Snider, A Commentary on the Odyssey of Homer - I

From, Homer's Odyssey: A commentary
[Please note that the Table of Contents here published, is created by Elpenor and is not to be found in the print version]

I. The first great communication of the dead and past to the living and present, by voice and by vision; some speak, others are only seen.

1. The present and living element is made up of Ulysses and his companions who are invoking by their rites and prayers the souls of the Underworld. The companion Elpenor dead, but not yet buried, forms the transition between the Present and Past.

2. The past and dead element, Pre-Trojan, is called up in two general forms: the ancient seer Tiresias who is both Past and Future through his mind, and, secondly, the souls of Famous Women, who pass in review before the Present. The hint of a world-justice runs through both the prophecies of the seer and the destinies of some of these women.

II. The second grand communication of the dead and past, now Trojan—to the living and present, now Phaeacian prominently, given by voice and vision.

1. The Present is here not only Ulysses far off in Hades, but the Phaeacians in their actual sensible world. The latter demand again the grand background and presupposition of their present life—the Trojan epoch represented in its great spirits.

2. The Past, Trojan, in three typical Greek heroes, Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax. The three typical Greek women of the Trojan epoch are also mentioned. An implicit idea of punishment, or of heroic limitation brought home to the hero, is traceable in this portion.

III. The idea of a world-justice with its universal judgment, hitherto only implied, now becomes explicit in Hades and organizes itself, showing (1) the judge, Minos, (2) the culprits in four condemned ones, (3) the saved one, Hercules, who rises out of Hades through the deed. By implication so does the living Ulysses—hence the journey is at an end, Hades is conquered.

Ulysses follows the direction of Circe, indeed he is propelled by the wind which she sends, to the "confines of the Ocean stream," to the limits of this terrestrial Upperworld. Here is the land of the Cimmerians, "hid in fog and in cloud," which veils the realm of the dead; here the sun sends no beam, either rising or setting. Again it is possible that the poet may have heard some dim account of the regions of the extreme North. But the significance of the Cimmerians is to shadow forth the dark border-land between life and death, which is here that between the limited and the unlimited. We see the strong attempt of the poet to get beyond limitation in its twofold appearance: first he will transcend the external boundary of the Homeric horizon, that of the sea stretching far to the westward; still more emphatic is his effort to transcend the limits of finite thinking and to reach an infinite realm, which is the goal of the spirit. He sweeps out of sensuous space, yet the poetic imagination has to remain in space after all, though it be a new space of its own creation. In like manner, he has to give the disembodied souls some finite nourishment in the shape of food and blood, in order that they become real. We feel in these dark Cimmerian limits his wrestle to pass over to the supersensible by thought.

D. Snider
A Commentary on the Odyssey of Homer - Part I

Learned Freeware

D. Snider A Commentary on the Odyssey of Homer - Part I

Learned Freeware

D. Snider
A Commentary on the Odyssey of Homer - Part I