Odyssey 5.116 · Book 5, lines 116–117
Calypso shudders
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ὣς φάτο, ῥίγησεν δὲ Καλυψώ, δῖα θεάων, καί μιν φωνήσασʼ ἔπεα πτερόεντα προσηύδα·
So he spoke, and Calypso shuddered, bright among goddesses, and speaking to him winged words, she addressed him:
Word by word
The setting
Hermes finishes. The nymph's first answer is not speech but a shiver — she has grasped that she must give up Odysseus — before the words come.
A note on this passage
A single line of reaction, then the speech-formula. Hermes stops; Calypso shudders. The verb is a physical one — a shiver of cold or dread — and it does her feeling before any argument can.
The undercurrent is that the goddess answers first with her body. She keeps her formulaic epithet, ‘bright among goddesses’, in the very line where she flinches, and the contrast is the point: divinity does not spare her the shock. The shudder is grief and protest at once — she knows the command cannot be refused, and she reacts to it exactly as a mortal would to unbearable news.
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