Mason Barto (Duke University)
At the end of the Odyssey, Zeus proposes to erase the memory of Odysseus’ rivals (ἔκλησιν θέωμεν, 24.485) in order to end the cycle of retribution and establish peace. Often noted for its abruptness, Zeus’ intervention has been viewed more recently as an organic part of the narrative whole (Loney 2019, 224-225 and Marks 2008, 62-65), despite persistent attacks on its authenticity from antiquity to the present day (cf. West 1989). Taking the epic’s end as its starting point, my paper examines the Odyssey through the lens of psychoanalytic theory to illustrate Homeric narrative in terms of repression and unconscious memory. I argue that the underworld speech of Amphimedon (24.121-190), one of the recently murdered suitors, functions as the very counter-narrative that Zeus’ final erasure of memory seeks to repress. Amphimedon’s underworld speech contradicts previous accounts by claiming that Penelope, Odysseus, and Telemachos premeditated the murders of Amphimedon’s companions (24.127, 167-8, 175). As a narrative act of defiance, Amphimedon’s account threatens to destabilize what Eustathius has called the philodyssean bias of the main narrator (“φιλοδυσσεὺς Ὅμερος”, ad Hom. Od. 1878.47).
Helen’s pharmakon passage in Book 4 sets an authenticating precedent for Zeus’ finalizing erasure of memory (ἔκλησις). In this banquet scene, Helen introduces a φάρμακον into the banquet wine which brings the forgetting of all griefs (κακῶν ἐπίληθον ἁπάντων, 4.221). She and Menelaos subsequently offer speeches of praise for the heroic exploits of Odysseus, presenting a model of narrative vs. counter-narrative that conforms to the disagreement between Amphimedon (24.121-190) and the main narrator (22.1-389). Helen’s longing to return home (4.259-61) in her banquet speech provides a subtle corrective to the traditional account that claims Helen was entirely responsible for the war (cf. Od. 11.439). Noting the divergent material in Helen’s speech and the φάρμακον as an instrument toward forgetting and re-imagining the past, I argue that repressed memory in the Odyssey signals the competition between cultural histories in Iron Age and Archaic Greece. I read the removal of counter-narratives in the Odyssey to post mortem spaces (Amphimedon) or to intoxicated states (Helen) as an intrapoetic criticism of extrapoetic discourses that thrive on the repression of dissent.
Zeus’ divine imposition of forgetting (24.485) and Helen’s drug induced forgetting (4.221) both represent an organization of cultural history that foregrounds specific views to the exclusion of others. I demonstrate that the Freudian Unconscious provides a suitable model for examining memory erasure and competing interpretations of the past, especially since the repression of dissenting views in the Odyssey resembles the repression of signifiers in the theory of the Unconscious (Freud 1955, 605-608 and Lacan 2017, 75-77). My paper advances the interpretation that the Odyssey 1) criticizes historical moments of cultural erasure and 2) urges the audience to question whether political stability is worth the loss of dissenting views.