Odysseus: Sex with gods: Calypso

If you were to look into your fantasy of a perfect lover, what might you conjure up for yourself? Images of beauty, power, and raw sexuality come to mind. In all of these fantasies, likely the object would embody perfection in a way that normal humans struggle to reliably maintain. Imagine then, the excitement you would feel if you met such a creature. A god in the flesh that took your breath away and looked at you with desire. Imagine the passion, the excitement, and the aliveness that coupling would feel like.

Odysseus washes up on the shores of Ogygia after the terrible ordeal of having his ship struck down in the water, and all of his comrades killed. There he meets Calypso, a nymph and a goddess, who cares for him and loves him. She wants to marry Odysseus and begs him off of his quest to return home. She offers him immortality to stay and live with her; all he must give up is his mortal wife. Odysseus lives with Calypso, but refuses to marry her, and for eight years he is trapped on the island with her.

Why would anyone turn down someone like Calypso? By all rights, she is a fantasy come true. It's quite the mystery, until we begin to see hints of an answer in the words of Odysseus. When he speaks of his time with Calypso he says. “She failed to move my heart.”

Calypso is a goddess, she lives out a completely different existential story. She does not know fear of death like a human man will therefore she does feel the vulnerable tension of human existence. In lacking this quality of vulnerability, she is unable to access the longing, and the intimacy, that comes with the awareness of human fragility. Thus Calypso's love is deeply insulated from any form of real discomfort, and she is unable to be a partner to Odysseus. She offers Odysseus an escape from the struggles of his quest, at the price of his heart.

We see this in the story when, Calypso has the power to help Odysseus leave the island, but instead she leaves him to cry by the coast during the day for his long lost wife and home. What is Calypso’s love towards Odysseus? It doesn’t seem to include Odysseus very much at all. Her love is like the love one might have towards a beloved car or pet. She cannot reach Odysseus’ heart, because she cannot reach her own. The only way a goddess could connect with a human man is for either the human to reject their humanity, or the goddess to reject their godliness. We see then, the unbridgeable gap which lies between Calypso and Odysseus.

We mirror this in our relationships as well. We all encounter Calypso in our lives. A powerful infatuation that moves us deeply. The Calypso person seems so perfect in our eyes, and it's intoxicating. The pleasure of the infatuation then hides from us a deeper look into the other. We don't see the way they disassociate from their own vulnerability. Relationships deepen only through the mutual expression of vulnerability, and so the unbridgeable gap is formed.

Thus what begins as a soothing experience for Odysseus quickly turns into quicksand. As he detects that she is “incapable of reaching his heart,” he knows that he must leave but cannot. He knows that there is no changing Calypso, they do not fit. Yet he does not know how to get home, and is terrified of taking the step into the unknown, finding himself in a limbo state. Unable to commit to Calypso and unable to leave, trapped. The Calypso relationship feels like a cage made of silk, lonely but comfortable to stay, terrifying and meaningful to leave.

Yet only through learning to see the distance that lies beneath the fantasy of Calypso does Odysseus begin to gain wisdom. In fact it is after this trial that he unlocks Athena’s (the goddess of wisdom) direct engagement in his life. Calypso is a necessary step we must all walk through in order to develop wisdom in relationships. Until we learn the emptiness of Calypso’s love, we remain infatuated with the presentation of people over their substance. Only through walking through Calypso’s love can we develop the readiness and desire for stable and flexible love over passionate but fleeting infatuation.