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It's the Odyssey! =D

Interestingly, Odysseus began his journey- more or less- by going to the land of the Lotus Eaters- which is earlier on in the album.

After that, he headed to the land of the cyclopes, and entered the cave of one of them, a giant with one eye - "He must be about one hundred foot tall/And he only has one eye". The cyclops eats half his men and says he'll give him a gift if Odysseus tells him his name. Odysseus says it's "Nobody". Later on, Odysseus blinds him and when the other cyclops go to see what the matter is he screams "Nobody is hurting me". In the morning, Odysseus and his men hide under the cyclops' sheep and escape- "He asks me for my autograph/I write nobody and then/I wrap myself up in my woolly coat/And I blind him with my pen".

After that they reach the home of Aeolus, god of the winds. He gives them a gentle breeze home, but when his men open the bag he gave Odysseus it sends them off astray- "And so much wind blew through her words/That I went rolling down the hall".

Next they reach the land of the Laestragonians, who are man-eating giants and eat most of his men- "The other half are cooking". After that they find themselves on the island of the witch Circe, who turns half his men into pigs- "Half the people have turned into squealing pigs". Later, after Odysseus has saved his men, he sets off again and finds the Sirens, a group of nymphs who try to sing sailors into their rocks. Wanting to hear them, he made his men strap him to his mast and fill their ears with beeswax- "And I saw Miss Polly singing with some girls/I cried struck me to the mast".

Later on, he arrives at the house of the sun god (there are LOADS of references to the sun all about the song) who kills the rest of his men. He washes up on the shore of the nymph Calypso, who falls in love with him and keeps him captive, offering him immortality. So he sleeps with her for 7 years, all the while yearning to return home to his wife Penelope- "Spent the next seven years between her legs/A-pining for my wife".

yes, it references Odysseia, but what does it MEAN.

to me that's only one part of the song anyway. There might a lot of references to a lot of works, I don't know, and maybe what he's trying to say is that everything he will do in life will be lost eventually, unlike Odysseia (and others?). "To think that everything you do today / Tomorrow is obsolete" is the most important line here.

While Cave here does not follow the Odyssey anymore, I am pretty sure he still stays in the world of Greek myths and especially the fall of Troy. Elena probably means Helen of Troy, the cause of all that mess and the Trojan War in which Odysseus fought. Deanna could be Diana, which is the Roman name for the Greek goddess of nature and hunting, Artemis. She does not play a major role in the epic, but has a small role in Trojan War in the Iliad.

This song is amazing! Thanks for the explanation!

Yeah, i picked it up after i realised the cyclopse refference and then it started to fall into place. They just keep comming. I realised the sheep thing before i came here. I figured id be one of the first. Appers66 did a better job of it than i could have. thanks. Great album to. Its scary. Im actualy studying the odyssey this year at uni.

I got the Odyssey references, but it seems to go off-focus towards the end. Deanna doesn't fit the theme. And as for Elena & her panda blood...where does she come in? Great song, but probably should have been rewritten (& cut) a bit before being recorded.

Shawn Thomas Odyssey, who did Kung Fu Panda, also did the movie....get this.....The Cave. Coincidence?

Appers66 did a great job explaining the song - it is the Odyssey. Here's my Random Useless Fact contribution.

When Nick compares Polly to a siren, it's a double entendre because her biography is titled 'Siren Rising' (the first chapter of which is titled West Country Girl). And here's a link to a preview of the book:

books.google.com/books

While Cave here does not follow the Odyssey anymore, I am pretty sure he still stays in the world of Greek myths and especially the fall of Troy. Elena probably means Helen of Troy, the cause of all that mess and the Trojan War in which Odysseus fought. Deanna could be Diana, which is the Roman name for the Greek goddess of nature and hunting, Artemis. She does not play a major role in the epic, but has a small role in Trojan War in the Iliad.

"Wine-dark sea" is a formula (frequently repeated phrase) in Homer. When he says her hair is like the wine dark sea, he's directly quoting from The Odyssey.

What I find interesting is the line "Don't it make you feel blue". The Ancient Greeks' definitions of colour were very different to ours, for instance Homer describes the sky as bronze and honey as green. As such, they effectively had no concept of "blue", either because of linguistic relativity or because our eyes have evolved to perceive more of the colour spectrum. As a literary guy, I feel like Nick Cave must have known this.

Also, he could be referring to the band Betty X, though I have no idea what that has to do with The Odyssey.