The Magic Isle of Calypso

Today I walked in the footsteps of Ulysses.

We’re now on the island of Gozo, which many historians agree was in the ancient world the isle of Calypso, where Ulysses was shipwrecked while wandering in search of his home after the Trojan War. Calypso, a sea nymph, fell in love with Ulysses and kept him captive because she could not bear to be parted from him. The island was rich in fruits and honey, a magical isle blessed by the gods and where time did not run as in the rest of the world. Calypso served Ulysses the finest wine and food and offered him her love, and even immortality if he would only stay with her forever.

Although tempted, Ulysses resisted Calypso and all she offered. He held fast to his vow to return to his wife, Penelope. Finally, after seven years and on the command of Jupiter, Calypso provided him with a well provisioned raft and a fair wind to take him home. Ulysses sailed away from Calypso never to return.

When I was a child I read a child’s version of the Odyssey. I read about all of Ulysses adventures: the Cyclops, the Sirens and Calypso’s great beauty and charm, and about the golden sands of Calypso’s magic isle. Did the story of Ulysses’ Odyssey happen as Homer tells it? Or is it just a story?

A schoolboy once asked Winston Churchill if King Arthur had been real. He replied, “Of course he was real, and if not he should have been, and more of the same.”

I visited Calypso’s cave and walked her beach, the sand was colored red-gold unlike any I’ve ever seen. I scooped up a handful and it now rests in a wine glass on my nightstand, sand where Ulysses and Calypso once walked.