Conversation in the “Odyssey” Author(s): Scott Richardson Source: College Literature, Vol. 34, No. 2, Reading Homer in the 21st Century (Spring, 2007), pp. 132-149 Published by: College Literature Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25115424 . Accessed: 15/09/2014 13:02
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Conversation in the Odyssey
Scott Richardson
Scott Richardson is professor of
classics at St. John’s University,
Minnesota, where he teaches
courses in comparative literature
and classical languages and liter
ature. He has published a book,
The Homeric Narrator (1990)
and articles on Homer.
The epigrammatic saying that speech has
been given to us for the purpose of con
cealing our thoughts came into his
mind. (Joseph Conrad, Under Western
Eyes)
hen it occurs to Nausicaa that she
had better do laundry in preparation for her own wedding day, which will
surely come soon, she delays her father’s
workday with a request for the proper equip ment, explaining, with a fa?ade of ingenuity
that might have fooled anyone else that she
must look out for her family’s hygiene:
“It is proper for you yourself to plan
plans
with the chiefs wearing clean clothes on
your skin.
But you have five sons in your house,
two married, but three red-blooded
bachelors;
they always want to go to dances wearing
w
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Scott Richardson 133
freshly cleaned clothes; I have to think about all these things.” (Odyssey 6.60-65)1
Alcinous has no trouble decoding his daughter’s appeal and grants it without
betraying his understanding of her true intention:
Thus she spoke, for she was ashamed to name her youthful marriage
to her dear father. And he understood everything and replied:
“I do not begrudge you mules, child, nor
anything else.
Go! The slaves will prepare for you a wagon
lofty and well-wheeled, fitted with a wagon cover.” (Odyssey 6.66-70)
We have just heard a conversation in which the communication takes place beneath the surface of the words: what is spoken by both parties is not what
is truly conveyed by Nausicaa nor meant by Alcinous. This indirect inter
change is a paradigm of the distinctive mode of conversation in the Odyssey. I like to think of language as a medium for the clear disclosure of what
people want to
get across. In conversation, words transmit information,
requests, and the thoughts of my interlocutor. It is a straightforward process:
say what you mean, use language to convey what you are thinking, and then
I will understand. But I can see the author of the Odyssey rolling his eyes in
disgust at my banal literalness and naively unimaginative attitude toward lan
guage. In this poet’s hands language tends toward obfuscation rather than
illumination. His characters do not as a rule say what they mean, and con
versation in his epic is something of a game at which some people are bet
ter players than others. Playing the game properly requires a keen ability to
use words to convey meaning indirectly and a sensitive awareness of what has
been said despite what has been said. The first speaker in this Henry James
dialogue does not stand a chance in the world of the Odyssey:
“Why is it so necessary for you to go to the theatre tonight, if Miss Rooth
doesn’t want you to?”
“My dear child, she does. But that has nothing to do with it.”
“Why then did she say that she doesn’t?”
“Oh, because she meant just the contrary.”
“Is she so false then?is she so vulgar?”
“She speaks a
special language; practically it isn’t false, because it renders her
thought, and those who know her understand it.” (James 1948, 437)
Likewise, conversation in the Odyssey is a cryptic puzzle, intelligible and
rewarding to those who know how to solve it, baffling to those who take it
at face value.
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134 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
Homer’s attitude toward language extends to a generally suspicious view of the way the world works.2 Dialogue in the Odyssey is founded on
indirection, and the characters’ success in life, even their survival, owes a
great deal to both using and recognizing speech as a means of disguising
thoughts and intent. This view of language as smoke and mirrors not only comments on the nature of human communication3 but also supports a
worldview at the heart of the Odyssey as a whole, one characterized by dis
trust and uncertainty.
Apart from instructions, gestures of hospitality, laments, prayers, and
requests (and even some of these are not only what they appear), the bulk of
dialogue that is straightforward and honest comes from the mouths of char
acters who prove in other ways artless: Zeus, Nestor, the servants, the suitors
other than Eurymachus, Telemachus early on, and Alcinous most of the time.
Zeus and Nestor, the divine and human voices of social and narrative order, stand above the game; the others either do not realize there even is such a
game or have not yet learned to play it very well. The great majority of con
versations in the Odyssey,4 however, feature one or more of these techniques: indirect address, implication, hidden or coded meaning, lying, feigned igno rance, injunction to secrecy, concealment of facts, expressions of disbelief,
evasion, disguised sentiments, testing, indirect steering or goading, presenta tion of false reasons, or performances
in character.
Odysseus, of course, an eminently suspicious man, is the champion of all
these kinds of indirection and concealment, the consummate manipulator of
language to suit his advantage. It might be instructive, however, to return first
to our apprentice conversationalist,
who shows promise but has
not yet
reached the finesse that gives Odysseus his edge. Nausicaa has the proper
Odyssean instinct when she manipulates her father into giving her mules and
a wagon, but it seems to escape her notice that Alcinous has seen through her
coded request. She also fails to acknowledge that she did not come up with
the laundry idea on her own. Athena, who wants a warm reception for her
hero, cold-bloodedly misleads her with the cock-and-bull expectation of an
impending marriage (6.25-40), and the girl innocently takes Athena’s words
at face value and pays for it in subsequent disappointment. Unaware of the
divine machinations and relishing her apparent success at concealing her
meaning and still getting her way, she goes on to ply her novice talent on the
master deceiver by the stream. After Odysseus delivers a masterful speech in
which his hints and flattery impart all the characteristics of a potential hus
band without disclosing his identity or his true intentions toward her, Nausicaa offers herself to him with what she thinks to be a cleverly disguised
proposition through indirection. She worries that if they are seen together,
people will talk:
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Scott Richardson 135
“And then some worthless fellow would meet us and say,
‘Who is this tall and handsome stranger walking with
Nausicaa? Where did she find him? He’s going to be her husband.'”
(Odyssey 6.275-77)
A great part of the girl’s adolescent charm is her delight in participating in
conversational indirection without recognizing its transparency in her hands
and without realizing that others are engaged in the same gambit with her.
Her obviousness highlights by contrast the techniques of the Odysseys sea
soned conversationalists, and her natural impulse to speak obliquely suggests that an attitude toward language as a power to use judiciously and to one’s
advantage is innate to the characters in the world of the Odyssey.
Though some years her senior, Telemachus is only now beginning to
fathom the game of language, which for him, as for his father, can mean sur
vival. The ability to conceal, lie, and feign innocence with words is a hallmark
ofTelemachus’s education in the Odyssey.5 By the end he is still rather imma
ture in this respect but a far cry from the blunt-speaking youth we see at the
beginning. After Athena’s visit rouses him from inaction, he asserts himself
before the suitors in no uncertain terms, calling them insolent, claiming dominion over his father’s house, telling them that he will order them out at
the assembly he himself will call the next day, calling on Zeus to destroy them, and claiming dominion over his father’s house (1.367-80, 389-98). A
bit of Athena, goddess of deception, does cling to him, however, after she
leaves: when asked about his mysterious visitor, Telemachus dissembles and
gives Athena’s prepared legend, though he now realizes, as Homer tells us, that his guest was a deity (417-20). His virgin address to the assembly in
Book 2 brings him back to the fumbling stage of the concealment game: he
announces forthrightly his disgust with the suitors (50-58, 63-67), his wish
that they would leave his household alone and even that they would be
slaughtered (58-62, 68-79, 138-45), his intention to leave Ithaca in search of
news of his father (212-17), and his plans thereafter (218-23)?no subtlety here, nothing but straightforward communication to his mortal enemies of
his thought and intent.
By the time he returns home, however, he has learned the value of telling less than he knows and saying something other than what he means. An ally of his new-found father, Telemachus can now tell bald-faced lies even to his
mother, give no sign that the new beggar is anyone special, and play his role
in Odysseus s subterfuge convincingly. He has learned the way of the world, and the survival of father and son depends on this particular education. He
can give his father a knowing glance and remain silent when Eumaeus wor
ries about the suitors’ violence (16.476-77). He holds his tongue when first
an object is thrown at his father (17.489-91) and speaks cunningly at the sec
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136 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
ond throw (18.406-09). Nevertheless, he is still a beginner. He cannot con
trol his temper after the third assault but lashes out with a torrent of heart
felt abuse first toward the culprit and then toward the suitors as a whole
(20.304-19).6 A more telling sign of immaturity comes in the recognition scene between Odysseus and Penelope, when the boy reverts to his naive
view of language and scolds his mother for not believing the simple truth
that has been uttered clearly in plain Greek, that the man before her is her
husband (23.97-103). Her reply shows her to be one of the elite:
“If truly indeed
this is Odysseus and he has come home, we two would
certainly know each other best of all; for there are between us
signs which we know, hidden from everyone else.” (Odyssey 23.107-10)
Of course, the true addressee of this retort is not her son at all but the man
she is about to test with the fiendishly clever bed trick, and the indirectness
itself of this challenge testifies to her high level of play. Her son, however, still
has a lot to learn about the game of communication.
Penelope’s indirect address to the man claiming to be her husband by
way of an apparently direct statement to her son and the implication in her
bed trick that she has been a faithful wife represent the two most prevalent forms of indirect communication in the Odyssey.7 Addressing someone other
than the one intended to listen is a tactic that arises early in life when, as
small children, we tell visitors about ourselves by directing our words toward
our parents. Even the suitors can
manage that. Deliberate implication shows
more skill and greater awareness of conversation as a game.
Penelope’s entry in Book 1 marks the first instance of indirect address,
which will become almost the norm in conversation with more than two
people present. When she berates the bard Phemios for his song about mis
adventure on the return from Troy (337-44), her real targets are the hateful
suitors who relish the topic. Telemachus, possibly another indirect addressee,
responds to his mother with a harsh reprimand (346-59) that is actually meant, though clumsy in execution, as an attempt to impress upon the suit
ors that he is now an adult, a man among men. In Book 18, mother and son
again indirectly confront the suitors in the guise of a conversation with each
other (215-25, 227-42). At the assembly in Book 2 Telemachus and the suit
ors insult each other by means of addresses to the Ithacan people (40-79,
178-207). Speaking to one party while formally addressing another early on
becomes a typical strategy of communication in this epic that scorns the
direct approach. To convey information or sentiments by implication asks for coopera
tion between interlocutors, so the one who pursues this method and expects
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Scott Richardson 137
to be met halfway by the other indicates a certain amount of respect for the
other’s ability to participate. Gauging that ability is part of the game.
Odysseus’s brilliantly controlled speech to Nausicaa (6.149-85) flatters her by
treating her like an adult, since she is asked to read between the lines, and at
the same time he makes sure that the adolescent gets very broad hints of his
implications: that he has been a leader of men, that he finds her marriage
able, that he is a great man brought low, that she has no reason to be afraid.
Perhaps he is rather obvious in our eyes, but, since he has left it for her to
pick up on the unstated, the inexperienced girl gratefully and eagerly falls for
the stranger’s lure, especially his disingenuous suggestion of an imminent
marriage. Her response implies a worldly awareness of suffering (187-90), and her indirect address to him via her friends about the Phaeacians’ close
relationship to the gods implies that he will be treated well but he had bet
ter behave himself (199-210). His refusal of help with a bath implies that he
is no sexual threat (218-22). Her next indirect address awkwardly implies that he would be an ideal husband (239-46), a suggestion she elaborates
soon with transparent indirection (273-90). This conversation has won
Nausicaa over to the stranger’s cause more
firmly than a
straightforward
exchange possibly could: the demands of implications have created a bond
of mutual participation, an intimacy that Odysseus is careful, for his benefit, that she misunderstand.
The conversations between Odysseus and the Phaeacians in Books 7 and
8 involve a great amount of implication at a somewhat more subtle level than
with Nausicaa. After Odysseus s direct supplication of Arete (7.146-52), we
follow a series of implied questions concerning the visitor’s identity, back
ground, and abilities; a veiled discussion of the relationship between the
stranger and Nausicaa, culminating in an outright proposal by Alcinous that
the man marry his daughter, which must then be smoothed over as a blun
der; indirect self-characterizations by Odysseus without revealing his identi
ty, suggesting the quantity and seriousness of his woes, his piety, his fame, his
participation in the Trojan War, and, after the open offer of marriage, his lack
of interest in wedding the girl; indirect insults and reconciliation; and implied
plans for an escort home. At the end Alcinous finally comes right out and
asks in a long speech for the stranger to tell his story (536-86), launching the
Apologue of Books 9-12. Their badinage until this point has been largely conducted at the level of hints and inference with reasonable accuracy of
mutual comprehension, typical of the conversations throughout the Odyssey. When characters can make themselves understood with suggestion or insin
uation, they tend to avoid straightforward statements. Outright assertions or
questions expose the speakers; indirect speaking keeps them more securely hidden and protected.
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138 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
Early in his apprenticeship Telemachus finds himself the middleman, with ho apparent awareness of the subtext, in a married couple’s indirect
conversation rich in implications that amount to hidden meanings. The
uneasy reconciliation of Helen and Menelaus finds expression in an encod
ed swapping of tales ostensibly meant to give their young visitor a picture of his father in Trojan War days, but their discourse is actually directed
toward each other. Helen, claiming to be repentant now of her folly years
before, tells of once rescuing the disguised Odysseus within the Trojan walls
(4.240-64), an anecdote really meant for her husband, who is to understand
that she was working for the Greek cause from the inside and deserves to
be thought well of now. Menelaus responds in kind with a tale of her
treachery at the very end of the war when Helen tried, by mimicry of their
wives’ voices, to lure the warriors out of the Trojan Horse (271-89). Telemachus hears two fine stories about his father and gives no sign that he
is following the exchange below the surface. The married couple, however, who speak each other’s language, are engaged in what must have been a
common meta-conversation: “I was really
on your side.” “No, you weren’t,
you shameless liar.”
The Spartan couple understands each other’s coded messages as Alcinous
deciphers Nausicaa’s more simply encrypted request. We see other instances
in which the words spoken mask a message understood only by the initiat
ed. When Antinous calls on the suitors to obey Telemachus, he comes very close to making an open admission of their plot to kill the boy, but not quite: it is clear to those in the know, not to anyone else (20.271-74). Odysseus asks
for a turn at the bow contest in a way that gives a clear signal of his
mur
derous intention to Telemachus and the herdsmen but goes right by the suit
ors and Penelope (22.275-84). Once Odysseus has figured out that
Penelope’s bed ruse (23.174-80) was her test of his identity, he can go fur
ther and interpret her choice of this sign as a clear message, not stated open
ly by either of them, that there is no one else who could have known their
secret: the test itself was an encoded implication of her faithfulness. Such
exchanges that exclude by-standers without access to the conversation below
the surface reflect the nature of dialogue in the Odyssey generally: we cannot
trust the face value of the words to convey what is in the speaker’s mind.
In some instances of hidden meaning, however, we cannot be certain
who understands what or even if there is a hidden meaning at all, and a good
part of our narrative enjoyment comes from the ambiguity. The recognitions and self-disclosures of Odysseus have spurred some scholarly controversy.
Many take Homer at his word that no one recognizes the hero until he says
so, whereas others have presented various forms of the argument that
Penelope and even Eumaeus have some awareness, ranging from
a vague
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Scott Richardson 139
notion to absolute certainty, well before the formal self-declaration.8 The
encounters between husband and wife in Books 18 and 19, no matter how
one gauges their level of knowledge, are indeed characterized by speeches
that, at least in one direction, convey information indirectly or can be inter
preted by the listener as a coded message. The first “conversation” between husband and wife after a twenty-year
separation can serve, at least in Odysseus s mind, as a model for successful
indirect communication such as we saw, in a rather spiteful form, with
Helen and Menelaus. Athena prompts Penelope to make her first appear ance to her husband without telling her the real reason for going downstairs
(18.158-68).Typically, there is a discrepancy between Athena’s purpose and
Penelope’s stated reason for this unaccustomed move: they have in common
that the queen is to show herself before the suitors (though Penelope does
not understand why), but Athena wants her to excite the admiration of her
husband and son (161-62), whereas Penelope, who does not know that her
husband is in the hall, says she will warn her son to beware of the suitors
(166-68). In fact, she makes no such warning but rather scolds Telemachus
for negligence as a host to the beleaguered stranger, a shortcoming he is in
fact feigning to conceal Odysseus s identity (215-25). She goes on to address
the suitors with a narrative whose truth-value is uncertain (except to
Odysseus, and he tells us nothing) and then with an admonition that sug
gests an intention whose sincerity is ambiguous even to the external audi
ence.9 She says that her husband upon his departure instructed her to marry another if he had not returned from the war by the time of their son’s emer
gence into adulthood (that is, now), virtually announcing her impending decision to choose from among them, hateful though such a marriage
would be (257-73).10 She follows up this mixed message of enticement and
repulsion with a plea for a proper courtship with gifts, the effectiveness of
which perhaps owes something to its being put indirectly (an implied neg ative comparison to proper suitors of the past) rather than with a direct
request (274-80). The suitors accept her words as both a true account of the past and a
promise of her intention to marry soon. Odysseus, on the other hand, receives with joy what another might regard as a direful announcement from
the wife he sees and hears now for the first time in twenty years:
Thus she spoke, and much-suffering godlike Odysseus rejoiced,
because she was wheedling gifts from them and was
charming their hearts
with soothing words, but her mind was intending other things. (Odyssey
18.281-83)
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140 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
We cannot be certain whether Odysseus is correct that his wife has other
intentions nor why he could be confident in his interpretation nor even
what he assumes those other intentions to be. In this situation he is in much
the same position as the narrative audience trying to analyze the text of this
ambiguous speech. He feels certain of his exegesis, but we cannot share his
certainty. What we can tell is that, in the spirit of their famous like-minded
ness, the hero of indirect communication is imputing some of his craft to his
wife and assumes that her words mean something other than what they
appear to mean.11 In his mind she is, as it were, directing her speech over the
heads of the suitors toward the stranger in the back, who readily decodes her
message as a clever subterfuge that works in his favor.
We can agree that the fireside interview between beggar and queen in
Book 19 is a treasure house of indirect communication even if we differ
widely about which statements are meant to be taken, by us or by either of
the interlocutors, at face value and which as encrypted messages. Her tale
of the shroud trick and pressure to remarry (137-61), his false autobiogra
phy (172-202), her test question (215-19), his detailed reply (221-48), her
assertion of her husband’s death (257-60), his counter-assertion of his
imminent return (268-307),12 the by-play about washing his feet and his
resemblance to Odysseus (317-60), her self-interpreting dream (535-53), his confirmation of the obvious interpretation (555-58), her sudden and
bizarre announcement of the bow contest to settle the marriage question
(571-81), his approval of this contest and prediction of the winner (583
87)?the entire conversation, which the maids in the room can safely hear
with a literal ear, gives us the distinct sense that the real communication is
carried on well below the surface of the words, though we cannot be sure
exactly what is meant and what is picked up by whom. The only blatant
statement in this interview is Penelope’s direct quote of the victorious
eagle in the dream she claims to have had, who tells her in plain words
what the dream signifies (546-53), an interpretation she quickly dismisses
as a false prophecy (560-69). We would like to know what Odysseus and Penelope each understand
to be going on during their conversation and to what extent they are
attuned to each other’s mind, but we must resign ourselves to informed
speculation and intuition. Our imperfect knowledge leads us to the recog nition that the characters of the Odyssey are not the only practitioners of
indirect communication. I would attribute the notorious ambiguity of Book
19 to the ethos of obfuscation in the epic and place our narrator among those who practice indirection with no compunction.13 Another author,
Tolstoy for example, who regularly interprets signs the reader might not
catch and conveys his characters’ actual thoughts, would be happy to clari
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Scott Richardson 141
fy the situation and leave us in no doubt that Penelope knows or does not
know, that Odysseus knows she knows or does not know whether she
knows and so on. Homer, however, is not always interested in the direct
communication of the characters’ true knowledge or conjectures.14 Rather, he delights in giving us hints.
The second half of the Odyssey is essentially a grand performance, with
Odysseus as director as well as lead actor, guiding the rest of the cast in what
they might or might not realize to be roles in his show. His false autobiogra
phies form the most salient contribution to this atmosphere, 15 and they are
joined by the techniques of indirection already discussed as well as close rel
atives of lies that create a false presentation of reality designed to attain vic
tory and reunion: feigned ignorance, concealment of facts, false reasons, eva
sion, secrecy, disguised feelings, indirect direction of the plot, and words to
preserve a false persona.
We have seen such performances throughout the Odyssey, and not only
by its hero. Athena sets the tone even before her impersonation of Mentes
when she steers the Olympian conversation away from Zeus’s topic to the
family that matters to her and pretends to believe that her favorite is hated
by Zeus, thereby getting the plot of the Odyssey under way. This goddess serves as the divine embodiment of the very set of attributes we have been
talking about?trickery, lies, deception, communication by indirection. She
then visits Telemachus in disguise and gives him advice in an underhanded
fashion. She sends him off to Pylos and Sparta for, as she tells him and has
already told Zeus, the purpose of learning about his father (93-95, 280-92), but she later confesses to his father that her true mission was to make a man
out of him (13.421-24). She could tell the boy directly and fully all he wants
to know about Odysseus, but the indirect nature of communication she helps to promote in this narrative serves her purpose here whereas a straightfor
ward message would ruin the plan. The point is not for Telemachus to know
the facts but rather for him to advance toward adulthood so that he will rise
to the demands of his conspiratorial role on his return. Secrecy is vital to
attain this end. The false reason for his journey and the concealment of the
facts lead to the maturity and self-confidence she needs him to gain to be of
practical help to his father upon their reunion.
A similar and more important instance of divine misleading arises when
Odysseus asks Circe permission to depart. She gives him the bad news that
he must first enter the kingdom of Hades to consult the prophet Teiresias,
for, she says,
“He will tell you the road and measures of the path
and how you will make the return on the fishy sea.” (Odyssey 10.539-40)
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142 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
Teiresias does no such thing. He barely mentions the sea voyage and tells
Odysseus nothing on that score that Circe does not already know. Later, the
goddess herself gives detailed instructions for the journey (12.25-27, 37
110).The trip to the underworld has been superfluous, a pointless agony, if
we are to believe Circe, and some erudite readers have taken Circe at her
word and have worked out explanations, defenses, and solutions as drastic as
excising all of Book ll.16 But the underworld adventure does belong here.
It is central to the development of Odysseus’s character and to the themes of
identity, family, and mortality. It is telling that Odysseus himself does not
think the journey superfluous at all. Unlike many scholars, he is not upset with Circe for sending him on a wild goose chase when she had the infor
mation all along. Like Telemachus s voyage, this journey has had as its object
something more profound than the specious reason given by the dispatching
goddess. After two or three years of listless wandering and malingering with
no particular sense of urgency, Odysseus has reached an ambivalence that
must turn into determination if he is to make Ithaca the priority and the
Trojan War an episode of the past. His conversations with Anticleia,
Agamemnon, and Achilles about fathers, wives, and sons encourage him not
to dwell on his previous persona and push him toward reaffirming his
Ithacan identity as son, husband, and father.17 If we believe Circe’s actual
words, we have missed the point. Odysseus, in this case, is a better reader than
most of us. He knows the idiom. He knows how language can be used to
conceal the true message. He can read between the lines.
Hermes gives a splendid cameo performance in his scene with Calypso. When he comes to order Odysseus off the island, the goddess’s reception of
her visitor (5.87-91) betrays the suspicion the perceptive characters properly maintain toward friendly overtures, and she is treated to what Hermes calls a
truthful account of his mission, a sure sign of disingenuousness (97-115). He
feigns reluctance to take on this duty, implying that she too must accede
though reluctant, and pretends to know little about this person she has on
the island or what he means to her; he implies that Athena has nothing to do
with it, that fate is to blame. Calypso is no less talented an actress. When
Hermes leaves, she approaches Odysseus with the new plan as though it were
her idea, and she tries to steer him away from accepting the offer by falsely
implying that she is eager for his departure but is not so sure about the gods’
willingness; she feigns compassion and invents troubles ahead that Hermes
said nothing of (160-70,182-91,203-13). Odysseus does not fall for her per
formance, convincing though it might have been. Master actor that he is, the
hero has learned to be as suspicious of others’ words as others should be of
his. Only after a thorough examination will he decide which lines to believe
and which to dismiss as false.
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Scott Richardson 143
He brings that attitude with him to Ithaca. It would be out of keeping with the ethos of the Odyssey for Odysseus to make a direct approach to
regaining his position on Ithaca, practical problems aside. In fact, I suspect we
generally overemphasize the practical in considering his behavior. Despite the urge to insist that Odysseus must keep his secret from Penelope and
Eumaeus so that they do not blow his cover or so that he can test their loy
alty, the essential reason Odysseus maintains the pretense before even his emi
nently and obviously loyal wife and swineherd till the last possible moment is
that in his world the straightforward must on principle be avoided.
That practicality is not necessarily the main point can be seen in the fas
cinating encounter with Laertes after the slaughter of the suitors. With noth
ing to gain by it, Odysseus treats his father to a false tale that causes him
needless grief.18 This apparently absurd behavior makes sense only by con
sidering the nature of conversation in the Odyssey as a whole. Forthright
speaking implies either naivete or trust. A winner, a survivor, in this world
does not walk straight toward the destination but approaches it obliquely. The
goal is to come out a winner, even if that means needless pain or prolonga tion of uncertainty along the way. Odysseus, the most successful player of this
game, has great respect for the power of indirection, and he maintains this
course until directness is absolutely necessary to go on. He keeps all his loved
ones on a need-to-know basis, and he follows faithfully his strategy of keep
ing everyone in the dark until the last possible moment in order for his plot to succeed.
As a director who cannot afford to be seen as such, Odysseus enjoins
secrecy on those who know his identity and must use indirect methods to
steer the course of events and the thoughts and decisions of those unaware.
For a while those in on the secret do not know who else is in that club.
Telemachus, the first and, as far as he knows, the only one to join the plot,
stays in character when, alone with Eurycleia, he asks about “the stranger” and speaks badly of Penelope’s treatment of him (20.129-33); she, also in
character after threat of death if she slips (19.482-90), defends her mistress
without letting on that the man is no stranger (135-43). Neither knows that
they are both part of the same conspiracy until he fails to astound her after
the battle with the revelation that she is summoned by his “father” (22.397). When Odysseus orders Eumaeus to have Eurycleia lock up the women
before the battle, the swineherd, new to the deception game after his clum
sy but successful delivery of the bow to his master, keeps the secret by telling the maid falsely that Telemachus gave the order (21.381-85), ignorant of her
participation in the plot. From the outset, keeping facts and plans concealed
from opponents and friends alike has been an important feature of Odyssean conversation: when the gods make their plans secretly in Poseidon’s absence
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144 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
(1.19-95), Athena holds a secret conversation with Telemachus (1.123-318), Telemachus demands that Eurycleia stay mum about his departure (2.349
76), and the suitors plot an ambush against Telemachus (4.632-72, 770-77). The concealment of Odysseus’s identity and plot on Ithaca through lies, mis
leading speeches in character, suppression of true feelings, and evasions of
direct answers is the grand, sustained culmination of a pattern that charac
terizes conversation throughout.
If Odysseus is going to control the plot from a position of secrecy, he will
not have much opportunity to guide the other characters’ actions in a
straightforward manner. Athena, as so often, shows at the beginning the tech
nique her favorite will employ masterfully. Her opening speech is a model of
indirect goading (1.45-62): she reaffirms Zeus s sentiments about Aegisthus, about whom she cares nothing at this point, pretends that Zeus is hard-heart
ed toward Odysseus after describing his plight, and asks a suggestive question. Without coming out with an open request, she maneuvers Zeus into taking
steps to get her hero back home. Her initial strategy, as Mentes, with
Telemachus includes feigned surprise at the presence and outrageous behav
ior of the suitors (1.224-29), a detailed account of the sorry condition of
Laertes (188-93), the pointed question whether he is his father’s son (206
12), a tale (possibly false) suggesting Odysseus’s vicious streak and vengeful nature (253-66), and an indirect comparison between Telemachus and
Orestes (296-302). In this context of indirect goading, her explicit advice
(269-85) sinks in readily.
Odysseus reprises Athena’s role upon meeting his son in Eumaeus s hut.
At first Odysseus stays quiet while the other two speak to him indirectly. Telemachus almost phrases his question of the stranger’s identity so as to
address Odysseus but technically puts it to Eumaeus (16.57-59); after sum
marizing the visitor’s false tale Eumaeus, though formally addressing
Telemachus, informs the stranger that he is handing him over to the young man (61-67); Telemachus recaps his situation at home for the stranger by
telling Eumaeus about his inability to offer proper hospitality (69-89).When
Odysseus breaks into the conversation (91-111), he feigns ignorance of the
boy’s plight with the suitors and goads him indirectly with his question,
“Tell me, do you willingly subject yourself, or do the people
throughout the land hate you, following the voice of a
god,
or do you put any blame on your brothers, whom a man
trusts when they’re fighting if a great quarrel arises?” (Odyssey 16.95-98)
He wishes he were young again and able to combat their outrage, since he
would rather die than see it perpetrated in his house. At great length he, like
Athena, offers his son an outsider’s view of the anomalous situation with the
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Scott Richardson 145
implication that there is no reason to put up with it. Telemachus s shame
could not be more skillfully aroused by a direct assault, and he now stands
ready to meet his father and join in his plot. Odysseus performs a similar ploy to get a rise out of Laertes (24.244-79), and he encourages Penelope at the
interview to ask him further questions and excites her curiosity by pretend
ing to be coy and unwilling to talk about himself (19.107-22). Odysseus’s manner of directing the scenes consists to a great extent in putting others in
a state of mind or getting them to take an action without actually telling them what to think or do.
When the point of one’s words is to manipulate the situation to suit one’s
interests rather than to reveal and communicate, conversation is game and
performance. The game of language in the Odyssey can be playful at times, but essentially the obfuscatory use of speech reflects a treacherous and pre carious world in which survival and happiness depend on assuming that
appearance is deceiving and the straightforward is masking a reality that must
be deciphered. Those who play the game well listen carefully to what is not
stated outright and express what they mean by not saying what they mean.
Notes
1 All translations of the Odyssey are my own, meant to be literal rather than lit
erary 2 AsWalcot (1977,14) observes, “No one can permit himself the luxury of trust
ing anyone else in Homer’s world.” For an
analysis of this world in terms of the spy
novel, see Richardson (2006b). 3 Tannen (1986) bases her sociolinguistic analysis of conversation on the prem
ise that indirect communication is the norm in human interaction. 4 The Odyssey is
a very talk-oriented epic. According to my count, of the 12,110
lines of the Odyssey, 8219 are in direct speech (67.9%). If we discount Books 9-12, almost entirely Odysseus’s first-person tales of his adventures, 5996 lines out of 9877
are in direct speech (60.7%). 5 Todorov (1971, 70) suggests that speaking is the principal sign of the boy’s
growing up: “Le passage de T?l?maque de l’adolescence ? la virilit? est marqu?
presque uniquement par le fait qu’il commence ? parler.” I would add that to begin
to speak is, for the
son of Odysseus, to
begin to conceal through speaking; to be an
adult in his world is to know how to use language to undermine or to distract from the truth.
6 De Jong (1994, 38-39) discusses these passages in the context of a study of
unspoken thoughts. 7 In her commentary de Jong (2001) notes each instance of indirect address,
which she calls “indirect dialogue” and defines in the glossary: “A talks to B about character C or about things which concern C (and which he intends C to hear)
without addressing C” (xiv). I count 69 speeches in which a person not addressed is
the principal intended recipient of the message and 86 speeches in which important
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146 College Literature 34.2 [Spring 2007]
information (sometimes false) is not stated outright but must be inferred by someone
listening carefully. Not included are instances of possibly encoded messages
or state
ments with a hidden meaning that an uninformed listener would not be able to infer.
8 Since Harsh s controversial proposal (1950) of Penelope’s early recognition of
her husband, many have weighed in on the question of how much Penelope knows
or suspects before her overt recognition in book 23. See especially Whitman (1958,
303-04), Amory (1963), Austin (1975, 200-38), Russo (1982), Emlyn-Jones (1984), Winkler (1990), and Katz (1991). Roisman (1990) argues for an early recognition of
his master by Eumaeus.
9 Various recent interpretations of Penelope’s motivation and speech and of
Odysseus’s amused reaction can be found in Austin (1975, 208-10), Van Nortwick
(1979), Emlyn-Jones (1984, 9-12), Byre (1988),Winkler (1990,146-47), Katz (1991,
78-93), Russo (1992, 58-67), and de Jong (1994, 40-42). 10 De Jong (2001,467) observes that in the interview of Book 19 Penelope fails
to mention to the beggar these instructions of Odysseus that she remarry when giv
ing him an
apparently thorough account of her predicament; “this suggests that the
instructions were her invention.”
11 De Jong (1994) brings out their like-mindedness in her analysis of the cou
ple’s unspoken thoughts (47) and concludes, “Their capacity to control their emo
tions, to remain silent, or to say something other than what they feel, marks Penelope
and especially Odysseus as the typical heroes of the Odyssey, poem of disguise and
dissimulation” (48). 12
Odysseus introduces this He with the tell-tale avowal of truth: “for I will tell
you truly and I will not conceal” (19.269). As Todorov (1971, 73) perceptively observes, “L’invocation de la v?rit? est un signe de mensonge.”
13 For a discussion of the various ways in which this narrator proves to be a par
ticipant in the game of indirection, see Richardson (2006a).
14 Winkler (1990, 143) admonishes us not “to assume that Homer is an utterly
transparent narrator, always telling us all that can be known. As the characters he
describes are normally devious and cautious about their words, so we should not
deny to Homer too the possibility that he will avail himself of
a certain cunning in
setting out the cross-purposes of his plot.”
In speaking of the plurality and com
plexity of narratives in the Odyssey, Slatkin (1996, 229) says “it is clear that it is not
easy for an audience to get a straight story, to discriminate among stories, or even to
know what a straight story is.” In preparation for an
analysis of two narrative prob
lems in the Odyssey, Scodel (1998,1) asserts “a common narrative technique: the
nar
rator seeks to generate both suspense and significance by misdirecting the audience
about the role the gods are to
play in the action.” Parry (1994), on the other hand,
who sees the poet as “the most important recorder of the truthful past” (12), cham
pions the view that Homer is to be trusted.
15 The literature on lies and disguise in the Odyssey is extensive. Some of the
more helpful discussions can be found in Stanford (1950),Trahman (1952),Todorov
(1971), Heatherington (1976), Stewart (1976), Walcot (1977), Haft (1984), Emlyn
Jones (1986),Murnaghan (1987), Roisman (1990), Bowie (1993), Pratt (1993), Parry
(1994), Reece (1994), Richardson (1996), and King (1999). Lateiner (1995) shows
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Scott Richardson 147
how facial gestures, body language, and other nonverbal behavior can convey the
truth behind concealing words or, when manipulated with talent, enhance the liar’s
performance; on
Odysseus’s exploitation of the nonverbal in his lies and disguises,
see especially chapters 5 (83-92) and 9 (167-202). 16
Page (1955) is typical of the analyst’s inclination to excise all or much of
Book 11. 17 It is interesting that the conversations in the underworld
scene seem them
selves straightforward and honest, with no undercurrent of hidden messages or innu
endo. The characters mean what they say. 18 See Scodel (1998) for a recent discussion of Odysseus’s motivation in lying
to Laertes and an assessment of previous interpretations. Winkler (1990,134-36) dis
cusses this scene in the context of the contemporary practice in Mediterranean vil
lages to lie and conceal even to family members
as a matter of course. See also Friedl
(1962),Walcot (1977, 18-19), and Most (1989) on the Mediterranean penchant for
lying on principle, which would account for the lie to Laertes (18-19).
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Article Contents
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Issue Table of Contents
College Literature, Vol. 34, No. 2, Reading Homer in the 21st Century (Spring, 2007), pp. i-viii, 1-304
Front Matter
Abstracts [pp. iv-viii]
Preface
Homer and the Oral Tradition
“Reading” Homer through Oral Tradition [pp. 1-28]
Reading Homer in the 21st Century [pp. 29-54]
Interpreting Homer’s Texts
“Res Agens”: Towards an Ontology of the Homeric Self [pp. 56-84]
Poulydamas and Hektor [pp. 85-106]
Homer’s “Odyssey”, Books 19 and 23: Early Recognition; A Solution to the Enigmas of Ivory and Horns, and the Test of the Bed [pp. 107-131]
Conversation in the “Odyssey” [pp. 132-149]
Homer and the Will of Zeus [pp. 150-173]
Feet, Fate, and Finitude: On Standing and Inertia in the “Iliad” [pp. 174-193]
Mapping Utopia: Homer’s Politics and the Birth of the Polis [pp. 194-214]
Homer’s Influence on Contemporary Culture
The Poet Who Sings through Us: Homer’s Influence in Contemporary Western Culture [pp. 216-228]
Learning Lessons from the Trojan War: Briseis and the Theme of Force [pp. 229-262]
Rewriting the “Odyssey” in the Twenty-First Century: Mary Zimmerman’s “Odyssey” and Margaret Atwood’s “Penelopiad” [pp. 263-278]
Reading “The Gunfighter” as Homeric Epic [pp. 279-300]
Books Received, October 16, 2006 to January 15, 2007 [pp. 302-303]
Back Matter
