We're few. We are a handful. Perhaps only two or three of us.
We sailed to Ithaca. We fought to the death at Troy.
Our wives were waiting for us.
We have thrown the seed into the furrow.
The universe, in essence, is simply and flatly arranged,
And the fate of wanderers is to sail to the house and disdain thrones ...
I know. I was Odysseus.
Oleg Ladyzhensky

Of the numerous heroes of the Trojan War, special attention is drawn to the only one who became famous by no means for feats of arms. Among the muscular machos, solving all problems with a sword and a spear, the cunning Odysseus (aka Ulysses) looks like a black sheep. This is probably why he was honored to become the protagonist of a poem comparable to the Iliad, and forever enter into legend.

Odysseus is one step closer to us than all other ancient Greek mythological heroes. He is not a white marble demigod, but an ordinary person who, among all the trials that have fallen to his lot, only dreams of returning to his homeland, to his beloved wife and son. His feelings are understandable and close to us, so we believe the whole story of his ordeals on the way home - no matter how fantastic the adventures of Odysseus may seem. In a sense, The Odyssey is the first fantasy: an unrealistic story about real people. So the myth began to turn into literature.

Visiting a fairy tale

There are two versions regarding the origin of the Odyssey, first published in the 4th century BC. e. Most researchers assume that it is collected in parts from different stories and that Homer, whoever he was, acted only as a talented compiler. But there are those who believe that the journey of Odysseus was described immediately and in its entirety - perhaps for the first time it was recorded from the words of the legendary king of Ithaca himself or his companions. In favor of the first is the fact that attempts to draw up some kind of travel route of our hero close to reality were unsuccessful: there is no consensus as to which modern places Odysseus visited. If we put together all the versions, it turns out that the cunning hero was thrown from side to side throughout the Mediterranean, brought to the Black Sea or the Atlantic Ocean, there is also a hypothesis that Odysseus made the first ever trip around the world. You can’t even write this off to the machinations of fate or the gods. On the other hand, none of the "proto-Odysseys" has yet been discovered - perhaps they existed only in the oral tradition.

For the reader, however, it is obvious that the text of the Odyssey falls into three unequal parts. Moreover, there are actually two journeys in the poem. While the king of Ithaca unsuccessfully tries to return home, his son Telemachus, who grew up without a father (after all, twenty years have passed since the Achaean ships set off to conquer Troy!), goes in search of him. He is visiting his father's comrades-in-arms, who returned from under the walls of Troy a long time ago, and tries to find out at least something about Odysseus. Meanwhile, our hero disappears somewhere in absolutely fantastic places: with the nymph Calypso and the sorceress Kirk (Circe), on the islands of lotophages, sirens and cyclops, in dangerous waters near the island of sirens and between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis ... Finally, the third part - this is the return of Odysseus home under the guise of a beggar wanderer and his reprisal against the suitors of the faithful Penelope.

If we assume that the Odyssey is a patchwork of various plots, it becomes clear why different peoples, far from each other, had similar stories about the incredible adventures of sea travelers. It is no coincidence that Odysseus is very similar to Sinbad the Sailor, and also to the legendary Celtic hero Mel Duin (the story of the latter is set out in Alfred Tennyson's poem "Maldune's Wanderings"). The story of a husband separated from his wife, who was almost married off in his absence, is another wandering plot: its version is set forth, for example, in the Indian legend Nal and Damayanti, which became part of the grand epic Mahabharata.

We learn about the wanderings of Odysseus from the hero himself: the story of adventures is put into his mouth. From the ninth to the thirteenth canto of the Odyssey, he tells about everything he experienced during the years of difficult trials, at a feast at the king of the Feacians Alcinous. This form of presentation also came from ancient times. The ancient Egyptian fairy tale "The Shipwrecked" is known - an incredible story of a certain sailor about how he got to the island, where a huge snake ruled, the lord of the land of incense.

So, if you are courageous, master yourself! Be brave and you will hug your children, you will kiss your wife, you will see your house again - and what could be better than that? You will return to your city and live to the end of your days among your brethren.

"Shipwrecked"

It was the stories of sailors about their travels that gave rise to a host of fairy tales and legends about the wonders of distant lands. Navigation at the dawn of navigation was a very dangerous occupation, travel took months and years, and exotic realities turned into pure fantasy in the minds of eyewitnesses and their compatriots listening to these stories. So the human fantasy in its own way created the world in which our distant ancestors lived, depicting it as an unsafe, but incredibly interesting place. Travel was the lot of brave and intelligent people who had the strength of a warrior and the curiosity of an explorer - and our Odysseus is just that.

Roundtrip

The most fascinating thing for the reader in the journey of Odysseus is to trace his path and correlate legendary places with real ones. All the bizarre islands and shores, on which the will of the gods brought our traveler, are believed to have existed in reality - only human fantasy has changed them beyond recognition.

One of the first "reference points" of the route of Odysseus is the island of lotophages ("lotus eaters"). It is believed that this fabulous people lived on an island off the coast of North Africa, which the Greeks called Libya. Another version claims that Odysseus was carried in a completely different direction - into the Black Sea, and this island was located at the mouth of the Danube or even the Kuban: huge plantations of river lotuses still grow here. However, it is quite possible that Homer's lotus is not a flower at all: in one place he calls it a tree. For the role of a fabulous lotus, they were offered: a certain kind of plums, dates, jojoba or banal hashish. The latest version seems to be the closest to the truth - in terms of the effect produced by the legendary lotus. The fruits of this tree, according to Homer, had a fabulous property: whoever tasted it fell into a state of blissful half-asleep, completely forgetting who he was and where he came from. The companions of Odysseus almost remained in the country of lotophages forever - the hero had to tie them to the ship's benches and pull them out of the wonderful island by force. Eating or drinking that gives oblivion is another popular fairy tale motif: it is enough to recall the folklore prohibition of eating or drinking anything in a magical land so as not to stay there forever.

Then Odysseus was brought to the island of the Cyclopes, where he managed to famously deceive the strong but stupid Polyphemus and gouge out his only eye. This island is associated now with Crete, now with Sicily: on the first island there are still wild goats that Polyphemus grazed, disorderly heaps of rocks rise on the banks, as if scattered in anger by some giant, and legends about giants circulate among the people. However, on almost every seashore there are rocks, the origin of which is attributed to the tricks of the giants. As for the mythical one-eyed giants themselves, legends about them could appear for the most unexpected reasons - for example, thanks to the skulls of ancient dwarf elephants, which are still found in abundance on the islands of the Mediterranean. On these turtles, the most conspicuous hole is where the trunk used to be, and can easily be mistaken for a single eye.

Odysseus (in translation, this name means “angry” or “wrathful of the gods”) is the only son of King Ithaca Laertes and Anticlea, the daughter of the famous businessman and swindler Autolycus, the son of Hermes. It is believed that it was the dodgy god who inherited Odysseus his ingenuity, for which the hero was nicknamed "cunning". Despite this, Athena Pallas has always been the patroness of the hero - she helped him in many difficult situations.

In his youth, Odysseus, along with all the heirs of the dwarf Greek kingdoms, took part in the mass matchmaking to Helen the Beautiful in Sparta - but he met her cousin Penelope, and he liked her much more. To the failed father-in-law Tyndareus, Odysseus gave invaluable, albeit fatal, advice: he offered to force all suitors to swear allegiance to Elena's chosen one, whoever he was. The beauty chose Menelaus, and later, when the Trojan prince Paris kidnapped her, the offended husband gathered a mighty army and started the Trojan War.

Odysseus did not want to go to war and, in order to "slope", pretended to be crazy: he harnessed a horse and a bull to the plow and scattered handfuls of salt across the field. He was outwitted by another ancient Greek hero, Palamedes: he simply laid the newborn Telemachus across the furrow, and Odysseus was forced to admit that his madness was imaginary. Subsequently, according to later authors, the Ithaca took revenge on Palamedes, during the Trojan War, by throwing a false letter from Priam into his tent and accusing his comrade-in-arms of treason. And it was Odysseus who was able to lure Achilles to the war, whom his mother Thetis dressed in a woman's dress and hid among the girls: at first he pretended to be a merchant and attracted the girls with rich goods, and then he simulated the attack of the robbers - and only Achilles did not run away with his friends, but grabbed his weapon , thereby giving himself away.

Our cunning hero is also largely responsible for the outcome of the war: it was he who came up with the idea of ​​building a huge wooden horse, inside which the Achaean leaders could hide in order to penetrate the city in this way. And after the death of Achilles, Odysseus got his armor.

The next item on the itinerary list of the gods in charge of Odysseus's involuntary cruise was the island of Eol, the god of the winds. According to Homer, the Aeolian fortress was surrounded by a bronze wall - that is why the traveler Tim Severin, repeating the route of Odysseus, considered that Eol lived in the same place, on Crete, where the old pirate fortress of Grabuza is now located. Here the rocks look like the walls of a man-made fortress, and in the rays of the setting sun they acquire a copper-red hue. Another hypothesis places the island of Aeola south of Sicily (this could be, for example, Malta). In Sicily, according to both ancient authors and modern researchers, there was the legendary kingdom of the listrigon giants, who smashed eleven ships of Odysseus, and only one escaped.

The most furious controversy among researchers is the location of Eya - the island of the sorceress Kirka, who turned Odysseus's companions into pigs, and left him with her as a lover. From this connection, the son Telegon was born. Kirk, according to legend, was the daughter of Helios and the sister of the Colchis king Eeta, the owner of the golden fleece and the father of Medea - both of these treasures were deprived of him by the Argonauts. Due to the fact that Colchis (Caucasus) was considered the favorite country of the sun god Helios, the island of Eia was most often searched for somewhere in the Black Sea. True, the question remains open - what kind of wind brought Odysseus there? This question should be answered literally: after all, the storm that brought the ship to the shores of Eia was caused by the wind from the magic bag presented by Eol. However, there are other contenders for the role of Kirki Island - the heavenly Greek island of Paxos or an island off the coast of Italy, somewhere near Rome; Possibly Capri.

Kirka pointed out to Odysseus where to look for the gates to the underworld, as he needed to communicate with the shadow of the soothsayer Tiresias. Temples dedicated to the lord of the underworld Hades, in Greece, were usually located near deep caves and clefts, and indeed reminiscent of the entrances to the underworld. Poisonous fumes often rose from some of these cracks, reinforcing the "afterlife" impression. Almost every Greek city had a personal entrance to Hades: for example, at least three places were shown from where Hercules supposedly brought Cerberus (Cerberus). Tim Severin was looking for the place where Odysseus sacrificed the dead, on the banks of the real river Acheron in the north-west of modern Greece, where it merges with another river, in ancient times called Cocytus. Although Homer indicated that the entrance to Hades was located far to the west, in the country of the Cimmerians, behind the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar). Most likely, this is a mistake of Homer or a copyist: real Cimmerians inhabited Transcaucasia in the 7th century BC, this name is also used for the pre-Scythian cultures of the Northern Black Sea region. Even ancient commentators corrected this name to "Kerberia" - the mythical people of Kerberos, the three-headed guardian of Hades. Such “afterlife geography” by Homer already indicates that the Greeks ceased to limit their world only to their native policy - Oikumene expanded, “nomos” (literally - “law”, more broadly - a place equipped according to human laws) grew to the size of “cosmos” (of the universe).

Leaving Eia, Odysseus sails past the island of the Sirens, who, with their marvelous singing, lured ships onto sharp rocks. Everything is clear with the rocks: swimming near the coast, especially unfamiliar ones, was dangerous with the possibility of getting on the reefs, especially if the coastal rocks are disguised by "bird colonies" or rookeries of marine animals. But where did the legends of singing that drive sailors go crazy come from? Studies have shown that over time, holes in some coastal rocks could be washed out, in which the wind whistled - and often not only whistled, but also emitted infrasound. Sound in this range is not perceived by the human ear, but it affects the nervous system, causing a feeling of fear, up to panic attacks. In such a state, it is not surprising to throw yourself overboard and throw the ship onto the reefs with an incorrect turn of the rudder.

Interestingly, Homer does not describe the appearance of the sirens. Their description as half-woman half-bird is found in the Roman poet Ovid in Metamorphoses. In medieval bestiaries, they are depicted as natural mermaids - half-woman, half-fish (perhaps dugong seals served as their prototypes). Before Odysseus, only the Argonauts managed to pass their island - because Orpheus drowned out the singing of the sirens by playing his lyre. As for our hero, he covered the ears of his companions with wax, and tied himself to the mast so as not to rush into the sea to the mysterious call. According to later legends, the sirens were predicted to die when one of the sailors managed to pass unharmed, but who was ultimately responsible for their death - the Argonauts or Odysseus - is unknown. As for the island itself, it is usually placed near Sicily or on one of the capes of the island: there are plenty of rocks dangerous for navigation. Tim Severin, on the other hand, believed that the island of the Sirens was the Greek Lefkada, not far from Ithaca.

After the sirens, Odysseus was in for another mortal danger - or rather, even two: Scylla (Scylla) and Charybdis. These sea monsters settled on both sides of the narrow strait: the six-headed Skilla, sitting on a rock, grabbed gaping sailors, and Charybdis sucked those who survived into her insatiable mouth. Odysseus noticed that Charybdis draws water into itself not constantly, but only three times a day, and passed by the monster when it was calm, at the cost of the lives of six comrades, whom the Skills managed to grab the mouths of. Traditionally, these monsters are placed on both sides of the Messenian Strait, which is between Italy and Sicily: it is rather narrow, and there are strong currents and huge whirlpools in it. According to the interpretation of the ancient author Palefat (very strange, however), Homer called the fast trireme of the Tyrrhenian pirates pursuing Odysseus Scilla, and Charybdis - an ordinary whirlpool. And according to Severin, such a dangerous place for Greek sailors could be the strait between the island of Lefkada and mainland Greece: on the one hand, there is a rock with a cave suitable for Skilla's habitation, and on the other, a rocky shallow, around which waves constantly foam.

Another mysterious place for researchers is Ogygia, the island of the nymph Calypso, with whom Odysseus lived for seven years. Homer placed this island somewhere far in the West: according to the text of the poem, Odysseus's ship was brought here by a storm as a punishment for the fact that his companions ate one of the sacred bulls of Helios that grazed on the island of Trinacria (the ancient name of Sicily) - so Odysseus lost his last his friends. Ogygia was identified with the island of Gavd (now Gozo) near Malta (here tourists are even shown the grotto in which the nymph allegedly lived), with the Adriatic island of Nymphea (now Sazani) or with Gibraltar. According to Plutarch, this island lay to the west of Britain - that is, it may well be Ireland, where other desperate Phoenician and Greek sailors brought. Tellingly, the epithet "Ogigi" referred to the underworld, and according to Homer, poplars and cypresses grow on the island itself - trees associated with the cult of the dead. In this sense, Odysseus, having escaped from the very pleasant captivity of Calypso, which offered him immortality and eternal youth, returned from the afterlife - thanks to the will to live and love for loved ones who are still waiting for him in Ithaca. True, it could not have done without the intervention of the gods: a messenger of Hermes was sent to Calypso with an order to release Odysseus.

The penultimate stage of the journey - the island of feaks - is usually identified with the Greek island of Corfu (in ancient times, Kerkyra). Here, at the feast of King Alcinous, where the wanderer is brought by the princess Nausicaa, who discovered his raft on the seashore, Odysseus tells the story of his disasters. Alkinoy immediately gives the order to equip the ship to take the hero to Ithaca. According to Homer, when the Phaeacians returned home, an angry Poseidon, who did not particularly like Odysseus, turned their ship into stone - now a rock that looks like an ancient ship can be seen in one of the bays of the island.

On this, the long journey of Odysseus was over: he still had to be recognized by his relatives, deal with the insolent suitors of Penelope, and finally live peacefully and happily on his native island. However, the legends did not leave him alone, but that, as they say, is a completely different story ...

Space Odyssey Captain Odysseus

In literature, Odysseus has become an archetypal eternal wanderer, like the Wandering Jew, and the story of his return home is a household name for any journey at all. The Roman Virgil composed his Aeneid in imitation of the Odyssey - this is a kind of remake of it based on Roman material. The Odyssey of Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini And "2001 Space Odyssey" by Arthur C. Clarke- two works very far from each other, but they both pay tribute to the most famous journey in literature with their title. According to the plot of the poem, one of the most significant novels of the twentieth century was written - Ulysses by James Joyce: the author, among other things (and this other thing in the book - a wagon and a small cart), ironically reduces ancient images - for example, the faithful Penelope in "Ulysses" turned into the wife of the protagonist, a dissolute and stupid Molly.

Throwing bronzed heroes off their pedestals is the most obvious way for writers to rethink myth. Thoroughly cleans the history of the Odyssey wanderings from the heroic halo of the Swede Eivind Yunson in the novel "Surf and Shores": the king of Ithaca here is an ordinary person with his human weaknesses, who, after the Trojan War, no longer wants to kill, no matter how the gods insist that he must "put things in order" on his native island. The story of Odysseus for the author is a way to reflect on the possibility and necessity of the use of violence, the relationship between ends and means. A Margaret Atwood V "Penelopiad" gives the floor to the faithful wife of Odysseus, who talks about how hard it was for her in the absence of her husband, chilling in the beds of nymphs and sorceresses. The eternal restlessness of the hero, according to Atwood, became a punishment for the massacre not so much with the suitors, but with the maids of Penelope, who in fact were faithful allies in the war against the greedy applicants for her hand.

Original interpretations of the image are quite rare in literature: the authors of numerous plays and novels on ancient themes almost do not go beyond the canonical plot, apparently considering that it is quite exhaustive. One of the first original Dante in his "Divine Comedy". We find Odysseus in hell - and not because he was not, and could not be, a Christian, but because an insatiable thirst for wandering prompted him to leave home and family over and over again - the author does not at all consider this a virtue.

“Neither tenderness for the son, nor before the father

Sacred fear, nor the debt of love calm

Near Penelope with a joyful brow

Could not subdue my sultry hunger

Explore the far horizon of the world

And everything that people are bad and worthy of ... "

Dante Alighieri
"The Divine Comedy"
(Hell, Canto XVI)

Unable to interrupt his eternal journey Odysseus in a pseudo-historical fantasy Henry Rider Haggard "The Drifter". After returning to Ithaca, the protagonist is brought to Egypt, where he witnesses the beginning of the wanderings of the Jews released by the pharaoh from Egyptian slavery. Here he meets Elena the Beautiful and falls in love with her: the two key figures of the Trojan War are united not only by common memories, but also by a common tragic fate, for the wrath of the gods has no statute of limitations. If Haggard sheds light on Odysseus' life after the Odyssey, then Glyn Ilif in the novel "King of Ithaca" tells about the events preceding the campaign against Troy - about the rivalry between suitors for the hand of Helen the Beautiful, the marriage of Odysseus to Penelope and his accession to his native island. "The King of Ithaca" is the first book of the large-scale epic "The Adventures of Odysseus": the continuations already published in English tell about the Trojan War, and then a novel about the return of Odysseus to his homeland will follow. And only the active participation of the gods in this whole story does not allow Ailif's novels to be called historical.

In the Homeric poem, many realities are begging to become symbols. Lion Feuchtwanger in the story "Odysseus and the Pigs, or On the Inconvenience of Civilization" writes not so much about Odysseus, but about his companion, who did not want to turn from a pig back into a man. The moral is obvious: only a thin layer of civilization separates a person from an animal, and it is sometimes so difficult to resist animal instincts that permission to indulge them is the greatest happiness.

Finally, sneaking up, I managed to touch the root of one of the pigs. Immediately the bristles that covered it fell asleep, and my companion Elpenor appeared before me, the youngest of us, an ordinary young man who did not distinguish himself in battles and was not endowed with reason. He stood straight in front of me in his human form. But he did not embrace me as I expected, and he was not jubilant, and he was not happy. No, he began to reproach me, saying: “Have you come again, evil disturber? Do you want to torment us again, expose our bodies to dangers and demand decisions from our souls? It's sweet to be what I was, to wallow in the mud in the sun, to rejoice in food and drink, to grunt and not have any doubts: should I do this or that? Why have you come, why are you forcibly returning me to a hated former life? Thus he reproached me, weeping and cursing. Then he went, got drunk and went to bed on the roof of the Circein house.

Lion Feuchtwanger

Perhaps one of the most profound interpretations of the story of Odysseus is offered by the novel Henry Lion Oldie "Odysseus son of Laertes". The authors managed, almost without departing from the canonical outline of events (from noticeable differences - for example, the fact that Odysseus in Oldie becomes the culprit of the death of Achilles), to tell not only about the adventures of Odysseus the Wanderer, but also about a whole era when the time of demigod heroes was replaced by the time of mortals who dream not of exploits and a beautiful death, but of a family and returning home. "Odyssey ..." became an indirect continuation of the novel "The Hero Must Be Alone": the heroes of the new era do not survive alone. Another look at the events described suggests Andrey Valentinov in the novel "Diomedes son of Tydeus"- more sober, less enthusiastic, sometimes arguing with "Odysseus, son of Laertes."

Making an ancient Greek hero a science fiction character? Easy! In the dilogy Dan Simmons "Ilion" And "Olympus" Odysseus plays one of the key roles, and a very mysterious one at that. While some powerful beings who call themselves gods replay the events of the Trojan War on Mars, on the Earth of the distant future - in a rather insipid hedonistic paradise - a mysterious wanderer is announced, calling himself Odysseus ... As always with Simmons, the number of references and allusions to the ancient and modern literature in dilogy is simply over the top, and our eternal wanderer here is just a small piece of a multi-colored mosaic in which Shakespeare, Proust, and Nabokov were involved. In Eduard Gevorkyan's novel The Dark Mountain, Odysseus, returning home, encounters the high technologies of the Atlanteans, who, it turns out, unleashed the Trojan War, but a brave Ithaca sinks their last ship. A Valentine Legend in the book "Olympic level showdown", partly parodying Oldie's novel, and completely makes Olympus an alien spaceship, and Odysseus - the son of the Cyclops Polyphemus ...

There is no such epic story that could not be turned into a parody. British mocker Terry Pratchett could not pass by such an opportunity: in the novel "Eric, and the Night Watch, Witches, and Cohen the Barbarian" an episodic character named Windrinsey appears - when the unlucky demonologist Eric, along with Rincewind, are transported to the era of the "Torth Wars".

Eric rolled his eyes.

“It was the cunning of Windrinsey that caused the fall of Tsort,” he explained. “And then it took Windrinsey ten years to get home. He experienced many adventures with temptresses, sirens and sensual sorceresses.

- Well, I understand why you studied the classics. Ten years, right? Where did he live?

"About two hundred miles from here," Eric replied seriously.

- What, constantly strayed from the road?

“And then when he got home, he fought with his wife's fans and everything, and his beloved old dog recognized the owner and died.

- Oh Gods.

- He, the dog, and not Windrinsey, was finished off by the fact that he carried his master's slippers for fifteen years. What a pity.

Terry Pratchett

But the original film incarnations in the history of Odysseus are much less than literary ones. Two large-scale adaptations of Homer's poem, which are very close to the text, are considered classic: "The Travels of Odysseus"("Ulysses", 1955) with Kirk Douglas and "Odyssey"(1997) with Armand Assante. Interestingly, in the first film, Circe and Penelope are played by the same actress. In film "Troy"(2004) the role of Odysseus is played by Sean Bean. The most unexpected angle of view on the classic plot is shown by a completely non-fantastic picture - "Oh, where are you, brother?" the Coen brothers. Here, Ulysses is the name of a prisoner played by George Clooney, Penny (Penelope) is his wife, who has already married another, and the comic "odyssey" consists of escaping from hard labor. The funny thing about this whole story is that the film won an Oscar for Best Adaptation of a Literary Work.

Finally, one cannot fail to mention a very curious anime incarnation of the eternal plot - 26-episode Uchuu Densetsu Ulysses 31 ("Ulysses 31: A Space Legend", 1988). The action takes place in the XXXI century. The main character - Ulysses, the captain of the spaceship with the unbanal name "Odysseus" - saves the son of Telemachus, abducted by aliens, but the aliens in retaliation erase information about the reverse course from the memory of the on-board computer, and now Ulysses must get to the mysterious kingdom of Hades (that is, Hades) to find my way home...

According to ancient mythology, the Latins - the indigenous population of Italy, the future Romans - were the descendants of Latinus, the son of Odysseus and Calypso. Virgil's "Aeneid" appeared much later, when the Romans hatched their own national pride: before that, it was believed that descending from a great hero is much more honorable than from the representative of the losing side, the Trojan Aeneas.

In a sense, Odysseus is the ideal traveler: not a restless vagabond, but a person who has a goal. Jorge Luis Borges, in his famous essay on "there are only four stories," cites the Odyssey as an example of the eternal story of returning home. And this is a story that there is always hope for a return, no matter what hardships await us on the way. Perhaps that is why this legend is still alive today.

The ODYSSEY is a Greek epic poem, along with the Iliad, attributed to Homer. Being completed later than the Iliad, O. adjoins an earlier epic, without constituting, however, a direct continuation of the Iliad. The theme of the Odyssey is the wanderings of the cunning Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who was returning from the Trojan campaign; in separate references there are episodes of the saga, the time of which was timed to coincide with the period between the action of the Iliad and the action of the Odyssey.

COMPOSITION "O". built on very archaic material. The plot of a husband returning unrecognized to his homeland after long wanderings and ending up at his wife's wedding is one of the most widespread folklore plots, as well as the plot of "a son going in search of his father." Almost all episodes of Odysseus' wanderings have numerous fairy-tale parallels. The very form of the story in the first person, used for the stories about the wanderings of Odysseus, is traditional in this genre and is known from the Egyptian literature of the beginning of the 2nd millennium.

Narrative technique in "O." in general close to the Iliad, but the younger epic is distinguished by greater art in combining diverse material. Separate episodes are less isolated and form integral groups. The composition of the Odyssey is more complex than the Iliad.

The plot of the Iliad is presented in a linear sequence, in the Odyssey this sequence is shifted: the narration begins in the middle of the action, and the listener learns about previous events only later, from the story of Odysseus himself about his wanderings, i.e. one of the artistic means is retrospection .

The "song" theory, which explained the emergence of large poems by the mechanical "stitching" of individual "songs", was therefore rarely applied to "O."; Much more widespread among researchers is Kirchhoff's hypothesis that "O." is a reworking of several "small epics" ("Telemachia", "wanderings", "the return of Odysseus", etc.).

The disadvantage of this construction is that it breaks apart the plot of the “return of the husband”, the integrity of which is evidenced by parallel stories in the folklore of other peoples, which have a more primitive form than “O.”; theoretically a very plausible hypothesis of one or more "proto-dysseys", i.e. poems that contained the plot completely and formed the basis of the canonical "O.", encounters great difficulties when trying to restore the course of action of any "proto-dyssey" .

The poem opens, after the usual appeal to the Muse, with a brief description of the situation: all the participants in the Trojan campaign, who escaped death, returned home safely, only Odysseus languishes in separation from his family, forcibly held by the nymph Calypso. Further details are put into the mouths of the gods, discussing the issue of Odysseus at their council: Odysseus is on the distant island of Ogygia, and the seductress Calypso wants to keep him with her, hoping that he will forget about his native Ithaca,

But, wishing in vain To see at least smoke rising from his native shores in the distance, He prays to Death alone.

The gods do not give him help because Poseidon is angry with him, whose son, Cyclops Polyphemus, was once blinded by Odysseus. Athena, who patronizes Odysseus, offers to send the messenger of the gods Hermes to Calypso with the order to release Odysseus, and she herself goes to Ithaca, to Odysseus' son Telemachus. In Ithaca, at this time, suitors wooing Penelope feast daily in the house of Odysseus and squander his wealth. Athena encourages Telemachus to go to Nestor and Menelaus, who have returned from Troy, to find out about their father and prepare for revenge on the suitors (Book 1).

The second book gives a picture of the popular assembly of Ithaca. Telemachus brings a complaint against the suitors, but the people are powerless against the noble youth, who demand that Penelope choose someone else. Along the way, the image of the “reasonable” Penelope arises, with the help of tricks delaying consent to marriage. With the help of Athena, Telemachus equips the ship and secretly leaves Ithaca for Pylos to Nestor (Book 2). Nestor informs Telemachus about the return of the Achaeans from under Troy and about the death of Agamemnon. Having escaped, thanks to the miraculous intervention of the goddess Levkofei, from the storm raised by Poseidon, Odysseus swims ashore about. Scheria, where happy people live - feaks, sailors who have fabulous ships, fast, “like light wings or thoughts”, who do not need a rudder and understand the thoughts of their sailors. The meeting of Odysseus on the shore with Nausicaa, the daughter of the Phaeacian king Alminoy, who came to the sea to wash clothes and play ball with the servants, is the content of the 6th book, rich in idyllic moments. Alkina, with his wife Areta, receives the wanderer in a luxurious palace (book 7) and arranges games and a feast in his honor, where the blind singer Demodocus sings about the exploits of Odysseus and thereby brings tears to the eyes of the guest (book 8). The picture of the happy life of the feacs is very curious. There is reason to think that, according to the original meaning of the myth, the feacs are death shippers, carriers to the realm of the dead, but this mythological meaning has already been forgotten in the Odyssey, and death shippers have been replaced by a fabulous “gay-loving” people of sailors leading a peaceful and magnificent lifestyle, in which , along with the features of the life of the trading cities of Ionia in the 8th - 7th centuries, one can also see memories of the era of the power of Crete.

Finally, Odysseus reveals his name to the Phaeacians and tells of his ill-fated adventures on the road from Troy. The story of Odysseus occupies the 9th - 12th book of the poem and contains a number of folklore plots, often found in the tales of the New Age. The form of the story in the first person is also traditional for stories about the fabulous adventures of seafarers and is known to us from Egyptian monuments of the 2nd millennium BC. e. (the so-called "story of the shipwrecked").

The first adventure is still quite realistic: Odysseus and his companions rob the city of the Kikons (in Thrace), but then a storm carries his ships over the waves for many days, and he ends up in distant, wonderful countries. At first it is a country of peaceful lotophages, "devourers of the lotus", a wonderful sweet flower; having tasted it, a person forgets about his homeland and forever remains a lotus collector.

Then Odysseus finds himself in the land of the Cyclopes (Cyclops), one-eyed monsters, where the cannibal giant Polyphemus devours several of Odysseus' companions in his cave. Odysseus saves himself by drugging and blinding Polyphemus, and then exits the cave, along with other comrades, hanging under the belly of long-haired sheep. Odysseus avoids revenge from other Cyclopes, prudently calling himself "Nobody": the Cyclopes ask Polyphemus who offended him, but, having received the answer - "no one", they refuse to interfere; however, the blinding of Polyphemus becomes the source of numerous misadventures of Odysseus, since from now on he is pursued by the wrath of Posidon, the father of Polyphemus (book 9).

The folklore of navigators is characterized by a legend about the god of the winds Eol living on a floating island. Aeolus amiably handed Odysseus a fur with unfavorable winds tied in it, but not far from their native shores, Odysseus' companions untied the fur, and the storm again threw them into the sea. Then they again find themselves in the country of the cannibal giants, the Laestrigons, where "the paths of day and night converge" (obviously, distant rumors about the short nights of the northern summer reached the Greeks); the lestrigons destroyed all the ships of Odysseus, except for one, which then landed on the island of the sorceress Kirka (Circe).

Kirka, like a typical folklore witch, lives in a dark forest, in a house from which smoke rises above the forest; she turns Odysseus' companions into pigs, but Odysseus, with the help of a wonderful plant indicated to him by Hermes, overcomes the spell and enjoys Kirk's love for a year (book 10). Then, at the direction of Kirk, he goes to the realm of the dead in order to question the soul of the famous Theban soothsayer Tiresias.

In the context of the Odyssey, the need to visit the realm of the dead is completely unmotivated, but this element of the story contains, apparently, in naked form, the main mythological meaning of the entire plot about the husband’s “wanderings” and his return (death and resurrection; cf. p. 19). on Ithaca and the journey of Telemachus, and from the 5th book attention is concentrated almost exclusively around Odysseus: the motif of unrecognizability of the returning husband is used, as we have seen, in the same function as the absence of the hero in the Iliad, and meanwhile the listener does not lose Odysseus out of sight - and this also testifies to the improvement of the art of epic storytelling.

The world of "bright visions" of Homer is amazing and beautiful. The most attractive thing for the modern reader in Homer is an unobtrusive, ingenuous combination of truth and fiction, history and myth, which for Homer's contemporaries was not just a fiction that amuses the soul, but constituted a special kind of reality, a natural path to knowing the world and person.

Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky forced the poet, who lived in distant Greece almost three thousand years ago, to speak in Russian. He devoted seven years of his life to translating the Odyssey.

Modern science considers the 8th century BC to be the time of the creation of the Homeric poems, and the place of their appearance is Ionia, the then most developed part of Asia Minor Greece. The Iliad is the "older" poem, the Odyssey is the "younger". They are not separated by such a long period of time: the ancients believed that the Iliad was written by a young poet, and the Odyssey by an aging poet. In the first poem, attention is focused on the military exploits of the heroes of ancient times, in the second - on the peaceful, but full of vicissitudes of fate, the present and hopes for a better future.

The protagonist of the "Iliad" is the mighty knight "quick-footed" Achilles, because of whose personal offense the outcome of the whole difficult campaign near Troy, which was favorable for the Greeks, ("the wrath of Achilles") almost broke.

"Cunning" Odysseus is a hero of a different warehouse, nature is more complex and rich. He is a valiant warrior who has repeatedly proven his courage and resourcefulness during military operations, steadfast in trials, ready to sacrifice himself for others, resolute and wise. These character traits, already manifested in the Iliad, are fully revealed in the Odyssey, acquiring new facets and qualities.

The “Odyssey” is inferior in volume to the “older” poem, and the action here takes place in a shorter time, but it is more eventful, the storytelling technique is more skillful and whimsical, the plot and composition are intricate. The action either stops, then briskly runs forward, then reverses; some events are only briefly mentioned, others are sometimes described in detail in the third person, and more often, in the numerous and lengthy speeches of the heroes, in the first person. The scene of action moves freely in space - from the sea to the mainland, from island to island, from Calypso to the Phaeacians, from them to the Cyclopes, from Odysseus to Penelope and Telemachus, from celestials to people. The action of digression and repetitions, the author's predilection for details and detailed comparisons slow down. There is what is called the epic expanse.

Love and longing for the homeland completely own the hero of the poem. The gods take up arms against him - Poseidon and Aeolus, Helios and even Zeus, fabulous monsters and cruel storms threaten death, but nothing can destroy his craving for his native hearth, love for his father, wife and son, whom he has not seen for twenty years. The promises of Calypso to grant him immortality and eternal youth confronted him with the need for a moral choice. Odysseus does not hesitate to choose a path full of danger home.

Next to the idea of ​​patriotism sounds the theme of peaceful life, hostile to bloody battles, hatred and treachery. It is not deadly duels and military battles, not wandering in foreign lands that make up happiness on earth, but peaceful labors in the circle of a loving family. The idea of ​​the sanctity of marriage and the family constantly owned Homer. In the Iliad, she is embodied in the images of Hector and Andromache, in the Odyssey - Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus. They are all united by love, loyalty and duty. Penelope, fighting off the harassment of obsessive suitors, weaves for three years in a row during the day, and at night dissolves the woven, promising to give them consent to marriage after the shroud is ready for the aged Laertes, father of Odysseus. Telemachus, "the sensible son of the Odysseus," dreams of quickly setting off on the arduous search for his father, whose salvation he never doubted. Faithful servants of the Ithaca king deserve praise and reward, and cruel punishment overtakes the infidels.

The famous episode of Odysseus' stay with the Cyclopes is full of allegory. Abandoned by hostile forces on the island of a one-eyed ogre, Odysseus is subjected here to perhaps the most difficult test. The human mind and the literally monstrous and blind destructive elements collide. Here everything is gigantic exaggerated. The stone with which the Cyclops blocks the entrance to the cave, “and twenty-two four-wheeled wagons would not move from their place,” his club is from a ship's mast. His cannibalism is terrifying. Odysseus appears to the giant as a pitiful and frail little man. Nevertheless, he defeats Polyphemus. It is not just Mind and Dull Force that enter into the confrontation, but humanity, civility and comradeship, on the one hand, and “cave” savagery and unsociableness, on the other.

The antipodes of the Cyclopes are the Phaeacians in the Odyssey. The Cyclopes do not know the art of shipbuilding and navigation, the “gay-loving” feacs, on the contrary, are professional sailors. Moreover, their magical ships do not need helmsmen, they are obedient to the mental orders of shipmen.

Unlike the formidable Cyclops, the Phaeacians are benevolent and hospitable. “We, keeping the custom, will help the praying guest,” assures the wise king Alkina. If the Cyclopes do not have popular assemblies and councils, then among the Feaks the king confers with the elders for a long time, and when it is necessary to make a decision on helping Odysseus, he gathers all the people. The Cyclopes are loafers, only saturating their wombs, while the Phaeacians are busy with useful things - they build ships, and even the young princess Nausicaa, along with the slaves, washes clothes, and the queen Areta is a skilled weaver-sneeze. Feaki love work, art, cheerful and peaceful life.

Both of these episodes, despite their completeness and seeming independence, are skillfully included in the plot, compositionally coordinated, marked by the continuity of poetic recreation and perfectly fulfill their role: plunging into the world of a fairy tale, the listener enjoyed both fiction and realistic accuracy of details. ; at the same time he absorbed the truths that the poet gradually instilled in him:

Woe to him who allows himself on earth a lie!

The poet leads his story as if from the outside - objectively, calmly and unperturbed, as if moving away from everything. The presence of the author is clearly not felt, his mouth, as Homer believes, speaks inspiration inspired by Zeus and the muses. But behind the descriptions, remarks and speeches, comparisons, metaphors and epithets, from which the images, characters and destinies of people are woven, stands the living personality of Homer, who sympathizes with his hero and gladly comes to his aid in difficult times together with his patroness - the wise Athena.

The epic poems of Homer teach goodness, courage and humanity in their original purity and simplicity, they generously pass on from generation to generation the moral ideas of the people about justice, beauty and wisdom. The Odyssey glorifies peace and labor, reason and perseverance. Having opened the window wide into the distant past, it continues to excite souls, “transmit the message from heart to heart”, teach and educate, delight and captivate today, like three thousand years ago.

It reminds of the most important thing: a person must love his homeland and life, help his comrades, honestly fulfill his duty, keep love and loyalty to friends and relatives, uphold justice, honor and dignity, always strive for excellence and lofty goals.

Homer

Name: Odyssey

Genre: Poem

Duration:

Part 1: 8min 48sec

Part 2: 8min 28sec

Annotation:
The author asks the Muse to tell him about the wanderings of King Odysseus, which he endured when he returned to his native Ithaca after the Trojan War. The wanderings of Odysseus dragged on for 9 years.
The goddess Athena convinces the god Zeus that King Odysseus must return home from captivity. She advises Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, to look for Odysseus. Telemachus sails to the city of Pylos to King Nestor, who also participated in the Trojan War. Nestor sends Telemachus with his son Pisistratus to Sparta, to King Menelaus. Menelaus tells that Odysseus was taken prisoner and is on the island of the nymph Calypso.
At the request of Zeus, Calypso releases Odysseus home. He builds a raft and sets out under a false name. At one of the feasts they sing a song about the Trojan War. Odysseus is crying. They ask him who he is. Odysseus tells about his wanderings: how he visited the Cyclopes, how the giant lestrigons sank all the ships of Odysseus, how the sorceress Kirk turned his people into pigs. Then he visited the realm of the dead, where he met many dead, including his mother.
He sailed a lot on the sea, all his people died.
During the absence of Odysseus, his wife Penelope had suitors. Odysseus arrived in Ithaca in the form of an old man. Only to his son Telemachus does he reveal the truth. Together with Telemachus, they figure out how to outwit Penelope's suitors. Penelope announces an archery contest for Odysseus. She will marry the winner. Bridegrooms cannot string. Odysseus wins the competition. A battle ensues between Odysseus and the suitors. With the help of the goddess Athena, Odysseus emerges victorious. The suitors are killed. At first, Penelope does not believe that this is really Odysseus. But she asks him questions, to which he gives the right answers. Peace reigns.

Homer - Odyssey part 1. Listen to the summary online.

The Trojan War was started by the gods so that the time of heroes would end and the present, human, iron age would come. Who did not die at the walls of Troy, he had to die on the way back.

Most of the surviving Greek leaders sailed to their homeland, as they sailed to Troy - in a common fleet through the Aegean Sea. When they were halfway there, the sea god Poseidon broke out in a storm, the ships were swept away, people drowned in the waves and crashed on the rocks. Only the chosen ones were destined to be saved. But even those were not easy. Perhaps only the wise old Nestor managed to calmly reach his kingdom in the city of Pylos. The supreme king Agamemnon overcame the storm, but only to die an even more terrible death - in his native Argos he was killed by his own wife and her avenging lover; the poet Aeschylus will later write a tragedy about this. Menelaus, with Helen returned to him, was carried by the winds far into Egypt, and it took him a very long time to get to his Sparta. But the longest and most difficult of all was the path of the cunning king Odysseus, whom the sea carried around the world for ten years. About his fate, Homer composed his second poem: “Muse, tell me about that highly experienced husband who, / Wandering long since the day when Saint Ilion was destroyed by him, / Visited many people of the city and saw customs, / Endured much grief on the seas caring about salvation ... "

The Iliad is a heroic poem, its action takes place on a battlefield and in a military camp. "Odyssey" is a fabulous and everyday poem, its action takes place, on the one hand, in the magical lands of giants and monsters, where Odysseus wandered, on the other hand, in his small kingdom on the island of Ithaca and in its environs, where Odysseus was waiting for his wife Penelope and his son Telemachus. As in the Iliad, only one episode, “the wrath of Achilles”, is chosen for the narrative, so in the Odyssey - only the very end of his wanderings, the last two hauls, from the far western edge of the earth to his native Ithaca. About everything that happened before, Odysseus tells at the feast in the middle of the poem, and tells very briefly: all these fabulous adventures in the poem account for fifty pages out of three hundred. In the Odyssey, the fairy tale sets off life, and not vice versa, although readers, both ancient and modern, were more willing to re-read and recall the fairy tale.

In the Trojan War, Odysseus did a lot for the Greeks - especially where they needed not strength, but intelligence. It was he who guessed to bind Elena's suitors with an oath to help her chosen one against any offender, and without this the army would never have gathered on a campaign. It was he who attracted the young Achilles to the campaign, and without this the victory would have been impossible. It was he, when, at the beginning of the Iliad, the Greek army, after a general meeting, almost rushed from Troy on the way back, managed to stop him. It was he who persuaded Achilles, when he quarreled with Agamemnon, to return to the battle. When, after the death of Achilles, the best warrior of the Greek camp was to receive the armor of the slain, Odysseus received them, and not Ajax. When Troy could not be taken by siege, it was Odysseus who came up with the idea of ​​​​building a wooden horse, in which the bravest Greek leaders hid and thus penetrated into Troy - and he is one of them. The goddess Athena, the patroness of the Greeks, loved Odysseus the most of them and helped him at every step. But the god Poseidon hated him - we will soon find out why - and it was Poseidon who, with his storms, did not allow him to reach his homeland for ten years. Ten years under Troy, ten years in wanderings - and only in the twentieth year of his trials does the action of the Odyssey begin.

It begins, as in the Iliad, Zeus' Will. The gods hold a council, and Athena intercedes with Zeus for Odysseus. He is a prisoner of the nymph Calypso, who is in love with him, on an island in the very middle of the wide sea, and languishes, in vain wishing "to see at least smoke rising from his native shores in the distance." And in his kingdom, on the island of Ithaca, everyone already considers him dead, and the surrounding nobles demand that Queen Penelope choose a new husband from among them, and a new king for the island. There are more than a hundred of them, they live in the Odysseus Palace, feast and drink wildly, ruining the Odysseus economy, and have fun with the Odysseus slaves. Penelope tried to deceive them: she said that she made a vow to announce her decision no earlier than weaving a shroud for old Laertes, Odysseus's father, who was about to die. During the day, she wove in front of everyone, and at night she secretly unraveled what was woven. But the servants betrayed her cunning, and it became more and more difficult for her to resist the insistence of the suitors. With her is her son Telemachus, whom Odysseus left as a baby; but he is young and is not considered.

And now an unfamiliar wanderer comes to Telemachus, calls himself an old friend of Odysseus and gives him advice: “Fix a ship, go around the surrounding lands, collect news about the missing Odysseus; if you hear that he is alive, you will tell the suitors to wait another year; if you hear that you are dead, you will say that you will celebrate the wake and persuade your mother to marry. He advised and disappeared - for Athena herself appeared in his image. So Telemachus did. The suitors resisted, but Telemachus managed to leave and board the ship unnoticed - for the same Athena helped him in this.

Telemachus sails to the mainland - first to Pylos to the decrepit Nestor, then to Sparta to the newly returned Menelaus and Elena. The talkative Nestor tells how the heroes sailed from under Troy and drowned in a storm, how Agamemnon later died in Argos and how his son Orestes avenged the killer; but he knows nothing about the fate of Odysseus. The hospitable Menelaus tells how he, Menelaus, getting lost in his wanderings, on the Egyptian coast, waylaid the prophetic sea elder, the seal shepherd Proteus, who knew how to turn into a lion, and a boar, and a leopard, and a snake, and into water, and into tree; how he fought with Proteus, and overcame him, and learned from him the way back; and at the same time he learned that Odysseus was alive and suffering in the middle of the wide sea on the island of the nymph Calypso. Delighted by this news, Telemachus is about to return to Ithaca, but then Homer interrupts his story about him and turns to the fate of Odysseus.

The intercession of Athena helped: Zeus sends the messenger of the gods Hermes to Calypso: the time has come, it's time to let Odysseus go. The nymph grieves: “Did I save him from the sea, did I want to give him immortality?” - but dare not disobey. Odysseus does not have a ship - you need to put together a raft. For four days he works with an ax and a drill, on the fifth - the raft is lowered. For seventeen days he sails, ruling on the stars, on the eighteenth a storm breaks out. It was Poseidon, seeing the hero eluding him, who swept the abyss with four winds, the logs of the raft scattered like straw. “Oh, why didn’t I die near Troy!” cried Odysseus. Two goddesses helped Odysseus: a kind sea nymph threw him a magical blanket that saved him from drowning, and faithful Athena calmed three winds, leaving the fourth to carry him by swimming to the near shore. For two days and two nights he swims without closing his eyes, and on the third wave they throw him onto land. Naked, tired, helpless, he buries himself in a pile of leaves and falls into a dead sleep.

It was the land of the blessed feacs, over which the good king Alkinos ruled in a high palace: copper walls, golden doors, embroidered fabrics on the benches, ripe fruits on the branches, eternal summer over the garden. The king had a young daughter, Nausicaa; Athena appeared to her at night and said: “Soon you will be married, but your clothes have not been washed; gather the maids, take the chariot, go to the sea, wash your dresses.” They left, washed, dried, began to play ball; the ball flew into the sea, the girls screamed loudly, their cry woke up Odysseus. He rises from the bushes, terrible, covered with dried sea mud, and prays: “Whether you are a nymph or a mortal, help me: let me cover my nakedness, show me the way to people, and may the gods send you a good husband.” He bathes, anoints himself, dresses, and Nausicaa, admiring, thinks: "Ah, if only the gods would give me such a husband." He goes to the city, enters Tsar Alcinous, tells him about his misfortune, but does not name himself; touched by Alkina, he promises that the Phaeacian ships will take him wherever he asks.

Odysseus sits at the Alkinoic feast, and the wise blind singer Demodocus entertains the feasters with songs. "Sing about the Trojan War!" - asks Odysseus; and Demodocus sings about the wooden horse of Odysseus and the capture of Troy. Odysseus has tears in his eyes. Why are you crying? Alkina says. - For this, the gods send death to the heroes, so that the descendants sing glory to them. Is it true that one of your relatives fell near Troy? And then Odysseus opens: “I am Odysseus, the son of Laertes, the king of Ithaca, small, stony, but dear to the heart ...” - and begins the story of his wanderings. There are nine adventures in this story.

The first adventure is with the lotophages. The storm took the Odyssey ships from under Troy to the far south, where the lotus grows - a magical fruit, after tasting which, a person forgets about everything and does not want anything in life except the lotus. The lotus-eaters treated the Odyssey companions to the lotus, and they forgot about their native Ithaca and refused to sail further. By force of them, weeping, they took them to the ship and set off.

The second adventure is with the Cyclopes. They were monstrous giants with one eye in the middle of their foreheads; they herded sheep and goats and did not know wine. Chief among them was Polyphemus, the son of the sea Poseidon. Odysseus wandered into his empty cave with a dozen companions. In the evening, Polyphemus came, huge as a mountain, drove a herd into the cave, blocked the exit with a block, asked: “Who are you?” - "Wanderers, Zeus is our guardian, we ask you to help us." - "I'm not afraid of Zeus!" - and the Cyclops grabbed two, smashed them against the wall, ate them with bones and snored. In the morning he left with the herd, again blocking the entrance; and then Odysseus came up with a trick. He and his comrades took a Cyclops club, large as a mast, sharpened it, burned it on fire, hid it; and when the villain came and devoured two more comrades, he brought him wine to put him to sleep. The monster liked the wine. "What is your name?" - he asked. "Nobody!" Odysseus answered. “For such a treat, I will eat you last, Nobody!” - and drunken cyclops snored. Then Odysseus and his companions took a club, approached, swung it and plunged it into the single giant's eye. The blinded ogre roared, other Cyclopes came running: “Who offended you, Polyphemus?” - "Nobody!" - "Well, if no one, then there is nothing to make noise" - and dispersed. And in order to get out of the cave, Odysseus tied his comrades under the belly of the Cyclops rams so that he would not grope them, and so, together with the herd, they left the cave in the morning. But, already sailing away, Odysseus could not stand it and shouted:

“Here you are, for insulting the guests, execution from me, Odysseus from Ithaca!” And the Cyclops furiously prayed to his father Poseidon: “Don’t let Odysseus swim to Ithaca - and if it’s destined to do so, then let him swim not soon, alone, on a strange ship!” And God heard his prayer.

The third adventure is on the island of the wind god Eol. God sent them a fair wind, and tied the rest in a leather bag and gave Odysseus: "When you swim - let go." But when Ithaca was already visible, the tired Odysseus fell asleep, and his companions untied the bag ahead of time; a hurricane arose, they rushed back to Aeolus. "So the gods are against you!" - Eol said angrily and refused to help the disobedient.

The fourth adventure is with the lestrigons, wild cannibal giants. They ran to the shore and brought down huge rocks on the Odysseus ships; eleven of the twelve ships perished, Odysseus and a few comrades escaped on the last.

The fifth adventure is with the sorceress Kirka, the queen of the West, who turned all aliens into animals. She brought wine, honey, cheese and flour with a poisonous potion to the Odyssey messengers - and they turned into pigs, and she drove them into the barn. He escaped alone and in horror told Odysseus about this; he took a bow and went to help his comrades, not hoping for anything. But Hermes, the messenger of the gods, gave him a divine plant: a black root, a white flower, and the spell was powerless against Odysseus. Threatening with a sword, he forced the sorceress to return the human form to his friends and demanded: "Get us back to Ithaca!" - "Ask the way of the prophetic Tiresias, the prophet of the prophets," said the sorceress. "But he's dead!" - "Ask the dead!" And she told me how to do it.

The sixth adventure is the most terrible: the descent into the realm of the dead. The entrance to it is at the end of the world, in the country of eternal night. The souls of the dead in it are incorporeal, insensible and thoughtless, but after drinking the sacrificial blood, they acquire speech and reason. On the threshold of the kingdom of the dead, Odysseus slaughtered a black ram and a black sheep as a sacrifice; the souls of the dead flocked to the smell of blood, but Odysseus drove them away with a sword until the prophetic Tiresias appeared before him. After drinking blood, he said:

“Your troubles are for insulting Poseidon; your salvation - if you do not offend the Sun-Helios; if you offend, you will return to Ithaca, but alone, on a strange ship, and not soon. Your house is ruined by suitors of Penelope; but you will overcome them, and you will have a long kingdom and a peaceful old age.” After that, Odysseus allowed other ghosts to the sacrificial blood. The shadow of his mother told how she died of longing for her son; he wanted to hug her, but under his arms there was only empty air. Agamemnon told how he died from his wife: “Be careful, Odysseus, it’s dangerous to rely on wives.” Achilles said to him:

“Better for me to be a laborer on earth than a king among the dead.” Only Ajax did not say anything, not forgiving that Odysseus, and not he, got the armor of Achilles. From afar I saw Odysseus and the infernal judge Minos, and the eternally executed proud Tantalus, the cunning Sisyphus, the insolent Tityus; but then horror seized him, and he hurried away, towards the white light.

The seventh adventure was Sirens - predators, seductive singing luring sailors to death. Odysseus outwitted them: he sealed the ears of his companions with wax, and ordered himself to be tied to the mast and not let go, no matter what. So they sailed past, unharmed, and Odysseus also heard singing, the sweetest of which is none.

The eighth adventure was the strait between the monsters Scylla and Charybdis: Scylla has six heads, each with three rows of teeth, and twelve paws; Charybdis - about one larynx, but such that in one gulp it drags the whole ship. Odysseus preferred Scylla to Charybdis - and he was right: she grabbed from the ship and ate six of his comrades with six mouths, but the ship remained intact.

The ninth adventure was the island of the Sun-Helios, where his sacred herds grazed - seven herds of red bulls, seven herds of white rams. Odysseus, mindful of the covenant of Tiresias, took a terrible oath from his comrades not to touch them; but opposite winds blew, the ship stopped, the satellites were hungry, and when Odysseus fell asleep, they slaughtered and ate the best bulls. It was scary: the flayed skins moved, and the meat on the skewers lowed. The Sun-Helios, who sees everything, hears everything, knows everything, prayed to Zeus: “Punish the offenders, otherwise I will descend into the underworld and will shine among the dead.” And then, as the winds subsided and the ship sailed from the shore, Zeus raised a storm, struck with lightning, the ship crumbled, the satellites drowned in a whirlpool, and Odysseus, alone on a fragment of a log, rushed across the sea for nine days, until he was thrown ashore on the island of Calypso.

This is how Odysseus ends his story.

King Alkina fulfilled his promise: Odysseus boarded the Phaeacian ship, plunged into an enchanted dream, and woke up already on the foggy coast of Ithaca. Here he is met by the patroness Athena. “The time has come for your cunning,” she says, “hide, beware of suitors and wait for your son Telemachus!” She touches him, and he becomes unrecognizable: old, bald, poor, with a staff and a bag. In this form, he goes deep into the island - to ask for shelter from the good old swineherd Evmey. He tells Eumeus that he comes from Crete, fought near Troy, knew Odysseus, sailed to Egypt, fell into slavery, was with pirates and barely escaped. Eumeus calls him to the hut, puts him to the hearth, treats him, grieves for the missing Odysseus, complains about violent suitors, pities Queen Penelope and Prince Telemachus. The next day, Telemachus himself comes, having returned from his wandering - of course, Athena herself also sent him here. In front of him, Athena returns Odysseus his true appearance, mighty and proud. "Are you a god?" - asks Telemachus. “No, I am your father,” Odysseus replies, and they, embracing, cry with happiness.

The end is near. Telemachus goes to the city, to the palace; behind him wander Eumeus and Odysseus, again in the form of a beggar. At the palace threshold, the first recognition is made: the decrepit Odysseus dog, having not forgotten the owner’s voice for twenty years, raises his ears, crawls up to him with his last strength and dies at his feet. Odysseus enters the house, goes around the room, asks the suitors for alms, suffers ridicule and beatings. Suitors pit him against another beggar, younger and stronger; Odysseus, unexpectedly for everyone, knocks him over with one blow. The suitors laugh: “Let Zeus send you whatever you want!” - and do not know that Odysseus wishes them a speedy death. Penelope calls the stranger to her: has he heard the news of Odysseus? “I heard,” says Odysseus, “he is in a nearby region and will arrive soon.” Penelope can't believe it, but she is grateful for the guest. She tells the old maid to wash the wanderer's dusty feet before going to bed, and invites him to be in the palace at tomorrow's feast. And here the second recognition takes place: the maid brings in the basin, touches the guest's legs and feels the scar on her lower leg, which Odysseus had after hunting the boar in his younger years. Her hands trembled, her leg slipped out: “You are Odysseus!” Odysseus clamps her mouth: "Yes, it's me, but be quiet - otherwise you will ruin the whole thing!"

The last day is coming. Penelope calls the suitors to the banquet room: “Here is the bow of my dead Odysseus; whoever pulls it and shoots an arrow through twelve rings on twelve axes in a row, he will become my husband! One after another, one hundred and twenty suitors try on the bow - not a single one can even pull the bowstring. They already want to postpone the competition until tomorrow - but then Odysseus gets up in his impoverished form: “Let me try too: after all, I was once strong!” The suitors are indignant, but Telemachus stands up for the guest:

“I am the heir of this bow, to whom I want, I give it; and you, mother, go to your women's affairs. Odysseus takes up the bow, easily bends it, rings the bowstring, the arrow flies through the twelve rings and pierces the wall. Zeus thunders over the house, Odysseus straightens up to his full heroic height, next to him is Telemachus with a sword and a spear. “No, I haven’t forgotten how to shoot: now I’ll try another target!” And the second arrow hits the most impudent and violent of suitors. “Oh, you thought Odysseus was dead? no, he lives for truth and retribution!” The suitors grab their swords, Odysseus strikes them with arrows, and when the arrows run out - with spears, which the faithful Eumeus brings. The suitors rush about the ward, the invisible Athena darkens their minds and diverts their blows from Odysseus, they fall one by one. A pile of dead bodies piles up in the middle of the house, faithful slaves and slaves crowd around and rejoice when they see their master.

Penelope did not hear anything: Athena sent a deep sleep to her in her chamber. The old maid runs to her with good news: Odysseus has returned. Odysseus punished the suitors! She does not believe: no, yesterday's beggar is not at all like Odysseus, as he was twenty years ago; and the suitors were probably punished by angry gods. “Well,” says Odysseus, “if the queen has such an unkind heart, let them make a bed for me alone.” And here the third, main recognition takes place. “Well,” says Penelope to the maid, “take out the guest’s bed from the royal bedroom to his rest.” “What are you talking about, woman? - Odysseus exclaims, - this bed cannot be moved, instead of legs it has an olive tree stump, I once knocked it together on it and adjusted it. And in response, Penelope weeps with joy and rushes to her husband: it was a secret, they alone knew a sign.

It's a victory, but it's not peace yet. The fallen suitors have relatives left, and they are ready to take revenge. With an armed crowd, they go to Odysseus, he comes forward to meet them with Telemachus and several henchmen. The first blows are already thundering, the first blood is shed - but Zeus's will puts an end to the brewing discord. Lightning flashes, striking the ground between the fighters, thunder rumbles, Athena appears with a loud cry: “... Do not shed blood in vain and stop the evil enmity!” - and the frightened avengers retreat. And then:

“With a sacrifice and an oath, the alliance between the king and the people was sealed / The bright daughter of the Thunderer, the goddess Pallas Athena.”

With these words, the Odyssey ends.

retold