The recurrence of myths in universal literature is indebted to the mediation of the teaching work. What would have been Oedipus or Antigone, Achilles or Medea, Aeneas and Dido, if they had been confined to the Greek or Latin sphere? It was by translation that they all found new defeats over time and through dissimilar cultures, on the pages of books, on theatrical, opera and ballet stages, and more recently on screens of cinemas, television and video players.
\nA cipherial example of this recurrence of the myth is Odysseus\/Ulysses, personification of the returning traveler, whose journeys have led him from the Greek epic to even a Franco-Japanese cartoon series, Ulysses 31 (1981), in which the story referred to in the Odyssey is transferred to the distant future (xxxi century).
\nUlysses, king of Ithaca, begins his literary existence in the Lyaada, then stars in the second great homopeya hom\u00e9rica, to which he gives his name in Greek. Like almost all founding texts in the history of literature, the Lyaada has been translated into numerous languages, and remains so since it was composed \u2013 back in the second half of the 8th century a. C., date accepted by most scholars. Maybe it’s happened with the Odyssey. Among the many translators of these works is the Cuban Laura Mestre (1867-1944), whose birth was 150 years old in 2017. To his memory I dedicate this modest foray into land that was so his; I hope that their versions of both homoric epics, so far preserved as manuscripts at the Institute of Literature and Linguistics of Cuba, will be published sooner anytime soon.
\nBut back to Ulysses: two millennia later, he does not cease his journey on the paths of poetry, fostered, as we pointed out, by the literary translation that has renewed and recreated the myth assimilating it to diverse cultures. Let us see several poems that address different facets of the mythical character, taking it to new space-time contexts, sometimes in a reflective tone, as in “After Homer”, by the Swiss Klaus Merz (Aarau, 1945), which recreates the domestic and simple reverse of the adventure, waiting for the absentee:<\/p>\n
After Homer
\nIn the rumring room
\nthe cat. Outside
\na homeless dog.
\nIn the window is
\na woman, she hopes:
\nand there’s no one to write it down.<\/p>\n
For her part, the Austrian Annemarie Moser (Wiener Neustadt, 1941) looks at the hero’s return in a humorous tone, satisfying the patriarchal vision of the wife who must wait patiently and faithful to the warrior returning from battles:<\/p>\n
Late return
\nHero odysseus, do you really believe
\nwhen after twenty wandering years
\nyou go home
\nyou’ll find her full of suitors
\nthe ones you’re going to slaughter?
\nYour wife has aged like you.
\nonly a few friends visit her
\nAnd
\nthe most important thing:
\nPenelope gave you up for dead
\nto get a widow’s pension
\nOld hero odysseus
\nforget your youthful pride
\nyou’ll have to fight hard
\nto be believed
\nyou’re alive<\/p>\n
Another aspect of the epic, the experience of the trip, is the most important thing in the book of the Portuguese Lu\u00eds Filipe Castro Mendes (Idanha-a-Nova, 1950): Another Ulysses returns home (2016), which takes the title of the initial poem, where the author unleashes dreams and longings related to distant and exotic places:<\/p>\n
Another Ulysses returns home
\nCities I never crossed, names
\nthat resonate from childhood,
\nSamarkand, Trebisonda, cities I never saw,
\npromises to be fulfilled by a browsed atlas in childhood,
\nin another century, in some other century.
\nCities like undone houses,
\ndrawers open on the ground, drawers to be emptied,
\nbooks that are always left over.
\nIt’s easy to sum up a life.
\nWhat will remain of her, we don’t know.
\nBut certainly nothing.
\nWords found in an old atlas remain:
\nSamarkand, Trebisonda.
\nOne day. One day I’ll be there.<\/p>\n
The Portuguese also Eug\u00e9nio de Andrade (P\u00f3voa de Atalaia, 1923) talks with Ulysses wondering, from his book The Weight of shadow:<\/p>\n
What morning did you still want
\nsand
\nor silk over your mouth
\nbefore entering Ithaca?<\/p>\n
And we close this brief journey of Ulysses by the poetry of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries with the beautiful poem “Itaca”, by the Cuban Nancy Morej\u00f3n (Havana, 1944), which contemplates in rich images the traveler who finally returns to his beloved land:<\/p>\n
Ithaca
\nAfter blows all over the body
\nand the wind swirling behind the ears,
\nhere comes Odysseus, dropping drops of water for every pore,
\nminnows hanging from every drop,
\na silver hume running away between his feet.
\nOdysseus returns to Ithaca.
\nHe wanted to go back to Ithaca,
\nto the place that, to the prodigal site
\nwhere his mouth becomes sweet
\ndespite the proximity of the sea.
\nIt’s worth stopping and watching the scene.
\nSomeone came to dry their moisture
\nand braid his hair
\nand to bring you dry, warm clothes,
\nlike the Peloponnese sun at this hour.
\nThey serve you the table with few local dishes
\nbut on the white thread tablecloth
\nthere are unspeakable embroidery
\nand, mainly, a high bottle
\nthat once housed,
\nfine spirits.
\nFrom that same bottle
\nescaped alcohols as surprised
\nby the rumors of the millennial night.
\nIn the hollow of the bottle,
\ncovering up the reminiscence of those old alcohols,
\nwildflowers of fixed transparency.
\nAfter I’ve eaten,
\nsirens invite Odysseus
\nto listen to the music of c\u00edtaras.
\nThey were two musicians.
\nor, rather,
\ntwo sons of silence
\nwho had expressly come to Ithaca
\nto play him music on his return.
\nHowever, only now
\nyou hear the silence
\nfreshly cut fruits:
\nto the swing of the leaves under the branches.
\nBut Odysseus’ throat
\nis mute, still and mute,
\nlike a ship still in the middle of the storm.
\nAnd the miracle was done:
\na bird flies
\nfrom his heart
\nto the center of
\nIthaca
\nIthaca that’s all the light
\nin the midst of a motionless zenith. \u03a9<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"