Sulle tracce di Proteo (Odissea 4, 382 ss). Tra memoria tecnica e psicologia della memoria

Abstract

In Odyssey, Book 4, Proteus, the old man of the sea, is represented as a divine figure in possess of peculiar skills: a prophetic art as well as a metamorphic one, which, full of tricks (dolìe techne), enables him to escape anyone who tries to capture him for knowing his/her own future, and this is properly the case of the Spartan king Menelaus. In this way, it emerges that the Proteus’ expertise, a technical one, depends on the methodic recalling to the memory of various morphological status, whose repeated seriality is the guarantee of being successful in changing his form continuously: the use of the expression “he (i.e. the old man) did not forget his tricky art” (v. 455) deserves consideration in a twofold sense: a) it is said of a technical skill which is anchored in the intime, natural sphere of the memory; b) it qualifies as techne, i.e. as a technical art, the whole process by Proteus of changing aspect as well as the possibility of hunting him, which Menelaus puts successfully in place by means of a systematic, procedural series of repeated actions aiming to intercept the next metamorphic status. At the same time, the whole account of Proteus’ transformations assumes a poietic and metanarrative value too, insofar as the story telling by Menelaus of his own deeds to Telemachus seems to recall the complex mnemonic procedures, based on the use of seriality, i.e. repeated formulae, through which the epic poetry was composed.