Raising the dead: Odysseus' journey to Hades

Just a few more notes on The Odyssey, as I read the final sections of Stephen Mitchell's intro; particularly interesting was Mitchell's discussion of the descent into hell: it's a section kind of easy to skim over, it's narrated by O when he tells the Phaeacians of his long voyage and is easy to overlook as it represents a triple pause: a pause in his journey, a pause in the narrative of the journey, and a pause in "Homer's" narration of his story. As Mitchell says, O is discouraged and disappointed to have to make this voyage to Hades - he'd rather just head homeward - but he does so on the orders of a god (was it Athena? I don't remember). In Fogle's translation of the Aeniad, F notes that all great epics have a section in them that seems to make no sense, that interpolates or interrupts, and that these odd sections contribute greatly to both the beauty and mystery of these works: it's as if the poet were taking just a moment to indulge in his or her personal obsession (can't remember exactly what the passage was in the A. that led hi to make this comment - a section I think about a conflict between two Roman clans/?); the journey to Hades plays a similar role in the O.: it could be cut, and probably often is, but adds a great deal to the texture of the work: the distant and dark, densely overgrown island; the pouring of ram's blood on the ground to raise the spirits (glad to be reminded by the strangeness of this by Mitchell's intro - I kind of read right over it while going through the poem), the dead rising like mist or clouds and gorging on the blood, the only way that they car resume corporeality; the frightening expression from all of them that they would do anything to return to physical life; Tiresias's inexplicable prophecy of O making a voyage to a distant land, carrying an oar; O's futile attempts to embrace his mother, Achilles' jealousy of the living, the appearance of the immature sailor on O's ship who fell off a roof on Circe's island and died - requesting a proper burial service. Death and the underworld are part of the mystery at the heart of this voyage - and perhaps of any voyage: all travel carries with it the risk of death, imprisonment, and exile.