Song of Calypso

As I think of my several months away from blogging, I am reminded of the goddess Calypso in Homer’s Odyssey. She falls in love with the eponymous hero and keeps him on her island, disrupting his journey and hiding him from his friends and family. Odysseus is held captive to be a sexual slave to Calypso, and he pines for his home in Ithaca and for his wife Penelope, who has her own problems. Like most aspects of the Odyssey, the story has a number of layers. Calypso’s name itself is the Greek word for hidden or veiled, and her veiling of Odysseus serves to create more dramatic tension in an epic that is one dramatic scene leading to another. The unveiling or release of Odysseus, accomplished by that old trickster-god Hermes, allows the plot to move toward home, but the unveiling is not an easy thing either because Odysseus goes from a life of being cared for by a goddess to the tumultuous journey home. In fact the word for unveiling in Greek is apocalypse, which as we know has dramatic connotations.

I have not been held captive by a goddess, but I have been veiled for some months now. To go from an open-source life to a hidden one was not exactly my choice but was instead a matter of time and circumstance. My veiling included being hidden from my family and friends, who often called or wrote to check on me. Unlike Odysseus, I could be reached, but with some difficulty. Even now, I have a voicemail from burningsteady who castigates me for having such a cool phone and not using it. My Calypso was my job, which became increasingly demanding and less fun. There were crises and major tasks to perform, and they became my captor. Like Calypso, they offered the seduction of an exciting vocation in a beautiful place; like Odysseus, however, I was mourning my loss of freedom and seeing the pleasure of the work diminish in the light of larger losses, such as my life. The ping-pong table broke, and there was no more hanging out with students at night. These activities were supplanted by reports and tasks that kept me in a constant state of frustration and anxiety. Even a trip to Tennessee to see Milton, St. Mary of Virginia, burningsteady, Lane, and other companions, became a blur with little or no time to even catch up properly, much less reflect.

Calypso held Odysseus on her island for seven years, and after he finally escaped, she died of grief. Seven years. I told someone the other day that I would probably be director of the Buffalo Center for seven more years before I became a regular faculty member again. There is a certain symmetry there that is both delightful and troubling. This is the song of Calypso who holds us captive by giving us what we want.