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The Olympian gods hold a council and Athena speaks, raising the issue of Odysseus’ imprisonment on Calypso’s island. She says Odysseus is no longer remembered as ruler in Ithaca, and raises the subject of the suitors who now plan to kill Telemachus. Zeus reassures Athena and says it is her own plan to have Odysseus finally exact revenge at home, and that she sails with Telemachus to protect him. Zeus turns to Hermes and instructs him to go to Calypso’s island. He predicts that Odysseus will leave the island on a raft, but after twenty days when he reaches Scheria, the land of the Phaeacians, he will be honoured by them and they will bestow valuable gifts upon him before he returns home.
Hermes prepares for his journey by donning his winged sandals and taking his wand which “enchants the eyes of men”. He flies across the ocean to Calypso’s island, Ogygia. Calypso’s cave is an impressive and alluring place. It is surrounded by beautiful woods, many birds, a vine full of grapes, clear springs and soft meadows. Hermes finds Calypso weaving at her loom but Odysseus is nowhere to be seen. He is on the headland, weeping bitterly at his situation. Calypso recognises Hermes and offers to do anything in her power for him. She feeds Hermes and then he tells her that he comes to her unwillingly, since there is nothing for him in this part of the world. He says he has come to demand that Odysseus be released and allowed to return home. Calypso is angered by this, and cites other instances where immortal women have taken mortal lovers, only for the gods to have intervened. She says the gods are jealous. She describes how she in fact saved Odysseus, after Zeus blasted his ship with a lightening bolt and killed his men. She has even offered to make Odysseus immortal. But she knows she cannot defy the gods, so she agrees to allow Odysseus to go, although she has no ship or crew to offer him.
Hermes leaves. Calypso finds Odysseus on the headland, still weeping. Odysseus has been an unwilling lover to Calypso during his time on the island and only desires to return home to Penelope. Calypso tells him he can go. She instructs him to cut timbers to construct a raft, which she will stock with food and water. She says he will make it home if the gods allow it. Odysseus does not trust Calypso. He demands she swears an oath that she will not find some way to thwart his return home. Calypso swears an oath never to harm Odysseus or thwart him. They return to the cave where Odysseus eats. As he does so, Calypso tries to persuade him one last time. She says there are terrible pains he must yet endure if he leaves the island, and again offers him immortality if he stays. But Odysseus is determined to go, even though Penelope, as a mortal, cannot match Calypso’s beauty. He is willing to bear whatever pains he must to make his journey home. As night falls Calypso and Odysseus make love. The next morning, she offers him a bronze axe and an adze so he can make his raft. She takes him to a place where trees that are suitable for shipbuilding grow. Odysseus sets to work, cutting trunks, making his raft, complete with a steering oar and a sail.
On the fifth day Calypso helps launches Odysseus from the island by summoning a wind. He sails for seventeen days before he sees the mountains of Scheria looming before him. But at this point Poseidon, who is returning from the Ethiopians, spots Odysseus and decides to cause him more trouble. He sends a mighty storm against him. Odysseus despairs, and thinks it is Zeus who is acting against him. Odysseus wishes he had died at Troy in the fight to protect Achilles’ body. There, he would have been buried with honour rather than dying alone at sea. A massive wave hits the raft. The mast is broken and the sail is lost. Odysseus is pushed beneath the water and is half-drowned. Cadmus’ daughter, known as Ino while still a mortal, but now called Leucothea as a sea goddess, takes pity on him. She advises him to take off his clothes which are weighing him down, abandon his raft and swim for shore. She offers him her scarf of immortality to make the swim, which he must cast back into the sea once he reaches land. But Odysseus is again untrusting and decides to remain with his raft while ever it is seaworthy. But a colossal wave now destroys it and Odysseus is forced to strip, wrap the scarf about him and dive into the sea as he was instructed. Poseidon watches his escape with bitterness and withdraws to his palace at Aegea port.
Athena now stops most of the winds except the north wind which she intends will take him to Scheria. Odysseus drifts for two days, lost. On the third day the wind dies altogether, but he sees landfall ahead. However, it is a dangerous shoreline he faces. It has jagged reefs and cliffs, with no harbour or road to service the it. Odysseus fears a large wave will dash him against the cliffs. His options are poor. He can try to get ashore here, or he can swim further, hoping to find a better landing place. But that would take longer, exposing him to further treacherous seas or creatures of the deep. As he considers his options another giant wave forces him towards the shore. Athena inspires him to leap for a reef. He clings to it, but the backwash takes him out to sea again. Athena again inspires him to continue swimming and look for a better landfall. He at last comes abreast of a river mouth. He prays to the river god for help and mercy. The god responds by smoothing out the current from the river and draws him ashore. Odysseus is exhausted, but he throws Leucothea’s scarf back into the ocean, as instructed.
Odysseus considers his new situation. He fears that if he stays near shore to sleep he will die of the cold, but that if he enters the forest where it will be warmer, he risks being attacked by an animal. He decides to risk the forest. He finds two bushy olive trees and climbs beneath them. They offer shelter from the sun and wind, and the ground beneath them is covered with a thick layer of leaves to make a comfortable bed. Odysseus makes himself a bed and falls asleep.
Calypso’s island, Ogygia, is mythical, but it is popularly located as the island of Gozo, part of the Maltese archipelago south of Sicily, which is where I have placed it in this map. Odysseus’ journey from Ogygia to Scheria is the first part of the journey we witness as readers of The Odyssey, but the story is told out of sequence and it in fact occurs late in Odysseus’ wanderings, since Odysseus has been trapped on Ogygia with Calypso for seven years.
In contrast to Helen from The Iliad, Penelope is the quintessential faithful wife. Through long years of her husband’s absence, and despite the overwhelming pressure to remarry from the suitors who occupy her house against her will, Penelope finds ways to stave off their ardour. Her most famous ploy is related in Book 2. Penelope weaves a shroud for her father each day, and each night she undoes her work so that her promise to marry one of the suitors once the shroud is completed can be delayed. Realising what she has been doing, the suitors occupy her house and refuse to leave, no longer trusting her.
Odysseus, on the other hand, finds himself in a world where women tempt him, and he fails to remain sexually true to Penelope. However, we see that a straight reading of Book 5 of The Odyssey asks us to weigh Odysseus’ sexual fidelity against his emotional fidelity. Homer writes:
Homer immediately contrasts Odysseus’ sexual infidelity with his emotional fidelity to Penelope:
In fact, Odysseus will sleep with two women during the course of The Odyssey. He has already slept with Circe to reverse her spell over his men (although this story is told later). In each situation there is an element of compulsion, although only in the case of Circe can Odysseus’ actions be said to have been in the interests of others.
However, Calypso’s temptation is strong, nevertheless. She is physically attractive, to start with, and she has total control over Odysseus’ life. He cannot leave the island without her consent. Added to this, she has offered him immortality and she wishes to marry him.
So, Odysseus’ actions in relation to his marriage may be compared to Penelope’s, who acts with a greater degree of fidelity. The standards applied to men and women, we might argue, are different. But it is a point that can be drawn from the story of Calypso, too. We have already seen Homer make a contrast between Penelope and Helen in Book 4 when he presents the unknowable Helen as a counterpoint to Penelope, signalling their contrast first by recalling Penelope through the weaving that Helen is about to undertake. Ini Book 5, when Hermes arrives at Calypso’s cave, she is also weaving:
In fact, Calypso is holding her loom on the barren beach of Arnold Bocklin’s 1882 painting, a symbol of the status she desires – marriage – against the clear impossibility of it, represented by the emotionally barren landscape. For us, Calypso is a more modern woman. Though she knows she cannot resist the will of the gods when told by Hermes that she must release Odysseus, she openly rebukes him for the assumption that women cannot be sexually adventurous as men:
That word “openly” suggests her unashamed sexual nature as well as her defiance, and her speech shows she already considers Odysseus a husband, though he has resisted her. She uses examples, also, to make her case about the inequality afforded female gods, in contrast to gods like Zeus, who sleep with mortal women all the time. She raises the examples of Dawn and Orion, and Demeter and Iasion, as part of her argument:
Eos, here referred to as ‘Dawn’, had become infatuated with the mortal, Orion, and abducted him, reminiscent of Zeus’ own sexual practices. Different versions of the legend exist. Artemis’ part in the story – killing Orion – is either the result of sexual jealousy or in retribution for Orion’s violation of one of her nymphs. In another version of the story, Artemis is tricked by Apollo into shooting Orion, who is swimming a distance away in the sea.
The second story Calypso references is about Demeter and Iason. Demeter was a goddess of agriculture and she lay in a ploughed field with Iason. Their union produced Plutus (the god of wealth) and Philomelus (the god of husbandry). Zeus is supposed to have struck Iason down with a thunderbolt out of jealousy.
Calypso’s speech reveals the level of control over women, even those who are immortal. In this respect, The Odyssey is a far more female-centric text than The Iliad, which has few women who are mostly slaves kept as prizes for the Greek commanders. In The Odyssey, Penelope may represent an ideal of fidelity in this society, but Homer is presenting us with other strong, independent women, who continue to draw our thoughts back to Penelope’s intolerable situation, even as we begin to follow the stories of Telemachus and Odysseus. In Helen we see a woman who was either abducted or seduced, and whose sexual status has been the cause of a war. In Calypso, we see a woman who makes a choice about her desires and her commitment to marriage, though they do not align with Odysseus’ desires. And in Penelope, we see a woman who is presumed to have no choice about her future or marital status. Her social status confers wealth and power on any man who marries her, so her own desires are rendered immaterial. In this respect, though Penelope may appear to represent an uncomplicated example of a faithful wife, her place in the story juxtaposed to women who act independently provides a contrast which encourages further thought.
The story of The Odyssey is often one of tension between the exotic and the domestic: between allure and seduction, and duty and love. Odysseus’ return home is not just a physical journey, but a journey back to his life as a king, a husband and father. Ithaca, an island difficult to cultivate, represents the ordinary world of toil, with a faithful wife who inspires love before passion. Calypso is only one of several women on Odysseus’ journey who will attempt to lure him from his path. Calypso can offer Odysseus a life of ease, as well as sexual pleasure. By Odysseus’ own admission, she is physically more attractive than Penelope, who is mortal. Calypso has offered Odysseus immortality to persuade him to stay. By the time we finally meet Odysseus in Book 5, he has already been trapped on the island of Ogygia with Calypso for seven years.
The following selection of paintings help to represent the conflicting tensions of sexual allure offered by Calypso and Odysseus’ desire to leave.
Calypso’s cave and its surrounds are described as an exotic place, so rich and wonderful that even the god Hermes is impressed to see them.
Breughel’s depiction of this scene is not strictly accurate, but it captures the spirit of the impression Homer is trying to convey: that this is a place of wonder and allure. In Breughel’s painting the cave is an Edenic paradise; sensual; a place of plenty. Breughel was a seventeenth century baroque painter known for his detailed paintings. For a sharper, larger image of this painting, you may wish to click here. Breughel’s painting goes beyond the natural wonders of the cave, as described by Homer, to suggest a place of wealth and opulence, with treasures stacked to adorn the natural beauty of the scene. The trees are laden with fruit and exotic birds, while a monkey and a small dog appear near the feet of Odysseus and Calypso. This painting is an erotic fantasy. It emphasises the sexual potential of Odysseus’ situation. Calypso is naked and freely available to him, while other women attend the domestic chores about them. The fecund extravagance of the painting lies not just with the lovers, but the natural riches and wealth on display in this improbable tableau.
The colours and style of this painting remind me of the Tahitian works of Paul Gauguin, possibly because it has an exotic eastern tone which some artists of the early twentieth century tried to capture as part of their interest in Orientalism. It does not have the flamboyant richness of detail we see in Breughel’s painting, but it manages to succinctly convey the allure of Calypso, nevertheless. Her body, visible beneath her translucent dress, is a sexualised display. The fecundity apparent in Breughel’s scene is represented mainly by the dark tumescent grapes and trailing vine, while other riches are suggested by the shield and stored goods to the left of Calypso. While Homer records a sexual encounter between Calypso and Odysseus before he leaves in Book 5, the overwhelming feeling conveyed is one of Odysseus’ despair and longing for home. In this painting Odysseus’ desire is far more apparent, as he sits with his back to Calypso, looking across the sea, presumably to home.
This final image might be interpreted as a progression from Breughel’s painting except that it is painted about 27 years earlier than Sir William Flint’s ‘Calypso and Odysseus’. Here we have the situation stripped bare. Calypso’s cave is small, dark and uninviting. The landscape is barren. The only hint of the erotic is Calypso’s semi-naked body as she sits on the suggestively bright red rug, holding her loom. Ulysses (the Roman name for Odysseus) is rendered with almost no detail in cold shades of dark blue, his back to us and Calypso. Like Flint’s Odysseus, he looks longingly out to sea. This is a bleak and ravaged scene which works as a representation of Odysseus’ state of mind: