De Chirico - The Return of Ulysses ( 1973 )

Return to Ithaka in a bath-tub
boat on a living-room floor, to a lounge suite.
Ulysses has come back to the hub
of what he abandoned incomplete,

when he went to War. Now he must answer
the consequences. It is not Space-Time
that boxes him in, the necromancer
of his own mother, but the blue clothes-line

draped before the wall. The enigma
of Penelope is the screen behind
which the map of the amygdala
is changed, of a woman reminded

of a young man, she had barely got
to know. Penelope hides in her grot.

Woodford Halse - 21 June 2025

On this hot Summer Solstice day, I considered the paintings De Chirico made of Ulysses’ Return in 1968, with reference to the final one he painted in 1973.

Consider particularly the one of a Greek woman with her back to us at a table, and a young man in a suit looking at her with his hands resting on it. He does resemble the picture on a wall behind him. The table appears to be outdoors, but it is really interior. This is the only one in this series that shows Penelope; even then her face is turned from us.

You will find them all on Google Images. In this series, de Chirico satisfied a theme he had been pursuing since his naturalistic Enigma of the Oracle of 1909.