The Fate of Telemachus: Part III

and its Conclusion

First by far to see Her was Prince Telemachus,

sitting among the Suitors, heart obsessed with grief.

He could almost see his magnificent father, here …

in the mind’s eye—if only he might drop from the clouds

and drive these Suitors all in a rout throughout the halls

and regain his pride of place and rule his own domains!

Daydreaming so as he sat among the Suitors,

he glimpsed Athena now

HOMER: THE ODYSSEY [Book 1, 132-139]

Here, I will tell you about the fate of our Telemachus. Remember that when I tell you about the plague of the Suitors, and the suffering they inflict upon Ithaca, I am not simply criticizing law, or some politician—you should care very little about politicians at all. Fundamentally, the blight of our Suitors is the faith that human language is capable of governing men. And it truly is an intensely religious belief, it requires you to ignore that which your senses tell you. This blind, deaf faith that ignores the shortcomings of our rules even as their failures spread themselves out over Ithaca, worse every year as our words and our rules become more and more complicated, less and less real. This faith that the next one, the next iteration of exactly the same kind of written-down-thing, the next one will work.

But the rules will not work, the Suitors will never actually rule Ithaca. They never have, and they’ve had plenty of time to prove their ability to do so. Time doesn’t matter here, they are incapable because they are mere Suitors, mere applicants for power who are unable to seize it for themselves. This is why Penelope (and do not forget what Penelope is here) never makes her decision, she cannot do so because of the very nature of the Suitors themselves. I will not spend any more time shitting on human language, its defects are self-evident, all one needs to do to understand what I’m saying is read the Opinions of your Courts, the word-drool of aged nerds with the softest hands of all blithering back and forth on what words like “water” really mean. Each and every one of you was born knowing exactly what water is, and such discussion—utterly divorced from physical reality—should mean very little to you; it certainly should not govern you, and yet it pretends to rule your Ithaca to the detriment of all.

Which brings this series to its conclusion: What is the Fate of Telemachus today? Homer’s Telemachus listens when the gods speak to him, and seeks out his Odysseus. That was that Telemachus’ fate, and it was glorious.

DO NOT PRETEND your religions will fix this. Your holy books are still of the Suitors, and I am sorry if that makes you sad, but I do not want Theocracy (I want least of all a theocracy of an imported desert-religion which demands you ignore the perfection of nature—the perfection of the hunt—demands that you believe natural-born men are somehow fundamentally bad). What I’m talking about of course cannot be written down; I believe the real gods don’t like it when you try.

So listen when they speak to you. Athena once said: “It’s wrong, Telemachus, wrong to rove so far, so long from home, leaving your own holding unprotected—crowds in your palace so brazen they’ll carve up your wealth, devour it all, and then your journey here will come to nothing.” (HOMER: THE ODYSSEY, Book 15, 11-15). Did Telemachus transcribe Athena’s words into a holy book, a stone tablet or a Pee Dee Eff, and then try to parse the language apart and discern its true meaning? No, he obeyed the goddess, ran away from his Mother, and killed the Suitor-lovers who attempted to punish him for pursuing Odysseus. You should too.

There is no step-by-step guide to this, I write no Men’s Self-Help Article here. But you probably have already heard a god speak to you as I have (if you haven’t I am sorry but I do not care) often accompanied by an intense understanding that something must be, but is not. This is what Telemachus felt. I have experienced this many times, but I will not debase the gods by jamming their messages into our coarse word-molds.

Listen and obey; do not be a fool, do not fling yourself naked unto a bristling phalanx because a god told you to fight it. Act as someone worthy to be heir to Ithaca, be excellent. When you are not powerful enough to bring forth a god’s will for something, DREAM of it—and when your powers grow great enough, faithfully realize that will. Perhaps later I will write more about this, but I do not want to tell you what to do because you already know, although some of you try to forget.

Take comfort in the perseverance of our Penelope, she will continue to pretend to play along, but will unweave her cloth every night; and in their incompetence, the Suitors will never overpower Penelope. Just as significant as the fact that the Suitors cannot obtain Penelope’s consent is the fact that everybody in Ithaca knows they need it—and this a good indication, if you still require one, that Homer really was speaking in fractals when he gave us the Odyssey, for men much weaker and less organized than the fantastical suitors as depicted in the poem regularly force-marriage women like the fantastical Penelope. Homer knew this, but the Suitors under their real meaning need Penelope’s permission for marriage to become the legitimate ruler. In turn, Penelope needs Odysseus to return; this is the only way she will ever consent to being married because Odysseus is the only legitimate ruler. Among other things, that is the point Homer is making in his brilliant work, that the legitimate ruler of a nation remains so even while absent—indeed, the ruler remains legitimate even if the Experts Agree that he will never return, or that even if he did it would be impractical for Ithaca to be ruled by him now.

Know that this symbolic back-and-forth between the Suitors and Penelope may go on for a very long time, that Telemachus does not even remember when Odysseus left. Still, no force-marriage between Penelope and the Suitors is possible—their arms are too small, they could never pin her down and consummate. But never forget, and never stop feeling, that Ithaca is degraded every day the Suitors remain. There is no great resolution here, no form of government I advocate for. Ithaca is plagued by the Suitors, and the solution is simple: Odysseus must return. He will return, whether or not you seek him, because he is the rightful king of this place; this work merely informs you of what that means, and on what Telemachus—be he 1 or 100 million—does in the meantime. Odysseus is the raw power of the gods’ will, he will rule because he is what rulership means. The Fate of Telemachus is to believe this.

Odysseus scanned the house to see if any man

still skulked alive, still hoped to avoid black death.

But he found them one and all in blood and dust …

great hauls of them down and out like fish that fishermen

drag from the churning gray surf in looped and coiling nets

and fling ashore on a sweeping hook of beach—some noble catch

heaped on the sand, twitching, lusting for fresh salt sea

but the Sungod hammers down and burns their lives out …

so the Suitors lay in heaps, corpse covering corpse.

HOMER: THE ODYSSEY [Book 22, 406-414]

-MM