Homer, Troy and Architecture. On Founding and Building Perfections

The idea of founding perfection on abstract and idealised patterns the model of which is broadly understood as geometry seems to be responsible for a certain utopianism characterising various aspects of thinking about change and improvement. In the case of literature it is Homer who has become the fatherly figure and a pattern of perfection, though the materialisation of his stories in writing was a result of much later endeavours carried out by others, mostly through translation. The paper discusses a few examples of idealisation of Homer and links them with the idea of the beginning of utopianism in literature. The ruin of Troy in the Iliad can be read as a beginning in attempts at refurnsishing and rebuilding of the world not only in art and literature, but also in architecture. Two classical Roman texts on architecture (by Vitruvius and Alberti) praise the perfection of geometry which, in both texts, constitutes an invisible performative pattern. The Renaissance arrival of Latin translations of Homer and the geometry of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man point to Humanism’s ideas of perfection as founded on an architectural pattern. The final part of this paper will address Alexander Pope’s repositioning of Homer from literary father to friend and companion. This part will also bring in the critique of geometrisation seen as a way to perfect the world in William Blake, who saw in Homer a participant in the Urizenic scheme of regulating perfection through the aggressive work of reason.