w be prepared for, which seeks to express just the
self-consciousness of the poet going through his inner experiences,
with the counterstroke from the outer world.

What new art-form, then, will Homer, the grand constructive poet, who
seizes every object necessary for his temple of song, assign to Ulysses
singing of himself? The Fairy Tale is taken with its strange
supernatural shapes, which have no reality, and hence can only have an
ideal meaning; we are ushered into the realm of the physically
impossible, where we have to see the spiritually actual, if we see
anything. Polyphemus is not a man, not an animal, not a direct product
of nature; he is a creature of the mind made by the mind in order to
express mind. Undoubtedly he has external shape, but that shape is
meaningless till we catch the spirit creating him. The Fairy Tale
removes the vision from an outer sensuous world, and compels an
internal vision, which looks into the soul of things and there beholds
the soul.

The Fairy Tale existed long before Homer, it is a genuine product of
the people. The stories which here follow have been traced among the
remotest races; they spring up of themselves out of the popular heart
and imagination. Homer picks them up and puts them into their true
place in his grand edifice, polishing, transforming them, by no means
creating them; certainly he never created this art-form. His merit is
that he saw where they belong and what phase of human experience they
express; to this merit must be added his special power, that of poetic
transfiguration. Not simply a redactor or putter together externally of
odd scraps, but the true architect of the totality; thus he comes
before us on the present and on all other occasions.

Ulysses, having told us who he is, proceeds to inform us of a second
important fact: his soul's strongest aspiration. He longs to return to
home and country. Ithaca, a small, rocky island, is the sweetest spot
on earth to him; Circe and then Calypso tried to detain him, each
wishing to keep him as husband; "but they could not shake the purpose
of my heart." One thinks that he must, while saying this, have cast a
sly glance at Arete, for whose approval it must have been intended, for
she was no friend of Circe and Calypso.

It is a curious fact that Homer, in this short description, makes two
mistakes in reference to the topography of Ithaca. The island can
hardly be called low as here stated, nor does it lie westw