Contempt - Alberto Moravia [59]
“I am using it,” I said, rather irritated; “that’s exactly what I am doing.”
“No, you’re not using it. Take a good look and think carefully and observe one fact before all others: the story of Ulysses is the story of Ulysses’ relations with his wife.”
I said nothing, this time. Rheingold continued: “What is the thing that strikes us most in the Odyssey? It is the slowness of Ulysses’ return, the fact that he takes ten years to get home...and that, during those ten years, in spite of his much-proclaimed love for Penelope, he does, in reality, betray her every time he gets a chance...Homer tells us that Ulysses thought only of Penelope, that the one thing he desired was to be reunited with Penelope...but ought we to believe him, Molteni?”
“If we don’t believe Homer,” I said, more or less jokingly, “I really don’t see who we are to believe.”
“Why, ourselves, men of the modern world, who know how to see right through the myth. Molteni, after reading and re-reading the Odyssey several times, I’ve come to the conclusion that, really and truly—and of course without realizing it—Ulysses did not want to get home, did not want to be reunited to Penelope...that’s my conclusion, Molteni.”
I said nothing, and again Rheingold, emboldened by my silence, resumed. “Ulysses, in reality, is a man who is afraid of returning to his wife—and we shall see later why—and, with this fear in his heart, seeks, in his subconscious mind, to create obstacles in his own path...That famous spirit of adventure is really no more than an unconscious desire to slow down his journey, frittering away the time in adventures that delay him and take him out of his way...It is not Scylla and Charybdis, Calypso and the Phaeacians, Polyphemus, Circe and the gods who are opposed to the return of Ulysses; it is Ulysses’ own subconscious which, step by step, creates good excuses for him to stay a year here, two years there, and so on.”
So this was what Rheingold was driving at—this classic Freudian interpretation of the Odyssey. I was only surprised that I had not thought of it before: Rheingold was a German, he had started his career in Berlin, at the time of Freud’s first successes, he had spent some time in the United States where psychoanalysis was held in great esteem; it was only natural that he should seek to apply its methods even to that hero who was, par excellence, devoid of complexes, Ulysses. I said dryly: “Very ingenious. But I still don’t see how...”
“One moment, Molteni, one moment. It is therefore clear, in the light of my interpretation—which is the only correct one in accordance with the latest discoveries of modern psychology—that the Odyssey is merely the inside story of what I may call a conjugal repugnance. This conjugal repugnance is debated and examined at great length by Ulysses, and it is only after ten years of struggle with himself that he finally succeeds in overcoming it and dominating it by accepting precisely the situation that had caused it. In other words, Ulysses, for ten years, invents for himself every possible kind of delay, makes every possible kind of excuse for not returning to the conjugal roof...he actually thinks, more than once, of binding himself to another woman. At last, however, he does succeed in gaining command over himself, and he goes home. And this return home of Ulysses amounts precisely to an acceptance of the situation owing to which he went away and did not want to come back.”
“What situation?” I asked, genuinely stupid this time. “Didn’t Ulysses go away simply in order to take part in the Trojan War?”
“Externals, externals,” repeated Rheingold with impatience. “But as to the situation at Ithaca before Ulysses’ departure to the war, the suitors and all the rest of it, I will speak about that when I explain the reasons for which Ulysses did not wish to return to Ithaca and was afraid to go back to his wife. In the meantime, however, I should like to stress first one important point: the Odyssey is not an extended adventure through geographical space, as Homer would