The Phaeacians' Last Transfer from the Under World to the Upper Word: Petrification and Crystallization between Anthropology, Narratology and Metapoetics (Odyssey 13.125-187)

The much criticized passage about the ship's petrification after Odysseus' final escort from Scheria to Ithaca (13.125-187) is central for the understanding of the entire epic poem. It marks both the transition from the first to the second part of the Odyssey and the end of an earlier epoch, the time of Poseidon's primordial justice, as well as the indisputable beginning of Zeus' order. The narration thus works on a temporal and spatial axis. In the freeze frame technique and in the focalization of a larger internal audience, mirroring the recipients, the petrification and encirclement of Scheria with rocky mountains symbolize and emphasize the opening gulf between past and present, Under and Upper World, death and life, darkness and light. The formation of a firmly closed barrier has also implications on the level of the performance itself. The petrification marks the Homeric self-reflective awareness of the fact that, due to its perfect form grown over generations, the fluid tradition has come to an end. The song tradition has gained a relatively rigid form of standardization that can be reperformed again and again from now on. It is as if the Odyssey , as Richard Martin has shown on the level of the heroic status, coining it "the last hero song", refers to its own monumentalized perfection, closing itself up against its prehistory as the very last song in a long chain of predecessors.