Chapter summary
At dawn, in the council of the gods, Athena complains to Zeus that no people remembers Odysseus, a king who ruled like a father, and who is now held on the island of the nymph Calypso, without ships or companions to take him home. She also recalls that the suitors plan to kill his son, Telemachus, on his return from Pylos and Sparta. Zeus answers that it was she herself who decided that Odysseus would take revenge on them, and he orders her to lead Telemachus safely home, so that the suitors return empty-handed. Then he sends Hermes to tell Calypso the decision: Odysseus will depart without escort of gods or men, on a well-bound raft, and on the twentieth day he will reach Scheria, land of the Phaeacians, who will honor him as a god and carry him in a ship to his homeland, with gold, bronze, and clothing in greater quantity than he would have brought from Troy. For it is his destiny to see his own again and return to his high-roofed house.
Hermes puts on his golden sandals, takes the staff that enchants or wakes the eyes of men, and flies over the sea like a gull to the island of Calypso. There he finds the cave, surrounded by a fire of cedar and thuya, by a wood, a vine, four springs, and meadows of violet and celery, and the nymph, who sings as she weaves with a golden shuttle. Calypso recognizes him, for the gods are not unknown to one another, even though they dwell far apart. Odysseus is not inside: he is sitting on the shore, weeping, his eyes fixed on the sea. Calypso welcomes Hermes with ambrosia and nectar, and Hermes says that he has come against his will, by Zeus's order, for no one crosses such a stretch of salt water for pleasure. He says that the man she keeps is the most unfortunate of those who fought at Troy, whose companions, on the return, offended Athena, and that he lost them all, and that Zeus orders her to release him, because it is not his destiny to die far from his own. Calypso shudders and complains: the gods are cruel and envious, they cannot bear that a goddess sleep openly with a mortal, and they killed Orion, lover of Dawn, and Iasion, lover of Demeter. She saved Odysseus when Zeus split his ship with a thunderbolt, cared for him, and promised to make him immortal and ageless. But no one defies Zeus: let him go; she has no ship or companions to send him, but she will give him counsel. Hermes advises her to let him depart, so as not to anger Zeus.
Calypso goes to the shore and finds him weeping, no longer pleasing to the nymph, forced to sleep with her in the caves at night. She tells him to stop weeping and to build a great raft, with a high deck, and that she will give him bread, water, wine, clothing, and a favorable wind, if the gods are willing. Odysseus shudders and grows suspicious: she wants something else, for there is no way to cross the sea on a raft, and he will only climb aboard if she swears she will not do him any further harm. Calypso smiles, caresses him, calls him a wily fellow, and swears by Earth, Sky, and the water of the Styx; she says she thinks for him what she would think for herself, for she has a just spirit, not of iron, but compassionate. They return to the cave and eat, he mortal food, she ambrosia. Calypso asks whether he wants to depart at once, and says that if he knew the sufferings fate holds for him before reaching his native land, he would stay and be immortal, even though he longs for his wife; and she says she is not inferior to her in body or stature. Odysseus asks her not to be angry: he knows that Penelope is inferior to her in appearance, because she is mortal and Calypso does not age, but even so he wants to go home every day. If a god wrecks him on the sea, he will endure: he has already suffered much. They spend the night together in the cave. In the morning she gives him a bronze axe and an adze and leads him to the end of the island, where there are dry trees. He cuts twenty trunks, planes and bores them, joins them with pegs, and makes a deck, a mast, a rudder, a wicker fence against the waves, and a sail from the cloth she brings. On the fourth day the raft is ready. On the fifth, Calypso bathes him, dresses him, puts aboard skins of wine and water and provisions, and sends a gentle wind. Odysseus sails alone at the helm, without sleeping, steering by the Pleiades, the Herdsman, and the Bear, which she bade him keep on his left. He sails seventeen days, and on the eighteenth he sees far off the mountains of the land of the Phaeacians, like a shield on the sea.
Poseidon, returning from the Ethiopians, sees the raft from the Solymian mountains and grows angry, for the gods changed their minds about Odysseus while he was away, and he is near the land of the Phaeacians, where he is to escape the limit of his sufferings. Poseidon says he will still do him enough harm, gathers clouds, churns the sea with his trident, releases all the winds, and night falls. Odysseus loses heart and laments not having died at Troy, beside the body of Achilles, so that he would have funeral honors and fame. A wave breaks the mast and carries it into the sea, and he sinks, weighed down by Calypso's clothing; he rises again and clings to the raft. Ino, daughter of Cadmus, who was mortal and is now a goddess of the sea, takes pity on him, appears to him as a cormorant on the raft, and tells him to cast off his clothes and swim to the Phaeacians, with the immortal veil under his breast, and to throw himself backward into the sea once he touches land. Odysseus suspects it is a trap set by some god, and decides to remain on the raft as long as its planks hold, swimming only when it breaks apart. Poseidon sends a wave that scatters the planks; Odysseus mounts one as one rides a horse, strips off his clothes, ties the veil, and swims. Poseidon sees him and tells him to wander until he mixes with men raised by Zeus, but that even then he will have no small suffering; then he goes off to Aegae. Athena checks the winds, leaving only Boreas free, so that the waves open before him.
Odysseus floats for two days and two nights. On the third day the wind drops and he sees the land near, glad as children who see their father rise from a long illness. When he comes within a shout's distance, he hears the waves on the rocks and sees that there is no harbor, only cliffs. He considers the risks: a wave may hurl him against the stone, and if he swims along the coast the wind may carry him back to the open sea, or a monster of Amphitrite may attack him, for he knows that Poseidon hates him. A wave hurls him against the reef, and Athena inspires him to hold onto the rock until the wave passes; the backwash tears him away, and the skin of his hands stays on the stone, like the little stones that cling to the suckers of an octopus pulled from its hole. Athena gives him wit, and he swims along the coast until he reaches the mouth of a river, where there are no rocks and there is shelter from the wind. He recognizes it as a river and prays to the god: the man who comes wandering is worthy of respect even among the immortal gods. The river checks its current and saves him. Odysseus collapses, exhausted, without breath or voice; when he recovers his spirit, he releases Ino's veil into the stream, and she catches it. He kisses the fertile earth and wonders whether to sleep near the river, where the cold and dew might kill him, or in the woods, where he might be prey for beasts, and he chooses the woods. Under two entwined bushes, wild olive and olive, he makes a broad bed of leaves, lies in the middle, and covers himself with leaves, as one buries an ember under the ash. Athena pours sleep over his eyes.
Analysis
The book shows Odysseus in three positions: held, free, and sailing, and then stripped of everything on the shore. Nothing he takes from Calypso reaches the land: the raft is destroyed, the clothing is left behind, and the veil of Ino is returned to the sea. He reaches Scheria with nothing from anyone, except his body and his life, and that is the image with which the book ends: the ember kept beneath the leaves.
The refusal of immortality is the center of the book, and in it Odysseus denies nothing that Calypso says: he concedes that Penelope is inferior and still wants to return. The poem does not explain the choice; it shows it in action, in the axe, the sail, the rudder, and the seventeen nights without sleep. Calypso, for her part, is no obstacle: she yields to Zeus's order, swears, teaches the path by the stars, and gives provisions, and her statement that she does not have a heart of iron finds confirmation in the deeds that follow.
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