From Circe’s Island to Hade’s underworld

Abstract

This essay approaches the witch Circe, as per her myth in Homer’s Odyssey and in the novel Circe by Madeline Miller (2019). According to the male voice in Homer’s chants and the main character’s own voice in the novel, we follow Circe in the hero Ulysses’ journey back to Ithaca, after the long and painful war between Achaeans and Trojans. From Gregory Nagy’s perspective of translation from Classic Greek to English, as posited in his lectures for the course “Ancient Greek Heroes” (2023) at Harvard University, we delve into the symbolism of the name Circe. We point to this symbolism when Ulysses goes to Hades’ underworld, passing by Circe’s Island, which entails the returning from darkness and death to light and life. Such a journey of the hero’s soul, symbolically from Circe’s Island to Hades’ underworld, teaches something about the witch exiled from Olympus.