2 Little Things Mean a Lot Odysseus’ Scar and Eurycleia’S Memory

2 Little things mean a lot Odysseus’ scar and Eurycleia’s memory Jeffrey Beneker In a famous scene from the Odyssey, the nurse Eurycleia is bathing Odysseus’ feet when she discovers a scar on his leg (19.386–507). At this moment, she realizes that the man whom she and everyone else except the gods and Telemachus (and the audience) thought was a wandering beggar is in reality her master, returned home after an absence of twenty years. The discovery of the scar in this scene carries much meaning, and not only for Eurycleia, but for modern readers of the Odyssey as well. In his well-known essay “Odysseus’ Scar,” Auerbach (1953) uses the bathing scene as the basis for his argument that Homer’s narrative lacks complexity and depth. Nothing that appears in the poem, Auerbach asserts, may be left “half in darkness and unexternalized” (1953: 5). That is to say, no character has thoughts that are not expressed, and events said to have taken place in the past are narrated in the foreground as though they were happening in the present. This foregrounding of all narrative action is, for Auerbach, fundamental to Homeric style. And so when Homer comes to relating Eurycleia’s discovery of the scar as she begins to wash Odysseus’ feet, poetic style dictates that the scar itself “must be set in full light, and with it a portion of the hero’s boyhood” (1953: 6). In this way, Auerbach accounts for the rather long “interruption” of the main narrative, during which the narrator recounts Odysseus’ birth and his boyhood visit to his maternal grandfather, where he went hunting, was charged and wounded by a boar, and earned his identifying mark (Od. 19.390–466). For a moment, the past becomes the present and “fills both the stage and the reader’s mind completely” (1953: 4–5) until Homer returns to the narrative’s actual present and resumes the bathing scene. In a reassessment of Auerbach’s article, Bakker (1999) rejects the conclusion that Homer’s poetry, because of the simplicity of its narrative, allows for analysis but not literary interpretation.1 He does, nonetheless, acknowledge the correctness of Auerbach’s emphasis on the foregrounding of narrative detail. He attributes this trait not to a stylistic choice, however, but to a necessity imposed by oral performance, which depends on memorization as much as on recitation. Homeric poetry, he explains, is presented in units that are reproduced by the performer as an act of remembering. Central to Bakker’s explanation is the argument that a performer must visualize a scene in order to remember it, and that while recit- ing his poem he recreates his visions for his listeners. All narrative detail, then, 32 Jeffrey Beneker whether from the past or the present, must be held in the light (to use Auerbach’s phrase) and externalized so that the poet can “see” it, and therefore memorize and later recall it. Bakker thus gives a new foundation to Auerbach’s observations about the foregrounding of narrative detail, but this foundation depends primarily on the technical requirements of oral poetry. He is silent, therefore, about how the foregrounded scenes contribute to the development of the poem’s overall story. In considering the particular case of the scar, we may observe that the narrator’s “interruption” recounts events that belong to the past of both characters in the scene. This has led others to argue that the story of the scar reflects the characters’ memories. De Jong (1985), for instance, reads the scene from a narratological perspective, arguing that the account of the scar is an example of embedded focal- ization, told from Eurycleia’s perspective, and so based on her memory, even though the narrator describes the events. Scodel (2002) invokes the phenome- non of “flashbulb memories,” which are “particularly vivid and strongly visual” memories of specific events that individuals carry with them for a long time. She argues that in Homer’s poetry, recognitions based on signs, as with the scar in this scene, always rely on vivid, personal memories that are shared between two peo- ple. This scene is, in fact, one of three scenes featuring very personal recollections that Odysseus shares with Eurycleia, Penelope, and Laertes, though Odysseus himself recounts his memory only on the latter two occasions. Scodel shows, however, that on all three occasions the recalled events give substance to the signs used to recognize the returned hero. The foregrounded story of how Odysseus earned his scar, therefore, may indeed be an act of memory, not only for the poet or storyteller, but for the characters as well. We must acknowledge, however, that in this scene (unlike those with Penelope and Laertes), the narrator recounts the past and does not indicate that either Odysseus or Eurycleia has recalled anything. If we are to interpret the story as reflecting the unarticulated memories of the characters, we have to rely on inference and analogy with other scenes. In this essay, I argue that Eurycleia recognizes Odysseus despite his disguise not simply because she sees the scar but because she has shared with Odysseus a meaningful experience in the past. The recollection of this experience does indeed substantiate the sign of the scar, as Scodel argues, but it also (like the articulated memories that Odysseus shares with Penelope and Laertes) plays a central role in the larger scheme of disguise and recognition that is fundamental to the second half of the Odyssey, serving especially to re-establish the master-servant relationship that is necessary for the recovery of Odysseus’ identity. This connection to the larger plot and to other recognition scenes is important for interpreting the vivid but unspoken recollection shared between Odysseus and Eurycleia in this scene. To set the context for the discussion, I would like first to look briefly at how disguise and recognition are essential to the plot in the second half of the Odyssey.2 Having learned from Agamemnon’s fatal mistake, Odysseus wishes to test the loyalty of his household and the mood of Penelope’s suitors before he reveals that he has returned to Ithaca. He therefore avoids contact with anyone on the island Little things mean a lot 33 until Athena has transformed his physical appearance, both his body and his clothing, so that he looks like an old, wandering beggar. In addition to giving him tattered clothing, she withers his lovely skin, destroys his fair hair, and dims his eyes, so that, as she explains to him, “you will appear unseemly to all the suitors, to your wife, and to your son, whom you left behind in your halls” (13.397–403).3 In sum, Odysseus no longer has the noble look that he had when he left for Troy. This change of appearance and adoption of a beggar’s persona allow him to enter his own house and to operate unrecognized by anyone (except his dog, Argus, and perhaps Penelope) until he himself chooses to make his presence known.4 Prior to the climactic battle with the suitors in book 22, Odysseus reveals his true identity only to his son (16) and to a pair of servants (21), while Eurycleia discovers who he is by accident (19). The rest of the characters, however, do not recognize him, and so the fact of his disguise is essential to nearly every scene in books 14–21. Following the battle with the suitors, when Odysseus’ identity becomes known generally, there still remain two important revelation-recognition scenes, those with his wife (23) and father (24). Taken as a whole, these revelation-recognition scenes demonstrate that Odysseus’ disguise is more than a device for allowing him to move about his house incognito. It also allows him to reveal his identity gradually and selec- tively as he attempts to accomplish a successful homecoming.5 As the narrative advances, we are presented with a series of scenes in which Odysseus reveals himself to, and is in turn recognized by, characters with whom he has special relationships and from whom he has been separated during his absence. This series of scenes, then, contributes to a general process of reconnecting Odysseus’ past to his present, a process that is essential to the poem’s larger narrative of Odysseus’ return. All of these characters—his servants, son, wife, and father—are essential to the life that Odysseus seeks to re-establish and are partners in the relationships that give definition to Odysseus’ character. In Murnaghan’s words, it is the “reanimation” of these relationships that allows Odysseus to reclaim his position upon returning to Ithaca: The permanence of Odysseus’ claim to his position may mimic the timeless power of the gods, but it actually rests on the durability of his domestic relationships, his capacity to recover a series of roles defined by his relations with others: father, son, husband, and master. (1987: 21) That is to say, by putting these relationships back in order, Odysseus not only restores his former life but also regains his status as master of his household and, by extension, leading man on Ithaca.6 Revelation followed by recognition, therefore, leads to a reassertion of Odysseus’ identity.7 The disguise and adopted persona are fundamental to this process. Even so, at the critical moments when another character recognizes him, there is always more to the event than simply reversing his change of appearance and dropping his persona. In fact, his servants Eurycleia, Eumaeus, and Philoetius (19.392–3; 21.221–6) know him not by sight but by the scar on his thigh, even while he 34 Jeffrey Beneker retains his full physical disguise.

Load more