Traversing No-Man’s Land JENNY STRAUSS CLAY We all know that the hero of the Odyssey is an ambiguous figure, trickster, a teller of great yarns, a devious manipulator, a master of disguises, polymorphic, multifarious, slippery. The Odyssey is named after its protagonist, yet that name, both in its presence and absence deepens our perplexity as to his identity. Here I am mainly concerned with the pseudonym Odysseus adopts in the cave of the man-eating monster: No Man. But even the name assigned to him at birth reeks of ambiguity and has been much discussed. I think first and foremost of Dimock’s article and Peradotto’s book.1 Here I only draw attention to a few relevant observations. In the very first scene of the poem, the poet draws attention to the hero’s name by punning on it—and for the Greeks paranomasia, especially in the case of gods and heroes, reveals their nature: nomen omen (e.g., Apollo, Cassandra’s destroyer, Aesch. Ag.1072–87; Aphrodite, the Foam-born, Hes. Th. 188–98; Hekate, the goddess by whose will prayers are received or rejected, Hes. Th. 411–52). In the divine assembly that opens the Odyssey, Athena bemoans Odysseus’s lot and berates Zeus: “Why now do you odysseus him so much? (τί νύ οἱ τόσον ὠδύσαο; 1.62). This accusation is especially ironic in light of Zeus’s opening complaint, accusing men of blaming the gods for their troubles; Zeus’s own daughter accuses her father of doing just that! The implied derivation of our hero’s name from odyssasthai, recurs at several important junctures of the poem (5.340, 5.423, 19.275; the verb means “to be wroth with” and is used exclusively—with one exception—of divine arion 29.2 fall 2021 2 traversing no-man’s land anger, which thus makes it the verbal equivalent of the noun menis, the subject of the Iliad. But the form of the verb is itself ambiguous; it can be understood as both active (“to incur wrath”) and passive (“to suffer wrath”). The unique occurrence of the active sense is exploited in Book 19 in the episode involving Odysseus’s naming shortly after his birth, a scene that is in turn embedded in the famous foot-washing incident and forms its core. There, the nurse Eurycleia not so subtly hints at an appropriate name for the baby, the first-born and only son of Antikleia and Laertes: Polyaretus, “Much-Prayed-For.” (Perhaps the old nurse does not realize the name’s possible ambiguity from αρή, both “prayer” and “curse”). Thereupon, his crusty old grandfather Autolycus names the child Odysseus, because, as he says, “I have come here, having odysseused, or having been odysseused (“having been hated” or “having aroused the hatred”)—or better, “cursing” and “being cursed”—by many men and women over the fertile earth” (19.407).2 The syntax here is intentionally ambiguous: the trickster Autolycus has both provoked and incurred wrath. And his grandson will live up to his grandfather’s reputation.3 The whole sequence is unified by its focus on the issue of identity: who and what is Odysseus? There are indications that the name of Odysseus is itself illomened or somehow taboo, since characters in the epic seem to make a special effort to avoid using it. Eumaeus is quite explicit (14.145–46): τὸν μὲν ἐγών, ὦ ξεῖνε, καὶ οὐ παρεόντ᾽ ὀνομάζειν αἰδέομαι. Stranger, even though he is not present, I am ashamed to name him. The irony of course is that Odysseus is present. Telemachus also seems to shy away from naming his father throughout his dialogue with Athena/Mentes in Book 1. His avoidance is most striking when he notoriously expresses doubts as to the identity of his father (Od. 1. 216–20): Jenny Strauss Clay 3 μήτηρ μέν τέ μέ φησι τοῦ ἔμμεναι, αὐτὰρ ἐγώ γε οὐκ οἶδ᾽· οὐ γάρ πώ τις ἑὸν γόνον αὐτὸς ἀνέγνω. ὡς δὴ ἐγώ γ᾽ ὄφελον μάκαρός νύ τευ ἔμμεναι υἱὸς ἀνέρος, ὃν κτεάτεσσιν ἑοῖσ᾽ ἔπι γῆρας ἔτετμε. νῦν δ᾽ ὃς ἀποτμότατος γένετο θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων, τοῦ μ᾽ ἔκ φασι γενέσθαι, ἐπεὶ σύ με τοῦτ᾽ ἐρεείνεις. My mother says I am sprung from that man, but I for my part Don’t know. For no one4 ever himself knows his begetter. Thus, indeed I should have been the son of some prosperous Man, upon whom old age came amid his possessions. But now, he is the most ill-fated of all mortal men: That’s the one from whom they say I was begotten, since you ask. But there are...