Page 20 - GALIET ABSENCE AND Presence's Loom: Helen and Penelope IV

“...and I wish bitter death had been what I wanted, when I came hither
following your son, forsaking my chamber, my kinsmen,
my grown child, and the loveliness of girls my own age. It did not happen that way: and now I am worn with
weeping.”19
Helen of Troy’s grief, though remorseful, rarely nears Queen Penelope’s. Hers is genuine in despair, love, and nostalgia; for hers flourishes in longing word and sagacious deed. Free-to-remarry, Penelope resists and refuses to betray Odysseus’ nuptial chamber despite how free she is,20 and she schemes, how so, to postpone her remarriage (against what Helen’s perfidy neglects) to preserve her presence, and the integrity of all beloved things. Penelope weeps, yet she wills rightly; Helen wills wrongly.
Penelope’s steadfast faith and will and idyllic nostalgia, too, reflects homebound Odysseus’ ever driven will to return, where a sad present, replete with absence 3⁄4 longing for yesterday’s mortal sublimity 3⁄4 refuses Calypso’s immortal bliss. Just as Penelope wills to weave and unweave, to preserve identity and presence, Odysseus wills his return never forgetting his presence near his beloved Penelope and his beautiful Ithaca. Just as storm-tossed Odysseus journeys homeward,
19 Il., 3.170-175.
20 When Odysseus leaves for Troy, he charges Penelope to mind all things, and, to wed whom she will, and depart from her house when Telemachus is a grown man. Ody., 18.255-284. 370.
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