From that one line, the rest of the story took flight. Because in a world without gods or magic, it is the stories people tell themselves that matter most. Personal and family and community narratives were the only history they might know – and I thought it made a neat echo of the overarching idea in our retelling that Odysseus, too, was creating his personal narrative of heroism out of the ruin and devastation he brought everywhere he had gone.
So who were my Sirens? How did they come to live upon their rocky, barren island to sing poor sailors to their doom?
Once upon a time, it seemed reasonable to me, perhaps a woman had been shipwrecked. The only survivor of such a tragedy, and faithful to her goddess, Persephone. Perhaps she had sought help from a passing ship, shouting and crying and singing hymns at the top of her lungs, and lured it into rocks she had not realized were there. Maybe she lived off what the waves washed up, what she’d dared to salvage. And perhaps every so often, there were survivors of these shipwrecks, now purposely arranged, men who seemed to climb miraculously from the sea, accompanied by supplies of fresh water and wine and foodstuffs, more easily accessed and salvaged by a more well-fed sailor than a starving woman.
Perhaps to her eyes, these men who survived might appear as gods. And perhaps one of them gave her a daughter, and another gave her a granddaughter. And perhaps the story she told her child and her grandchild was the dream of a woman who had been driven into madness by her deprivations, her suffering – or even just something woven from half-truths that might give her small, lonely family hope for themselves.
That story in turn would have been passed on to the next generation, and the one after that, embroidered just a little bit more with every telling, until the only story they know, the only truth they might have, is the myth Homer (and other writers) presents us with: Once, these women served Persephone, and when she was lost, they were given wings to search the world over. But when they returned to Demeter, having failed to find her daughter, they were punished and sent into exile on their barren island, where they sang poor sailors to their deaths, forevermore. Until the day a ship passed them by without crashing, and failing in their task again, they were turned into stone.
The stories we tell ourselves, these narratives we weave in our personal lives and our family histories, and our communities, and our countries – I think sometimes we forget that they’re a kind of magic, too. And given enough time and isolation, like the Sirens and perhaps Odysseus, we’re still more than capable of forgetting the whole truth.
Also: I’ve got to give heaps of credit to Libbie for suggesting a little falconry might solve my problems of removing a viable food source and creating more hardship for my girls, and to Diana Paz for her early reading and support as I struggled at first to find my way in this strange godless world – which as you all know, is not my usual sort. But I hope I’ve done justice to the myth of the Sirens all the same!
Calypso’s Vow
by David Blixt
Inspiration. To breathe in.
When first approached to contribute to this volume, I was asked which story on Odysseus’s journey most interested me. I didn’t hesitate. I wanted to write about Calypso.
An odd choice, perhaps, for someone usually singled out for his action sequences. Here were no wars, no duels, no hair’s-breadth escapes. Instead there was a story of comfort, and longing, and loss. On both sides.
Blame Suzanne Vega.
I was barely a teenager when Solitude Standing was released, and while I love the poetry of that whole album, the song that touched me most was her Calypso:
My name is Calypso, and I have lived alone
I live on an island and I waken to the dawn
A long time ago I watched him struggle with the sea
I knew that he was drowning and I brought him into me
Now today, come morning light
He sails away, after one last night
I let him go.
Simple, and heartrending. If you love somebody, set them free. (Sting’s song of that name came out two years earlier, and was far chirpier. I don’t know why the pop music of my youth so tinged this story, but it did.)
Of course, after that choice came the research. The island, her family. My trouble was that Odysseus spends such a long time there. I didn’t want him to be ensorcelled or imprisoned. Not a sex-slave, as he basically is in Homer. I had no interest in making Calypso a sex-crazed nymph or voluptuous witch. No, she was divine, but in the way rulers are called divine. She was a queen. Queens rule. From there I drew on other myths and traditions, and she grew into a full-bodied character.
But still the question lingered: why does he stay so long?
There was a lot of discussion between the other authors of the wreckage Odysseus leaves behind him. I decided that it had to have some effect. Redemption is a large part of any hero’s journey. After thirteen years of death and strife, of war and survival, where so many died that he might live, he wants to look in a mirror and not loathe himself.
His flaw, of course, is that he is so competent. Like Caesar, he is too good at what he does not to inspire awe, or envy. Or love. Which is what happens to Calypso. She loves him. And she sees what they could be together.
The beauty of Vega’s song is the sacrifice, the abnegation of self. She loves him, but he loves elsewhere. So she lets him go:
The sand will sting my feet and the sky will burn
It's a lonely time ahead
I do not ask him to return
I let him go
I let him go
If self-abnegation was my theme, it had to be his goal as well. That was why he stayed. To prove he could be more than a selfish survivor. To prove he could serve someone other than himself. To prove he could keep a vow.
But he’s not in love with Calypso, whose story this is. “Are you the villain of my life, or am I the villain of yours?” asks Brutus in Eve of Ides. The truth is we are all the heroes of our own stories, but sometimes we are supporting players in a larger drama. It hurts to recognize that.
It hurts even more to realize that your part in someone else’s story has come to an end.
A few years back Sean Graney crafted an astonishing play called All Our Tragic, combining all the known Greek tragedies into a single, 12-hour experience. The title comes from a line that has haunted me: “All our tragic stems from people loving what they should not.”
I reference that thought here as homage to Sean, and also to the Greek stories that continue to inspire playwrights, poets, songwriters, and now a bevy of amazing writers, among whom I am honored to stand. I have to thank everyone involved in this wonderful tome, Libbie, Russ, Scott, Amalia, and especially Vicky for her guidance, patience, and inspiration.
The stories of the Greeks inspire us to conspire. To breathe together.
The King in Waiting
by Russell Whitfield