The idea I am using here is based on my reading of the structuralist approach I encountered as an undergraduate reading for example “Myth and Tragedy” by Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Whilst this book is concerned with tragedy its ideas, which have fed through into the work of many other scholars, has wide applicability. It is not doctrinaire unlike its critics. When I studied the Iliad it seemed natural to think in structuralist terms. I think it is helpful to have some way of talking about the space in which books 6 and 7 are set and how and why the spaces are imagined. I don’t just mean physical space but gender and political space as well.
You make a good point about the limits to Nausicaa’s freedom of movement through a liminal space but I think it is helpful to think about liminality also in less physical terms. Odysseus is passing through from one state ( ship wrecked, naked and with nothing but his wit) and will achieve status as an honoured guest. Nausicaa is likewise on the threshold of moving from unmarried parthenos to married life and membership of a different oikos. These transitions are fraught with difficulties and ambiguities. The very existence of the institution of Xenia presupposes the vulnerabilities of “a “guest”, who is visiting a country where, as a stranger, he is deprived of all rights, of all protection, off all means of protection.” (Benveniste 1969 in Nagy “The best of the Achaeans”). I find it important to keep in mind the dangers which are implied by the existence of Xenia and this leads me to view relations as more fragile, ambiguous and dangerous.
Indeed we do although I am not sure what it really adds to our discussion of Xenia. Indeed, immediately following this we have 7.302-7 in which Odysseus falsifies his account of what happened by saying it was his idea not to come directly to Alcinous.
We can return to this when we discuss book 7 but whether you regard this as a simple inconsistency or a “tactful falsehood” as Hainsworth puts it, it is a reminder not to take what Odysseus says at face value.
I was interested to see that the Loeb translates διερὸς with its post homeric meaning (wet, liquid) as slippery.
“There is no mortal man so slippery, nor will there ever be one, as to come to the land of the Phaeacians bringing hostility, for we are very dear to the immortals.”
Hainsworth observes on this line that “διερὸς: a notorious gloss.” and explains the usual way of taking it.
Those who like to be “purist” deprive themselves here of the playful possibilities of turning this line into something perhaps more than it can bear, but which is to me irresistible. Whilst Odysseus may not be overtly hostile his visit is not without tragedy for those Phaeacians who are turned to stone.
I’m sorry I brought this up because it really is a ridiculously minor thing but you’ve got me interested now.
I don’t dispute for a second that in its context λοῦσʼ ἐν ποταμῷ is 3rd person and it’s impossible to take it any other way (I’m not suggesting a translation of ‘and I washed myself’), but surely the situation here is a bit more complex than to say there’s no ambiguity at all?
In both my example (7.296) and your example (6.210) we have λούω as active and transitive, but with an implied object in both cases (me/him) and an implied subject and elision at 7.296. Doesn’t this necessarily make it more ambiguous than, say, “τὸν δʼ ἐπεὶ οὖν δμῳαὶ λοῦσαν” (8.454), where nothing is implied and there is no possibility of morphological ambiguity? Perhaps we mean something different by ambiguous.
If the form isn’t ambiguous, the meaning at least seems to be. The LSJ uses the line I quoted as its only example of λούω meaning “bathed me, i.e. let me bathe, 7.296;”, stretching the outer limits of ‘i.e.’ - perhaps there are other examples not cited, but this seems like circular reasoning. The Greek clearly says “she bathed [me]”, but because she didn’t literally bathe him the definition shifts accordingly to him being allowed to bathe himself. How is Alkinoos supposed to pick up on this distinction without his copy of the LSJ to hand to let him know how it should be interpreted in the light of the previous book?
Perhaps I misunderstood your original post. In my mind this ran:
Seneca: Nausicaa, as a young woman, is not in a position to provide xenia, which is limited in scope to men alone (Whittaker). Her hospitality and gift giving can only be considered as part of a suspension of norms in a liminal space.
Sean: Interesting!
Sean: In this later passage Odysseus suggests that she was unusually generous to him, and that more young people should act like her (young people these days!). I wonder if this suggests she is, in fact, engaging in xenia expected of her in spite of her lacking an oikos (broad definition of xenia) or perhaps this is just a kind of exceptional politeness (outside of the narrow definition of xenia implied by your first post).
New content: What separates Nausicaa’s xenia/politeness from Alkinoos/Arete’s xenia in the narrow definition appears to be her control of capital (begins Marxist Feminist Odyssey Reading Group thread) and her lack of expectation of reciprocation. But then maybe this is too transactional a way of thinking about it. I assume part of your original point is that when women are involved in xenia their work (weaving, bathing) is subsumed by men into their own process of guest-friendship, as opposed to these being freely-given by the women themselves in personal acts of xenia. I can’t see any other way to interpret Whittaker’s comment.
I don’t know about ambiguity, but I think this is pretty straightforwardly a causative active (Smyth 1711), like the phrase Caesar pontem fecit. I don’t think that Odysseus means to suggest Nausicaa (who is the only possible subject of λοῦσʼ) may have washed him with her own hands, just as Caesar pontem fecit doesn’t suggest Caesar held the bricks.
It’s true that Odysseus doesn’t clarify whether he or the slaves splashed the water onto his body, but I think the meaning of the verb λοῦσʼ is the same either way: Nausicaa said the right word, and a little while later Odysseus was clean. Maybe that’s ambiguity, but it’s no more ambiguity than any other time when a noble person ‘washes’ another person in epic.
I don’t think there was any misunderstanding. I did not mean to be dismissive of your post but it seemed to me not to contradict anything in my assertion that Nausicaa was not initiating a ritual of guest-friendship when she meets Odysseus. It is interesting that Odysseus indulges in the trope of “young people are so thoughtless” as a means of simultaneously marking himself and Alcinous as “thoughtful” and including Nausicaa in their group, although I would not want to over stress this. To my mind its a deft touch.
I don’t want to get too ahead of our collective reading but it is significant that while Odysseus supplicates Arete (7.142 ff. ) for onward passage, everyone looks to Alcinous to give Odysseus a seat at the feast and thereby accept his supplication. (Prompted by Echeneüs in an interesting parallel with Nestor receiving Telemachus). I think this adds force to my argument that women do not contract guest friendships, despite partaking in parts of the ritual such as Nausicaa’s gift of clothes and Arete asking, fruitlessly as it appears, Odysseus for his name (7.237-9).
There is something to be learned from this approach to strangers. If Odysseus had landed in the UK he would have been taken to a detention centre and subjected to a lengthy legal process. His desire to be repatriated would however have made him popular with the authorities although he would still have faced discrimination and outright hostility. No friendly welcome here I am afraid.
Perhaps we do need a Marxist Feminist Odyssey Reading Group thread! But I think we can use many different ideologies to understand the Odyssey and it is best to integrate them into a broad approach even if that causes difficulties and contradictions. I only wish that those who object to this approach would see that they too are mobilising their own ideologies while at the same time claiming to be “transparent”.
I laughed out loud at this! Gods this country is in a shabby state.
Hi Menoeceus! Welcome to textkit, and thanks for contributing to the group.
I’m going to leave replying to this properly until we reach the line itself because it’s become a massive deviation from this week’s reading (my own fault), but I’ve checked every instance of λούω in Homer and I can’t find an active indicative example of the subject definitively not also being the ‘bath attendant’ as you suggest, so I cleave to my reading for now. Mwh’s objection that Alkinoos would be shocked by the idea of Nausicaa bathing him is a debate in itself, though as always I’m sure he has good reasons.
But I think we can use many different ideologies to understand the Odyssey and it is best to integrate them into a broad approach even if that causes difficulties and contradictions. I only wish that those who object to this approach would see that they too are mobilising their own ideologies while at the same time claiming to be “transparent”.