Subject: Re: [lojban] "generic Odysseys"

From: "michael helsem" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2001 23:28:19

>From: John Cowan <[email-masked]>
li'o
>The trouble is that Homer is simply he who wrote the Odyssey and the Iliad,
>and the Odyssey and the Iliad are the works of Homer. We have
>no independent notion of Homer, as we do of most authors.
>

he's little more shadowy than Shakespeare, or for that matter any poet 
before the
time of Samuel Johnson; what's important (even if we wish to dispute it) is 
the
idea of there being a unique text which is associated with a TE PEMCI. now, 
to
discuss variant readings is another matter. at some point CENBA MILXE 
crosses
over into FRICA, & we begin to talk about "families" of texts (GIRZU LEKA 
SIMSA).
certainly the set which comprises canonical & uncanonical (i.e. Gnostic) 
Gospel
texts is such a family. we have to pick out images & phrases & plotlike 
sequences
that some or all of them share, & imagine that there were numerous authors, 
all of
whom felt themselves contributing to a meta-enterprise somewhat in the way 
that
writers today participate in "genres" (TCACI SE LISRI) more or less 
conformingly.
if the Odyssey arose in this manner, it certainly received its last editing 
at the
hands of a great creative artist, & this is the TE PEMCI we honor in 
"Homer"'s name.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"...the spring of the Army-McCarthy hearings... John [Berryman], as an 
addicted reader of The New York Times, once began a class by holding up the 
front page so the class might see the latest revelation in the ongoing 
drama. 'These fools will rule for a while and be replaced by other fools and 
crooks. This,' and he opened a volume of Keats to the 'Ode to a 
Nightingale', 'will be with us for as long as our language endures.'" 
--Philip Levine, in The Bread of Time (1994)

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