Going Home: The Deeper Meaning of "The Odyssey"

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey

“Our Gallery House Stable”: Today we feature the art of Debra Tate Sears, whose work often focuses on images of Home.

Where are you on your life journey, and where and what is the home to which you are traveling?

In honor of the new Odyssey movie, by Christopher Nolan, here is one of my all-time favorite poems, by Constantine Cavafy.

Cavafy was a Greek poet who often wrote about events from ancient history and literature. This one is based on Homer’s Odyssey -- and Ulysses’ famous journey back to his homeland, Ithaka, after the Trojan war.

The poem is a metaphor for the journey of life itself, with Ithaka symbolizing the fulfillment of that life journey.

Read it through, and then I’ll give you my interpretation.

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY​

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

“The Side Gate,” by Debra Tate Sears

As usual, Cavafy ends with a goosebump-inducing line: “you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.”

And he’s already told us what they mean, with the OTHER goosebump-inducing line that preceded this final one: “Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.”

In other words: this poem conveys the timeless idea that the journey, not the destination, is the ultimate point.

But also: that the destination’s whole point is to facilitate the journey.

But I think the poem has a spiritual element too, the same one that’s at the heart of my book Bittersweet and that I’ve been trying to share for years now. Early in Homer’s epic poem, the Odyssey, we meet Ulysses, weeping on a beach, longing for home (Ithaka).

And the reader understands that it’s this very homesickness that sets his journey in motion; and that this longing for Ithaka represents the spiritual longing we all feel (whether we’re atheists, believers, or somewhere in between) to return to the perfect and beautiful world from whence we came.

Freud interpreted this longed-for world as the womb. The Judeo-Christian tradition calls it the Garden of Eden. The Sufis call it the Beloved of the Soul, with whom they long for union. The Wizard of Oz calls it Somewhere Over the Rainbow. But it’s all the same thing. And this longing is what J.R. Tolkien called “our whole nature at its best and least corrupted, its gentlest and most human.”

So please ask yourself: who or what do you long for, and where will your longing carry you?

*

Of course, there’s one big thing you have to overlook, in order to fully relish this poem: What about the people back home – Ulysses’ son, Telemachus, who longed for him, all the years of his absence, without the benefit of an exciting journey to distract and enrich him? What about Ulysses’ wife Penelope, trapped in her womanly role of weaving and unweaving all day and night, in an effort to fend off Ithaka’s would-be plunderers?

Many poets have addressed this question. One of my favorites is Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “An Ancient Gesture,” which I came across in my 9th grade literature textbook, and which immediately seized me.

An Ancient Gesture

Edna St. Vincent Millay

​I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
​
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope…
Penelope, who really cried.

“Penelope, who really cried.” I think about that line, ALL THE TIME, when I see politicians or other public figures mimicking deep emotions for the crowd’s consumption.

False tears won’t carry us home – but true ones might.

“Rear Courtyard,” by Debra Tate Sears

Incidentally, one other person who has addressed Penelope’s situation is actually… me. My very first (unpublished) writing project, after leaving my law career at age 33 to become a writer, was a coming-of-age memoir. I wrote (parts of) it both in prose and sonnet form; and in the sonnet version, I rewrote Penelope’s story, imagining that she’d had many private, unrecorded, but equally glorious adventures of her own, during all the years she waited for Ulysses.

Then I told my own story as a modern-day version of hers, concluding:

“I’m Penelope’s descendant/Heiress to a life transcendent.”

And this I believe: whoever you are, and wherever you are on your journey, you are heir to Homer’s Ulysses. And, you are Penelope’s descendant.

And you will come to understand, if you don’t already, what all these Ithakas mean.

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As always, I’d love to hear from you, if you’re inclined to share.

*Where are you on your own life journey?

*What is your Ithaka?

*Are you inclined to read more Cavafy? You should!