Feeling pain and delight while hearing a song in Odyssey 8

Abstract

This posting of 2015.06.10 continues from where I left off in the posting of 2015.06.03, where I was focusing on the audience’s reception of the first song of Demodokos. The song, as we saw, is paraphrased at verses 72–83 of Odyssey 8; and the reception, as we also saw, is described at verses 83–92, which I translated and analyzed in the previous post. These verses 83–92 say that the singing of Demodokos is a delight for the Phaeacians who hear his song, while it is a pain for the one person in the audience who is not a Phaeacian, and this person is the hero Odysseus. The occasion of the singing is a feast hosted by Alkinoos, king of the Phaeacians, and Odysseus is attending as a guest of honor, though his identity is not yet known to anyone there at the feast. But Odysseus too is a part of the audience, and that fact becomes a problem for the reception of the song performed by this singer.