Snider, A Commentary on the Odyssey of Homer - II

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]

III. Next comes the most important and longest portion of the Book, turning the glance forward to Ithaca and the future, also to the great deed of the poem. A new deity appears when Neptune vanishes, not a hostile power of Nature but a helpful spirit of Intelligence—it is the Goddess of Wisdom, Pallas. This divine transition from the one God to the other is the real inner fact, while the physical transition is but the outer setting and suggestion.

Accordingly, the theme now is the man and the deity, Ulysses and Pallas in their interrelation. We are to have a complete account of the human unfolding into a vision of the divine. The movement is from a complete separation of the twain, to mutual recognition, and then to co-operation. Pallas has had little to do with Ulysses during his great sea-journey, and since he left Troy. That long wandering on the water was without her, lay not at all in her domain, which is that of clear self-conscious Intelligence. That misty Fableland is the realm of other divinities, though she appeared in Phaeacia.

The question, therefore, is at present: How shall this man come into the knowledge of the Goddess? How shall he know the truth of the reality about him in his new situation, how understand this world of wisdom? The sides are two: the man and the deity, and they must become one in spirit. The supreme thing, therefore, is that Ulysses hear the voice of Pallas, and develop into unity with her; indeed that may be held to be the supreme thing in Religion and Philosophy: to hear the voice of God. Even in the business of daily life the first object is to find out the word of Pallas.

Such is the dualism in the world, which must be harmonized; but in the individual also there is another dualism which has to be harmonized. Ulysses is mortal, finite, given over to doubt, passion, caprice, is the unwise man, subjective; but he is also the wise man, has an infinite nature which is just the mastery of all his weakness; he has always the possibility of wisdom, and will come to it by a little discipline. He will rise out of his subjective self into the objective God. This is just the process which the poet is now going to portray; the Hero overwhelmed in his new situation and with his new problem, is to ascend into communion with Pallas, is to behold wisdom in person and hear her voice, and then is to advance to the deed. This process we may look at in four different stages, as they unfold on the lines laid down by the poet.

1. First we have quite a full picture of Ulysses before he reaches the recognition of the Divine, and of his gradual climbing-up to that point. At the start he is asleep, is not even conscious of the external world about him, he has indeed entered a new realm, yet old. As long as the Phaeacian spell is upon him, he can do nought but slumber. Then he wakes, he sees but does not recognize his own country. He doubts, he blames the Phaeacians wrongfully, in his distrust of them he counts over his treasures. He is now the unwise, capricious man; he has no perception of Pallas; not only the land is in disguise to him, he is in disguise to himself, to his better self.

Yet the poet is careful to mark the providential purpose just in this disguise. The Goddess threw a mist over things, that he might not know them, or make himself known till all was in readiness for the destruction of the Suitors, till she had told him what he had to do. Still it is his own act or state that he cannot at first hear the voice of the Goddess.

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

Learned Freeware

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

Learned Freeware

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