Homer live, then and now

Authors

  • Héctor Eduardo García Cataldo Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso

Abstract

Homer's work entails a number of questions linked both to thetradition it inaugurates and to the critique it raised in the becoming of its own culture.This article studies one of those critical aspects starting from the analysis which Platomakes in his Republic against the content of the verses of Homeric poetry. Platoniccriticism has its foundation in ethical and political criteria, following rational principlesaccording to the model of citizen-man which the philosopher himself proposes. Therefore, the aesthetics of Homer's work does not respond to that model.The erasure of the verses in this respect means the obliteration of what is most enigmaticin the nature of human beings and which keeps suspended in the air its force until today, which Homer foresaw with full diaphaneity and expressed with a beauty frankly unequaled,unraveling the erotic humus of human physis, that from then and still that from now.

Keywords:

Homeric poetry, Platonic criticism, intertextuality, lovepassion