3. Fableland comes next, really a product of self-conscious art. In it are set forth the struggles which arise between man and the civilized order. Phæacia is the simple condition of peace; man is in complete harmony with himself and his institutional environment. But what if he falls out with both? That will be a new stage, represented by a new set of beings, who are to indicate not so much the conflict with nature as the conflict with spirit. The world of reality is transcended, marvelous shapes sweep into view, Polyphemus, Circe, the Sirens, even the supersensible realm of Hades—all of which, however, must await a special exposition. Still we should note that after this ideal realm of struggle and desperate enterprise comes the real world of strife, Ithaca, which is to be harmonized by the man who has passed through this Fableland, and has reached an ideal harmony in Phæacia.
II.
We soon find that Ulysses has been thrown back to Calypso's Isle from Fableland, of which in a certain sense it is the continuation. The circle which he has passed through is, therefore, the following:—
- 1. Fableland.
- 2. Ogygia.
- 3. Phæacia.
This is, then, the movement of the individual, in contrast with the previous sweep of the poem as a whole, which represents the movement of the world. Both are bound together, both pass through the same stages, though in a different order. The process of social development begins with the state of Nature, with Ogygia, unfolds into a simple institutional life, into Phæacia, which then enters into certain negative phases, such as are seen in Fableland. But the man from Troy, Ulysses, begins with the last, and is whelmed back into the first, and finally rests in the second before going to Ithaca. Let us note this personal movement in a little more detail.
1. Ulysses passes into Fableland, having wantonly done a deed of violence against civilized life and order by destroying the city of the Ciconians (Book IX), as he was returning from the Trojan War. Such is the negative element in him, which has been engendered by that war, and which now appears in various manifestations, such as his doings with Polyphemus and Circe, till his career in Fableland winds up with destroying the Oxen of the Sun. This is the extreme negative act which throws him back beyond Circe's into Calypso's realm. He assaults really his own will in this last act, he undermines his own power of recovery, he puts out his own light. Circe would have sent him forward again, leaving intact his will-power; Calypso detains him lulled in the sensuous delights of her bower. He denies his own reason; how then can he rise after a fall? Indeed what use is there of rising? So he sinks down into Ogygia, the Dark Island.
2. It is no wonder, therefore, that he remained with Calypso seven years and more, draining to the dregs the cup of that life. Still he has desire to return home, must have it, he must possess reason to deny reason. He longs for what he has not, sensuous charms cannot drown his aspiration; such is the Hell in which he has placed himself. Still even here when he has passed his probation, he must be released by a decree of the Gods, who, formerly favorable to Neptune, the divine foe of Ulysses, have now become friendly to Minerva, the Hero's protectress. Why this change in the everlasting powers? When Ulysses is ready to leave Ogygia, the Gods cannot keep him there, they have to change; the divine Order must help him escape, if it be divine. This is just what happens; Zeus, voice of the Olympian law, commands his departure, and Calypso must obey.
3. Ulysses, then, comes to Phæacia, an institutional land with social, domestic, and political life. From the grot of Calypso he passes to the home of Arete; both woman and man are in an ethical relation. He sees a world of peace and harmony, he witnesses the corrective of his own negative Trojan experience. He, having taken Phæacia into himself, has a remedy for distracted Ithaca; he has beheld an ideal to which he can adjust his own land. He was not the man to bring civil order to Ithaca just after the destruction of Troy; now he has passed through his own destructive phases, has become conscious of them, has told them to the Phæacians, which long account has in it the character of a confession. All is given in a mythical form, but it is none the less an acknowledgment of error from first to last. He is the poetical confessor of himself, and the Phæacians are contemplating the grand experience in the mirror of art.
We may now see the reason why the poet began the story of Ulysses with the stay at Calypso's Isle. Thus the poem unfolds in the order of society, starting with the state of nature, passing thence to a civilized condition, and showing finally the conflicts of the same with the negative forces which develop in its own bosom. Homer could have landed Ulysses at Phæacia, and could have made the Ulyssiad start in that sphere, placing Calypso's Book just after the account of the slaughter of the Oxen of the Sun. But what a loss would that have been! No social development would thus be suggested in the movement of the poem, and the individual Ulysses would have to pass, not from institutional Phæacia, but from savage Ogygia to the reformation of Ithaca. In this way we realize to ourselves the true instinct, or perchance the profound thought which underlies the structure of this portion of the poem.
Thus we conceive the double movement of the Ulyssiad through its three main stages, in which we feel strongly emphasized the idea of development, of a genetic process. These lands and peoples are generated by the wanderer's own spirit, though they all exist in their own right and are carefully set down in Homeric geography. Ogygia is the product of Ulysses himself, and so he goes thither to the reality. The misfortunes in these lands are the very deeds of the offenders returning upon them. As the Gods are both subjective and objective, so are these poetic places and persons; they are both in Ulysses and outside of him, they are the inner change of the individual and the outer development of the world. Each, however, fits into the other, is inseparably intertwined with the other; both together form the double movement which is the fundamental structural fact of the present division of the Odyssey.