265 / 298
Vico’s Ring
265
pursues and grapples with, which is the unearthing of ancient
historic strata that could provide insight(s) on the origins of civi-
lization, in complex interaction with his “philosophical” and
“philological” speculation, and to that end, the 8
th
century BC
poet Homer, living outside the pertinent time frame as he did,
had little, if anything, to contribute
583
. From a source-critical per-
spective, Vico’s lack of interest in the 8
th
century recorder of the
poems cannot be taken for lack of esteem for the literary accom-
plishment of this third Homer, not only in putting the poems in
writing as such but also in transforming them into a literary mas-
terpiece
584
.
In the light of these explicit distinctions between three kinds
of “Homers”, it would seem that Vico’s belief in the existence of
an 8
th
century individual writer traditionally named Homer
should be beyond dispute. This is not the case, however; actually,
it would appear that the balance of Vico studies is weighted in
favor of doubt or rejection of an affirmative belief on Vico’s
part
585
. The “blame” for causing the controversy could be placed
at the feet of Vico himself, in a manner of speaking, by virtue of
a key paragraph in Book III of
Scienza nuova,
that is, § 873, the
second half
586
of which reads:
And certainly if, as in the case of the Trojan War, there did not remain
of Homer certain great vestiges in the form of his poems, the great dif-
ficulties would lead us to conclude that he was a purely ideal poet (
un
Poeta d’idea
) who never existed as a particular man in the world of na-
ture. But the many great difficulties on the one hand, taken together
with the surviving poems on the other, seem to force us to take the
middle ground (
affermarlo per la metà)
587
that Homer was an idea or a he-
roic character of Grecian men insofar as they told their histories in
song.
Much of the problematic, and thus also any solution, revolves
around the type of designation, or, in the terms of analytic phi-
losophy, definite description, ascribed to the different occurrenc-