Calvino on Homer

Alice Turner · 18 Feb 2000, 20:06 · from whorl-v0010.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <akt at attglobal.net>
Subject: (whorl) Calvino on Homer
Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 20:06:28
Message-ID: <whorl-v0010-0268 at digest.urth.net>
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I thought I'd pass on a nice part-paragraph from The New York Review of Boo=
ks that seems appropriate to this new series. It is in a review of Italo Ca=
lvino's "Why Read the Classics?" by a distinguished Princeton prof named Mi=
chael Wood. The part I quote has to do with The Odyssey. Words in quotes ar=
e Calvino's, without are Wood's:

He talks about the "risk of forgetfulness" to which Odysseus is constantly =
exposed. The lotus-eaters, Circe, the sirens: so many invitations to forget=
. "Forget what?" Calvino asks. "The Trojan War? The seige? The Trojan horse=
?" No: his home, his return voyage, the whole point of his journey. The exp=
ression used by Homer on these occasions is 'to forget the return.'" To rem=
ember the return is to seek a past which is also a future. "Memory truly co=
unts," Calvino writes, "only if it holds together the imprint of the past a=
nd the plan for the future, if it allows one to do things without forgettin=
g what one wanted to do...." This form of memory works, I take it, both whe=
n what one does is the same as what one wanted to do and when it is differe=
nt--although there is far more need for it in the second case.

Me again. Maybe I should have put this in the Urth list, where there has be=
en so much grousing about Sev's memory, and where we can also talk about th=
e Soldier. But since we are embarking on the Odyssey, and since Horn's memo=
ry is clearly so compromised, and since what Horn does is so seldom what he=
 wanted to do, and since I hope this series will top both previous series, =
and since I think most of us subscribe to both lists, I chose here. I wonde=
r if Wolfe read Calvino; it's quite likely, since he was drawn to Borges an=
d they're often grouped together. And Pajarocu is certainly an "invisible c=
ity" <g>.

-alga

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