"If you are not living in your own story, you are living in someone else's", said many a popular philosopher/psychologist. Gertrude Stein famously had some fun along that particular artistic vein in her Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.
It does appear evident that Homer, and the Ancients in general, were most preoccupied with the intertwining of character in the great loom of fate. Penelope, I am reliably informed, is derived from "πήνη", which I might point out to the wider audience who like myself are perhaps still at the copy and paste stage of typing words in the Greek alphabet, means "weft".
Yes, Jennifer, Shakespeare also had a great deal of fun with the endless possibilities, both comic and tragic, of playing with disguises sometimes several layers deep.
It would be remiss of us indeed to neglect this important aspect of Homer's art, lest the whole thing be degraded to little more than an epic tediousness of grandiose cardboard cutouts of implausibility strutting about while doing a bit of slaying and slaughtering.
Odysseus seems to prefer a disguise; like for Huck Finn, playing someone else seems to be the way to get into a scene, ultimately to elicit the truth from the people around him--or at least *a* truth. But the real star of the show of the Odyssey, perhaps even in his own eyes, may be the performer, the soloist playing all the parts.
"If you are not living in your own story, you are living in someone else's", said many a popular philosopher/psychologist. Gertrude Stein famously had some fun along that particular artistic vein in her Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.
It does appear evident that Homer, and the Ancients in general, were most preoccupied with the intertwining of character in the great loom of fate. Penelope, I am reliably informed, is derived from "πήνη", which I might point out to the wider audience who like myself are perhaps still at the copy and paste stage of typing words in the Greek alphabet, means "weft".
Yes, Jennifer, Shakespeare also had a great deal of fun with the endless possibilities, both comic and tragic, of playing with disguises sometimes several layers deep.
It would be remiss of us indeed to neglect this important aspect of Homer's art, lest the whole thing be degraded to little more than an epic tediousness of grandiose cardboard cutouts of implausibility strutting about while doing a bit of slaying and slaughtering.
Hear hear! That derivation for Penelope is disputed, but I see its attraction.
Odysseus seems to prefer a disguise; like for Huck Finn, playing someone else seems to be the way to get into a scene, ultimately to elicit the truth from the people around him--or at least *a* truth. But the real star of the show of the Odyssey, perhaps even in his own eyes, may be the performer, the soloist playing all the parts.
Like the hero with a thousand faces, y'all:
"O me, man of slack faith for so long,
Standing aloof, denying portions so long,
Only aware to-day of compact all-diffused truth,
Discovering to-day there is no lie or form of lie, and can be
none, but grows as inevitably upon itself as
the truth does upon itself
Or as any law of the earth or any natural production of the
truth does.
(This is curious and may not be realised immediately,
but it must be realised
I feel in myself that I represent falsehoods equally with the rest,
and that the universe does.)
Where has fail'd a perfect return indifferent of lies or the truth?
Is it in the ground, or water or fire? or in the spirit of man? or in
the meat or blood?
Meditating on liars and retreating sternly into myself, I see that
there are no liars or lies after all,
And that nothing fails its perfect return, and that what are called
lies are perfect returns,
And that each thing exactly represents itself and what has
preceded it.
And that the truth represents all, and is compact just as much
as space is compact,
And that there is no flaw or vacuum in the amount of the
truth - but that all is truth without exception:
And henceforth I will go forth and celebrate anything that I see or am,
And sing and laugh and deny nothing."
Walt Whitman
Just what Odysseus would say ...