Odysseus And Penelope Quotes

Penelope In the pathway of the sun, In the footsteps of the breeze, Where the world and sky are one, He shall ride the silver seas, He shall cut the glittering wave. I shall sit at home, and rock; Rise, to heed a neighbor's knock; Brew my tea, and snip my thread; Bleach the linen for my bed. They will call him brave.

Odysseus...sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

Wise Penelope! That's was Odysseus said to his wife when he got home. I don't think he ever told her he loved her. He probably knew the words would sound too small.

This was their way of honoring the dead. The story over, the demands of their own hard, rough lives began to re-assert themselves in their hearts, in their nerves, their blood and appetites. Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, hraka that must be passed, holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

She seemed to fit into the air like a jewel in its crown.

Odysseus draped the towel over his shoulders and stretched his back. "You remember practicing with wooden swords? All the moves, the blocks, the counters, getting your footwork right, learning how to be in balance always?" "Of course you were a hard master." "And you recall the first time you went into a real fight, with blood being shed and the fear of death in the air?" "I do" "The moves are the same, but the difference is wider than the Great Green. Love is like that, Helikaon. You can spend time with a whore and laugh and know great pleasure. But when love strikes--- ah, the difference is awesome. You will find more joy in the touch of a hand or the sight of a smile than you could ever experience in a hundred nights of passion with anyone else. The sky will be more blue, the sun more bright. Ah, I am missing my Penelope tonight

This is the way with grief. With guilt. With regret. All we can do is honour the lessons this brings, look honestly upon who we were and what we have done, and try to do better when the next sun rises.

Do you always make beautiful things for those you are angry with?

We women of sky and fire, we goddesses, we are so mighty, and yet if we learn anything from old mother Hera, it is that the brighter we blaze, the more the men line up to make us fall.

Either live with that fire in your heart, or die in shrivelled, blackened grief. No one will forgive you. No forgiveness will ever be enough. And no one but you can make your actions the apology that the dead are owed. Repent and live – and stop asking the dead to take the pain away. They cannot. You will live with it, and that is all.

It made me think of Penelope waiting for Odysseus—Penelope at her loom, not missing a trick, lumpen suitors everywhere.

When people ask why tell the stories that we know best from the Odyssey from Penelope’s perspective, or Circe’s perspective, they presuppose that the story ‘should’ be told from Odysseus’ point of view. Which means the answer to this question should always be: because she’s in the damn story. Why wouldn’t we want to hear from her?

So to hell with dignity. Dignity has got nothing on Rita Hayworth singing “Put the Blame on Mame” in Gilda, and absolutely nothing on Mae West in anything. It seems far more exciting to be a Siren beckoning with her song or Calypso captivating on her island than to be Penelope, the archetype of female fidelity, weaving and unweaving at her loom, sending her suitors away, waiting for the errant Odysseus to return, waiting while he luxuriates in lotusland, waiting while, as one correspondent to The New York Times Book Review put it, he “commits adultery with various gorgeous, high-class women,” waiting for her husband like Lucy waits for Desi at the end of the day, or Alice waits for Ralph at the end of the night. Bad girls don’t wait around—one doesn’t get to go everywhere by sitting by the phone.

All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view. When I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales. These were told by women to children, you know, and you get a different perspective. It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories. [...] In the Odyssey, you'll see three journeys. One is that of Telemachus, the son, going in quest of his father. The second is that of the father, Odysseus, becoming reconciled and related to the female principle in the sense of male-female relationship, rather than the male mastery of the female that was at the center of the Iliad. And the third is of Penelope herself, whose journey is [...] endurance. Out in Nantucket, you see all those cottages with the widow's walk up on the roof: when my husband comes back from the sea. Two journeys through space and one through time.

The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments: first, to the chosen adventure, but then, also, to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gawain's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper to his caste, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as release from rebirth. Gawain is a European and, like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned from the Island of the Sun to his marriage with Penelope, he has accepted, as the commitment of his life, not release from but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear.

They will think, perhaps, that the torment of another may in some way alleviate the pain of their hearts, and they will be wrong.

When only one man can win, it is remarkable how many men will consider themselves the guaranteed winner, whispered Odysseus.

But Athena had no babe, and she never would. Her only love was reason. And that has never been the same as reason.

Penelope’s face is luminous. “My father used to tease me and say that I would marry some forgotten king on a forgotten island.” Clytemnestra nudges her. “Well, you are.” Penelope laughs. “Who knows about Ithaca? Who will remember Odysseus?” “Probably no one. The clever ones are always forgotten.

How often in those days did I think of Odysseus’ smiling child? I tried his trick, along with all the rest. Held my son’s floppy body up into the air, promised him he was safe. He only screamed louder. Whatever made the prince Telemachus so sweet, I thought, it must have come from Penelope. This was the child I deserved.

Would that the dead were not dead! But there is grass that must be eaten, pellets that must be chewed, (...) holes that must be dug, sleep that must be slept. Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

I look back at my life and tell myself that the choices I made were the only ones that could be made, the only thing to be done. This is true, of course. It is also a lie. There were words spoken that could have been expressed some other way. There were secrets held. Judgements made. I cannot change them now. I run through my memories again and again, and every time they grow more distorted, the truth vanishing into fantasy.

I also got into difficulties by first calling Eurycleia “Eurynome” and then forgetting and using her real name; so that later on I had to pretend that there were two of her. And I forgot, in my account of the massacre, that Penelope’s lovers—whom I make her suitors because the legend, as Phemius used to tell it, disgusts any decent audience—could have armed themselves with the twelve long axes through which Odysseus shot, and used them as maces to hack him and his men in little pieces. But Homer, I am sure, went equally wrong at times, and I flatter myself that my story is interesting enough to blind Phemius’s listeners to its faults, even if he has a cold, or the banquet is badly cooked, or the good dark wine runs short.

I begin to see that perhaps there is some small protection in being the fool. The giggling girl who understands nothing and thinks only of carnal pleasure or temporary satisfaction. That being the fool is in fact… wise. Safe. An intelligent, capable, living human – such we may hold accountable for their actions. But a simpering girl?

Love – the love of a soul that learns to fly, to delight in the flight of another – was never on their minds. And so they were never much on mine.

There is something really rather magnificent about a woman who knows what she is doing, Laertes decides, but damned if he will ever say as much.

His mind was a tapestry constantly weaving and unweaving with the dedication of Penelope for her Odysseus.

But one thing is certain: those daughters of Leda are a plague on their menfolk. Did Odysseus worry that he would receive a similar welcome here on Ithaca? That I, the devout Penelope, would treat him as Clytemnestra had treated her husband? The idea is preposterous. My name is a byword for patience and loyalty, no matter which bard sings it. But that is my Odysseus. And your Odysseus. Always finding things out the hard way.

Thus possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of a matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians. The chief of them, notably Odysseus, would then claim kingship by marrying the High Priestess of our cult, namely Penelope. No, Sir, we deny that this theory is merely unfounded feminist claptrap. We can understand your reluctance to have such things brought out into the open “ rapes and murders are not pleasant subjects “ but such overthrows most certainly took place all around the Mediterranean Sea, as excavations at prehistoric sites have demonstrated over and over.

Still, he’d kept up his membership in the Gun Club. Had taken the girls hunting every chance he could. And still went everywhere with Odysseus—having retired Penelope the day they were married, for Georgie was now closest to his heart.

If you dare tell me he’s Odysseus’s son as if that’s some sacred charm, I will scream,” she answers, clear as the ringing of the hollow drum. “I will wail and rend my hair, the whole thing. So help me, Hera, I will do it.” Sweetheart, I whisper, I’m here for it. Many is the time my husband has returned from his frolics and I’ve turned on the waterworks, rent my garments, flung myself upon the ground and sworn that I shall die, scratched at my eyes, drawn blood from my celestial skin and beaten my fists against his chest. It doesn’t change his behaviour long-term, but at least I get to embarrass him some tiny, tiny fraction of the way he humiliates, demeans, dishonours and diswomans me. So you do the wailing; I’ll bring the olives.

If you dare tell me he’s Odysseus’s son as if that’s some sacred charm, I will scream,” she answers, clear as the ringing of the hollow drum. “I will wail and rend my hair, the whole thing. So help me, Hera, I will do it.” Sweetheart, I whisper, I’m here for it.

And so, Athene, the prayer I offer is this: thank you for bringing my husband home, if that is what you have done. If the man who sleeps upstairs in the bed he once carved from an old olive tree is an impostor, I suppose I will find out soon enough. He knows the old stories of our marriage, of that I am certain. And Telemachus is devoted to him, which is fortunate. So perhaps it does not matter if he is the man who left, or a changed man, or even another man altogether. He fits in the space that Odysseus left." - Your devoted Penelope

Thus possibly our rape and subsequent hanging represent the overthrow of a matrilineal moon-cult by an incoming group of usurping patriarchal father-god-worshipping barbarians. The chief of them, notably Odysseus, would then claim kingship by marrying the high Priestess of our cult, notably Penelope.

I duelled for Achilles’ armour after he was gone,” Odysseus recalls. “But that largely involved a battle of wits. Against Ajax.” “Isn’t he the fella who went mad, killed a load of sheep then topped himself?” “That’s the one.” “Not sure that’s the standard of tactical brilliance we’re dealing with right now.

While altering the saga of Odysseus’s Return to make my Elyman suitors serve as Penelope’s lovers, I had to protect myself against scandal. What if someone recognized the story and supposed that I, Nausicaa the irreproachable, had played the promiscuous harlot in my father’s absence? So, according to my poem, Penelope must have remained faithful to Odysseus throughout those twenty years. And because this change meant that Aphrodite had failed to take her traditional revenge, I must make Poseidon, not her, the enemy who delayed him on his homeward voyage after the Fall of Troy. I should therefore have to omit the stories of Penelope’s banishment and the oar mistaken for a flail, and Odysseus’s death from Telemachus’s sting-ray spear. When I told Phemius of these decisions, he pointed out, rather nastily, that since Poseidon had fought for the Greeks against the Trojans, and since Odysseus had never failed to honour him, I must justify this enmity by some anecdote. “Very well,” I answered. “Odysseus blinded a Cyclops who, happening to be Poseidon’s son, prayed to him for vengeance.” “My dear Princess, every Cyclops in the smithies of Etna was born to Uranus, Poseidon’s grandfather, by Mother Earth.” “Mine was an exceptional Cyclops,” I snapped. “He claimed Poseidon as his father and kept sheep in a Sican cave, like Conturanus. I shall call him Polyphemus—that is, ‘famous’—to make my hearers think him a more important character than he really was.” “Such deceptions tangle the web of poetry.” “But if I offer Penelope as a shining example for wives to follow when their husbands are absent on long journeys, that will excuse the deception.

Penelope looks Menelaus in the eye, looks him up and down, and is for a moment the most beautiful mortal thing upon this land, even though Helen herself is not a minute’s scamper away. There is a word here for her beauty – a word like power, or victory; or perhaps even more arousing still, there is that in Penelope that is untamed.

Even as a child, Helen was told by all who saw her what a pretty thing she was, what a beautiful woman she would grow up to be. A prophecy uttered so many times must be fulfilled. No one told Helen that she would grow up to be royal, regal, wise, learned or revered, so it didn’t really occur to her childlike mind that these might be aspirations to seek.

Odysseus’s travels involve such a terrific set of adventures that I tend to forget how much of the book is actually about his wife and son—what goes on at home while he’s traveling, how his son goes looking for him, and all the complications of his homecoming. One of the things I love about The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien’s understanding of the importance of what goes on back on the farm while the Hero is taking his Thousand Faces all round the world. But till you get back there with Frodo and the others, Tolkien never takes you back home. Homer does. All through the ten-year voyage, the reader is alternately Odysseus trying desperately to get to Penelope and Penelope desperately waiting for Odysseus—both the voyager and the goal—a tremendous piece of narrative time-and-place interweaving.

I may not have gone to Troy, boy, but I was getting pissed with Nestor while you were just a fantasy in your mother’s eye. I was shitting round the back of Theseus’s palace and getting hammered with fucking centaurs while you were still a toothless little shit sucking on your mother’s titty. You can guard a queen all day long – queens need some guarding. But don’t think for an instant you can get away with guarding a king.

PART III THE TRIUMPH OF ODYSSEUS CHAPTER XXIX. Athena Advises Telemachos XXX. Telemachos Astonishes the Wooers XXXI. Penelope's Web XXXII. The Journey of Telemachos XXXIII. Telemachos in Pylos XXXIV. Telemachos in Sparta XXXV. Menelaos Relates His Adventures XXXVI. The Conspiracy of the Suitors XXXVII. Telemachos Returns to Ithaca XXXVIII. Telemachos and the Swineherd XXXIX. Telemachos Recognizes Odysseus XL. Telemachos Returns to the Palace XLI. Odysseus is Recognized by His Dog XLII. Odysseus Comes, a Beggar, to His Own House XLIII. Conversation of Odysseus and Penelope XLIV. Eurycleia Recognizes Odysseus XLV. Penelope's Dream XLVI. Athena Encourages Odysseus XLVII. The Last Banquet of the Suitors XLVIII. Odysseus Bends the Bow XLIX. Death of the Suitors L. Eurycleia Announces the Return of Odysseus to Penelope LI. Odysseus Visits His Father Vocabulary and Notes

For a woman to contemplate her own beauty is vanity, superficial pride, shallow beyond contempt, the sign of a mindless slut. Of course for a woman to be anything less than beautiful is for her to be ugly, or in the best case invisible and without merit, and that is also unacceptable, but still, but still. The most a woman born without socially acceptable perfection can do is worry about these things in secret, rather than be caught trying.

I will always be the other woman. I disappear for a time like the moon in daylight, then rise at night all mother-of-pearl so that a man’s upturned face, watching, will have reflected on it the milk of longing. And though he may leave, memory will perfect me. One day the light may fall in a certain way on Penelope’s hair, and he will pause wildly… but when she turns, it will only be his wife, to whom white sheets simply mean laundry— even Nausikaä in her silly braids thought more washing linen than of him, preferring Odysseus clean and oiled to that briny, unkempt lion I would choose. Let Dido and her kind leap from cliffs for love. My men will moan and dream of me for years… desire and need become the same animal in the silken dark. To be the other woman is to be a season that is always about to end, when the air is flowered with jasmine and peach, and the weather day after day is flawless, and the forecast is hurricane.

Greetings, Antinous,’ I said to him. ‘I wish you’d take that arrow out of your neck.’ ‘It is the arrow of my love, Penelope of the divine form, fairest and most sagacious of all women,’ he replied. ‘Although it came from the renowned bow of Odysseus, in reality the cruel archer was Cupid himself. I wear it in remembrance of the great passion I bore for you, and carried to my grave.’ He goes on in this spurious way quite a lot, having had a good deal of practice at it while he was alive.

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

Did you like Zosime?” The question stuns Tryphosa. It astonishes her. It appals her. It is faintly disgusting, uncouth. A queen asking not merely about a maid, but the sentiment of a maid? The affection one maid may have for another, the relationship between two women who are no better than slaves? Queens do not care for such things. It would be undignified, inconvenient for them to do so. It implies that the woman Penelope addresses has feelings. Feels hurt. Knows pain. Is indeed human. And Tryphosa has worked so hard, for so long, to be anything but human.

Not for the first time in literature and society, and assuredly not for the last, there is one set of standards to which Penelope must adhere, and a very much looser set for Odysseus. And yet, in some ways, Odysseus does remain faithful to his wife. He shares another woman’s bed, but he doesn’t share her idea of their future. She offers him something of enormous value–immortality, for which all heroes strive, one way or another–and he rejects it. He would rather return to his less beautiful, mortal wife. Homeric heroes make huge sacrifices for even a brush of immortality: Achilles specifically chooses a short, glorious life that will result in fame which outlives him (a kind of immortality) rather than a longer, less famous existence. And here is Odysseus, offered eternal life but rejecting it. And all for the chance to return to a woman he has not seen for twenty years. A divorce lawyer might not call this fidelity, but it is something.

I don't understand," Olivia said. "How did Penny sewing and unsewing make for the Trojan War?" "Penelope was Odysseus's wife," Philippa explained. "He left her, and she sat at her loom, sewing all day, and unraveling all her work at night. For years." "Why on earth would someone do that?" Olivia wrinkled her nose, selecting a sweet from a nearby tray. "Years? Really?" "She was waiting for him to come home," Penelope said, meeting Michael's gaze. There was something meaningful there, and he thought she might be speaking of more than the Greek myth. Did she wait for him at night? She'd told him not to touch her... she'd pushed him away... but tonight, if he went to her, would she accept him? Would she follow the path of her namesake? "I hope you have more exciting things to do when you are waiting for Michael to come home, Penny," Olivia teased. Penelope smiled, but there was something in her gaze that he did not like, something akin to sadness. He blamed himself for it. Before him, she was happier. Before him, she smiled and laughed and played games with her sisters without reminder of her unfortunate fate. He stood to meet her as she approached the settee. "I would never leave my Penelope for years." He said, "I would be too afraid that someone would snatch her away." His mother-in-law sighed audibly from across the room as his new sisters laughed. He lifted one of Penelope's hands in his and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. "Penelope and Odysseus were never my favored mythic couple, anyway. I was always more partial to Persephone and Hades." Penelope smiled at him, and the room was suddenly much much warmer. "You think they were a happier couple?" she asked, wry. He met her little smile, enjoying himself as he lowered his voice. "I think six months of feast is better than twenty years of famine." She blushed, and he resisted the urge to kiss her there, in the drawing room, hang propriety and ladies' delicate sensibilities.

At this, Helen gives a little cry. It is a tiny “ah!”, as if she had trodden on a jagged stone with bare feet, a thing that comes, goes, happened and has passed but still, it hurt – goodness, it stung. Before anyone can ask after her well-being, however, she closes her eyes and turns her face away, a dismissal given by one who does not wish to speak of her distress, lest more distress be given.

It is not acceptable to ask a lady her age, but she had grown well into her beauty, wearing the lines about her eyes with mirth, a twist about her smile and a flash of her fragrant wrist as though to say “I may not be young, but what merry tricks have I learned!

The soldier who led this group – a man of notched chin and significant thigh that under normal circumstances I’d find really quite enthralling – considered this a moment. Then he laid his hand upon my priestess’s shoulder and shoved her – he actually shoved my priestess, upon my sacred hearth! – so hard she lost her footing and half fell, caught by one of the waiting women before she could tumble entirely. Golden nectar splashed around the lip of the bath, spilling in shimmering pools about the white marble floor as I sat upright, the bones of my long, silken hand standing out white. I cursed the soldier who so dared touch my devoted one, barely noticing what I did: he would love and he would bind his heart to passion and when he had given his all, then he would be betrayed. And then genital disfigurement. One does not cross Aphrodite without some thoroughly explicit consequences.

I cursed the soldier who so dared touch my devoted one, barely noticing what I did: he would love and he would bind his heart to passion and when he had given his all, then he would be betrayed. And then genital disfigurement. One does not cross Aphrodite without some thoroughly explicit consequences.

The soldier who led this group – a man of notched chin and significant thigh that under normal circumstances I’d find really quite enthralling – considered this a moment.

Funny how often divinities are found to agree with the actions mortals most desire. It is a trait I have often noted, and would find annoying if it wasn’t so often quaintly delightful in its unexpected consequences.

Antinous learned how to be a blusterer from his father, but consequently the only man he cannot out-bluster, cannot out-harangue is the very man who taught him, and who does not understand that the qualities he dislikes in his son are the self-same qualities he cannot perceive in himself.

The priestess of the temple is called Anaitis, and she has just the most fabulous line in earthy, hunky sexiness that you will ever see. My goodness, if ever there was a woman for caressing in a field of barley it is her – but alas, she does not see herself in that way, for as Autonoe approaches the lady with autumn hair who stands in the porch of the shrine, Anaitis folds her arms and tuts: “What’s happened now?

while the drummer, clad only in a really rather charming loincloth that leaves little to the imagination, maintains his rhythm. Not many men can get away with displaying so much buttock while on the job, but Spartans have always had very strong opinions about male beauty, and though it can lead to some socially toxic long-term consequences, right now I am here for it.

And where should I be, goddess of war? Up on Olympus wheedling with Zeus to send your Odysseus a favourable wind? Or are you done debasing yourself for a man?

Do I… seek a husband? That is… such a curious thought. My husband is Odysseus. No body has been found. Therefore he lives. I am married to him and that vow is unbreakable. I do not, therefore, seek a husband.

Odysseus is a terrible sailor. I do not see any sign his son has inherited a better sense of direction.

Follow me through the halls of the palace of Odysseus; follow to hear the stories that the men-poets of the greedy kings do not tell.

I may never know if you are my Theseus or Odysseus but call me Penelope for my heart remains steadfast in its fidelity, ' (p. 46)

Yet I would far rather they suffer a quick rejection from false desire than the slow heartache of a life lived without truest, purest love.

Penelope is at the turning age of life where a woman has either found that sense of herself that makes any creature radiant, beautiful, a splendour to the heart and the eye; or in her flailing and thrashing about for identity has reverted fitfully to some younger time, painting her face with wax and lead and rubbing henna into her hair in the hope perhaps of buying a little more time to learn to love the changing visage she sees in the reflecting pool.

Martin gave him an ecstatic welcome—as he always did. Ulf had read that dogs believed when their owners left them behind in the house they would never see them again. Dog memory, however long it might be when it involved smells, and the remembrance of smells, was not all that strong on events, and a dog might well forget that his owner usually returned after going out. So the poor dog would go through the agony of abandonment—seemingly permanent—every single day, sometimes more than once a day. And when the owner returned, the dog’s joy would be immense, as great, in its way, as the joy of Penelope on the return of Odysseus. Or, for that matter, of the hero’s dog when his master turned up once again in Ithaca, although poor Argos, lying on his dungheap, was too old to do much more than raise his ears and wag his tail, much as he would have liked to turn somersaults, bark with delight, and confer slobbering canine kisses.

I have never feared the forgetful river of Hades,” Elektra replies, soft as a mountain stream, and Priene is familiar enough with killing to see the truth of it, and wise enough to wonder why.

We must rule out all merely sentimental reasons. Calypso’s island is more beautiful than Ithaca is. Calypso is more beautiful than is Odysseus’ wife, Penelope. Odysseus has been told that when he reaches Ithaca, he will have to deal with more than a hundred suitors for Penelope, who have descended upon his estate like an invading army. They have devoured his goods and turned his home into a banquet hall and brothel. He has no idea what kind of young man his son, Telemachus, has become. He cannot depend upon the loyalty of any single person; even his wife, who he supposes will have been true to him, is not utterly beyond suspicion. He cannot depend upon the citizens of Ithaca. Many of them will wish that he had starved on an unknown shore or been cut down in battle. The goddess Athena has told him that he will return and will succeed, but she is a crafty liar, as he himself is, and in any case, if you trust the gods, you will deserve what you get. Odysseus wants to go home because it is his home. It is as simple as that.

I have done everything in my power to be . . . relevant. To make the world about me wise, to make wisdom greater than war. I have failed. Men fight and die, and for what? Glory and power and spite and pride - nothing more. Gods and kings spin their stories, and in their stories it is good to die for one man's pride and to give thanks for the chains that are put about the neck of every child born less than a king. And I thought . . . if I could now wield power through wisdom, or mercy, or justice, then perhaps I could take power in this other way. Perhaps if I became like these men of blood and cruelty, that would be enough. So I banished from my heart all thoughts of tenderness, compassion, longing or kindess. I turned away friends for fear of being wounded, laid aside love as a danger, punished women for things men do, denied my loneliness and refued my fears. Poison. All of it. Poison. And still not enough. I am too cruel for women to love me, too tender for men to deign to grace me with respect. Where does this leave me? Why - I have fallen so far that to have men honour my name, my divinity, I must make myself an adjunct to his story. [...] My power should have broken the world, should have cracked the palaces and remade them anew. Not as goddess-who-appears-like-a-man, but as a woman, as strength-of-woman, as arm-of-woman, as wisdom-of-woman. But I could not make it so. Instead I must contrive. I must bend myself into some other shape, make some other story in which poets will praise him. A mere man. A petty mortal. They will call him wise. They will sing his song down the ages. The story of Odysseus is the last, greatest power Athena has left. They will speak his name, and after, mine. That is all the power I have.

How strange the ocean looks, she thinks, when one is not waiting for someone to sail upon it.

Then she told Flavia about Odysseus and his journeys, about how the entire time he was away, his wife, Penelope, fought off suitors and waited faithfully for him to return. “Men like to hear stories like that,” Cass said, even though she had no idea if it was true. “They like to think of their women as sitting dutifully by the fire embroidering while they’re out journeying to Palazzo Dolce to visit you.

Earlier times may not have understood it any better than we do, but they weren't as embarrassed to name it: the life force or spark thought close to divine. It is not. Instead, it's something that makes those who have it fully human, and those who don't look like sleep walkers...It isn't enough to make someone heroic, but without it any hero will be forgotten. Rousseau called it force of soul; Arendt called it love of the world. It's the foundation of eros; you may call it charisma. Is it a gift of the gods, or something that has to be earned? Watching such people, you will sense that it's both: given like perfect pitch, or grace, that no one can deserve or strive for, and captured like the greatest of prizes it is. Having it makes people think more, see more, feel more. More intensely, more keenly, more loudly if you like; but not more in the way of the gods. On the contrary, next to heroes like Odysseus and Penelope, the gods seem oddly flat. They are bigger, of course, and they live forever, but their presence seems diminished...The gods of The Odyssey aren't alive, just immortal; and with immortality most of the qualities we cherish become pointless. With nothing to risk, the gods need no courage.

Did you know he named his pistols?” she asked. He felt his jaw begin to tick and immediately forced himself to relax. “I think I’ve read that before.” “Well, I just read it recently. As if having a boy pistol and a girl pistol wasn’t bad enough, he goes and names them. Odysseus and Penelope.” She laughed. A full-throated, from-the-belly laugh. “But what can you expect from somebody named Lucious?” Over his four years as a Ranger, he’d traveled seventy-four thousand miles, made two hundred scouts, and one hundred eighty-two arrests. He’d endured cold, hunger, and fatigue without a murmur. He’d been said to have the eyes of a fox, the ears of a wolf, and the ability to follow scent like a hound. Yet this tiny bit of fluff could throw him off-kilter like no other. He counted to ten. “What’s wrong with the name Lucious?” She looked at him, incredulous. “What’s wrong with Lucious? It’s . . . it’s . . . I don’t know . . . silly, don’t you think? Sounds like luscious.” He was named after his father. The father whose life had been senselessly snuffed out by Mother Nature. Carrying his dad’s name was a great privilege and a source of pride for Luke. How dare she make fun of it. Anger simmering, he twisted the wires together and forced himself to respond as if he had nothing personal at stake. “Don’t guess I ever thought about it. Can’t say the name’s ever bothered me, though.” “That’s probably because it isn’t yours. I’m sure if it were, you’d think differently.” “Maybe so.” Picking up a cloth on the switchboard, he wiped his hands. “Did you get a look at this Lucious fellow?” “I did.” He raised a brow. “And was he luscious?” “Ha!” Folding the paper, she tossed it on the desk. “Hardly. If anybody was luscious, it was Frank Comer.

As much as I love what I do and consider it worthwhile, I cannot escape the suspicion that what we do as mental health professionals is not as good as the healing that in other cultures has been rooted in the native soil of the returning soldier's community. Our culture has been notably deficient in providing for reception of the Furies of war into community. For better or for worse, the health care system has been given this role -- along with the prisons, where a disproportionate number of men incarcerated since the Vietnam War have been veterans. We must create our own new models of healing which emphasize communalization of the trauma. Combat veterans and American citizenry should meet together face to face in daylight, and listen, and watch, and weep, just as citizen-soldiers of ancient Athens did in the theater at the foot of the Acropolis. We need a modern equivalent of Athenian tragedy. Tragedy brings us to cherish our mortality, to savor and embrace it. Tragedy inclines us to prefer attachment to fragile mortals whom we love, like Odysseus return from war to his aging wife, Penelope, and to refuse promised immortality.

The trick, I find," muses Penelope, "to living with a pain that cannot be reconciled, a grief, or a fury, a rage that you think will burn you from the inside out, is not to dwell on all the reasons why your life has ended, but to wonder what it might become now. I am a widow queen. This is my trap, my curse. My power. My grief is a knife. My anger is cunning. Having been denied the purpose intended for me--to be a wife, a loving mother--my purpose is to be a queen, to serve not myself, but my kingdom. *Mine.* The land that is entrusted to *me.* Not to my husband's ghost. Not some... poet's picture of Odysseus. But to me. I will live and I will take all that has been put upon me and I will make of it something new. Something better.

Would that the dead were not dead! (...) Odysseus brings not one man to shore with him. Yet he sleeps sound beside Calypso and when he wakes thinks only of Penelope.

When he'd read those stories, he imagined himself as Odysseus, off on grand adventures, longing to return to Penelop at hom. As a teen, he believed he could become a brave hero one day, as long as there was a faithful woman by his side. . . His parents' marriage had made him believe that fairy tales were real, and that true love was not only possible, but beautiful-and worth pursuing.