Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings In The Odyssey And The Iliad 0801418887, 9780801418884

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CORNELL STUDIES IN CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY EDITED BY

FREDERICK M. AHL * KEVIN C. CLINTON JOHN E. COLEMAN * JUDITH R. GINSBURG G. M. KIRKWOOD * CORDON R. ~1ESSING ALAN NUSSBAUM * PIETRO PUCCI \VINTHROP WETHERBEE VOLUME XLVI

Odysseus Polutropos: Intertextual Readings in the Odyssey and the Iliad by Pietro Pucci From Myth to Icon: Reflections of Greek Ethical Doctrine in Literature and Art

by H elen F. North Lucan: An Introduction b)' Frederick 1\1. Aid The Violence of Pity in Euripides' 1\1edea by Pietro Pucci

Epicurus' Scientific Method by Ehwbeth Asmis

The Rhetoric of Imitation: Genre and Poetic Memory in Yirgil and Other Latin Poets by Gian Biagio Conte, edited by Charles Segal

THE TOW!\'SEND LECTURES

Artifices of Eternity: Horace's Fourth Book of Odes by Michael C.

J.

Putnmn

ALSO BY PIETRO PUCCJ

li esiod and the Language of Poetry The Violence of Pity in Euripides' "M edea"

Odysseus Polutropos ..

~~,~~-

~'""""'"'''''""'"'

INTERTEXTUAL READINGS IN THE ODYSSEY AND

1~HE

ILIAD

PIETRO PUCCI

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON

THIS BOOK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED WITH THE AID OF A GRANT FROM THE HULL MEMORIAL PUBLICATION FUND OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY.

Copyright © 1987 by Corn ell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, nn1st not be reproduced in any forn1 without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 1485o. First published 1987 by Corn ell University Press. International Standard Book Number o-8o 14-1888-7 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 86-16798 Printed in the United States of An1erica Librarians: Library of Congress cataloging information appears on the last page of the book. The paper in this book is acid-free and meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Productwn Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

CONTENTS

Preface Abbreviations Introduction: Variations on Odyssean rrhen1CS

7

I. MULTIFACETF:D DISGUISES

I.

2.

3· 4· 5· 6. 7. 8. g.

Sexual and rrextual Jealousy The Birth of a New Hero Allusion and Misreading Suffering and rrrickery Textual Disingenuousness in Portraying Od ysseus' Suffering Disguise Disguise and Recognition Disguising Truth: Fiction More Light in the Epiphany, Less Light in the rext

33 44

-o :J

sG 63 76 83 98 I I 0

11. RETURN TO THE SA:'\1E: DRIFTING AWAY

Return: No Return I l . Return, Death, and ln1n1ortality I 2. Polemic Gestures between the Iliad and the Odyssey: _, Odysseus as a Chan1pion I3. Return and Cheating Death IO.

127 1 39

,

Ill. SYNONYMY

I4. The Heart (Thumos) of the Iliadic Lion and the Belly (Gaster) of the Odyssean Lion I5. Being Mindful of Food: Being Forgetful of c;riefs 5

157 I65

Contents 16. Pirates and Beggars 17. Gaster: Eros and Thanatos

1 73

181

IV. READING: WRITING

18. Gaster and Thelgein 19. The Song of the Sirens 20. Odysseus, Reader of the Iliad 2 1. Phemius and the Beginning of the Odyssey 22. Arte Allusiva Bibliography Index

247 257

6

PREFACE

Readers of this book will undertake a voyage into the pages of the Odyssey and the Iliad. 'The voyage n1etaphor is in keeping not only with the theme of the Odysspy but with the polytropic and drifting nlovements of Odysseus in his travels and of Odyssean writing. During these explorations, readers will be 1nade aware of the possibility of an intertextual reading of the Odyssey. At the heart of this book lies the recognition that an intertextual approach can create exciting "sense" and reveal a powerful interaction between the two poen1s. Of course intertextual confrontations occur everywhere in the texts, wherever a fonnula, a n1otif, or a scene in one poen1 evokes corresponding features in the other poen1. In principle, therefore, I might have analyzed all the lines of the OdyssPy or of the Iliad. Short of this, I had to choose passages; n1y choice has been detennined by the epics' rnajor thernatic and rhetorical rnotifs. In part I, the then1e of disguise develops sinn1ltaneously with the rhetoric of sinn1lation and fiction. The then1e of return in part I I develops with the therne and the rhetoric of re-cognition and the apres coup. rrhe third part analyzes the troubling synonytnity of thumos and gaster; part IV illustrates the reading that the Odyssey enacts of its con1petitive texts. These diverse yet converging lines of reading inevitably produce, I suggest, polytropic and rnultiple views. 'rherefore-by analogy with two fan1ous novels-the book expands in the digressive, dissenlinating style of Tristram Shandy rather than in the cohesive fashion of Middlemarch. For this work emerges frorn the 1nodern awarenessdue to McLuhan, Barthes, and Derrida-that the book in its traditional fonn as an organic whole, a body fully hannonious and selfcontained, is at an end, and writing is beginning. 'ro son1e extent this must have been the Odyssey's own sense of itself as a self-contained whole.

7

Preface I quote Hotner from Homeri ojJera, edited by David B. Monro and Thomas W. Alien (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902-12). 'franslations are mine unless I have indicated otherwise. I have transliterated all Greek words into Latin characters. At the same time, since one of the purposes of transliteration is to n1ake the text intelligible to nonHellenists, I have used the Latinate forms of Greek personal names with which English-language readers are familiar; accordingly, "Achilles," not "Akhilleus"; "Telemach us," not "Telemakhos"; "Ch ans, . " not "Kl1ans . " ; "Od ysseus, " not "Od usseus " ; an d so on. I have not been fully consistent, however; to preserve puns, for instance, I have reverted to the transliterations "Odusseus," "Telemakhos," and the like. l~he other exceptions-son1e geographical names-will be readily understandable to readers. I owe assistance and help to tnany institutions and individuals. A fellowship frotn the John Sin1on Guggenheitn Memorial Foundation (in 1g8o-81) allowed tne to pursue research in the stin1ulating environinent of the Centre de Recherches Con1parees sur les Societes Anciennes in Paris. Several grants fron1 the College of Arts and Sciences of Cornell University and frotn the l~ownsend Fund of Corn ell University's Departtnent of Classics have helped with editing and typing. The book would not have the fonn it has without this assistance and without the skillful editorial contributions of lVfartha Linke. I a1n grateful to the friends who have read this book at various stages of its con1position and have given generously. of their titne, advice, and insights. I mention here Robert Latnberton, Cordon Kirkwood, Cordon Messing, Frederick Ahl, and especially Andrew Ford, who in tny setninar on the Odyssf)' and in reading this text has been a congenial and generous critic. At the Centre in Paris, where I was invited to present son1e results of n1y research, I benefited fro In the illtuninating responses of Mat-eel Detienne, Nicole Loraux, Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Jean- Pierre Vernant, and Heinz Wistnann. Gregory N agy has supported this book with his powerful critical insights and his unending loyalty. PIETRO Pucc1

lthaca, New York

8

ABBREVIATIONS

A. H.

Karl Friedrich An1eis and Car! Hentze, eels. Homen 1/ias. \tVith coinnlentary. 2 vols. Leipzig: Teubner, 1884-87. A.H.C. Karl Friedrich Ameis and Car! Hentze, eels. Homen OdyssN'. Rev. Paul Cauer. 4 vols. (2 vols., each in two parts). Leipzig: Teubner, 1920-28. A1P American 1ournal of P hilolOf:,')'· Alien Thon1as \V. Alien, eel. Odyssey. Vols. 3 and 4 of Homeri ojJem, eel. David B. rvtonro and Thomas \V. Alien. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902-1 2. BSL Bulletin de la Societe de Linguistique dr Paris. Butcher and Lang S. H. Butcher and Andrew Lang, trans. Homer's Odyssey. London: rvtacmillan, I 879· CP Classical Philology. Classical Quarterly. CQ cw Classical W or/d. DE Pierre Chantraine. Dictionnaire flymologiqur> de la langue grl'cqw}. 4 vols. Paris: C. Klincksieck, 19G8-8o. Pierre Chantraine. Gramnwire lwmrrique. 2 vols. Vol. I, Plwnfliqw' GH et morplwlogie. Vol. 2, Syntaxr. Paris: C. Klincksieck, I 948-53. Reprint, vol. I only, Paris: C. Klincksieck, I 973· Greek, Roman, and Byzantine 5)tudies. GRBS HSCP Ha rvard Studies in Classical PhilolOf.,')'· 1ournal of H rllenic Studies. 1HS Leaf Waiter Leaf, ed. Iliad. 2d ed. 2 vols. London: :rvtacmillan, 19001902. Lexikon des friihf:rriechischen Epos. General eel., Bruno Snell. 11 fasLfrgE cicles to date. G()ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1955-. LIMC Lexicon I conographicum Mytlwlogiae Classicae. Edited by Hans Christoph Ackermann and Jean-Robert Gisler. 2 vols., each in two parts. Zurich and Munich: Artemis, 1981-84. Nitzsch Georg Wilheln1 Nitzsch. Erkliirendr Anmerlwngen zu Homn:s OdysSff. 3 vols. Hannover: Hahn, 1826-40.

9

Abbreviations Omero, Odissea. The Italian translation of G. Aurelio Privitera. General introduction by Alfred Heubeck and Stephanie West. 6 vols. Milan: Fondazione Lorenzo V alia, 1981-. Vol. 1, Libri IIV (1981), ed. Stephanie West. Vol. 2, Libri V-VIII (1982), ed.J. B. Hainsworth. Vol. 3, Libri IX-XII (1983), ed. Alfred Heubeck. Vol. 4, Libri XIII -XVI ( 1984), ed. Arie Hoekstra. Vol. 5, Libri XVII-XX (1985), ed. Joseph Russo. Vol. 6, Libri XXI-XXIV (forthcoming), ed. Manuel Fernandez-Galiano. (Citations include the editor and number of the relevant volume, e.g., Odissea-West, 1 :25.) Proclus Proculi, Chrestomatlzia. In Homeri opera, ed. David B. Monro and Thomas W. Alien, vol. 5· Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912. Stanford W. B. Stanford, ed. The Odyssey of Homer. With comn1entary. 2 vols. London: MaCinillan, 1959. TAPA Transactions of the American Philological Association. van Leeuwen189o Jan van Leeuwen and M. B. Nlendes da Costa, eds. Odysseae Cannina. Leiden, 1890. van Leeuwen1917 Jan van Leeuwen, ed. Odysseia. Leiclen, 1917.

Odissea

10

Odysseus Polutropos

Had I unknown phrases Sayings that are strange Novel, untried words Free of repetition Not transrnitted sayings Spoken by the ancestors! I wring out rny body of what it holds In releasing all n1y words; For what was said is repetition When what was said is said, Ancestors' words are nothing to boast of, They are found by those who came after. The Complaints of Khakheperre-Sonb

Introduction: Variations on Odyssean Themes

Critics have traditionally been f~1scinated by the representation of Odysseus at the beginning of the Odyssey and by the developrnent of that initial in1age. But which is the initial irnage of Odysseus and how does it evolve in the course of the poern? Fro answer this question is to interpret Odysseus' traveling as the locus of experience through which he reaches his telos. 1\vo n1~or interpretations ernerge frorn the critical literature: either Odysseus' traveling and return are viewed as the painful experience through which the hero transfonns himself and reaches the full rneasure of his hurnanness, or these adventures are considered as episodes that endlessly repeat the san1e experience until Odysseus' return puts a ternporary stop to his wanderings. In the forn1er view the Odyssey becon1es a sort of Bildungsruman, in the latter, a serialized novel that could go on practically forever. In the fonner interpretation return-as an archetypal thenlemeans the long n1aturation of an experience, the crossing of borders, the recouping of a loss, the reappropriation of a lost self. According to this view, Odysseus would live with Calypso, in an imaginary world, himself half-conscious of his real self, since for son1e tirne he has been willing to live hidden with her. Only when he decides to con1e back and to accept his n1ortality does the hero begin to be hirnself and the Odyssey itself begin. Odysseus' return hon1e, then, represents his return to hurnanity, consciousness, reality, and responsibility, and the episodes of this return constitute facets of those reappropriations. This interpretation therefore retrieves the "beginning" of the Odyssey from the metaphysical dynarnics of the notion of return, for notions such as "reappropriation of the self" and "fulfilhnent of one's destiny" (telos) are n1etaphysical to the extent that they outline a perfect closure and a utopian sense of "humanness." It is fron1 this end-

Odysseus Polutropos fron1 this conclusion, fron1 the closing up of the return-that a beginning, a point of departure at a lower level, is retrieved. It is certain that the Odyssey allures and captivates the reader by precisely this trip and that n1ost n1en1orable critical pages on the Odyssey have capitalized on this tnetaphysical n1ovement and on its handing down to us the edifying portrait of the noble, suffering hero, accepting his hun1anness and growing great in it. Accordingly, critics have not hesitated to pursue allegorical or synlbolic readings, for the fictional and fablelike episodes of the poen1 encourage this reading. In the syn1bolic readings of recent years Odysseus undergoes various births and is fostered by several rr1other figures as he ascends the difficult ladder to acceptance of his humanity and, with it, all its hun1iliating lin1itations. The other reading-that which focuses on return as return to the same through analogous, repeated experiences-delivers no Inoral lessons, only inexhaustible pleasure. ()dysseus is shown to cheat death at every corner, to con1pensate fully for each personal loss, and to retrieve his whole self after each shan1 and disguise. It is easy to understand the gratifying and alluring power such a character exercises over his readers: on the one hand, Odysseus satisfies our deepest andtnost uncontrollable desire, to outwit death; on the other, he is an itnperishable "persona," an inerasable entity, forever self-identical. He is the supren1e distillation of fiction that looks n1ore real than reality. But this interpretation too is n1etaphysical, for it is grounded in a utopian notion of satneness. Our critical reading cannot be blind to the incredible contradictions, gaps, and tricks that the text exhibits as it creates that sense of Scuneness; but in fact Odvsseus does not return to the sarne, to begin with because his return does not stop his journeying. 'fhe n1an "of n1any turns" (jJolutrojJos) is engaged in a n1oven1ent of re-turn (hujJotrojJos, Od. 2 2 ·35) that will not end with his landing at Ithaca. He is conscious of having to journey again. Furtherrnore, his journey has already been a sort of centrifugal n1oven1ent, endlessly drifting away frotn hon1e. Rather than a return to the s£une, I see a nnlltiplication of the san1e events, a sort of drifting repetition of analogous episodes. 1 'fhis third reading also seen1s to suggest a I

Pietro Pucci. "The Proem of the OdJ'·'ey." Arethu.1a 15 (198~): 39-6~. The metaphor of the journey and its metaphysical premises have been perceptively analyzed in recent criticism. See, for instance, the rich and exhaustive analyses of Ciuseppe Mazzotta in Dante, Poet of the Desert (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1979). and the brilliant thesis of Georges Van Den Abbecle, "The Economy of Travel in French Philosophical Literature" (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1981 ). 1See

Introduction utopian, reassuring interpretation of the poen1 to the extent that the continuous drifting would never carry Odysseus to any fixed point, and therefore not even to death. And yet, as we pit the polytropic centrifugal rnovernent against the movernent back borne (hujJotropos), and as we focus on the fictional strategies that ensure his survival, the gratifying and dornesticated n1oven1eru of his return is jeopardized. The ernpire of necessity, of death, that he avoids by his shrewdness and cunning (metis) presses on him and holds hirn in specific ways. On a few n1omentous occasions he appears to us between life and death, as when he goes down to Hades, returns to Ithaca on the Phaeacian ship, or spends seven years on Calypso's island. He returns on the Phaeacian ship without any awareness or consciousness, for he is irnmersed in a profound sleep "rnost sirnilar to death" (tluuwtai aukhista eoikos, Od. 13.80): the hero dies to be reborn in Ithaca, where at first he will not recognize his fatherland. 1~o the extent that on this and sirnilar occasions Odysseus arrives in a new situation by passing through unconsciousness, or by hirnself being at the rnargin of the world of consciousness, his life as a character undergoes a crisis, renlains suspended, or becon1es irrelevant to the evolution of events. Death grasps hin1 and coexists with his life, necessity with pleasure. Analogously, as the hero passes through new situations and condi- , tions, his previous self is deeply altered. Here too it is not rnere chance that a physical change, a deep transfonnation in his body, rnomentarily takes place; for indeed when Odysseus, the beggar in his own house, is shown lying down like a dog before his dirty bag on which he has piled his food (Od. 17.356 ff.), he is a different rnan. Though his nan1e and epithets are the sarne and his \Vords are occasionally the san1e, sornething of the old hero is dead. All this irnplies that as he cheats the necessity of death, death sirnultaneously cheats hin1, suspends his life, changes his physical appearance, constantly an1putates or adds to his previous self. His cunning does not save hin1 frorn becon1ing a sort of kaleidoscopic Odysseus that the sarneness of the nan1e and the rnany recognition scenes barely hold together. The edifying interpretation of the Odyssey, which focuses on the developn1ent of the hero toward his fulfilhnent (telos), obtains legitirnation and power in these scenes. And yet, if rny reading is correct, the text seerns constantly ternpted to deny any change in the inner nature of the hero. The force of my inquiry consists in elucidating and bringing into the foreground the odd econo1ny that holds Odysseus between these extremes: life and death, sarneness and otherness, return to his house and turns away from home. It is the undecidable tension between 15

Odysseus Polutropos these opposite terms that forces Odysseus to become the man of ~~,~manyness and polytropy; to the extent to which these skills of the hero succeed, they don1esticate (literally and figurally) all the issues that are implied in the unresolvable tension. Polytropy is synonymous with rnetis, "cunning," "shrewdness." 2 The then1e of return and its drifting economy hinges on the notion of met£s itself. In the Odyssean epiphanies of Athena, metis appears as the craft of disguise and illusion that can manipulate necessity and alter reality when there are people to deceive and obstacles to surmount. The power of this specific metis (of which Athena's metis represents the divine counterpart) is unbeatable, as the success of Odysseus' plan in his own house proves. Yet through the constant rnanipulation of reality by calculated selfdisguise and by reinvented biographies, Odysseus rernoves himself from his "real" self and falls into shadowy and intermediary postures in which he will at once be himself and not himself, true to his ten1per and disloyal to it. My contention is that Odysseus' "real" self can only be "presumed" to exist behind his disguises and his narratives and that therefore the disguising scenes are what create the illusion of his "real self." The paradox here is that trickery should be astute enough to control and n1anipulate its own strategy of conceahnent, of shan1n1ing, without itself being taken in, but I suggest that these shadowy postures indicate rather that Odysseus and his metis do not fully control the strategy they enact. Odysseus therefore sornetirnes appears both as n1anipulator of the ruse and as its dupe. To cite only one incident, his outward disguise as a beggar conceals hin1 even when it is no longer necessary-for instance, in his first self-revelation to his wife (Od. 23.1 15-16). Polymetis Odysseus, the rnan of rnany ruses, the rnan of rnany turns, appears, appropriately, in a text unsurpassed for rhetorical met is and polytropy. If I choose to speak of Odysseus' polytropy rather than of his rnet£s it is because "polytropy" has the felicitous ad vantage of describing not only his character but the thetnatic and rhetorical qualities of his text, for the turns and re-turn of his wanderings, the turns and ruses of his tnind, are rnirrored in the turns (tropoi, rhetoric and rhetorical figures) of the Od_yssey itself. Furthennore, whereas polytropy in1plies that the process of turns is open, metis narnes the sue2 The

relations between the crafty turn of mind and metis is one of the themes Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vern ant trace in their book Les Ruses de /'intelligence: La JV!etis des grecs (Paris: Flammarion, 1974).

16

Introduction cessfully accon1plished ruse and trick. l'o this extent polytropy is a slightly n1ore neutral word than metis, which by evoking a successful, winning craft n1ust be constantly de1nystified by the reader. The don1inant presence of notions such as polytropy, mftis, and doloi, "tricks," in1plies that the e1npire of necessity is harsh and inevitable. What I call here, generally, the e1npire of necessity receives n1ore precise determinations in the various situations staged in the Odyssey. Essentially this en1pire of necessity includes death, self-forgetfulness, dissen1ination (drifting away forever), and loss of the self. As mijtis, doloi, and polytropy succeed in controlling these threats, pleasure en1erges for the character and for the reader as well. l'bc te~)(t of the Ody~sfy ~ c~pplies endl~.s~~"Y~'JJ:iatiQI!~,,~,~2 thi~~~an1e basic situatioiL ~1 y pren1ise, which will bectHne clearer further on in the book, is that necessity and pleasure are the tern1s of a su pplen1entary structure that holds then1 together in a contiguous unstable tension. Odysseus' return ho1ne and his turns (away fro1n hon1e) constitute a return of the hero to his literary tradition or lineage as well. rihe Odyssey narrates the final (or ahnost final) adventures of a hero whose p~~~~§usaee"ds"]lT1~;-at-p1~Jicti{)l1.~iT-tin1e ofTiis""las t journey, t~l re£td y known and sung throughout the Creek-speaking world. rhis "sequel" thus f(>llows in a long tradition of songs, on both the then1atic and the textual level. Yet, as I will e1n phasize, the ~·elationship between the Odyssey and the tradition in wh)~h it takes shape is extre1nely af!ililvak;u~' The narrative tension that suspends ()dysseus between ' his return hon1e and his turns (away fron1 hon1e) is paralleled by the O.dJssey's intriguing textual econon1y, which sinndtaneouslradheres to and diverg~§ n1 its tradition. "'"--"OfTlie'"~·est of the rich and vast epic tradition on the rrn~jan \Var we unfortunately know only the Iliad. Were we able to read the entire Trojan cycle, especially that part in which ()clysseus played a proininent role, the view I an1 presenting here Inight be different; as it is, we must rely on the Iliad alone as the representative Inodel of the epic tradition and the one tern1 of con1 parison. The 1nost significant indication of the Od;,ssey's an1bivalent econon1y is its silence about the Iliad. 3 At ~everal points the,,O({}SSf'Y indicates, ••

,..

.,.

"'~'"'~H"-""'

3See David Monro, eel., Homer's Od-yssey, Book\ X//I-XXI\1 (Oxford: C:larendon Press, 1901 ), p. 325: "The Odyssey never re1;eats or refers to any incident related in the Iliad." This statement, soon raised to the absoluteness of "Monro's law," stimulated research such as that of Denys Page: see The Homeric Odysse)' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), which tries to prove that the Od_ysse_v was not aware of the Iliad. A sound position on the problem can be found in Gregory Nagy, The Best l~( the Arlweans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979): "if the avoidance was indeed deliberate, it would mean that the Od_ysse_y displays an awareness of the Iliad by steering clear of it, or rather

Odysseus Polutropos blatantly, that it is ignoring the Iliad and its t:r:-adition. 1 Given this evidence, I. f~1vor the hypothesis that the Odyssey did in fact know the Iligd. The/t;~spr()b~)Iyev()Tved-sili1ulta~~y, each aWe of the~~~·other, before being fixed in the monun1ental con1positions w.e now have, and it is likely that during the forn1ative period some passages in each were intentionally revised to conform to corresponding passages in the other. Clearly, the Iliad and the Odyssey presume each other, border and lin1it each other, to such an extent that one, as it were, writes the other. This thorough con1ple1nentarity, however, does not n1ean the two poen1s constitute one consistent and hannonious unity. On the contrary, the Ocj)_~~~~ey's pretense of.ig~g.ring~~~· ail~···~Y!~~e ~ersa­ ,bespeaks a decidedly polenuc, coi~LrnversiaLrelatio!}§Jup. For exan1ple,.tl1e.. heroes Achilles and Odysseus are represei{ted in both poems in an intertextual dialogue in which one pretends to be deaf to the other, as each in his own poen1 represents an ontological Inode opposing that of the other. The Odyssey's siintdtaneous dependence on and disengage1nent fron1 the Iliadic tradition are highlighted in those passages of the poen1s that clearly seen1 to respond to each other and therefore to play with allusion.~~ine after line ofthe.Qdys,,~e)!.adopts the..epi(~dicliQ!l and repeats its fonuulaic phrases, at tinH~~.s. divergingJ'ronl1ts··o.~nodel, _at tin1es renewing it with uncanny subtlety. The allusion would prove the dependence ol one poen1 on the other and at the s£une tin1e the desire of the alluding text to conceal, or at least to rnake enign1atic, such dependence. n may be a matter of evolution. Perhaps it was a part of the

Odysse~m

tradition to veer away from the Iliadic. Be that as it may. the traditions of the Iliad and of the Odyssey constitute a totality with the complementary distribution of their narrati\·es" (pp. 202 1) . .4 See,

for example, Od. 2:)L~~}!l.gies ?and diff\c~~.dtiq"Jt E.!~e~S.GiltS for the analysis of intertextuaht). 31 Parry defined a generic ef5iil1cta·s .. 'one fthc ·rnnobling words of the language of poetry" (italics mine); see "Traditional Epithet in Homer," pp. 150-:> 1. 32I call "connotation" the affective, stylistic, and practical values that arc present in an expression. A word affects its listeners by what it does to them as well as by giving them a "meaning," a "denotation." Allusion adds a specific connotation since it en>kes a comparison and therefore either a controversy or a gesture of admiration.

Odysseus Polutropos of an expression in determinate contexts creates a significant insistence and detern1ination: the sjJec~fic epithets of a hero, for instance, are essential denotations and connotations of his literary representation (polutrojJos points to the unique Herrnes-like virtues of Odysseus); the difference between tim.e (honor) and kleos (glory) is essential in order to understand better the fan1ous Sarpedon passage in the Iliad that is still read generically and without any focus. 3 :~ Repetition, and the awareness of the repetition, is the 1natrix of in1portant epic notions and conceptions such as kleos and mneme, which affect the whole idea of poetic activity and artistry, as we have already seen. The~l~Ql~~-oJjn1~TQ.cJl reJerences . in1par~~ . .!~~. . w~.£t~h Jine,~.s~~ne,~art~L~ ep)sode the self-awa~:.~Jl~Ss .of ~~!E~g part of a literary prodl1ctiQ!l,_ in which one po~t cornpetes_ with.a.uD.th~l· :H If we take ·'this coin petition seriously, we n1ust listen to the difference within the san1eness of the repeated expression as to the artistic expression of the poets, their way of calling attention to their own texts. Retrieving such connotations is indispensable in order to understand the strategy of the text, its tendentious thinking, and its artistic force. Now we can turn to Odysseus, as he appears in the Odyssean writing of book 5· rroday we read it as a book, but at one tirne it was a song, a lay. Yet even as a song it was a kind of "writing," because it was always a technically cotnplex fonn of orality and therefore an elaborate "text" con1posed through the differential systen1s of the "sign," words and gestures, through the gaps and lags of their n1oven1ent, and through the allusion to other "texts." :\:{11. I2.310-2H: (~riffin reads itjust as Lord Gram·ille did in 1763; sec Pietro Pucci,

''J~ ~.~ ~~~~~i.L~I;!:IJ!~:~~!- i(:_!~~:ltl!.!~:J2. r.t l1 cum i 11 g i11 B C:l'fll.l (Cdl!.lLWJL. :~ 1Hcsiod ~Vork'

awl Days 2:)-:d): "and the potter is resentful of the potter. the carpenter of the carpenter, the beggar IS jealous of the beggar, the poet of the poet." The statements that competition takes place among epic singers/poets and that one song (aoide) is more praised than another (Od. 1 ·351 -52) intimate what we would call "literary" awareness among professionals and audience. Even the necessary presence of the poet/singer among his listeners becomes an important literary theme in the Odyssey. The powerful effects of the poet's \'oice, the sudden entry of Pcnclope asking Phcmius to cease from his wretched song. Phemius' final supplication of Odysseus are instances that testify to the physical and spiritual interaction between poet and audience and represent unforgettable scenes in the poem.

I MULrriF AC£1-.ED DISGUISES

l Sexual and Textual Jealousy Tout reste a faire pour poser la question de ce qu'il y a clans un texte quand on pretend en deli1niter le "corpus." Penser rl la !rare. ce devrait etre, depuis assez longtemps, reconsiderer lcs evidences tranquilles d u "il y a" et "il n 'y a pas" "clans" u n "corpus" en exccdan t, ~t la trace, l'opposition du present et de l'absent, la simplicite indivisible du limes ou du trait marginal, le sin1plisrne du "ceci a ete pense" ou "cela n'a pas ete pense," le signe en est p1~esent ou absent, S est P. On serait alors tenu de reelaborer de fond en comble toutes les valeurs, elles-meines distinctes (jusqu'~t un certain point) et souvcnt confondues de l'imjJense, du nm1-tluhnatisf>, de l'imjJliritr, de l'extlu sur le mode de la Jorclusion ou de la denf>gation, de l'introjertiun ou de l'inrmjHJmtion, etc., silences qui travaillent d'autant de traces un corpus dont elles paraissent "absentes." Jacques Derrida, La Carll' j)()s/ale

Odysseus and Calypso enjoy food and drink with each other in what is their last described tneal together. 1 After the enjoyn1e1H (tarpesan) of the n1eal, Calypso turns to Oclysseus with this expansive epithetic address (5. 203): Diogenes, Lan·tiadr1, j){)lunu1dum · Odussl'll Descendant of Zeus, son of Laertes, resourceful Odysseus.

This is the first tin1e we hear the fornuda in the Od_yssf')\ since the vocative fonn of address can obviously be used only in the hero's presence. The use of this dignified expression of praise is not a rnatter of chance. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey this verse with its variant (found in Od. 24. 192)~ and the independent polumi!chanos:>, occur in specific contexts and at specific n1o1nents. As Nonnan Austin re1See

Stanford's commentary on 5.21 I ff., I :299· line reads: olbie Laertao j;ai, polwnecltan' Odusseu. 3 See Athena's description of Odysseus as polumeclzanos in Od. 2 The

33

1.205.

Multifaceted Disguises marks, "Polymechanos is no faded m eta ph or but one that proclaims that Odysseus is about to contrive or has just contrived some new stratagern, bordering on the rnagical." 4 In our passage this dignified address can be taken seriously if we read it as glossing Odysseus' recent success in obtaining Calypso's oath, but it can be read as ironic and provocative if we assun1e Calypso implies that Odysseus, the hero of farnous schernes, tricks, devices, and resources, now uncharacteristically behaves naively: he prefers to go hon1e, heedless of the trouble he will have to face, simply to see a n1ortal won1an, when if he rernained with Calypso he could enjoy peace, the unparalleled beauty of the nyrnph, and imrnortality (203313). Read in this way, Calypso's words would be consonant with her jealousy, on which critics are quick to con1n1ent. 5 Yet I believe the sexual jealousy hinted at in her words coincides with other in1plications of a different nature. We can begin to perceive these irnplications when we listen to what the text has to say to us readers through its allusions, and therefore when we make sense of the precise repetition of the words with which Calypso opens her speech. Lines 203_and _2Q4~e~at exactly the lines wi~b_whieal wink-occurs in Calypso's answer to Hermes. Calypso adapts an Iliadic line-or ,·ice versa-(!/. 24-:~;~): "You are hard. gods, and cruel" (skhct/ioi l'Sle theoi di'/t'JnoJu's). with which Apollo begins to indict the gods' insensitivity to Achilles' cruel treatment of Hector's body. Calypso, instead. savs ( 1 18): "You are hard, gods. and jealous" (sl