tacheia:

Calypso’s island is magical. It supplies every possible demand Odysseus might have for food, drink, clothing, sex, companionship or conversation. He has only to pay over the coin of his self. His entire self. Calypso wants Odysseus body and soul. She wants everything about him. Physical, moral, and verbal. She wants the work of art that he has made of his own human being. And she wants it for all time. She promises to immortalize him.

When he rejects the transaction she’s baffled. Why would anyone choose to abandon a consumer paradise where he could live forever with a ravishing divinity? Odysseus’s answer is: “I know you’re a goddess and bigger and better looking than my wife, for you are deathless and ageless while she is a mere mortal, and yet, I prefer Penelope and what I really long for is the day of my return.” Odysseus’s answer sets up a calculus. He measures the infinite days and infinite pleasures of Calypso against the single day of his homecoming and the mortal attractions of his wife. The infinite comes up lacking.

Neither Odysseus nor Homer ever tells us exactly what the infinite lacks. That is, we never get an objective description of Penelope. We do not know if she is dark or fair. Odysseus no where itemizes the qualities that make her more desirable than a goddess. What becomes clear in the final stages of the poem however as husband and wife engage in a so called recognition scene that extends from Book XVII where Odysseus shows up in disguise at Penelope’s house to Book XXIII where she falls weeping in his arms and calls his name is that these two people are a match for each other in wits and ambiguity.

We watch Her throughout the six books seduce him by the simple tactic of never letting him know what she’s thinking. She dangles herself. She dangles the prospect of homecoming before him in a series of tantalizing interactions. She gives him clothing, a meal, a bath, a bed in the courtyard and several deep conversations without ever letting on whether she’s recognized him or not. Scholars still disagree on where exactly in the poem she decides Odysseus is Odysseus and she should welcome him home. Penelope’s power is the power of a meaning withheld.

—Anne Carson on the distinction between selling and selling out