The Odyssey (4): Books 5 – 8

Nymph & Princess, King & Poet

With book 4 ends the Telemachy, it is now Telemachus’ father, the hero Odysseus, our star (!), who takes centre stage; with his fate resting on the good will and intentions of some powerful women, but above all the continuing favours of daughter goddess Athena and her wily ways of influencing father Zeus to do well by the hero with traits of intelligence and cunning paralleling her own.

Book 5: From the Goddess to the Storm

pp. 180-196

*Odysseus und Kalypso* by Arnold Böcklin (1883)

We are introduced to a morose Odysseus on Calypso’s island – held there long captive by the nymph for eternal love’s sake. Years before washed upon her shores, the gratitude he may have felt for the sanctuary she provided has turned to a bitter indifference towards his captor. Her physical attractions and the gifts she bestows no longer temper his misery or distract from his profound longing for his home and wife – Ithaca and Penelope.

Nudged to intervene (by you know who), Zeus sends Hermes to command the release of Odysseus so that he may finally continue on his journey home. Calypso reluctantly complies, and her affections are indeed such that she ensures Odysseus is outfitted such as to bear the dangers of the high seas, though not counting upon the intervention of the forever cranky Poseidon who whips up the fiercest of storms. But, lo and behold, there is another “girl” on his side – the White Goddess, Ino – who drapes him in a magic veil to guide him through the dangerous seas to the shores of Phaeacia, where Athena hovers to keep him safe.

book 6: a princess and her laundry

pp. 197-207

Athena manipulates another beauty, the princess, Nausicaa, to further her rescue plan. Encouraged by a dream to do so, Nausicaa is laundering garments with her slave girls at the washing pools, when the bedraggled Odysseus appears and with words, heavily laden with flattery, seeks her aid. His plea is not denied, for Nausicaa understands the rites of courtesy due to needy strangers, and (now bathed and spruced up some by Athena!) is impressed by Odysseus’ beauty and grandeur. She instructs him on how he may find his way inconspicuously to the town walls; where at book’s end our hero awaits the right time to proceed to the palace of Nausicaa’s father, King Alcinous.

book 7: a Magical Kingdom

pp. 208-219

Enveloping him in her magic mist and leading him under the guise of a little girl, Athena ensures that Odysseus safely finds the King’s palace. As their daughter, so the royal pair Alcinous and Arete offer all due hospitality, their guest having a look and manner such that for a moment he was mistaken to be of godly nature. Odysseus reveals his story of being lost at sea, years spent at Calypso’s pleasure and Zeus’ intervention to set him free; only then to encounter an irate Poseidon and be washed upon their shores, whereupon their daughter saved him. After having eaten and drunk his fill and parried the King’s suggestion that he be a good match for his daughter – but still been assured that they will assist him in getting home, a good bed is prepared for the weary stranger and a feast in his honour is planned for the morn.

book 8: The songs of a poet

pp. 220-239

And on the next day there is indeed a worthy celebration in honour of the stranger – a fine banquet of meats and sweets and wines, and games of athletic prowess in which a taunted Odysseus shows too his excellence of person, and a very Homeric poet – the blind Demodocus – sings of the Archaeans and Trojans and of a quarrel between the heroes Achilles and Odysseus (Odysseus weeps!), of the adulterous Aphrodite and Ares, and later, at Odysseus’ request, of the fall of Troy and the Wooden Horse (and Odysseus weeps some more!). Alcinous, alert to all the weeping, demands that the stranger come clean – tell his story.

[22. September 2021] Odysseus weeps and weeps some more as Demodocus sings of the mayhem and blood shed as Troy falls, but it has come to my attention, that the sorrow he exhibits, the tears he sheds, can be interpreted as an asymmetrical act to the grief of Andromache on the death of Hector and her anguish about what fate now awaits her.

Odysseus was melting into tears;
his cheeks were wet with weeping, as a woman
weeps, as she falls to wrap her arms around
her husband, fallen fighting for his home
and children. She is watching as he gasps
and dies. She shrieks, a clear high wail, collapsing
upon his corpse. The men are right behind.
They hit her shoulders with their spears and lead her
to slavery, hard labor, and a life
of pain. Her face is marked with her despair.
In that same desperate way, Odysseus 
was crying [...] 

Book 8 [lines 521-532], The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson (pp. 237-239)

It is really extraordinary how a woman introduced as a simile for the state of the grieving Odysseus then takes on a life of her own in the verse. And that life could be, generically speaking, the widow who has lost her beloved on the battlefield and is facing an uncertain future, or it could be imagined more specifically as Andromache. Though, in the moment, Odysseus’ emotions are being stirred by his intense warrior pride and the desire to hear again tales of days of glory, perhaps I was remiss in not allowing some credence to the possibility that Odysseus’ reaction was not also a gesture of empathy for those who had suffered in Troy; after all he has come some way – and in more than nautical miles – since the Trojan war.

Church and crown

…and The Prayer Book Controversy of 1927-28.

Brought to my attention while listening to the Times Literary Supplement Freedom, Books, Flowers & the Moon podcast here is an essay by A.N. Wilson in the TLS (a free article if you’re lucky or with subscription) that starts and ends with Josiah Wedgwood IV, a descendent of the potter and a Labour Party MP from 1923 until his death in 1943. Clearly here a name known through the familiar colour and motif of Wedgwood porcelain, but to me also because I recall Virginia Woolf sharing some gossipy, interesting stuff of another variety regarding “Jos.” in her diary. What I can’t remember are comments about his passionate political commitments (and make herewith a note to myself to look into this – Leonard Woolf would have surely had sympathy with some of his opinions).

For Wedgwood was certainly a radical sort – leaving the Liberals behind him in the interest of a commitment to the working class fight, standing almost alone against the eugenics zeitgeist, ever alert to the dangers of fascism, supportive of Zionism, Indian independence – and, in respect to the Prayer Book controversy, opposed to Anglican matters of cleric, communion or anything else being disputed in the Houses of Parliament. It was not the substance of the 1928 Prayer Book revisions (foremost being that opponents saw in it an opening towards Catholic practices) that Wedgwood railed against (as an agnostic he presumably didn’t give a twig!), rather that as a matter it had no place in a secular establishment.

For the record: the bill brought forward was defeated two times in the House of Commons, soon thereafter the Bishops took matters into their own hands and the 1928 version was authorised after a fashion, the Church of England has its own governing Synod (1969) and must no longer seek parliamentary approval, and the infamous 1928 book and its 1662 precursor exist together; neither absolutely adhered to in practice amidst a variety of forms of worship.

And what concerns A.N. Wilson (Wiki informs: that he is a biographer of “the potter”, that his father was in fact managing director of Wedgwood – oh, and that he is Emily’s father!) is just how Protestant is Britain now, and that leads to curious considerations; including whether at the next Coronation Service the new monarch will swear an oath to uphold the Protestant Religion. And what can that possibly mean in a nation comprising so many beliefs and in an increasingly secular society?

Reading Woolf & Hearing Dante

Writing up my thoughts as I reread Virginia Woolf’s diaries, I turned for a browse back to Night & Day (1919), and I was overcome in some segments with the rhythm of Dante. Perhaps I am imagining it, but take the time here to experiment a little anyway – beneath are a couple of excerpts (a Kindle version) that I have broken up (rather willy-nilly!) in tercets ending with a quatrain as with some English translations of The Divine Comedy.

There was no reason, she assured herself,
for this feeling of happiness;
she was not free; she was not alone;

she was still bound to earth
by a million fibres; 
every step took her nearer home.

Nevertheless, she exulted
as she had never exulted before.
The air was fresher, the lights more distinct,

the cold stone of the balustrade
colder and harder,
when by chance or purpose

she struck her hand against it.
No feeling of annoyance with Denham remained;
he certainly did not hinder any flight

she might choose to make,
whether in the direction of the sky
or of her home; 

but that her condition was due to him,
or to anything
that he had said,
she had no consciousness at all.

Virginia Woolf. Night and Day Ch.XXIII (Kindle Locations 4335-4339).

He walked on upon the impetus
of this last mood
of almost supernatural exaltation 

until he reached a narrow street,
at this hour empty
of traffic and passengers.

Here, whether it was the shops
with their shuttered windows, 
the smooth and silvered curve 

of the wood pavement,
or a natural ebb of feeling,
his exaltation slowly oozed
and deserted him.

Virginia Woolf. Night and Day Ch.XXIII(Kindle Locations 4362-4364).

How they came to find themselves
walking down a street with many lamps,
corners radiant with light, 

and a steady succession of motor-omnibuses
plying both ways along it, 
they could neither of them tell;

nor account for the impulse which led them 
suddenly to select one of these wayfarers 
and mount to the very front seat.

After curving through streets
of comparative darkness, 
so narrow that shadows on the blinds

were pressed within a few feet of their faces,
they came to one of those great knots of activity
where the lights, having drawn close together, 

thin out again and take their separate ways.
They were borne on 
until they saw the spires of the city churches
pale and flat against the sky.

Virginia Woolf. Night and Day Ch.XXXIV (Kindle Locations 7346-7351).

Perhaps it is just this “stream of consciousness” flowing from Katherine & Ralph respectively, in which inner-contemplation is interwoven with the descriptive place as they wander through Kew Gardens or then together walking in the City at the end of the novel, when what is settled is clearly not, that causes me to wonder at this. But I seem to remember Dante was important to Woolf, and to the familial and social milieu of her Victorian youth, and coincidentally at the end of 1918 she is alerted to Tom Eliot’s allusions to Dante, and this at a time she was struggling with her revision of Night & Day.

Well, I meant to just browse, but in the end I read it through. Perhaps I agree with Katherine Mansfield’s insinuation (as VW interpreted her criticism anyway) that it was not a break-out work but rather a throw back – old-fashioned in other words! But with a century in-between and the luxury of being able to appreciate Woolf’s work in its entirety, I very much see Night & Day as Woolf’s bridge into the moderne. And the irritations that plagued her with regard to this book, and they were numerous, may well have resulted from an awareness of its failings; only a bridge when she could have been braver and taken an enormous leap like some of her contemporaries, including Mansfield. But I like the way she took, I like how her life intruded into her story – romance and friendship and not quite ménage à trois, the serious and shallow of both sexes and the occupations they chose, urban living and rural retreats, patriarchal legacies and generational conflicts. Very few lives change radically from one day to the next, so why should the writing of? And stylistically, the omniscient voice, whilst presented formally, has a way of “wandering” that suggests the more fragmented narratives to come (and a life’s journey, divine too in its way.)

Mothering Sunday – 22nd March 2020

While half listening to BBC Radio 4 today, and being informed of a virtual service to be led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, I am reminded that today is what is known in the UK as Mothering Sunday. I have taken the time to track down Justin Welby’s sermon – it is not long and the circumstances we face from this wretched pandemic do not have to be explicitly stated to impart a warmth and nearness that contrasts with the coldness and distance that threatens to envelope us. Not surprisingly, Welby advocates seeking consolation in the Church, as a conduit to imparting the same to others, but he also suggests that loving and giving to family and friends, and commitment to our place as a member of a community will in itself offer hope and consolation.

My copy of Mothering Sunday,Graham Swift, Scribner UK, 2016

And this day reminds me of the wonderful 2016 work from Graham Swift entitled Mothering Sunday, which I liked so very much – each of the 149 pages! Best described therefore as a novella, an oft maligned and not easy to define genre but the perfect form I think for this gem from Swift.

Not long ago I was contemplating the single day narrative, but I did forget this one, and essentially it is just that, and that day is Mothering Day, 30th March, 1924; diverging only to explain the situation and the perspective from which the narrator speaks. The mood of that day is so beautifully described that it is almost tangible. And startling is Swift’s first person narration – unafraid as he is to choose a woman’s voice; the language, the measure he brings is, to my mind, truly brilliant. To me his work is put together as a Matryoshka doll – a literary form within a literary form, and is illustrative of how a historical moment can define the trajectory of a life, can define literature, can define life, lives …

Subtitled “A romance”; that it is, but more, for it also is a snapshot of British society at that time, when, exacerbated by the trauma and losses of war, the stringent class structures were being stretched and opportunities being created, such that a young woman with brains and ambition had alternatives, places to go beyond servitude.

We’re all in the same club…

the lonely hearts club…

Cover of the Beatle’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Wikepedia, By Source, Fair use

Covid-19 knows not social status, not race nor creed, nor national borders. We are in this together -or so we are told. (Do I alone wonder at the limits of our proclaimed solidarity?) And amidst these strangest of days in which we have been hurtled, many of us may wonder at the times ahead – how long? what to do? – we ponder philosophical and political questions on freedoms and responsibilites – individual and collective, reappraised is the role of the oft maligned State, and we even look beyond: at the “who we are” that comes out when it’s all said and done. More than anything we contemplate what this will be like, this “staying at home”, this “minimising social interaction”. Olivia Lange writing on ‘How to Be Lonely’ at The New York Times, offers her thoughts, and some from Virginia Woolf:

But loneliness isn’t just a negative state, to be vanquished or suppressed. There’s a magical aspect to it too, an intensifying of perception that led Virginia Woolf to write in her diary of 1929: “If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.” Woolf was no stranger to quarantine. Confined to a sickbed for long periods, she saw something thrilling in loneliness, a state of lack and longing that can be intensely creative.
The New York Times, Opinion, March 19 2020

To put this a little more in context, the Woolf quote is part of a lengthy and fragmented diary entry on Friday 11 October 1929; finding herself “surrounded with silence”, not in a physical sense but what she refers to as a pervasive “inner loneliness”. Reflecting on all her personal and professional good fortunes, the triumphs of family and friends, she wonders at the disquiet that haunts her, and which she can not quite grasp; but this time at least she will “Fight, fight. If I could catch the feeling…”

And as Virginia Woolf fought (for most of her life & until she could no more) the demon lurking in her head, guised as an empty void, so then should we all give it a go – be creative; find new ways of occupying ourselves, of communicating, of sharing not only our anxieties but also little kindnesses, and be patient and alert not only to our own needs but those of others. And, as Laing says at the end of her piece:

Love is not just conveyed by touch. It moves between strangers; it travels through objects and words in books. There are so many things available to sustain us now, and though it sounds counterintuitive to say it, loneliness is one of them. The weird gift of loneliness is that it grounds us in our common humanity. Other people have been afraid, waited, listened for news. Other people have survived. The whole world is in the same boat. However frightened we may feel, we have never been less alone.
The New York Times, Opinion, March 19 2020

And I would add – a good dose of well placed humour. Returning to Virginia Woolf – often overlooked in any short telling focusing on the scathingly brilliant and problematic personality legend would have us believe, is that Woolf often displayed, and especially in her diaries and private correspondence, an abundance of humour and warmth, an appreciation of human frailty and no mean measure of self-deprecation. Some laughter and an awareness of the very smallness of ourselves and greater humanity in the continuum of history may help placate our fears. And a recognition that more likely than not there are many who are a whole lot worse off than ourselves.

And music – personal comfort music for when times are tough, and that for me always includes the Beatles.

The Diary of Virginia Woolf (1)

Volume One: 1915-1919

My Copy of Volume One of The Diary of Virginia Woolf

Posting here today only to note that I have finally completed my rereading and personal reflections on the first volume of The Diary of Virginia Woolf, covering the years from 1915-1919 – and I must say it was an enthralling and intellectually stringent endeavour, that led me off on wide tangents on occasions. Volume Two will now follow; more condensed and at a speedier pace to be hoped.

The Odyssey (3): Books 3 – 4

To Pylos and Sparta

Before accompanying Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta, I would like to mention a favourite book from a couple of years ago: the terrific memoir by Daniel Mendelsohn entitled An Odyssey – A Father, A Son and an Epic (Alfred K. Knopf, 2017). One could say: “As if everyone doesn’t have one those! Is in the midst of…” An “odyssey” that is. For each and every life is just that of course; however eventful, however modest, but when one is a classicist and estranged from an aged father and the reconciliation comes to be in a university seminar room and aboard an Aegean cruise ship then there is an added impetus.

Written with honesty and warmth, and garnered with some most extraordinarily poignant moments, I devoured Mendelsohn’s book in few sittings so taken was I by the fine prose. And it was not just the filial interactions between Daniel (Telemachus) and Jay (Odysseus) but the cast of “not just supporting” characters – mother, siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts and “aunties”, cousins, students – making up a tableau of fellowship every bit as Homeric as the modern world allows.

I mention Mendelsohn’s book here because in the chapter titled “Telemachy” (as such are the first four books of The Odyssey referred to) he provides an interesting appraisal of Books 3 and 4 and the significance of the journeys to Pylos and then to Sparta intertwined with interactions in the seminar room and with Mendelsohn family history – enough myth to go around. And in this context, be it in epic or biography, two central concepts are explored. Firstly, nostos (ie. homecoming), in all its breadth of meaning relating to place and person. And secondly, paideusis (education), formally pursued or personal growth in the course of things – “lifelong learning”.

To Pylos and Sparta!

Book 3: An old king remembers

pp. 135-151

Greeted gracefully by King Nestor and his sons and men, and all finding favour with the gods, Telemachus, encouraged by Athena and growing in confidence, makes his person known and pleads for knowledge of his father’s fate. Nestor tells of the destruction of Troy, of Athena’s wrath, of the death of heroes, of Menelaus and Agamemnon (& Clytemnestra & Aegisthus & Orestes – the whole complicated story of fidelity, betrayal and revenge), and how the gods granted he and his men safe passage, but the fate of Odysseus knows he not. What he does know; is that a wise son should not stay away too long from his father’s land for lurking amongst his mother’s suitors may well be an Aegisthus. Menelaus, Nestor says, may well know more, and when all the rites of hospitality are over, he sends Telemachus on his way to Sparta; honouring him with his son, Pisistratus, as companion.

Book 4: What the sea god said

pp. 152-179

Arriving amidst an elaborate wedding feast, Telemachus and Pisistratus are granted a warm and gracious welcome; “hospitality” sounds so, well, medicinal, better is the German “gastfreundschaft“, a ‘let’s eat and enjoy and ask questions later’ attitude of acquaintanceship begging to be contrasted with our modern manner which is so often conditional on who, when and why.

Menelaus tells of the trials and tribulations of his journey home, reveals his love of Odysseus, later of his encounter with the sea god Proteus and what he told about Agamemnon and Aegisthus and Odysseus being trapped upon Calypso’s island. Telemachus is identified as the hero’s son by Helen, who uses her potions to hold back the young man’s grief and instead to regale him with tales of his famous father, especially that surrounding the Wooden Horse at Troy. Telemachus hopeful now that his father may well live, makes haste to return to Ithaca.

[631-847] The book ends in Ithaca where the suitors, enraged by Telemachus’ mission to find news of his father, make plans to ambush him upon his return. And, Penelope, initially angered at not being made aware of her son’s journey, is placated, firstly, by the loyal Eurycleia and then by a dream construed by the godly powers of Athena.

First reflections

“The Mirror & The Light” by Hilary Mantel

Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & The Light is out today! Welcomed by Wolf Hall fans everywhere, and in London with long queues – though why that should be necessary in this day and age I really wouldn’t know – and with various degrees of mostly ecstatic reviews. Ms. Mantel it seems has survived the hype – alone that, a feat! At almost 900 pages I will need some time, but time that will absolutely be found, and sooner I hope rather than later. I had pondered some time last year returning to the first two of the trilogy in preparation, unfortunately…! Perhaps a browse back is in order, and the hope that knowing we are rid (to put it crudely!) of More and Boleyn and approximately how we got there is enough! Maybe a little more than a browse.

Here is a NY Times review, and also an informative magazine piece on Mantel. Should you have access, The Time Literary Supplement review by Edmund Gordon will surely persuade the unpersuaded.

*Portrait of Thomas Cromwell*,
Hans Holbein the Younger (1532–1533), The Frick Collection.

By the way, Holbein, whose portrait of Th. Cromwell is perhaps the most recognisable reproduction, and whose rising star in the Tudor court was courtesy of the patronage of Cromwell, has again a recurring presence in this final novel of the series and with psychological dimensions beyond the historical or purely narrative; another NY Times review (this time from Thomas Mallon) makes the interesting observation:

“…For all its political and literary plotting, “The Mirror and the Light” is most memorable for its portraiture, with Cromwell acting as our Holbein, challenging us to weigh his interpretive assessments against our enormous accumulated knowledge of his concerns, biases and kinks.”
The New York Times, Book Review, Feb. 25 2020