Chapter II: Second Twelve Books (8)

And all these floating metaphysical gossamers are found in Homer! Yes, but not in a metaphysical form; Homer's organ is poetic, he lived in the age ere philosophers had dawned. Still he too had before him the problems of the soul and of the world. Nor would he have been a true Greek unless he had grappled with this Play of the Negative, which had some marvelous fascination for the Greek mind. It is the leaven working in the Sophists with their subtle rhetoric, in Socrates with his negating elenchus, in Plato with his confounding dialectic. Homer, as the prophet of his people, foreshadowing all forms of Greek spirit and of Greek literature, bring to light repeatedly this Play of the Negative.

The modern German, in more respects than one the spiritual heir of the ancient Greek, has not failed to give evidence of his birthright in the same direction. Kant's Critique, and Hegel's Logic are the most desperate efforts to grasp this slippery, double-doing and double-thinking Negative, infinitely elusive, verily the old Serpent. But the supreme attempt is the modern poetic one, made by Goethe in his Faust poem, in which is embodied anew the mighty Negative, who is now none other than the devil, Mephistopheles. Thus the last world-poet reaches across the ages and touches elbows with the first world-poet in a common theme.

Thus Ulysses nullifies the Cyclops, inflicting three deprivations through his three means: the charred stick takes away vision, the strong wine takes away strength, the ambiguous pun prevents help. The pun also announces covertly to Polyphemus the nature of the power which is undoing him, but he does not and cannot understand that. But the problem of Ulysses is not at an end with simply nullifying the Cyclops; he and his companions are not yet outside of the cave. Herewith we come to a new stage of process.

3. This is the escape, to which the strong giant must be made to contribute, he is skillfully turned against himself. The great stone is removed by him from the mouth of the cave, but he places himself there at the entrance, and no human being can pass. Still, the herds have to go out to their pasture. Ulysses dexterously binds three large sheep together, fastens a companion under the middle one, while he clings beneath a huge ram, and out they move together. But the giant stops just this ram and talks to it, being his favorite of the flock. The man of nature is again outwitted by the man of intelligence, allowing his enemy to slip through his very fingers. The conversation of the blind Cyclops with the dumb animal is pathetic; his one solitary friend apparently, the only creature he loved, is compelled to silent service against its master. "Why art thou last to leave, who wast always first? Dost thou long to see the eye of thy ruler, which has been put out by that vile wretch, Nobody?" So the Cyclops speaks, without seeing or knowing, yet with a touch which excites sympathy for his misfortune.

The special characteristic of this scene is that Ulysses does not now destroy, but employs Polyphemus and his property. Nature must be used by intelligence to overcome nature; the strength of the giant must be directed to rolling away the big stone; his herds are taken to bring about the escape of his foes, and he is turned into an instrument against himself. Thus he is no longer negated as in the last scene, but utilized; having been subdued, he now must serve.

Ulysses and his companions are outside the cave, having gotten rid of those dark and fearful limits which walled them in with a monster. Mind, thought has released them; soon they are on their ship in a free element. But the end is not yet; even Polyphemus, the natural man, must come to know who and what has subjected him, he too is in the grand discipline of the time.

4. Two things Ulysses is now to tell to the Cyclops in the distance. The first is the wrong and the penalty thereof: "Amply have thy evil deeds been returned to thee," namely, his treatment of men. "Zeus and the other Gods have punished thee," there is a divine order in the world, which looks after the wrong-doer. Thus Polyphemus the anarchist, atheist, and cannibal gets a short missionary sermon on justice, religion and humanity. But he does not receive it kindly, he "hurls a fragment of a mountain peak," and almost strikes the ship. The line of danger is not yet passed.

Still Ulysses must tell something else though his frightened companions try to dissuade him. But he must, he cannot help it: "If any one ask thee, say it was Ulysses, the city-destroyer, who put out thine eye." A great light this word brings to the poor blind Cyclops, almost the light of self-consciousness. He recalls, he knows his conqueror, and therein begins to know himself, to recognize his error. "Ah, woe is me! the ancient oracles about me are fulfilled!" Of old there had been prophecies concerning his destiny, but he did not understand them, seemingly did not regard them. How could he, with his bent toward the godless? The prophet Telemus had foretold "that I would lose my sight at the hands of Ulysses." How shall we consider this prophecy? A dim, far-off presentiment among the Cyclops themselves that they were to be subjected to a higher influence; their limited, one-eyed vision was to vanish through a more universal, two-eyed vision. Such a presentiment nature everywhere shows, a presentiment of the power beyond her, of the spiritual. What else indeed is Gravitation? A longing, a seeking which even the clod manifests in its fall earthward, a prophetic intimation; so the Cyclops, the natural man, had his prophet whom he now begins rightly to recognize; truly he is getting religious, quite different is his present utterance from his previous blasphemy: "we are better than the Gods." Nay, he offers to intercede with his father Neptune, praying the God to give a sending of the stranger over the sea. Moreover he recognizes his divine father as the only one who can heal him in his present distress. Possibly the words are spoken to beguile, but Polyphemus here offers to do his duty to the stranger on his shores, and he recognizes the Gods.

Manifestly we witness in this passage a striking development of the rude Cyclops under the tough discipline of experience. He acknowledges first his mistake in regard to the prophecy: "I expected to see a man tall and beautiful and of vast strength, not this petty worthless weakling who has put out mine eye." A hero of visible might, a giant like himself, not a man of invisible intelligence, he imagined he was to meet; great was his mistake. The conflict between Brain and Brawn was settled long ago before Troy, and has been sung of in the preceding Book. Here then is certainly a confession of his mistake, and, if his words are sincere, an offer to undo his wrong.

5. At this point there is a change in Ulysses, his victory has begotten insolence, he becomes a kind of Cyclops in his turn. Such is the demon ever lurking in success. Listen to his response to the confession and supplication of his wretched victim: "Would that I were as sure of taking thy life and sending thee down to Hades, as that the Earth-shaker shall never heal thine eye." The implication is that the God cannot do it--an act of blasphemy which the God will not be slow to avenge. But how true to human nature is this new turn in Ulysses, how profound! No sooner has he escaped and experiences the feeling of triumph, than his humanity, nay his religion vanishes, he sweeps over into his opposite and becomes his savage enemy. What follows? The law must be read to him too, his own law; he will hear it from the mouth of Polyphemus, and it is essentially this: As thou hast done to me, so shall it be done to thee.

Accordingly we have next the curse of the Cyclops denounced upon the head of the transgressor. This curse is to be fulfilled to the letter, the poet has fully shown the ground of it, Ulysses has really invoked it upon himself, it lies in his deed. Possibly Polyphemus, when he offered to give the dues of hospitality and to send the guest home, was merely using the words of deception, which he had just had the opportunity of learning, and was trying to get possession of his enemy's body. Doubtless it was well for Ulysses to keep out of the giant's hands. But that does not justify his speech, which was both cruel and blasphemous.

Hear then the curse of the Cyclops, which hints the great obstructing motive to the return of Ulysses, and marks out the action of the poem; "Give Ulysses no return to his home; but if he returns, may he arrive late and in evil plight, upon a foreign ship with loss of all his companions, and may he find troubles in his house." Of course Neptune heard the prayer, had to hear it, in the divine order of things. The curse lay inside of Ulysses, else it could not have been fulfilled; he himself could drop from his humane and religious mood in adversity and become a savage in prosperity. His chief misfortunes follow after this curse. But for the present he escapes to Goat Island, though another portentous rock is hurled at him by the Cyclops. There he sacrifices to the Highest God, Zeus, who, however, pays no heed--how is it possible?

Such is this far-reaching Fairy Tale, certainly one of the greatest and most comprehensive ever written. It shows a movement, an evolution both of Polyphemus and Ulysses; this inner unfolding indeed is the main thing to be grasped. It is worth the while to take a short retrospect of the five leading points. (1) The completely negative character of the Cyclops as to institutions, religion, and even the physical man. (2) This negative being is negated by the man of intelligence, who puts out his eye, nullifies his strength by drink, and thwarts all help for him by a punning stratagem. (3) He is made to help his enemies escape from his cave by the skill of Ulysses who turns the force of nature against nature. (4) The Cyclops reaches self-knowledge through Ulysses, who tells his wrong and its punishment, who also tells his own name: whereat the Cyclops suddenly changes and makes a humane offer. (5) Ulysses changes the other way, becomes himself a kind of Cyclops and receives the curse.

This curse will now follow Ulysses and drive him from island to island through Fableland, till he gets back to Ithaca with much suffering and with all companions lost, where he will find many troubles. In this manner the return of Ulysses becomes intertwined with Polyphemus and this Fableland, which furnish an underlying motive for the third Part of the Odyssey (the last 12 Books). The curse here spoken is still working when Ulysses reaches home and finds the suitors in possession. Verily his negative spirit lies deep; in cursing Polyphemus, he has cursed himself.

Thus the impartial poet shows both sides--the guilt as well as the good in Polyphemus and in Ulysses. The man of nature has his right when he offers to transform his conduct, and it shows that Ulysses still needs discipline when he scorns such an offer. Polyphemus too is to have his chance of rising, for he certainly has within himself the possibility. Has not the poet derived the noble Arete and Alcinous and institutional Phaeacia from the savage Cyclops? But Ulysses negatives Polyphemus just at the start upward. The character which he showed in sacking the city of the Ciconians is in him still, he is not yet ready to return.

The Ninth Book has thus run through its three stages and has landed us in pure Fableland. These three stages--the attack on the Ciconians, the Lotus-eaters, the adventure with the Cyclops--may now be seen to be parts of one entire process, which we may call the purification of the spirit from its own negative condition. The man, having become destructive-minded (_oloophrn_) must be put under training by the Gods, and sent to battle with the monsters of Fableland.

So we advance to the next Book with the certainty that there is still some stern discipline in store for the wandering Ulysses.

_BOOK TENTH._

At the first glance we can observe a certain similarity between this Book and the last one. There are in each three distinct portions or adventures, two very short and simple, and one very long and intricate. Each Book culminates in a fabulous being with whom the Hero has a wrestle for supremacy, and in both cases he comes out victorious. We are still in Wonderland, we have to reach into the ideal realm in order to find out what these strange incidents mean. The two central figures are Polyphemus and Circe, respectively, each of whom imparts the dominating thought to the Book in which he or she appears.

The first thing we ask for is the connection, the inner thread which joins these Books together. It was stated that Polyphemus was the negation of the institutional world, he was individualistic, he belonged to neither Family nor State. No laws, no councils, no civil polity; he is a huge man of violence, hostile specially to man's social life. Circe on the contrary, is the woman hostile to woman's domestic world, the Family, first of all; she is the grand enchantress, representing the power and seductiveness of the senses; she is the enemy of what we call morals. To be sure, we shall find in her something more, whereof the full unfolding will be given hereafter.

Ulysses is the one who is to meet those negative forces and put them down. His companions give him special trouble in the present Book, they seem to represent the weaker phases of man, possibly of Ulysses himself. Already he has suppressed Polyphemus, or the institutional negation; now he is to subordinate Circe or the moral negation. The latter is a woman because she must have sensuous beauty and all the charm of passionate enticement; the former is a man because he must show strength and violence rather than the allurement of pleasure.

Nor should we forget that these forms are in Ulysses himself, and were really generated out of his Trojan life; that spirit of his, shown at the start by the attack on the Ciconians, has all these phases in its process. He is traveling through an Inferno, seeing its entire demonic brood, which he has begotten, and which he has to fight and subject. At the same time these fantastic shapes are typical, and shadow forth the universal experience of man, belonging to all countries and all ages.

As already stated, there are three different localities to which Ulysses is brought. Three islands, bounded, yet in a boundless sea, through which he moves on his ships; such is the outermost setting of nature, suggestive of much. No tempest occurs in this Book; the stress is upon the three fixed places in the unfixed aqueous element.

I. First is the island where dwells AEolus with his Family; hither Ulysses comes after putting down Polyphemus who was hostile to domestic life. In this spot the bag of winds is given into the possession of the navigator, whose companions, however, release them, and he is driven to the starting-point, with the winds at large. AEolus refuses to receive him the second time.

II. Next is the city of the Laestrigonians, where is a civil life, a State, to which Ulysses can come after subjecting the Cyclops, who had no polity of the sort. But the State is verily a giant, a cannibal to him now, with all the winds loose. Hence he has to flee for his life. Whither now does he go?

III. Not to Penelope and Ithaca, but to Circe, and her isle. She is the form which next rises before Ulysses, banished from the domestic world of AEolus, and fleeing from the civil life of the Laestrigonians.

We shall try to bring the threads of connection to light, for it is our emphatic opinion that these three islands with their shapes are spiritually bound and wound together. Still further, they reach back and interlink with the forms of the previous Book, which furnish antecedent stages of the grand total movement of Fairyland. Separated in image are these islands and their inhabitants, but they have to be united in thought. Not a mere accident is the sequence, but a necessity, a strict evolution. The work here, according our best belief, is organic, and the reader must not rest contented with his understanding of it, till he moves with the poet from place to place by the interior path of the spirit.

I.

The first fact about the AEolian Isle is that it was afloat in the waters of the sea, as Delos and other islands of antiquity were reported to be. Not stationary then; the king of it, AEolus, has a name which indicates a changeable nature, veering about like the winds, of which he is king. The second fact pertaining to this Isle is that a wall of brass encircles it not to be broken through; "and the cliff runs up sheer from the sea." Manifestly two opposite ideas are suggested in this description: the fixed and the movable; the island within itself is bound fast, and cannot be driven asunder; yet it floats in the most unstable of elements, in the sea and winds. Such is the physical environment, clearly mirroring the meaning. Something permanent in the midst of all that is mutable we may expect to find here.

On the island dwell the King of the Winds and his wife, along with six blooming sons and daughters. He gave his daughters to his sons for wives; a custom not elsewhere found in Homer outside of the realm of the Gods; yet is claimed to have been a very ancient custom, which the Ptolomies revived in Egypt. At any rate here is the picture of the Family in its patriarchal form, wholly separated from other connections and set apart by itself, on the brass-bound precipitous island. The Family is abstracted from the rest of the world and given a dwelling-place.

At this point we begin to catch a glimpse of the significance of the story. The Family is the first power which seizes the emotions and passions and caprices of men (the winds of his soul) and starts the taming of them; the marriage tie is fixed, is not for a day; thus the Family makes itself permanent, and makes the human being stable through feeling and duty. None but married people are here; very different will it be hereafter in the island of Circe. The king of the winds is not only AEolus, but also his institution, the Family, rules here, for there is no State to be governed. Not polygamy, but monogamy, as the great Homeric principle of domestic life, do we witness--the mutual devotion of one man and one woman. Externally we found the fixed and the floating; internally also we discover the fixed and the floating, or rather, that principle which fixes the floating, and makes the world stable. Thus we see the reason why Homer puts the Family upon the Isle of the Winds.

It is no wonder, therefore, that in such a place is held up before us a picture of happiness and plenty. "All feast from day to day with endless change of meats;" why ask whence the viands come? The inner peace provides them. Even the sound of flutes is heard round about, according to one way of translating the passage; music attunes the everlasting festival. Not mere gratification is this, but happiness, the outer again mirroring the inner; domestic harmony is the matter set forth.

Hither Ulysses comes with his companions, "to the city and beautiful houses" of AEolus. A city is here, but no civil life is introduced into the story. "A whole month the monarch entertained me;" what was again the interest? "He asked me about Ilium," the eternal theme, which lies always in the background of Fairyland as well as of Historic Hellas. The Trojan war and also "the Return of the Greeks" were recounted, we may say, sung by Ulysses; the Iliad and the Odyssey, delighted also those domestic AEolians. Was not Troy destroyed because of a wrong done to the Greek Family? Finally Ulysses was gotten ready to be sent home by his host.

AEolus, the ruler of the winds, gives them into the might of Ulysses; he confines them in "a bullock's bladder," which, tied by a silver chain, he places in the ship. It is manifest that the sea, deprived of these windy powers, cannot hinder the passage. Again we behold the main fact of the island: the unstable, uncertain, capricious, is held by the fixed, the permanent; during his sojourn with AEolus, Ulysses has obtained an inner hold, an anchorage of the moral kind, which he sorely needed. This was given him by his view of the Family, which was the real security of the island. All the conditions of his return (but one) are placed in his hand, tied up in a bag. "Only the west-wind was allowed to blow," which sent him homewards.

Still the supreme condition was not, could not be given by AEolus or by anybody else, could not be tied up in a bag. The free man must be alert, he must watch, and win his own salvation; his prime duty is to keep the bag tied, and therein to exercise his will. This is just what he failed to do at the last moment. He went to sleep when in sight of Ithaca; his companions, led by curiosity and avarice (two blasts of the soul) open the bag, expecting to find gold and silver, and find the rushing winds. Of course all are driven back to the starting-point, to the island, on which they soon land.

What will Ulysses do in such extremity? "Shall I drop into the sea and perish, or shall I still endure and stay among the living?" Suicide will not solve his problem: "I remained and suffered." Herein also we trace the stamp of the hero, whose special call it is to master fate.

So Ulysses tries again to get the bladder of winds from AEolus, confessing that it was equally the fault of himself and his companions. But the opportunity is gone; the sum total of conditions, all bagged and tied up, and put into his hands, presents itself only once. Moreover the sleep of Ulysses, just at the nick of destiny, showed an internal weakness; he became careless, almost insolent under such circumstances; he manifested a similar trait to that which led to the curse of the Cyclops. Again he hears a malediction, now uttered by his former host: "Get thee out of my island quickly, most guilty of men, hated by the Gods!" Thus AEolus regards the man before him, and reinforces the curse of Polyphemus. But if Ulysses had to fall asleep by sheer fatigue (which construction the passage hardly demands), then he did not look properly after his companions, making them the sharers of his knowledge. A foolish question has been asked here and much discussed: How did Ulysses know what his companions said during his sleep? Easily enough; but the answer is not worth the candle.

AEolus, therefore, refuses to receive Ulysses and his companions a second time; they have fallen, they must experience the full meaning of their conduct; they must go to Circe, and some of them, at least, be changed into swine, till they know the nature of their deed. AEolus cannot receive them, they have destroyed his gift; they would repeat their act, if he gave all into their hands again, without the deeper penalty. The law thus is clear; they, having disregarded the fixed control of appetite and passion, which the King of the Island imparts, are swept back into brutishness.

Many have been the interpretations of this marvelous King and his children and his island. The supporters of the physical theory of mythology have maintained that the twelve sons and daughters are the twelve months of the year, six of summer and six of winter, while AEolus, the father, is the Sun who produces them. Others regard AEolus as a mortal king, who, on account of certain traits or certain deeds, was transformed into the fabled monarch of the winds. There has been much dispute over the location of AEolia; the most of those who have searched for its geographical site are in favor of one of the Lipari Islands, on the northern coast of Sicily. Finally Virgil has somewhat transformed the legend and put it into his AEneid.

II.

Ulysses and his companions now had to use the oar on seas without wind; "their spirit was worn out," hope had fled from them toiling through the becalmed deep. They arrive at the land of the Laestrigonians, a race of giants, into whose narrow harbor surrounded by its high precipices the ships enter, with the exception of that of Ulysses, who has learned caution. A kind of cave of the Giant Despair is that harbor, reflecting outwardly the internal condition of the men, after their weary labor coupled with the repulse from AEolus.

First of all we here observe a city with a civil order; there is the place of assembly, a king over men, with a royal palace. No husbandry appears, but there are wagons fetching wood to town on a smooth road (probably a made road); shepherds are specially designated, so that we may suppose a pastoral life prevails, yet these people in their city are not roving nomads. The Family also is noticed, being composed of the king, queen, and daughter; the latter is bringing water from the town fountain--a primitive, idyllic touch. But the stress is manifestly not upon the domestic but the civil institution; the State is here in full operation, in which fact we mark the contrast with the preceding island, AEolia. Another sharp contrast may be drawn between the Laestrigonians and the Cyclops; the latter are giants also, but have no civil order.

Ulysses, therefore, witnesses the State, in due gradation after the Family. He can come to both these institutions now, and see them at least, for he has put down Polyphemus, who, we recollect, was the negation of both. But only see them, not share in them; the curse of the Cyclops is still working upon him and in him; though he destroy a destroyer, that does not make him positive; the devil destroys the wicked, but that does not make him good. Hence the State rejects him as did the Family; he is by no means ready to return to Ithaca and Penelope. Such is his experience at present.

But why should the Laestrigonians be portrayed as giants? Of course the Fairy Tale deals in these huge beings for its own purpose. AEolus and his children seem to have been of common stature. The fancy can often play into the meaning, or suggest a glimpse thereof. The State may be called the Big Man, the concentrated personality of many persons; he strikes hard, he overwhelms the wrong-doer. Therefore he seems now so terrible to Ulysses, and is really so to the latter's companions, of whom all perish here except one shipful. It is the function of the State to punish; in the sweet domestic life of AEolus, there was no punishment, only banishment; thus we behold now the penalty, at the hands of that institution which is specially to administer it. The companions did no wrong to the Laestrigonians, but note that just here judgment comes upon them. Ulysses escapes, but to him also these people appear as destroyers, as man-devouring cannibals; so the State often seems to the guilty, overwhelming the individual with its penal vengeance.

The Cyclops was also a giant and a cannibal, full of hostility; but mark the difference. He was the Strong Man of Nature, not human in shape, with that one eye in his head; his violence was against institutions, the violence of the wild barbarian, which has to be put down by man. But the Laestrigonians live in a civilized order which has to punish the transgressor; their shapes are not monstrosities of nature, but magnified human bodies. Both are giants and cannibals, both negative, but in a wholly different sense.

What is the location of the Laestrigonians? A subject much disputed recently and of old, with very little profit. Some expressions are puzzling: "The herdsman coming in greets the herdsman going out;" then again, "a herdsman needing no sleep would earn double wages," which implies apparently two periods for toil in twenty-four hours, the one "for tending cows" and the other "for tending sheep;" and this is possible, "for the paths of day and night are near" to each other, as if somehow day and night ran their courses together. What does it all mean? Some dim story of the polar world with its bright nights, which story may have come from the far North into Greece, along with another Northern product, amber, which was known to Homer, may lie at the basis of this curious passage. But we can hardly place the Laestrigonians under polar skies in spite of this polar characteristic. Others have sought their locality in the Black Sea and have even seen their harbor in that of Balaklava. All of which is uncertain enough, and destined to remain so, but furnishes a marvelous field for erudite conjecture and investigation. The certain matter here, and we should say the important one also, is the institutional order and its negative attitude toward Ulysses. That is, we must reach down and bring to light the ethical thread which is spun through this wonderful texture of Fairy Tales, before we have any real explanation, or connecting principle.

III.

Onward the wanderer, now with his single ship, has to sail again; whither next? He arrives at another island called AEaea, "where dwells the fair-haired Circe, an awful Goddess, endowed with a singing voice, own sister of the evil-minded wizard AEaetes, both sprung of the Sun and of Perse, daughter of Oceanus."

This genealogy we have set down in full, as given by the poet, on account of its suggestiveness. These names carry us back to the East, quite to primitive Arya; here is the Sun, the God of the old Vedas; here is Perse, curiously akin to Persia, which was light-worshiping in her ancient religion; then we come to AEaetes, father of Medea, usually held to be of Colchis on the Eastern coast of the Black Sea, whence we busily pass to Hellas in many a legend, and from Hellas we now have traveled far westward into Fairyland. One ancient story, probably the first, placed Circe in the remote East; another, this of Homer for example, sends her to the far West; a third united the two and told of the Flight of Circe upon the chariot of the Sun from Orient to Occident, which is doubtless a much later form of the tale, though ascribed to Hesiod. Circe is of a higher ancestry than Polyphemus, though both go back in origin to the sea with their island homes; she, however, is a child of the light-giving body, and will show her descent in the end. Her name is related to the circle, and hints the circling luminary, on whose car she is said to have fled once. Here in Homer, however, we may note an inner circle of development; she passes through a round of experience, and seems to complete a period of evolution. She must be grasped as a movement, as a cycle of character, if you please; she develops within, and this is the main fact of her portrayal.

The preceding etymological intimations are dim enough, yet they point back to Asia, and to an old Aryan relationship. Not too much stress is to be put upon them, yet they are entitled to their due recognition, and are not to be thrown aside as absolutely meaningless. By Homer, himself, they could not have been understood, being traces of a migration and ethnical kinship which had been in his time long forgotten, and which modern scholarship has resurrected through the comparative study of language.

More important is the connection between Circe and the two preceding portions of this Book, AEolia and the Laestrigonians. We have just seen how both Family and State cast Ulysses off, must cast him off, since he is without moral subordination. The inner self-control demanded by an institutional life he has not been able to reach, after the alienation produced by the Trojan War; the bag of winds given into his hand by AEolus he could not keep tied. Why? Behold Circe rise up and take on shape after his twofold experience. Really she is evolved out of Ulysses in a certain sense; he sees her just now and not before, because he has created her. Why is he thus repelled by Family and State? Circe is the answer; she is the enchantress who stands for sensuous pleasure in its most alluring form; with her is now the battle.

Thus we approach another struggle of the hero, the longest and by far the most elaborately unfolded, of the present Book. In many respects it is the counterpart of the story of Polyphemus in the previous Book. There he meets and puts down the anti-institutional man; here he meets and puts down the anti-moral woman. The one represents more the objective side of man's spirit, the other more the subjective; both together image the totality of the ethical world, in its two supreme aspects, institutions and morals.

Very famous has this story of Circe become in literature. It has furnished proverbs, allusions, texts for exhortation; it has been wrought over into almost every possible form--drama, novel, poem, paramyth; from the nursery to old age it retains its charm and power. Its meaning is plain enough, especially at first; but it grows more weird and more profound as it develops; at last it ascends quite into the beyond and points to the supersensible world.

Now the main point to be seized in this tale is the movement, the development of Circe through her several stages, which are in the main three, showing Circe victorious, Circe conquered, and Circe prophetic. Ulysses and his companions move along with these stages, being also in the process; but the center of interest, the complete unfolding, is found in Circe. These three chief stages we may give somewhat more fully before entering upon the detailed exposition.

_First._ The island is reached; some of the companions under a leader (not Ulysses) go to Circe's abode, and are turned into swine after partaking of her food. Circe triumphant.

_Second._ Ulysses himself then goes, having obtained the plant _moly_; he subdues, enjoys; he releases his companions. He finally asks to be sent home, according to the promise she had given. Circe subordinated.

_Third._ Then she reveals her prophetic power and announces the future journey to Hades, ere he can return home. Thus she sends him on beyond herself, and reaches her culmination in this Book.

Of these three stages the last seems inappropriate to Circe's character, and is always a puzzle to the reader, till he probes to the thought underlying the tale. Circe, then, is to show herself a seeress, and foreshadow the world beyond the present. Why just that in her case? But before the question can be answered, we must unfold the first two stages.

I. After an introduction which names the new island and its occupant, as well as gives a bit of her genealogy, the tale takes up Ulysses and his companions. After a rest of two days and two nights, the hero goes forth to spy out the land, ascends a hill whence he sees the smoke of Circe's palace rising "through the bushes and the trees." His last experience makes him careful, his thirst for knowledge does not now drive him to go at once into her presence. He returns to his companions with his information, and on the way back he kills a high-horned stag, "which had come down from the woods to the stream to slake its thirst." The result is a good meal for all once more, and a restoration of hope.

1. In such a mood he imparts his discovery: "I have seen with mine eyes smoke in the center of the island." Terror-striking was the announcement to his companions, who at once thought of "the cannibals, Cyclops and Laestrigonians." And they had cause for fear. It may, however, be said in advance that Circe is not a man-eater, but a man-transformer; she is a new phase of the great experience, she bestializes; she is negative, not so much from without as from within, not consuming the human shape but transmuting it into that of an animal.

A curious expression here needs some explanation. "We know not where is east and where is west, not where the Sun goes under the earth, nor where he rises." Why not? There have been several ways of viewing this passage. Ulysses did not know the countries where the Sun set or rose, though he must have seen the direction. A statement from Voss may be here translated: "The side of night and of day he knew well, for he saw sunrise and sunset; but he does not know into what region of the world he has wandered away from home." One other suggestion: it may have been very foggy or cloudy weather at the time. The internal hint, however, is clear; he is astray, lost; he knows not what direction to take for his return.

But something has to be done. Accordingly Ulysses divides his crew into two portions, one commanded by Eurylochus, the other by himself. The lot decided that Eurylochus and his company should go to the house of Circe, and the lot always decides aright in the hand of Ulysses. Forth they "go wailing, two and twenty companions, and leave us behind, weeping." A tearful time for those forty-four people plus the two leaders; which numbers give a basis for calculating the size of the crew, of which six had been already destroyed by the Ciconians and six by the Cyclops.

2. Soon they reach the abode of Circe, whose picture is now drawn with characteristic touches. She is beautiful, sings with a beautiful voice, and makes beautiful things, weaving webs such as the Goddesses weave. Surely an artistic being; her palace is built of hewn stone, not of natural rock, yet it lies in the depths of the forest. Here again she shows her power: wild animals, wolves and lions, lie around--fawning upon, not attacking men, tamed by her powerful drugs. That is, she shows herself the mistress of nature, or rather the transformer thereof; her mighty spell can change character and shape.

There has been a difference of opinion from antiquity down to the present about these animals. Are they transformed men, or merely wild animals tamed? The matter is left in doubt by the poet and either view will answer for the passage. The connection, however, with the transformation of the companions of Ulysses, would suggest the first meaning. These partake of her food, with which she mingles her drug, "in order that they might wholly forget their native country." But here is something more than the indifference of the Lotus-eaters; these eaters and drinkers at once become swine as to "their heads, voices and hair," and eat the acorn and the fruit of cornel-tree, "like wallowing pigs." Yet their mind remained "firm as before."

There can be no doubt that Time has interpreted this scene in but one way, and Time is probably correct. Still it is not here expressly said that the companions indulged to excess in food and drink, though they apparently had just had a sufficiency of feasting along the sea-shore, on venison and wine, "unspeakable meat and sweet drink." We must, however, consider the whole to be a phase of that same lack of inner subordination which led these people to untie the fatal bag of winds upon a former occasion.

3. One man alone escaped to tell the story, as so often happens in such adventures; it is Eurylochus, "who remained outside the palace suspecting guile." When Ulysses hears the account, he proposes to go at once and release his comrades. Eurylochus beseeches him not to attempt it, but he persists, saying, "I shall go, a strong necessity is upon me." Possibly in his contemptuous expression, "You stay in this place eating and drinking," is hinted just that which he is now to put down, in contrast with his companions. Eurylochus is the man who is unable to solve the problem; he runs away from it, is afraid of it, and leaves his wretched associates behind. But the problem must have a positive solution, which here follows.

II. We are now to witness the dealings of Ulysses with Circe; he is to subordinate her, making her into a means, not an end; she will recognize him and submit completely, taking an oath not to do him any harm; she will release his companions and restore them to their natural forms at his behest; she will then properly entertain the entire crew, no longer turning them into swine. The world of the appetites and the senses will be duly ordered and subjected to the rational; from an imperious enchantress Ulysses changes Circe into an instrument of life and restoration. He is the transformer of her, not she of him; for she will reduce man to a beast, unless he reduces her to reason.

1. Ulysses on his way to Circe's palace is met by a seeming youth (really a God, Mercury) who warns him and gives him a plant potent against the drugs of the enchantress. It is manifest that Ulysses has a divine call; he knows already his problem from Eurylochus, the God reiterates it and inspires him with courage. In addition he receives a plant from the divine hand, whereof the description we may ponder: "The root is black, its flower white as milk; the Gods call it _moly_, hard it is for men to dig up." Very hard indeed! And the whole account is symbolical, we think, consciously symbolical; it has an Orphic tinge, hinting of mystic rites. At any rate the hero has now the divine antidote; still he is to exert himself with all his valor; "when she shall smite thee with her staff, draw thy sword and rush upon her, as if intending to kill her." Thus he is to assert the god-like element in himself, the rational, and subject to it the sensuous. It is clear that Ulysses is beginning to master the lesson of his experience.

2. He does as the God (and his own valor) directed, and Circe cowers down subdued. She is not supreme, there is something higher and she knows it. At once she recognizes who it is: "Art thou that wily Ulysses whose coming hither from Troy in his black ship has often been foretold to me?" Such a prophecy she must have known and felt, she had mind and was aware of a power above her, which would some day put her down, after the Trojan time. In like manner Polyphemus, the man of nature, has heard of a coming conqueror, and actually named him.

This one kind of subjection, however, is not enough, it must be made universal. Every kind of subordination of the sensuous, not merely in the matter of eating and drinking, is necessary. The next thing to be guarded against is carnal indulgence, which may "make me cowardly and unmanly." Hence Circe has "to swear the great oath, not to plot against me any harm." Thus in the two chief forms of human appetite, that of eating and drinking and that of sexual indulgence, she is subjected.

Ulysses is beginning to have some claims to being a moral hero, still he is not by any means an ascetic. He has the Greek notion of morality; we have a right to enjoy, but enjoyment must not make us bestial; rational moderation is the law. He drinks of Circe's cup, but does not let it turn him into a swine; he shares in all her pleasures, but never suffers his head to get dizzy with her blandishments. Every seductive delicacy she sets before him, mingled with the most charming flattery; "I did not like the feast." Why? This leads us to the next and higher point.

3. Lofty is the response of Ulysses: "O Circe, what right-minded man would endure to touch food and drink before seeing his companions released?" At once she goes to the sty and sets them free, restoring their shapes, "and they became younger, larger, and more beautiful than they were before." A great advantage is this to any man; it is worth the hard experience to come out with such a gain, especially as the companions must have been getting a little old, stooped and wrinkled, having gone through so many years of hardship at Troy and on the sea.

4. Thus Ulysses has transformed Circe into an instrument for restoring his fallen comrades; surely a noble act. Next she of her own accord asks Ulysses to go to the sea-shore for the rest of his men and to bring them to her palace for refreshment and entertainment. This he succeeds in doing after some opposition from the terrified Eurylochus, who has not yet gotten over his scare. Sorely did the companions need this rest and recuperation after their many sufferings on land and sea; "weak and spiritless they were, always thinking of the bitter wandering." But now in the palace of Circe "they feasted every day for a whole year," eating and drinking without being turned into swine. Even Eurylochus follows after, "for he feared my terrible threat."

Thus we catch the sweep of this grand experience of and with Circe; if she governs, she bestializes man; if she serves, she refreshes and restores. Her complete subordination is witnessed; from transforming people into swine, she is herself transformed into their helper, and she becomes an important factor in the great Return to home and country. But it is time to think of this Return again; the period of repose and enjoyment must come to an end.

III. Here, then, we behold a new phase of Circe, that of the seeress into the Beyond. Ulysses says to her at the end of the year: "Now make your promise good, send us home, for which we long." Stunning is the answer after that period of relaxation: "Ye must go another way, ye must pass into the Houses of Hades." It is indeed a terrible response. But for what purpose? "To consult the soul of the blind Theban seer Tiresias, whose mind is still unimpaired; to him alone of the dead Proserpine gave a mind to know." Clearly this means the pure intelligence without body; Ulysses must now reach forth to the incorporeal spirit, to the very Idea beyond the senses, beyond life.

The first question which arises in this connection is, How can Circe, the enchantress of the senses, be made the prophetess of the supersensible world? If we watch her development through the two preceding stages, we shall see that she not only can, but must point to what is beyond, to spirit. In the second stage she experiences a great change, no longer transforming into the lower, but herself transformed into the higher; she becomes a moral being, subordinating the sensuous to the spiritual; she has, therefore, spirit in her life and manifests it in her actions, when she is the willing means of subjecting appetite to reason.

The same transformation we may note on her artistic side, for she remains always beautiful. The first Circe is that alluring seductive beauty which destroys by catering to the senses; she is that kind of art, which debauches through its appeal to appetite and passion alone. But the second Circe is transfigured, her service is of the spirit, she releases from the bondage of indulgence, she aids the ethical Return to Family and State. It is true that she never becomes a saint or a nun, she would not be Greek if she did; moreover, according to the Greek view, she must be transcended by the typical man, who is to rise into an institutional life, which is hardly Circe's. Still the primal moral subjection is shown in her career.

The domain of morals reveals the spiritual in action, the domain of true art reveals the spiritual in representation. What shall I do with this world of the senses? was a great question to the Greek, and still is to us. In conduct subordinate it; in nature transform it into an image of the higher. The work of art is a divine flash from above into a sensuous form; this flash we separate from its material, and pass into pure spirit; then we reach Tiresias, the mind embodied, not limited in Space and Time.

Circe thus indicates her own limitation, which belongs to morals and art. She is not the Infinite, but can point to it; she hints the rise from art to philosophy. Backwards and forwards runs the suggestion in her career; the Greek can lapse to the first Circe and die in a debauch of the senses, or he can rise to the prophetic Circe, and lay the deep foundation of all future thought. The Greek world, in fact, had just this double outcome.

Ulysses, then, has to go to Hades, the supersensible realm; his heart was wrung, "I wept sitting upon the couch, I wished no longer to live nor to see the light of the sun." But after such a fit, he is ready for action: "when I had enough of weeping and rolling about, I asked Circe: Who will guide me?" Then he receives his instructions, which have somewhat of the character of a mystic ritual, with offerings to the dead, who will come and speak. Messages from the spirit world he will get, but he must pass through the Ocean stream, to the groves of Proserpine. From that point, after mooring his ship, he is to go to the houses of Hades, where is a rock at the meeting of two loud-roaring rivers; "pour there a libation to the dead" with due ceremony. In all of which is the method of the later necromancy, or consultation of the departed for prophetic purposes. Very old is the faith that the souls of deceased persons can be made to appear and to foretell the future, after a proper rite and invocation; nor is such a belief unknown in our day.

Ulysses departs from Circe's palace and tells his companions concerning the new voyage: whereat another scene of lamentation. To the Greek the Underworld was a place of gloom and terror; he liked not the spirit disembodied, he needed the sensuous form for his thought, he was an artist by nature. The Homeric Greek in particular was the incarnation of the sunny Upperworld, he shuddered at the idea of separating from it and its fair shapes. But the thing must be done, as it lies in the path of development as well as in the movement of this poem.

Ulysses must therefore go below, inasmuch as this world with its moral life even, is not the finality. There is aught beyond, the limit of death we must surmount in the present existence still; a glimpse of futurity the mortal must have before going thither. So Homer makes the Hero transcend life as it were, during life; and extend his wanderings into the supersensible world.

The reader has now witnessed the three stages of this Tenth Book--AEolus, the Laestrigonians, and Circe. The inner connection between these three stages has also been investigated and brought to the surface; at least such has been the persistent attempt. Especially has Circe been unfolded in the different phases which she shows--all of which have been traced back to a unity of character.

The intimate relation between the Ninth and Tenth Books has been set forth along with their differences. Both belong to the Upperworld of this Fableland; hence they stand in contrast with the Netherworld, which is now to follow.

_BOOK ELEVENTH._

The present Book is one of the most influential pieces of writing which man has produced. It has come down through the ages with a marvelous power of reproduction; in many ways poets have sought to create it over; indeed Time has imitated it in a series of fresh shapes. Virgil, not to speak of other attempts in ancient Greek epics, has re-written it in the Sixth Book of the AEneid; from Virgil it passed to Dante who has made its thought the mould which shapes his entire poem--the _Divine Comedy_.