usually i just shit post on here but here’s my thoughts on the Epic: The Musical discourse as someone who has 1: read the source matter, 2: analyzed the lyrics very often and 3: understands a bit more greek mythology then the average person; so please, bear with me.
Calypso Vs Circe: who’s a “feminist icon” vs a “serial rapist” sit with me here.
for one: in epic, neither calypso nor circe are confirmed to have raped odysseus.
two: in the odyssey, (in most adaptions/translations) odysseus’ says “..but my heart did not consent” when talking about sleeping with calypso. but, when talking about circe says, “she let us stay in her palace, but asked that i room with her” (or something to those effects bear with me), he never confesses or confirms to have slept with circe.
three: calypso was cursed to never be able to leave her island, as well as to fall in love with who ever stepped foot on it. listen to me for a moment: i am not disregarding her actions. she is a rapist by most accounts of the odyssey and i will not ignore that.
four: odysseus says something similar to what he says in epic to circe when she asks to bed him, “i can’t, for i have a wife and son to get home to, i can not betray them” (another reminder, all of this is mostly paraphrase because i lost my copy of the odyssey).
five: in epic, calypso never forces herself onto odysseus, for most accounts it sounds like it, i will admit, but she is confirmed to just have been pushy and too forward with odysseus, who pushed back on her just as much but as a goddess, she was not used to being refused.
six: for the people saying, “you just like circe because she’s white” i’m gonna hold your hand while i say this. neither of them are white. neither of them are black either. they are both described as what we’d call middle eastern/european (ik europeans tend to be described as white but in places closer to the equator, such as greece, they tend to be darker in skin color)
fun fact as well: THE GODS ARE NOT HUMAN. THEY ARE NOT BLACK, WHITE, BROWN, ANYTHING!!! THEY HAVE MORTAL FORMS THEY USE THAT THEY ARE COMMONLY ASSOCIATED WITH THEM THAT TEND TO BE REGIONALIZED TO THE AREA OF ANCIENT GREECE THEY ARE BEING WORSHIPPED IN
with that out of the way, i’ll say one thing, i like both circe and calypso IN EPIC. they are both severely misunderstood by the community which enrages me but i can’t change peoples minds. i do not like calypso in greek mythology though.
but listen to me, as a hellenic pagan, if i wanted to worship her, i would! the gods are NOT their myths, as those myths were written by man mostly to tell us how to live life.
if you want more info i highly recommend theoi.com, hellion.org, or just reading the matter and making your own judgemen!!!
