OCTAVIOPAZ
601
investigating secrets. in the vein not so much of Sherlock Holmes as of
Torquemada and State Prosecutor Vishinsky. Shakespeare's
Tempest
turns
into a fireworks display whose bright play of light blinds us to the base
reality: the birth of modern imperialism. Prospero is the European master
and Caliban his colonial slave. The text is a tissue of lies; by unraveling
it. the critic unmasks the author. who is the accomplice of tyranny and
oppression. No one escapes the ridiculous verdicts of these judges in their
robes and mortarboards.
This change has affected the art not of writing poems but of read–
ing them. Reading the
Odyssey
as a literary text is not the same as reading
it as a social document. If we read it as an amazing adventure in which
heroes are moved by strong. simple passions. the whole told with con–
summate verbal art at once noble and direct. how can we fail to be fas–
cinated by the cunning of Ulysses as he tricks Polyphemus or unties the
bonds of love with which Circe attempts to imprison him? For anyone
who reads this as a document. it is no more than a chapter in the history
of human superstition. The Circe fable shedding light on belief in magic
and its relation to sexuality; the story of Polyphemus read as an allegory
of combat between a tribe of aborigines (the Cyclopes) and a handful of
imperialist adventurers. Indeed. the
Odyssey
describes mores of
unquestionable interest to the historian. but it is neither a historical ac–
count nor an ethnographic study: it is a poem. a verbal creation. Any
reader who does not pause in awe at the beauty of certain strophes is a
brutish boor. Nor should we approach this age-old poem as a sort of
crossword puzzle which. once solved. will reveal to us the reality of
Homeric Greece: a superstition-ridden agricultural society made up of
miserable peasants. violent warriors and thieves. and liar poets. That is to
say. yet another variant of class society and its iniquities. Such an
interpretation. despite its crudity and oversimplification. may not be al–
together wrong. But to read a poem in this way is like studying botany
by scrutinizing a Corot or Monet landscape.
Outside the closed precinct of universities. the poetic tradition has
been exposed to a continuous and insidious erosion which. precisely be–
cause it is not intentional. is extremely difficult to stop. The assault is not
the result of a deliberate choice on the part of critics. as in the case of
the doctrinaires I have mentioned. but of the nihilism inherent in all
mechanisms. The agent of erosion is not an idea but a process: The
growth of the publishing industry. combined with the power of public–
ity. has turned what was once the interchange of ideas. values. tastes. and
opinions into a modern market. The literary world. like the artistic. sci–
entific. and philosophical ones. was always an exchange. a trade in goods
both material and spiritual: books are objects. and at the same time they
are ideas and aesthetic forms. A famous literary review. published in Paris
