against idiots

In 1967, a copy of the

Iliad

, the work of Homer, left the library of the Madrid institute of San Isidro on loan.

Although the deadline was 15 days, the book did not return.

But with Homer you always have to wait for a return, even if it takes years.

Odysseus arrived in Ithaca 10 years after the Greeks defeated the Trojans.

The delay in returning and arriving when no one is expecting you are Homeric qualities.

So it has happened again.

Like the protagonist of the

Odyssey,

the copy of the

Iliad

has also returned home.

This time the return has taken 57 years.

The book came with an anonymous note written on a computer in which “a student whose name I don't want to remember” asked “humbly for forgiveness.”

There is memory of other traveling books.

Those who returned to their libraries when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, for example.

Those who had borrowed them 28 years before headed to the other side of the city, now open, to deliver what belonged to everyone.

The ancient Greeks might well have called such a seemingly small gesture a deed, because a deed was what was important to the community.

And perhaps they would have agreed that the return of a book is a plea against idiots, since the word

idiot

comes from the Greek root

idios

, which refers to the private.

At that time, an idiot was someone who only cared about his personal affairs and ignored public affairs.

The person who returned the copy of the

Iliad

could have ignored the matter after so many years, but he wrote a note of apology, looked for the recipient's postal address, went to the Post Office, waited his turn to be attended to, waited for the book to be weighed — How much does the

Iliad

weigh ?—and paid extra for it to arrive as soon as possible by Correos Express.

In his decision, the idea of ​​being part of a community, of a living body, in which the transmission of knowledge is vital for the well-being of individuals, prevailed.

When acting, he thought against a society that puts the I before We.

The

Iliad

is not just any book.

Along with the

Odyssey,

it is the foundational book of Western literature.

It narrates the war that destroyed Troy around the year 1200 BC. It describes the siege of the city by a confederation of Mycenaean kings, its conquest, plunder and destruction.

But it tells much more than that: it talks about ambition, the desire for glory, greed, paternity, hatred, anger, negotiation, violence, friendship, revenge... multiple forms that love and death take.

It is much more than a book;

It is a mirror of human nature.

They say that Alexander the Great knew the

Iliad

by heart.

The stories of Helen and Paris, of Agamemnon, of Achilles and Hector, of Priam, of Odysseus... have crossed the centuries and are still as alive today as then.

If the

Iliad

was recognized as an amazing literary work, in 1864 a German millionaire, Heinrich Schliemann, demonstrated that the world that the book described was not imaginary, but real.

Guided by the verses of Homer, Schliemann reached the hill of Hissarlik, in modern-day Turkey, and unearthed part of the wall of Troy.

That sonorous name did not designate a fictitious place, but a city located exactly where Homer said.

If the reading of the

Iliad

shaped the identity of the Greek people and of all of us, the discovery of Troy changed the history of archaeology.

There are books that resonate with such power that it is impossible for us to forget them.

They speak about us with such astonishing clarity that we feel that we are their authors.

Alberto Manguel says that, in 1990, the Colombian Ministry of Culture created a system of traveling libraries to bring books to inhabitants of distant rural regions.

All were returned when the deadline was met, except one.

Villagers in one of those regions refused to part with the

Iliad,

arguing that the book told their story.

The war he told was the same one that devastated his country, the fears and desires of his characters were his fears and desires.

The librarian gave them the book.

The

Iliad

had worked its magic: Greeks and Trojans had changed into Colombians.

By reading the story and making it their own, they had also become its authors.

Nothing is known about Homer, there are those who think that he never existed and his name is a mask behind which all those who sang the fabulous stories of the Trojan War hide.

In the note that accompanied the copy of the

Iliad

that has returned to the San Isidro Institute, it is mentioned that the translator is José Gómez Hermosilla.

He is, in that edition, the voice of Homer.

Nuria Barrios

is a writer and translator.

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