(Book V: Lines 118-143. Page 388.)
“You gods are the most jealous bastards in the universe—
Persecuting any goddess who openly takes
A mortal lover to her bed and sleeps with him.
When Dawn caressed Orion with her rosy fingers,
You celestial layabouts gave her nothing but trouble
Until Artemis finally shot him on the Ortygia—
Gold-throned, holy, gentle-shafted assault goddess!
When Demeter followed her heart and unbound
Her hair for Iason and made love to him
In a late-summer field, Zeus was there taking notes
And executed the man with a cobalt lightning blast.
And now you gods are after me for having a man.
Well, I was the one who saved his life, unprying him
From the spar he came floating here on, sole survivor
Of the wreck Zeus made of his streamlined ship,
Slivering it with lightning on the wine-dark sea.
I loved him, I took care of him, I even told him
I’d make him immortal and ageless all of his days.
But you said it, Hermes: Zeus has the aegis
And none of us gods can oppose his will.
So all right, he can go, if it’s an order from above
Off on the sterile sea. How I don’t know.
I don’t have any oared ships or crewmen
To row him across the sea’s broad back.
But I’ll help him. I’ll do everything I can.
To get him back safely to his own native land.”
In this passage, the nymph Calypso bitterly complains to Hermes about Zeus’s order to send Odysseus back home. She accuses the gods of obsessively policing goddesses’ love affairs with mortals. Calypso’s language is intense–as Homer warns us in the preceding lines, “words flew from her mouth like screaming hawks” (line 117). However, the most impressive facet of the speech is its clever structure, which by its conclusion convinces the reader that Calypso is the victim of a grave injustice.
Calypso starts off on the offensive. Not only does she charge the gods as being “the most jealous bastards in the universe”, but more importantly, she characterizes them as being in the practice of ‘persecuting’—rather than merely prosecuting or even judging—those goddesses who sleep with mortal men. From there, Calypso attempts to portray herself as the latest victim in the long line of abused goddesses. She references two examples of goddess-man relationships ended by “celestial layabouts [who are] nothing but trouble”. From her perspective, the gods meddled in Dawn’s and Demeter’s relationships not out of any genuine sense of moral outrage, but rather to alleviate their boredom and create drama. Calypso ends off this part of the speech with a line of self-pity: “And now you gods are after me for having a man.”
The latter half of the speech serves as a contrast between a powerful, but destructive Zeus, and a benign and helpful Calypso. “I was the one who saved [Odysseus’s] life,” not Zeus. “I loved him,” Calypso says, “I took care of him.” In contrast, Zeus may be the possessor of “the aegis and none of us gods can oppose his will,” but is essentially useless to Odysseus—after all, it was he who struck lightning at Odysseus’s ship and wrecked it. Finally, Calypso acquiesces to Zeus’s demands and resolves to help Odysseus reach home. “I’ll do everything I can. To get him back safely to his own native land.”
Besides for this speech, the reader is only exposed to Calypso through the perspective of others. Indeed, at least through the end of Book VIII, Calypso is invariably cast in an unflattering light, an immortal captor barring a weary hero from returning home to his family. The reader is compelled to view Calypso more positively. Of course, the hypocrisy here is all too apparent; by imprisoning an unwilling lover for several years, Calypso is guilty of the very crime that she accused the other gods of committing—namely, negative and unproductive interference into human affairs. However, this passage serves another role besides for rehabilitating Calypso’s image. In the bigger picture, the reader gains a more honest understanding of the way Greek gods work. They are essentially humans with superpowers. Though Calypso is a goddess, her impassioned speech is humanizing, and helps readers empathize with her predicament. Similarly, Zeus may be all-powerful, but he’s at the very least inconsistent—a classic human flaw that would otherwise be unexpected of a godly figure.
I really enjoyed reading this because we basically picked the same passage. It was nice seeing a different, yet similar, take on it. We extracted different meanings from the same passage, but ended up discussing the same theme, godly power. What resonated with me most about your analysis was the fact that you chose to emphasize Calypso’s perspective of how the Gods (or really just Zeus) rules. You really explained how she can be considered a passionate victim. It’s a stretch, but it’s like you’re the Medean chorus for Calypso here. Hopefully, this can open to discussing sexism amongst the Gods in class.
Great job, Michael.
I really loved this passage, especially the line ‘And now you god’s are after me for having a man.’ This passage explored sexism in a way that I truly did not expect from an epic that was written at the end of the 8th century. In this passage, Calypso insinuated that had she been a male god, she would not have faced the same treatment for holding a mortal sexual captive. I believe that she is correct in that assumption.
On the converse, your line ‘Calypso attempts to portray herself as the latest victim in the long line of abused goddesses’ holds a strong basis as well. Calypso condemns gender roles when they harm her, but hides behind them when they suit her. The reality is that in her relationship with Odysseus she did not play the role of victim, but rather that of his captor. She held Odysseus captive to appease her own selfish desires, actions which do not bode well with the role of victim.
Your analysis (rightly) points out that this passage humanizes Calypso; it grants us, as readers, access to her inner life, her grievances, her desires. It is also a rhetorical performance, designed to win sympathy (it succeeds better on you than on Hermes!). What’s interesting, here, is how Odysseus’s own desires drop out of the story momentarily. Calypso frames her complaint in terms of how the (male, usually) gods treat her and other female gods who take human lovers. The mortals’ own desires are curiously inaccessible–which raises the question: does Calypso KNOW how badly her lover/captive wants to go home? Or does she believe that the things she offers him–immortal life, herself–outweigh the things he (thinks he) wants?