“There are three kinds of men: the living, the dead and those who sail the seas.” Anacharsis, a wanderer from the northern shores of the Black Sea said to have been the first foreigner awarded Athenian citizenship around 600BCE, is credited with first formulating the thought. This version in English was on a panel at the very start of an exhibition this summer celebrating Homer’s hero Ulysses and his vast poem, the Odyssey.
Ulysse is the first show put on in a fine new public gallery in the town of Draguignan, the Hôtel départemental des Expositions du Var, the Var being the French department of which Draguignan was once the capital. That honour is now given to Europe’s biggest naval base, Toulon down on the Mediterranean, the sea where Ulysses had his adventures.
Excuse the “men” in the English offered by the gallery, the word “homme” in French is one of those traps in the language that block any simple removal of its patriarchal heritage. It does for both man, men and for people in general. Human rights becomes droits de l’homme much to the disappointment of many in the Ligue de droits de l’homme, the country’s main civil rights organisation, who would prefer it to speak of droits humains.
