Homer's Odyssey / A Commentary

by Denton Jaques Snider

And here we cannot help noting an observation on Homer's poetry. It must be in the reader ere he can see it in the book. Unless he be ready for its spirit, it will not appear, certainly it will not speak. There must be a rise into the vision of Homeric poetry on the part of the reader, as there is a rise into the vision of the Goddess on the part of Ulysses. The two sides, the human and the divine, or the Terrestrial and the Olympian, must meet and commune; thus the reader, too, in perusing Homer, must become heroic and behold the Gods.

BOOK FOURTEENTH.

The Book begins with another transition in place; Ulysses passes from the sea-shore, with its haven, grot, and olive-tree up into the mountain, to the hut of Eumæus. We have quite a full description of the latter's abode; there is a lodge surrounded by a court and a wall; within this inclosure are the sties, and the droves of swine over which he is the keeper, with four assistants. Nor must we omit the fierce dogs, savage as wild beasts. Such is the new environment which Ulysses enters, and which has at its center a human being who gives character to this little world. Again we catch a clear quick glimpse of the Greek landscape in one of its phases.

The spiritual transition is, however, the main thing. Ulysses passes from Pallas, the deity of pure wisdom, to Eumæus, the humblest of mortals in his vocation. Yet this poor man too has the divine in him, and manifests it in a supreme degree, not, however, in the form of reflective wisdom, but in the form of piety, of an immediate faith in the Gods. Still this faith has its sore trial. Such is the contrast between the two men. Ulysses has brought with him the Goddess of Wisdom, whose words he has heard, and with whom he has held communion. Hardly does Eumæus know Pallas, he has not the internal gift of seeing her in her own shape. Thus both these men share in the divine, but in very different ways.

From this difference in the two men spring both the character and the matter of the Book. It is a play, a disguise; a play between Wisdom and Faith, in which the former must be in disguise to the latter, yet both have the same substance at bottom. For Faith is Faith because it cannot take the form of Intelligence, yet may have in its simple immediate form all the content of Intelligence.

Eumæus has an open single-hearted piety; he cannot play a disguise, he hates it for he has been deceived by it when assumed by lying fablers. For this reason he is not intrusted with the secret of his master's return till the last moment, he would have to dissemble, to violate his own nature, and then perhaps he would not have succeeded in his attempt. So Ulysses with a true regard for his man withholds the great secret, and has to play under cover in order to get the needful information.

Accordingly the present Book has a decided tinge of comedy. There is, on the one hand, the disguise, external and internal—in garments and in identity; on the other hand, there is the error which takes one person for another, and produces the comic situation. Thus the Book is prophetic of a great branch of Literature, and may be considered as a starting-point of Greek Comedy, yes, as one of the origins of Shakespeare. To be sure, it is not mere fun or amusement; it is the Comedy of Providence, who often is in disguise bringing his blessing. Eumæus in his piety has just that which he thinks he has not; his loyalty has brought to him just that which he most desired; his mistake is in reality no mistake, but a mere appearance which will vanish in the end.

It is true that this sport of comic disguise began in the previous Book with Pallas. But can the mortal hide himself from the deity, specially from the deity of wisdom? Hence the Goddess tears away the mask with a smile, and there follows the recognition. But at present it is the mortal who is the victim of disguise, by virtue of his limitations. Still the mortal, when he cannot see, can believe, and so transcend these same limitations. Thus it is with Eumæus, his mistake is a comic nullity.

In the hut of the swineherd, there is no domestic life, the woman is absent. This condition is specially ascribed to the present state of things in Ithaca. Eumæus, though he be a slave, could have a household, "a dwelling and ground and wife," if his old master were at home. Even now he has his own servant, bought with his own wealth. Slavery was not a hard condition in the house of Ulysses; it was domestic in the best sense probably. Indeed the slaves were often of as high birth as their masters, who in turn might be slaves in the next fluctuation of war. Eumæus himself was of kingly blood, and he retains his regal character in his servitude.

Ulysses has now reached the fortress which is to be the rallying-point of his army of three heroes, and from which he is to issue to the work of the time. But that is hereafter. In the present Book, we have his play with Eumæus, his disguise, which assumes three main attitudes. First, he is passive, chiefly asking and listening; thus he gets out of Eumæus what information he wishes; then he plays an active part in his disguise, telling his own history under the mask of fiction; finally he assumes an open disguise, that is, he tells of one of his artifices at Troy, and then states his present object in telling it. The simple Eumæus, however, does not suspect him in all these transformations. Still we may notice in the swineherd a strong feeling of oneness with the stranger, an unconscious presentiment of who he is.