Blue Ulysses
Walking, sailing, in the footsteps of Homer's Odyssey, I embark on a quest : the color "Blue Ulysses". A mythological color that would exist only by the time of the journey, where the multitude of blue variations is incrusted on the retina like an ephemeral canvas.
Sicily and its surroundings islands were the map and the territory in the mediterranean sea.
The encounters, creators of this pigment, follow one another : the Cyclops and his rages of rocks, the God Aeolus and the windy caprices, the seductive and mischievous Circe, the bewitching Sirens, the black wave and the bestial savagery of Charybdis and Scylla, the faithful memory of Argos the dog companion...
Does a color contain in itself a story ?
Literature, painting and nature, through the prism of the initiator movement, act like an alchemy. The "Blue Ulysses" is not only a color : it is the reveries of the wanderer and whose mythological breath allows it to still exist even when we close our eyes.
Walking, sailing, in the footsteps of Homer's Odyssey, I embark on a quest : the color "Blue Ulysses". A mythological color that would exist only by the time of the journey, where the multitude of blue variations is incrusted on the retina like an ephemeral canvas.
Sicily and its surroundings islands were the map and the territory in the mediterranean sea.
The encounters, creators of this pigment, follow one another : the Cyclops and his rages of rocks, the God Aeolus and the windy caprices, the seductive and mischievous Circe, the bewitching Sirens, the black wave and the bestial savagery of Charybdis and Scylla, the faithful memory of Argos the dog companion...
Does a color contain in itself a story ?
Literature, painting and nature, through the prism of the initiator movement, act like an alchemy. The "Blue Ulysses" is not only a color : it is the reveries of the wanderer and whose mythological breath allows it to still exist even when we close our eyes.
When young Dawn with her rose-red fingers shone once more
I called a muster briskly, commanding all the hands,
‘The rest of you stay here, my friends-in-arms.
I’ll go across with my own ship and crew
and probe the natives living over there.
What are they—violent, savage, lawless?
or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?’
With that I boarded ship and told the crew
to embark at once and cast off cables quickly.
The Odyssey, chap. IX
We entered a fine harbor there, all walled around
by a great unbroken sweep of sky-scraping cliff
and two steep headlands, fronting each other, close
around the mouth so the passage in is cramped.
Here the rest of my rolling squadron steered,
right into the gaping cove and moored tightly,
prow by prow. Never a swell there, big or small;
a milk-white calm spreads all around the place.
But I alone anchored my black ship outside,
well clear of the harbor’s jaws
I tied her fast to a cliff side with a cable.
I scaled its rock face to a lookout on its crest.
The Odyssey, chap. X
Now down we came to the ship at the water’s edge,
we hauled and launched her into the sunlit breakers first,
stepped the mast in the black craft and set our sail
and loaded the sheep aboard, the ram and ewe,
then we ourselves embarked, streaming tears,
our hearts weighed down with anguish …
But Circe the awesome nymph with lovely braids
who speaks with human voice, sent us a hardy shipmate,
yes, a fresh following wind ruffling up in our wake,
bellying out our sail to drive our blue prow on as we,
securing the running gear from stem to stern, sat back
while the wind and helmsman kept her true on course.
The sail stretched taut as she cut the sea all day
and the sun sank and the roads of the world grew dark.
And she made the outer limits, the Ocean River’s bounds.
The Odyssey chap. XI
When they reached the ship at the water’s edge
the royal escorts took charge of the gifts at once
and stores of food and wine, stowed them deep in the holds,
and then for their guest they spread out rug and sheets
on the half-deck, clear astern on the ship’s hull
so he might sleep there soundly, undisturbed.
And last, Odysseus climbed aboard himself
and down he lay, all quiet,
as crewmen sat to the oarlocks, each in line.
They slipped the cable free of the drilled stone post
and soon as they swung back and the blades tossed up the spray
an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest,
soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself …
And the ship like a four-horse team careering down the plain,
all breaking as one with the whiplash cracking smartly,
leaping with hoofs high to run the course in no time—
so the stern hove high and plunged with the seething rollers
crashing dark in her wake as on she surged unwavering,
never flagging, no, not even a darting hawk,
the quickest thing on wings, could keep her pace
as on she ran, cutting the swells at top speed,
bearing a man equipped with the gods’ own wisdom,
one who had suffered twenty years of torment, sick at heart,
cleaving his way through wars of men and pounding waves at sea
but now he slept in peace, the memory of his struggles
laid to rest.
The Odyssey, chap. XIII