May holidays! Our legs carry us on their own. Our journeys are almost always dreamlike. Journeys we imagine without opening our eyes. Blind journeys?
The kind that struck Odysseus for trivial reasons and carried him for a decade from one adventure to another, but not towards home. Journeys to places from which few have returned, such as the narcotic land of the Lotus Eaters.
Well, with today’s (alleged) level of physical fitness – why not? With good equipment, in good company, we can go anywhere.
What’s more, even the shortest of journeys will always require a mind. Even one like Homer’s, a mind that sees nothing. Equipment, company, finances, planning – yes, they are all important for good travel, but they are not enough.
It’s hard to define the missing element. Perhaps it is given to those who do not see the obvious, a sensitivity to signs, to very strange, incomprehensible, certainly foreign signs.
If we are not afraid of them, if we approach them to try to understand what they mean to us, then another journey begins. Each of us can do this, even barefoot. With our eyes closed.
Ingres, who painted the literally huge (386 x 515 cm) Apotheosis of Homer, invented almost like Homer himself.
At the same time, he could not neglect thorough preparation, could not risk the criticism that the Apotheosis was badly painted, even if strangely imagined. Hence such detailed studies of Homer’s physicality in the Louvre, a physicality that is not of primary importance for free travel.
