“Grant that this my child may likewise prove, even as I, pre-eminent amid the Trojans, and as valiant in might, and that he rule mightily over Ilios. And some day may some man say of him as he cometh back from war, ‘He is better far than his father’ … and may his mother’s heart wax glad.” (VI 466)

Homer (end of the 8th century B.C.)
Bard, simply called “the Poet” by the ancients

“At the start of our culture’s poetry, there is Homer. For three thousand years, all the poets of Europe have quenched their thirst at this inexhaustible source, and even the most drawn out explorations in classicism, like those of James Joyce, harbour themselves under his name. The Ancients called him the Father. We don’t know anything about his life, and even the exact epoch in which he composed his poems is obscure. (…) The Iliad is the most ancient. Nothing tells us that it was composed by the same man who composed The Odyssey, and who, according to legend, was blind. Nothing says the contrary either. It seems to date from the IXth century before Christ, and for modern man it seems to be a work of unequal value – and of a terrible monotony in its continual and fastidious combats between Trojan warriors and Greek warriors around the walls of Troy. But the work is always saved by its unique use of language, the savage splendour of its ample comparisons which burst from every page, the natural breath of air that inserts itself suddenly between the battles and the confabulations of the gods. And there is Hector, the most touching of all the heroes of The Iliad, the immortal scenes with Andromache, the extraordinary supplication of Priam. There is not one chant where some splendid treasure is not to be found, even in the midst of the monotony of the epic. All Greek poetry is derivative of it. Yes, truly, the one whom they called simply the Poet – just as they called his book the Poem – remains the Father.”

20th century Author
Writer