Nemesis: Odysseus & the Oar
For the god whose wrath he endured
for ten years on his desolate waters
he would be asked, upon his return,
to leave home once again and offer
alms to the sea god, to appease a feud
he neither wanted, nor wanted to renew.
Tiresias told me I must take an oar
and bear it across the mainland,
trudging town to town as far north
as I can until I discover a people who
neither know of oceans nor understand
what the tools of their overcoming are for.
And one of them will ask if what I carry
is not some kind of winnowing fan,
and in that spot the oar must be buried
to rot away, unfulfilled, in a dry land.
A grudge borne hard must be laid to rest
in its opposite, to die an unrealized death.
Or else it persecute him even as a shade,
as the grim, advancing gaze of Nemesis.
A debt foregone that must be paid.
His anticipation of it would form an abyss
of dread coincidence, where all action,
all thought, remain unbearably determined.
A grudge borne hard becomes the cause
and must be laid to rest in its opposite.
So compelled was he by such divine law
not once he considered outwitting it
but leaned the oar upon his shoulder
to right things before he grew any older.
Did you know Odysseus's homecoming wasn't the end of his journey?
His triumphant and bloody return against the suitors, and his heartfelt reunion with Penelope, were only the penultimate leg of his long-delayed return from war.
I'm not talking about Dante's invention either. Or Tennyson's idea of a white-bearded Odysseus going on one final sea voyage.
In Book XI of The Odyssey, Tiresias tells Odysseus what will happen (and what he must do) when he returns to Ithaca.
"After you've dealt out death to all the suitors," the blind seer says, "you must take an oar and go north as far as you can until the men there do not know what it is that you carry. When they mistake it for a winnowing fan, there you must stop and lay the oar in the ground, and make a sacrifice to Lord Poseidon."
Only after Odysseus does this will he be able to return home and live peacefully into old age. Only then will he be assured of dying happily, surrounded by people who love him.
The plot of The Odyssey doesn't include this journey, for obvious reasons, although Homer finds it important enough that he mentions it twice. Once in Book XI, and again in book XXIII, when Odysseus explains the prophecy to Penelope. She agrees that such a thing must be done, despite her husband having been gone for 20 years at this point.
Why does Homer undercut the pathos of his hero’s return, the triumph of overcoming the suitors, the resolution with Penelope, by telling us that he must make an equally arduous journey to the far north (to the land of the Hyperboreans) to bury the hatchet with Poseidon?
The simplest answer is that Homer was superstitious. Part of a culture that believed it was necessary to pay homage to the gods. But if we take the idea of myth seriously (and The Odyssey is one of the foundational myths) then the action is clearly a significant one to the psychological process of homecoming.
After our long awaited return, we must make amends and repent. Why?
I was interested in this idea while writing my second book of poetry, The Philosopher, The Poet & The Politician. The collection itself is about the lives of Socrates, Plato, and Pericles, but in it are a few blank verse poems about Odysseus.
The episode with the oar is intertwined with the concept of nemesis. Nemesis is divine retribution. It means "to give what's due," "to distribute." It's the justice that one deserves for what one has done.
This kind of retribution is a major theme in the Greek world view. It pops up in their tragedies and myths, and is usually related to hubris, as Nemesis often distributes justice in proportion to a hero's hubris.
Odysseus's hubris is no different than any other Greek tragic hero. His downfall is the very thing that makes him great. While his cunning and wiles often gave Odysseus an advantage, allowing him to survive, to gain the upper hand against enemies, it was his cleverness that brought the wrath of Poseidon against him, and caused him untold woe for ten long years.
He outsmarts Polyphemus, but can’t help revealing his identity to the Cyclops as he’s sailing away to safety in Book IX. “Odysseus outwitted you, you fool. The King of Ithaca has gouged out your eye and humiliated you.”
Enter Poseidon, the Cyclops’s father, who avenges himself upon the king, adding 10 years to his journey.
And so Tiresias tells Odysseus he must make amends with the god by repenting for his hubris. He must take great pains to put to bed any lingering resentment, so that he doesn't spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, wondering whether or not retribution will be exacted against him again.
This putting to bed, this coming to terms with, is an essential step in the arc of Odysseus’s character, and in the psychological development of the hero. It's not enough that he makes it back alive, that he survives all the trials put to him and reunites with the people he loves, victorious. He must come to some understanding, otherwise his journey is merely episodic, swashbuckling adventure.
So he accepts what faults were his in the ordeal. In this way Homer's Odysseus differs from the tragic heroes of the Greek playwrights because he comes out the other side of tragedy changed for the better. He has overcome and understood.