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oem. He hears of the awful death of Ajax, son of Oileus, he hears of the sad fate of his brother Agamemnon; also the Old Man of the Sea tells him a few words concerning Ulysses, who is still alive but cannot get away from the isle of Calypso. News just good enough to give hope to the son who is eagerly listening, and hears that his father still lives. Finally, Menelaus learns of his own future existence from the Old Man, who is in person the very embodiment of what lies beyond the senses, of immortality. "The Gods have decreed thou shalt not die, O Menelaus, but shalt dwell in the Elysian Plain, at the ends of the earth." He is the husband of Helen, and coupled forever with her destiny; he is, through her, of the divine family of Zeus. Such is the promise, has it not been fulfilled? The poet thus brings to an end his Fairy Tale, with its deep-reaching glances into Egypt as one of the antecedent sources of Hellenic civilization. We find therein hinted a double relation: first, Egypt was the giver of much wisdom to Greece especially the distinction into Appearance and the one First Principle; secondly, it was hostile to Greek spirit, which had to pass through the Egyptian stage to reach its own destiny. Homer spins, in this Book, a thread which connects the culture of Hellas with that of Egypt, So much we dare find in the present legend without much straining. The distant background of this entire visit of Telemachus to Sparta is Egyptian and Oriental, as we see from the talk of both Helen and Menelaus. We may now be certain that Homer, the poet, had before him a thought of this kind: the inner soul of things and the outward manifestation. The story of Proteus we may call not merely a Fairy Tale, but the Fairy Tale, which images its universal self in setting forth its special theme; it has the one meaning, which, however, takes on many varieties of external shape; it is the essence of all Fairy Tales. Still you have to catch the Proteus and make him tell his secret; I can only advise you to hold fast, and finally the true form of the Old Man will reveal itself, and speak the truth of many appearances, nay, of all. In reading this poem of Homer we are only following the poet, if we seek to lay hold of its essence under its varied manifestations. The whole Odyssey is a Proteus, ever changing, assuming new forms, which will utterly bewilder the reader until he reaches its first principle. Homer probably suggests that h
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