Time and Space in Ancient Myth, Religion and Culture

SNF-Projekt, Menelaos Christopoulos, Athina Papachrysostomou, SNF-Projekt, Menelaos Christopoulos, Athina Papachrysostomou, Anton Bierl, Menelaos Christopoulos, Athina Papachrysostomou

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110534221
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Die Beiträge dieser gesamtaltertumswissenschaftlichen Reihe behandeln hauptsächlich Themen zur Antike aus dem Bereich der Literatur-, Bild-, Medien-, Theater-, Religions- und Kulturwissenschaften. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt auf der Anwendung moderner Theorien, z. B. auf dem Gebiet der Anthropologie, Performativität und Narrativität, auf dem interdisziplinären Vergleich, auf der mythisch-rituellen und ikonischen Poetik von Texten und bildlichen Darstellungen sowie auf der Rezeption antiker Stoffe in diesem Kontext.

Part I Epos

Menelaos Christopoulos

Strange Instances of Time and Space in Odysseus’ Return

Although the Odyssey is usually read and studied by well advised readers, who are perfectly aware of the poet’s major device to start the narrative in medias res, the structure of time and space throughout the poem often conveys to the audience subtle and unexpected aspects which speak in favour of this article’s title. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to focus on some of these aspects which appear to be particularly significant.1

An important one seems to be what I will further call a ‘corrupted nostos’, an idea underlying or parallel to the general narrative of Odysseus’ return. One remembers that four times in the Odyssey Odysseus returns to the same point from which he had departed. The first time occurs at the very beginning of Odysseus’ return and is mentioned by Nestor when Telemachus visits Pylos (3.13–166). The Pylian king tells Telemachus that after the sack of Troy, Odysseus initially sailed with Nestor from Troy up to Tenedos but then he returned back to Troy to join Agamemnon who had stayed there to offer sacrifices to Athena. The second time is Odysseus’ return to the island of Aeolus after Odysseus’ companions thoughtlessly opened the skin bag that Aeolus had offered to Odysseus (10.46–76). The third time is Odysseus’ return to the island of Circe after having visited the Underworld on Circe’s advice (12.1–36). The fourth time is Odysseus’ return to the strait of Skylla and Charybdis after the shipwreck of his ship due to the impious slaughter of Helios’ cattle by Odysseus’ companions (12.426–446).2 Of these four returns, the first (Tenedos-Troy) and the third (Underworld-Circe) are due to Odysseus’ own intentions and have no negative consequences for him nor is there any differentiation perceived in the circumstances he had already experienced in his first contact with these places. But in the second and the fourth occasion (return to Aeolus’ island and to the strait of Skylla and Charybdis respectively) the situation is totally different. The first time that Odysseus crosses the strait of Skylla and Charybdis he is on his boat, with his companions and the danger he encounters comes from Skylla. The second time Odysseus is without his boat and without his companions; plus, he enters the strait from the opposite edge and the danger he encounters comes from Charybdis. In contrast to Jason, the hero of the pre-homeric Argonautic epic, who crossed the strait of the Clashing Rocks one way only, Odysseus crosses twice and both ways a strait with two different types of danger coming from each one of the strait’s two rocks. Further on, this second crossing is for Odysseus the first danger he experiences alone, after the death of his companions. The circumstances of the second crossing are definitely worse than those of the first. The return to Aeolus’ island leads also to a worse departure, since, instead of being welcomed, hosted and gifted, Odysseus is this time cursed, rejected and expelled.

Where does this theme of reverse nostos or second departure lead us? It seems to me that here we have something more than the occurrence of one of our usual, frequent and well identified tools often registered in Homeric poetry: this is neither a simple narrative doublet nor a narrative retardation of the plot. Actually, these reverse nostoi are highly interesting as to their own content and their own context. First of all, we observe in them the persistence of the number 2 (two departures from the same place, four occurrences of the theme, two crossings from two entries of the strait, two dangers from two rocks), whereas the usual number pertaining to Homeric epics is traditionally stated to be either 3 or some multiple of 3.3 Secondly, one tends to see in these reverse nostoi and repeated departures an ironic undermining of the concept of the nostos itself, by forwarding first a return to the departure instead of an arrival to the end – something that I would tend to call a ‘corrupted nostos’ – and then a second departure from the same place under much worse circumstances than those prevailing the first time. Further on, since these corrupted nostoi and their unhappy outcome are always the result of the companions’ unwise initiative, one wonders whether the purpose of these narratives on Odysseus’ second departure from the same place is not only to echo but actually to enhance and further develop the idea announced in line 5 of the prooimion, where we are told that Odysseus did not finally save his companions, although he very much wished to do so. In other words, these corrupted nostoi could merely illustrate the idea that the companions were not saved, because they simply did not ‘deserve’ to be saved; whether this distinction is to be considered against the background of aristocratic values prevailing in the Odyssey is a question to be answered in another paper or in another book, but it certainly has to do with the way the idea of ‘collective’ and the idea of ‘individual’ are perceived in the epic. What these narratives say (which the prooimon does not say) is not only that the companions are ruined by their own ἀτασθαλίαι, but mainly that their existence is ruinous to Odysseus’ own salvation; by the middle of the trip to Ithaca this major incompatibility has already become clear: it is the companions’ salvation against Odysseus’ salvation, it is them or him, themselves versus himself.

In Odysseus’ return there are not only significant departures and arrivals, there are also significant stays. The longest of these stays is, of course, his sojourn on the island of Calypso, from where the narrative of his return begins. Strangely enough, this idleness of Odysseus on the island of Ogygia allows a remarkable spread of his Trojan kleos. The wreck of Odysseus’ ship after Thrinakia and the loss of his companions is by many aspects an important shift in Odysseus’ return, since the nostos is no longer collective but individual and, consequently, heroic kleos is individually ascribed to him.4 But from that very moment and further on, the nature of the deeds related to his person changes and light is now increasingly shed on his Trojan exploits. Until the arrival to the island of Calypso, Odysseus is active at a present time and this action concerns a collective nostos, his own return, as well as his companions’. But with the stay in Ogygia, the prevalence of present time stops. As long as Odysseus remains inactive in Calypso’s island, witnesses of his Trojan kleos, such as Nestor, Menelaus and Helen, have the time to go home and propagate it, so that the kleos itself precedes Odysseus when he regains his activity and listens to Demodocus’ song on the Wooden Horse. In terms of time and space then, as Odysseus’ nostos brings him from Troy back to Ithaca, the renown of his kleos brings him from Ithaca back to Troy, an achievement of an itinerary which he initially had refused to undertake.

Much has been said about the character complementarity between Odysseus and Penelope, mainly in matters of mental capacity;5 formulaic persistence speaks in favour of this complementarity: περίφρων Penelope is the suitable spouse of πολύμητις Odysseus. She even manages to fool him when she tests his identity by pretending that his bed, nailed on the root of an olive tree, can be easily removed to another room of the palace. Further formulaic evidence can perhaps strengthen this concept of complementarity also in terms of time. Each time that Odysseus’ trip continues, we read / listen that he and his companions (or he alone when he leaves Calypso’s island), “raised the mast and fixed the sail on it” and as long as the sail is raised on the mast, on the histos, it brings him closer to his destination and, then, the course of time is positive for his timely arrival. What happens with Penelope? She also has her own histos, the loom. But as long as the cloth, the shroud for Laertes, is woven on this histos, the course of time is negative for Odysseus’ timely arrival. As he sails for three years and spends other seven waiting in Ogygia, she weaves for three years and spends other seven waiting in Ithaca.6 Finally, when both histoi stop functioning for both characters, the husband and the wife, the course of time seems to lead to an impasse. Penelope’s trick is revealed and she is now forced to move towards an unwished marital life, while Odysseus is trapped within an unwished substitute of marital life on Calypso’s island, where he had been brought to grasping to the remains of his broken histos.

The idea presented a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Part I Epos
• Part II Drama
• Part III: Empirical and Imaginary Chronotopes
• Part IV Shifting Chronotopes
• Index Locorum
• Index Nominum Notabiliorum
• Notes on Contributors