Monsieur Bossu's Treatise of the Epick Poem/Chapter 10
CHAP. X.
The Fable of the Odyssëis.
The Odyssëis was not design'd as the Iliad, to instruct all the States of Greece join'd and confederated in one Body, but for each State in particular. A State is compos'd of two parts; The Head which commands is the first, and the Members which obey make up the other. There are Instructions requisite for the Governour, and some likewise necessary for the Subjects: for him to rule well, and for them to be rul'd by him.
There are two Vertues necessary to one in Authority; Prudence to order, and Care to put in Execution the Orders he has given. The Prudence of a Politician is not acquir'd but by a long experience in all sorts of Business, and by an Acquaintance with all the different Forms of Governments and States. The Care of the Execution suffers not him that has order'd it, to rely upon others, but it requires his own Presence; and Kings who are absent from their States are in danger of losing them, and give way to great disorders.
These two Points might be easily united in one and the same Man. [1]"A King absent from his Kingdom visits the Courts of several Princes, where he learns the Customs of different Nations. From hence there naturally arises a vast number of Incidents, of Dangers, and of Passages, that are very useful for a Political Instruction: And on the other side, this absence gives way to the disorders which happen in his own Kingdom, and which end not till his return, whose sole Presence can re-establish all things". Thus the Absence of a King is the same, and has the same effect in this Fable, as the Division had in the former.
The Subjects have scarce any need but of one general Maxim, which is to suffer themselves to be govern'd by, and to obey faithfully some Reason or other which seems to them contrary to the Orders they have received. It were easie to join this to what we have already said, by bestowing on this Wise and Industrious Prince such Subjects, as in his absence would obey, not the Orders they receiv'd, but what appear'd to them more reasonable: And by demonstrating from the Misfortunes this Disobedience draws upon them, the Evil Consequences which almost infallibly attend these particular Conducts, which are distinct from the general Notion of him who ought to Govern.
But as 'tis necessary that the Princes in the [2]Iliad should be Cholerick and Quarrelsome: So 'tis necessary in the Fable of the Odysseïs that the chief Personage should be. Sage, and Prudent. This raises a difficulty in the Fiction; because this Personage ought to be absent for the two reasons aforemention'd, which are Essential to the Fable; and which constitute the principal part thereof: But he cannot be absent from his own home without offending against another Maxim of equal importance; viz. That a King should never leave his own Country.
It is true, there are sometimes such necessities as sufficiently excuse the Prudence of a Politician: But such a necessity is a thing important enough to supply matter for another Poem, and this multiplication of the Action would have been Vicious. To prevent this, first this necessity and the departure of the Hero must be disjoin'd from the Poem: And in the second place, the Hero having been oblig'd to absent himself for a Reason antecedent to the Action, and distinct from the Fable; he ought not to embrace this opportunity of instructing himself, and so absent himself voluntarily from his own Government. For at this rate, his absence would have been still voluntary, and one might with reason lay to his Charge, the disorders which might have happen'd thereon.
Thus in the constitution of the Fable, the Poet ought not to take for his Action, and for the Foundation of his Poem, the Departure of a Prince from his own Country, nor his voluntary stay in any other Place; but his Return, and this Return hinder'd against his Will. This is the first Idea the Poet gives us of it. [3]His Hero appears at first in a desolate Island, sitting upon the side of the Sea, which with Tears in his Eyes he looks upon as the obstacle, that had hinder's him so long from returning home, and visiting his own dear Country.
And lastly, since this forc'd delay has something in it that is most Natural and usual to such as make Voyages by Sea: Homer has judiciously made choice of a Prince whose Kingdom was in an Island.
We see then how he has feign'd all this Action, allowing his Hero a great many Years, because he stood in need of so many to instruct himself in Prudence and Policy.
"A Prince had been oblig'd to forsake his Native Country, and to head an Army of his Subjects in a Foreign Expedition. Having gloriously perform'd this Enterprize, he was for marching home again, and thither would have conducted his Subjects. But spite of all the attempts, which his eagerness to return home again put him upon, There are Tempests which stop him by the way for several Years together, and cast him upon several Countries very different from one another as to their Manners and Government. In the dangers he was in, his Companions, not always following his Orders, perish'd through their own fault. The Grandees of his Country do very strangely abuse his absence, and raise no small disorders at home. They consume his Estate, conspire to make away with his Son, would constrain his Queen to chose one of them for her Husband, and indulge themselves in all these Violences so much the more, because they were perswaded he would never return. But at last he returns, and discovering himself to his Son and some others, who had continu'd Loyal to him, he is an Eye-witness of the Insolence of his Enemies, punishes them according to their deserts, and restores to his Island that Tranquility and Repose, which they had been strangers to during his absence."
As the Truth, which serves as a Foundation to this Fiction, and which with it makes the Fable, is, That the absence of a Person from his own Home, or who has not an Eye to what is done there, is the cause of great disorders: So the principal Action, and the most Essential one, is the absence of the Hero. This fills almost all the Poem: For not only this bodily absence lasted several Years, but even when the Hero return'd, he does not discover himself; and this prudent disguise, from whence he reap'd so much advantage, has the same effect upon the Authors of the Disorders, and all others who knew him not, as his real absence had; so that he is absent as to them, till the very moment he punish'd them.
After the Poet had thus compos'd his Fable, and join'd the Fiction to the Truth, he then makes choice of Ʋlysses, the King of the Isle of Ithaca, to maintain the Character of his chief Personage, and bestow'd the rest upon Telemachus, Penelope, Antinous, and others, whom he calls by what names he pleases.
I shall not here insist upon the many excellent Advices, which are as so many parts, and natural Consequences of the Fundamental Truth; and which the Poet very dexterously lays down in those Fictions, which are the Episodes and Members of the entire Action, such for instance are these Advices: Not to intrude ones self into the Mysteries of Government, which the Prince keeps secret to himself. This is represented to us by the Winds shut up in a Bull-hide, which the miserable Companions of Ʋlysses must needs be so foolish as to pry into: Not to suffer ones self to be lead away by the seeming Charms of an idle and lazy life, to which the [4]Sirens Songs invite Men: Not to suffer ones self to be sensualiz'd by pleasures, like those who were chang'd into Brutes by Circe: And a great many other points of Morality necessary for all sorts of People.
This Poem is more useful to the Vulgar, than the Iliad is, where the Subjects suffer rather by the ill Conduct of their Princes, than through their own fault. But in the Odysseïs, 'tis not the Fault of Ulysses that is the ruin of his Subjects. This wise Prince did all he could to make them sharers in the Benefit of his Return. Thus the Poet in the Iliad says, He sings the Anger of Achilles, which "had caus'd the Death of so many Grecians;" and on the contrary, in the [5]Odysseïs he tells his Readers, "That the Subjects perish'd through their own fault."
Notwithstanding it is to be confess'd, that these great Names of Kings, Hero's, Achilles, Agamemnon, and Ulysses, do no less denote the meanest Burghers, than they do the Cæsars, the Pompeys, and the Alexanders of the Age. The Commonalty are as subject as the Grandees, to lose their Estates, and ruin their Families by Anger and Divisions, by negligence and want of taking care of their business. They stand in as much need of Homer's Lessons, as Kings; they are as capable of profiting thereby; and 'tis as well for the Small as the Great, that the Morality of the Schools, that of the Fable, and that of the Chair deliver those Truths we have been just speaking of.