Deixis

Deixis is an act of speech by which speakers locate themselves in space and time, with respect to things, events and each other.Footnote ⁷ Interest in the poetics of deixis in Greek literature, in Homeric studies and elsewhere, has grown considerably in recent years.Footnote ⁸ Deixis is, primarily, a means of pointing at and locating oneself in the reality of a speech situation, of pointing to ‘real’, extra-textual objects or referents, either physically or visibly present or absent for a speaker and his interlocutor (sometimes called deixis ad oculos).Footnote ⁹ Since deixis is by its very nature dialogic, we find it most commonly in Homer in those parts of the poem usually referred to as ‘direct’ or ‘character’ speech. Here characters are usually addressing one or more other specified characters, and their speeches therefore contain linguistic evidence of the speaker interacting with his or her interlocutor(s) and their immediate environment. (We can contrast the use of the ‘anaphoric’ demonstrative pronoun ὁ in Homer, by which speakers, both the narrator and characters, ‘recall’ referents – characters and objects – produced by narrative, which are not imagined to be physically present, but are constructs of language.)Footnote ¹⁰

In Homer we find three deictic pronouns by which a speaker is able to convey the relative proximity of things to himself and his addressee. The first two are ὅδε, for first-person or speaker-orientated deixis, and οὗτος, for second-person or hearer-orientated deixis (both ὅδε and οὗτος being ‘proximal deictics’).Footnote ¹¹ A clear example of how both of these pronouns work is found in the teichoskopia in Iliad 3. From their view from the Trojan wall, Priam asks Helen to identify various figures on the battlefield (coincidentally including, in the example to follow, Odysseus) using ὅδε, demonstrating both their proximity in space and his own perspective (e.g. 3.192 εἴπ’ ἄγε μοι καὶ τόνδε φίλον τέκος ὅς τις ὅδ’ ἐστί, ‘Come, tell me also, dear child, who this man is’; also 3.166–7, 226). Helen responds by referring to the same figures using οὗτος, once more demonstrating their proximity, but showing that she shares Priam's perspective (e.g. 3.200 οὗτος δ’ αὖ Λαερτιάδης πολύμητις Ὀδυσσεύς, ‘This is the wily son of Laertes, Odysseus’; also 3.178, 229).Footnote ¹²

Thirdly, we have (ἐ)κεῖνος, the so-called ‘distal deictic’ which fundamentally designates remoteness from the spatial context of utterance, beyond the spatial and/or temporal sphere of both the speaker and addressee.Footnote ¹³ Unlike ὅδε and οὗτος, whose referents are clearly delineated with respect to the spatial position and perspective of the speaker and interlocutor, κεῖνος lacks any such inherent specificity in relation to those who utter it. It is therefore capable of a certain degree of flexibility in terms of the precise spatial position its referent assumes.Footnote ¹⁴ Here we can identify an important distinction between its use in the Iliad and Odyssey, reflecting something of this flexibility. In the former, those characters referred to as κεῖνος, when not so designated in order to mark their distance in time (e.g. 5.648 of Heracles), tend to be absent but in a known distant location (even if that precise distant location is not conveyed by κεῖνος per se). For example, Achilles, the most common referent of κεῖνος in the poem, is so termed due to his position at the ships, away from the fighting (e.g. 14.368). By contrast, the Odyssey builds upon a further opportunity available in κεῖνος, namely its lack of inherent spatial specificity in relation to those who utter it, its protean quality. It is the significance of this fluid spatial quality of κεῖνος in the Odyssey – a quality which, I suggest, is crucial to its sense in the poem, and whose exploitation reflects the epic's specific spatial parameters – that I will explore here.

Odysseus as κεῖνος: an introduction

My discussion of κεῖνος begins not with the Odyssey, but with the Iliad. In a famous passage from the Embassy Scene in book 9, Achilles begins his response to the entreaties of Odysseus with the following statement (308–13):

Who is ‘that man’ (κεῖνος, 312) to whom Achilles refers here? The consensus of both ancient and modern readers has been that Achilles means Odysseus himself.Footnote ¹⁶ The famous verbal trickster has just offered a tour de force of rhetorical skill in his plea to Achilles to accept Agamemnon's offer of compensation and return to the war. He has also, significantly, omitted a central condition upon which Agamemnon's offer is predicated: that Achilles submit to Agamemnon's authority and kingship (158–61). Achilles responds by indicating his suspicions and disapproval of Odysseus’ verbal trickery, and in doing so articulates an ethical distance between his own commitment to simple, forthright, truthful speech, his ‘ethics’ of language – that a man should say what he means and mean what he says – and Odysseus’ more flexible attitude to language and truth.Footnote ¹⁷ By declaring his own preference for honest speech so forcefully, Achilles’ words ‘seem already to instantiate the forthrightness they promise’.Footnote ¹⁸

And yet, scholars have also noted the ironies of Achilles’ statement. In his call for complete transparency of thought and speech, Achilles demonstrates a striking indirectness about what (and more specifically, whom) he means with these words.Footnote ¹⁹ Achilles not only avoids giving a name, but the specificity of person typically implied by the demonstrative κεῖνος is quickly contradicted when he suggests that he is in fact referring more generally to a class of people (ὅς κε).Footnote ²⁰ The very interpretative problem Achilles’ pronouncement poses of whether or not he means someone specifically, and, on the assumption that he does, who that person is – Odysseus? Agamemnon? – lends a further opacity to Achilles’ manifesto of linguistic clarity. Achilles’ obscurity even in the act of advocating transparency (and in doing so in such a seemingly transparent way) is followed by additional moments in his speech where what he says seems to contradict what he means;Footnote ²¹ thereafter, events are largely determined by a disconnect between what various central characters say and do not say, and how their actions are based on such significant omissions.Footnote ²²

In appearing to implicate Odysseus in the indirectness he abhors, Achilles adopts a remarkably Odyssean approach to language. Within its context, Achilles’ reference to ‘that man’, κεῖνος, encapsulates a wider tension in the epic between language that is transparent and language that is opaque. Our interpretation of κεῖνος determines whether we take Achilles at his word or implicate him in the very behaviour he condemns; if we understand it as a specific critique of Odysseus, and thus an example of Achilles’ ‘straight talking’, we must also accept that this ad hominem attack is emphatically not direct, while if we interpret κεῖνος in a non-specific way, as a general reference to a ‘kind’ of person, we retain the integrity of Achilles’ claim to transparency, at the expense of a certain forthrightness. Indeed, those readers of the Iliad who assert confidently that Achilles must be referring to a specific person here, and that that person is Odysseus, assume in such an endeavour that Achilles is not being completely transparent, and that his words need interpreting and clarifying. Without proposing to take a hard position on whether Achilles does or does not intend to refer to Odysseus, I wish here to suggest that there is something more at stake if we do read Odysseus into this passage as the referent of κεῖνος; and that the specifically Odyssean associations of this pronoun as developed particularly in the Odyssey give a further dimension to the ironies of the passage. When we reapproach Achilles’ words from the perspective of the Odyssey, it is hard not to see there a reference to Odysseus, regardless of what Achilles ‘intends’.

The ‘polytropic’ nature of κεῖνος in Iliad 9, its ability to implicate the speaker in the identity of the person to whom it refers, comes out even more clearly in another Homeric passage that closely echoes Achilles’ pronouncement about the man who is ‘hateful’ to him. As with the Embassy Scene in Iliad 9, the setting for this Odyssey passage is a meal. Where Odysseus earlier found himself sat opposite Achilles (αὐτὸς [Achilles] δ᾽ ἀντίον ἷζεν, Il. 9.218), in Odyssey 14 he sits, disguised as an old beggar, opposite his faithful swineherd Eumaeus (αὐτὸς [Eumaeus] δ᾽ ἀντίον ἷζεν, 79), to whom he is unrecognisable, as the two enjoy dinner in Eumaeus’ humble hut.Footnote ²³ On this occasion it is Odysseus, and not the host, who pronounces on the man who is hateful to him (156–7):

The ironies of Odysseus’ appropriation of Achilles’ words – words originally implicating Odysseus himself – have also been noted.Footnote ²⁴ Odysseus has just asked Eumaeus to identify for him his absent master, claiming that in his wanderings (ἐπὶ πολλὰ δ’ ἀλήθην, 120) he might have seen him and might therefore be able to offer news of him (115–20). Eumaeus responds by insisting that no such news, offered by a wanderer, would be believed: such men lie in order to obtain material compensation, as Penelope has previously learned to her cost (122–9). Eumaeus believes that in the same way his aged guest would readily contrive a story in order to obtain a cloak or a tunic (131–2). The response of Odysseus in vv. 156–7 appears to share in Eumaeus’ condemnation of the lying beggar, who ‘speaks deceptions’ (ἀπατήλια βάζει, cf. 127). For this reason, the disguised Odysseus will presently accept nothing, in need though he is (κεχρημένος, 155; cf. κεχρημένοι, 124). Instead, he swears an oath that Odysseus will return to exact vengeance on those who currently plunder his property, speaking with an Achilles-like certainty that his words will translate into outcome, and says that only upon the fulfilment of this oath will he request a tunic or cloak as a reward (151–4).Footnote ²⁵

And yet Odysseus will shortly embark on two of his famous lying tales, elaborately deceptive narratives about the beggar's past that point, in the process, to his material need and seem contrived to solicit reward in the very way he and Eumaeus have just condemned. In the first tale, the second of Odysseus’ ‘Cretan lies’ (192–359), the beggar relates how he learned news of Odysseus and his imminent return to Ithaca during his stay among the Thesprotians (321–33); he also describes how Thesprotian sailors stripped him of his cloak and tunic and replaced them with the rags ‘which you see with your own eyes’ (τὰ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν ὅρηαι, 343). After a further unsuccessful attempt at extracting a pledge from Eumaeus that he will reward him with a cloak and tunic if his predictions of Odysseus’ return are proven correct (391–400), he tells a second story (462–506), designed to test whether Eumaeus would give him his own cloak or order one of the other swineherds to do so (συβώτεω πειρητίζων, | εἴ πώς οἱ ἐκδὺς χλαῖναν πόροι ἤ τιν’ ἑταίρων | ἄλλον ἐποτρύνειεν, 459–61). The beggar recalls another occasion when he was in need of a cloak, while leading a Greek ambush on Troy, and Odysseus devised a deceptive ploy to obtain one for him. This time, Eumaeus responds to his guest's story by duly providing him with a cloak and bedding.

Thus, the beggar who has just told Eumaeus that he finds hateful ‘that man’, κεῖνος, who tells deceitful tales to ward off want now seems perfectly willing to do precisely that, while his ‘true’ prediction about Odysseus is disbelieved by Eumaeus, who believes instead that the beggar must be lying because he is motivated by need.Footnote ²⁶ Like Achilles, Odysseus implicates himself in his own condemnation of liars: he turns out to be the very κεῖνος he claims to hate, much like Achilles, in pointing to Odysseus as ‘that man’, κεῖνος, implicates himself in the very Odyssean approach to language he abhors. Moreover, if we understand Achilles’ original pronouncement as a condemnation of Odysseus, the latter's appropriation of it has the effect of rearticulating Achilles’ critical sentiment precisely in a context where it is proven to be true.

What makes the disguised Odysseus’ appropriation of Achilles’ words even more complex is that his pronouncement about ‘that man’ who is hateful to him – where in both its Iliadic and Odyssean contexts the reference can be read as pointing to Odysseus himself – is embedded in a larger narrative context in which both Eumaeus and his disguised guest consistently and markedly refer to the absent Odysseus as κεῖνος.Footnote ²⁷

This pattern emerges from the beginning of book 14. Upon the arrival of Odysseus at Eumaeus’ home, the swineherd greets his visitor by lamenting his current sorrows, and comparing the situation in Ithaca with what he supposes to be the fate of his master: while he rears Odysseus’ own pigs for the suitors to consume, ‘that man’, perhaps, in want of food, wanders in a foreign land (ἄλλοισιν δὲ σύας σιάλους ἀτιτάλλω | ἔδμεναι· αὐτὰρ κεῖνος ἐελδόμενός που ἐδωδῆς | πλάζετ’ ἐπ’ ἀλλοθρόων ἀνδρῶν δῆμόν τε πόλιν τε, 41–3).

After providing his guest with a seat, Eumaeus then speculates on what his own current position would be, if his master were present and ‘was growing old here’ (εἰ αὐτόθ’ ἐγήρα, 67); he concludes, however, that Odysseus is dead (68), and traces his downfall to his decision to fight at Troy: ‘For that man too, for the sake of Agamemnon's honour, went to Ilium famed of horses, in order to fight with the Trojans’ (καὶ γὰρ κεῖνος ἔβη…Ἴλιον εἰς εὔπωλον, 70–1). Once more, the present state of Ithaca is set in the context of the absence of Odysseus, described as κεῖνος and as having left Ithaca. Then, during their meal, Eumaeus speculates that ‘these men here’ (οἵδε, 89), the suitors currently installed in the palace, must know something of the death of ‘that man’, Odysseus (κείνου λυγρὸν ὄλεθρον, 90), judging by their behaviour. Soon after, in a passage briefly touched upon above, the disguised Odysseus invites Eumaeus to disclose the identity of this master of his: ‘For Zeus only knows, and the other immortal gods, whether I have seen him and could bring news; for I have wandered far’ (Ζεὺς γάρ που τὀ γε οἶδε καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι | εἴ κέ μιν ἀγγείλαιμι ἰδών· ἐπὶ πολλὰ δ᾽ἀλήθην, 119–20), in an oblique reference to the veracity of the evidence he can offer, in tension with the famous capacity of wanderers to lie (ἀλήθην < ἀλάομαι; cf. ἀληθής, ‘truthful’).Footnote ²⁸ Eumaeus immediately rejects this suggestion: ‘No man who had wandered and came here bringing news of that man could persuade his wife and dear son’ (οὔ τις κεῖνον ἀνὴρ ἀλαλήμενος ἐλθὼν | ἀγγέλλων πείσειε γυναῖκά τε καὶ φίλον υἱόν, 122–3). In questioning the trustworthiness of wanderers, who have a tendency to lie in order to obtain material sustenance, Eumaeus unwittingly points to the wanderer, οὔ τις, who has in fact come to announce news of ‘that man’ Odysseus. Eumaeus’ words further suggest an identification of the wandering stranger before him and the marked use of κεῖνος to refer to Odysseus, since the pronoun is suggestively bookended by the poem's two most well-known appellations of its hero, οὔ τις and ἀνήρ.Footnote ²⁹ I will return to this passage later.

And yet Eumaeus’ use of κεῖνος to refer to Odysseus throughout is motivated by the physical absence of his master and by his reluctance to speak his name, using a circumlocution instead – a point that soon emerges, when the swineherd declares, in his grief at his master's absence: ‘him, stranger, I am ashamed to name, even though he is not present’ (145–6). Odysseus responds by asserting on oath that, despite his host's emphatic denial that his master Odysseus will come home (ἐπεὶ δὴ πάμπαν ἀναίνεαι οὐδ’ ἔτι φῇσθα | κεῖνον ἐλεύσεσθαι, 149–50), he will in fact return, and demands a reward for his prescience as soon as ‘that man’ reaches home (ἐπεί κεν κεῖνος ἰὼν τὰ ἃ δώμαθ’ ἵκηται, 153). Odysseus’ subsequent pronouncement about ‘that man’ whom he finds hateful – the man who in succumbing to need tells falsehoods – which is itself declared in order to suggest a contrast with the veracity of his own news and prediction, must therefore also be read within the broader context of Odyssey 14, where the deictic repeatedly occurs as a marked pronoun used to describe Odysseus himself.Footnote ³⁰ The Odyssey, so famous for its verbal playfulness, is here perhaps at its most playful and slippery, and precisely in a context where the simplicity of language is invoked. Indeed, soon after these verses, the disguised Odysseus once more reaffirms his prediction that Odysseus will return, again using a form of κεῖνος and drawing a connection with the situation close at hand: ‘He will return home, and whoever here dishonours the wife and fine son of that man will be punished’ (οἴκαδε νοστήσας, καὶ τείσεται, ὅς τις ἐκείνου | ἐνθάδ’ ἀτιμάζει ἄλοχον καὶ φαίδιμον υἱόν, 163–4). And this, as we shall soon see, forms part of a wider pattern within the poem of characters referring to the absent Odysseus as κεῖνος; within the context of the poem as a whole, the deictic pronoun is closely associated with the eponymous hero.Footnote ³¹

Given the wider poetic and pronominal resonances that Odysseus’ appropriation of Achilles’ original statement activates, it is worth considering whether there is something more at stake in the obliqueness of the pronoun κεῖνος in these contexts – that is, its capacity both to suggest an identity and to deny one, playing on the physical presence of the man to whom the pronoun refers and yet eluding that identification. Returning to one of Odyssey 14's most pointed passages, when the disguised beggar relates how Odysseus orchestrated for him to obtain a cloak at Troy, Odysseus’ initial response to his dilemma is described in the following way (490–3):

Not only is Odysseus once more referred to as κεῖνος, ‘that man’, but the beggar's description of him also recalls the associations between Odysseus as κεῖνος and his predilection for ‘hiding one thing in his heart and saying another’. For ‘such as that man was’, he devised – or, more literally, ‘held’ or ‘checked’ (σχέθε)Footnote ³² – a plan (νόον) in his heart, and, speaking in hushed tones, warned his interlocutor not to speak transparently by divulging his need for a cloak, ‘lest another of the Achaeans hears you’. Odysseus then demonstrates his own virtuosity in allowing his words to mask his intentions by declaring to his companions that a dream has announced to him that they have come too far from the ships, and requests that someone return to Agamemnon for reinforcement. The link between Odysseus’ duplicity and the reference to him as κεῖνος also points to the speaker's own doubleness, as well as to the way in which he blends his own identity with the κεῖνος he appears to distinguish himself from – just as he has already suggested a link between himself and ‘that man’ he despises for telling false tales out of want, a man who evokes the pre-eminent κεῖνος of book 14, Odysseus himself.Footnote ³³ The disguised Odysseus, who at that very moment is ‘hiding one thing in his heart and saying another’, masks his own attempt to extract a cloak from Eumaeus by telling a story in which Odysseus advises him not to divulge his need for a cloak; this comes after the beggar has previously framed his story by declaring that he will ‘hide nothing’ (οὐκ ἐπικεύσω, 467; cf. κεύθῃ, Il. 9.313). In doing so, he juxtaposes the identity of ‘that man’, κεῖνος – Odysseus – with ‘this’ plan of his which he held in his heart. The use of the proximal deictic pronoun in one sense refers to the plan the beggar will describe in the lines to follow. Given, however, the way in which he conflates Odysseus’ own strategy of verbal indirectness in order to obtain a cloak with his own, the proximal deictic could just as well be understood as another strategy by which the disguised Odysseus hints at his double identity, and in doing so suggests a conflation of the absent (κεῖνος) Odysseus with the verbal performance taking place in the presence of Eumaeus: ‘that man’ Odysseus is actually ‘this man’ before the swineherd. Odyssey 14 thus not only develops the complex relationship between κεῖνος and Odysseus but links it to the poem's broader concerns with Odysseus’ physical absence from Ithaca and his return at the poem's denouement.

Odysseus κεῖνος: Odyssey 1–4

To contextualise this further, it is necessary to turn to the beginning of the poem. The encounter between Telemachus and Athena (disguised as Mentes) in book 1 establishes at the inception of the epic a contrast between the immediacy of the present conditions on Ithaca and the absence of Odysseus.Footnote ³⁴ The highly deictic nature of this opening scene, and the way it manipulates the language of space, encourages an interpretation of our first references to Odysseus as κεῖνος that acknowledges the full deictic force of the term, rather than reducing it to a simple third-person pronoun. The specificity with which space is delineated here also throws into relief in particular the indeterminacy of Odysseus’ current location with reference to Telemachus and others in Ithaca. Telemachus sees the newly arrived Athena/Mentes as he is ‘visualising his father in his mind, if coming from somewhere he might scatter the suitors’ (113–16):

From the start of the exchange, then, Odysseus is constructed as an object of elusive visual status and spatial location, compared with the suitors, concretely in his proximal deictic space, and Athena, whom he actually sees. This conflation of notions of proximity and distance, vision and absence, continues and becomes more marked throughout the scene. Telemachus seats himself and his guest ‘apart from the rest of the suitors’ (ἔκτοθεν ἄλλων | μνηστήρων, 132–3) in order to provide a buffer against the travel of sound, both the din of the suitors (ὀρυμαγδῷ, 133), and his own questions to the guest about his absent father (ἠδ’ ἵνα μιν περὶ πατρὸς ἀποιχομένοιο ἔροιτο, 135).Footnote ³⁵ Subsequently, after the suitors have dined and Phemius begins his song, Telemachus addresses Athena (157–63),

Here Telemachus draws an explicit contrast between ‘these men’ and ‘these activities’, within the perceptual sphere of the (speaker and) interlocutor, and ‘that man’, the object of remote, undefined, ambiguous deixis. The reference to ἀνέρος (161) at the beginning of the hexameter unavoidably recalls our first ἄνδρα, the very first word of the poem. And, in a similar way to there, Telemachus here adopts a rhetorical strategy of successive statements of qualification, proceeding from the complete dislocation of the person to whom he refers, to a gradually more spatially specific, and indeed more proximal identification of place: a man who begins only elsewhere, indeed only adjectivally (ἀλλότριον), and progresses from the land (ἠπείρου) to the sea (ἁλί), and finally to Ithaca itself (Ἰθάκηνδε).Footnote ³⁶ And yet, as Telemachus’ discourse effects the return (νοστήσαντα) and presence of Odysseus, so that he might even be seen (ἰδοίατο), it simultaneously casts him in increasingly immaterial, disembodied, incorporeal terms – from a man, to his bones (ὀστέα), and finally to κεῖνος, an abstract deictic pronoun.

Telemachus’ words here thus construct an uneasy tension between presence and absence. Where in the proem ‘the man’, ἄνδρα, had been supplemented by πολύτροπον in order both to describe and enact the active and passive characteristics of Odysseus – by identifying the man as elusive, ‘of many wiles’, ‘much turning/turned’, the man's identity and location elude us – so here Telemachus recapitulates the same fundamental tension intrinsic to the act of describing Odysseus through language, suggesting, simultaneously, conflicting centripetal and centrifugal possibilities that consistently defer closure.Footnote ³⁷

This tension communicated through the deictic κεῖνος here acquires further support throughout the exchange between Telemachus and Athena, where a conflict between presence and absence continues to be articulated, particularly through the use of deictics. Telemachus concludes a series of questions in which he has enquired as to how Mentes came ‘here’ (ἐνθάδ’, 173) by asserting, by way of possible explanation for Mentes’ acquaintance with Odysseus, that ‘that man too was mobile among men’ (καὶ κεῖνος ἐπίστροφος ἦν ἀνθρώπων, 177). In addition to the opposition between the centripetal and centrifugal dimensions of Telemachus’ terms of reference, ἐπίστροφος further raises questions over agency.Footnote ³⁸ Not only is Odysseus κεῖνος, remote and undecidedly located, but there is the suggestion that a man who is ἐπίστροφος is not always in control of his direction of travel. Athena's response, in which she pretends to speculate that ‘that man’ (κεῖνον) is still alive but detained on an island perforce (198–9), contributes to the deictic ambiguity by which Odysseus is characterised throughout the exchange by invoking him in a context of vision (208–12):

Again here the discourse concerning Odysseus combines notions of convergence and divergence: the coming together of Telemachus and Mentes presents an opportunity for the latter to compare the former to the absent Odysseus (208–9), remembered by Mentes firstly in terms of their previous encounters (209) before Odysseus departed for Troy (210), where the two last went their separate ways (212). Moreover, the visual constructions of Odysseus (208–9, 212) are belied by his status as κεῖνος, with Mentes articulating a subtle ring composition with his references to the spectacle of Telemachus (present, converging with Mentes) and lack of sight of Odysseus (stressing their separation). This unsettling juxtaposition of spatial and visual conceptions is developed by Telemachus, following his famously diffident response to Athena's questions regarding his paternity (232–6, 243–4):Footnote ³⁹

Telemachus combines temporal and spatial deictic shifts by imagining the proximal space of ‘this house’ (οἶκος ὅδε, 232) at a previous time when Odysseus was in residence, here expressed through the oxymoronic κεῖνος … ἐπιδήμιος (233): κεῖνος is expressed from the perspective of the near and present (ὅδε), even though ‘that man’ was present at one time, but is now ‘unseen’ (ἄϊστον, 235).Footnote ⁴⁰

The conversation between Telemachus and Athena taken as a whole thus participates in a sophisticated dialectic whereby Odysseus’ deictic status is emphasised, explored and destabilised. κεῖνος is used here, as often elsewhere, of Odysseus in constructions where his death is not explicitly predicted, acknowledged or asserted; as with Telemachus’ first use of it (163, where in its immediate context Telemachus imagines Odysseus returning), it is employed in contexts where he is remembered as alive,Footnote ⁴¹ his survival and return is either claimed or imagined,Footnote ⁴² even as a remote possibility, or his death cannot be confirmed.Footnote ⁴³ By contrast, the anaphoric ὁ and its cognates are typically used in explicit assertions of Odysseus’ death.Footnote ⁴⁴ When Telemachus uses κεῖνος in lamenting that the gods have made Odysseus ‘unseen’ (ἄϊστον), the point he is making is precisely that there exists no physical or visible trace, no proof, that he has died, so that he and the community cannot be confident of his death and therefore cannot obtain the sort of closure necessary for the proper mourning process to take place. References to Odysseus as κεῖνος thus demonstrate a deictic psychology that is prepared to situate the hero, however remotely or insecurely, within the conceivable parameters of time and space; Telemachus’ qualification of κεῖνος as ‘unseen’ merely exemplifies how tentative this supposition can be. This is not to overlook the fact that Telemachus does explicitly avow his father's death, nor to posit conclusions about his supposed sincerity or state of mind at such moments. It is, rather, to suggest that the poem exploits the deictic value of κεῖνος to construct certain narrative expectations and tensions between the juxtaposing themes I have identified. κεῖνος is significant in the early books of the epic precisely because Odysseus’ location is unknown and because of the inability of Telemachus and others to confirm his death.

κεῖνος is used consistently throughout the first four books of the Odyssey to underscore Odysseus’ absence, along with the ambiguity and uncertainty that arises from the fact that he currently resides outside the visual, evidentiary sphere of proximal deixis. It signals his complete separateness and dislocation, reflecting the ambivalent conviction with which characters are prepared to situate him within space. Telemachus’ encounters with Nestor and Menelaus further develop the dynamic interplay between various, potentially conflicting possibilities of what κεῖνος suggests, of what it might mean for Odysseus to be κεῖνος. Telemachus begins his questioning of Nestor in book 3 by saying (86–8, 92–5):

Odysseus is κεῖνος, according to Telemachus, because he has eluded geographic specificity and ocular exposure; his death, the event which brings ultimate spatial fixity, and therefore his location, cannot be confirmed because he has not been seen. Nestor's response adopts the language of κεῖνος in a way that compounds this ambiguity: it is used to describe Troy (3.103), the sufferings of the Achaeans (113), those men of the Achaeans whom Nestor is unable to confirm survived or perished (185), as well as both Aegisthus (195) and Orestes (197). Nestor's response thus fails to clarify what κεῖνος signifies on the axis of spatial certainty and uncertainty, and of life and death. One of only two instances in which he uses it specifically of Odysseus, however, provides an interesting comparison (120–5):

This interjection brings the past and absent (ἔνθα, ποτε, 120) of Nestor's recollection of events during the Trojan War to the present and presence of his interaction with Telemachus: his memory of Odysseus’ expertise at Troy culminates in a remark about Telemachus, whom he beholds sat before him (εἰσορόωντα, 120), being the offspring of ‘that man’ (κείνου ἔκγονός ἐσσι, 123). It once more suggests a delicate coexistence of evocations surrounding the term when applied to Odysseus, whereby Odysseus is referred to as κεῖνος within contexts of sight and vision so as to juxtapose contrasting notions of his absence and (eventual) presence, and of his capacity to be seen and his current separation from others’ sphere of visual deixis.Footnote ⁴⁶

Odysseus is similarly referred to as κεῖνος at the palace of Menelaus in contexts with a marked emphasis on sight, as well as deictic distinctions between absence and presence. Menelaus expresses his enduring sorrow ‘for that man, in that he is gone so long, nor do we have any idea whether he is alive or dead’ (κείνου, ὅπως δὴ δηρὸν ἀποίχεται, οὐδέ τι ἴδμεν, | ζώει ὅ γ’ ἦ τέθνηκεν, 4.109–10); as elsewhere, κεῖνος is used to describe Odysseus in his indeterminate state, absent but with conclusive information about him otherwise unavailable.Footnote ⁴⁷ The deictic quality of κεῖνος is manipulated even more explicitly as Helen and Menelaus proceed to articulate comparisons between Telemachus, present before them, and Odysseus, absent. Helen asks Menelaus who ‘these men [οἵδε, 138] claim to be’, stating (141–5):

In positing a likeness between ‘this man’ (ὅδ’) before her and Telemachus, whom ‘that man’ (κεῖνος ἀνήρ) had left in Ithaca, Helen also picks up on the relationship between Telemachus and Odysseus, expressed explicitly in deictic language, with κεῖνος used once more in a context emphasising Odysseus’ departure and absence: the past and absent is layered onto the near and present. Even though the comparison at this stage is with a young Telemachus, and not Odysseus himself, the memory of the absent Odysseus is once more invoked in a scene of visual resemblance. The relationship between Telemachus and his father is (possibly) playfully suggested through the juxtaposition of ὅδ’ Ὀδυσσῆος, where ‘this man’ (ὅδ’), Telemachus, verbally elides into (that man), Odysseus (Ὀδυσσῆος): this Telemachus is so similar to his father that their references collapse into one another and contain a close linguistic echo (hod’ od-, notwithstanding the different breathings), as if to suggest that ‘this man is (almost) Odysseus’. Menelaus responds by drawing an explicit comparison between Telemachus and Odysseus: ‘such as these’ (τοιοίδε … τοιαίδε) were the feet, eyes, head and hair of ‘that man’ (κείνου, 149–50, again at 152), before Peisistratus confirms that ‘of that man is this man truly the son’ (κείνου μέν τοι ὅδ’ υἱὸς ἐτήτυμον, 157) (note once more the similarity between ὅδ’ υἱός and ‘Odysseus’).Footnote ⁴⁹ This, of course, participates in a thematic interest in the characterisation of Telemachus as he comes to terms with his position in society and his relationship with his father. But, just as importantly, it also anticipates a subtle poetic strategy of the epic's ‘return’ books by which Odysseus’ homecoming is figured as the transformation of a man's deictic status from being a κεῖνος to a ὅδε.

From κεῖνος to ὅδε

The second half of the epic, in which Odysseus gradually achieves recognition and reintegration in Ithaca, is in a sense concerned with the fixing of signs, of deictic, referential certainty. Odysseus and a number of other significant objects acquire a signifying value based on their fixed spatial position with reference to those around them. In a series of recognition scenes, the disguised Odysseus will reveal his true identity to members of his family and household and that will have the result of realigning their deictic orientation. Such figures continue to refer unwittingly to the absent-but-present Odysseus as κεῖνος, even as the κεῖνος increasingly converges on their proximal deictic space.Footnote ⁵⁰

Eumaeus, after receiving his disguised master into his hut and following a series of exchanges in which he has alluded to Odysseus as κεῖνος, responds to a question from Odysseus about the identity of his master (122–5, discussed briefly above):

In the very act of rejecting the possibility that Odysseus’ outcome and location might be elucidated – in effect, asserting that Odysseus will remain a κεῖνος, beyond the sphere of precise deictic positioning – Eumaeus articulates the process of deictic reintegration that Odysseus is in the process of effecting, from the wandering ‘Outis’ (οὔ τις … ἀλαλήμενος) and κεῖνος to the returning man.Footnote ⁵¹ It also recalls an association between Odysseus’ ‘pseudonym’ and κεῖνος as articulated by Polyphemus himself (9.452–7):

Both characters identify the cause of the failure to locate Odysseus as an inability to depend on the communicative function of language, at the same time as both are implicated in that linguistic impasse. Eumaeus inadvertently asserts that ‘Outis’, coming and announcing news of κεῖνος, could persuade his family. The Cyclops’ reference to Odysseus as κεῖνος as he addresses his ram and feels along its back, only just missing Odysseus with his touch as he clings to its belly, provides an ironic twist to the term's visual associations elsewhere. Polyphemus uses the pronoun of distal deixis despite Odysseus’ proximity to him at that very moment, revealing, in his case, the difficulty blindness creates for asserting with certainty who is (and who is not) within his sphere of proximal deictic reference. Eumaeus, like Polyphemus, is effectively ‘blind’ to Odysseus’ proximity, and can only refer to him as κεῖνος (a further association is suggested by the verbal similarities between ἀλαλήμενος and ἐξαλάωσε).

Yet his admission betrays a clue to the very inverse process: Odysseus, here also in his sphere of proximal deictic reference, is again κεῖνος, but will later become ὅδε, when he reveals himself to Eumaeus and Philoetius.Footnote ⁵² In a previous encounter between the two and the disguised beggar, Philoetius has asked Eumaeus, ‘Who is this stranger who has just arrived …?’ (τίς δὴ ὅδε ξεῖνος νέον εἰλήλουθε …; 20.191), before addressing Odysseus directly (204–6):

In following up on his initial inquiry about ‘this man’ (the beggar) by suggesting that ‘that man’, Odysseus, has ‘such rags as these’, Philoetius begins to elide the gap between this man and that man: ‘such rags as these’ is only one remove from saying ‘That man has these clothes!’ As in book 14, reference to the beggar's clothing once more suggests an identification of the man before them with κεῖνος, Odysseus.

The beggar's identity is not disclosed to the two farmhands at this stage, as it has been to Eurycleia in book 19. The trusted nurse, who had ‘taken that man [Odysseus] into her hands’ as a baby (ἣ κεῖνον … δεξαμένη χείρεσσ’, 19.354–5), is instructed by Penelope to bathe their disguised guest, and in doing so notes his similarity to Odysseus using deictic pronouns: ‘No doubt too Odysseus is now just like this in his hands and just like this in his feet’ (καί που Ὀδυσσεὺς | ἤδη τοιόσδ’ ἐστὶ πόδας τοιόσδε τε χεῖρας, 358–9). The deictic conflation between the absent hero and disguised beggar continues as Eurycleia begins by appearing to address the disguised Odysseus as Odysseus, in the second person (363–9), before shifting to referring to her master in the third person, using κεῖνος, in order to compare his situation with that of the beggar (‘so, no doubt, that man too women mocked in a strange land, as these bitches mock you’, οὕτω που καὶ κείνῳ ἐφεψιόωντο γυναῖκες | … | ὡς σέθεν αἱ κύνες αἵδε καθεψιόωνται ἅπασαι, 370–2).

Odysseus’ identity is revealed on this occasion through the discovery of his scar, the ultimate evidence of the elision between ‘that man’ and ‘this man’, inscribed as it is on the hero's body, and something that will prove to be an important aspect of Odysseus’ deictic self-revelation as ὅδε to others (below). At this stage Odysseus demands that the nurse maintains her silence (479–502) and does not disclose to Penelope that the man before her is ‘that man’. Eurycleia will eventually confirm to her mistress not only that the beggar is Odysseus, but that he is κεῖνος (‘I wanted to tell you; but that man would not allow me to’, ἔθελον δὲ σοὶ αὐτῇ | εἰπέμεν· ἀλλά με κεῖνος … | οὐκ εἴα εἰπεῖν, 23.75–7), although Penelope's failure to recognise her husband at this stage means that he remains, in a sense, κεῖνος to her.

Odysseus’ disclosure of his identity to Eumaeus and Philoetius employs deictics even more emphatically. The hero prefaces his revelation by asking the two, ‘Shall I tell you something or keep it to myself? No, my heart urges me to tell it’ (ἔπος τί κε μυθησαίμην | ἦ αὐτὸς κεύθω; φάσθαι δέ με θυμὸς ἀνώγει, 21.193–4). When Philoetius responds to Odysseus’ test of loyalty by expressing his desire that ‘that man’ would return (ὡς ἔλθοι … κεῖνος ἀνήρ, 21.201), the hero replies (21.207–8):

Whereas Odysseus’ ability to conceal the truth previously pointed to his identity as κεῖνος (Iliad 9 and Odyssey 14, discussed above), here his revelation has the effect of demonstrating that ‘that man’ is ‘this man’. Odysseus had disclosed his identity to Telemachus earlier using similar deictic language (16.204–5):

He will go on to do the same for Laertes, after he has informed his father of his previous encounter with ‘that man’ Odysseus (ἐκεῖνον, 24.288, 312; κεῖνος, 313):

Odysseus’ identity is finally confirmed for his father by his scar – ‘This scar, first, behold with your eyes’ (οὐλὴν μὲν πρῶτον τήνδε φράσαι ὀφθαλμοῖσι, 331) – just as for Eumaeus and Philoetius, when Odysseus deictically points to it (‘I will show you another clear sign’, σῆμα ἀριφραδὲς ἄλλο τι δείξω, 21.217), and by the vegetation of Laertes’ garden. Recognition is achieved through progressive degrees of spatial and physical embedding: the wandering Odysseus, now ὅδε; the scar, permanently located on the moving body of Odysseus; and the trees and vines, permanently fixed in the immoveable soil of Ithaca.Footnote ⁵³

The story of the Odyssey might thus be described as the process of Odysseus’ deictic (dis)placement and re-establishment in a position of fixity and permanence in Ithaca, at the centre of his oikos, by occupying a role of visual command as the authoritative, deictic centre. Odysseus goes from being κεῖνος, the patient, passive object of deictic reference, linguistically a referent of undefined visual and spatial location in the discourse of his loved-ones in Ithaca, to ὅδε, not only in the perceptual sphere of others, but self-referentially. So long as Odysseus remains unrecognised by such figures, he remains κεῖνος, and, correspondingly, so long as Odysseus is κεῖνος to them, he remains unrecognised: for recognition as an act of subjective visual and existential apprehension, an acknowledgment that ‘this man before me is Odysseus’, necessarily involves a recognition and an acceptance of a person's fixity in physical space, of definitude, inherent in the indexical ὅδε and lacking in κεῖνος. Moreover, Odysseus’ decision to reveal himself as ὅδε signals his success in wresting control of the referential capacity of deixis as it is applied to himself. So in one sense Odysseus’ progression from being κεῖνος to ὅδε marks his control over his recognition by others in a way that is predicated on the increasing specificity and precision of language. By a perverse logic, the deictic ὅδε, possessing as it does no inherent semantic meaning, succeeds in confirming and proving Odysseus’ identity and presence, in a way that his name alone fails to do. By revealing himself as ὅδε, ‘this very man, me, here before you’ (ἔνδον μὲν δὴ ὅδ’ αὐτὸς ἐγώ, 21.207), Odysseus points, self-reflexively, to the physical reality of his body and presence, serving to prove his identity in a way that simply asserting that ‘I am Odysseus’ or ‘I am your father’ is insufficient to do. The deictic is contiguous with a physical, visible reference-point.

The Odyssey concludes with those around Odysseus, both friend and adversary, recognising him as ‘this man’ (ἀνήρ ὅδε, οὗτος ἀνήρ), for example at 22.70, 78 (Eurymachus), 248 and 134 (Agelaus). Odysseus’ recognition is thus predicated on his assumption of a recognised and fixed position within the physical space of Ithaca. This is perhaps one way in which a ‘pure’ teleological reading of the epic seems appropriate, since the centripetalism of Odysseus’ deictic status, his inexorable propulsion to the centre of his oikos and the centre of deictic reference, appears to have been irrevocably completed. This move towards closure, from the deictic uncertainty of Odysseus’ location created by the capricious currents of the sea, to his deictic definitude on the fixed soil of Ithaca, appears to be symbolically affirmed when Odysseus and Penelope retire to their marital bed, the sēma which derives its signifying value from its immobility.Footnote ⁵⁴

But it is important to note, by way of conclusion, that this teleology is perhaps less straightforward than it would appear.Footnote ⁵⁵ Odysseus has been told by Tiresias during his visit to the Underworld (11.121–31; repeated at 23.267–77) that he will have to make one final journey, which will take place beyond the textual and spatial boundaries of the poem. This journey will involve Odysseus, oar-in-hand, leaving Ithaca and travelling inland, until he encounters a people who mistake his oar (‘the wings of ships’, 11.125 = 23.272), through ignorance of and unfamiliarity with the sea, for a winnowing-shovel. At this point Odysseus is instructed to fix the oar in the earth, perform sacrifices to Poseidon, and return home.Footnote ⁵⁶ Before Odysseus can permanently become ὅδε in Ithaca, then, he must once more assume the referential status of κεῖνος.