The Fate of Telemachus: Part 0

Introduction to a series centered around application of Homer's Odyssey

“I came in the hope that you can tell me now

some news about my father.

My house is being devoured, my rich farms destroyed,

my palace crammed with enemies, slaughtering on and on

my droves of sheep and shambling longhorn cattle.

Suitors plague my mother—the insolent, overweening . . .

That’s why I’ve come to plead before you now,

if you can tell me about his cruel death.

perhaps you saw him die with your own eyes

or heard the wanderer’s end from someone else.

More than all other men, that man was born for pain.

Don’t soften a thing, from pity, respect for me—

tell me, clearly, all you eyes have witnessed.

I beg you—if ever my father, lord Odysseus,

pledged you his word and made it good in action

once on the fields of Troy where you Achaeans suffered,

remember his story now, tell me the truth.”

HOMER: THE ODYSSEY [Book 4, 354-369]

I’m going to write about what is being described in this passage. What I love about Homer’s work, both this one and the more historical Iliad, is the way its words operate in literary fractal (‘fractal’ defined as ‘a never-ending pattern that is self-similar across different scales’); The Odyssey describes a journey across the fantastical world of Odysseus (I do not use “fantastical” to suggest any non-reality of this world, and neither should you), but it also describes an internal journey within Odysseus’ mind using the same words, and those words also say something about the world and mind of Homer, from which they were created.

Note: Do not be foolish and think we can know what someone who lived alongside Homer could get out of this story, these words; our lives are so alien to that world that attempting to insert ourselves into it is a disgusting violation. Modern scholars, as instructed by their clergy, too often purge themselves of any sense of reverence for the words the poets have placed before them; they recognize how men like Homer are simultaneously able to tell an ancient story and also speak to something contemporary, some political message about the poet’s own world, and these scholars think they’ve accomplished something meaningful (you see this most clearly in how they talk about Virgil). The modern scholar who thinks that’s it, that the telling of the ancient story was merely done for the sake of a political message, or who otherwise thinks they can rank the possible meanings of the words (“but what he’s really talking about is . . .”) is wrong. They are a child who notices that the sunlight passing through a stained-glass window is here red, there blue, elsewhere green, and who then assumes—because their favorite color is red—that the window’s designer is secretly trying to show us red sunlight. And they probably have childishly soft hands too.

The important thing is to recognize the way this poetry speaks coherently to different situations, different times and places, and to avoid reducing the words to any literal meaning. You do not have to know the location of “the fields of Troy where you Achaeans suffered” on a map to know what that place means, and you probably shouldn’t try to (although I’m sure Mr. Schliemann had fun). You should instead read with reverence, acknowledging that the words themselves have something to tell you, and that you don’t have anything worth telling them. From this perspective, the fate of Telemachus—among countless other things—described in The Odyssey is revealed to be of profound significance to a modern man. Just as Homer’s words speak to aspects of fantastical Odysseus’ world, and simultaneously to aspects of Homer and his world, so too do they speak to us and ours.

The passage that opened this essay is clearest description of the primary stage of what I’m calling “the fate of Telemachus”, although other passages are informative and will be referenced later. Homer is describing, at one level, the situation his fantastical Telemachus faces: His father is Odysseus, the perfect king of the island of Ithaca. At some point during Telemachus’ infancy, his father left for the Trojan War. That was a long time ago, and for a while things were fine, but now that the king has been gone for so long a bunch of other men have arrived, basically saying “it’s been like twenty years, your dad is dead, it’s time for your mom to pick one of us to be the new king.” These men—these Suitors—don’t leave when Telemachus’ mother, Penelope, refuses to pick one of them to replace her husband. Instead, they hang around Ithaca, basically taking whatever they want at the kingdom’s expense while maintaining an external attitude of politeness—they don’t conquer the place, but they also won’t leave. In turn, Penelope doesn’t pick one of them to be the new king, but she also doesn’t tell the suitors “no, go away all of you, I simply won’t pick a new husband.” This passage is a plea from Telemachus to one of his father’s old wartime friends, describing the situation in Ithaca and begging for any information on his missing father, Ithaca’s missing king.

At a grander level, Homer is describing what it feels like to be so alienated from the process of ruling something rightfully yours that it is as if your father is missing and strangers are invading your house. Throughout history, some people have felt this way. I am one of them, and you probably are too. The purpose of this project is to use Homer’s great work to figure out exactly what this means, and what to do about it. In other words, to answer the present iteration of Telemachus’ plea.

The importance of “as if” in the above-bolded sentence should be stressed. When reading works like The Odyssey, all interactions between characters, forces, physical locations, and other things should be understood in the form of “as if”. This is because these characters and other things are archetypes (if you do not understand this term, you should go out and seek to understand it right now). When you read that Telemachus is the son of Penelope and Odysseus, and that he is commanded to “fit a ship with twenty oars, the best in sight; sail in quest of news of [his] long-lost father.” (Book 1, 322-323), you do yourself a disservice and an insult to Homer if you interpret those words as meaning only that the characters Penelope and Odysseus literally conceived this Telemachus, and that the story involves him literally procuring a ship with exactly twenty of the best oars he can see and then going on a quest for information about his biological father. You do the same disservice and insult if you ascribe any other set of meanings to the objects of the story while maintaining a literal interpretation of their interaction (for example, if you ascribe to Odysseus the meaning of “a warrior caste of invaders who came to dominate this region of Greece” and to Penelope “the subjugated, and thus feminized, indigenous population of this region” with their son Telemachus thus meaning “the offspring of these two peoples, inevitably more attracted to their patrilineal heritage, thus their quest for knowledge/idolization of Odysseus”). Rather, understand that the feelings evoked by reading the words “sail in quest of news of your long-lost father” are all you need; understand that you are to understand the words before you as if Odysseus is Telemachus’ father, as if Penelope is his mother, that Telemachus’ situation is so dire that it is as if a perilous quest for the absent father becomes necessary. This is not an original thought of mine, you can find a lot of better writing on why archetypes like Telemachus, Penelope, and Odysseus should be examined in the context of “as if”.

For now, I will close with one example: that of Telemachus himself. Telemachus is not a mythological figure based on a real person, he is not representative of all sons, he is not a dogwhistle for an ethnic group, or a coded message about class; he is not literally anything. Telemachus can only be understood by examining his “as if” interactions with the other archetypes present within The Odyssey. Read it for yourself, you will find that Telemachus is the state of being the rightful inheritor of an “Ithaca” that is being destroyed right in front of you. I will explain what the “Ithaca” archetype is later, along with many others. But when I say “you” I mean you, reader. Do not be foolish and think that I am writing mere literary analysis. Homer was not making it up, the fate of Telemachus is nonfiction.

-MM