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]

4. Two things Ulysses is now to tell to the Cyclops in the distance. The first is the wrong and the penalty thereof: "Amply have thy evil deeds been returned to thee," namely, his treatment of men. "Zeus and the other Gods have punished thee," there is a divine order in the world, which looks after the wrong-doer. Thus Polyphemus the anarchist, atheist, and cannibal gets a short missionary sermon on justice, religion and humanity. But he does not receive it kindly, he "hurls a fragment of a mountain peak," and almost strikes the ship. The line of danger is not yet passed.

Still Ulysses must tell something else though his frightened companions try to dissuade him. But he must, he cannot help it: "If any one ask thee, say it was Ulysses, the city-destroyer, who put out thine eye." A great light this word brings to the poor blind Cyclops, almost the light of self-consciousness. He recalls, he knows his conqueror, and therein begins to know himself, to recognize his error. "Ah, woe is me! the ancient oracles about me are fulfilled!" Of old there had been prophecies concerning his destiny, but he did not understand them, seemingly did not regard them. How could he, with his bent toward the godless? The prophet Telemus had foretold "that I would lose my sight at the hands of Ulysses." How shall we consider this prophecy? A dim, far-off presentiment among the Cyclops themselves that they were to be subjected to a higher influence; their limited, one-eyed vision was to vanish through a more universal, two-eyed vision. Such a presentiment nature everywhere shows, a presentiment of the power beyond her, of the spiritual. What else indeed is Gravitation? A longing, a seeking which even the clod manifests in its fall earthward, a prophetic intimation; so the Cyclops, the natural man, had his prophet whom he now begins rightly to recognize; truly he is getting religious, quite different is his present utterance from his previous blasphemy: "we are better than the Gods." Nay, he offers to intercede with his father Neptune, praying the God to give a sending of the stranger over the sea. Moreover he recognizes his divine father as the only one who can heal him in his present distress. Possibly the words are spoken to beguile, but Polyphemus here offers to do his duty to the stranger on his shores, and he recognizes the Gods.

Manifestly we witness in this passage a striking development of the rude Cyclops under the tough discipline of experience. He acknowledges first his mistake in regard to the prophecy: "I expected to see a man tall and beautiful and of vast strength, not this petty worthless weakling who has put out mine eye." A hero of visible might, a giant like himself, not a man of invisible intelligence, he imagined he was to meet; great was his mistake. The conflict between Brain and Brawn was settled long ago before Troy, and has been sung of in the preceding Book. Here then is certainly a confession of his mistake, and, if his words are sincere, an offer to undo his wrong.

5. At this point there is a change in Ulysses, his victory has begotten insolence, he becomes a kind of Cyclops in his turn. Such is the demon ever lurking in success. Listen to his response to the confession and supplication of his wretched victim: "Would that I were as sure of taking thy life and sending thee down to Hades, as that the Earth-shaker shall never heal thine eye." The implication is that the God cannot do it—an act of blasphemy which the God will not be slow to avenge. But how true to human nature is this new turn in Ulysses, how profound! No sooner has he escaped and experiences the feeling of triumph, than his humanity, nay his religion vanishes, he sweeps over into his opposite and becomes his savage enemy. What follows? The law must be read to him too, his own law; he will hear it from the mouth of Polyphemus, and it is essentially this: As thou hast done to me, so shall it be done to thee.

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