I have always found Borges’ discussion on Homer interesting. Specifically, his reference to Oscar Wilde’s idea that Homer was depicted as being blind in order t

I have always found Borges’ discussion on Homer interesting. Specifically, his reference to Oscar Wilde’s idea that Homer was depicted as being blind in order to convey that poetry is an aural, and not visual, art form. From On Blindness: I will begin with that obvious example of the friendship of poetry and blindness, with the one who has been called the greatest of poets: Homer. (We know of another blind Greek poet, Tamiris, whose work has been lost. Tamiris was defeated in a battle with the Muses, who broke his lyre and took away his sight.) Oscar Wilde had a curious hypothesis, one which I don't think is his­torically correct but which is intellectually agreeable. In general, writers try to make what they say seem profound; Wilde was a profound man who tried to seem frivolous. He wanted us to think of him as a conversationalist; he wanted us to consider him as Plato considered poetry, as "that winged, fickle, sacred thing." Well, that winged, fickle, sacred thing called Oscar Wilde said that Antiquity had deliberately represented Homer as blind. We do not know if Homer existed. The fact that seven cities vie for his name is enough to make us doubt his historicity. Perhaps there was no sin­ gle Homer; perhaps there were many Greeks whom we conceal under the name of Homer. The traditions are unanimous in showing us a blind poet, yet Homer's poetry is visual, often splendidly visual-as was, to a far lesser degree, that of Oscar Wilde. Wilde realized that his own poetry was too visual, and he wanted to cure himself of that defect. He wanted to make poetry that was aural, musical-let us say like the poetry of Tennyson, or of Verlaine, whom he loved and admired so. Wilde said that the Greeks claimed that Homer was blind in order to emphasize that poetry must be aural, not visual. From that comes the "de la musique avant toute chose" of Verlaine and the symbolism contemporary to Wilde. We may believe that Homer never existed, but that the Greeks imagined him as blind in order to insist on the fact that poetry is, above all, music; that poetry is, above all, the lyre; that the visual can or cannot exist in a poet. I know of great visual poets and great poets who are not visual-intellectual poets, mental ones-there's no need to mention names.*