Homer's Odyssey: A CommentarySnider, Denton Jaques
Philosophy
Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary
Snider, Denton Jaques
Epic poetry, Greek -- History and criticism; Homer. Odyssey; Odysseus, King of Ithaca (Mythological character) -- In literature
(3) The fact that the previous Books of Fableland have a threefold
division only, while this threefold division is duplicated in the
Twelfth Book, has also its psychological bearing in connection with the
foregoing views. In the first case, the poet was not aware of his
process, he yielded to the poetic act immediately; but in the second
case, he is conscious, he knows his own process and prefigures it; he
holds it up before himself in advance, just as Circe holds up before
Ulysses his future career. Ulysses also must know in advance, hitherto
he has simply followed instinct and chance, whithersoever they led. In
like manner, the poet now shows himself knowing what he will do; his
threefold organic movement, hitherto more or less implicit and
unconscious, has become explicit and conscious, and can be prophesied.
He himself thus is an example of the Ego which both casts before and
forecasts itself, in other words is self-duplicated.
(4) Here, however, we must note a distinction. In all four Books of
Fableland, Ulysses is the poet himself in a sense, he is singing his
own adventures to the Court of Phaeacia, he is well aware of what he has
passed through and to what he has come.
He is not a Demodocus chanting heroic strains of the Trojan Past; he is
Ulysses telling his own spiritual experiences after the taking of Troy.
It has been already unfolded (p. 246-7) that he was in a negative,
alienated condition; he had fallen out with and was separated from his
Hellenic world, whereof this Fableland is the record. But he arrives at
Phaeacia, an harmonious institutional realm, then he becomes fully
conscious of his negative condition and projects it out of himself in
these Tales or Songs. So all Fableland shows this consciousness in the
man; but the Twelfth Book shows him conscious not only of his negative
state, but of his mental process, conscious of his consciousness, we
may say; he is not only Thought, but is Thought thinking Thought, or at
least imaging the same; that is, Thought has itself as its own object
or content. So much we are inclined to find hinted in this duplication
of the movement in the Twelfth Book.
At this point we hear the cry of dissent: You make Homer too
introspective, you make him a self-introverted, self-torturing
nineteenth century man, whereas he is the most unreflective,
unconscious of poets. Very natural is such a protest, my good reader;
this sort of thing may be carried too far, and become fantastic. Still
it is a great mistake to think that Homer never takes a glance at his
own mind and its workings. He must have looked within in order to see
his world; where else was it to be found in any such completeness? He
has built it, and he must have taken some interest in the architect and
in his processes. Homer himself is a greater wonder than any wonder he
has created, and he probably knew it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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