None of the exotic pleasures Odysseus has experienced in his travels or the heroic adventures that have earned great glory bring Odysseus the complete fulfillment or the overflowing joy that these scenes of reunion bring to his life-neither the island paradise of Calypso whose peerless beauty never fades nor the royal welcome of the Phaeacians and King Alcinous who offers Odysseus the hand of his daughter Nausicaa, a maiden whose incomparable beauty moved him to ask in awe if she were a mortal or a goddess who resembles Artemis: “I look at you and a sense of wonder takes me.”Īfter an absence of twenty years and upon arrival in Ithaca, Odysseus in disguise seeks news of the situation of his family and the state of his kingdom. In every one of these reunion scenes between master and servant, father and son, husband and wife, and father and grandfather Homer depicts scenes of the sweetness of life (“something life perfection”) and the most exquisite joys of the heart. From the moment he arrives in Ithaca as a beggar in disguise to the revelation of his real name, Odysseus experiences many reunions with all the beloved members of his household and family who have mourned his absence and yearn for his return to reunite the family, restore justice to his kingdom, and expel the suitors of Penelope who have corrupted the home and brought barbarism into civilization. In the concluding chapters of the Odyssey after Odysseus’ twenty-year absence from Ithaca, he returns home from the Trojan War and from the years of wandering after the fall of Troy. The planting of trees in the orchard-the passing down of tradition, of the moral wisdom of the past, of the torch of life, and of the beauty of life’s simplest but richest and pleasures-produces the great harvest of joy that culminates in the final chapters of the “Odyssey.”Įditor’s Note: This is the final essay that Professor Mitchell Kalpakgian, who passed away on August 28, 2018, wrote as Imaginative Conservative Senior Contributor, and perhaps the very last scholarly work he completed.

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