Sorrow and depression do not dampen the libido, evidently. Instead, he spends all day weeping – though at night, to be sure, in the way that is normal for mortal men, he takes comfort in bed with Calypso. If the Elysian Fields are so great, Odysseus should be ecstatic at having got there so soon. The gods count you the son-in-law of Zeus. Singing winds of the West refreshing all mankind.Īll this because you are Helen’s husband now No snow, no winter onslaught, never a downpour there,īut night and day the Ocean River sends up breezes, Where life glides on in immortal ease for mortal man The Elysian Fields, where the gold-haired Rhadamanthys waits, No, the deathless ones will sweep you off to the world’s end, The trouble is that the Elysian Fields are made to sound just like Calypso’s isle – indeed, they are also made to sound like the obviously threatening lands of the Lotus-eaters: But about your destiny, Menelaus, dear to Zeus,Īnd meet your fate in the stallion-land of Argos, Instead, as a relative of Zeus, he will go off to the Elysian Fields. For Menelaus, the leader of the Spartans, tells us – and it is supposed to be good news, at least for him – that, at the end of his life, he won’t have to go to be a shade in Hades. The question is a sharp one, surely, but it is sharpened further in the poem. Now why would you leave all that for a middle-aged woman and your own incipient old-age and death? No need for Rogaine, no need for Viagra, you’ll be young and vibrant and virile and hairy forever. Moreover, she can make you immortal and give you eternal youth. She’ll always be fun in bed, and always, it seems, willing to go there. Her hair will be forever luxuriant and silky. First off, Calypso is a nymph – she will always be a babe. But I believe the poem intends you to be puzzled. Why, then, does Odysseus leave Calypso? Or, putting it the other way around, why doesn’t he stay? Maybe you think you know. In the end, these four diverse mysteries have the same solution. The fantastic nature of these realms seems completely mismatched to the reality of what is taking place in Ithaca. Then there is the mystery presented by the form of the Odyssey itself, with its odd mixture of realism (the suitors and Penelope) and magic (the unreality of the realms that Odysseus visits between the fall of Troy and his return home). Yet, on the face of it, the suitors have done nothing nearly so bad. What have they done to deserve it? In the poem, their behaviour is often likened to that of Aegisthus, who took Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra as his lover, and then murdered Agamemnon on his return from Troy. The first concerns the savage punishment – death – imposed on the suitors. These mysteries shall be deepened in a moment, but first I want to add two others that are equally perplexing, though not, perhaps, equally erotic.

There are two erotic mysteries at the heart of the Odyssey: the mystery of why Odysseus leaves Calypso, and the mystery of why the suitors are so hot for Penelope.

Homer’s Odyssey, as we all know, is the story of Odysseus’ long journey away from Calypso and home to Ithaca, where his wife Penelope waits, courted in his absence by 117 princes young enough to be her sons. He became marooned on the faraway island of Ogygia, enjoying – or tiring of – the favours of the beautiful nymph Calypso. But the great Odysseus was not among them. The Trojan Wars ended in Troy’s defeat at the hands of the Greeks, many of whom returned to their homes.

Penelope odyssey