Lecture I

In museums everywhere you will find sculptured heads of Homer. I am not saying that the likeness is particularly good, but when we look at this blind Homer, whose eyes, in spite of blindness, have such a mysterious expression and whose head has a striking pose, the portrayal is good enough to make us feel perhaps he blinded himself voluntarily—I am, of course, speaking metaphorically—perhaps he deliberately made himself blind in order that sight should not disturb a certain kind of listening; for Homer listens. Without the distraction of sight, he experiences the interplay between the pulsation of the cosmos and the pulsing of human blood, the pulsing of the human ether body, where the Beings of the air carry out their dance of harmony and melody. In a kind of whirring ... as when one listens to the whirring of a swarm of flies ... Homer heard the hexameter and, undisturbed by sight or the ordinary clear light of day, it is as if his ears were touching at the same time as hearing.