Day 11, Book 11

John Flaxman (1835)

Odysseus' voyage to the kingdom of the dead . . . his unburied friend Elpenor begs for proper ceremony; the blind Tiresias prophesizes Odysseus' doom. In a poignant moment, Odysseus seeks to embrace the shade of his  mother:

Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her,
three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away 
like a shadow, dissolving like a dream, and each time
the grief cut to the heart, sharper, yes, and I,
I cried out to her . . . 

A parade of female ghosts processes by – and suddenly, we are back with Alcinous, who interrupts the telling, before Odysseus resumes. Agamemnon relates his treacherous return home (always a threat, for both Odysseus and Telemachus).

Achilles arrives, and we have something of a face-off between the hero of The Iliad and the hero of The Odyssey. Achilles addresses Odysseus as a "reckless friend . . . what greater feat can that cunning head contrive?" Odysseus seeks "to reassure the ghost," but Achilles impatiently retorts:

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! 
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man – 
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive –
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.