Part III: The Prisoner of Calypso

Seven Years on an Island (Book 5)

Here, finally, is Odysseus.

We find him on a beach. He is sitting alone on a rock, staring at the sea, crying. He has been here for seven years. The goddess Calypso — a beautiful immortal nymph — has fallen in love with him and will not let him go. She has given him everything: a magnificent cave, food, wine, her own company. She has offered him the one thing no mortal can refuse and almost none refuse: immortality. She has offered to make him a god.

He sits on the rock and cries.

This is Homer's introduction of his hero. Not a warrior on a battlefield. Not a king on a throne. A middle-aged man, exhausted and heartbroken, who would trade everything — eternal youth, godhood, paradise itself — to smell the smoke of his own home again.

The gods convene on Olympus. Athena pleads Odysseus's case to her father Zeus. Zeus agrees: it is time. He sends his messenger Hermes to Calypso's island with an order she cannot disobey.

Hermes Arrives

Lawrence describes Hermes's flight to the island in one of the poem's most sensory passages:

He bound on his feet the fair sandals of imperishable gold that carried him over the waters and over the boundless earth swift as the breath of the wind. He took the wand with which at will he closes the eyes of mortals in sleep, or wakes them. With this in hand the strong Argus-slayer flew.

Past Pieria he swooped down from the upper air to sea level and then sped across the waves like a sea-mew that drenches its thick plumage in the sea's brine as it hunts fish through its perilous troughs. So Hermes rode the wavelets.

When at last he reached the remote island, he left the violet sea for the land and went inland to the great cave where Calypso the nymph lived. He found her within. A great fire blazed on the hearth and the burning logs of split cedar and juniper wafted their fragrant incense across the island. Inside she was singing, moving before her loom and weaving with a golden shuttle.

Notice what Homer does here: before we see the prison, he shows us how beautiful it is. The fire, the fragrance, the singing goddess at her loom. Even Hermes — a god — pauses to admire it before going in. This is the trap Odysseus is caught in. It is not ugly. It is not cruel. It is exquisite. And he still wants to leave.

"There is nothing dearer to a man than his own country and his own people."

Calypso is angry but not evil. She argues — rightly — that she is immortal and more beautiful than any mortal woman. She offers Odysseus everything Penelope cannot. Odysseus acknowledges all of this carefully, diplomatically, without giving offense. And then says he is going home anyway.

She provides him a raft, tools, provisions, and a fair wind. He builds the raft himself over four days — Homer gives us the details of the construction: the timber, the tools, the rigging. Odysseus is not just a talker and a fighter. He is a man who knows how to build things with his hands.

He sets sail. He is almost home when Poseidon spots him and destroys the raft in a fury. Odysseus is thrown into the sea and battered for two days before washing up, barely alive, on the island of the Phaeacians — where a princess named Nausicaa finds him asleep under a pile of leaves.

Discussion

1. Calypso offers Odysseus immortality. He refuses. What does this say about what Homer values — and what Odysseus values — more than eternal life?
2. We first meet Odysseus weeping on a beach, not fighting a battle. Why might Homer choose this as the hero's introduction?
3. Homer describes Calypso's island in loving detail. What is the effect of making the prison beautiful?