sirens. The frame for the telling of these stories is the court of Nausicaa – the young princess dreaming (literally) of marriage who goes down to the shore and finds and saves a shipwrecked man. He is gradually discovered to be a great hero of Troy; her father offers him her hand and holds betrothal games at which the hero triumphs. There cannot be a fairy tale ending however, because the unknown hero has a life and wife elsewhere. In becoming part of Odysseus’ story Nausicaa, Calypso, Polyphemus the Cyclops and the rest, lose their control of the ending of their stories; they become figures in a story of one man’s encounter with myth.
Chapman’s Odyssey
Odysseus’ characteristic quality in Homer is to be polytropos, poikilometis –multifaceted, various-minded. The many sides of Odysseus’ (or Ulysses’) story have fascinated story-tellers from the time of Homer to the twentieth century’s James Joyce and Derek Walcott. Odysseus is the most represented as well as the most variously represented figure of European literature. In Greek tragedy he is the devious, amoral politician; in the Troy Tales popular in the Roman world he is a figure of romance; a long-established moralising tradition was concerned to interpret his story as exemplary (Odysseus bound to the mast a type of Christ’s crucifixion): his wanderings as expiatory and exemplifying the Roman and Christian virtues of patience, fortitude and prudence.
Chapman revered Odysseus and revelled in the richness and resonance of his stories. He responded to and could convey all the different sides of Odysseus – his craftiness and inventiveness, his ability to survive, his extraordinary venturesomeness, his passion and his careful reserve. He can render with wonderful ease the many shades of Odysseus’ experiences – the moments of searing emotion, such as when Odysseus tries to embrace his mother’s shade in the Underworld:
‘ . . . when I had great desire to prove
My arms the circle where her soul did move.
Thrice prov’d I, thrice she vanish’d like a sleep,
Or fleeting shadow, which struck much more deep
The wounds my woes made, and made ask her why
She would my love to her embraces fly,
And not vouchsafe that ev’n in hell we might
Pay pious Nature her unalter’d right.’
and moments of high fantasy: the Sirens
‘ . . . sit amidst a mead,
And round about it runs a hedge or wall
Of dead men’s bones, their wither’d skins and all
Hung all upon it . . . ’
the strange landscapes, such as Calypso’s magic isle:
A grove grew
In endless spring about her cavern round,
With odorous cypress, pines and poplars, crown’d,
Where hawks, sea-owls and long-tongu’d bitterns bred,
And other birds their shady pinions spread –
All fowls maritimal; none roosted there
But those whose labours in the water were.
A vine did all the hollow cave embrace,
Still green, yet still ripe bunches gave it grace.
Four fountains, one against another, pour’d
Their silver streams, and meadows all enflow’r’d
With sweet balm-gentle and blue violets hid,
That deck’d the soft breast of each fragrant mead.
Ithaca is a starker setting than the Phaeacia and Mycenae of the earlier books, both physically (Ithaca is economically and materially a Dark Age society) and morally – Odysseus is disguised as a beggar, bringing bloody revenge on the suitors. Chapman is at home in both settings – in both he moves from sensitive emotional perceptions to high drama; he is extraordinary in being able to follow Homer in endowing the everyday world of Ithaca with a sheen of graceful materiality. Chapman, like Homer and like Odysseus, delights in both a well-crafted door and a well-fabricated tale.
One description stands out as an example – Odysseus’ description of his making of the marriage bed out of a living olive tree. This is the central moment of the Odyssey, the final proof that Odysseus is who he is, the final recognition of Odysseus by
Chapman’s Odyssey
Odysseus’ characteristic quality in Homer is to be polytropos, poikilometis –multifaceted, various-minded. The many sides of Odysseus’ (or Ulysses’) story have fascinated story-tellers from the time of Homer to the twentieth century’s James Joyce and Derek Walcott. Odysseus is the most represented as well as the most variously represented figure of European literature. In Greek tragedy he is the devious, amoral politician; in the Troy Tales popular in the Roman world he is a figure of romance; a long-established moralising tradition was concerned to interpret his story as exemplary (Odysseus bound to the mast a type of Christ’s crucifixion): his wanderings as expiatory and exemplifying the Roman and Christian virtues of patience, fortitude and prudence.
Chapman revered Odysseus and revelled in the richness and resonance of his stories. He responded to and could convey all the different sides of Odysseus – his craftiness and inventiveness, his ability to survive, his extraordinary venturesomeness, his passion and his careful reserve. He can render with wonderful ease the many shades of Odysseus’ experiences – the moments of searing emotion, such as when Odysseus tries to embrace his mother’s shade in the Underworld:
‘ . . . when I had great desire to prove
My arms the circle where her soul did move.
Thrice prov’d I, thrice she vanish’d like a sleep,
Or fleeting shadow, which struck much more deep
The wounds my woes made, and made ask her why
She would my love to her embraces fly,
And not vouchsafe that ev’n in hell we might
Pay pious Nature her unalter’d right.’
and moments of high fantasy: the Sirens
‘ . . . sit amidst a mead,
And round about it runs a hedge or wall
Of dead men’s bones, their wither’d skins and all
Hung all upon it . . . ’
the strange landscapes, such as Calypso’s magic isle:
A grove grew
In endless spring about her cavern round,
With odorous cypress, pines and poplars, crown’d,
Where hawks, sea-owls and long-tongu’d bitterns bred,
And other birds their shady pinions spread –
All fowls maritimal; none roosted there
But those whose labours in the water were.
A vine did all the hollow cave embrace,
Still green, yet still ripe bunches gave it grace.
Four fountains, one against another, pour’d
Their silver streams, and meadows all enflow’r’d
With sweet balm-gentle and blue violets hid,
That deck’d the soft breast of each fragrant mead.
Ithaca is a starker setting than the Phaeacia and Mycenae of the earlier books, both physically (Ithaca is economically and materially a Dark Age society) and morally – Odysseus is disguised as a beggar, bringing bloody revenge on the suitors. Chapman is at home in both settings – in both he moves from sensitive emotional perceptions to high drama; he is extraordinary in being able to follow Homer in endowing the everyday world of Ithaca with a sheen of graceful materiality. Chapman, like Homer and like Odysseus, delights in both a well-crafted door and a well-fabricated tale.
One description stands out as an example – Odysseus’ description of his making of the marriage bed out of a living olive tree. This is the central moment of the Odyssey, the final proof that Odysseus is who he is, the final recognition of Odysseus by
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