Apples and Oranges. Maarten Asscher
In books 5 to 14 of the twenty-four book epic, Telemachus does not play a visibly significant role. It is Odysseus’ own peregrinations the reader now hears about, which he recounts on being asked at the court of the king and queen of the Phaeacians. But in the meantime, in reality a matter of a mere few weeks, Telemachus has evolved from an indecisive boy into an intelligent and dynamic young man. He rejects an invitation to remain in Sparta longer than is necessary. As soon as he hears from Menelaus about his father’s wanderings and his involuntary stay on the island of Ogygia, detained by the nymph Calypso, he takes his leave, politely but firmly. The pressure exerted on him by the king of Sparta to stay twelve more days, and the impatience of Telemachus who experiences his call to act more urgently than before, together form a delicate counterpoint to the imprisonment his father Odysseus was forced to endure for many years on his journey home.
Menelaus likewise does not fail to mention the courageous and persevering Orestes, the avenger of his brother Agamemnon. After Athena and Nestor, Telemachus is here confronted with this explicit example for the third time in short succession.
In the meantime Odysseus arrives on Ithaca, transformed beyond recognition into an old beggar by the goddess Athena. When Telemachus returns unscathed to the island by ship shortly thereafter, the familiar denouement unavoidably unfolds, restoring Odysseus to his throne and to Penelope’s marital bed, while each of her suitors tastes defeat. Only the singer and collaborator Phemius is spared, having argued that he was forced to perform for Penelope’s suitors against his will.
Observe, however, what has happed to the young Telemachus in this relatively short period of time. After his minor odyssey in the Peloponnese and his conversations with Nestor and Menelaus, and inspired above all by the guidance of Athena, the youthful character has undergone a critical evolution. He is now more energetic, even more brazen and defiant in face of his mother’s suitors. He expresses himself with greater clarity and his presence is more robust, so much so that even Penelope concludes on his return from Sparta that at least her son no longer offers a reason for her prolonged life of widowhood. Telemachus thus functions in the story once again as a catalyst in the contest for her hand organized by Penelope among the suitors, which is won by Odysseus with flying colors. Telemachus then fights at his father’s side to secure the reputation of palace and queen, and his own reputation as his father’s son.
Time to bring in the arch-doubter Hamlet. ‘My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!’ he says, spurring himself on to no avail in one of his renowned soliloquies. Hamlet remains in his bloody thoughts and becomes thereby an example of existential indecision and inertia for countless dramatic and novelistic heroes after him. Telemachus, on the other hand, manages to transform his bloody thoughts into long-anticipated deeds. In the Odyssey’s forty-one day time span, courage does indeed swell up within him. The son of Odysseus grows, perhaps even surpassing himself, from someone who believed he was ‘doomed to be patient’ into someone who knows how to win over the gods and keep them on his side, who knows how to act effectively and succeed with honors in fulfilling the supreme task to which he is predestined in the story of his life.
With respect to Telemachus, the Odyssey might be described—with a little good will—as a proto-Bildungsroman or coming-of-age novel, and Odysseus’ son as the young hero of this literary manifestation. Telemachus may even be the first fictional character in western literature to experience genuine personality development within a single book. Thus seen, he is clearly the more modern of the two sons juxtaposed here and thereby the most timeless. As such, he haunts the pages of many later novels and plays about sons and fathers, even Shakespeare’s tragedy about the ever-indecisive Danish prince. Instead of wandering lost over Ithaca’s rocky inclines, Telemachus paces back and forth—like an older brother, an ancient shadow—at Hamlet’s side on the misty battlements of Elsinore. Hamlet himself, who had the gift of words but not of deeds, would say: ‘The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.’
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