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later,
    the shipwreck of Ulysses, in the fifth book of the “Odysseis” [Chapman’s transliteration of the Greek word for Odyssey ], and I had the reward of one of his delighted stares, upon reading the following lines:
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    Then forth he came, his both knees falt’ring, both
    His strong hands hanging down, and all with froth
    His cheeks and nostrils flowing, voice and breath
    Spent to all use, and down he sank to death.
    The sea had soak’d his heart through .
    It is the most famous meeting between Homer and an English poet. Keats had read and stared in delight, shocked into a moment of recognition, of what the Greeks called anagn ō risis , when a clogging surface is stripped away and the essence for which you have been hungering is revealed.
    At this stage Odysseus has been at sea for twenty days. For nearly two hundred lines he is churned through the pain Poseidon has wished on him: “Just as when, in the autumn, the North Wind drives the thistle tufts over the plain and they cling close to each other, so the gales drive the raft this way and that across the sea.” The sea is never more vengeful in these poems, never more maniacally driven by violence and rage. The raft is overturned and broken, the giant surf hammers on flesh-shredding rock. It is one of Odysseus’s great tests. His name itself in Greek embeds the word odysato , meaning “to be hated,” and that adjective appears twice in this storm. He is the hated man on the hateful sea. This is his moment of suffering, and the sea he sails on is loathing itself.
    Throughout the Odyssey he is the man of many parts, inventive, ingenious, with many skills and many gifts, but here is merely polytlas , the man who dares many things, suffers many things and endures many things. Only when a goddess-bird and then Athene herself come to his aid can he finally drag himself to the shore.
    Here in a virtually literal translation is what Homer says as Odysseus emerges from the surf.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â he then bends both knees
    and his strong hands-and-arms; for sea has killed his heart.
    Swollen all his flesh, while sea oozes much
    up through mouth and nostrils, he then breathless and speechless
    lies scarcely-capable, terrible weariness comes to him.
    The Greek word Chapman translated in “ The sea had soak’d his heart through” —the phrase which Keats loved so much—is dedm ē to , which means “overpowered” or “tamed.” It comes from a verb, damazo , of immensely ancient lineage, its roots spoken in the steppelands of Eurasia at least six thousand years ago, used to describe the breaking-in of animals and later the bending of metal to your desires and needs. It is essentially the same word as “tame” in English, or domo in Latin, the word for reduction, to kill in a fight, to domesticate and dominate. But in the Iliad it also appears as a word for seduction, or more likely the rape of girls. Young girls, enemies, heifers and wives are referred to in Homer by words that come from the same stem. So Odysseus here is tamed and unmanned by the sea. The sea defeated him. As a hero reduced to the condition of a heifer, his heroic willpower temporarily overcome, he is no better than a corpse, bloated, destroyed, owned, possessed and dominated.
    Pope, encased in the language of politesse, fell short when faced with this challenge.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â his knees no more
    Â Â Â Perform’d their office, or his weight upheld:
    His swoln heart heaved; his bloated body swell’d:
    From mouth and nose the briny torrent ran;
    And lost in lassitude lay all the man.
    On a sofa? you might ask.
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