Calypso—An Episode in the Odyssey as Depicted by James Joyce and Eyvind Johnson

Abstract

In the Calypso episode of Ulysses , James Joyce transforms the myth of Calypso into the daily routines of Leopold Bloom’s domestic life, treating the Homeric material with irony and distance. In contrast, Eyvind Johnson’s Strändernas svall focuses on the mythical setting, describing Odysseus’s stay with Calypso and his ambivalence—he wants to leave but also to stay since the world he will return to is not the same as the one he left. While Joyce diminishes myth to reveal the weight of the present, Johnson amplifies it to probe the existential pull of exile and return.