"When Ulysses hears his own story sung by an epic poet and then he reveals his identity and the poet wants to continue singing, Ulysses isn't interested any longer. That's very astonishing"
About this Quote
Queneau zeroes in on a perversely modern glitch in Homer: the hero can’t bear the “content” once it becomes his. Ulysses is enthralled when he’s anonymous, when his life arrives as art at a safe remove - curated, elevated, made legible by the poet’s voice. Then he outs himself, and the spell collapses. The epic stops being a mirror he can peer into and becomes a room he’s trapped inside. Astonishing, yes, but also psychologically exact: the moment your story is recognized as yours, it stops being entertainment and turns into responsibility, consequence, and pain.
Queneau, a 20th-century poet with a taste for formal play and narrative mischief, isn’t just admiring Homeric craft. He’s flagging the weird economy of selfhood: we crave mythic versions of ourselves, but we don’t want to live in them. Ulysses’ boredom reads like an early diagnosis of celebrity fatigue and oversharing culture. The poet wants to “continue singing” because art is hungry; it lives by extending patterns, turning lives into reusable material. Ulysses’ refusal is a counter-claim: lived experience resists infinite narration.
The subtext is also about authorship. Once Ulysses names himself, he competes with the bard’s authority. The hero no longer wants interpretation; he wants control, silence, escape. Queneau’s astonishment isn’t naive wonder - it’s a sly recognition that the self, once narrated, becomes a product, and the only way to stop the song is to walk out of your own legend.
Queneau, a 20th-century poet with a taste for formal play and narrative mischief, isn’t just admiring Homeric craft. He’s flagging the weird economy of selfhood: we crave mythic versions of ourselves, but we don’t want to live in them. Ulysses’ boredom reads like an early diagnosis of celebrity fatigue and oversharing culture. The poet wants to “continue singing” because art is hungry; it lives by extending patterns, turning lives into reusable material. Ulysses’ refusal is a counter-claim: lived experience resists infinite narration.
The subtext is also about authorship. Once Ulysses names himself, he competes with the bard’s authority. The hero no longer wants interpretation; he wants control, silence, escape. Queneau’s astonishment isn’t naive wonder - it’s a sly recognition that the self, once narrated, becomes a product, and the only way to stop the song is to walk out of your own legend.
Quote Details
| Topic | Poetry |
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