t
state or suggest the fact with precision. Without troubling ourselves
further about names, we shall proceed to seize the meaning by an
exposition given in some detail.

No careful reader can doubt that the poem changes decidedly at the
present juncture in color, style, environment and purpose. What reason
for it? And what is the connection with the preceding portion of the
poem? Four Books (IX-XII) of the same character essentially, unfold
themselves before us and demand a new kind of appreciation; they are
not idyllic, not epical; they form a class of a peculiar sort, which
class, however, we have before noticed in the Odyssey, showing itself
in short but suggestive interludes.

We shall, accordingly, first grapple with the leading facts of this new
poetic order and seek to interpret them, or rather let them interpret
themselves. Phaeacia, which we have just seen, lies before Fableland,
though the story of the latter is now told in Phaeacia.

1. The first fact which strikes us is the decided contrast between the
two realms. Phaeacia is the land of pure idyllic delight, its supreme
characteristic is peace, its happy people seem to have no conflict;
Fableland, on the contrary, is one incessant course of strife, struggle
and calamity, beginning with the unprovoked attack on the Ciconians.
Polyphemus the savage Cyclops is the opposite of the civil ruler
Alcinous; Circe, the enchantress, is the insidious foe to domestic life
represented by Arete; State and Family in Phaeacia are counterbalanced
by an anti-State and an anti-Family in Fableland. Thus man and woman
are shown in the two different places as institutional and
anti-institutional. Still deeper does the opposition reach; Phaeacia
lies wholly in the Upperworld, with its sweet sunlight, while Fableland
has a dim Underworld, beyond the sunlight, the realm of the
Supersensible; finally Fableland witnesses the supreme negative act of
man, typified in the slaying of the Oxen of the Sun. We may, therefore,
affirm that Fableland, as compared with Phaeacia, shadows forth the
realm of negation; the one stands for the ideal Greek world of ethical
order and harmony; the other is the denial and destruction of the same.

But we must not omit the reverse side of the contrast. In Fableland
there is one continued striving of the human soul, a chafing against
all limits, a moving forward from one stage to another; the spirit of
man is shown transcending its bounds everywhere. I