«Il contrario di Ulisse». Suggestioni onomastiche in “Ulysse from Bagdad” di Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Abstract

Right from the title, Ulysse from Bagdad (Paris, Albin Michel 2008), this novel by the contemporary French writer Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt, reveals the process of writing a story set in firmly in the turbulence of contemporary life, but whose name and echo of the vicissitudes which the protagonist meets evoke the presence of the ancient Greek epic. The onomastic element constitutes a guide for the reader, enabling him to recognize the model underlying the rewrite project. References to the Odyssey emerge on several occasions in the analogies between the circumnavigation of the narrator-protagonist of the novel and the journey of Ulysses. Recontextualization in the modern era is often the keystone that transforms the epic theme into a comic subject. The Homeric hypotext, in Schmitt’s rewriting, constitutes a counterpoint that serves to lighten the tragic story of the narrator-protagonist. Only at a certain point in his vicissitudes does Saad assume the migrant name, that of the Homeric hero, behind which he intends to hide his true identity as a clandestine. For the rest of the narrative, and particularly in the conclusion, the narrator-protagonist insists on the differences that separate him from the Greek hero, until he defines himself as “the opposite of Ulysses”. But through the Homeric hypostasis, Saad’s story also benefits from a mythologization process.