‘Let Demodocus rest his ringing lyre now!’ A Benjaminian refrain over the eighth book of The Odyssey

Abstract

Could the experience of Ulysses, the hero of the Odyssey, tell us something about ourselves? This essay attempts to outline a brief answer to this question by focusing on the eighth book, the structure of which is based on a carefully structured network of interruptions. During the banquet hosted by King Alcinous on the Island of Phaeacia in honour of Odysseus, who has not yet revealed his identity to anyone, the blind poet Demodocus, inspired by the Muse, makes two appearances, singing about episodes from the Trojan War. Both times, Alcinous notices that Odysseus tries to hide his tears and stops the recital. The caesuras caused by the songs of the bard modulate the affections of the hero who, attending like the Benjaminian relaxed audience to the scenes of his life, ends up revealing his identity. At the very core of the interruptions there is a repeated gesture of lamentation, and the repetition will end up making a difference. Weeping turns into revelation, the revelation into transfiguration. The structural interruptions of the eighth book of the Odyssey ultimately reveal what it means to be embedded in a world of human and non-human powers and the difficulties in negotiating our individual agency within such a world. But the book also defines interruptions as occasions for making meaning in creative and reflective ways.