Trickery as a Determining Factor
in Events
Each stanza suggests the malignant effect of super-
natural trickery on human intention and accom-
plishment. The first instance is the reference to
Poseidon, which theorizes that while the Greeks
were fighting on the Trojan plains, the god of the
sea stretched the sea, setting up the sailors to face a
much longer westward trip toward home than they
experienced in their journey east to Asia Minor.
The wasteland of an island Odysseus describes in
the second stanza includes vague reference to pigs
and a queen. In the Homeric legend, the sailors are
turned to swine when they visit the region ruled by
Circe. Odysseus is alone on this rocky, filthy land,
and his crew has been transformed by sorcery to
animals. In the last stanza, Odysseus mentions
that he would have never left his son and their
home on the island of Ithaca had it not been for
the trickery of Palamedes. Odysseus feigned mad-
ness in order to avoid being enlisted in the Greek
military, but the cunning Palamedes exposed the
ruse and forced Odysseus to join.
These references to trickery are in keeping
with classical Greek conceptions about fate and
supernatural powers that shape human affairs.
However, they also serve this Odysseus psycho-
logically. By projecting responsibility onto
agents beyond his control, Brodsky’s speaker
exonerates himself regarding the way things
have turned out. The speaker’s use of these refer-
ences illustrates the self-serving way an older
person might interpret the past in terms of
chance or accident in order to avoid the guilt of
holding himself responsible.Style
Epistolary Form and Direct Address
Anyone who has read an old letter knows how
such a document drops the reader instantly into
a specific moment in the past. The direct address
of a letter creates a sense of immediacy and con-
fidentiality. The experience is something akin to
eavesdropping; the reader is placed in the posi-
tion of an unintended recipient of a private
communication. Then, too, the text addresses a
particular reader, and the relationship between
the writer and the intended recipient is estab-
lished immediately. There is a sense on the letter
writer’s part that personal disclosure is possible
now, given that only this one recipient is
expected to read the message. Yet, the reader of
Brodsky’s poem is not that recipient but some-
one removed from the moment of composition
and the assumed moment of receipt of commu-
nication. Thus, the particularity of that moment
in time (when the letter is written) and that envi-
sioned second moment in time (when the
intended recipient reads the text) are experienced
together in all those subsequent moments when
any reader of the poem experiences directly this
supposed private address.
The epistle form allows the poet to capitalize
on that immediacy and privacy and that level of
heightened disclosure and intimacy and to utilize
these features of a private letter in the composi-
tion of his poem. The purposes served are multi-
ple and intriguing. As imagined by Brodsky, this
Odysseus is shown in a late-in-life moment of
introspection and brooding. Without his armor,
without his men, no longer defined vis-a`-vis an
enemy, he is inexplicably confused and self-
doubting. The poem thus exposes the hidden vul-
nerability of the victor, who after battle pondersCalypso takes pity on homesick Odysseus and
agrees to allow him to return to his wife Penelope.
(ÓMary Evans Picture Library / Alamy)
Odysseus to Telemachus