Homer's Odyssey / A Commentary

by Denton Jaques Snider

This is the being with whom Ulysses is now to engage in conflict, which becomes highly dramatic. The conquest of the man of Nature by the man of Intelligence—such is the theme through its various fluctuations. This man of Nature, however, we are always to consider from his negative side, as hostile to a civilized order; so the poet has carefully represented him. He is to be put down; yet even Polyphemus has his right, he is brought to a gleam of self-knowledge, and Ulysses has to pay the penalty of his deed, which has also its curse. A very deep current runs through the poem in this part, which we shall divide into five different scenes, hoping thus to make its movement and thought somewhat more distinct.

1. Ulysses, taking twelve of his bravest companions from his ship, not forgetting a goatskin of wonderful wine, for he had a presentiment that he would meet a huge wild man, who is wont to succumb readily to civilized drink, enters the cave while Polyphemus is absent. A vivid picture of that primitive dairy with its cheese, milk, curds; the men fell to and helped themselves, as was natural. Then the companions wished to depart at once, taking what quantity of cheese they could carry, but Ulysses refused, he must "see the Cyclops and test his hospitality." Just the opposite was the case in the land of the Ciconians; there Ulysses wished to flee but his companions would not. Why this difference? He must know Polyphemus, must see the giant and subordinate him; that is just his supreme necessity now, he really can no more run away from the monster than from himself. But that attack on the Ciconians was an unjust, violent deed of which the penalty was sure to follow; this Ulysses knew and sought to escape. In the present case, however, no wrong has been done as yet, and he must meet and solve his problem, while his weaker companions would shun the trial.

Polyphemus returns with his herds in due time, and closes the mouth of the cave with a huge rock, "which not two and twenty wains could move from the threshold." Soon by the light of his fire he sees the lurking strangers and asks, "Who are you?" Ulysses replies, stating that they are returning from Troy, but have been driven out of their way by adverse winds; then he makes his human and religious appeal: We come as suppliants, receive us; "revere the Gods," specially Zeus the protector of suppliants. But the Cyclops scoffs at Zeus and the rest of the Gods: "we are their betters." Thus is witnessed in the monster the denial of the Greek religion, and an atheistic turn of mind.

Next follows in logical sequence his supreme negative act, he is a man-eater. "He seized two of my companions and hurled them against the ground as if they were dogs, then he devoured them piecemeal, swallowing all—entrails and flesh and marrowy bones." Surely Ulysses is getting some experience on the line of that Trojan deed.

Now we catch the entire sweep of this particular Cyclops. He has shown himself as the representative of three mighty negations: of civilized life, of religious life, and of human life. He destroys man, feeds on him; so negation, war, revolution, must do in the end. The horrid phantasm is the true image of the destroyer of the race. Nor does he belong to the old Greek world and to the Trojan time only; he is among us, and he can be translated into modern terms quite familiar. Polyphemus is an anarchist, an atheist, and a cannibal; the ancient poet wraps the three together in one mighty monstrosity. In the morning the Cyclops devoured two more companions for his breakfast, then drove his flocks afield, leaving the rest of the strangers shut up in the cave with the big stone in the opening.

During the day the "man of many shifts" has an opportunity for reflection in that dark recess. He dares not kill the giant outright, "with my sharp sword stubbing him where the midriff holds the liver," for how could they then get out? No, the man of nature must be saved and utilized; with all his might he is to be overborne by the man of intelligence, and made to remove the big stone.

2. The plan of Ulysses with its successful execution is the subject of the next phase of the conflict. By this plan three things must be done in order to counteract the giant and to negative his power. He must be deprived of physical vision, which becomes the more easily possible from the fact that he has but one eye; if he had two eyes like the ordinary man, he could still see though one be put out. That this purpose be accomplished, he must somehow be shorn of his physical strength; finally any resistance which might come from the rest of the Cyclops outside must be rendered nugatory. Such are the three chief points of the impending problem, which Ulysses has to meet and does meet with astonishing skill and foresight; the Cyclops is blinded, is made helpless by drink, and is befooled by a pun.

Ulysses burns out the eye of the monster with the charred end of a stick of olive wood, which he prepares beforehand; huge Round-eye (the meaning of the word Cyclops) has no eye now. Ulysses by means of that miraculous wine, product of culture, makes the giant drunk, who thus loses his physical superiority. The Ithacan evidently knew, as well as the American, the power of fire-water over the wild man; that the wine had some strength, is shown by the fact that one cup of it had to be diluted with twenty measures of water, when taken by ordinary mortals. Not without significance does the exhilarated Cyclops laud this civilized wine in contrast to that of the wild grapes of his own land.

But the third scheme of Ulysses is the most subtle of all, and touches the heart of the whole problem, though it be merely a pun. He calls himself Nobody to Polyphemus, who, without sight or insight, is the victim of a word. For a complete man must have not only a double sight from his eyes, but a double insight from his mind, seeing before and after in the latter case especially. The result is when the other Cyclops, roused by the cries of Polyphemus, ask him from outside the cave: What is the matter? he answers, Nobody is killing me. Whereat off they go, dropping a word or two of cold advice, or perchance of sarcastic humor.

We should, however, reach down to the essence of what appears on the surface as a mere trick of speech. It may seem far-fetched to say, but it is none the less the actual fact, that Ulysses is a Nobody, and a very active one to Polyphemus. That is, he has shown himself the negative power which overwhelms the giant, who is now himself quite reduced to a nobody by Mr. Nobody. Or, in abstract terms, Ulysses has negated the negation and has here suggested the subtle work of the process in doing so. Has he not negatived Polyphemus, who was himself a negative, so carefully and fully defined by the poet at the start?