Homer's Odyssey / A Commentary

by Denton Jaques Snider

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 Capræa, according to ancient authorities; or they were found on the promontory between Pæstum 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 Plangctæ (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 Plangctæ (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 Phœnician 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.