and know Ulysses himself; the son is to advance to direct
communion with his great father.

Here the Fourth Book, or rather the Telemachiad, reaches out and
connects with the Ithakeiad, which begins in the Thirteenth Book.
Ulysses returns to Ithaca and steals to the hut of the swineherd
Eumaeus; Telemachus comes back from Sparta, and, avoiding the ambush of
the Suitors, seeks the same faithful servant. Thus father and son are
brought together, and prepare themselves for their heroic task.

But before this task can be accomplished, the grand experience of
Ulysses is to be told in the eight following Books (V-XII); that is, we
are now to have the Ulyssiad, just as we have had the Telemachiad.
Father and son are now separated from home and country; both are to
return through a common deed of heroism.

_General Observations._ Looking back at the Telemachiad (the first four
Books) we observe that it constitutes a very distinct member of the
total organism of the Odyssey. So distinct is it that some expositors
have held that it is a separate poem, not an integral portion of the
entire action. The joint is, indeed, plain at this place, still it is a
joint of the poetic body, and not a whole poetic body by itself. Only
too easy is it for our thought to dwell in division, separation,
scission, analysis; let us now turn to the opposite and more difficult
habit of mind, that of uniting, harmonizing, making the synthesis of
what seems disjointed. In other words let us find the bonds of
connection between the last four Books and the coming eight Books, or
between the Telemachiad and the Ulyssiad.

1. We have already noticed the three grand Returns, rising one above
the other to the culmination--that of Nestor, of Menelaus, of Ulysses.
Now the first two are told in the Telemachiad; but they openly lead up
to the third, which is the complete Return, and which is just the theme
of the Ulyssiad. Nestor makes the immediate Return, without conflict,
through Greece, but he points directly to Menelaus, and foreshadows the
coming of Ulysses. Menelaus, however, prophesies the third Return, and
thus directly joins his account with the Ulyssiad. In this manner we
see and feel the intimate bond between these two grand divisions of the
total Odyssey.

2. We notice the same general movement in the Telemachiad and in the
Ulyssiad; the same fundamental scheme underlies both. There is the real
Present, in the one case Ithaca, Pylos, Sparta, in t