Parisian Literary Salon

Oxen of the Sun | Begotten, Not Made - Ulysses and The Arian Heresy | Background: Homer’s Odyssey | Allotropic Style - Idealism and Realism | Spark Notes reference

Oxen of the Sun

May, 2006 - Toby
Hello folks-
Last week was particularly enjoyable- I really celebrate the way you all both support each other in the reading and disagree respectful to feed our understanding. I am hoping to get the notes written up as well as add some ideas I discovered reading the paper I wrote on this chapter 22 years ago??? I sounded a bit more like Gerty then….and Jennifer might add some insights she has had since our conversation (nudge nudge).

Yes Oxen of the Sun bogs down- Joyce creates a series of parodis of English prose from Anglo-Saxon down to modern slang….( Nabakov adds: “änd is not a success”). Perhaps one way to get through this chapter is to try and find some of the parodic voices that have been cited: Elizibethan prose, Browne, Bunyan, Dickens(!!!), the Gothic Novel, Charles Lamb….then “the prose tumbles down into broken sounds, echoes, and half-words, …a rendition of the stupor of intoxication.” (this from Nabakov).
As you are struggling with it, remember this: each time we have encountered a hard chapter (think Proteus, for instance) the work of getting through it- even with minimal understanding, has strengthened your reading muscle. Note (circle!) the places that you do understand- the quick, pithy lines that connect with earlier images and moments.
Remember- you are reading Ulysses- arguably the greatest book in the English language and the most difficult. Here is where you earn your badge.

Begotten, Not Made - Ulysses And The Arian Heresy

Spring 2005 - Chris Keene

Ulysses, by James Joyce, is a famously incomprehensible book, in part because Joyce seems to assume that all his readers grew up in Dublin and were educated by Jesuits. A good example of this is his cryptic reference early in the novel to Arius, a Christian theologian and heretic from the fourth century who was reviled by the Jesuits. This article delves into the links between Ulysses and the Arian Heresy.

Stephen’s Dilemma
Stephen Daedelus, the Hamlet-esque protagonist of Ulysses, starts the novel with a lot on his mind. Appalled by his father’s behavior, ashamed of his own behavior at the deathbed of his mother and unsure of his artistic skills, Stephen longs to escape the “nightmare of history” — particularly his own.

In characteristically gloomy fashion, he compares his attempt to separate his own destiny from his boozy father’s with the unsuccessful efforts of the Christian heretic, Arius, to separate the Son (Jesus) from the Father (God). He also sees in Arius a fellow soldier in the fight against the domineering Roman Catholic Church, imagining “Arius, warring his long life upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father.” (p. 25)

Arian Heresy
Arius (AD 256 - 336) was a Christian theologian who claimed that God existed before Jesus. This is consistent with Mark’s gospel in which Jesus was a man who ascended into union with God, but conflicts with John’s gospel in which Jesus is a divine being who has always been in union with God (also called ‘consubstantiation’).

In the early church, there was an active debate between Arius - who felt it was dangerous to blur the lines between God and Jesus - and opposing theologians - who felt it was dangerous to make Jesus too human. The debate took a nasty turn when the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion in the Roman empire.

Constantine’s first use of Christian symbols was in 312, just before his battle to capture Rome from the rival Emperor Maxentius. He claimed to have received a vision promising victory if he painted the letters “Chi” and “Rho” (the first two letters of the word “Christ”) on his soldiers’ shields. Two years earlier, before another big battle, he had claimed to have an identical vision involving Apollo, so clearly he was an equal opportunity employer of deities.

A human Jesus was considered a poor source of authority for a divine Emperor. Nor is a pacifistic Jewish prophet a suitable rallying figure for the official cult of the Roman Military. Finally, the endless squabbling between the pro- and anti-Arius factions undermined Constantine’s needs for a single, unified theology to rule the empire.

The process of adapting the intensely personal, pacifistic Christianity theology to fit the governance needs of the militaristic Roman empire is called the “Constantinian Accord.”

The most public example of this occurred in 325, when Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea, specifically to refute the Arian concept of a human Jesus.

In keeping with Constantine’s wishes, the council produced the Nicene Creed, which goes a bit overboard on the divine etymology of Jesus: “Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” Of himself, Stephen is clear to point out that he was “made, not begotten.” (p 46)

This Nicene creed made Arius a heretic. In keeping with the new union of church and state, he was punished by both the church (excommunication) and the state (exile and destruction of his writings). Although he was later re-instated by the emperor, he died mysteriously the following day. Embarrassingly, he died on the toilet, apparently after being poisoned while dining with the emperor; hence Joyce’s comment “In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia.” (p 47) Euthanasia means good death in Greek, another inside joke by Joyce.

Stephan and Arius
In Ulysses, Stephen longs for personal freedom but says of himself: “I am the servant of two masters, the imperial British state and the holy Roman catholic church.” (p. 24) From Stephen’s point of view, Arius is a forgotten hero who fought against the destruction of “true,” pacifistic Christian faith, first by the Roman Empire and later by the Roman Catholic church.

Stephen’s identification with Arius is not just a slap at the Roman Catholic church, but specifically at the Jesuits who had educated him. The defeat of Arius by his enemy Athanasius was a frequent theme of paintings commissioned by the Jesuits. The Jesuits saw their hero’s triumph over the heretic Arius as a “warm-up” for their victory over the protestant heretics. Stephen’s anti-Jesuit views led Buck Mulligan to observe, “You have that cursed Jesuit strain in you, only its injected the wrong way.” (p.

Arius ultimately gave his life remaining true to his fairly obscure but fiercely held views against consubstantiation. Of the hundreds of bishops who had supported his views before the Council of Nicene, only two were willing to publicly support it at Nicene (and they were speedily packed off to exile with Arius and struck from the list of attendees so that the decision of the council could be recorded as “unanimous”).

This tenacious hold on a personal philosophy against all comers may shed light on one of the most difficult questions raised by the book: why did Stephen refuse to pray with his dying mother? Interpreted within the light of the Arian heresy, he may have felt that what was at stake was nothing less than the integrity of his “endless form of forms” (p 60) (this seems to be a fancy circumlocution for ’soul’).

Stephen’s personal aspiration is that “you will not be the master of others or their slave.” (p. 56) Accommodating his mother’s desire would mean sacrificing his personal integrity to please a person who will soon be “beastly dead” anyway. In an extraordinary leap of analogy, Stephen compares the futility of losing his own soul to please a dying woman with drowning while trying to save a drowning man. “A drowning man, With him together down, I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost.” (p. 57)

Arius Resonating
In testament to the unity of themes within Ulysses, there are a number of resonances between the Arius heresy and passages that on the surface address other themes. For example, the doctrine of a single entity containing father, son and holy ghost was called “consubstantiation.” In his attempt to re-imagine himself as a different person than his father, Stephen complains of “My consubstantial father’s voice.” (p 47)

Stephen declares, “I fear those big words that make us so unhappy” (p 38). Clearly, consubstantiation qualifies as one of these words, and Stephen makes it even bigger by imagining Arius “warring his life long on the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality.” (p 47)

Another poignant passage imagines the doomed Jews trying to do their work at the Paris Stock Exchange: “…the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain” (p 42). With Arius and his supporters in mind, the exact same words could be used to describe their efforts to win over the Council of Nicene, knowing that the rancours of the emperor were massed against them.

With a book like Ulysses, this kind of fun never stops. Examples of other Ulysses/Arius free-associations include:

* Stephen laments the inability of the Irish to make art that reflects their true character because that character has been shattered by their conquerors: “It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.” (p 6) Similarly, the demands of Roman Empire for an imperial religion destroyed the early Christian church’s image of itself.

* “History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” (p 42) Through the Constantinian Accord, Christ’s initial message of universal love was transformed into a tool for justifying the use of power in a military state.

* “Stephen jerked his thumb out the window: ‘That is God.’” (p 42) Stephen believes in a personal, accessible philosophy, much closer to the human Jesus of Arius (and the Gnostics) than the inaccessible deity of the Roman Catholic church who could only be approached through state-sanctioned priest/intermediaries.

More on Arius

Arius (AD 256 - 336, poss. in North Africa) was an early Christian theologian, who taught that the Son of God was not eternal, and was subordinate to God the Father. His famous assertion was “If the Father begat the Son, he that was begotten had a beginning of existence: and that there was a time when the Son did not exist.”

Reconstructing the life and teachings of Arius is difficult because the Roman Catholic church destroyed all of Arius’ writings (shades of the fate that befell the Gnostics). The only record of his teaching is found in writings of those who denounced him as a heretic. Did Joyce worry that the same fate would befall his “heretical” literary work?

The core of the debate is: was Jesus a man who became a God or a God who became a man? If Jesus was a human who became one with God, we as humans can follow his example. This puts Jesus squarely in the tradition of other great religious figures, including the Jewish prophets, Buddha and Mohamed: humans who were transformed by their experience of God. Jesus as a God who became human is much more a deity on the Greek/Roman lines: a God who for a time masqueraded as a human being.

Sources
James Joyce, Ulysses, Penguin Classics 2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arius

Background: Homer’s Odyssey
Spring 2005 - Chris Keene

A little history to get into the setting of the Odyssey:

The Homeric epics (which cover the Trojan War and aftermath) were set in the Mycenaean period (which ended between 1200 and 1100 BC) but their characters, plots and settings continued to develop during the Greek Dark Age (110-800 BC), when the Dorians sacked most of the Myceanaean city-states, iron replaced bronze and writing totally disappeared.

The Iliad and Odyssey were among the earliest works to be written down

When literacy reappeared in the 8th C (The Iliad around 750 BC and the Odyssey twenty to thirty years later).

These epics were composed and performed in oral-formulaic verse over the generations. A bard who knew the legends intimately would recite them to audiences for hours and days at a time. He relied on stock phrases like [i]early, rosy-fingered dawn[/i] that fit the Ancient Greek meter (a pattern of long and short syllables — a bit like hip hop!). This explains their frequent repetition in an otherwise improvised narrative story.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are traditionally attributed to a blind bard, Homer, but obviously, no scribe sat in the wings to jot down the 12,000 plus lines during the definitive recitation by one man.

Now to the promised plot summary, with a few chapter (book) benchmarks and a nod to the briefest of notes/controversies that surround the work:

Book One: In the preamble (proem), the bard tells us of Odysseus’ struggles to return home after the fall of Troy ten years earlier (and the subject of the Iliad). Odysseus has been held captive for seven years by the nymph Kalypso and Zeus is being encouraged by the goddess Athena to tell let him go.

Odysseus’ predicament is put on hold here and Homer cuts to Ithaka (in which Odysseus was king), and the problems of Odysseus’ grown son (Telemachos) and Odysseus’ wife (Penelope).

Ithaka is on the decline: social mores and respect for traditions and the law are going to the dogs after the King’s twenty-year absence. Penelope doesn’t know if she is a wife or widow (if she’s a widow, she must remarry). Telemachos does’nt know if he should rule the kingdom or guard it for his dad’s return. At twenty, he’s still immature and hovering in pre-adulthood. Suitors for Penelope’s hand have moved into the palace and are acting disgracefully: they are eating all of Odysseus’ livestock, drinking his casks of wine, pursuing his wife and generally acting boorish. This is a flagrant disrespect for the Greek concept of xenia, a proper guest/host relationship.

Faithful Penelope has held off her suitors for three years by telling them she must first weave a funeral shroud for Laertes, her aged father-in-law. Cunningly, at night she pulls out the day’s work she’s accomplished. But the suitors uncover her ruse and the pressure to choose one of them as a husband is mounting.

The goddess Athena, disguised as a male guest, arrives at the palace. A good host (showing proper xenia), Telemachos takes away her spear, offers her food, a bath and lodging and does not ask who she is. Only after she has been properly welcomed does Telemachos speak to her about how he grieves his absent father and is angered by the suitors’ intrusion. Athena suggests that he visit two of his father’s comrades, Nestor and Menelaos, and also hold a town council meeting to set the men of Ithaca straight. Telemachos calls the council together and accuses the men of disrespectful behaviour. Their spokesman, Eurymachos, responds that they could care less about the old social mores.

Telemachos travels to see Nestor (horse tamer and wise King of Pylos. He fought beside Ulysses in the Trojan War). He graciously gives Telemachos a gift of horses and a chariot to get to Sparta. Telemachos leaves with Peisistratos (Nestor’s son), to learn about his father from Menalaos and his wife, Helen (they have just returned home after seven years of wandering).

Menalaos tells them about Agamemnon’s murder by his wife Klytaimestra and her lover, Aigisthos (and also how Agamemnon’s son Orestes avenged his father). Telemachos weeps when Menelaos praises Odysseus’ bravery during the Trojan War, and Helen recognizes Telemachos as Odysseus’ son. She gives the men a drug to stop grieving and tells Telemachos that she helped his father keep his cover during the Trojan Horse deception. Menelaos points out that only Odysseus’ bravery kept his men from divulging their hiding place. Alas, Menalaos has no recent news of Odysseus, but remembers hearing from Proteus (a future-predicting, form-changing sea god) that Odysseus was being held captive by the nymph Kalypso.

Book Four ends with a flash-back to Ithaka, where the suitors are now plotting to murder Telemachos upon his return and Penelope is weeping for her husband.

In Book Five, Athena reminds Zeus that Odysseus needs to be set free, especially before Penelope’s suitors murder Telemachos. Zeus dispatches Hermes to tell Kalypso that she must give up Odysseus. Kalypso goes to her lover while he weeping with homesickness, staring out over the sea. He’s not sure she might not be up to something and makes her swear by the River Styx that she isn’t trying to trick him. She swears but also tries convincing him to stay by offering immortality.

Odysseus gracefully declines (mortals who opt for immortality usually come to bad ends in mythology), saying his longing for home and a return to his [i]whole self[/i] are overwhelming. He tactfully sidesteps the question of whether Kalypso is more attractive than his wife, thus avoiding her ill will. So Kalypso helps him build a raft and he sails off with hopes of reaching Ithaca. But the sea-god Poseidon deters him with a shipwreck. Odysseus washes up half-drowned on an island (Scheria, land of the Phaiakians) and falls asleep naked in a pile of leaves.

Cut to the palace of the Phaiakians where Athena is appearing in a dream to the marriage-aged princess, Nausikaa, planting the idea of washing the family laundry (sort of a pre-marriage ritual). Nausikaa convinces her father to let her go accompanied by her servants, and they find a place close to where Odysseus is sleeping. When the work is done, they play catch with a ball. Odysseus wakes up when it splashes in the water nearby. He has no idea if he’s washed up among savages or among people who will welcome him properly. Worse, he’s naked and afraid of terrifying Nausikaa, whose help he desperately needs to get home.

He covers himself with a branch and approaches Nausikaa with great respect and propriety. She promises him clothes, gifts and whatever he needs. She also extends the customary (and socially correct) offer to have her attendants bathe him. He declines (a naked man, after all, puts himself in a rather delicate position by being chummy to a princess and then asking her father to help him out). He bathes himself (Athena making him younger and more handsome in the process) and when he reappears, Nausikaa tells her servants that she would be interested in him as husband material, if only he’d stay. Obviously, Odysseus’ obstacles in reaching Ithaca do not exclude the female species.

With Nausikaa’s directions and Athena leading the way through the mist, Odysseus reaches the palace of Alkinoos and Arete. Athena advises him to get to the king through Queen Arete, which proves a successful strategy. Odysseus is welcomed at the palace, clothed, fed and even provided entertainment (athletic games and a singing bard). But when one of the young Phaiakians, Euryalos, comments that Odysseus doesn’t look like an athlete (tantamount to saying he doesn’t look like a warrior), Odysseus is so insulted that he reveals his identity (no one seems to be listening, however.)

The bard Demodokos sings of the Trojan war; first of a quarrel between Odysseus and Achilles, then of the love affair of Ares and Aphrodite. Odysseus requests the story of the Trojan Horse and the bard obliges. Realizing that his glory has not been forgotten, “Odysseus melted into tears, and all below his eyes his cheeks were wet. And as a woman wails and clings to her dear husband, who falls for town and people, seeking to shield his home and children from the ruthless day; seeing him dying, gasping, she flings herself on him with a piercing cry; while men behind, smiting her with their spears on back and shoulder, force her along to bondage to suffer toil and trouble; with pain most pitiful her cheeks are thin; so pitifully fell the tears beneath Odysseus’ brows.”

Queen Alkinos asks why he weeps.

(If the Odyssey was originally performed over three days, this probably was the close of Day One.)

In Book Nine, Odysseus praises the bard’s recounting of his tale and then declares, “I am Odysseus, son of Laertes who for all craft am noted among men, and my renown reaches to heaven.” Then he begins his story of his “Great Wanderings” and quest to return home:

The Greeks depart from Troy and are first tempted with forgetfulness (of home) and blissful pleasure by the lotus-eaters (the lotus was a narcotic). Escaping this distraction, they then must battle the Cyclops Polyphemos. He traps them in his cave by rolling a huge stone in front of the opening and dines on six of them. Odysseus cleverly devises a plan to get the Cyclops drunk and blind him while he is sleeping. Alive but unseeing, he’ll be able to move the boulder but not notice the men’s escape. Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his name is “Outis” (”Nobody”) while plying him with liquor. When he falls into a drunken sleep, Odysseus spears his single eye with a burning stake. Polyphemos calls to his neighbours in agony, but when they ask who is hurting him, he answers them “Nobody.”

The next morning, the Cyclops rolls away the stone, but begins carefully counting his rams by touch as they leave. Odysseus instructs his men to cling to the animals’ bellies and they are able escape to their ship unseen. But as they sail away, Odysseus goads the Cyclops, then rashly shouts out his true name. The Cyclops hurls a boulder at the ship, which nearly washes it back ashore, and asks for Poseidon to put a curse on Ulysses.

They stop at the island of Aiolos, king of the winds, where Aiolos gives Odysseus all the winds in a leather bag. Again setting sail and with Ithaca in sight, Odysseus’ men decide to peek in the bag. They are blown back to Aiolos, who refuses to help them a second time.

After seven days at sea, they reach the land of the giant Laistrygones, whose king, Antiphates, eats one of them and calls the other giants to pelt Odysseus’ ships with boulders. Odysseus and his comrades narrowly escape on one ship and travel to the island of Aeaea, home of the seductive goddess Circe.

Half of the men go with Eurylochos (Odysseus’ second-in-command) to Circe’s palace, where she promptly turns them into pigs. Odysseus takes a potent plant that immunizes him to her transformative powers and races to their rescue, springing on her with his sword. Guessing who this brave, courageous man is, she invites him back to her bower, “that there we two may know our love and learn to trust each other.” He is not against this idea, but insists that she turn his crew back to human form before he can enjoy her pleasures. She does — and also promises that she will not detain him any longer than he wants to stay (unlike Kalypso). Critics usually mention something about the male/female double standard for fidelity here, and some explain it in much the same way as some Biblical scholars do: The male’s responsibility was to carry on his family line and his wife was required to be faithful to keep the line pure. At any rate, Odysseus and his men don’t set off from Circe’s until one year later.

Circe has instructed Odysseus that he must go to the Land of the Dead (a popular destination for many Greek heroes: Heralkes — or Hercules, to those who grew up watching the cartoon series: Orpheus and Theseus) to consult the soul of the great seer Teiresias on reaching home safely. Odysseus sails on the streams of Ocean (the Ancients believed that a river surrounded the flat disk of the world) to Persephone’s land. By sacrificing two sheep and pouring their blood into a pit, Odysseus summons the soul of his fallen comrade Elpenor. Elpenor asks Odysseus to bring his body back to Aiaia to be buried.

Next, Teiresias appears and gives Odysseus instructions on how to return home safely (he also warns him about the suitors and not harming the Sun god, Helios’ oxen on Thrinakia).

The ghost of Odysseus’ mother, who has died of grief from mourning her son’s absence, also appears to give him news of Penelope and Telemachus. Odysseus tries to embrace her, but sadly cannot. The critics point to this underworld journey (the “Nekuia”) as the “death” of the warrior Odysseus and the “rebirth” of Odysseus the Ithacan.

Odysseus recites a list of other heroines who appeared to him before ending his narrative performance. Queen Arete responds favourably to his adventures and Alkinoos begs him to go on (it’s not everyday they entertain a great hero who has not only returned alive from Hades, but has spoken to the gods as an equal).

Odysseus tells them about his meeting the ghost of Agamemnon, who recounts the tale of his murder by his wife, Klytaimestra and her lover (he also warns Odysseus to trust no one –not even Penelope).

The ghost of Achilles confides that he’d rather be a poor man’s slave than king over the dead (contradicting his stated choice in the Iliad).

The soul of Aias is still jealous and angry that Odysseus was awarded Achilles’ armour and won’t speak to him.

But when the ghost of Herakles greets Odysseus as an equal in the Kingdom of the Dead, Odysseus is terrified and sets sail back to Circe.

Circe outlines his route home: he must sail past the singing Sirens (by stuffing wax in his crew’s ears and tying himself to the ship’s mast), avoid the clashing, ever-changing Stymplegades rocks, and find his path between the sea monster, Skylla and the whirlpool, Charybdis. Circe repeats Teiresias’ warning not to kill any of Helio’s oxen on Thrinakia.

Odysseus sets sail and reaching Thrinakia, plans to sail past. But Eurylochos persuades him to stop for just one night so the weary crew can rest. Once they land, the winds blow against them for a full month and they are not able to leave. The crew becomes so ravenous that, after Odysseus wanders off to pray and then falls asleep, Eurylochos and the men sacrifice some of Helio’s oxen. Odysseus awakens to the smell of barbeque. His men devour the meat, but he refuses to touch it, thus avoiding the full wrath of Helio’s curse.

When the winds change and they set sail again, their ship is destroyed in a storm (at Helios’ request, or so says Kalypso, who heard it from Hermes). They’re blown back to Charybdis (a whirlpool), who drowns everyone but Odysseus. Half dead, he washes up on Kalypso’s island, having come full circle.

(Book Thirteen is generally considered the turning point in the Odyssey, when Odysseus’ problems change from the threat of gods and monsters to the threat posed by Penelope’s suitors.)

The heroic tale finished, King Alcinos gives Odysseus a ship and crew to return home. Odysseus falls into a wine-induced sleep on board and is deposited, still sleeping, on the shores of Ithaca by the crew. When he awakens, he is not sure where he is or whether the natives are reverent and hospitable or savage and cruel. A disguised Athena comes again to the rescue, but the cautious Odysseus pretends he’s a stranger. She tells him he’s landed on Ithaca and praises his craftiness and ability to lie (like herself). In fact, she says, that’s why she’s always liked him so much. If he’s such a favourite of hers, he wonders, why has she let him wander for ten years? Well, she didn’t want to anger Zeus’ brother, Poseidon — and besides, she knew he’d eventually make it back to Ithaca.

Letting bygones by bygones, they set to devising a plan to return Odysseus’ kingdom to him: Athena turns him into an old beggar and instructs him to visit Eumaios, his old swineherd while she arranges a meeting with Telemachus. Eumaios is very gracious to the beggar and speaks with love and loyalty about his long-absent master, Odysseus. Odysseus fabricates a story about his Crete origins and forecasts that Odysseus will return. Emaios, it turns out, is really a king’s son who was kidnapped as a child (this makes for an interesting parallel: a slave opening his hut and slaughtering his best pig for a beggar; and a “disguised” prince opening his doors and showing xenia to a disguised king).

Book Sixteen opens with Telemachos being welcomed by Eumaios, who greets him as a son. Odysseus, still playing the part of a beggar, asks him about home. Telemachos tells him of Penelope faithfulness and of the suitors who are abusing their hospitality. Eumaios is dispatched to reassure Penelope that her son is safe.

Athena appears alone to Odysseus, turning him back into his old (younger!) self and giving him the go-ahead to tell Telemachus his true identity. Telemachus is doubtful when Odysseus announces, “I am your father,” but finally throws his arms around him. “Loud were their cries and more unceasing than those of birds, ospreys or crook-clawed vultures, when farmers take away their young before the wings are grown: so pitifully fell the tears beneath their brows.”

Odysseus instructs Telemachos to go back to the palace and wait for him to return disguised as a beggar. He warns him not to give his real identity away, even if the suitors are insulting and, when he gives the sign, to quickly take the weapons off the dining room walls and lock them in a storeroom. Odysseus warns again: Telemachus should tell no one, not even Penelope, who he really is.

Book Seventeen: Odysseus and Eumaios meet the disloyal goatherd, Melanthios, en route to the palace. Once in the courtyard of his home, Odysseus passes his old dog Argos lying on a dung heap. Argos wags his tail and lays back his ears, but Odysseus cannot give himself away and only wipes back a tear. As he walks by the dog, faithful Argos dies. Time cannot be turned back.

Once inside, Antinoos, one of the suitors, disrespectfully throws a footstool at the old beggar, hitting him on the shoulder and attracting Penelope’s attention. She summons Eumaios to bring the beggar to her, but Odysseus refuses to meet with her until evening (when the lights are dim?).

When she descends from her chambers that night, Telemachos (showing an authority that astonishes the suitors) tells them all to go home. Penelope and Odysseus sit across from each other on either side of the hearth. He tells her that she may ask him anything except for his identity (whether or not she guesses it is debatable). She tells him of her plight with the suitors and how she fended them off for three years by pulling out her weaving each night. She finally asks who he is and Odysseus tells her that he is a Cretan who met Odysseus in the Trojan War. Penelope weeps at the mention of her husband, but Odysseus only stares straight ahead.

Penelope then recounts a dream in which her pet geese are being killed by an eagle. The eagle turns into Ulysses and the geese into her suitors. Odysseus tells her is an omen that her husband will return. Penelope then suggests an archery contest among the suitors. Whichever can string Odysseus’ old bow will be her husband. Finally, she offers the beggar a bath.

He asks for an old woman to wash only his feet and Eurykleia, one of his childhood servants, is summoned. The site of his scar evokes her memories of how Odysseus was wounded by a boar’s tusk while hunting with his grandfather. It was this same grandfather who gave Odysseus his portentous name (the Greek verb means “to take/give pain” or “to bear a grudge against,” or “to make others angry”). When Eurykleia runs her hand over his scar, she realizes she is washing the feet of Odysseus and is overcome with joy and grief.

Penelope retrieves Odysseus’ bow from the storeroom. She tells the suitors that she will marry whoever can string it and shoot through the path of twelve axes. Telemachus puts the axes in place and is the first to attempt stringing the bow. It looks as if he may succeed after two tries, but Ulysses catches his eye. A young suitor, Leodes, tries next and shreds his soft palms in the attempt. Atinoos follows him, warming the bow by the fire then rubbing it with tallow. Still, he fails. While the suitors are thus occupied, Odysseus calls Eumaios and his cowherd, Philoitios, outside and shows them his scar. He promises to free them and give them houses and wives if they will defend him. Eumaios is to bring the bow to Odysseus and bar the hall door. Philoitios is to bolt the courtyard door, making escape impossible. Their plan set, Odysseus goes back to the suitors and asks to be given a try at stringing the bow.

The suitors are horrified at the idea of letting the beggar try (Eurymachos is mortified that future generations will learn that he hasn’t succeeded), but Penelope insists. Odysseus is given the weapon and Telemachus excuses her from the room.

Odysseus strings the bow and shoots through the axes effortlessly. Making a sign to his son (in Book Twenty-two), he throws off his rags and puts an arrow through the neck of Antinos. The suitors, who still don’t really “get” who the beggar is, rebuke him for killing one of them and then rush for the arms. But Telemachus has already disposed of them and the doors have been barred. When Odysseus makes it clear he has returned, the suitors turn pale with fear. Eurymachus tries to blame everything on Antinoos and offers to pay Odysseus back, but Odysseus will not be swayed. The suitors have wronged both him and Ithacan society.

While Odysseus holds them at bay, Telemachus runs for arms, accidentally leaving the storeroom door open. Melanthios, a suitor, climbs through a vent for spears for his camp. The now fully-mature Telemachos admits his mistake to his father. While the swine and cowherd overpower Melanthios, Athena starts deflecting the suitors’ spears. Thus Odysseus and his men are able to slay all the suitors.

Eurykleia arrives and rejoices at the sight of the dead suitors. She tells Odysseus that twelve out of fifty of his female slaves were disloyal and they are called to clean up the mess and then hung in the courtyard. Odysseus purifies his palace with fire and sulphur.

Book Twenty-three opens with Eurykleia telling Penelope that Odysseus is back and has killed the suitors. Penelope can’t believe it wasn’t the work of a god, so goes to Odysseus and studies him. Telemachos chastises her for not greeting her husband properly, but Penelope she says has her secret reasons. Phemios is told to play his lyre and the slaves to dance so that passer-bys will believe the suitors are alive and celebrating an impending marriage.

After Odysseus bathes, he returns to Penelope and reproaches her for not believing that he is whom he says. He then asks Eurylkeia to make up a bed for him. Penelope tells the old servant to move Odysseus’ own bed outside her chamber. Odysseus becomes livid: He built the bed around a olive tree, then the bedchamber around the living bed post, then the house around the bedchamber (all symbols of marriage and fidelity.)

With this outburst, Penelope realizes that he is truly Odysseus and rushes to kiss him. She begs him not to be angry at her cautiousness, and says that she feared being tricked. “So she spoke, and stirred still more his yearning after tears; and he began to weep, holding his loved and faithful wife. As when the welcome land appears to swimmers, whose sturdy ship Poseidon wrecked at sea, confounded by the winds and solid waters; a few escape the foaming sea and swim ashore; thick salt foam crusts their flesh; they climb the welcome land, and are escaped from danger; so welcome to her gazing eyes appeared her husband. From round his neck she never let her white arms go.”

They spend the night (which Athena lengthens for them) making love and recounting their twenty years apart. Penelope tells him about staving off the suitors and Odysseus tells her about his adventures and finally, they sleep. The next morning, Odysseus, Telemachos and the cow and swineherds prepare to battle the suitors’ relatives.

The final book begins with the slain suitors arriving in Hades and Agamemnon praising Penelope’s fidelity and ingenuity (thereby ending any parallels to his treacherous wife).

Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, the disguised Odysseus visits his worn and grieving father, Laertes, wanting to embrace him but deciding to put him to the test as well. The “wanderer” tells Laertes that he met Odysseus five years earlier, which causes the old man even greater torment. Satisfied, Odysseus admits who he really is, proves it with his scar, and reminds his father of how they planted trees together when he was a boy. They go off to join Telemachos et al to battle the suitors’ families. In the final lines, Athena calls the battle to a halt and makes all sides promise peace.

Allotropic Style, Idealism and Realism
Spring 2005 - Denise

…in response to what Jennifer said about style, referring to the elegiac beginning of the paragraph “Stephen, an elbow rested on the jagged granite”, that changes in tone by ending on a highly realistic description of his mother’s deathbed (”sluggish bile” etc.) which is taken up in the line that follows: “Buck wiped again his razorblade.” (As if he were wiping away the bile himself!).

This made me think of something I had read - and which I found absolutely fascinating - in my introduction on style. You know this work much better than I do, but maybe there are others in the group who are discovering it as I am and who would be interested.

My intro. says a quintessential characteristic of Ulysses is that it is allotropic, ie. that it exists in two, simultaneous - even competing - but co-ordinated forms, or strains.

These strains were developed (or so says my intro) at a couple of lectures he gave in Trieste in 1912, “Realism and Idealism in English Literature”, based on a comparison of the works of Daniel De Foe and William Blake. De Foe being the master of realism of course, and Blake being the idealist.

I just thought the above quote illustrates this with its idealistic beginning, then the realistic end exacerbated by the short, sharp (!) following line on Buck and his razorblade!

I’m sending this to Jennifer as she inspired the thought. Maybe I can just keep track of this angle to our reading and see how it works out as we continue on.

Between salons, I feel like taking one page at random anywhere in the book and reading it through just to enjoy the style and be surprised by something picked up, un-explained on the way. It gives me a feeling of reaching out into the book’s immensity and not just staying sternly huddled to its beginning!

SparkNotes Reference
Spring 2005 - Lizzie Gohier

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/section1.html