In Books I through IV of Homer's Epic,
we're gonna see the story unfold according to the thread of Telemachus.
He's gonna pull us through the different twists and turns of the plot to get us
started on the story. We're gonna learn about Odysseus and his
house, about Ithaca, about Penelope, mostly through the eyes of Telemachus.
We're gonna learn about what it is to be a Greek hero through Telemachus's
representation, but most of what Telemachus is gonna teach us about
hero-ness is gonna come in a negative way. Telemachus is a young man, and he's not
quite ready to step up into the hero role that we're going to see his
father has been executing out there in the wider world for his adult life.
Telemachus is indeed a young man. He's twenty years old.
His father's been gone for ten years of of fighting and ten years of wandering.
Not quite back yet. So he's a young man.
And surely by the standards of our day that would count as a youth.
Now in the Greek take on things though twenty is plenty old enough to be out
there taking some action. In fact, the great Greek warriors who
become grand heroes get started on things at about that
age, or a little bit younger. Achilles was off conquering whole swatches
of territory at this age. Twenty is plenty old enough to step up and
get things done, but Telemachus is just not quite there yet.
Now when we need him, we need him in repose.
He's in a reclining kind of position. In this sort you can imagine a kind of
silk like form that he has. This is David's representation of him filtered
through the Renaissance. But truly captured something of what Homer
had in mind with this figure Telemachus. Young man not quite ready to take action
and in this feeling of kind of languor over the situation.
When we meet Telemachus, he is in a strange situation.
He is daydreaming. We, we have Athena come up and make
contact with him, she's in disguise; makes contact with him and then we jump in, the
narrative jumps into Telemachus's head. He could almost see his magnificent father
here in the minds eye. If only he might drop from the clouds and
drive these suitors all in a route throughout the halls. So Telemachus is just
waiting for something, like a miracle to happen, right?
Well, you know, chances are his father is not gonna just drop from the clouds and
take care of things. So he's waiting for something impossible
and that's just not, sort of, natural hero stuff to have happen.
Instead, if something's going wrong and a hero is around.
A hero is gonna take care of business. Heroes take things into their own hands
and get things done. Telemachus is not quite ready for that.
Instead what he typically does is blame the gods, blame the situation, blame fate,
blame others, but especially he blames the gods.
Take a look at what he does on page 85 shortly after we meet him. Page 85 in Fagles's
translation. Once we were a wealthy house now the gods
have reversed have reversed our fortunes with a vengeance.
The gods have invented other miseries to plague me as well.
So Telemachus blames what's happening on the gods.
Well, sure from this we can understand that the
Greeks did have a very broad understanding of divine involvement in the world.
And it might make perfect sense for someone to turn around and say it's, you
know, the gods' fault. They're controlling things in a certain
way, right? Take a look at another example of this,
pages 88 and 89. Telemachus jumps in, at a moment in the conversation.
Penelope has just come down, from her chambers, she hears Phemius the bard singing tales
of homecomings of the great heroes coming back from Troy.
Recall what we're reading here. Homer's Odyssey is itself one of these
kind of homecomings. So Phemius's for us, doing within the
Odyssey. A kind of Odyssey taking about homecomings
of the great heroes from Troy. When Penelope hears this, she's sad, she
wishes that Phemius would stop, and says "oh please poet relent, don't do this." At which
point Telemachus jumps in and says "mother that's actually not fair, you shouldn't be
blaming Phemius the bard, because bards are not to blame." He says, pages 88 and 89, "Zeus is
to blame. He deals tp each and every laborer on this earth whatever doom he
pleases." Now heroes typically don't jump in with this kind of fatalistic talk.
Yes, indeed it's true the gods are busy, the gods are active, the gods are engaged
in the world. But they don't typically blame the gods
for all the things that go on in the world.
When they reference that kind of aspect of things, it'll be a different, something
else is going on in a hero's mind. And, if some nasty stuff is happening
right in a hero's face, the hero doesn't say, oh, there's nothing I can do, and
just step back and say, the gods must be in control of it, so, instead, I'm gonna
sit back powerless, and withdraw. They don't take divine involvement in the
world as a way to sit back and exonerate themselves from action that they're
responsible for taking. Heroes always jump in and try to take
action as best they can. There is a kind of double determination
that's at work in the Homeric world. It's a certain kind of determinism if Zeus
declares something, yes indeed it's going to happen.
If the gods are involved in it they're much stronger than here than we mortals,
so they're gonna kinda make stuff happen, but that determinism doesn't turn.
Into a kind of fatalism. At least in the heroes minds.
Fatalism is a discussion of the weak and in this case Telemachus is expressing that
weakness. Whereas what a hero does is step up and
say, yes, great things happen by the Gods, and now, Gods, use my hands as instruments
to execute your will and the fate of what's about to happen.
The heroes assume that they are powerful cogs in the machineries of fate.
And their hands are what's going to bring the fated outcome to fruition.
They need to be involved. They need to be engaged.
The more engaged the more heroic. The less engaged the less heroic.
So, Telemachus is giving us a side, the less heroic version of this here.
As if we needed more proof on this, we'll see lots of examples when we come to
Odysseus, of him acting in this kind of a way.
But take a look at the very beginning of the epic on page 78 of Fagles'
translation. Within the first 100 lines, Zeus himself
chimes in on this particular issue and says, how shameless the way these mortals
blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their
miseries. Yes, but they, themselves, with their own
reckless ways. Compound their pains beyond their proper
share. So Zeus is saying, you human beings.
Sure, we're in charge of stuff, we run stuff.
But you have to stop being reckless. And you've gotta get engaged, and take
care of business yourself. Don't just sit back and blame us for all
the bad things that happen. Now, when Telemachus needs to make this
turn from the kind of a person that sits back and lets bad things happen, and feels
bad for himself. To the kind of person more like Odysseus
who takes action, and gets, gets things done.
He's gonna need some guidance. He's gonna need some help.
The help Telemachus is gonna get is gonna come in this figure of Athena, disguised
usually as Mentor. When she's, the senior person helping
Telemachus around. You'll see in the very, First time we see
her in Book I, she's actually in the, in the figure of Mentes,
another, elder figure who shows up, but typically as a Mentor.
And for some of you out there who are saying, wait a minute, does that have
anything to do with the English word. "mentor", from which we get a noun and a
verb, mentoring, to bring someone along. Yes, indeed, it does.
The English word is just drawn directly from the Greek proper name and it becomes
a very, well, prominent word, even in a contemporary discourse.
So, Athena, in this disguise as mentor, leads Telemechus along and brings him on
a, a, on a kind of. A journey literal as well as figurative in
order that he can grow up. That kind of back-and-forth starts to
happen in Book I as Athena jumps in and starts to help our youth,
Telemachus along and she brings him through the things that he needs to, to,
to, to do in order to gain these new capacities.
To gain this new perspective. Just really to grow up.
We're gonna see Telemachus's travels in our next book but in closing things off
lets take an example of the old Telemachus, the early Telemachus. As he shows up Book I we see him feeling sorry for
himself and daydreaming. Athena comes along and kind of gets him
going, but she does then help him, nudge him into taking some action.
So at the close of Book I he decides he's going to call an assembly.
Opening of Book II he does call the assembly.
When he does it's a pretty sad result. He brings all the people together and says
"Oh. You, suitors, I've had it up to here with you."
And he gesticulates and gets angry and fulminates and says that he, this all has
to stop. At which point, what happens, his reaction
in the crowd of the people who are violating him.
They all feel sorry for him. They pat him on the head and they say aw,
so sorry Telemachus we, you know, were eating you out of house and home I can see
how that makes you sad but really don't blame us you should blame your mother.
So they pass the buck and talk about as if there is some abstract thing that is
hurting Telemachus. Don't take responsibility and they, and
they surely don't engage Telemachus' attempt to engage them.
So Telemachus is not quite ready. He does the right thing by calling the
assembly, but he doesn't quite have the, heft.
In, within his society to pull this off. Pity is not what you want to have happen
when you come out and read a bunch of people the riot act.
Instead, you're looking for something else.
We're gonna see that something else get stirred up in the suitors, but it's gonna
take a number of books before we get there.
Once we do, those poor suitors, we, we might start to feel a little sorry for
them instead of them pitying Telemachus. Next what we're gonna see is Telemachus off
on his journey. We'll talk about that in the next lecture.