The origins of Western literature are primarily the literature of the Mediterranean Sea. It is difficult to follow the routes marked by people whose courage and curiosity have curtailed distances, erased fear and built civilisations.

From this fascinating plot of channels hollowed out in the waters of a whimsical sea, primeval figures come to life, those to whom written literature has assigned a fundamental value, delivering it together with its mindfulness to the fickle temporariness of the oral tale.

It must be said, however, that the common appearance of archetypical figures derives essentially from their vagabond and mobile conditions. In substance, no matter whether this concerns solitary adventurers or entire communities, that which renders these figures unique and confers on them their literary dignity is indeed the element of travel.

A journey that is undertaken in a geography of fluid horizons, on routes that are followed to regain a world of lost affections, or to construct a new destiny, is always and however a journey. From the darkness of all times, the civilisations that have developed and have been succeeded on the shores of the Mediterranean have always acknowledged their own ancestors. These almost belong to an erratic destiny, coming from afar, owners of a knowledge that was never taken for granted; ancient protagonists that enriched their own experience and that of others through an intense exchange of sacred rites and human practices, a fusion of which will become the foundation of that extraordinary civilisation that is construed around the inviolable sacredness of the guest and hospitality.

Starting with Seth the Egyptian, through to the Sumerian Gilgamesh and up to the versatile and genial Ulysses, hospitality has maintained and nurtured its exploratory geographic and sacred value along time itself.

The traveller is always a foreigner and constantly lives in the conditions of a guest. The guest is received in a foreign land; he talks to his listeners of unknown and distant lands, he unfolds the fickle fantasies of the unknown in an orderly imagination of plausible ways of living and of spaces that are no longer inhabited by monstrous creatures.

Ulysses and the Odyssey

When Ulysses-Odysseus alights from a world of tales in the domain of the ‘Very Mediterranean’ handwritten tradition, he has already become the common heritage of a civilisation, which is shared in its general surroundings by the varied peoples who live on its shores. But this civilisation, which once had so much in common, lacks a common ‘founding prototype’. Ulysses is the hero of Homer who, in contrast to the archaic figures that preceded him, is situated in an experimental space of existence and in a civil statutory position assuming the responsibilities of his own choice, no matter how dramatic these may be. This break with archaic schemes, together with the appearance of the unknown by means of a dangerous play on human heritage, is that which refers to it as the archaeological image of modern European man.

So much has been written and said on his very special and tormented relationship with divinity. If Ulysses rebels against the will of the gods to edify his own and our humanity or if, conversely, he is persecuted by the gods because of his impiety and blasphemy, the problem appears to be misplaced.

It is not the tie between rebellion and persecution (aspects which refer to narrative and therefore secondary pretexts) that indicate the modernisation of the personality but much rather the change in framework within which the new relationship between men and divinity is articulated. The gods of Ulysses in the Odyssey intervene differently from how they intervened in the Iliad. In the human events they intervene with much fewer whims and only the little that is necessary to hold high that quality in the personality of the exemplary hero. It is that society which is mirrored in Ulysses and which ratifies the character represented by the model hero. The gods accompany and encourage this enrichment of heroism but do not assume exclusive responsibility. In any case, Odysseus is not similar to the gods (not that Homeric gods were faultless!), but he invents his own individuality by teaching each one of us a number of technical devices on numerous strategies of the mind with which one may overcome obstacles and face the events in which one is protagonist by resorting where necessary to deceit and invention.

In Troy, Ulysses fights with valour, convinces with his rhetoric and deceives his enemy. During his tormented return journey to his homeland, he builds rafts, discovers lands and meets people. He becomes the symbol of scientific and anthropological curiosities and as a navigator, the archetype of the modern civilisation that has its foundation in the sea and in navigation.

It is not surprising if the myth of Ulysses has accompanied the ages, assuming the burden of highlighting the changes of history where lack of continuity was most evident. In the Odyssey, even if the lack of continuity refers to the unprecedented relationship between the hero and the gods as well as the attribute to Ulysses of a clearly human profile, the journey is accomplished in full respect of a circular pattern of return. By means of this, the goal, which was clear from the outset, is reached, that is restabilising order in the world and in life as against the indistinct randomness and arbitrary disorder. The challenges to which the hero is subjected serve to implement a social paradigm of this result that causes the triumph of the re-establishment of order; in the land of Itaca there is Penelope, Telemaco, Laerte and the trusted Arco. All of them personify values in which the society of the time believed blindly: marital love, filial love... The last milestone of the Homeric journey of Ulysses is the family the Proci have attacked with modern and arrogant subversion. It is his last challenge. Then everything will fall back in place in a natural order.

However, that journey which Homer will make Ulysses accomplish up to Itaca cannot be said to have been truly accomplished, because the hero, once at sea, does not succeed anymore to avoid the beckoning of the unknown.

In future, when Ulysses will open other ways to civilisation, the myth of returning home will fade gradually as the topic of the narrative and will in turn affirm other reasons that will render plausible the inevitable need to go back to sea.

In reality, the danger of forgetting the aim of his travelling is often noticeable in the Odyssey.

Respectively:

• With the Lotofagi, Ulysses will become forgetful if he eats the sweet fruit of the lotus;

• Circe is almost doping him with her potions;

• The Mermaids are charming him and only the ropes that are binding him are preventing the worst for him.

• Calypso contributes considerably by putting him for many years into a state of erotic metaphysical ecstasy.

It is clear that the victory is attributed to the myth of “the return”, to resuming the past of the hero, the restoring of an identity without blemishes, the completion of which is also realised through the identification of one’s own imperfections.

Nevertheless the journey, which has become emblematic of conscience, cannot end. Once Odysseus has become representative of us all, he is compelled to pursue his never-ending journey.

The danger faced by Ulysses in forgetting his ‘return’ is revealed here and there in the Odyssey; it becomes for him paradoxically the yeast of new adventures that will mark the epiphany of new social and cultural historic happenings. It will once again be a journey and it will always be the last journey. This will be for Ulysses the oblivion that will obtain the lotus – as indeed was observed by Italo Calvino in 1975: “from the potions of Circe, to the song of the mermaids, it is not only the past or the future”, but the memory that comprises both the past and the future.

Once he realises the fatal scheme of the return, the hero is once again positioned by Homer in a sort of grey limbo without any parameters. The last prophetic escalation, which is projected by the hero navigator outside his comfortable confines, is that of Tiresia that, also in the Odyssey, reveals to Ulysses that he will once again sail the sea, after having killed the Proci. It is an indirect legacy that Homer transmits to future generations. Once again the sea. Once again the theme of the journey. From Calypso he had refused the gift of immortality. After having berthed in Itaca, he will refuse that of immobility. His restlessness is now considered an unending “thirst for consciousness”. The type of intellectual seduction by which Ulysses is infected will be a constant feature in Italian and other literature. Dante, Leopardi, Foscolo, Pascoli and other poets, as well as foreign writers with various lyrical accents but with an identical spirit, will ask the Homeric hero to clarify the extent of new time by means of a last journey beyond the new columns of Hercules.

When this happens in Dante, who literally flings the ship of Ulysses towards “The mad flight” beyond the columns of Hercules, this is what is verified in the consciousness of time at the threshold of Humanism. “Vertute e conoscenza” – virtue and consciousness are the new route of Humanism, which explores a new way of relating with the divine, and simultaneously navigating towards the unknown. Once again, Ulysses is marked with this extraordinary cultural change that will contribute thenceforth to realise that painless coexistence between classicism and Christianity.

Ulysses and the third millennium

He is today the personality that, more than many others, reflects not only the goals reached in various disciplines but also expresses the restlessness that emerges from experiments that escape from our control and require competences that until recently were considered unachievable. One navigates the Internet like a tempestuous sea. One pursues the Odyssey in the most varied domains of consciousness which marks the presence of the reassuring archetype of that which we have become: Ulysses-Odysseus.

One meets him everywhere. In his name, television programmes are repeatedly produced and scientific reviews are broadcast, and international conventions, as well as exhibitions, are dedicated to him. At the Exhibition Centre of Rome in 1996 there was a great review called Ulysses, myth and memory. In his presentation, G. Riveccio wrote: “Departing from Itaca 3,000 years ago, Ulysses still has to reach the destination because his adventure is unending, renewed and reinvented every time, from the most ancient times to contemporary art and every time in a different spiritual itinerary”.

To conclude, I think it is fair to say that the real journey of Ulysses started where the Odyssey ended and that “the sense of that journey is implied in the journey itself, in the meeting and exchange of diverse civilisations, in the constant challenge of man towards novelty and the unknown.” (P. Mieli, Ulysses a fugitive from the dungeon of the past) La Stampa, 7 March 1991.