;

What is the essence of Odysseus? Nanos

Valaoritis converses with Spyros Nikolaou
and Megakles Rogakos on the nature of
Odysseus
and
his
relationship
with
Duchamp.

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The etymology of the name of Odysseus is the

word odyssasthai, a verb of middle voice
suggesting the pain of persecution by the whim
of the gods, especially Poseidon. In order to win
his heralded identity, Odysseus must suffer and
cause pain, to evolve as a person and to leave
behind the arrogance of the occupier, to
experience the loss of beloved comrades and his
dead mother, to seek in every way the return to
the roots that bred him, and protect his kingdom
from the promiscuity of immoral suitors. The
legendary and resourceful archer of the Iliad is
transformed into a humble and wise old beggar,
who as he bends his bow is very well aware of the
futility of hubris and the mortality of human
existence. While firing his arrow he might hope
that his descendants would inherit the world,
having learned a few things from his sufferings.

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In the Greek world Odysseus is an antihero a

special person with both advantages and
disadvantages, which add to his personality the
comic element. As such he lacks conventional
heroic qualities such as idealism, courage, or
morality. He is in line with a very characteristic
type of antihero, the traditional trickster full of
wiles. He is cunning, but only as circumstances so
warrant. He knows how to use arms and to
target, but he is far from the heroic glory of
Achilles or Hector. His heroism lies not in fighting,
but in tricking in order to achieve his goal to
take Troy, to beat the Cyclops, and to kill the
Suitors. To be a trickster is a quality of the mind.
It describes the average Greek, who copes with
challenges and is a bit of everything he is
generous, hospitable and sensualist, but he is
also a hustler, tricker, crafty, and goody-goody.
Indeed, in ancient Sparta the young were
initiated to theft, and in Crete they are still
learning how to steal the neighbours sheep.
Theft becomes offensive only if the thief is

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careless enough to be caught. In Sophocles

Philoctetes, Odysseus acknowledges, Whatever
(fraudulent) kind of person is needed, that kind of
person am I. Whenever the trial concerns good
and just men, you would not find anyone more
reverent than I. (vv. 1049-1051). For this reason
Odysseus is interesting, because he is a complex
person. This versatile element of his behaviour,
which resembles the volatility of the woman, give
impetus to the Greek to stand out if he may
manage, like Aristotle Onassis, one of the most
famous 20th century Croesi. This quality certainly
interested Marcel Duchamp. He was cold and
detached as a French of the north, but he had the
Mediterranean temperament of self-sufficiency,
inventiveness and resourcefulness. He also had
the determination of Odysseus, who claimed also
in Philoctetes,But I was born with this nature,
always to desire victory. (v. 1052). This calling is
reminiscent of the fact that Duchamp was known
under the alias Victor, which became the title to
Henri-Pierre Rochs unfinished novel (19571959) about him.
Odysseus in Comparative Mythology
As comparative mythology helps identify motifs
that are universal, the trickster is also to be found
in the myths of Asia and North America. The
indigenous peoples of North America often
represent the Coyote as an anthropomorphic
animal that, like the devil, impersonates the
creator in order to undermine him. In Indonesia
Brahma is the creator of the world, but happens
to have a grotesque character. It is also likely that
Odysseus (the odious one) is linked to the Norse
god Vodan/Odin (the enraged one). He is a clever
god that travels a lot all over the world, and
leaves his wife. His inventors designed him as a
character with whom the general public may
identify.
The Existence of Homer and its Contribution

The analytic scholars argue that Homer is not a

poet, but an idea, and that the epics are a

collective work of several anonymous poets.

Neoanalytic scholars, however, are convinced
that Homer is a real poet. Nanos Valaoritis

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identifies him in the unified poetic style. The

Homeric work might be staples of the earlier oral
tradition, such as the Kalevala (epic poem that in
the 19th century Elias Lnnrot claimed to
complile in a volume from Finnish oral folklore),
but its dramatic passages (the meeting of Priam
and Achilles, the conversation of Hector and
Andromache, and the recognition of Odysseus
and Penelope) are poetic inventions that are
added to the myth and expand the story. In
Homer there is emotional charge, psychological
complexions and philiosophical drama that
constitute art at its highest.
Moreover, Homer made sure that his own poetic
stapling is wholly tied under the common
denominator of the ancient Indo-European
tradition of the trinity with its distinct reference
to the three hypostases of the human existence
koilia (survival instincts, impulses and desires);
thymos (logic and sense of justice); and noos
(intellect and morality). Later Plato, educating
and interpreting the beautiful words of Socrates,
spoke about the triple hypostasis of the soul with
the myth of the chariot that consists of two
horses the bad horse that is epithymitikon
(instinct) and the good horse that is thymikon
(will) and is led by the charioteer that is
logistikon (intellect). A similar triple distinction is
shared by the Hindus who divide the world into
three castes sutra (farmhouse, laborers and
peasants); raja (princes and warriors); and satva
(priests, kings and philosophers). Freud also
structured in a similar triplicity the instances of
mental life the id (motives, instincts and
biological needs); the ego (logic based on
experience); and the superego (moral and social
values). Homer analyzes the trinity of existence
allegorically, so that it may not be directly
perceptible and thus to preserve the riddle.
Odysseus combines all three instances, and
harmonizes them. Because of the noos he
controls the koilia, as seen on the island of
Helios. Due to his curiosity, Odysseus leads his
companions to dangerous places the dark
subconscious.

, The Russian literature is inspired by the theories

of the Danish philosopher Sren Kierkegaard

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(1813-1855), who owes his wisdom to Socrates.

Thus, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the greatest European
novelist, distinguished The Brothers Karamazov
(1880) into three the gourmand and bon viveur
Dmitri; the pure and devout Alyosha, and the
logical and dark Ivan. All three oppose the
corrupt, drunkard and sensualist father Fyodor
Pavlovich Karamazov. On a first glance it seems
to be a detective story, but on a second reading it
may be seen as a treatise on the polemic against
the nihilism and atheism of socialism. Leo Tolstoy
merges the three archetypes into one and thus
looses the trinity in confusion.
Apartment of Nanos Valaoritis, 21 Patriarchou
Ioakeim Street, Athens, 31 July 2016
Megakles Rogakos, M.A., M.A.
Art Historian & Exhibition Curator
Bibliography
Austin, Norman. Sophocles Philoctetes and
the Great Soul Robbery. Madison, WI: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
Nanos Valaoritis converses with Eleftherios
Anevlavis and Megakles Rogakos on Joyces
concept of Epiphany

Joyce in Ulysses portrays Bloom as a simple and

ordinary person. They accused him of realistic
writing, but the language in which it is written is
amazing! It is always fresh and never trivial. The
first to apply this is Homer, delivering a text with
mixed style of Aeolic and Ionic features that he
composes originally in order to offer a poem in a
special language.

(1813-1855),
. , The Greek of Joyce are few, but his intuition is
, immense. He deliberately avoided the allegory.
, Even there he resembles Homer, following a code
(1880) and implying things that are not obvious. The
, readers may benefit from the way of thinking in
, which Joyce rendered the scenes of the Homeric
. Odyssey in his Ulysses. The interpretation
, depends on the code. The Celts think in this

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manner, with a kind of implicit circumlocution,

the so-called kenninkgs (from the old Norwegian
verb kenna, meaning to know). This makes it
easier for the readers to understand the
intentions of Homer. Thus did Valaoritis arrive at
the nderlying acrophonic subjects of each book in
the epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey (see Nanos
Valaoritis Homer and the Alphabet, 2012). It is
obvious that the funeral in Ulysses is a reference
to the Nekyia, and that the enigmatic person with
, brown mackintosh there is Hades. The barwomen
21, , 31 2016
singing operas are the Sirens. The ephemeral
journalism with air that lifts the papers refers to
Aeolus.
, M.A., M.A.
&
Intertextuality

. . . In vain does the classical school assert that

, . : , 1975.
Homers work is independent and self-sufficient.
With the theory of intertextuality Julia Kristeva
insists that a text cannot be self-sufficient as a
whole, and so, does not operate as a closed
system (Kristeva 1966). Homer knew not directly
but obliquely works from the East, such as the
epic of Gilgamesh, which dates back to the

Assyro-Babylonian
literature.
William
Shakespeare derives from the dramatic literature
of Seneca, which in turn originates in the ancient
Greek tragedy. Also Thomas Stearns Eliot, with
. his strong temperament, in the Waste Land
, (1922) created a network of intertextual links by
! taking quotations of existing texts in their original
. language and integrating them into his own

, poems. This method led to the kind of

intertextuality he sought, to provide a rich
, background for his literary work, contributing to
its temporal dimension and universal scope in a
.
manner that no isolated piece of literature can
achieve. Eliot put into effect the mythic method,
, as he described it for James Joyces Ulysses
. (1921),
a
continuous
parallel
between
. , contemporaneity and antiquity [that is] simply a

way of controlling, of ordering, of giving shape

and significance to the immense panorama of
.

futility and anarchy which is contemporary

history. (Eliot 1975:178). However, Joyce went
further to incorporate in his work various finds
contemporary
titles
from
publications
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newspapers, verbal clichs, slang words of the

street, even automatic physical sounds of the
body. Some of these finds considered sufficiently
to call the epiphany, meaning a sudden spiritual
manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech
or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the
mind itself (Joyce 1944:211). Therefore, the
purpose of the use of this instrument, as Joyce
explains to his brother Stanislau, is to give
people some kind of intellectual pleasure or
spiritual enjoyment by converting the bread of
everyday life into something that has permanent
artistic life of its own for their mental, moral,
and spiritual uplift (Ellmann 1982:163). One
such epiphany gave the definition of God, that
was previously attempted by Alfred Jarry (God is
the tangential point between zero and infinity.
Jarry 1965:114), Stephen jerked his thumb
toward the window saying: That is God.
Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! What? Mr Deasy asked.
A shout in the street. (Joyce 1934:1.33).

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According to Anevlavis, this epiphany concerns

the absence of God from the world and the man
that He created. It evokes the cry of Christ in the
Gospel of Matthew, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?
that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? (Gospel of Matthew27:46). It is the
cry of the crucified human consciousness on the
Cross; the cry of the priest who is decapitated on
the steps of the sanctuary in his church; the cry
of the innocent drowned child in the sea of
uprooting; the cry of the slain soldier in the wars;
the cry of despair of man, for Let us make man
in our image, after our likeness (Genesis 1:26).
According to Valaoritis, God exists as a word in
books, and cannot be abolished before the
language and its grammar is abolished.
Another epiphany is the banal monologue either
of Molly Bloom (Ulysses) or Anna Livia Plurabell
(Finnegans Wake) that is isolated from its
environment and obtains a meaning of its own. In
fact, all of Ulysses is the epiphany of the
contemporary, common and everyday Dublin,
where the Homeric Odyssey re-emerges.

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Apartment of Nanos Valaoritis, 21 Patriarchou

Ioakeim Street, Athens, 7 August 2016
Megakles Rogakos, M.A., M.A.
Art Historian & Exhibition Curator
Bibliography
Austin, Norman. Sophocles Philoctetes and
the Great Soul Robbery. Madison, WI: The
University of Wisconsin Press, 2011.
Eliot, T.S. Ulysses, Order, and Myth. in
Selected Prose of T. S. Eliot. Frank Kermode, ed.
New York, NY: Harcourt, 1975.
Jarry, Alfred. Exploits and Opinions of Dr
Faustroll, Pataphysician: A Neo-Scientific Novel
(1898/1911). Simon Watson Taylor, tr; Roger
Shattuck, in. London, UK: Methuen, 1965.
Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. Binghamton, NY:
New Directions, 1944.
Kristeva, Julia. Le mot, le dialogue et le roman
(1966), in Smiotik: Recherches pour un
smanalyse. Paris: Seuil, 1969, pp. 143-173.
Valaoritis, Nanos. Homer and the Alphabet
(2010). Athens: Hellenic American Union, 2012.

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