The Blind Bookkeeper (or Why Homer Must Be Blind) / Le comptable aveugle (l'Incontournable cecite d'Homere) (Paperback)

Rich with literary awards and honours, Alberto Manguel extends his literary genius to address and complete a thoughtfully crafted extrapolation on a paper left unfinished by Northrop Frye in 1943. The result is a succinct yet densely multilayered examination of how various readings of Homer throughout the annals of history cast light upon the human tendency towards war rather than peace and asks what roles writing and reading play to bring the world into better equilibrium. Central to this lecture is the concept of re-binding, a word drawn from the Latin roots for the word religion, which Manguel posits is the essential definition of poetry. Homer's writings, the point of origin of all written verse, are also the first written instance of the binding of imagined, written, and read realities. The semantics of Homer's name and the literal and figurative ramifications of his blindness are investigated as Manguel builds the scaffold for unveiling our own blindness through our desire to read Homer in our own image. We are left to examine our own assumptions. Comble de prix litteraires et d'honneurs, Alberto Manguel prete son genie litteraire a l'etude et au parachevement d'une extrapolation songee que Northrop Frye avait laissee en plan en 1943. Il en resulte une analyse succincte mais en replis serres des multiples lectures d'Homere leguees par les siecles, qui revele comment ces interpretations eclairent la propension humaine a la guerre plutot qu'a la paix, ce qui le mene a s'interroger sur le role que jouent l'ecriture et la lecture quand il s'agit de creer un monde plus equilibre. La notion de re-lier, un mot dont les racines latines sont les memes que le mot religion, est au coeur de cette conference, et Manguel en fait la definition essentielle de la poesie. Les ecrits d'Homere, point d'origine de toute la poesie ecrite, fournissent aussi la premiere occurrence d'un lien entre les realites imaginees, ecrites et lues. La valeur semantique du nom d'Homere et les repercussions concretes et figurees de sa cecite font partie des elements que Manguel scrute pour fonder son evocation de notre aveuglement a nous quand nous insistons pour lire Homere a notre propre image. Nous n'avons plus qu'a remettre nos hypotheses.