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Ascend - The Great Books Podcast
The Odyssey Book 5 with Dr. Glenn Arbery and Dr. Frank Grabowski
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- [00:00]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Today on Ascend, the Great Books podcast, we discuss book five of the Odyssey with Dr. Frank Grabowski and Dr. Glenn Arbery of Wyoming Catholic College. Okay, guys, I'm just going to play my cards here about book five of the Odyssey. I think that not only is this the most important passage, arguably, of the entire Odyssey, I actually think it's one of the most important passages in the entire Western canon. Why would I say this? I say this because Odysseus is offered immortality in book five. He is offered to become a God.
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
He.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
He can become immortal and stay on Calypso's pleasure island, her pleasure cave. That even impresses Hermes, the God, for the rest of his life. He has all the appetitive pleasures that he wants. He has food. And he's taken as the lover of Calypso, this beautiful goddess. Into all of that, he says no. And the question is twofold. The question is, first, why would Odysseus say no to that immortal life of pleasure? And the second question is, what would you say? What would you say to a life of immortal pleasure if it was offered to you? This is the question that we take up in book five. This is the question that Homer poses to us. And I think it's one of the most important questions in the entire Odyssey and in the Western canon. And so, with this in mind, I'm going to read then the summary of book five from our guide. King Odysseus is trapped on Calypso's island. Zeus, at Athena's pleading, agrees to two proposals. First, Odysseus may leave the captivity of Calypso, and second, Athena may help Telemachus escape the trap set by the suitors. Hermes, the messenger God, goes and tells Calypso that it is Zeus's will that Odysseus be set free upon a makeshift raft. And Calypso, though upset, acquiesces to the will of Zeus. She tells Odysseus that he may leave and. And he has her promise she is not plotting some new harm against him. After four days of working on a raft, Odysseus sets sail on the 5th with gifts and provisions from Calypso. Poseidon, who is returning from Ethiopia, sees Odysseus has left the island, and it made his fury boil even more. Poseidon sends a storm to synch Odysseus. As he's being battered by the waves, a goddess of the sea, Aino, pities Odysseus and tells him to strip off his clothes, tie her scarf around his waist and swim for land. Poseidon smashes the raft to pieces and Odysseus, with the help of Athena, makes it to shore. The book ends with Odysseus falling asleep beneath two olive trees.
- [02:45]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Foreign.
- [02:50]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
The Great Books Podcast My name is Deacon Harrison Garlick. I live in rural Oklahoma with my wife and five children, serve as a deacon at Holy Family Cathedral and as Chancellor and General Counsel for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa. We're recording on a beautiful afternoon here at the Chancery. If you're new to Ascend, we're a weekly podcast that helps guide you through the great books so we can be like a small group to you. We have videos, podcasts, written guides, all kind of resources to help you. We've read the Iliad, many of the Greek plays, many of Plato's dialogues, some short stories as well, with more on the way on the way. And we just finished Dante's Purgatorio for Lent and we read Dante's Inferno last year with Paradiso on the docket next Lent. So we can be a small group and we can help you read the great books. You have all the resources. No excuses. You can begin today. Check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. We have Instagram now. Very excited and Patreon. We appreciate all of our supporters who have access to our written guides, including a guide on the Odyssey and also community chats where you can talk about the great books with other people and visit thegreatbookspodcast.com for our schedule and more information. Okay, so today we are continuing our 12 week study of the Odyssey prior to the new Christopher Nolan movie coming out. So you too can be disappointed and join us in that disappointment. Actually, I have to see the movie. I'm not excited about that. I have to see it because then we're going to have an episode debriefing on the movie itself and how it matched up to the actual text. Also, happy to confirm that Dr. Patrick Deneen of Notre Dame, the author of why Liberalism Failed, will be joining us at the end of our study to discuss his new book, American Odyssey, what An Ancient Story Reveals About Our Divided Souls, which is out July 21st and corresponding to our country's 250th anniversary. But today we're discussing book five, arguably one of the best books in the entire Odyssey, one that certainly has captured my attention. I'm very excited about many of the conversations we're going to have today and to guide us through this text, we have two of our very own mentors. We have returning to the podcast, Dr. Frank Grabowski diaconate candidate, third order Franciscan, Dean of faculty at our classical school. Many accolades. Dr. Grabowski, how are you doing?
- [04:58]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Very well, Deacon. Thanks for having me back. I've really enjoyed revisiting the Odyssey with you and so hoping to make some new discoveries today.
- [05:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it actually, it is amazingly refreshing to actually revisit a text. I know for you guys that teach academically, you're like, oh yeah, I get to reread a text like every year or whatever. Well, when you're on the podcast of Ascend and you're on like the 50 year track to read the great books, you don't get to finish. You don't get to revisit books very often. So actually revisiting the Odyssey has been incredibly refreshing. Also, we have a first time guest today, Dr. Glenn Arbery, who serves as a professor of humanities at Wyoming Catholic College. He holds a PhD from the University of Dallas and he previously served as the president of Wyoming Catholic College from 2016 to 2023. Welcome to the podcast.
- [05:47]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Thank you. Glad to be here. Yeah, looking forward to it.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Tell us a little bit about Wyoming Catholic.
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
Well, I'm a Catholic. I always used to say when I was president, I think our new president still does. It's unique in the world. We combine great books with an experience of the outdoors that's actually part of the curriculum. We have two chaplains, one Roman Rite, one Byzantine, we have daily Mass, we have Divine Liturgy, and we have the great tradition of the Western world, starting with Homer. And I'm delighted to talk about the Odyssey today with you.
- [06:24]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it's a beautiful place. Had several Wyoming Catholic professors on. Always enjoy your all's insights. You guys have a fantastic and very unique college. And obviously now Father Deacon Kyle Washett, the current president, has been on podcast many times. Enjoy his company. So before we jump into book five, really excited to have a lot of those conversations. Just tell us a little bit about like your own scholarship, what great books you enjoy reading, et cetera.
- [06:49]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Well, I love Homer as much as anything, but, you know, when I first got out of graduate school, I was writing about Dostoevsky and Dante. And, you know, when you do the great books, you sort of range around widely. I worked with Dr. Louise Cowan at the University of Dallas, who was a mentor to me. And a group of us over a number of years published four volumes on genre, which those books are still very much in circulation and very influential on students. One is called the Terrain of Comedy, the Epic Cosmos. The third was the Tragic Abyss, which I edited. And then the Prospect of Lyric. And for both of those first two, I wrote about Homer. I've also been interested in Southern literature. I have a book through ISI called the Southern Critics. That's an edited compilation of their works. In 2001, I published why Literature Mattered with ISI. Why Literature Matters Not Mattered, why It Matters through ISI Books that dealt with some contemporary authors, but really came to focus on Othello and the iliad. I published three novels more recently with Wise Blood Books, starting in 2015.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Two.
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
So that's, that's, you know, I'm. I'm a southerner and when you talk too fast, I might have to slow you down. So.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, that's pretty good. Well, I. My fault is that I'm an attorney, so sometimes I do need to because I only, I only have a short period of window to get in my thoughts and your rhetorical devices. So a little bit on the other end of the spectrum. What. Tell me about your novels though. Like, what genre are they? That's, that's fascinating. Tell me about the novels.
- [08:38]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Well, they are. It's a trilogy actually. And it's sort of roughly Dantian. You know, the first one is pretty dark, but they're all set in the south where I grew up, and they center on a couple of figures who are working through some pretty major sands, I'll put it that way. And the last one just came out in November, it's called Gates of Heaven and it includes a move, interestingly from the south to Wyoming of all places. But yeah, I hope you look at them at some point.
- [09:12]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, good, we really appreciate you sharing that. That's fantastic. Okay, jumping into the text. Book five, one of my favorite texts. This was, I mean, so first, like, particularly as a first time reader, I was like, oh, finally, like we get Odysseus, we finally get his introduction into the text because that's what I was really looking for. But now, like, as I've read this a few times, I like, I just think this book is incredibly rich, particularly in its, like, philosophy. As you kind of look through all the signs and things that Homer the teacher gives us. It's something that's really captured my imagination. I appreciate you being on today, helping to guide through this text. So just kind of looking at the beginning, I'll just kind of sketch it out and then we can kind of jump into where you were. So what do we see? We see dawn referenced in the beginning. We see her lordly mate, Tithonus or Tithonus. I'd like to circle Back to that and why we get that reference. And then we get Athena coming and making this pitch for Zeus and Zeus's response. And I'd really like to know where, like, what you guys observe in this kind of opening section. One thing that really caught my attention in this is when she's trying to give this pitch to Zeus about what they should do. One of the things that she leverages is that the suitors are going to kill the boy. They're going to kill Telemachus. And one thing I haven't noticed in the past, that I noticed on this reading is that Athena's actually leveraging her own work to try and get Zeus to act. So the, the suitors weren't going to kill Telemachus, at least not now, because he wasn't a threat. But we see that through her act as Mentor, right? As he's had his own little Odyssey, and he's kind of regaining that, or maybe for the first time maturing in that thematic and that spiritedness. He's becoming a threat to them for the first time. Right? He's not the little boy that grew up in the house. He's a young man that now that are going to ambush and kill. So I just thought it was really interesting that part of her rhetoric here is that she's the one that's actually made him a threat, and then she's using that as leverage against Zeus. I mean, what stood out to you guys in this passage?
- [11:07]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah, Zeus more or less points that out to her, you know, says, well, you know, you can deal with this, I bet. But that is. That's fascinating that she has brought Telemachus to the point of being a substantial man. And at the beginning of the Odyssey, he's clearly still a boy, still looking for guidance. But the Mentor connection comes up pretty clearly here, right at the beginning, too, doesn't it? Because she repeats what Mentor said. As Frank, you were saying just a few minutes ago before we started, the exact same lines that Mentor says in the council back in Ithaca is what Athena repeats here to Zeus about how he was, how Odysseus was a good
- [12:00]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
leader, like a father, and what do we.
- [12:03]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
So what do we make of that? Maybe Dr. Hrabowski, like, so we realize that this is the exact same wording. I think it's a good Homeric thing to look at. Like, we saw this a lot in the Iliad, when Homer repeats stories or even lies, he stacks these narratives on top of each other and we're trying to figure out what's changed. But Here, like, so what's the import? Like, what's the takeaway if Athena is actually copying verbatim Mentor speech?
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Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, that's a very good question. So I think what we, you see here, we see this contrast in both cases in Ithaca at the beginning of book five, we have these two councils. We have the Council of the Ithacans. It's very dysfunctional. We've talked about this in the previous podcast. Very dysfunctional polis. Yeah. I think what really stood out to me, gentlemen, is that Mentor actually addresses the council prior to us learning about Athena becoming incarnate. So in the text in book two, mentors addressing the council on, on page 100 around, it would be around line 260 or so, or 250. And as Dr. Arbery says, these are verbatim words. Right. So what's really happening here? Because later on page 101, around line 300, we learned that Athena came to its prayer from close at hand for all the world, with mentors billed in boys. And so one of the questions that I was considering is whether Mentor all along was Athena. In other words, when Odysseus appoints Mentor as the caretaker for Ithaca, who exactly is this Mentor? We don't know much about him. We learn that he has a father, and so we don't really know much about his past, about his family. He seems to be a well known commodity within Ithaca and people know him. But, but I often wonder whether this Again, so I think, and I'll end on this note, that I think Homer right now is beginning to realize that in the Iliad he creates a problem, this unbridgeable gap between the heavenly and the earthly, that, that this is a very, there's a distance between the two. And so you need to somehow bridge this gap between man and the gods. And how do we do this? And he may very well come up with a solution here that Christians will find very familiar, namely in the incarnation where a God, in this case Athena actually takes on the form of a man. And so if we continue, by the end, we learn that Athena, after a piece is established in Ithaca, she retains the form and the bodily shape of Mentor. And so, yeah, it raised the question within my mind as to who Mentor is and whether Mentor was Athena all along, from the very beginning.
- [15:01]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
That's an interesting speculation. And certainly we're supposed to bring Athena and Mentor into a unity by the time that Telemachus goes on his trip first to Nestor. But Homer usually cues us into that, it seems to me, in other words, when there's a. If the God is appearing in a certain way, he will say so. And later, you know, when Mentor, when Athena takes on the actual appearance of Mentor as they get onto the ships, you know, we're told about that. I like your point about the incarnational dimension of this because it's certainly crucial to the way Homer is giving us these gods. You know, Hermes in the Iliad side will appear as a young man just when he's getting his beard. But he usually cues us into those things. So what? Yeah, but the question, I think is what we do with this identification between Mentor and Athena that, that you've pointed out so well.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I really, I really like that. I really like raising the question. I love raising questions on things that I thought were completely clear. And it's like, oh, wait, maybe this is, maybe this is not as clear cut as I thought. And so, no, I think raising the question of when, when does Athena actually take on the guise of Mentor is a really fascinating question because I see both sides of that. One is, it does seem like we have two Mentors at some point because he was seen boarding the ship and then he was seen in Ithaca. Not that Athena couldn't do that too, but at least that seems to be some illusion that there's a real Mentor running around and there's Athena in the guise of Mentor. But then, I mean, Homer's a teacher and sometimes his teachings are very subtle. And for Athena to give the exact same verbiage that Mentor Game gave, I think that's. Yeah, that is, Is that a hint to something else? I think that's fascinating. I'd actually really like to think about that more. One of the things that also stood out to me about this passage is, well, two things. One, you know, Zeus responds, I love this, right? What nonsense you let slip through your teeth. And so he explains, like, this is the, this is the goal. This is. You have, this is what's going to happen. This is the plan. And so, yes, we're going to send Hermes. Odysseus is going to be set free. He talks about the raft. He's gonna say he's gonna come home with more plunder than he could have if he ever had one from Troy. And so again though we get this conversation, I don't know, this is a little bit before line 50 and fagles, he says, so his destiny ordains, he shall see his loved ones reached his high roofed house, his native land at last. And this kind of again raises the question that we see throughout the Iliad and here too is. What exactly is the distinction between Zeus and fate or Zeus and destiny? Are these two different movements? Is this something that Zeus tends to like, fate is something that he actually tends to shepherd along? Or is fate just simply the alter ego of Zeus's will? Dr. Aubrey, what do you think?
- [18:16]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I think not the latter. I think that Zeus has to serve fate. Even in the Iliad, for example, when Sir Paton, his son, has to die, Zeus would love to avert that circumstance, but he can't. It would lead to too many things that would be out of order should he do so. Even here you get the possibility in book five, a little bit later, when Odysseus almost drowns, you know, against his destiny, it would have happened. But I don't think that Zeus equals fate so much as he has to act as the servant of what's coming into being. So I don't know what Dr. Grabowski thinks about that. But, you know, it seems to me that Homer makes those distinctions.
- [19:11]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, Dr. Arbery, I agree with you 100%. Previous podcasts, I've drawn attention just to how ambiguous this word fate is in Homer. Homer uses different words that are routinely translated as fate. In this particular case, it's moira. And this is a word that is used within the context of the Sarpedon episode, as well as Hector in book six of the Iliad when he's speaking with Andromache about his fate. And so I agree with you. I don't think that Homer understands. I think he's wrestling with this, but I don't think that he understands fate as a kind of predestined outcome or as an outcome that is determined by Zeus's will. I think of it as, you just, I think very articulately put, that it's a kind of moral framework that even the gods are beholden to. Right. That even Zeus must play, that they have to all play by the same rules. We all do.
- [20:11]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah. And I think it's always being worked out. The particulars have to be discerned. You know, what's going to happen, how is it going to lead to this necessary m. But everything in the in between seems a little contingent. At least that's the way I read it. You know, we know Odysseus is going to get home, but all the particulars of that are not necessarily in place.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, very good. I, I tend to view it. I, I agree with both of you. I tend to think that it's something that Zeus has to shepherd. It's something that he receives. And he seems to be more sensitive to it than most because even with Sarpedon, remember, Hera basically warns him, if you go against this, it will cause chaos. And so he seems to be the one that has to shepherd this along. But I also think this is something that Homer gives us as part of maybe that poetic dialectic that it's at times ambiguous. And the kind of conflation there, the grayness then is an invitation for the reader, the listener, to discern maybe the difference between the gods and providence and fate. He gives you enough, I think, to make you ask these questions. Any other thoughts? Like on this, on this opening part of Zeus's response, Athena's plea to him, or the opening.
- [21:29]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I have just one comment, and that is a little bit earlier, where Athena, in addressing Zeus and the council, indicates that Calypso is holding Odysseus there by force, or another way of translating that is by necessity. And so this is, I think, one of the central questions that a number of my students have, and that is, to what extent is Odysseus there willingly? And to what extent is he culpable for this? Because, you know, a lot of the students don't, don't take kindly to his infidelities, right? And so it calls the question, this is his moral character. But if he is indeed held there by force or by necessity, that would seem to lessen his culpability and perhaps even provide some reason to excuse his indiscretions.
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
Well, back in book one, I have a different translation I'm working from Lattimore. But in the Lattimore translation, when Athena first presents Odysseus case to the Council of Gods, she says about Calypso, she detains the grieving, unhappy man, and ever with soft and flattering words, she works to charm him to forget Ithaca. So that sounds very different from constraint in the way that we might imagine it. But on the other hand, she's not giving him the means to leave, you know, which she obviously could do once, you know, once we see her set about thinking of his way to get off the island and book five. But, yeah, I think it. He is helpless, you know, and soft and flattering words without any means of escape become a kind of tyranny.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I certainly. I mean, Dr. Barelski, to your point, I certainly understand your students kind of recalcitrants to, like, really, like, where's his culpability here? And a lot of people, too, are introduced to the Odyssey as this wonderful tale of Odysseus trying to get Back to his wife and his home and et cetera. So this can throw you for a loop. And then we run into some later narratives that I think are even more difficult to kind of work through. But let's use this as a segue and look into, like, the nature of the island and what. And the effect it's having in Odysseus. So Hermes goes. So according to the will of Zeus, according to destiny and also Athena's rhetoric, Hermes goes down to Calypso's island. And what I really noticed particularly moving through this time is that. Okay, yes. So this is basically a pleasure island. This is a pleasure cave. Like, this has everything that you can have to the degree that even Hermes is somewhat entranced. So down at line 80 or so, it says why even a deathless God who came upon that place would gaze in wonder, heart entranced with pleasure. Hermes the guide, the mighty giant killer, stood there spellbound, which I'm assuming then is this. Homer is really playing up the pleasures of this cave, which. Which includes Calypso herself. And. And what I thought was really interesting, there's many things to talk about here, is that in juxtaposition to that, where do we find Odysseus? He sat off on the headland, weeping there, as always, wrenching his heart with sobs and groans and anguish, gazing out over the barren sea through blinding tears. Now, when I was a young man and I read this the first time, I was like, are you kidding me? This is Odysseus, like the war hero. You know, he's like, he's really clever and all this. And then this is how we get introduced to him, is he's crying on a beach like, are you kidding me on this? Read through. It really struck me, the juxtaposition that Homer is giving us that here is this cave of pleasures that even the divine, the gods are entranced by. And where's Odysseus? He's in sorrow. And he's removed himself from presumably the farthest away he possibly can. He's on the edge of the beach. I mean, what do you guys make of the scene?
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
I think it's sort of an amazing demonstration of what being in a place that's too beautiful for too long can do to you. It's like you are on vacation forever. You have nothing to do. And Odysseus can't see what Hermes sees for the first time when he comes there. He can't see that anymore. He can't see the really Edenic quality of this island. And I hope we can comment on that later because Milton, I think, thinks of Eden as a kind of Calypso's Island. That's perhaps theologically controversial. But in any case, I think Odysseus in his first appearance is certainly not appearing as the hero as any way that we would imagine him to be. But I'm sorry, Dr. Grabowski, I know you probably have something to say on that also.
- [26:45]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
No, Dr. Robert, I mean, you actually mentioned something that it really struck a chord in me. How so? Deacon Harrison has spoken of the juxtaposition between this beautiful island and the man of constant sorrow or despair in Odysseus. But the juxtaposition that for me came to mind was between Calypso's island and Ithaca, where Ithaca, we know, is not Pleasure Island. It's an island that is rocky, that is desolate, that is rough. And so something that has certainly come up on other podcasts is the role that. What I take to be Homer's understanding, the role that place, that that one's home plays in one's personal identity. So it's no wonder. So, Dr. Aubrey, when you said, you know, there's something. There's something to be said for enjoying oneself too much that it becomes exhausting. And so I think that for us, our first glimpse at Odysseus is a man who hasn't just suffered. We'll learn all about his suffering later. He'll tell us himself, but that he's become displaced, right. That this is not his home and this has affected him at a deeply metaphysical and ontological level.
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
It could be his home. I mean, it's offered as his home. And that's, I guess, what we will need to get into more deeply. But if he chose to be, he could be there forever. It's a matter of jettisoning all those loyalties that he has to his wife and to his son and entering into a different sphere of things. But, you know, so I guess we have to ask, why can't this be his home? You know, what is it about it that makes it unsuitable for a man of his nature for him to be crying on the beach? What is it he wants? You know, what is it that would be better than this dreamland, you know, of everyone who thinks about retirement, you know. Yeah. What could you want better than, you know, this ever youthful goddess, this, you know, I don't know. It. It sounds like, you know, every CEO's dream. And. And yet, you know, here's Odysseus weeping as though his heart is breaking, which it is.
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
And I think also.
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Dr. Glenn Arbery
I'm sorry, let me just one, one thought while I. Well, I have it. The cave, you know, the fact that Calypso lives in a cave, that it's not a made place, that it's, you know, it doesn't require any of the, of the skills that we later see Odysseus using and building the raft. What does that mean? You know, what is it, what, what would it mean to have your home be a, be a cave?
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Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I don't, I have some questions about it, but I can see that they eat in comparison in certain ways. This is not a place in which you actually have to have like a techne. This is a place that you just have these pleasures and et cetera. I think one thing, and I think that Homer in a lot of ways is building up to the zenith of this book. He's trying to give us little hints about why Odysseus makes the choice that he has. We don't quite know that choice yet, but it's going to be exposed to us. I think he's trying to give us that because I think as you mentioned Odysseus choice is not the choice that most people would think and I think a lot of us to answer that might immediately jump to Christianity or something, but you don't do that with Odysseus. So why does he make this choice? And I think this is being built up. So let's look at some of these things that we get. Almost little appetizers. So Hermes then tells Calypso, right, that Odysseus has to go because of the will of Zeus. He also mentions destiny and these things. Calypso's response is really fascinating and how she responds to this. So her response to this is, listen, hard hearted you are you gods, you unrivaled lords of jealousy scandalized when goddesses sleep with mortals openly even when one has made the man her husband. And so she gives these examples from dawn and also from Demeter of these terrible things that tend to happen when the goddesses decide to sleep with mortals, even if they want to then make that mortal immortal and bring them into the Olympians. And what, what I think is really fascinating about this is, and I'd like to go back a little bit is how this book opens. And I'm right here, I'm riffing off Dr. Patrick Deneen, who I think has some really wonderful insights into this of how this book actually opens. It says as Dawn Rose, who we were just referenced. So this is not Dawn. So in this passage that we just got from Calypso. She mentions Orion. So this is not Dawn's first foray into trying to take a mortal as a lover. And ending in tragedy. How this one opens is as dawn rose up from bed by her lordly mate, Tithonus, or Tithonus. Now, who is this guy? Well, this is her husband, kinda. So this was a mortal who she loved. And so. And she's obviously an immortal. She's a goddess. She's the dawn that she asks Zeus to make immortal. And Zeus says yes. However, this turns into a horrific tragedy because apparently, according to the rhetoric of Zeus, she forgot to ask for him to have eternal youth, immortal youth as well, which you think would be implied, but again, there's this prejudice against these male mortals becoming gods. And so then Tithonus is trapped in this tragedy in which he cannot die, but he continues to age. And I love the. There's that classic like Dulair's children's Greek mythology I'm sure you guys have at the Classical school. It's the best absolute standard for children's Greek mythology. And all the. All the illustrations are done by colored pencils. It's just fantastic. And in this section, they have him kind of changing from like a man to an old man to this, like, crumpled creature to the fact that he just ends up being like almost like a little insect that's like in the corner of her room in a basket. That's what has happened to her husband. And so this is what I'm pointing out is the beginning of this book begins with a reference to this. And then Calypso references it as well, in a slightly different context of what happens to these men if they try to then sleep with these goddesses and become immortal, they take the offer. And I think what's really interesting here, because what we get then, to make it very explicit, is down by 150. She says, I welcomed him warmly, cherished him, even vowed to make the man immortal, ageless all his days. So we are told that Calypso offered immortality to Odysseus, and to this point he has said no. And I think there's a few things here to kind of maybe try and coalesce, because I think the question that's already been raised is how can he say no to this? Is this not the zenith of what all the men want? So you become a God? Is that not like the natural end? That's the ascendancy. This is the greatest thing that could happen to you. And by the way, not only do you Gain immortality. You're apparently just going to spend your immortality on the pleasure islet with a beautiful goddess. I mean, how do we even start to maybe scratch the surface here? I don't want to keep talking.
- [34:38]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
There's.
- [34:38]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I have all kinds of thoughts on this. I love this book. But like, how do we start to scratch the surface here of how Odysseus can say no, particularly according to Homer.
- [34:48]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I think he's been saying no for seven years. You know, in the Homeric Hymns and elsewhere, you discover that if a God wants to make a mortal into an immortal, the God will feed the mortal ambrosia and nectar. And we see Hermes sit down across from Calypso when he comes to visit and she serves him ambrosia and nectar. And later, when we see Odysseus sit down in the very same seat, as Homer emphasizes, she serves him such things as mortals eat. I think that Odysseus must have been refusing from the very first meal that he had there. There's some way that he won't step into that role which he feels is somehow dangerous. You know, maybe he knows the story of Tethonus, I don't know. But I don't know that his choice not to be an immortal isn't one that's just been present the whole time he's there, if you see what I mean. In other words, it's not an upcoming choice. It's a steady kind of almost habit on his part of refusing this.
- [36:15]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
There's a famous thought experiment made by the philosopher Robert Nozick, the. The experience machine or the pleasure machine, where. Right. The. The way the thought experiment goes that, you know, in some future, at some future time, scientists have managed to engineer a machine that you would hook yourself up to for life that would provide you with any sort of experiences or pleasures, you know, anything that your heart desires. We're supposed to ask ourselves whether we would ever hook ourselves up to a machine. Whenever I present this to my students, of course, there are the few hedonists in the crowd who would say, absolutely sign me up. Most say no. And when I ask them, why? Because they respond, because that's not living. That's not actually living a life that's just receiving pleasure. So there's. So there's no. There's no work involved. There's no effort. And so you don't actually feel like you've earned the happiness or the pleasure. And I think that in a way, Odysseus, and obviously by extension Homer, understands this, that Odysseus is not A God. He could become a God, but he's a man by nature. And so what human life involves isn't just experiencing delight, but also experiencing all the other emotions that are connected with human existence, whether that be pain or sorrow. So, yeah, I think that, you know, again, Homer, despite maybe not knowing about Robert Nozick's experience machine, is sort of anticipating the same intuition.
- [38:08]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah, no, I agree. I think that Odysseus knows that to stay here on Calypso's island, I mean, her name means something like being engulfed or being obscured. It's cognate with eclipse and such words, that to be there is to become what he is in the Cyclops cave, or says he is nobody. He's erased from human speech and he becomes forever the kind of kept man of Calypso. You don't sense any possibility that becoming immortal would mean that Odysseus has some sort of role on Olympus or something like that. Know, he's just going to be there on the island forever. What a terrible prospect. You know, if you're thinking in terms of meaning and of what you are ultimately as a. As a human being and what your story is, you know, there's no story anymore. There's nothing to relate, there's nothing to say. So, yeah, I completely agree. The adversity and the pain even, are something that you feel Odysseus almost positively longs for here.
- [39:40]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And just to add one more note too, gentlemen, in previous podcasts we've talked about these epithets. These Greek heroes have Odysseus's most famous epithets being plutar poss, being a man of twists and turns, but also plutolos, which is much suffering. And one could debate what exactly these epithets mean or how they relate. Do they define. Do they constitute the essence? But they do, in some respect constitute a vital part of a person's identity. And so by achieving the status of an immoral, he would lose all of this. He would no longer be a man of twists and turns. He would no longer be a man of constant sorrow, much so suffering. He would no longer be a man of many counsels, and so he would, in effect, lose himself.
- [40:27]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Every time you say a man of constant sorrow, I hear that song.
- [40:33]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I think so, too. I mean, many, many good thoughts. Yeah. One thing I would say is, yeah, some of the commentaries try to connect the Cyclops narrative to Calypso. So just as Odysseus becomes that nobody, he blinds the Cyclops, that we're going to get the narrative later on, but it's already been referenced in book one. Then he has this punishment of then being with the concealer of being with Calypso. And if he accepts this, then he has basically a blind life that he'll become blind himself. Because I think that a few thoughts just to kind of keep scratching at this. You both mentioned earlier that this appetitive life, this life of pleasure, seems to be unfulfilling. And I think that's a huge motif in this, that then what is. What is man actually made for? What's his teleology? What is his purpose? Does Homer have then a thick understanding of the human condition and what man is actually called to do? Because these warnings, you can couple that the appetitive, the lower part of the soul that loves these pleasures. Soul's somewhat anachronistic here for Homer, but I think there's antecedents to it very clearly seems to be unfulfilling. There has to be something more to life than this. Then you get it. Coupled with the fact that basically every time a man tries to do this, it ends horrifically. So Calypso gives her examples. Now, she doesn't blame it on that this is something contrary to man's nature. She just blames it on the jealousy of the male gods. But I think very clearly, like with Tithonus at the beginning, you see that accepting this ends in something that's unnatural. It ends in something that's very disordered. And again, that I think then robs Odysseus of his own. His own identity very clearly. So let's keep, let's keep pushing the text. I think we actually get more evidence Homer's kind of spoon feeding us to this very slowly. But I think this is a big question. Why does he say no? And then a moral read is, what would you say? Just like Dr. Kabaski talked about with his students, like, what would you say to Calypso if you were able to live on this island of pleasures with a beautiful goddess? And so going to, you know, about 160 or so, Calypso has acquiesced to Hermes. And so now we're going to have this episode of her and Odysseus. And so again, we get him this around a little bit for 160 weeping, his eyes never dry, his sweet life flowing away. And then later on in the nights True. So this gets like Homer running interference in the nights True, he'd sleep with her in that arching cave, but he had no choice. Unwilling lover alongside lover, all too willing. Now, Dr. Kabowsi, is this not to solve the problem for your students. They're just like, oh, okay, he got dragged into this or what do they do with that line?
- [43:21]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, that's a good question. Yeah, I think that, well, my students are Catholic and so naturally they have this almost instinctive repulsion to sort of any suggestion that he would be unfaithful. They, they, they attribute, I think they attribute to Odysseus far more agency than he may have. You know, as, as Dr. Arbery said, you know, he, Odysseus didn't have to. He, presumably he still has free will, but he's in such a weakened state. And by weakened I don't mean just physically weakened, but psychologically and spiritually and morally weakened. His Thumas has, has grown so small and emaciated because of these pleasures.
- [44:11]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Right.
- [44:11]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
So I mean, when we think about the different parts of the soul, and I know this is something that we're going to touch on much later, but Thumas for Homer is such a vital part of our existence. I mean it's a vital part of the warrior's existence. And so if the thumotic part of Odysseus has shrunk to almost a vanishing, vanishingly small point, it is no wonder that he is suffering from a kind of, almost weakness of will where he cannot stop himself. And so does this excuse Odysseus? Well, I think I'll leave it on this note. I think it's a mistake to regard these characters as being sort of black and white where we can easily identify the heroes and the villains. I think what makes this story and Odysseus such a compelling character is the ambiguity, is the struggle that he is far more relatable than swift footed Achilles or Ajax or maybe even to some
- [45:13]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
extent Hector, you know, a puzzle over this. The same issue with Calypso and his apparent concession to her, you know, all these years. But I just wonder if we're looking at it in the same way the Greeks would have. I don't know. And I think that it's important to notice that Odysseus is never said to have a captive slave woman with him in the Iliad, you know, and as so many others do. I mean, Agamemnon with Chrysaeus and Achilles with, you know, Briseus and so on, even Nestor. But there's never any mention of a woman that Odysseus is keeping. Maybe in some other source than Homer, but not in Homer with Goddesses. I wonder if it's simply,
- [46:13]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I don't
- [46:13]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
know exactly how to talk about that. But you can't really say that Odysseus was unwilling with Circe. You know, he stays with her a year and his men have to urge him to leave. On the other hand, that's the instruction he's given by Hermes when he goes to her, that when, you know, he confronts her, he is supposed to enter the surpassingly beautiful bed of Circe. So there's something about some difference between goddesses and mortal women in terms of the whole question of fidelity, I would say, and I don't know how to talk about that, but it has something to do with the absence of some mortal agency in the presence of. Of the goddess's will. And I don't know.
- [47:11]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I love what you said, Dr. Aubrey, you know, and I would just add one thing. So this whole question about Odysseus and whether he's done something despicable or moral, I mean, I think that we have to separate two questions here. There are two separate questions. So we could ask the question, is Odysseus from perhaps a Catholic point of
- [47:32]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
view
- [47:34]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
or a contemporary point of view, is he praiseworthy? Is Odysseus praiseworthy? The other question, however, I think is far more interesting and that is, does Homer intend to present Odysseus to us as someone worthy of praise? Right. And I think that touches upon what you said, Dr. Aubrey, which is, sure, we need to read this through a modern lens because we're moderns, right, we live in the 21st century. But I think we also need to situate ourselves within the Homeric mindset, within the Greek world. And that's not to say that we ought to be relativists, but locating this historically as well as like ethically within that time period, I think is really, really important. Because, you know, if we don't, then I think we'll lose Homer's ultimate message.
- [48:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think that there's a few thoughts on that. Very lots of good comments were made. Yeah, I think it's very important that we receive Homer qua Homer and that even before going into like a natural law critique or even an Old Testament parallels. I mean, neither David or Boses are perfect. Going to Christian ethics, things like this, which are all fruitful comparisons, they're wonderful parallels. But I really want to get into like, what is Homer the teacher trying to teach us right before we have those comparisons? Because those comparisons will always be much richer if we can saturate ourselves in the intent of Homer. And I think Dr. Arbery's point too, about the infidelity and like, how do you change this? Is there two different rules? And, like, how do you articulate it? What's interesting to me here is that, you know, sex with Calypso seems to be very much situated in the temptation to become immortal. It's not just simply sex with a immortal goddess that seems to be okay. I mean, Peleus with Thetis produced Achilles. There's obviously, there was reasons for that, that Zeus gave that away and that was okay. So it seems to be in a certain way that there's a zenith here of the appetitive of, like, the mortal having sex with the immortal goddess seems to be in a certain way, the highest of the appetitive that, you know, these. These pagans could desire. But here with Calypso, it has a hook in it, right? It's. It's here to draw him into something. And what's interesting is too, in that same passage I read, it says where he's crying. It says, with tears he wept for his foiled journey home. That makes sense, since the nymph no longer pleased. And so there I thought it was interesting too, because even, you know, a lot of the commentaries allude that at some point he was willing and was participating in this. Maybe not engaging in more, you know, the offer of immortality, but engaging, you know, sexually with Calypso. And then there's something that has become dissatisfying with this. Instead of going up to immortality, it has something in him, has decided to see this as ultimately unsatisfying. And I liked what Dr. Grabowski said, is that, you know, this warrior, his. His Thumas, his thaumatic seems to have been whittled down. He's crying on the beach. And I actually really think, because that's another interesting parallel, maybe with Tithonus beginning, that I haven't thought about, is that this engagement with the immortal goddess in this capacity brings a certain shriveling of one's humanity that at first glance, you're like, oh, this would be amazing. Look me up to the pleasure machine. Like, this would be fantastic. But really it brings something that is actually very inhuman. And I think this is what we. If I can push this a little bit forward, I. It seems then that that's what is alluded to. So we get. Well, you have to love that Calypso then comes and talks to him, and this is all her idea. There's no mentioning of Zeus, there's no mentioning of Hermes. He just says, like, now I am willing heart and soul to send you off at last. I mean, I Know, like when we read Homer, it's easy to glance over when they start being repetitive, but they always change little things and the things they change are always like really telling. But what's really fascinating to me is Odysseus response to her. He doesn't believe her. He sees that she is a liar. This is at 190 in Fagles Long enduring Odysseus. He shudders then says passage home? Never. Surely you're plotting something else goddess urging me in a raft across the ocean's mighty gulfs. So this is, this is an interesting juxtaposition because she said she has been telling us that she's been offering him immortality, which means that you would think that she likes him. She says you can go home. And he thinks that she's plotting to kill him. Maybe because it's that she's given up on that offer and if you can't, if you're not going to accept me, you'll just simply die. But he makes her swear an oath which then she swears on sticks which for those who are familiar that's like the one kind of binding oath that the gods will actually do. They, they swear on this river in the underworld. And I don't remember all the details. I think the Iliad gives us this, that if they break it they're like paralyzed from like a whole year and these other things. This is actually a meaningful oath. I think that she can make that. She says never all. All I have in mind, devised for you are the very plans I'd fashion for myself if I were in your straits. That's around 2:10 or so actually. I would argue that I actually still don't believe her for certain reasons. And actually I think I would make an argument later on that it actually still is a trap and she has devised to kill him on the way there. But what do you make of this back and forth where she retells a story, she removes the influence of Zeus. He right, this cunning Odysseus knows that the goddess is lying, makes her swear. I mean, any observations on this back and forth?
- [53:04]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Odysseus doesn't believe most goddesses, you know, even when Athena comes to him later. But you know, even in this book, right, when Aino gives him the baal, he doesn't really trust that that's going to work. But yeah, I had not, I had not thought of Calypso as, as tricking him. I'd like to hear that, hear you sort of work that out.
- [53:30]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, does that make us jump pretty far ahead I'm just. I'm trying to figure out where.
- [53:34]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I don't mean to. I don't mean to get ahead of ourselves. I'm just.
- [53:37]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, we'll jump into that when we can. I have. I have a theory that she is. She is still trying on his way home. Okay, so here, let's get into what I. This back and forth though that follows, I think is the meat and potatoes. I mean, I'm a big advocate of writing your book. And this is what my page looks like for those who need to write in their texts. Yeah, exactly. It's just these are signposts to future reads. Some of these comments, I really hope you can't read that. I just showed you because I was young and dumb and just. Please forgive me, but there's a maturation. You write in your text, you mark in it, et cetera. So let's look at this back and forth. So she gives one more offer here. This is down at right before 2:30. But if you knew down deep what pains are fated to fill your cup, before you reach that shore, you stay right here, preside in our house. That's interesting, right? Our house with me. And be immortal. And so again we get this offer of particularly comparing it to pain in pleasure. If you only knew what you were going to have to suffer. And what does Odysseus say? Let me actually, let me keep reading what Calypso says. She says I just might claim to be nothing less than she because what she thinks. Calypso says that she's longing to see his wife. But I just might claim to be nothing less than she. Neither in face nor figure. Hardly right is it for a mortal woman to rival an immortal goddess. How? And build in beauty. So this is really interesting that Calypso, the caretaker, the concealer of Pleasure island, seems to assume that he wants to go back to his wife because she's beautiful. And Odysseus's answer to this is really rich. He says, ah, great goddess, worldly. Odysseus answered, don't be angry with me, please. All that you say is true. How well I know. Look at my wise Penelope. She falls far short of you, your beauty stature. She is mortal after all. And you, you never age or die. Nevertheless, I long, I pine all my days to travel home and see the dawn of my return. So let's stop there. I think this is a masterful bit of rhetoric. I'll throw out my theories and then you guys push back one. I love that the epithet is wise Penelope. But he never closes that comparison. He compares her in beauty to Calypso, but never actually compares her in cleverness to Calypso. And I think that's really interesting. Why does he actually long for his wife? Now, it's Calypso that's made the thesis that it's why, that it's his wife that he longs for. But the epithet is that she is wise. And he admits then that, no, of course, she's. She's not as beautiful and build and breeding, et cetera, as you, your immortal goddess, et cetera. But he's given her the epithet of wise, which I think leaves a comparison there that is unsaid of the attraction that Odysseus has to Penelope. Which is, I think, is a theory that gets played out throughout the text. Because then he says, I nevertheless, I long and pine all my days to travel home and see the dawn of my return. He talks about coming home to Ithaca, not coming home to Penelope. Any thoughts on this passage?
- [56:51]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Well, I'll offer a few thoughts. I'll offer a few thoughts. So, yeah, this reference to wise Penelope. So clearly there's a connection that Odysseus has to Penelope that hasn't and will never exist between Odysseus and Calypso, right? That this isn't just a love that is rooted in the appetites, but it's a love that's rooted in noose, in. In the mind. That. That there's, you know, however you want to flesh this out.
- [57:26]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
But.
- [57:26]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
But I think that Homer here is really providing us with a new way of understanding love. So that's something that's been missing throughout all of this. You know what? The relationship that Calypso has had with Odysseus up to this point has been purely carnal. And that becomes not only exhausting, but it becomes empty. And you see that there's no real foundation for it. And so we know Odysseus, we know that he's plutar, possibly. We know that he's. He's a man of many councils. And so he's a man that's motivated principally by his mind, by his right, that he. That he's. He's a thinker. And so he, as a mate, he cannot just have a beautiful woman who will provide him with a garden of earthly delights, right? He needs to have someone who is his equal, in a sense. And when we finally do meet Penelope, we see her. Well, we already have. But when they finally meet each other, they test each other. And so it's just. It's A very different kind of relationship that Homer hasn't presented in anywhere else in his epics.
- [58:38]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
My translation translates wise as circumspect. Periphron, I think, is the Greek word, but it's a kind of seeing around things that is not what you associate with Calypso. I think what's being said about Calypso here is pretty damning, isn't it? I think that's what you're. What you're getting at, that she has nothing to say. There's really nothing to talk about, nothing of interest in the household, nothing, no problems to deal with. So the fact that she's beautiful becomes a sort of parody of what the good life might be, you know, and even if Penelope is aging still, she's aging with a story and with a. With suffering to deal with and with something. Always something to say, some way to test, some way to tease. You don't feel any of that with Calypso. That's why I worry about your saying that she might be deceiving him. It's almost as though she's not up to that. I don't know.
- [59:59]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, I think maybe just play my cards a bit. I actually think this passage is an antecedent to the Platonic soul, so we can talk about in Homer. That soul is kind of a thick word for Homer. We really get the soul when we talk about Socrates and Plato. And again, as we've kind of talked about in the podcast, as a reminder, the Platonic soul, if you take Plato to be seriously on this, right, has basically three parts. As an intellect that loves the truth. It has the spirited, the thematic, that loves nobility, glory, honor, human excellence, etc. And then it has the appetitive, which loves pleasure. And I think right here, what we're seeing here, again, answer the question. How can he say no? Is that Calypso's existence that she offers him only satisfies the appetitive. It does not satisfy the intellect or the spirited. And I think this passage that he says is very important because not only did he just mention wise Penelope. So there's your nous, there's your intellect. But then he says, and if a God will wreck me yet again on the wine dark seas, I can bear that too, with a spirit tempered to endure. Much have I suffered, labored long and hard by now in waves and wars. And this to the total, bring the trial on. So in his response to her, how? How could you leave my island? I offer you immortality. I offer you myself. I offer you all these pleasures. How can you leave? He has a reference to wise Penelope and to being spirited, the other two parts of the soul. And I think too like one. One thing I think I would like to throw out here to play out is I actually think the relationship between Athena to Odysseus is very similar to Odysseus to Penelope. Why does Athena actually love Odysseus? Well, love, there is a strong word, but why does she favor him? Well, I think because of all the mortals, Odysseus is most like Athena. If Athena looks at Odysseus, she sees herself. He is the man of twists and turns. He's incredibly clever. And when we finally see later on when they have a reunion, she basically says this. So then I think, Odysseus, why does he love Penelope? It's because of the mind. She reminds him of himself, that she is the matchless queen of cunning. He is the man of twists and turns. So the goddess who could outdo her in the appetitive cannot outdo her in the relationship they have with the intellect. And so I think here you can read this as having an antecedent to the Platonic soul of the intellect, the spirited and the appetitive. And they're in that. That's what's so fascinating. And they're in the right order.
- [62:25]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah. I think that if Odysseus had an initial attraction to Calypso, it was probably out of a kind of thumatic gratitude that is, you know, he washes up on the island, he has no recourse, she saves him. And I think there's probably initially a kind of gratitude on his part which quickly runs out. But I mean, that's sort of a side consideration there. I absolutely agree. I think the Platonic soul is almost Plato reading, you know, reading the Odyssey here because, you know, you see it so clear.
- [63:09]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Like, if I may add just one more point, I think what Odysseus is discovering at long last is that gratifying the Thumas, or at least the pursuit of chaos, the pursuit of glory is not enough. And so he's seeing now, or at least by a Homer, there's this transition from a life in pursuit of class to a life in pursuit of oikos, of the home, that the home is so vital to our human flourishing, our human functioning. And so, you know, when, when, when he refers to this, this long desire to travel home, I think for, at least for, for Odysseus there's this, this final realization that, yeah, I am never going to become complete. My soul is never going to become well ordered until I finally arrived back in Issachar.
- [64:07]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I appreciate you saying that because. Yeah, I haven't. I. I forgot to mention that earlier, that I really enjoy that you brought up the theme of place, because I do think that is.
- [64:18]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I didn't hear this. Can you say it again?
- [64:21]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
The theme of place. For Odysseus to be Odysseus, for him to have his identity, for him to have his story and his narrative that is actually tethered to a particular place. And you can kind of see this too, with the hero's journey. Like, he has to make it home to complete the hero's journey. He has to make it back to Ithaca. He has to be the better Agamemnon. He has to be the Agamemnon that doesn't get murdered by your wife, that doesn't get murdered by the suitor. So he has to make it back home. And that's maybe something that you've been bringing us to. Dr. Hrabowski is that's another whole problem with saying yes to Calypso is that then he cuts off that cycle and he won't have the glory. Now, again, that ties to the spiritedness. He won't have the chaos, the glory of being the one who actually made it home and then has, you know, the return of the king, that has his wife, that does. Kills the suitors, that does all these things, if he says yes to this pleasure, he loses all of that.
- [65:16]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, I had a very. Just very briefly had a very interesting conversation with my students just this week where the issue of mobile homes came up. Think, okay, how is this grist for philosophical mill? But when I. When I heard that expression, and this was all within this context of me thinking about the. The relevance of place to one's identity, to Odysseus identity, I bristled at the suggestion. I said, well, no, that's a category error. There is no such thing. Ontologically speaking, there can be no mobile homes because homes are locatable within a place. So, I mean, that's a controversial. Obviously a controversial claim to make. But I do, again, I think it brings us back to this point that I really, truly believe that Homer is making. And that is in addition to all of these other qualities that make us us, that make Deacon and Dr. Arbery as individuals. That place does play an essential part of that.
- [66:16]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, No, I agree.
- [66:18]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Go ahead.
- [66:19]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I do, too. I just. I wonder if without place, the whole idea of Oikos just kind of goes away. In other words, that could be a Kind of Oikos here with Calypso, but that in itself would never be sufficient. Getting back, completing the story, as you're saying, Deacon Harrison is what brings Clios. So it's the Oikos that satisfies your Thumas. That's really what you're after, right? Not simply home and comfort.
- [66:59]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Love it.
- [67:01]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah.
- [67:01]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, very good. Okay. Pushing us forward a bit. Okay. So he can go home. Okay. But you have to make a raft and you have to do these other things. And I think there's probably some very interesting comparisons here between this is the pleasure island and now, you have ingenuity, you have techne, you have building things, tools, etc. There's got to be some parallels there. Okay. But here's my clothes theory. Okay. So I'll just throw this out there, because this is down at 290. She gives him fragrant clothes. And we're going to see then in this book that then this becomes like a theme. So, okay, I see where you go, right. Aino gives him a scarf to tie around his waist that's going to save him. But Calypso's clothes almost kill him.
- [67:43]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Almost kill him, Right.
- [67:44]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Because it's like, oh, here are these clothes. Okay, well, that's innocuous. Fine. Thank you for my fine clothes as I go on my sea voyage. Yeah. But by the way, if you fall into the ocean, they're probably going to kill you. They're going to get wet and drown you, particularly if you're in a storm. So I think there's an. So there's different things here. So you can. There's a difference between what these clothes almost did and whether Calypso had that particular intent, or whether Homer, as the author, is drawing a comparison between, say, Calypso giving him these fine clothes, which is somewhat of a luxury, a pleasure that then almost kills him in an act of being thematic, versus then the scarf that Aino gives him is. Actually has a purpose of helping him to survive. I think there's parallels there, but this is the. I've always been kind of curious when she gives him these fine clothes if there's not just like a smirk on her face. I did, however, really appreciate Dr. Arbery's point that as the zenith of the appetitive, she might be too stupid to be actually doing this. I actually really like that theory. I'm very open to that. But in that theory, then maybe it's Homer, the author, who's making the parallel. Regardless of Calypso's particular intent.
- [68:51]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I think Homer's definitely making it. I just don't know about Calypso, you know, I mean, for him to be wearing those clothes and really keeping them on after they almost drown him, you know, and he has to, Aino has to tell him, maybe you ought to take this off. You know, that's another way of being Calypsoed, isn't it? You know, being kind of covered up and consumed and engulfed. But yeah, clothing is such a theme, you know, especially in the next book, you know, when Nausicaa comes down with all the laundry from, from the house and Odysseus ends up wearing the garments that are actually made by Arete herself. You know, all that's, it's an interesting switch. But yeah, we go from Calypso's clothing to the most wonderful kind of nakedness when a dish just crawls on shore here. But I'm sure we'll get to that in just a minute.
- [69:48]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, just to push us forward a bit. So Poseidon. So Poseidon enters the narrative. This is around 3:10. And again, these are gods that are very much creatures with inside creation. They are beings inside time. So one of the benefits is if they happen to go on vacation or go chit chat with the Ethiopians, you can get away with some stuff for a while because they can't see you. They're these finite creatures. But Poseidon comes back, he's been hanging out with his Ethiopian friends, which is literally the translation that Bagels gives us. And his fury boils even more. And so now he's going to. Now we're really problematic. Correct. Because what's happening now we have Odysseus on a raft on the sea, while the sea God has now discovered that he has done this and he's angry. So this is a very bad place to be just in General. Correct. So Dr. Bobowski, maybe I'll hand it over to you because I'm indebted to you for maybe helping me understand this. So as these storms start to come up, we have these gales, these maelstroms, etc. Odysseus around, I don't know, maybe 4 or 3:30. In Fagles it says he spoke to his own great heart. What is happening in this passage?
- [71:03]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Okay, yeah, so very interesting. So this is actually occurs four times in the subsequent verses. So the, the Greek is megalator. Thumas can be trans here is translated as great heart. But it actually, what it means is sort of a great hearted spirit or great spirited spirit. Well, I think what's really Interesting is that there's a conversation taking place. So this brings us back to our conversation just moments ago about the Homeric understanding of the soul and it having these different parts that'll later be fleshed out more fully by philosophers like Plato. But what Homer is giving us here is this great insight into Odysseus mind, his psychology that he's having to work out a solution to the problem. That it isn't just reason that is figuring it out, but rather these different parts of the soul have to, in a sense, dialogue that they all have to, they all have to figure it out together. So I love. Yeah, he spoke to his own great heart. So it's almost like you might say the development of a kind of self consciousness. Not to say that these characters weren't self aware before, but I think in this particular, within this particular context, Homer is really drawing out the inner life of Odysseus in a way that we haven't seen before.
- [72:34]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
It's very interesting to me that he says this later in the poem, particularly when it's the night before he attacks the suitors. You know, he speaks to himself but it's as though he has to his heart, you know, his Thumas could go either way. It could give in to fear because, you know, it's subject to reason, but it's not itself the source of reason. You know, it's why in the Platonic paradigm, you know, you have to enlist Thumas on the side of reason in order to control the appetites. But here he's. Yeah, it's wrestling with his own kind of emotional center to get it to work in the right way so that it'll be courageous instead of yielding to fear. But you know, he's working it out. You know, it looks like he's going to die a dismal death, you know, so get ready. You know, it's wonderful.
- [73:46]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
He's laying out choices for himself as we'll see. If I do this, this will happen. If I do that, that'll happen. Yeah. So yeah, it's spelling out in a very explicit way the whole process of solving a problem. And again, like I said, I, this is I think unprecedented up to now in the Homeric epics.
- [74:08]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I don't, I don't disagree with that. I, I would like to explore to what degree this is similar to Achilles and Achilles own choice. So if you look at in Fagals, this is, it's a, it's at first speaking to the thumas. So 330. So interesting enough, he Blames Zeus, not Poseidon, which is just interesting. And maybe that.
- [74:30]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
It is interesting. Yeah.
- [74:32]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Maybe Zeus is just in charge of everything anyway, so we always just blame Zeus because things can't happen if Zeus doesn't say so. But I thought it was really interesting. Go ahead.
- [74:39]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
The last storm he was in, it was Zeus, right? That's the one that destroyed his ships and his men. So. Yeah, I don't know.
- [74:47]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, no, that's a good. It's just something I'd like to flag that it's. It's Zeus that he cries out to. So then he says, um. He says, yeah, King. Well, actually, we'll just start there. King Zeus crowning the whole wide heaven. Black, churning the seas in chaos, Gales blasting, raging around my head. From every quarter my death plunged in a flash. It's certain now. Three, four times blessed, my friends in arms who died on the plains of Troy those years ago, serving the sons of Atreus to the end would to God I died there too and met my fate. That day the Trojans, swarms of them hurled at me with bronze spears, fighting over the corpse of proud Achilles. A hero's funeral. Then my glory spread by comrades, now what a wretched death I'm due to die. So this is just a few preliminaries. One, it's interesting because like he. He is again, you said a choice. Would I have died in Troy? We're going to see then. We already have an allusion to this, which is Achilles. And I think it's very intentional that Homer then mentions Achilles here. So Achilles, for everyone's remembrance, also had a choice. He could go home and he could have lived a long life in peace. But then no chaos, no one would remember your name. Or you could stay and you could die in Troy, but then your name becomes eternal, you have eternal chaos and we'll get Achilles later and see how he thought about that choice through the mouth of the Odysseus. But here it seems to me that we have a parallel to that in a certain way, as he mentions, it would have been better to die there. 2. What's really fascinating to me, and pulling from the commentaries as well, is that he is lamenting not dying in Troy. He's not lamenting not staying on the island with Calypso. Isn't that interesting? You would think like, oh, I left the pleasure island. Never mind. This is awful. I should go back to Calypso. He doesn't say that. He doesn't actually defer to the appetitive part of the soul again. To be somewhat anachronistic, but to bring in Plato, who I think has deep roots here, but rather he appeals to the spirited part. Would I have died in Troy, where I got glory? Because now what? I'm going to die in the ocean, no burial. I'll be like all those poor souls that Achilles, you know, slit their livers and threw them in the river, wandering around in the afterlife, you know, blind and dumb and torn apart as the people who thought they could kill Achilles with no. No funeral rites. So it's just a fascinating passage. I'm not, you know, obviously I don't think that exhausts it all, but any thoughts on this?
- [77:24]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
That's fascinating. It's like he sees no difference between drowning here and staying on Calypso's island. Ultimately, they're both kind of anonymous, engulfing, you know, so it's almost like those whole seven years don't even occur to him. You know, it would have been better in either case if he had died at Troy, you know, than to suffer the kind of nameless death that this would entail.
- [77:59]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
One thing that occurs to me too is the timeline. So I appreciate you mentioned the seven years. So he's on Calypso's island for seven years because the timing in which Zeus says it's time for him to go is really fascinating because Zeus. Zeus is going to know that this is when Poseidon is returning. And so he's really set up Odysseus to suffer, which is the reason that he might be calling out Zeus, because he set this whole thing up for him to suffer and to continue to suffer in his. In his journey home. Because again, the Odyssey, it's about the man of twists and turns, but the chronology of the Odyssey is also twists and turns. So sometimes it's difficult to actually step back and think about the timeline when Odysseus is actually being able to go home. Another thing that occurs to me again, I've been reading the Bow and the Lyre, which is kind of an interesting text. This is by Benedetti. And so it's really fascinating. It's almost at times a very thick, somewhat opaque stream of consciousness is how he writes. But I've been enjoying it. I like it. One of the things that he. Now I'm going to forget what he says. Oh, one of the things that he mentions about the seven years is that we don't know this yet. Maybe first time readers wouldn't, but we would know it. Revisiting the text as we work out the chronology that Odysseus has already been warned that his wife is being wooed by the suitors, but he doesn't actually know when it actually starts. And so the whole seven years that he's on Calypso's island, he's at. One of the things that's in the back of his mind is that he is going to end up like Agamemon, that he's going to lose his kingdom, he's going to lose his house, the suit. One of the suitors is going to seduce Penelope and she'll kill him along with whatever suitor. When he gets home, Telemachus might be dead. He doesn't know when in all the suiting actually starts. He doesn't know that one of the things that's also eating him up, I think on Calypso's island is what's happening back in Ithaca. And also that tethers into the thing of place, etc of why he needs to return and make things right.
- [80:04]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And just, just to add one more comment too, I think, you know, Homer could have written this any number of ways. He could have merely described what Odysseus was experiencing, right? But instead he gives us this close and intimate insight into his thoughts. And so it just, in a way it kind of reminds me, I mean this may be a stretch for some but of what Augustine does in his confessions. Augustine doesn't, in writing his autobiography, he doesn't just simply tell us what he did. What he did isn't who Augustine is, but it's rather that very robust intellectual life. So I think in the same way Homer is allowing us to see that what truly amounts to greatness isn't just simply the number of war prizes that one claims during the wars, but rather how one has grown intellectually and morally.
- [81:04]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
And you're saying that particularly in the way that Odysseus speaks to his own Thumas. Am I understanding you rightly, in other words?
- [81:13]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, I mean, just the mere fact that Homer is giving us this privileged access into Odysseus thoughts and very just a kind of.
- [81:22]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Right, because you think about the beginning of the Iliad when Achilles is about to kill Agamemnon and Athena comes and grabs him by the hair and turns him around and it seems like that kind of hesitation or introduction of the second thought is something that happens without Athena's direct intervention with Odysseus. I'm not sure that I'm saying that correctly, but no, a hundred percent.
- [81:54]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Again, the agency here is entirely within Odysseus.
- [81:58]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
And so there are a few places Here, when you see Athena put a thought in his heart or something like that, you know, give him forethought or give him, as Lattimore translates it, an inkling he has a thought that he wouldn't have had that keeps him going. But, yeah, that's really interesting.
- [82:21]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
And Dr. Aubrey, we actually touched on this in the previous episode where, when. When Athena inspires. When Athena inspires Telemachus, Homer uses the word daimon, which again brings to mind Daimonion, the, The. The. The guiding spirit, the. The. The guiding guardian angel, however you want to put it, of Socrates. So I think that, yeah, what you're saying is, is true that. That how the divine interacts with humans in the Odyssey is radically different from how they interact with humans in the Iliad.
- [82:57]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah, very much so. Can I just point out a couple of things that I noticed this time? I don't remember ever noticing. And this has nothing to do with our major themes, it's just the image. And Odysseus's raft is being described. It's as the north wind in autumn tumbles and tosses thistle down along the plain and the bunches hold fast one on another. It's sort of like tumbleweed out in West Texas. And what's so interesting is that it's a raft in the middle of the water, you know, that's being described in that driest of ways. And then over a little bit further, when Odysseus raft is broken up, here's the description. It curled over and broke down upon him. And as when the wind blows hard on a dry pile of chaff and scatters it abroad in every direction. So the raft's long timbers were scattered. So it's these two very windy, dry comparisons, you know, to describe the kind of decomposition of Odysseus work here in the middle of the ocean. I just wonder why Homer's doing that. You know, I don't know if you notice that or if you have any thoughts on. Just struck me this time.
- [84:22]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
No, I didn't notice that. I appreciate you bringing that. Yeah. Just there's so many levels. And then how he uses those similes, I mean, it is incredibly rich. No, I would like to very much think about that more. Just to push us forward a little bit. After 3:50, that's where we get that the clothes weigh him down. So just to root that in the text, then we get. Oh, yeah, we haven't even mentioned this, which I think is fascinating. A little bit before 3:70, but someone saw him. Right, okay, so what's he doing? He's flopping out in the ocean, probably about to drown because of Poseidon in the middle of the storm. And someone sees him. Who sees him? Well, Cadmus daughter with the lovely ankles. Aino, a mortal woman. One. There's our theme. There's our theme of immortality again, should a mortal become immortal? A mortal woman once with human voice and called. I can't. I don't know how to pronounce her name. And you know how pronounce her name that she's called now as a goddess.
- [85:23]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah, Leukothea, I would say. Yeah.
- [85:26]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Okay.
- [85:27]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Now she lives in the sea's salt depths, esteemed by all the gods as she deserves. She pitied Odysseus, tossed, tormented. So she broke from the waves like a shearing shear, water on the wing. Okay, so then she's going to give him the clothes that we talked about. That is going to help him as a divine aid. I think it's a parallel to Eclipso. We have two female goddesses. We have both. We have two giving of the clothes. One almost kills him, one's going to help bring him to shore, etc. But what I really like about this passage is that it's then the introduction of another mortal who became immortal. So I just want to read this from our guide on the Odysseus on the Odyssey rule fast of who she actually is. So similarly to Tithonus or Tithonus, we should observe Homer references the goddess Aino, who was, quote, a mortal woman once. Aino, the sister of Simile, who was the mother of Dionysus. Right. We saw that in the Bacchae as the tale that we received there was driven mad by Hera and she jumped into the sea with her son in her arms. So she was then transformed by Zeus into a sea goddess and her son into the sea God. Here we may observe on a preliminary level that Aino's transformation to the divine is tethered to two things unnatural to man, madness and suicide. Moreover, it's unclear that Aino made any intentional decision to become divine. So it's just fascinating to me that he references just another mortal that becomes immortal and whether or not that's actually even a positive. Any thoughts on that or as we get into Odysseus and the scarf and the kind of following narratives, it's interesting
- [87:12]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
that she is here as his helper, isn't it, that she would know that he was in this kind of difficulty. This is the kind of role that you often associate with Achilles Mother Thetis, She's a kind of savior goddess. And I don't know what the parallel would be here. So she marries a mortal, but she is not a mortal who becomes immortal. But I don't know, it's interesting that she comes to Odysseus. You would think Athena would have something to do with it, but I don't know that there's any sense of that here. And why the veil? As I understand this veil, it's sort of like a woman's headgear or headdress. Penelope wears one when she goes down to speak to the suitors back in book one. She wears a veil and it's the same word. I wonder why this, a woman's headdress or veil would be what saves Odysseus take off those fragrant immortal garments and put on the guise of a woman. Is that what? I don't know. So much is going on here. I wonder if you gentlemen have thought about that. I don't know.
- [88:41]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I haven't thought about it from that angle. But that is fascinating. It's also fascinating that he doesn't seem to trust it. So just like with Calypso, he meets this with. Yeah, he meets this with deep suspicion. But then this is again going to some insights both of you have shared. It's tethered, then contextualized in him speaking to his own Thumas, his own spirit. And I think that's fascinating too because he's receiving advice externally from the divine and then he's processing it by speaking to his own spirit. And I think one thing I was going to mention earlier when Dr. Hrabowski was introducing this topic is this seems very much to me tethered to the opening word of this text. Man. This is just a very human thing to do. We are discursive animals. We have to work through things. We have to talk to ourselves. We have eternal, you know, internal dialogues, you know, etc. And I just, I love this passage because it brings so much of these parallels here. But he doesn't. He has human agency here. I'm not going to obey the divine directly. I have my suspicions. Now, ultimately, I think it works out the way that Aino pretty much said it was going to work out. He holds onto the raft, it's smashed, and then he has to swim to the shore. And this serves as like a divine protection for him, correct?
- [90:00]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah. And in fact, he takes ownership of his decision, at least in the Fagel's translation, around line 395, he says, here's what I'll do. It's what seems best to me. And so I think that once again, Homer here is showing us the emergence, the emergence of a kind of agency that we don't see really anywhere else up to this point.
- [90:28]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
It's interesting that, yeah, he's. He's going to stick to his own plan until it absolutely won't work anymore if the raft actually gets destroyed. Yeah, I'll try the veil at that point. But he's working it all out for himself and not trusting the divine to be of much assistance to him.
- [90:54]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
What do you think about the fact then this scene is met then with Poseidon speaking to his own spirit? Then the divine also has this dialogue with the thaumotic. So this is line, I don't know, a little after 4, 10. So this is the God of earthquakes spied him, shook his head and grumbled deep in his spirit and basically like, okay, you've suffered enough according to what I think destiny or fate has allotted to you. And so he relents and immediately Athena can step in. And so Athena's presence is known. But what do you think about the fact that then Homer couples all this with the God, the divine speaking to his own spirit as well?
- [91:33]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I haven't thought about it, Deacon, but perhaps, I mean, one. One way of understanding this is, you know, rather than. Rather than humans learning from the gods, the gods may be learning from humans, or at least it's a way of humanizing the gods in a way that make them more relatable because at least up to this point, they, despite possessing many of the same human desires, they're very distant. And so maybe this would come back to something I suggested earlier with the Athena mentor relationship, that this is Homer's way of somehow trying to bridge this gap that he's, I think, very deliberately created in the Iliad. And so, you know, I'm not the first one to say this, but some would argue that the Odyssey is in fact a theodicy or is a way of trying to reconcile this divide between the divine and man. And so I think throughout this story we do see Homer attempting to do just that.
- [92:43]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Yeah, that aspect of it seems to be there from the very first council in book one, doesn't it, when Zeus is pondering over why men blame the gods for bad things that happen when they actually bring it on themselves. So this whole dimension of justifying the gods and their actions is very much part of the whole of the Odyssey. I don't know here when the. I'm going to read the lines in my Translation the strong earth shaker saw him swimming and shook his head and spoke to his own spirit. There now drift on the open sea, suffering much trouble until you come among certain people who are the gods fostering. So it sounds like he's addressing Odysseus even as the text tells us that he's, you know, speaking to his own spirit. So the kind of doubleness there, you don't get Odysseus addressing somebody else when he's speaking to his own Thumas. So I don't know, I had never noticed that parallel.
- [93:56]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, just to push us forward a bit. So he is okay, so now he's trying to make it to the shore. He has Aino's scarf about him. Athena then is introduced to the mix. And one thing that's I don't know if I appreciated the first couple times I read this is that Athena then works indirectly through him. So unlike Aina who shows up and is like, hey, take my magical scarf and like, he'll be okay. Athena then is inspiring the thematic. She comes in and so just as an example, 470 if Bright Eyed Goddess Pallas Athena had not inspired him that I think this happens at least twice a little after 480 again, Athena's help, but she's not making herself known. And this is something that's really fascinating because you mentioned that he'd been on the island for seven years and then we also know that it was Athena who raged at the Achaeans when they were leaving. So you kind of have. We just think Odysseus and Athena like she loves him, she favorites him, et cetera. Odysseus hasn't seen the favor of Athena for a very long time. He doesn't know that she's running interference for him, you know, in the Olympian court, that she's going up to Zeus and saying these things. And even now she, he doesn't know that he's done anything with his seven years on Calypso's island. And now she's helping him, but quietly and he's not aware of this. And I'm building this up because then when they finally kind of meet explicitly, he's going to have some thoughts on this and commentary. And so we see here that this is a very subtle thing. And the only other thing I would mention then is this kind of like coming to the shore narrative is that he has Aino's help, he has Athena's help and then he has to have the River God's help. So even though this is a Very thematic, human, you know, rooted in man, etc. Passage. It is also very much with the assistance of the divine. Even though, contrary Poseidon, contrary Calypso, the divine is certainly assisting here. And this is around like 490 or so where he cries out to the river God, which I thought was beautiful because he contextualizes it as guest friendship. Right. Like, welcome me. Like almost be welcomed into someone's house.
- [96:01]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I love it. I love the soul part of the poem.
- [96:03]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, yeah. Welcome me into river. So if you love this, though, I mean, what's something that stands out to you or why do you appreciate it?
- [96:10]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I mean, just for what you're saying. I think when we were talking earlier about Zeus and fate, you know, and I was saying that how you're going to work fate out is still very contingent. It depends on circumstances. And here it seems to me, you're seeing those circumstances here. Athena gives Odysseus some idea about how to hold onto the cliff, or gives him a forethought about staying out of the surf and getting back out into the deep water. All these things that develop out of the particularities that he's facing are working toward, ultimately toward what his homecoming is going to be. But I don't know, I love the interchanges. I love the way that Athena very subtly begins to suggest herself back into the scene. And as you say, I particularly love it when Odysseus is swimming along and doesn't just see a river, but thinks, I better pray to that river. I don't know your name, but, you know, here I am. I hope that you will have mercy on me in the way that I'm. Now come to your current and to your knees. After much suffering, as Lattimore has it, pity me then I call myself your supplant. I don't know, it's just sort of a beautiful humility on Odysseus part. But also this sense of what some might call the enchanted world, where everything is full of persons and entities that allow him finally to come to shore and in the way he comes ashore is just, I don't know, unforgettable. Swollen with salt. Right.
- [98:09]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
It's always dangerous to read Christian themes into a pagan story, but. But I mean, this comes very close, I think, to the Christian or Catholic understanding of grace. We talk about how she is inspiring. She's inspiring at this. She inspires Telemachus. I'm reminded of when she provides Diomedes in the Iliad with the strength and how, at least Fagels translates it now Take heart, Diamedes. Fight it out with the Trojans. Deep in your chest, I've put your father's strength. There's an insertion. Right. It's like an ingredient. And then he gets puffed up. He gets. He gets. He gets. He gets buffed here.
- [98:56]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I really. I don't think we should be shy about making those parallels. I just. I really think they're here, you know, so.
- [99:03]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
Yeah, but I mean. Yeah, just. Just to finish my thought. Yeah, I think that. Yeah, sure, let's come. No, no, this comes very, you know, our understanding of grace, that it's. It's not something that God gives us and then like some sort of magical incantation, we become better, we become holier. It's something that we also have to use, that we have to put to good use. We have to employ. So, once again, I think Homer is evolving in his understanding of how the gods and man interact.
- [99:35]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Yeah, it's a much more. Much more subtle description of the relationship between the divine and the human, particularly for agency. That's something that we think the Odyssey takes up in a much more attentive and subtle way than say, maybe the Iliad does. As what is the agency of man? And as Odysseus is going on his journey. Yeah, just a few things. As he's landed on the shore, I think it's interesting that he left a dark woods and he arrives in the dark woods. So we remember in Calypso's. I don't know if it's actually in book five, but in book one, when it says that he's on Calypso's island, it's actually also a dark wood. So it's not just the island in the cave, but the island itself is a dark wood. So he moves from that dark wood to this dark wood. And I'm not sure what I want to make of that, but it's something that stood out to me. These are the little clues, right? These are the little signs that we tend to watch for when we read Homer or when we read Scripture. Then we get something that I'm just like, okay, what is Homer doing here? This has to be an image. This has to be a symbol. It has to be a sign of something, because what's he do? He has to find shelter, he's exhausted, et cetera. It's a beautiful scene, as Dr. Aubrey mentioned. And so he's going to crawl up and go to bed. So where does he go to bed? Well, this is a line a little bit for 5:30. Right. He found a Grove with a clearing all around and crawled beneath two bushy olives sprung from the same root. One olive wild, the other well, broad, well bred stalk. So he is crawling under this bush which seems to have the same root. One is wild and one is domesticated. And so they so dense they grew together, tangling side by side. And so he crawls underneath this and then Athena comes again in a subtle way and showers sleep upon him. What do we make of this, like final image of Odysseus under the olive trees?
- [101:25]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
It's hard not to make a lot of it, isn't it? The olive is sacred to Athena. This description of the leaves and the way that the branches are so tied together that the wet blowing winds can't penetrate them and so on. The exact same description is given of where Odysseus meets the boar in book 19. The boar is in the same kind of lair as Odysseus is here. So that the place where he gets the distinctive scar is like this place. And it seems to have to do with his whole identity as Odysseus. But I don't know, I love this whole description. All the beds we've seen in the Odyssey so far, this bed, he's gone from the beautiful bed of Calypso to this bed where he has to pile the leaves over him. And that final simile, it's just wonderful, you know, as like a farmer who buries a burning log in a black ash heap in a remote place in the country where none live near his neighbors and saves the seed of fire, having no other place to get a light from. That's Odysseus kind of burying his life under all these leaves so that there'll be something still there in the morning. That's just so beautiful.
- [103:11]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
My gosh, it really is. And of course we're anticipating yet another bed that we'll be introduced to later. The great rooted bed, the bed that is effectively this tree which is stable. Right. And so, you know, we begin with a bed of pleasure that moves to this makeshift bed that's temporary and we'll eventually hopefully find Odysseus reunited with his wife in this permanent bed tethered to the earth.
- [103:41]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
This guy's a pretty good poet, isn't he?
- [103:45]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
He's not bad. He's not. Yeah, I think, yeah, I think the tethering of, of the beds is a great way to read it, not to give like too much away. Maybe for those who this is their first time, read through it. But yeah, watch. I, I think I really enjoy tethering the olive branch to Athena and then maybe just like, what is the role of wood from the olive tree in this narrative? Is that. Is that a theme? Subtle one that we can start to kind of tether together as well? No, this is wonderful. This has been fantastic. Any other thoughts, comments? Obviously, we could keep talking about this book Five is tremendous. Homer. Yeah, he's not too bad, but any other comments or thoughts?
- [104:25]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Just. Just one last thought. And, you know, this. This is something that I. I think George DeMott points out, but just thinking about Odysseus coming up out of the sea, crusted with salt, you know, barely able to move. I mean, it really is a kind of rebirth image. And, you know, he's naked. He's been through the whole torment of these last few days and the storm and swimming at sea and, you know, coming ashore completely naked, as is very much emphasized at the beginning of the next book, right when he comes out and sees the girls who are coming down to the sea to do their laundry. It's just, you know, it's a kind of rebirth of Odysseus or almost a re in wombing of Odysseus, you know, when he piles all the leaves over him. He's come out of Calypso's island, he's come onto land, and now he has to take onto himself this complete. Obscuring this time on it by his own hand in order to be reborn from it. It's just beautifully done. I don't know.
- [105:41]
Dr. Frank Grabowski
I love that. Dr. Aubrey, you know, Deacon Harrison and I are participating in a number of reading groups at Holy Family Classical School, and we're currently going through St. Basil's address to Young Men. Basil actually refers to this very scene where he emerges on the island of the Phaeacians naked. But the way Basil puts it is that he's clothed in virtue. And so I love what this conversation has become, which is, you know, we see with Odysseus a kind of stripping off, in a sense, a stripping off of his maybe old self, or at least of all the muck that all the things that have in a way contaminated him on Calypso's island have caused him to lose himself. And now he's going to clothe himself not in the gear of a warrior, but rather the gear of the virtues. And so I think that what Homer, as we're working through this, I mean, Homer is really going to draw attention to how Odysseus is not only rediscovering himself, but in a sense, in a very very deep and profound sense he's becoming a new man. And which is why Penelope will have to. She doesn't recognize him. It's not just the age, but it's everything that he's been through.
- [107:05]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
I really like. I really like reading that as a rebirth scene. I like that a lot. I'd like to think about it more. Okay. Dr. Aubrey, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.
- [107:16]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
I've enjoyed this conversation immensely. Haven't gotten to talk about the Odyssey like this in a while, so thank you.
- [107:22]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Well, we're here anytime. We enjoy this conversation. And so it's been. It's wonderful. It's wonderful to have your comments and insights remind us again, like, where people can find more about, like, you and your works, your books, things like that.
- [107:36]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Just go to Wyoming Catholic College or just wyomingcatholic. Edu and you can click into what we're doing here and probably find out something about me if you're really that interested.
- [107:49]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
Okay. Well, thank you again.
- [107:51]
Dr. Glenn Arbery
Well, thank you.
- [107:52]
Deacon Harrison Garlick
All right, everyone, next week we are reading books six through eight. So we'll be having a discussion next week. Please continue to join us on our 12 week study of the Odyssey. Go check us out on X, YouTube, Facebook, Patreon and Instagram and we will see you guys next week. Thanks so much.