Odysseus : (Ulysses in Latin) son & successor of Laertes the king of Ithaca, famed for his strategy & wise counsel, led his contingent in the Trojan War.
... Ithaca. No one recognized him, except his favourite dog, Argus. Odysseus found that his queen Penelope was surrounded by a number of suitors. As Penelope wanted to hear the news about Odysseus, and although she could not recognize him, she wanted to talk to him. Odysseus did not reveal himself to her, but he raised her hopes that Odysseus would be coming back soon. Penelope could not believe him, and... Clytaemnestra, had taken his cousin Aegisthus for king; and when Agamemnon entered the Palace, they killed him. The return of Odysseus to Ithaca was also very sad. Homer tells the entire story of the return of Odysseus to Ithaca in another long epic poem, Odyssey. Odysseus took ten years to return from Troy to Ithaca. He had set off with an entire fleet, and when he returned to Ithaca, he was alone... the bow of Odysseus, which Penelope had kept safe. Then they had to shoot the arrow through the holes in a number of axes set in a line. All the suitors failed; in the end, Odysseus asked if he could try. With amazement, everyone saw him bend the bow easily and hit the target effortlessly with his first shot. As pre-planned, Odysseus's devoted servants locked all the palace doors and Odysseus and his ...
... in striking contrast the overhead aesthesis fashioning the one and a vital and mental aesthesis fashioning the other. Between Savitri and Odysseus there is all the difference between the purposive beauty of the Dawn and the fierce energy of a storm. When Odysseus becomes an ascetic after the destruction of his Ideal City, he no doubt transcends the dualities but, after all, it is a bleak enlightenment... Sun, my quick coquetting eye, my red-haired hound, Sniff out all the quarries that I love, give them swift chase... 67 When the wheel comes full circle, when the Sun sets, when Odysseus is 'dead' (that is, when the body becomes spirit and the spirit becomes air), there is heard only, "the ultimate and despairing cry of Earth/ the sun's lament, but with no throat or mouth or voice... sublime, though rhetorical effectiveness and sensuous extravagance are rarely missed. There is a commendable virtuosity in a picture like that of the Ivory God with seven heads that a pedlar sells to Odysseus: Below, the most coarse head, a brutal base of flesh... Above it, like a warrior's crest, the second head clenched its sharp teeth and frowned with hesitating brows... The ...
... high-voiced message and challenge; Only their shout at thy side will reply when thou leapst into Troya. So have their chieftains willed and the wisdom calm of Odysseus." But with a haughty scorn made answer the high-crested Hellene: "Wise is Odysseus, wise are the hearts of Achaia's chieftains. Ilion's chiefs are enough for their strength and life is too brittle Hurrying Fate to advance on the spear... the spears fall thick on the shields of the fighters, Lightly the wheels leap onward chanting the anthem of Ares, Death is at work in his fields and the heart is enamoured of danger? What says Odysseus, the baffled Ithacan? what Agamemnon? Are they then weary of war who were rapid and bold and triumphant, Now that their gods are reluctant, now victory darts not from heaven Down from the clouds... Asia, men who desert us. Not for ourselves alone have we fought, for our life of a moment! Once if the Greeks were triumphant, once if their nations were marshalled Under some far-seeing chief, Odysseus, Peleus, Achilles, Not on the banks of Scamander and skirts of the azure Aegean Fainting would cease the audacious emprise, the Titanic endeavour; Tigris would flee from their tread and Indus be ...
... In the meantime, Odysseus finds that the depraved Egyptian Empire too is in the throes of a rebellion, and gets quickly involved in it. But he is presently reduced to discomfiture and travels through darkest Africa to track the sources of the Nile. He and his companions reach at last the lake that is really Nile's source, and leaving them to rest for a while, Odysseus makes an ascent to a ... days he communes with himself and his God and whatever gods may be. An irresistible creative urge wells up in Odysseus, and he and his companions put forth sustained labours to build an Ideal City which, however, is destroyed by a sudden earthquake. One more illusion shattered, Odysseus turns an ascetic ("a figure more like an Indian Yogi", says W.B. Stanford), goes into a trance, and after resisting... its size and splendour and ambition alone", 64 it should claim and secure a place among the indubitable poetic triumphs of our time, taking a seat near Savitri and the Cantos. Odysseus—who is at once Homer's hero, Kazantzakis' alter-ego, and the human spearhead of the evolutionary adventure—is the hero; his wanderings, his visions, his musings and his ravings, his successes and ...
... trim-coifed goddess. A voyage, then; Odysseus, obviously; and there is Circe, too. Is it the Odyssey again in a Poundian version, perhaps in all the four Dantean Page 388 senses, the literal, the allegorical, the analogical, the ethical? We return to Odysseus from time to time: What have you done, Odysseus, We know what you have done... 41... circumference and no centre. But the Odysseus-clue is valuable, although it will not do, as Tate warns us, to pull it too hard, lest it snap altogether. Kenner makes the further point that, even as Tiresias is central to the scheme of The Waste Land, Odysseus is to that of the Cantos: In one sense, the substance of the Cantos is what Odysseus sees, as that of The Waste... the shade, foresuffering all, is capable only of psychic action...Odysseus, polumetis, many-minded, fertile in strategems, is engaged in active amelioration of conditions for himself and his men, involved in factive protagonist in what he sees. 45 In the first Canto, when Odysseus sets out on his voyage, Tiresias tells him: Page 389 ...
... Achilles; he agrees and promises Achilles half of Greece if he will rejoin the siege; but Achilles continues to pout. (X) Odysseus and Diomed make a two-man sally upon the Trojan camp at night and slay a dozen chieftains. (XI) Agamemnon leads his army valiantly, is wounded, and retires. Odysseus, surrounded, fights like a lion; Ajax and Menelaus cleave a path to him and save him for a better life. (XII-XIII)... to be used. With one of them Paris met his death. An oracle said that Troy would not fall as long as it had possesion of the Palladium, a sacred statue. Odysseus and Diomede resolved to steal it, but the Trojans continued to resist. At last Odysseus hit upon a plan. Under his guidance they fabricated an immense wooden horse which moved on wheels. The belly of it was hollow and large enough to hold twelve... sent him to live with the daughters of a neighboring king. However, another soothsayer pro-claimed that Troy could not be taken without Achilles' help, so the Greeks sent wily Odysseus to search for him. When discovered by Odysseus, Achilles was quite willing to join the Greek army and headed his father's Myrmidon troops when the fleet embarked for Troy. By examining closely several descriptions of ...
... Savitri VI The Odysseus Theme In a perceptive essay on 'The Odyssey and the Western World', George de E Lord has tried to delineate Odysseus as a middle term between the Achilles of the Iliad and the Aeneas of Virgil's poem. Between Hamlet, father, the old-world heroic hero who smote the sledded Polacks on the ice, and Horatio the self-poised... of the flux of passion and aimless brutality.. .The historical circumstan -ces of Odysseus' situation are so like ours that his restoration of the waste land within and outside him has the deepest relevance for ourselves." 55 The whole point of the argument is that Odysseus is an evolving, not a static, character; he is ready and eager to experiment, to explore,... both action and thought. It is not therefore surprising that Odysseus (or Ulysses) has become almost the archetype of the modern man. Tennyson's Ulysses first widely popularised the figure of the restless adventurer to whom ease is but sloth and who is determined "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield". The Poundian Odysseus of the Cantos voyages forth on the seas of the past, the present ...
... rivers. Odysseus: Son and successor of Laertes, king of Ithaca, and leader of the Ithacan contingent against Troy. He was famous as a cunning and resourceful warrior and wise counselor and was especially favoured by Athene. The famous Troyan horse, a huge wooden horse secretly filled with Greek warriors, was an idea of Odysseus. ... Styx and so made him invulnerable except in the heel by which she held him. She later tried to prevent him from participating in the war by disguising him as a girl on Scyros. Discovered there by Odysseus, he came to Troy of his own free will and not as a vassal of Agamemnon. With his army of Myrmidons he took many towns in the Troad, including Lyrnessus where he captured Breseis. When Agamemnon... strength and love of battle, but to uphold the right and establish order. She is also known as Pallas. Her statue, the Palladium, stood in Troy, but Athene herself aided the Greeks and especially Odysseus, her favourite. Babylon: Ancient city on the Euphrates, one of the greatest and most prosperous cities in the ancient world. Breseis: Daughter of Briseus, a man of Lyrnessus in Troad ...
... exposed a discreditable trick on the part of Odysseus, who by forged evidence got him executed for treason (Virgil, Aeneid ii. 811f). 48 Ajax expected to be awarded the arms of Achilles, which were supposed to pass, after their owner's death, to the next bravest of the Greeks; but the generals Agamemnon and Menelaus awarded them to Odysseus. Ajax, in a fit of madness, killed some cattle... people's minds, to find out who is really wise among them, and who only thinks that he is. What would one not give, gentlemen, to be able to question the leader of that great host against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus,49 or the thousands of other men and women whom one could mention, to talk and mix and argue with whom would be unimaginable happiness? At any rate I presume that they do not put one... in Attica. 32 from a tree or from a rock: Odyssey XiX 163. This proverbial expression, implying "so you must have some parents" is used by Penelope in encouraging the disguised Odysseus to reveal his name and family. 33 sons: Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus. Unfortunately they did not take after their father. 34 thirty votes: Apparently ...
... exposed a discreditable trick on the part of Odysseus, who by forged evidence got him executed for treason (Virgil, Aeneid ii. 81 If). Ajax expected to be awarded the arms of Achilles, which were supposed to pass, after their owner's death, to the next bravest of the Greeks; but the generals Agamemnon and Menelaus I awarded them to Odysseus. Ajax, in a fit of madness, killed some cattle... people's minds, to find out who is really wise among them, and who only thinks that he is. What would one not give, gentlemen, to be able to question the leader of that great host against Troy, or Odysseus, or Sisyphus, 49 or the thousands of other men and women whom one could mention, to talk and mix and argue with whom would be unimaginable happiness? At any rate I presume that they do not put one... parishes in Attica. from a tree or from a rock: Odyssey XiX 163. This proverbial expression, implying "so you must have some parents" is used by Penelope in encouraging the disguised Odysseus to reveal his name and family. sons: Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus. Unfortunately they did not take after their father. thirty votes: Apparently 220 voted for and ...
... unknown waters lay behind him. This was Odysseus who after the fall of Ilium was carried off his course and had to plough the seas for eleven years before reaching his native Ithaca. An Odyssean travail of the poet's being is what Poe's Helen puts an end to by her beauty. Poe's Helen is evidently not Helen of Troy, who was no cause of ultimate rest to Odysseus, yet the new Helen carries an aura of her... pressure of the phrase "weary way-worn wanderer". In the second stanza another key-note is given to the theme. The remembrance of Helen, of the Greek warriors who besieged Troy for her sake, and of Odysseus who was one of them — this remembrance becomes the gateway to a sense of the temper, both in life and art, of the ancient world. The Woman addressed is seen as the embodiment of that temper which ...
... shaker of shores, creator of earthquake. Lord of the main;*Hermes is, luck bringing, and Aphrodite, adorer of smiles. In the same vein, he writes of swift-footed Achilles and noble, long-suffering Odysseus. It is assumed that Homer came from Asia Minor and was probably born on the island of Chios, or possibly in the city of Smyrna. A guild of poets did exist on Chios and in his hymn to Apollo... hands of an other Greek warrior, Philoctates. Page 42 As legend goes, mighty Troy will never be taken by force but fall victim of a stratagem played on her by the Greeks. "Crafty Odysseus” convinced the dispirited army to build up a huge wooden horse, deceitfully dedicated to Athena, in which hollow stomach warriors could be hidden, and to leave it on the beach. Then the Achaean fleet... took to the sea and hid out of Troy’s view. The Trojans, persuaded that the Greeks had sailed away, and fearing Athena’s anger, took the horse within their walls. At night, when everybody was asleep, Odysseus and other soldiers came out and opened the gates to the rest of the army. When morning came, what had been the proudest city in Asia was fiery ruin. As the invocation of the Iliad says ...
... sullenly stand aside from the conflict. Menelaus feels demoralised and strikes a wholly defeatist note, some of the chieftains rail against Agamemnon and some rage against Achilles. It is left to Odysseus to show the way of prudence and calculation. Agamemnon, fallible mortal though he may be, remains the chosen leader of Greece, not "a perfect arbiter armed with impossible virtues", but "a man among... who is valiant, wise and far-seeing". Achilles' prowess is another asset that shouldn't be cast aside in a mood of petulance but exploited for the success of the common cause. Like Paris in Troy, Odysseus wins here, and the climactic death-grapple becomes inevitable. For almost ten years the war has been going on, this see-saw between victory and defeat, and hope and despair: All went backwards... Sometimes double similes occur to produce particular effects. For example. Antenor's speech in the Trojan Assembly is likened to the billows that are like "the hooded wrath of serpent". 100 Odysseus in the Greek camp is likened to an oak, a peak, a conqueror, a mortal Atlas, and finally to .. .the Master who bends o'er his creatures, Suffers their sins and their errors and guides ...
... 55. TheSewaneeReview,Summer 1954,pp. 426-7. In his more exhaustive survey, The Ulysses Theme,W3. Stanford has brought together Leopold Bloom in Joyce's Ulysses and Kazantzakis's Odysseus and drawn some interesting points of similarity and contrast, (pp. 222-39). 56. Opus Posthumous, p. 100. 57. Cf. Browning: What does, what knows, what is; three souls, one... the nemesis of absolute freedom...Kazantzakis sends his hero, when he has freed himself in turn from the Ego, the Race, and the World, to a much more desolate place—to the wastes of polar ice...The Odysseus of Kazantzakis has pursued personal liberty to the zero-point of the earth." (The Ulysses Theme, p. 236). 79. Quoted in Towards Standards of Criticism, ed. by F.R. Leavis, p. 107. ...
... Hector's death and the burning of Troy was filled with the achievements Page 53 of Memnon and Penthesilea, the treacherous killing of Achilles by Paris, the quarrel between Odysseus and Ajax, the killing of Paris with the bow of Philoctetes, and other episodes since commemorated in tragedy and heroic poetry. From the nine Books of Ilion now available it is difficult... learned of the rejection of his offer and decides upon instant battle. There is a parallel assembly of the Greek chieftains, and Page 54 after hearing Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus, they too decide to join the fray at Achilles' side. In a short Book Achilles takes leave of his mistress, Briseis. There is also a synod of the gods on Olympus, and the future is dimly determined ...
... seriousness of the whole" 26 and the low-life realism "is never in danger of making ridiculous the heroic side of his story. Thersites is speedily silenced; the swineherd of Odysseus remains 'the god-like swineherd', himself a king's son". 27 More important still, Homer, unlike Chaucer, is no observer of external life "without any pr... air and we feel ourselves raised to a semi-divine stature." 29 Again: "... it is the adventures and trials and strength and courage of the soul of man in Odysseus which makes the greatness of the Odyssey and not merely the vivid incident and picturesque surrounding circumstance, and it is Page 22 ...
... the Small. The Great was the most famous fighter of the Greeks next to Achilles. According to Greek legend and, unlike as in Ilion., he died by his own hand when after Achilles's death he lost to Odysseus in the attempt to gain possession of the armour of Achilles. The Small, son of Oileus and called the Locrian, boastful in character and reputed to be the fastest of the Greeks next to Achilles,... my heart in the batde, she means that she is in love with Achilles who, as we learn from an earlier passage, sent a proposal for her hand in marriage. In the Book of the Chieftains, Odysseus, in the passage beginning Rather far would I sail in my ships past southern Cythera, is made to anticipate the wanderings through which he went for twenty years after the fall of Troy ...
... pain of the iron. Last the eternal gaze was fixed on Troy and the armies Marching swift to the shock. It beheld the might of Achilles Helmed and armed, knew all the craft in the brain of Odysseus, Saw Deiphobus stern in his car and the fates of Aeneas, Greece of her heroes empty, Troy enringed by her slayers, Pans a setting star and the beauty of Penthesilea. These things... fields of the Troad, came to the fateful warfare, Veiled, the goddess calm and pure in her luminous raiment Zoned with beauty and strength. Rejoicing, spurring the fighters Close o'er Odysseus she stood and clear-eyed governed the battle. Zeus to Hephaestus next, the Cyclopean toiler Turned, Hephaestus the strong-souled, priest and king and a bond-slave, Servant of men ...
... not, set in an exhausted village." Once he asked me: "Isn't the hero of Homer's epic Odious?" I said: "Lullaby, many people have thought that, but nobody before you uttered such an apt thing about Odysseus." On another occasion he informed me in Nirod's office-room upstairs: "The latest number of the New Testament is waiting for you Page 43 on Nirod's table." It proved to be the recent ...
... modern ethical mind, it loses all its significance at once. Krishna so treated becomes a [mere?] debauchee and trickster who no doubt did great things in politics—but so did Rama in war. Achilles and Odysseus pulled of their setting become one furious egoistic savage and the other a cruel and cunning the savage. I consider myself under an obligation to enter into the spirit, significance, atmosphere ...
... subject, I see little in common between the wrath of Achilles and Man's first disobedience to God along with the Page 232 justification of God's ways to men. Again, the wanderings of Odysseus are dissimilar, in their innate orientation, to Dante's tour of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. The deeply religious epic, with metaphysical implications, cannot be equated with the heroic epic ...
... t. As for the basic subject, I see little in common between the wrath of Achilles and Man's first disobedience to God along with the justification of God's ways to men. Again, the wanderings of Odysseus are dissimilar, in their innate orientation, to Dante's tour of Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso. The deeply religious epic, with metaphysical implications, cannot be equated with the heroic epic ...
... modern ethical mind, it loses all its significance at once. Krishna so treated becomes a mere debauchee and trickster who no doubt did great things in politics—but so did Rama in war. Achilles and Odysseus pulled out of their setting become, one a furious egoistic savage, and the other a cruel and cunning savage. I consider myself under an obligation to enter into the spirit, significance, atmosphere ...
... of its two intrinsically long components: "sacked the / divine / stronghold." Nor is this trio of dissyllables a mere variation: it meaningfully covers the mention of the past magnitude of the city Odysseus left in ruins before he started tossing to and fro. The rhythmic pace is slowed down and at the end brought to a standstill with the very word connoting the original firm-foundedness of Troya which ...
... ) Homer is always simple even in his profundity, straightforward even in his subtlety, natural even in his majesty. A typical instance of this style is at the very beginning of the Odyssey. Odysseus has lost all his companions — most of them because they slew the oxen that were sacred to Helios, the sun-god, who in return brought about their death. Homer says, as F. L. Lucas has pointed out, ...
... village." Once he asked Amal: "Isn’t the hero of Homer’s epic Odious?" Amal said: "Yes, many people have thought Page 73 that, but nobody before you has uttered such an apt thing about Odysseus." I have cited all these trivial instances in order to show how, apart from her yogic force, the Mother used also minor psycho-physical aids to prepare the sadhak in the inner discipline. Of course ...
... coastal regions and venture forth to reach "the islands of the Blest". Beyond the seeming termini of this world must the traveller—the veiled Purusha; the insatiable mariner; the indefatigable Odysseus of the occult seas— dare to catch the vision of the blessed Isles, to discover "a new mind and body in the city of God". 21 No sleep, no rest, till the goal be reached! Purusha ...
... thought and character and feeling as obviously emerges in a strong and single and natural speech and action. And yet it is the adventures and trials and strength and courage of the soul of man in Odysseus which makes the greatness of the Odyssey and not merely the vivid incident and picturesque surrounding circumstance, and it is the clash of great and strong spirits with the gods leaning Page ...
... power and the magnitude of the genius expended may be the same whatever the frame of the sight, whether it be Homer chanting of the heroes in god-moved battle Page 224 before Troy and of Odysseus wandering among the wonders of remote and magic isles with his heart always turned to his lost and far-off human hearth, Shakespeare riding in his surge of the manifold colour and music and passion ...
... all over the hill by his rays", vi gobhir adrim airayat . 1 But at the same time, the rays of Surya are the herds of the Sun, the kine Page 124 of Helios slain by the companions of Odysseus in the Odyssey, stolen by Hermes from his brother Apollo in the Homeric hymn to Hermes. They are the cows concealed by the enemy Vala, by the Panis; when Madhuchchhandas says to Indra, "Thou didst ...
... be the symbol of the ray of that Truth. In the Vedas the Sun has been called the Lord of Truth, "...the rays of Surya are the herds of the Sun, the kine of Helios slain by the companions of Odysseus in the Odyssey, stolen by Hermes from his brother Apollo in the Homeric hymn to Hermes. They are the cows concealed by the enemy Vala, by the Panis ...' ,63 In modem imagery we would speak of the ...
... a modern ethical mind, it loses all its significance at once. Krishna so treated becomes a debauchee and trickster who no doubt did great things in politics — but so did Rama in war. Achilles and Odysseus pulled out of their setting become, one a furious egoistic savage, and the other a cruel and cunning savage. I consider myself under an obligation to enter into Page 316 the ...
... Apophthegm: n. Aphorism; concise statement of a principle. Page 18 youth, the Odyssey arose out of his old age. It describes the ten-year long and difficult journey back to the home of Odysseus, one of the heroes in the Iliad. It is primarily a superb adventure story and, contrary to the Iliad which remains in the real world, it includes many elements of folklore (giants, monsters, sorceress; ...
... dimension of understanding and a piercing total power of revelation to which the other two poems cannot lay claim. Or, finally, we may start again with stories of old like the wanderings of Odysseus, the mission of Hanuman to Lanka in the Ramayana, or Gilgamesh's voyage through Darkness, follow the peregrination motif as it found expression in the epics of later times, notably in the Divina ...
... render a work superior to another which has ups and downs. Horace's dictum, "Even Homer sometimes nods", refers to the Iliad , but surely the epos of Achilles's wrath is greater than that of Odysseus's wanderings. There is a dazzling fire, there is a dizzying flight in the former that reveal more and reach farther than all the wondrous discoveries of the "many-counselled" sailor among the islands ...
... render a work superior to another which has ups and downs. Horace's dictum, "Even Homer sometimes nods", refers to the Iliad, but surely the epos of Achilles's wrath is greater than that of Odysseus's wanderings. There is a dazzling fire, there is a dizzying flight in the former that reveal more and reach farther than all the wondrous discoveries of the "many-counselled" sailor among the islands ...
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