Abstract
Calypso’s Oath is a translation of the original Dutch Het recept van Calypso. I reviewed the original some years ago and have been since hoping for an English version. It has been a treat to read the book again. Maja Pellikaan-Engel writes with deliberation, clarity and wit, and even though I judged her Dutch exceptionally beautiful, the English text is no disappointment.
Pellikaan-Engel is a classicist and a philosopher. Her readings of Homer, Plato, Cicero, Seneca and Augustine make up the core of Calypso’s Oath. In the introduction Pellikaan-Engel describes how as a student and later a teacher she found that her understanding of these texts differed considerably from the standard reading. The most significant reason for this discrepancy she finds in the fact that she is a woman and that the standard interpretation is largely made by a selective group of men (p. 9).
Throughout the book Pellikaan-Engel challenges standard interpretations: Calypso is not the sex goddess she is often taken to be; Socrates’ exemplary status as philosopher is tainted when it becomes clear how little responsibility he took for Xanthippe and their children; Cicero’s admiration for the destruction of Carthage makes him not the role model of the humanities that he is often taken to be; Seneca’s much lauded apatheia at his death is a product of vanity; and Augustine’s repudiation of his mistress shows lack of self-knowledge and empathy. The re-readings are short and clear and are preceded by an overview of the conventional interpretation. I found the reading of Cicero the most disillusioning, and that of Calypso the most moving.
The reading of this part of The Odyssey underpins the remaining readings, as indicated by the title. I am sorry to see the original Dutch title, The Recipe of Calypso, replaced by Calypso’s Oath. Both titles refer back to that part of the text in which Odysseus asks Calypso to take an oath that she will indeed help him to return home. While she thinks this request for an oath silly, she nevertheless obliges:
But I am only thinking of and shall ponder on what I should devise for myself, if I were in your straits; for my mind is righteous and the heart in this breast of mine is not of iron, but has compassion. (Od. 5. 188–191, tr. M. Pellikaan-Engel; quoted on p. 17)
Reading these lines Pellikaan-Engel is reminded of a ‘home recipe rather than the declaration of a fundamental moral principle’ (p. 17). This image, of home recipe, characterizes not just Calypso, but also Pellikaan-Engel’s interpretations. Calypso’s moral position comes from extensive deliberation and consideration, placing herself in different positions. For her, empathy is central. Calypso’s moral position is like a recipe that has been tried and finely tuned. Similarly, Pellikaan-Engel’s works is the result of much study and of empathy with the marginalized: with Calypso, Xanthippe, Seneca’s wife Paulina and Augustine’s mistress, though much less with the men of these stories. They receive little empathy in her reading, because they show little empathy themselves.
Calypso’s oath is all the more remarkable as it follows her rage against the gods’ decision that she has to let Odysseus go. She rebukes the gods for their double standards. Female gods are not allowed to have any love relationships, while the male gods sleep with whomever they like. Her own relation with Odysseus was, moreover, not a fling, but intended to be for eternity – literally. What is more, she saved Odysseus from drowning, after Zeus had destroyed his ship. What rights have the gods to reclaim him now?
And yet, Calypso decides in the end to let Odysseus go. She gives him her oath and is magnanimous when helping him prepare for his journey. She is much more generous, in fact, than the suspicious Odysseus. His original love has disappeared, though Pellikaan-Engel perceptively notes that this does not stop him from sleeping with the goddess.
Homer, in Pellikaan-Engel’s reading, is ahead of his, and perhaps even the present time. He challenges the double standard throughout The Odyssey. Pellikaan-Engel thus draws her readers’ attention to his description of the death of the female slaves, who had – willingly or not – slept with Penelope’s suitors. Their execution – they were hanged in a row – is compared to that of innocent birds.
And as when long-winged thrushes or doves fall into a snare set in a thicket, as they seek to reach their resting-place, and hateful is the bed that gives them welcome, even so the women held their heads in a row, and round the necks of all nooses were laid, that they might die most piteously. And they writhed a little while with their feet, but not long. (Od. 22. 468–473, trans. AT Murray, revised by George E Dimmock, Loeb Classical Library; quoted on p. 21)
Homer’s criticism of double standards – different for men and for women, different for the powerful and the powerless – is, however, rarely noticed. The standard interpretations ignore Calypso’s words, and her subtle philosophical position using empathy and understanding. Instead, they focus on her sexuality.
In such readings the book proves itself to be a rich and necessary addition for everyone reading the classics. It is an addition, for Pellikaan-Engel rarely mentions why these texts have indeed become ‘classics’. The value of the texts is for her evident, but I wonder whether the same is true for her readers, who may not know the texts at all. It is at such points that the origin of the text shines through, as it was written in a country where classics are still taught at a considerable number of (state) schools.
In the last chapter Pellikaan-Engel draws her readers’ attention to more forgotten women from philosophy’s history, only to conclude that ‘academic philosophy is a male monopoly which applies a double standard’ (p. 92). This stern, bleak judgement is followed by the more hopeful outline of a ‘true revolution’ in the academic world, where the presence of women and especially of women’s studies is changing standards and practices, encouraging research into forgotten female philosophers and the analysis of ‘the blind spots of male philosophers’ (p. 95).
Yet, blind spots are not the privilege of male philosophers, as Pellikaan-Engel affirms. Blind spots, she argues, are created and sustained in a self-enclosed academic world. Her book is a heartfelt and well-written plea for all philosophers to follow and adapt Calypso’s recipe, who expressed her rational moral ideal of empathy both in words and in deeds. This book should encourage its readers to leave their enclosed world from time to time, but also to return to the texts discussed and discover new insights as well as blind spots. They may even find some empathy for Odysseus, Socrates, Seneca, Cicero, or Augustine.