What is the relation between Homer and the Bible? None, we are tempted to say. Or at least there was none historically. As with Every and Second, bound together in the Working Week Press edition, the relationship is a back formation. A long and rich tradition, of course, beginning with Milton, relates the Bible to Homer; and perhaps this is what MM is up to: a re-imaging and personalizing of the two classics. He traveled first to Israel, then to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, where he dramatically situates the Trojan War as on a stage. Next he reenacts Odysseus’ (or it is Homer’s?) experience. In so doing, he creates a space and timeliness into which alternative voices may enter: Vergil’s, Dante’s and others’. To limit ourselves to the biblical imitatio: we note that the voices of Moses and David are joined by the likes of a more contemporary King, Elvis Presley (whose museum is the principal attraction on the bus tour route that MM took from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem). Rather than recapitulate The New Testament, with its various locations, Morrison gets on a plane and recapitulates instead the diaspora of Christianity within the region, to Amman, to Beirut. This too he re-imagines in terms of a single scenario viewed from a Beirut hotel window. Any modern who reads Homer without knowing the Bible, or the Bible without Homer, is missing something. HERMES’ double movement is under way.
The full text of Every, illustrated by Denis Mizzi
Voorwoord bij Every Second (Preface to Every Second in Dutch translation)
FnL Osowski, "(UN)Veiled"
The Gorph and MM, "Just in Time"
Denis Mizzi, Cover illustration for Every Second
