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]

3. The preceding story was the Heroic Tale, which goes back to the Past, especially to Troy, as the grand deed done by the united Hellenic race, whereof the Iliad is a sample. But now we enter a new field, and a new sort of composition, which, in default of a better name, we shall call the Fairy Tale. Helen is not now present, nor is her struggle the theme; Menelaus, the man, is to recount his experience in his return to Hellas.

The story is inspired by the desire of Telemachus to know about his father. As that father is not present the question arises, Where is he? Menelaus will undertake to answer the question by a tale which shadows forth the Distant and the Future—a prophetic tale, which casts its glance through the veil of Time and Space.

A mythical figure appears, Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, who is to foretell to the inquiring mortal what may be needful for his safety. Not an Olympian God is Proteus, yet a supernatural shape standing between man and deity and mediating the two, the human and the divine. For it is Proteus who sends Menelaus back to the Gods whom he has neglected and offended.

The Fairy Tale which we are now to consider, is not to be looked upon as an allegory; it is a story with incident, movement, character, all in their own right, and not for the sake of something else. But we must not, on this account, imagine that it has no thought; in fact, the Fairy Tale is just the way in which primitive peoples think. It has thought, often the profoundest thought, which darts through it, not steadily, but fitfully in flashes at the important links, like electric sparks. This thought we are to catch and hold, and not rest satisfied with the mere outer form of the story.

Persons we can always find who are strongly prepossessed against seeing any meaning in the Fairy Tale, or in the Mythus. Modern usage of these literary forms, doubtless, justifies such an opinion. Still we must remember that Homer was not playing, but thinking with his Fairy Tale; he had no technical terms, and almost no abstract language for expressing thought; the day of philosophic reflection had not yet dawned upon Greece. Homer has a great and deep thought to utter, but his utterance is and must be mythical. His problem, too, he has, and it is spiritual; the Mythus is his statement, honest, earnest, final. No, he was not playing at story-telling, though it must have given him pleasure; nor was his object merely to delight somebody, though he certainly has delighted many by his song. He was the true Poet, upholding his own worth and that of his vocation; he was loyal to the Muse whose word he must sing whether it find listeners or not. Homer built his legendary structure to live in, not to play in; with all his sportiveness, he is a deeply earnest man; if his Zeus sometimes takes on a comic mask, it is because Providence is a humorist. Homer, when he mythologizes, is thinking, thinking as profoundly as the philosopher, and both are seeking to utter to men the same fundamental thought. The reader is to think after the poet, if not in the immediate mythical form, then in the mediate, reflective way.

The present Tale seeks to give an answer to the two main questions of Telemachus: Where is my father now? And, Will he return home? To answer the one question requires a knowledge of what is distant in Space; to answer the other question requires a knowledge of what is distant in Time. Can we not see that herein is an attempt to rise out of that twofold prison of the spirit, Space and Time, into what is true in all places and times? In other words, Menelaus unfolds in a mythical form, the Universal to his young pupil, and we may now see in what manner he gives the lesson.

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