The Blind Bookkeeper (or Why Homer Must Be Blind) / Le comptable aveugle (l'Incontournable cécité d'Homère)

By Alberto Manguel

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.

Comblé de prix littéraires et d’honneurs, Alberto Manguel prête son génie littéraire à l’étude et au parachèvement d’une extrapolation songée que Northrop Frye avait laissée en plan en 1943. Il en résulte une analyse succincte mais en replis serrés des multiples lectures d’Homère léguées par les siècles, qui révèle comment ces interprétations éclairent la propension humaine à la guerre plutôt qu’à la paix, ce qui le mène à s’interroger sur le rôle que jouent l’écriture et la lecture quand il s’agit de créer un monde plus équilibré. La notion de re-lier, un mot dont les racines latines sont les mêmes que le mot religion, est au coeur de cette conférence, et Manguel en fait la définition essentielle de la poésie. Les écrits d’Homère, point d’origine de toute la poésie écrite, fournissent aussi la première occurrence d’un lien entre les réalités imaginées, écrites et lues. La valeur sémantique du nom d’Homère et les répercussions concrètes et figurées de sa cécité font partie des éléments que Manguel scrute pour fonder son évocation de notre aveuglement à nous quand nous insistons pour lire Homère à notre propre image. Nous n’avons plus qu’à remettre nos hypothèses.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
• Release date: Nov 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9780864925916

Alberto Manguel

Internationally acclaimed as an anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor, Alberto Manguel is the bestselling author of several award-winning books, including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, with Gianni Guadalupi, and A History of Reading. Manguel grew up in Israel, where his father was the Argentinian ambassador. In the mid-1980s, Manguel moved to Toronto where he lived for twenty years. Manguel's novel, News from a Foreign Country Came, won the McKitterick Prize in 1992. In 2000, Manguel moved to the Poitou-Charentes region of France, where he and his partner purchased and renovated a medieval farmhouse. Célébrité internationale à plus d’un titre — il est anthologiste, traducteur, essayiste, romancier et éditeur — Alberto Manguel est l’auteur du Dictionnaire des lieux imaginaires, en collaboration avec Gianni Guadalupi, et d’une Histoire de la lecture, entre autres succès de librairie. Manguel a grandi en Israël où son père était ambassadeur de l’Argentine. Au milieu des années 1980, Manguel s’installe à Toronto où il vivra pendant vingt ans. Il reçoit le McKitterick Prize en 1992 pour son roman News from a Foreign Country Came. Depuis 2000, Manguel habite la région française de Poitou-Charentes, dans une maison de ferme du Moyen-Âge qu’il a achetée et remise à neuf avec son compagnon.

Book preview

The Frye Festival honours Northrop Frye, one of the twentieth century’s leading intellectuals, literary critics, and educators. A celebration of Frye’s contribution to culture and civilization, the festival is dedicated to the advancement of literacy and the appreciation of literature. It also promotes Canada’s bilingual literary heritage by bringing together French and English authors from around the Atlantic region, across the country, and throughout the world.

The Frye Festival began in April 2000. Since then, forty poets, dramatists, and fiction and non-fiction writers have gathered each year in Moncton, New Brunswick, where Frye grew up. For several days, they participate in bilingual events, reading their works in schools, cafés, and restaurants in the language in which they write.

The Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye Lecture began in 2006. A close collaboration between the Frye Festival and the Université de Moncton, this series aligns two great traditions: the literary heritage of Antonine Maillet and the critical heritage of Northrop Frye. It will eventually develop into the bilingual Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye Research Chair in Imagination and Criticism, hosted by the Faculté des arts et des sciences sociales at the Université de Moncton.

The Blind Bookkeeper

(or Why Homer Must Be Blind)

The Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye Lecture

ALBERTO MANGUEL

Copyright © 2008 by Alberto Manguel.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Cover and interior design by Julie Scriver.

Portrait of Alberto Manguel © Patrick BOX / Opale.

Translation by Christine Le Boeuf.

Printed in Canada on 100% PCW paper.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Manguel, Alberto, 1948-

The blind bookkeeper (or why Homer must be blind) / Alberto Manguel.

(The Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye lecture)

Includes bibliographical references.

Text in English and French, on inverted pages.

Co-published by: Université de Moncton and the Frye Festival.

ISBN 978-0-86492-516-9

1. Homer — Criticism and interpretation. 2. Authors and readers.

3. Vision in literature. 4. Literature and history.

I. Université de Moncton II. Frye Festival (Moncton, N.B.)

III. Title. IV. Title: Comptable aveugle.

V. Series: Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye lecture

PA4037.Z5M36 2008     883’.01     C2008-903815-0E

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport for its publishing activities. The Frye Festival also acknowledges the contribution of Scotiabank towards the Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye Lecture.

Goose Lane Editions

Suite 330, 500 Beaverbrook Court

Fredericton, New Brunswick

CANADA E3B 5X4

www.gooselane.com

Contents

Foreword

The Blind Bookkeeper

(or Why Homer Must Be Blind)

Bibliographical Notes

Biographical Note: Alberto Manguel

Biographical Note: Antonine Maillet

Biographical Note: Northrop Frye

Foreword

Alberto Manguel’s intellectual and literary connections to Northrop Frye are strong and evident in his writing. For the first epigraph in his Library at Night (2006), for example, Manguel chooses a citation from Robert Burton’s famous book about books, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). Burton admits at this point that he has read many books, but to little purpose, for want of a good method. Manguel shares Burton’s bibliophilia and, as significantly, Burton’s lack of method or system, preferring rather to follow intuitive associations or chance in his reading. At work in these connections between Manguel and Frye is the serendipity between acts of reading and writing. When asked to name his favourite book, Northrop Frye responded slyly that it was Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, sometimes. On the page following the Burton epigraph, clinching one connection, Manguel cites none other than Northrop Frye, who writes, A big library really has the gift of tongues and vast potencies of telepathic communication. With a balletic symmetry between epigraph and citation, therefore, the telepathy Frye speaks of informs the reading and writing of Mr. Manguel, who is the third annual Antonine Maillet – Northrop Frye Lecturer.

Alberto Manguel takes his inspiration for his lecture from a fragment of an essay that Frye wrote in the spring of 1943, an essay that remained unpublished until it appeared in a volume of Frye’s collected works in 2002. Its ambitious title is The Present Condition of the World. It seeks,