THE SCAR OF ULYSSES
415
what they do not say to others, they speak in their own minds, so
that the reader is informed of it. Much that
is
terrible takes place in
the Homeric poems, but it seldom happens wordlessly; Polyphemus
talks to Ulysses; Ulysses talks to the suitors when he begins to kill
them; Hector and Achilles talk at length, before battle and after;
and no speech is so filled with anger or scorn that the particles which
express logical and grammatical connections are wanting or out of
place. This last observation is true, of course, not only of speeches
but of the presentation in general. The separate elements of a
phenomenon are most clearly placed in relation to one another; so
that a continuous rhythmic procession of phenomena passes by, and
never is there a form left fragmentary or half-illuminated, never a
lacuna, never a gap, never a glimpse of unplumbed depths.
And this procession of phenomena takes place in the foreground
-that is, in a local and temporal present which is absolute. One
might think that the many interpolations, the frequent moving back
and forth, would create a sort of perspective in time and locality;
but the Homeric style never gives any such impression. The way
in which any impression of perspective is avoided can be clearly
observed in the procedure for introducing the interpolations, a syn–
tactical construction with which every reader of Homer is familiar;
it is used in the passage we are considering, but can also be found in
cases where the interpolations are much shorter. To the word "scar"
(v. 393) there is first attached a relative clause (which once a wild
boar ... ), which enlarges into a voluminous syntactical parenthesis;
into this an independent sentence unexpectedly intrudes (v. 396: a
god himself gave him ... ), which surreptitiously disentangles itself
from syntactical subordination, until, with verse 399, an equally free
syntactical treatment of the new content begins a new present which
continues unchallenged until, with verse 467 (the old woman now
touched it . . . ), the scene which had been broken off is resumed.
To be sure, in the case of such long interpolations as the one we are
considering, a purely syntactical connection with the principal theme
would hardly have been possible; but a connection with it through
perspective would have been all the easier had the content been
arranged with that end in view; if, that is, the entire story of the
scar had been presented as a memory which awakes in Ulysses'
mind at this particular moment; it would have been perfectly easy
