Something About Eve

    And Odysseus continued: “I had wisdom. My prudent wisdom was to men of every calling an object of considerable attention, and the fame of it reached Heaven. I ruled in Ithaca, an island kingdom, well situated toward the west. I went unwillingly with the other well-greaved Greeks to besiege Ilion: the enterprise to me seemed rash, and unlikely to be remunerative: yet, being engaged, I dealt prudently, and in the end, where so many merely brave persons had failed, it was through my prudence that the enterprise succeeded. For ten years Ilion defied the strength of Achilles and of Ajax; Ilion derided all the endeavors of auburn-haired Menelaus and of godlike Agamemnon: but the cunning of Odysseus felled Ilion in one night. I took my share of the spoils; I left the glory to them that wanted it. I returned across the world to that which I more prudently desired, toward the quiet comforts of my home in craggy Ithaca. The prayer of the blinded Cyclops, the wrath of earth-shaking Poseidon, the white thunder of offended Zeus, and the twelve winds of AEolus, all fought against me. I prevailed. The sea-witch Scylla, an exorbitant lady with twelve arms, a ravening monster whom none might pass and live, I passed. Charybdis, which devoured all, did not devour me, for I clung prudently to a fig-tree.”

    “Indeed,” said Gerald, “the leaves of that tree are very often a great protection,—O much-enduring and crafty Odysseus,” Gerald added hastily, as became a Greek scholar.

    “Moreover, the sun’s daughter, fair-haired Circe, and bright Queen Calypso, the divine one of goddesses, these also detained me rather more amiably. I embraced them; they did not find me slothful in their beds. For they were goddesses, as quick in anger as they were in lust. It is not prudent to deny a goddess. From the fond arms of these immortals I passed on toward my desired goal. Yet nobody is always prudent. When my ship approached the island of the man-devouring Sirens I caused the ears of my sailors to be stopped with wax; but I caused myself to be bound to the mast, so that I might hear the song which Leucosia sang in the while that Parthenope and Ligeia made a sweet music. I desired to hear without any hurt that song which was so lovely that it. drew less prudent men to the arms of its singer, wherein, as they well knew, dark death awaited them. I heard that song. It did not matter to me that I saw how the low beach about those music-makers gleamed, like silver, where a thin silk light fell upon the scattered bones of many men whom they had slain. I struggled to cast myself into the gray sea-water, so that I might go to Leucosia. But my bonds held me. I was bound, both my hands and feet were bound, with very strong cables. The black ship passed onward, whitening the water with its polished blades of fir-wood; and I wept as I too passed onward, away from my own ruin, and drawing nearer to the goal which my prudent wisdom had desired.”

    “Truly, the enchantment of her singing must have maddened you. Yet such is the magic of great poetry,” Gerald remarked, “a thing not ever wholly to be explained even by the poet.... Yet your goal, nevertheless, was reached, they tell me, O much-contriving Odysseus. Your goal was reached, as remember it, in the many-pillared hall of your home in Ithaca, and in a fine slaughter of those suitors who were pestering your wife because they believed that she was your widow.”