Page 12 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

treacherous maidens, ensnaring the irreversible spring hour, denounce her sagacious stratagem to the ignoble suitors. Time shall, henceforward, cease to roll its mythic, cyclic seconds, and the hours shall linearly unfold, and while Odysseus does not return, Penelope of sorrows shall, tormented, contemplate the last breath of her stratagem: her necessary absence against her possible permanence. In this ambiguity and irresoluteness, the three-year seasons go around and around, reflecting in each motion Penelope’s tossing moods, until the final spring of Odysseus’ return comes to pass, where a new beginning is adumbrated: one not of stagnation, but of progress spanning beyond the temporal recurrence of the desolate summery, autumnal, and wintry hours. To finish her weavings shall be to remarry, to depart, yet Odysseus’ unforeseen return and the suitors’ demise shall conjugate, once more her solemn identity with the lovely Ithacan scent of being and presence.
To undo signifies Penelope’s temporary salvation. She shall remain by her Telemachus’ side, preserving not only all filial things intact, “her goods, serving women, and her (this) high-roofed house,”3 but also the household’s integrity, and her connubial dream with Odysseus. In the blithe hours of her grief, she unravels her weavings 3⁄4 to avoid exile and despair, her sickness
3 Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. By Allen Mandelbaum. New York: Random House, 2003. 19.503- 530. 396.
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