PROFESSOR POCOCK’S. RESEARCHES INTO THE ODYSSEY

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29070, 5 December 1959, Page 3

PROFESSOR POCOCK’S. RESEARCHES INTO THE ODYSSEY

Reality and Allegory in the Odyssey. By L. G. Pocock, M.C., M.A., formerly Professor of Classics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Adolf M. Hakkert, Amsterdam 200 pp.

Professor Pocock’s researches into the “Odyssey” are well known in Christchurch. In 1957 the New Zealand University Press published “The Sicilian Origin of the Odyssey,” in which he presented his arguments in support of the theory first advanced by Samuel Butler in 1897; namely, that the “Odyssey” was not a poem of the Eastern Mediterranean as is usually presumed, but a poem of Trapani in north-west Sicily. Butler’s allied theory that the poem was the work not of a man but a woman, smacking as it does of a perverse and characteristically Butlerian love of thumbing his nose at accepted opinion, no doubt had much to do with the fact that his topographical ideas were never taken seriously by the scholarly world. But Professor Pocock’s very thorough study of the topographical evidence in support of Butler’s theory showed that the whole idea perhaps merited some real attention after all. >

Pursuing his efforts to provoke such attention, Professor Pocock has further developed his view of the “Odyssey” in this new book. He has now gone far beyond Butler, and beyond his original topographical interests, though these remain the foundation of all his later thinking. He now contends that not only were all the places visited by Odysseus in his wanderings real places, but also that the adventures of Odysseus were based on those of a real hero of the Elymi (Greekspeaking allies of the Phoenicians) who lived in the seventh or eighth century; and further, that the whole poem should be read as an allegory on the subject of Phoenician sea power. That this is a bold hypothesis and one that is open to many objections Professor Pocock is well aware. But he argues, as ever, staunchly and with delightful pungency and forthrightness of expression. The reader, however sceptical, cannot help being disarmed when the author shares with him the excitement that attended the various stages in the development of his ideas, and takes him into his confidence about his difficulties. “I puzzled about it off and on, literally for years.’’ he confesses amiably at one point in the argument. At another he admits to having been “somewhat excited” when his son. Dr. J. G. A. Pocock, sent from Sicily photographs that provided a vital link in his argument. “These were very expensive photographs,” he cheerfully confides in his reader. “But they really are the poet’s signature.

U'm hiy th ' ,n “ • tho of ,.£ our se, a matter for the specialist to decide how far Uk»K SS ? r ? ocock ’ s theories are kk ®J> i to be correct - The interested layman, with a good map and a translation (or the original, . he reads Greek) of the Odyssey at his side, can follow the argument fairly easily. And he is bound to be impressed by of Professor Pocock’s points. But ultimately his bias, in the discussion will probably be a temperamental one. He will either be more naturally inclined to agree with the statement of the distinguished classical scholar, Merry, who said of the .. Ody „ we are m a wonderland which we shall look in vain for on the map ; or he will be temperamentally more inclined to Professor Pocock s view that if the Odyssey” is only a fairy-tale then it cannot be great literature. To assign the geography of the poem o Fairyland, insists Professor Pocock does “less than justice, much less than justice, to the best of poets.” The author of the Odyssey ’ was, in his opinion, not only an accurate topographer, whose brief but vivid wordpictures of the landfalls of Odysseus must and do refer to real places, but also a political allegor-

ist who gave his poem a basis of historical as well as geographical reality. It is in keeping with Professor Pocock’s sturdy determination to play the “Odyssey” squarely in the real world that he 'uses such business-like and precise tools of research as Admiralty Charts and the “Mediterranean Pilot”; and that he takes such pains and offers good, practical suggestions on the interpretation of problems like that of the herdsman in the land of the Laestrygonians who, if he wished to do without sleep, could have earned a double wage herding cattle by night and sheep by day. But he goes a very long way in his insistence on the foundation of reality in the poem. The bones scattered the Sirens, for instance, must be real bones (though the Sirens themselves were only allegorical figures), the bones of Carthaginian mercenaries deliberately starved to death, which the poet “had perhaps seen for himself.” And the lotus plant consumed by

the Lotus Eaters “sounds much more like a story of narcotics” than anything else. The more obstinate reader may rebel against such reductions of the original story to all too solid reality. And he may with good reason have objections to make to Professor Pocock’s account of the allegory he finds in the “Odyssey”: It is undeniably a little difficult to agree that the whole poem is an extended allegory on the sinister, naval power of the Phoenicians when the Phoenicians are never mentioned from the beginning of the poem to the end—and just as difficult to accept Professor Pocock’s explanation that the fact that they are never mentioned is “a very significant piece of camouflage.” But it must be conceded by everyone who reads this book that Professor Pocock makes out a very strong case for some of his identications of Odyssean landfalls with real places—particularly those in and about the Straits of Gibraltar. And there can be nothing but admiration for the range of his learning and interests, and the vigour of his writing. Great enjoyment has plainly gone into these researches and into the writing of this book, and the enjoyment communicates itself—to the unregenerate and the convert alike.