Sunday, April 10, 2022
A Puzzle
James M. Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1975), p. xii:
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I thus remind the reader of a puzzle, a puzzle which is central to this book. It is this: Why do we care about these stories, which are so far from us and which are anyway not true? This, like many central puzzles, seems most of the time no puzzle at all; yet at times, when one is in the proper mood, it can appear to be an absolutely baffling mystery. We carry with us in our solitude these fictions the poets have left us, we brood over their meanings, feel joy and sorrow at the events, make of the characters our friends and enemies, and find ourselves somehow nourished by the experience. These unreal worlds become at certain moments more real to us than reality itself; that is the puzzle.
