Explanation of Odysseus’ odd description Circe’s land as “where the darkness is and where the dawn.” Circe’s land is equated with sunset when Odysseus ventures into “death and darkness” but with the dawn when he “returns to life and light”

This Rhapsody centers on the bewitching goddess Circe, whose mystical powers will lead Odysseus to make direct contact with the dead—and with the world of heroes who have already died.

“Circe Invidiosa,” (1892). J. W. Waterhouse (English, 1849–1917). Image via Wikimedia Commons.

Circe, like her mystical island, is at first disorienting for Odysseus, but the goddess will in due course reorient the hero, making it possible for him to learn how he will ultimately make his way back home. Odysseus will find his reorientation in the realm of the unconscious.

Odysseus here at O.10.189–197 confesses to his companions that he no longer knows where the sun rises or where the sun sets, O.10.190–192, and, accordingly, he expresses his own despair by questioning whether there will be for him any further access to mētis ‘mind, intelligence’, O.10.193. So, the disorientation of Odysseus is linked with loss of mētis. Clearly, the mind of the hero is correlated here with the celestial dynamics of sunset and sunrise. See further the comment on O.10.190–102. (More on this subject in GMP 246.) In response to the hero’s expression of despair, his companions weep uncontrollably, O.10.198–202, and now all they can think about are the horrors they remember having experienced in their encounters with the Cyclops and with Antiphates the Laestrygonian, O.10.199–200. The epithet for one of these two monsters here, the Cyclops, is androphagos ‘man-eating’, O.10.200, which suits not only the cannibalistic Cyclops but also Antiphates the Laestrygonian, who as can see at O.10.115–116 is likewise a cannibal. These memories of cannibalism are most telling, since the name of the Cyclops is linked here with the biē ‘force, violence, strength’ of this monster, O.10.200. And the link surely extends to Antiphates the Laestrygonian. That monster too, like the Cyclops, is a negative exponent of biē ‘force, violence, strength’. And such memories evoke the worst moments of the story of the Trojan War as narrated in the Iliad, as when Achilles himself expresses the ghastly urge to eat the body of Hector raw, I.22.346–347. See the comment at I.22.346–348; also at I.23.001–064. So, Achilles as the primary exponent of biē ‘force, violence, strength’ in the Iliad can be seen in this context as a foil for Odysseus as the primary exponent of mētis ‘mind, intelligence’ in the Odyssey. Even the Iliadic contexts of biē ‘force, violence, strength’ are evoked here, since Cyclops at O.10.200 is described not only as androphagos ‘man-eating’ but also as megalētor ‘having a heart that is mighty’. Similarly at O.10.106, in an attested variant of that verse, this same description applies also to Antiphates the Laestrygonian. Beyond these two attestations, this epithet megalētor ‘having a heart that is mighty’ occurs nowhere else in the Odyssey, whereas it occurs regularly as a conventional description of generic warriors in the Iliad. That is why I propose to describe the horrific visions of cannibals in the Odyssey as Iliadic nightmares.

|190 ὦ φίλοι, οὐ γὰρ ἴδμεν ὅπῃ ζόφος οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἠώς, |191 οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἠέλιος φαεσίμβροτος εἶσ’ ὑπὸ γαῖαν |192 οὐδ’ ὅπῃ ἀννεῖται· ἀλλὰ φραζώμεθα θᾶσσον, |193 εἴ τις ἔτ’ ἔσται μῆτις· ἐγὼ δ’ οὐκ οἴομαι εἶναι.

|190 My friends, I am speaking this way because I do not know which place is west and which place is east |191 - which is the place where the sun, bringing light for mortals, goes underneath the earth |192 and which is the place where it rises. Still, let us start thinking it through, as quickly as we can, |193 whether there is still any craft [mētis] left. I must tell you, though, I think there is none.

(Epitomized from H24H 10§§38, 40, 42.) When Odysseus reaches the island of Circe and learns that this place, though it first seems familiar and reminiscent of his own island, is in fact strange and alien and antithetical to home, he despairs. As noted in the previous comment, the hero feels he has no intelligence or mētis left in him to devise a stratagem for a successful homecoming, and his despair is expressed as a feeling of disorientation. He is no longer able to distinguish between orient and occident. To restate in terms of two words used elsewhere in the Odyssey, the hero is experiencing a loss of orientation in his nóos or ‘thinking’, and this loss is presently blocking his nostos, ‘homecoming’. Despite such moments of disorientation for Odysseus, however, his nóos, ‘thinking’ will ultimately reorient him, steering him away from his Iliadic past and toward his ultimate Odyssean future. That is, the hero’s nóos will make it possible for him to achieve a nostos, which is not only his ‘homecoming’ but also the ‘song about a homecoming’ that is the Odyssey.