Our hero has made it on to Scheria. He's on this island far away.
We start to learn now, as he makes his movement from this, edges of the island
where he meets Nausicaa and her friends. When he moves from there into the center
of this town this city. He sees something really amazing.
This place is a little bit strange. It's not quite like a normal citadel.
That we will hear more about as Odysseus goes on, on his adventures.
And we've seen now represented. Presented in Telemachus's journyes as he
goes around and sees Nestor's palace or Menelaus's palace.
The Phaeacians have a slightly different kind of reality that they live in.
They are far away and they don't mix all that well with others we're told.
They're at the world's frontier out of all human contact.
We're told on page 174 at the bottom in book seven.
There's plenty of food there. The crops are irrigated by springs.
There's a kind of natural irrigation system that's happening.
There's gentle wind. These that bring ripeness in all seasons?
So that you have these lush, almost magical orchards that just produce fruit.
It just kind of comes up out of the depths without extra toil having to be exerted in
order to get the food, to get the food out.
We'll hear later, at the close of book eight, of their magic boats.
They have boats that actually steer themselves.
They don't have steersmen in their boats. Their boats just kind of know by will
where they're supposed to go. And then maybe something to focus on in
terms. Wasn't strangest, the strangest of all is
the idea that the Gods talked to them. Face to face.
You hear about this on page 186 in book seven, that the Phoenicians have ability
to talk face to face with the gods. Usually, they don't disguise themselves
when they come and talk to the Phoenicians.
This is really weird, when humans have direct views of gods.
Usually, there's trouble in mind. There's a story of Zeus and Semele that,
all you all will know, that a young mortal girl who has a tryst with Zeus convinces
him to show. Him, to herself in all his full glory and
he says no, please don't make me do that, when he does, she gets incinerated because
of how amazingly glorious Zeus is. Similarly, we will hear other kinds of
stories of humans getting in trouble by getting in too close to gods as the, as
the coarse advances. Then also remember we made a mention when
we talked about marriage of [inaudible] that in an earlier mythic time even you
know. Prior to myth, myth in the beta stage.
There are some tales of just kind of normal human god interactions.
They went to parties together. They shared meals together.
We hear about that in the marriage of Piles and Thetas.
Later on, we're gonna see a really interesting episode of this portrayed in
Hesiod's Theogony. That's gonna be the story of Prometheus.
So, you know that things get a little bit messy when it comes to that interaction as
well. But for the, the Phoenicians.
They seem to have this easy rapport with the gods face to face.
They really put them in this mythic space, that's already kind of Mythic for myth.
It's Proto-mythic, it's beta myth, it's the early side of things.
So they have this easy back and forth. They are though while they're removed from
others, they are though extraordinary sailors.
And this sailing capacity, this sailing prowess, brings them what sailing prowess
always does. Extraordinarily rich trade, and tremendous
amounts of wealth. There are fabulous riches described as
Odysseus approaches, the, the palace of King [inaudible].
There's amazing stuff that he runs into. A detailed description and a lavish
description, such as we have not yet seen. This scene, where the, the wealth of the,
of the palaces is described, gives us a chance to talk about one of the common
Homeric techniques of telling the story that are really useful for us to focus on
to get the most we can out of this tech-myth.
Homer uses a technique called ring composition.
And in ring composition, some specific thing.
Here, labelled A is articulated in the story.
And then there's a long digression. Here represented with B.
Where we talk about something that is related to this usually specific physical
thing we just ran into, and then we'll know that we're done with the digression
when we mention A again. So sometimes he might say "and then the
general picked up that sword. That sword which was handed down many
generations earlier to his grandfather and his grandfather and got passed down to
him. That sword is the one he picked up now."
So usually we will have an articulation of the physical object, we'll have long
digression, and then another articulation of the physical object to finish off the
XXX. Thought to be a very useful aid for those
that are doing. In a world of formulaic presentations of
poetry, so if your memorizing something and you're trying to get it going and then
you want to talk about your digression and then you want remind yourself and your
audience that you're done with the digression, just mention that thing that
you did in the beginning. It tells you that it's the time to get
out. Now this technique is used in great effect
when Homer is describing the riches at the palace of King Alkinoos.
So let's just take time to look at a little bit from book seven using Fagels's
translation. Now as Odysseus approached Alkinoos's
famous house, a rush of feelings stirred within his heart, bringing him to a
standstill even before he crossed the bronze threshold.
A strong radiant. A radiance strong as the moon or rising
sun came flooding through the high roofed halls of generous King Alcinous.
Walls plated in bronze crowned with a circling frieze glazed as blue as lapis
ran to the left and right. From outer gates to the deepest court
recesses and solid gold doors enclosed the palace.
Pretty striking the description of what he's walking in to.
And in fact the description goes on and lots of details are brought out.
We hear about the threshold that he's standing on is actually (itself made off).
Bronze. The door posts and the lintel are made of
silver. The handles on the door are made of gold.
There are gold and silver dog statues on either side of the door that were made by
[himself. They're immortal and never die.
They're guard dogs made of gold and silver.
There are many thrones in the palace. One is just not just good enough.
And each of them is decorated and draped with beautiful fine fabric, that's, of
extraordinarily fine quality. Then there are golden statues of boys that
are there for torch holders. There are 50 servant women screwing
around. And there are magnificent In orchards and
vineyards stretching for acres, that just fertilized themselves.
So, we hear this long, long digression on tales of the extraordinary wealth of
Alkinoss's Palace, that's visible to Odysseus's eyes.
At that point then, at the end of this digression, bottom of page 183 and 84 in
Fagles, in the middle of book seven, such were the gifts the glory showered down by
the gods on King Alkinoss's realm. And there Odysseus stood, gazing at all
this bounty. A man who borne so much once he had his
fill of marveling at it all, he crossed the threshold quickly, strode inside the
palace. So with our ring composition, we have an A
and a B, and an A. The A is our threshold and the digression
in B is our long and detailed tales of wealth and A again is our threshold.
The way that Homer uses this, look at what he's done.
The usefulness of this ring composition and it's characteristic of the Homeric
technique. We have Odysseus enter into the palace and
we basically see it through his own eyes. He walks in, hits the threshold and then
he's just overwhelmed. And in that marvelous one or two seconds
of Odysseus getting the visual, overwhelming.
Impression of wealth in Alcinous's Palace. In that short time Homer goes on and on
and on in narrative description. And then reminds us at the end of it that
actually what we've just done is paused with Odysseus for a moment on the
threshold. But what we've been able to hear is this
giant explosion in Odysseus's mind of Deep, registering of this powerful,
emotional kind of element, elements of perception that Odysseus gets.
So, time is able to actually expand and explode inside of these rings.
We'll have a mention of something, there may be a long memory that comes back to
us, someone, and a mention of it at the end.
That memory of course comes back. In an instant, but the representation of
it in Homer's poetry goes on for some lavish amount of time.
So Reins provide a way for Homer to dilate certain very pregnant scenes to let us
pause for a moment usually inside of someone's head as something grand happens
right before our eyes. And in this case there's nothing that's
gonna be quite as grand as Alcinous's Palace.
It's extraordinary. So Odysseus is entering into a world of,
of tremendous, tremendous wealth.