication of the threefold form of the Book?

(3) Finally comes the very peculiar structure of the second adventure, which we have above called the Double Alternative. The dualism of the Book we may say, is now doubled, and transformed into the middle one of the three grand trials or exploits which the Hero has to pass through. The monster Scylla is here to be noted, with its six necks and heads, three on each side of the body, wherein again the triple is duplicated, though the body is certainly one. It was this monster which did most harm to Ulysses, snapping up six of his companions in the passage.

Such are the main points in the structure of the present Book, assuredly as great a marvel as anything recorded in the same, when it is once fully beheld. That it is intimately connected with the thought of the Book, is indeed the very form and mould thereof, is felt by every careful reader. But what is this thought? Here the difference begins, and the conflict of opinion ranges over and into fields diverse and far apart.

II. It may be said that the interpretations suggested by these three adventures with the Sirens, with Scylla and Charybdis, and with the Oxen of the Sun belong to two extremes; those of Nature and of Mind. Readers and commentators of different character and training will differ; one set will lean to the physical view, the other to the spiritual. It is our opinion that both views can find justification in the poem. We may first look at the physical interpretation.

All these monsters have been supposed to represent perils of navigation, especially in the Italian seas, which were frequented by the early Greek navigator. They have also been located geographically, to be sure in a variety of places. The Sirens dwelt on three dangerous rocks near the island of Capraea, according to ancient authorities; or they were found on the promontory between Paestum and Elea, or even down at Cape Pelorum in Sicily. Why should they not be indeed everywhere! Then they have been supposed to personify the secret dangers of a calm sea, and their song is the music of splashing waters. Undoubtedly a physical substrate must be granted in the case of the Sirens, and in the Mythus generally; still they are truly everywhere, not only in the Italian Sea, but also in the sea of life, and they appear not only to the professional sailor but to every human navigator. Are literal rocks passed by putting wax into the ears of the crew and by tying the captain to the mast? Surely some other peril is suggested.

In the second adventure, the Plangctae (the Claspers, not the Wanderers, as some translations give it), have been located at the Lipari Islands in the Sicilian Sea, where there is strong volcanic action. The well-known Symplegades of the Argonautic expedition which were placed at the entrance of the Euxine, were probably patterned after this Homeric conception, and transferred to the North-east. The two terrors, Scylla and Charybdis, lie in the straits of Messina, according to the accepted view, the former on the Italian side, the latter on the Sicilian. A town named Scilla still exists in those regions, and an eddy in the straits of Messina is still called Charilla (from Charybdis doubtless.) Etymologically Scylla means a bitch, Charybdis is allied with Chaos (from a Greek word meaning to yawn). Later legend gave to Scylla a great variety of forms, which were reproduced in art and poetry. One story represents her as having been a beautiful maiden who was loved by Glaucus, and who was turned into her present monstrous shape by Circe through jealousy, for the enchantress loved Glaucus too. The sucking-in of the waters by Charybdis, and her disgorging of them has been connected with the ebb and flow of the tides. It may also be added that the Plangctae (in the sense of wandering or floating islands) have been supposed to refer to icebergs, some report of which may have reached the Homeric world through the Phoenician sailor, who must have passed outside of the straits of Gibraltar, into the Atlantic.

III. Such are some of the physical explanations which this Book has suggested; we may now consider it in relation to certain mental phenomena. Already we have unfolded the ethical meaning which especially lies in these shapes, and the Hero’s struggle with them. But they have another and deeper suggestion; they adumbrate the nature of mind itself and the process of thinking; both in form and content the whole Book strangely points to psychology, as if the poet, having created these wonders of Fableland, were going to create his own creative act and present it in an image.

(1) The division of the Book into the two parts already alluded to in which each is what the other is, in which there are both separation and identity, calls up the fundamental fact of self-consciousness, which is often expressed in the formula Ego=Ego. Mind, Ego, separates itself into two sides, yet each side is the whole and recognizes the other side as itself. This act is the condition of knowing of every kind, which always differentiates then identifies. One step more: Circe in her prophecy gave the pure form of the idea, then came its realization, so that there is suggested the primordial distinction of the mind into Intellect and Will, or the Thought and the Deed. Thus we see in this division of the Twelfth Book the exact characteristic of subject-object, and there is still further suggested the distinction between Thinking and Willing.

(2) Passing to the threefold subdivision of each of the two parts, we observe that it also calls up psychological distinctions. Three stages of the knowing mind, Senses, Understanding, Reason, may be found here, not very definitely given, still distinctly implied. The Sirens represent the Sensuous, especially in its moral aspect; the Plangctae with Scylla and Charybdis set forth a vivid image of the divisions and conflicts of the finite Understanding; the Oxen of the Sun point to the central light, that of Reason, which, when destroyed in any way, constitutes the chief human calamity.

Another curious psychological hint may be noted in the text of Homer. The Sirens, the first or implicit stage, are sometimes spoken of in the dual and sometimes in the plural; Homer would seem to imply that they are two in number, yet they always act and sing as one. That is, the dualism or separation is as yet implicit; but in the second stage (that of Scylla and Charybdis) it will become explicit with decided emphasis. Later legend made the Sirens three in number, and gave them names, and otherwise distinguished them; but this is not Homeric and indeed has lost the Homeric consciousness.

(3) The fact that the previous Books of Fableland have a threefold division only, while this threefold division is duplicated in the Twelfth Book, has also its psychological bearing in connection with the foregoing views. In the first case, the poet was not aware of his process, he yielded to the poetic act immediately; but in the second case, he is conscious, he knows his own process and prefigures it; he holds it up before himself in advance, just as Circe holds up before Ulysses his future career. Ulysses also must know in advance, hitherto he has simply followed instinct and chance, whithersoever they led. In like manner, the poet now shows himself knowing what he will do; his threefold organic movement, hitherto more or less implicit and unconscious, has become explicit and conscious, and can be prophesied. He himself thus is an example of the Ego which both casts before and forecasts itself, in other words is self-duplicated.

(4) Here, however, we must note a distinction. In all four Books of Fableland, Ulysses is the poet himself in a sense, he is singing his own adventures to the Court of Phaeacia, he is well aware of what he has passed through and to what he has come.

He is not a Demodocus chanting heroic strains of the Trojan Past; he is Ulysses telling his own spiritual experiences after the taking of Troy. It has been already unfolded -7) that he was in a negative, alienated condition; he had fallen out with and was separated from his Hellenic world, whereof this Fableland is the record. But he arrives at Phaeacia, an harmonious institutional realm, then he becomes fully conscious of his negative condition and projects it out of himself in these Tales or Songs. So all Fableland shows this consciousness in the man; but the Twelfth Book shows him conscious not only of his negative state, but of his mental process, conscious of his consciousness, we may say; he is not only Thought, but is Thought thinking Thought, or at least imaging the same; that is, Thought has itself as its own object or content. So much we are inclined to find hinted in this duplication of the movement in the Twelfth Book.

At this point we hear the cry of dissent: You make Homer too introspective, you make him a self-introverted, self-torturing nineteenth century man, whereas he is the most unreflective, unconscious of poets. Very natural is such a protest, my good reader; this sort of thing may be carried too far, and become fantastic. Still it is a great mistake to think that Homer never takes a glance at his own mind and its workings. He must have looked within in order to see his world; where else was it to be found in any such completeness? He has built it, and he must have taken some interest in the architect and in his processes. Homer himself is a greater wonder than any wonder he has created, and he probably knew it.

It is by no means the purpose to affirm in the preceding remarks that Homer intended to make an allegorical psychology. He simply had a mind, and the essence of mind is to be able to look at mind. So Homer saw himself and his own process, and set it forth in an imaginative form. Very similar is the plan of Shakespeare in the Tempest. Prospero is the poet, not only as poet, but the poet making his drama in the drama. There is also a significant duplication both of structure and character: Prospero is at one time magician, that is, poet, and commands the elements and the spirits, especially Ariel; at another time he assumes his ordinary relations as parent and as king, and is as limited as other mortals. Shakespeare made many dramas, then he saw himself making dramas, then he put into a drama himself making dramas. That is, he in the end (Tempest is usually held to be the last of Shakespeare’s plays) took up his own poetic process into a poem, and thus completed the arch of his great career.

So much for the psychological aspect of these Books of Fableland. It must be stated again that abstract terms, so necessary for an exact science of mind, had not been elaborated to any extent in Homer’s day. Reflective language is a later product of Greek spirit. Still the philosopher is anticipated and prophesied in the poet, and it certainly cannot be amiss to trace vague premonitions and promises of the coming Plato and Aristotle in the old poet. Homer has in him the germ of the whole Greek world, and for that matter, much of the modern world also; the best commentary upon him is the 2500 years since his time.

IV. The slaying of the Oxen of the Sun has also its searching suggestiveness, and is found in one form or other in the World’s greatest Books. Mind destroying mind may be shown as light extinguishing its own luminary; some such hint lies in the symbolism both of the act and its punishment. It is indeed the culminating point of negation spirit denying spirit. This is the real sin against the Holy Spirit, unpardonable because repentance, all possibility of pardon is denied by the doer of the deed. As I understand him, this is the essence of the sin of Dante against Beatrice, with which she reproaches him in the last part of the Purgatorio. Suggestions of the same kind of guilt may be found in the characters of Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Banquo, in whose cases the violation brings on a tragic fate; indeed every true tragedy has some touches of the light-denying or light-defying deed and its penalty. Above all rises in this respect the Faust of Goethe, the theme of which is explicitly intelligence denying intelligence, whereby the human mind becomes utterly negative, begets the Devil, and enters into compact with him for a life of indulgence. While such a state lasts, repentance is impossible.

Some such intimation ancient Homer must have had, and shadowed it forth in this strange symbolic deed. Ulysses having disregarded all he had learned by his long and bitter experience, leaving unheeded the warnings and prophecies of the Supersensible and the Sensible World (Tiresias and Circe), drops back into the sphere of Calypso, and has to serve the senses seven years till will and aspiration lift him again. Such a servitude was not uncommon in Greek legend, Hercules is the very embodiment thereof; even a God, Apollo, Light itself, has to serve Admetus, a mortal, in expiation of undivine guilt.

An important element of structure is to be noted at this point: the poem bifurcates and the reader has to move in two directions. If he wishes to follow the development of Ulysses, (which is indispensable) he must return with the latter to Calypso’s Island and trace him through his three grand experiences Oyggia, Phaeacia, and Fableland. But if the reader wishes to continue in the action of the poem, he must now pass out of Fableland to Ithaca in the company of the Hero. (For this double movement of the Ulyssiad, see pp. 121-8.)

But before Fableland is left behind, its full sweep may be called up once more: from the Upperworld of Earth (Ninth and Tenth Books, both belong together in a general survey), which shows the negation of Greek ethical life and its conflicts, we pass to the Underworld of Hades, which on the one hand is the negation of all Greek sensible existence, and on the other hand is the revelation of the supersensible (soul, idea, world-justice); thence we come back to the Upperworld in which the idea, obtained beyond, is seen struggling with the reality in various negative phases Ulysses, knowing in advance, is shown in his attempt to realize his knowledge in the deed. Such then, is this grand threefold sweep of Fableland.

One more retrospect: let us glance back at the whole Twelve Books, this first half of the Odyssey, composed of the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad. Both are parts of one whole; father and son acquire each his special discipline for the coming deed. Both are brought to a recognition of the Divine Order, the son mainly through tradition, the father mainly through experience. Both reach beyond the sensible into the supersensible or ideal realm; Telemachus hears the story of Proteus, which teaches the essence in all appearance; Ulysses descends to Hades and there communes with pure mind without its terrestrial incumbrance, in the case of Tiresias and others. Such is the internal preparation; now they are to do the deed. The idea they possess, the next is to make it real.

Accordingly the action of the poem, with Ulysses as its center, moves next to Ithaca, the realm in which the idea is to be realized: wherewith we enter upon a new grand division of the poem.

(The reader who wishes to study the parallelism between this Twelfth Book and Prospero can consult the author’s Commentary on Shakespeare, where it treats of the Tempest. In fact, the entire play, which is also a kind of Fairy Tale, has many correspondences with Homer’s Fableland.)

ITHAKEIAD.

Such is the designation which we have concluded to give to the last twelve Books of the Odyssey, inasmuch as a name is needed for this portion corresponding to the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad. The scene is laid wholly in Ithaca, the characters of the poem are all brought together, and the main conflict takes place. It is the country which is to be cleansed of violence and guilt; that Divine Order which father and son have learned about, each in his own way, they must now make real in the world, especially in their own land. Manifestly Ithaca represents the realm of wrong, of hostility to the social system of man; the Suitors defy Law, Family, State, Gods.

But Ulysses, before he can reform his country, has had to reform himself. When he attacked the Ciconians, he was as negative to institutional order as the Suitors themselves; he was not the man to destroy them at that time, he was too like them to undo their work. Hence the long discipline in Fableland, which has been fully explained in the preceding comments; hence too he had to see Phaeacia, the ideal institutional life realized in Family and State, as well as in Industry and the Fine Arts. Let the reader note that he passes, not from Fableland, but from Phaeacia, to Ithaca; having that Phaeacian Idea in his soul, he can transform his own country. Thus he will truly save his companions, namely, the people, whom before he lost in Fableland.

Telemachus also in his training has seen much and brought back an ideal with him. He has heard the wise man Nestor and witnessed the religious life of Hellas in its highest manifestation. Pylos, Nestor’s kingdom, is almost a Greek theocracy; the Gods appear visible at the feasts and hold communion with the people. Likewise at Sparta Telemachus saw a realm of peace and concord, in striking contrast with his own Ithaca; but chiefly he heard the Marvelous Tale of Proteus, after which he was eager to return home at once. Thus he too has had his experience of a social order, as well as his ideal instruction. Previous to his journey he had shown a tendency to despair, and to a denial of the Gods on account of the disorders of the Suitors in his house. Unquestionably he comes back to Ithaca with renewed courage and aspiration, and with an ideal in his soul, which makes him a meet companion for his father.

The third character is the swineherd Eumaeus who is the great addition in this portion of the Odyssey. He too has had his discipline, which is to be recounted here; he has been stolen as a child and sold into slavery; still the most terrible calamities to himself and his master and to the House of Ulysses, have not shaken his fealty to the Gods. Thus in common with Telemachus and Ulysses he has faith in the Divine Order, and can cooperate with them in realizing the same in Ithaca. Very different has been his discipline from that of the other two, both of whom became negative and had to be sent away from home for training, but Eumaeus has remained in his hut and never swerved in his fidelity to his sovereigns above and below, though he does not understand the providential reason for so much wrong and suffering.

To these three men we are to add the woman, Penelope, who has her part, perhaps the most difficult in this difficult business. She cannot resort to violence, she must use her feminine weapon, tact, with a degree of skill which makes her an example for all time. Indeed not a few of her sex declare that she has overdone the matter, and that her acts are morally questionable. But there can be no doubt that it is the part of tact to find fault with tact, and that woman will always decry woman’s skill in artifice, without refraining from its employment altogether; indeed just that is a part of the artifice.

For this and similar reasons the moral bearings of this portion of the Odyssey have always aroused discussion. In general, the question comes up: What constitutes a lie? Is the disguise of Ulysses justifiable? Is the subtlety of Penelope morally reprehensible? The old dispute as to conduct rises in full intensity: Does the end justify the means? Two parties are sure to appear with views just opposite; the one excuses, the other condemns, often with no little asperity. The Odyssey has been denounced even as an immoral Book and both its hero and heroine have been subjected to a burning ordeal of literary damnation.

The poet has, however, his wrongful set, the Suitors, about whose character there is no disagreement. They are the negation of that Divine Order which is to be restored by those who believe in it the three men who come together at the hut of the swineherd, and who have been trained by the time and circumstances just to this end. Ulysses has had to pass through his negative period and overcome the same within; now he is prepared to meet the Suitors and to destroy them without the negative recoil which came upon him after destroying the city of Troy. He can do a necessary deed of violence without becoming violent and destructive himself; he will not now re-enact the Ciconian affair.

Let us look into the inner movement of the matter here indicated. The slaughter of the Suitors by Ulysses was undoubtedly a negative act, yet the Suitors also were negative in conduct, wholly so; thus violence is met and undone by violence, or negation negates negation. What is the outcome? Manifestly a double result is possible: if a negative cancels a negative, there may remain still negation, or there may be a positive result. Ulysses has passed through the first of these stages by his discipline already recorded, after which he is master of the negative; the destruction of the Suitors will not now make him destructive, as did the destruction of Troy. It will be seen, therefore, that the poem has a positive outcome; after some trouble, Ulysses will renovate the country, will restore Family and State, in fine the whole Order which had been upset by the Suitors.

With the transition from Fableland occurs a marked change in the style of the poem. In the previous portions we have already noted the Marvelous Tale of Fairyland, the Heroic Tale of Troy, the Idyllic Épopée of the Present, the latter especially in Phaeacia. But in these last twelve Books we read a story of actual social life, a story which almost strikes into the domain of the modern Novel. Still fabulous adventures will be interwoven now more in the form of the novelette with Phoenician and Egyptian backgrounds. Also a tone of humanity, even of sentiment, makes itself felt in various places. A new situation brings with it a new style, yet Homeric still. Hereafter these points will be more fully noticed.

We have already indicated the fact that Pallas starts to organize the Odyssey in Book First. Two portions she designates, the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad, which really belong together, showing the spiritual palingenesis, or internal renovation of son and father ere they proceed to the renovation of their country. Such in general are the first twelve Books, showing the two masters of destiny, the two positive men with their idea; the second twelve Books show them realizing their idea, and doing the great deed for which they have been prepared.

This second half of the Odyssey falls into two divisions. The first is located at the hut of the swineherd and brings the three men together, whose general character has been already indicated; they have been trained by life to a living realization of the Divine Order. This division consists of four Books (XIII-XVI). The second division transfers the scene from country to town, from hut to palace. Ulysses in disguise will witness personally the full course of the wrong of the suitors, against his property, his family, his state, and against the Gods. Then he becomes the minister of the world-justice which he has already seen in Hades. Finally he harmonizes the distracted institutional life of his country and the poem ends. This second division embraces the last eight Books, and has its own special stages in its movement.

Survey of Books Thirteenth to Sixteenth. In this portion we are to witness the leading transition of the poem, that of Ulysses and Telemachus to Ithaca, the transition from the long and elaborate preparation for the act to the act itself, which is the supreme one of man, that of asserting and realizing the Divine Order. In these four Books is the gathering of the chosen forces into one spot and into one purpose which forces have been hitherto separately developed; here it is that we behold the practical preliminary movement for destroying the Suitors. Hence arises the feeling which most readers express on a sympathetic perusal, that these four Books of the Ithakeiad, which is the name already given to the present division of the Odyssey, have enough in common to cause them to be grouped together in an organic survey of the poem. They have, first of all, unity of locality the hut of the swineherd to which, round which, and from which their incidents move. To be sure there is a glance at the enemy, the Suitors, who are at a different point; but even this glance serves to emphasize the setting common to these four Books, which is the abode of Eumaeus. Very humble it is, but it stands in every way as the contrast to the palace.

This unity of place naturally suggests unity of action as to what is going on in that place. All the forces in opposition to the Suitors are secretly gathering there and organizing. It is the center of attraction which is drawing out of the universe every atom of congenial energy for punishing the transgressors. It has brought Ulysses from Phaeacia, Telemachus from Sparta, and possesses already the faithful Eumaeus in its own right. This is the fortress, and these are the three men who make the attacking army. They are now getting themselves together. All three have passed through a grand discipline just for the present end, which is to be the great deed of deliverance.

Moreover the place has a character of its own, a peculiar atmosphere in sympathy with its purpose. Its strength we feel, its adamantine fidelity to the House of Ulysses. It is a secluded spot in contrast to the palace; its occupant is a slave in contrast to the kings who are suitors; his business is to be the companion of swine in contrast to the regal entertainment at court. The highest and the humblest of the social order are here placed side by side; with what result? The unswerving rock of loyalty is the hut and the heart of the swineherd; upon it as the foundation the shattered institutional world of Ithaca is to be rebuilt. The lowest class of society is, after all, the basis of the edifice; if it remain sound, then the superstructure can be erected again after the fiery purification. But if it be utterly rotten, what then? Such, however, is not the case in Ithaca, as long as there exists a man like the swineherd. From his rock, then, and, still more, from his spirit, is to issue the energy which is to transform that perverted land of Ithaca.

Still, here too Ulysses is the pivot, the central character; the hero both in thought and action, for whom Eumaeus furnishes a spatial and spiritual environment. The hut of the swineherd is but a phase, one landing-place in the career of Ulysses. An idyllic spot and forever beautiful; who but Homer has ever gotten so much poetry out of a pig-sty? We witness the transfiguration of what is the very lowest of human existence into what is the very highest, veritably the Godlike on earth.

Ulysses, however, has to remain in disguise even to his most faithful servant; not out of distrust we must think, but out of prudence. Knowing his master, the swineherd would be a different person in the presence of the Suitors; he has an open, sincere, transparent heart, and he would probably let the secret be seen which lay therein. The gift of disguise he possesses not, as Ulysses has clearly observed in his conversation; in this respect he is the contrast to the Hero himself. But Telemachus will get the secret, for he has craft, is the true son of his father; has he not just shown the paternal trait in cunningly thwarting the Suitors who are lying in wait for him, by the help of Pallas, of course?

In these four Books, accordingly, we behold one stage of the great preparation for the deed which is the culmination of the poem. Not now the disciplinary, but the practical preparation it is, when one is ready and resolved internally, and is seeking the method and means. Both Ulysses and Telemachus have had their training; now it must pass into action.

We behold, first, Ulysses making the transition from Phaeacia to Ithaca, and thence to the fortress of loyalty, from which the movement is to be made. Secondly we see all the instruments getting together, and being prepared for the work, particularly the three heroes of the attack. Finally we observe Ulysses inquiring and learning all about the situation in Ithaca; he obtains everything that information at second hand can give. But hearsay is not enough; he must see at first hand. Thus we pass to the palace, and out of the first series of four Books, which we are next to consider separately.