#Penelopreads diarey series

I kept twenty geese in the house, from the water trough Lease, read this dream for me, won’t you? Listen closely…. “My friend, I have only one more question for you…. Then, before parting for the night, Penelope returns to the beggar and says (all quotes are from the translation of Robert Fagles, 1996, Viking Press), The Queen steps away while the old nurse washes the beggar’s feet.

She then asks her old servant woman, Eurycleia, to bathe the stranger and arrange a comfortable place for him to sleep. Penelope replies to the beggar’s story by saying she wishes his words would come true, but she doubts they will. The beggar fervently promises the Queen that Odysseus is very close and will return very, very soon.

Penelope, who for many years has desperately clung to the hope that Odysseus would someday return to her, has invited this strange wanderer into her private chambers to ask if he can tell her any news of her husband. The crafty warrior has disguised himself as an old beggar in order to gain entrance into the palace without being recognized, and he is plotting violent revenge against the men who would steal his throne.

#Penelopreads diarey series

Odysseus, after leading the Achaean army to victory against the Trojans and after enduring a seemingly endless series of trials and adventures, has returned at last to his island home of Ithaca, where he has found a mob of rude noblemen besieging his palace. In many respects this encounter is the point of greatest dramatic intensity in the entire poem, and at the heart of the scene is a dream-Penelope’s dream of the twenty geese that are suddenly slaughtered by a mountain eagle.

The story has to do with the meeting of Odysseus and Penelope in Book 19 of The Odyssey. It’s a very old story, one you may have heard before, but I’d like to tell it again because even though it’s “just a story” it highlights the real perils that come when these dream interpretation principles are overlooked. I’d like to illustrate some basic principles of dream interpretation by telling a story.