Communication, Love, and Death in Homer and Virgil: An Introduction by Stephen Ridd

Author:Stephen Ridd [Ridd, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2017-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

6.3 Separating

Among Odysseus’s experiences in the course of the long journey home from Troy are two extended periods spent living first with one and then with a second goddess, and a short encounter with a beautiful and intelligent girl who is the daughter of a friendly, local king. Great subtlety interlaces the accounts of these three experiences of feminine company and the way in which each is brought to an end. Each is set far away from Ithaca, and together they explore many different aspects of the relationship between the sexes before Odysseus finally returns home to resume, after the long physical and emotional separation, his own married life with Penelope.13

Calypso (“The Concealer”), her cave home, and her desire to make Odysseus her husband are introduced at the start of the Odyssey, and by the time Odysseus is first seen by the reader in Odyssey 5, the sense that he is desperate to leave her and to return home has been well established (Odyssey 1.13–15, 48–59; 4.556–60; 5.82–84). Odysseus spends his nights with the goddess, but she no longer brings him any pleasure: “At night-time he slept with her, by necessity, / in her hollow cave. She wanted him but he did not want her” (Odyssey 5.154–55). He spends the days in tears, gazing out at “the barren sea.”14 When Hermes delivers Zeus’s command to Calypso that she must let Odysseus go, she responds with a shudder and with words that convey a mixture of emotions: bitterness, grudging acceptance tinged with a moment’s petulance (“let him get lost!”), and finally generosity as she promises that she will do what she can to send him safely on his way (Odyssey 5.116–44). The breaking of the tie between Odysseus and Calypso, with whom he later tells the Phaeacians that he spent seven years (Odyssey 7.259), is described in detail (Odyssey 5.149–227). First Calypso goes over to Odysseus, and this physical proximity brings with it a new willingness to see the situation from Odysseus’s point of view: “‘Poor man, please do not grieve here any more, do not let your life / waste away, for now I will send you on your way, with a good will’” (Odyssey 5.160–61).

Calypso conceals her visit from Hermes. Her words come as a shock to Odysseus, who is lost in sad thoughts, and he too reacts with a shudder. Initially he is wary of doing as she says and entrusting himself to the perils of the sea on a raft, and he insists that the goddess swear a great oath that she is not planning him any harm (Odyssey 5.171–79). This human mistrust of the word of a goddess has the paradoxical effect of bringing the two of them together at this highly charged moment: “So he spoke and Calypso, the divine goddess, smiled / and stroked him with her hand and spoke out to him” (Odyssey 5.180–81).15 There is no sense of anger or resentment here but rather a smile on Calypso’s face and a playful reprimand from her before she duly swears the oath.

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