August Malmström, Swedish
“Your Highness, I Am the One They Call Odysseus, and My Journey Has Kept Me From Ithaca For Nigh on 20 Years. Please Please PLEASE May I Use Your Restroom?,” 1853
Oil on canvas
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (Google translated, if necessary), here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated Swedish Wikipedia page has more).
/// Brave Odysseus knelt down to seize
Queen Arete by hugging her knees.
He’d been cloaked by a mist
so she didn’t resist.
At his sudden appearance, all freeze.
/// And, so, how did he get to this spot?
First he’s hidden in mist, now he’s not.
Near the Queen he appeared.
Will our hero be speared?
That’s explained in The Odyssey’s plot.
/// After decades of wand’ring and slaughter,
he’d been shipwrecked and crawled from the water.
His home still out of reach,
he lay bare on the beach,
but was clothed by the King and Queen’s daughter.
/// The girl, Nausicaä, offered to bring
this poor stranger to her dad, the King.
But Odysseus knew
there’d be gossip these two
were unchaperoned having a fling.
/// To the palace he headed, alone,
when Athena approached him. She’d known
that he’d need a disguise.
As a shield from men’s eyes,
she made fog hide his walk to the throne.
/// When the mist at once magically cleared,
a strange man at their feet now appeared.
King Alcinous thought, “Odd…
this guy must be a god.”
The Queen recognized what he wore. “Weird!”
/// He explained, “I’m a man who was lying
on your shore near where clothing was drying.
Since my garments were gone,
your child said, ‘Put these on.’
So, no moral rules were we defying.”
/// By Odysseus they were impressed,
and his tale of the way he was dressed.
He had not told his name,
nor his Trojan War fame,
but his true I.D. soon the King guessed.
/// Homer tells us the royals next said,
“Take Nausicaä, our child, and be wed.”
With his wife on his mind,
he politely declined.
T’was _Penelope_ he longed to bed.
/// At rich banquets, their guest they’d regale.
He repaid them by telling the tale
of his journeys since Troy,
and the means he’d employ
to survive and toward Ithaca sail.
/// They could all see Odysseus burn
with a yearning at last to return
to his long-suffering wife
and his old pre-war life.
So they helped him with love and concern.
/// This small part of the tale is now done.
More adventures to come; I’ll cite one.
That young beauty who viewed
our shipwrecked hero nude,
wed a similar dude… Ody’s son!
/// Their guest kneels as a sign of respect,
(much as people who pray genuflect).
When he clasps the Queen’s knees,
it’s to pinpoint his pleas.
He would never approach her erect!