Federico Fellini and Homer: Parallels and intersections

history, and those in the Fellini Satyricon2. This classical film loosely based on Petronius’ Satyricon (1st century AD) and numerous other monuments of ancient lit-erature3 was made in 1968–1969 and presented in early September 1969 at the 30th Venice International Film Festival.

The previous publications focused on the general themes of the Ancient Roman and the new Satyricons: heroes’ peregrinations (Homer’s Odysseus, and Encolpius in Petronius and in Fellini), the Banquet of Trimalchio theme (in Petronius and Fellini), the motif of gods’ wrath conjugate with that of Odysseus’ peregrinations (in Homer’s epic and — controversially — in Petronius’ book, the theme of the artful hero, the image(s) of labyrinth/labyrinths (in Fellini’s film), the puzzle structure of the works (those of Fellini and Petronius), and others4.

This article examines other concurrences found in Fellini and Homer. Are they deliberate? Fortuitous? Plausible? Archetypal? Fanciful (either by the film director or by the author of this article)? The article highlights the parallels in the works of great masters living almost three millennia apart: in the epic written by the Ancient Greek genius and in the ‘historiographic’ film by the classic of Italian cinema5.

Despite the paradoxical juxtaposition of the modern film and Homer’s epic, I believe that this approach is viable. Here I shall refer to the analytical comparison made in the books by American experts in Russian philology and history of Russian literature, Frederick T. Griffiths and Stanley J. Rabinowitz on classical epic (Homer and Virgil) and the Russian novel (from Gogol to Pasternak)6; of special interest is the chapter “Tolstoy and Homer” on the War and Peace as a “Russian Iliad”7. It may seem that there are greater reasons to find traces of Homeric influence in Lev N. Tolstoy’s Russian grand epic War and Peace about the Great War. FS, in spite of the large scale of the film, is not an epic or a novel; the film is devoid of heroic pathetic, neither is it a romantic drama, nor an historical narrative about “the age of Great Rome” or any other grandiose mythical/historical events, as the Trojan War was for Homer and the Patriotic War of 1812 for L. N. Tolstoy. Yet, we encounter the Iliad and Odyssey motifs, plots and practices in Fellini’s work. Another matter if they were borrowed, or constituted a deliberate hint, or was it just their inadvertent influence?

With good reason, Martin M. Winkler may be called a classic in the study of Homeric parallels in contemporary cinematography: for several decades the scholar has been studying analogies with the mythology and the epic of Eurasian peoples in, predominantly, American cinema, having written more articles and books on that topic than anyone else8. His experience in examining the archetypes of the heroic narrative (mainly, the Greek-Roman sources) presented in a visual form has proved very influential. Kostas Myrsiades’ work of 2007 is a good example of interpreting American westerns as a Homeric epic9 (the 2009 impression of the collection edited by him10). The American philologist analyses The Gunfighter (1950), the movie directed by Henry King (starring Gregory Peck as the notorious Jimmy Ringo). Following Martin M. Winkler11, K. Myrsiades examines κλέος (‘glory’) of Homer’s heroes as a parallel to understand heroism in the cultural tradition of the American West. He draws analogies with other values for the characters of westerns; the values the Homer’s heroes in the Iliad (to a greater extent) and the Odyssey champion and die for: τιμή (honour) and γέρας (gift; honours as a tribute paid to the hero)12. Having compared Ringo, the “fastest gunfighter in the Wild West”, to Homer’s swift-footed Achilles, K. Myrsiades comes to the conclusion that

By exploring the themes of the hero’s cunning, homecoming, and reunion [the film] The Gunfighter can be read as a western Odyssey. However, The Gunfighter can also be seen as a western Iliad by placing the emphasis on the hero as a warrior striving to become “the fastest gun alive”, a title he equates with the honor and glory that will give meaning to his life. But as in the Homeric epics, through self discovery and self-recognition the hero ends by repudiating timê, kleos and geras, the values through which the Homeric hero strives to become aristos Achaiōn (the best of the Achaians)13.

In the articles of the collection edited by K. Myrsiades14, the scholars J. S. Burgess15 and Ch. C. Chiasson16 also discuss the theme of Homeric heroism and κλέος of warriors in the Iliad as presented in Wolfgang Peterson’s film Troy (2004).

Professor Gregory N. Daugherty in his article “Indirect or Masked Modysseys?” (2018) tried to generalize the ‘Odyssean’ motifs in the art of cinema17. The scholar shows that Homer’s epic poem about peregrinations and the return of the King of Ithaca exerted colossal influence on the contemporary Western culture, including the cinema.

The Odyssey of Homer has had an enormous impact on western culture including cinema. Its receptions (Homer’s Odyssey. — А. S.) have appeared at almost every stage of the history of film either as costumed epic or as adaptations of themes, plots, characters or folkloric structures to modern nostoi — tales of returns and homecomings. While some of the Homeric costume epics or direct adaptations contain allusions to contemporary wars (e. g. the US invasion of Iraq in Troy 2004), most of the indirect adaptations of the Odyssey explicitly reference western wars, wrenching socio-economic or even political conflict. Most of these seek to establish their connections to Homer …18

G. N. Daugherty abstains from discussing various attempts (either successful or less successful) adaptations of the Odyssey which appeared at every stage of the history of cinematography as period dramas (Daugherty’s costume epics) — numerous examples of peplum of the Old and New Worlds, whose golden age was the 1910s and the span of 1950s – 1960s. The scholar revisits the contemporary artistic practices of adaptation of Homeric motifs, plots, methods and folk patterns which abundant in films and TV series about wars and the return of a hero/heroes home. According to Daugherty, reading codes found in cinematic narrative (νόστοι) ‘returns’ reveals the link with the ancient source — Homer’s Odyssey19. He singles out the pictures where the ‘Odyssean’ elements are veiled20. Using some works, the scholar analyses such a phenomenon as Modyssey.

The modernized Odyssey — frequently referred to as a ‘Modyssey’ — is almost a genre unto itself. Odyssean elements are evoked in order to elevate a modern journey to epic stature and or to underscore the critical differences. We should draw a distinction between a true Modyssey and a more open quest plot or road picture film21.

I have already made an attempt to identify Homeric practices and motifs in the series directed by Tatijana M. Lioznova Seventeen Moments of Spring. This experience seemed interesting for interpreting the phenomenon of the film through the prism of ‘Homeric topoi’ as a Soviet myth of the ‘Trojan Horse’22.

As was already stated, I have examined the Odyssey motifs and practices of FS used by F. Fellini’s, B. Zapponi’s and B. Rondi’s, script writers, in my previous works. Now let us turn to the allusions to Homer’s Iliad, which are made either explicitly or implicitly in the film about Ancient Rome. Even more so that we have actual grounds to form an opinion about the “intersections”: the director’s own recollections and reviews, his cooperation with classics when he was in the process of making FS23, stories told by the master’s contemporaries about the artistic designs he cherished, though never fulfilled.

• 2.    “IO ERO ULISSE…”: FELLINI’S “YEARS OF HOMER

AND ‘BATTLES’” IN THE JULIUS CAESAR GYMNASIUM

Federico Fellini as often as not acknowledged that he had always dreamt to make a film loosely based on the European ‘Book of Books’ — a duology the Iliad and the Odyssey recounting the exploits of the heroes of the Trojan War. Fellini was inspired by Homer’s epic poem in his school years at Rimini gymnasium. Together with his classmates he would learn verses from these poems and play “Iliad games”, where they took on roles of kings and generals and acted out the parts of heroes. Later, Federico Fellini remembered the years spent at the Ginnasio Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) as “anni di Omero e della ‘pugna’” (“years of Homer and ‘battles’”). And the future director was Odysseus. Each of his classmates chose a role of his favourite epic character, assuming his name. In any case, this is what he tells in his autobiographic book Making a Film (Fare un film, 1980):

Quelli del ginnasio sono gli anni di Omero e della “pugna” (italics mine. — A. S.). A scuola si leggeva l’Iliade, mandandola a memoria. Ciascuno di noi si era identificato con un personaggio di Omero. Io ero Ulisse, stavo un poco in disparate e guardavo lon-tano. Titta, già corpulento, era Aiace Oileo, Mario Montanari Enea, Luigino Dolci “il domatore di cavalla Ettorre” e Stacchiotti, il piú anzianodi tutti perché aveva ripetuto ogni classe tre volte, era “il piè veloce Achille”.

Il pomeriggio si andava in una piazzetta a ripetere tra noi la Guerra di Troia, lo scontro fra i troiani e gli achei. Andavamo, appunto, a “fare la pugna”. <…> L’Iliade veniva rivissuta anche in classe, dove i volti dei compagni di scuola si erano ormai sov-rapposti agli eroi omerici: in tal modo, le avventure di quegli eroi erano proprio le nostre (italics mine. — A. S.). Cosí, quando un un giorno, andando Avanti nella lettura dell’Il-iade, ci imbattemmo nella definizione di Aiace, chiamato da Omero “stupida massa di carname”, Titta che era Aiace cominciò a protestare, preso dall’odio verso Omero, quasi il poeta lo avesse, in tal modo, vilipeso fin dale origini del mondo.

Giunti alla morte di Ettore, Luigino Dolci, che era Ettore, visse il suo grande mo-mento. Povero Luigino! Trascinato come un verme intorno alle mura di Troia (with quotes of poems. — A. S.) <…> Luigino era morto. <…> La classe ammutoliva. Era stato Stacchitti, con la nuova armature fabbricatagli da Vulcano, colui che sapeva mettere in fuga i troiani con un sol grido24.

Then follow examples of their childish “reconstructions” of Homer’s scenes: Ajax’s wrath (Luigi Benzi, nicknamed Titta, who shared the desk with Federico in the classroom), the death of Hector (Luigino), who was dragged along the walls of Troy; the shield of Achilles-Stacchiotti, for whom Vulcan made divine armour, but the hero had a weak point — his heel… Later, when Fellini speaks about his classmate Luigi Dolci (as Hector), he recalls again: “quello che nell’Iliade faceva Ettore (recitavamo per conto nostro l’Iliade” (“We staged the Iliad ourselves”)25.

In the “years of Homer”, the Rimini students had their own Zeus. They called the headmaster, who had a long flaming-red beard and a stern temper, the Lord of Mount Olympus. Unless, of course, the dreamer of Fellini made it up later. His fantasies and conjectures were legendary (see, for example, the chapter ‘I am a great liar’ in Benito Merlino’s book on Fellini26.

Asked by journalists about his childhood, adolescence and everything that could contribute to the making of a great film director, Fellini often responded with outright fiction, grey lies or the truth embellished and reconsidered in the light of his imagination27.

• B.    Merlino then adduces examples of ‘truthful legends’ Fellini made up about his life. And “the great liar” is the story about himself²⁸. He did acknowledge that he never kept his memories but “put everything in his films” and “no longer could distinguish between what had actually happened and what he had made up”²⁹.

• 3.    FELLINI’S YET ANOTHER “UNMADE DREAM”

But this is how F. Fellini and T. Guerra, the script writers of Amarcord (1973), portray Zeus the headmaster: “standing at the window in the gymnasium are Zeus, the headmaster, and Signorina Leonardis, the teacher of mathematics, a buxom woman”30; “Zeus the director, pats his long beard putting out a spark”31; “Zeus, the gymnasium headmaster, talks with the teachers waiting to be photographed”32, etc., etc. In anger, the Olympian deity of the headmaster ranted and raved at the students. Fellini speaks: “Il preside (the gymnasium. — A. S.), detto Zeus, una specie di Mangiafuoco…”33 Luigi Benzi, another of Fellini’s erstwhile friend, the very same Titta as Ajax, also remembers the Thunder-bearer.

Modern Rimini is full of the Fellini topoi: Cinema “Fulgor”, Palazzina Dolce, central Cavour Square, the magnificent Grand Hotel (“Old Signora” as the narrator in Amarcord calls it), the gymnasiums the would-be director went to, the railway station and the railway line near the city cemetery, ancient Roman arches, Via Clementini, Via Briguenti, Via Dante…34 Fellini’s many films — from I Vitelloni (1953) to The Voice of the Moon (La voce della luna, 1990) are the fruit of his reminiscences and dreams about the shadowy Rimini past. They are redolent of personal memories of his childhood and adolescence35, his boyhood fantasies, fears, infatuation for Bianca Soriani, Homer’s epic, the streets and squares of Rimini where the “bookish children” played the Iliad game, the smells and sounds of his native town, cinema performances at Cinema “Fulgor”, “proper books”… Here, as young children they had their gods and heroes: Zeus, Achilles, Hector, Ajax, Aeneas… and, surely, the ingenious Odysseus — our Federico Federico.

• G. Davydov in his article “Unmade dreams of Federico Fellini” focusses on the master’s untapped designs: “Evidence of these unmade films is galore, scattered across his memoirs. Here and there, Fellini tells how he failed to embody the intended. <…> The number of Federico Fellini’s unmade films is virtually larger than that of the made ones”³⁶. Indeed, but Davydov writes only about one of Fellini’s unfulfilled projects — G. Mastorna’s Journey (Il viaggio di G. Mastorna), which the director kept revisiting throughout the twenty years, but never was able to carry them out³⁷. This “vague dream” would become Fellini’s true “nightmare”³⁸. As a result, only a quarter of a century after he had first started to work on The Journey, at the turn of the 1990s, the director would turn this design into reality in the series of cartoons on the theme of the mysterious Mastorna³⁹. Yet, G. Davydov misses another unmade project (one may say another of his haunting dreams) — a grandiose intention to make a film loosely based on Homer’s epic.

Alesandro Carrera, the author of the new monograph The Eternal Rome of Fellini (2018), provides a broader list of “film dreams” on the topics from European classical literature, noting parenthetically that rumours about “Fellini’s Iliad” were afloat. “Fellini’s Divine Comedy takes its place among his recurring dream together with Fellini’s Iliad (which was rumoured too) and Fellini’s Don Quixote…”40. The director did acknowledge that “to make an adaptation of Don Quixote was the dream of his life”41, as well as to create a fanciful film about Dante’s wanderings around Italy of the 13th century42. Fellini wanted to make a screen version of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi43, adapt into films fairy tales by Charles Perrot and Hans Christian Andersen, the surrealistic novel America by Franz Kafka and other classical litera-ture44.

An interesting deliberation about an “unmade dream” can be found in the book Genius loci by P. L. Vayl, writer and columnist:

Fellini would frequently say that he wanted to dramatize the Iliad, but he never did it — and no wonder. Though there are few books more fitting for screening. The Iliad can — and today’s people cannot otherwise — be read as a film script, and not a literary one, but as a detailed storyboard made by a film director. A local subject against the broad historical background, the torrential pace of the unfolding plot, the alternation of battle episodes and chamber psychological scenes, the rhythmic interchange of designs: large (battle), medium (the author’s or the commander’s viewpoint), and general (the view from Mount Olympus) — all this makes the thing stemming from the origin of Western civilization a masterpiece of the cinema45.

This seemingly paradoxical (and even provocative) observation about the dramatized Iliad may, in my opinion, stand to reason. Indeed, the account of various scenes in Homer is not only graphic, visual, vivid, but it is amazingly similar to its cinematic rendering.

One of the chapters in Dmitry V. Panchenko’s book on Homer’s poems and the Trojan cycle of myths is called “‘The cinematographic’ technique”46, with examples of cinematic practices in Homer’s poems. For greater detail of screen images and the cinematographic technique in Homer’s epic, see the new interesting study by E. V. Salnikova “The prehistory of the magic of screens. Motifs of the Iliad and the Odyssey”47.

Homer’s accounts are visual, dynamic, tense, editable – in fact, cinematographic. And this “cinematographic” technique of the legendary Poet was the task for Federico Fellini to cope with: too grand for the Fellini of his school years, who learned verses from the Iliad and the Odyssey by heart to act out “Trojan battles”, together with his friends at school and on the streets of Rimini, but within the powers of the mature master Fellini, who had mastered all the nuances of the art of fare un film (making a film).

Charlotte Chandler mentions (by Fellini’s own statement) that producers made the director a proposition to dramatize Homer’s epic, and explains (in his own words) why he could not make his long-held dream come true.

Surely, I was approached with making an adaptation of the Iliad. As young children, we read and learned it by heart and then rushed outside and played the Greeks and the

Trojans like American kids playing cops and gangsters. I don’t know why but it seemed to me improper to dramatize something like “Fellini Iliad” (italics mine. — A. S.), and by no means would I be able to go with Homer’s plot servilely. Moreover, it is difficult to find a convincing evocation of the work so firmly stuck in minds of many generations48.

Thus, according to the master, he was as if too humble to compete with the great ancient sage. The author of the first epic poems was not only the founder of all ancient and European literature, but he might well be the creator of the Ancient Greek alphabet49. And if the latter assumption is true,

In which case, Homer happens to be a downright giant of the cultural history of mankind — not only as a man traditionally deemed as a creator of the first two (and masterpieces at that) monuments of European culture, but also the author of one of the greatest and most useful inventions50.

Indeed, Homer (the “conventional Homer”, the creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey) was “our everything” for the whole Hellenic and, later, Roman culture (see the final chapter “Homer in ages”) in I. E. Surikov’s latest book on Homer51. The pioneer poet, creator and sage Homer was venerated not only by the whole Antiquity; since the Renaissance he has been reputed as “the monarch of poets” in Christian Europe as well; see, for example, The Divine Comedy by Dante: “Pay tribute to the almighty poet! (l’altissimo poeta)”; “Homer, the sublime singer of all countries”, Inferno, IV. 79, 88. During the age of oblivion of Homer’s texts in the first centuries of the Middle Ages, and in Modern Times when Homer’s poems got a new lease of life, the Poet was a symbol of European culture52. And he remained as such in the 20th century.

In the age of cinema, in the Old and New Worlds, Homer’s epic may well be the most often dramatized (only to be surpassed by films on biblical subjects). Since the first days of the cinema, Homer’s characters enthralled priests of the Tenth Muse (the fullest list of cinematographic and TV films based on Homer’s poems and the Trojan cycle of myths till the end of the 2000s can be found in Hervé Dumont’s comprehensive catalogue (2009)53; see the above-mentioned study by

• G. N. Dougherty on Modyssey in cinematic art⁵⁴; of latest publications⁵⁵; also a collective monograph edited by M. M. Winkler Classical Myth and Culture in the Cin-ema⁵⁶ and the recent collection Reading Homer: Film and Text⁵⁷; for an expanded list of literature, see in my review⁵⁸). Yet, the quality of numerous adaptations of both the Iliad and the Odyssey themes leaves much to be desired, but this is a different matter. It is indicative that even today Homer is sought out and — as usual — relevant.

According to P. L. Vayl, subjective principles of the cinema art did not allow Fellini to dare to dramatize Homer’s epic:

• <…> Fellini never filmed the Iliad: it may have been because the Iliad is ‘us’, and Fellini is only ‘me’. That is why his antiquity contribution – instead of generating mass mythological conscience — is narrowed down to the utterly subjective Satyricon, which he downplayed even further by calling it Fellini Satyricon⁵⁹.

The juxtaposition of Homer’s us and Fellini’s me is checkered and graphic. Such a juxtaposition of artistic principles has its reasons, but it is radical, schematic and, as a condensed contraposed comparison, exaggerated. I can make two remarks on Petr Vayl’s “antinomic” definition of approaches toward “the objective” author/au-thors of the European “Book of the Books” and the “utterly subjective” Fellini’s Satyricon. First, as related to Homer’s epic, A. F. Losev’s formula of “a people as a creative individual and an individual as a creative people” invites objection60. The Russian classic and philosopher writes in his book on Homer (the first edition in 1960):

…with good reason we can say that the Greek people taken as a whole and in its integrity is the only and last artistic individual who created the Homer poems, and that these creative individuals (one or several) who created these poems were proponents of people’s will without contributing into this work anything narrowly subjective or singu-larly-personal61.

Such speculations correlate with P. Vayl’s definition of the Iliad as a product of “mass mythological conscience”; criticism of views on the nationality of Homer’s epic can be found in I. M. Nakhov’s article “My Homer”62.

The second observation is about Petr Vayl’s thesis in the afore-mentioned citation — on “utter subjectivity” of FS as is reflected in Fellini’s “upright”, narrowed-down name. The matter is that the makers of the film had to authorize the title, as is well-known. The story is amusing: after losing the case against Alfredo Bini, Italian producer, and Gian Luigi Polidoro, film director, who released his Satyricon in March of the same year 1969, Federico Fellini and his producer Alberto Grimaldi had to yield the original (Petronius’) namesake to his “competitors”. After the lost litigation, Fellini’s film was named after him — Fellini Satyricon63; on G. L. Poli-doro’s Satyricon64.

Of interest are comparisons adduced by P. L. Vayl:

Spielberg comes to succeed Fellini, and this is not a substitution of one master for another, it is a qualitative change: the notion ‘fellini’ is quite definite, that of ‘spielberg’ can mean anything, including ‘fellini’. <…> Fellini never dramatized the Iliad, but what if Spielberg does it: he can, he ‘does not care’. The epic, dinosaur swing allows him to shoot crowd scenes and choose actors for the production on such a scale that a small country would have to engage its entire population. To say nothing of the budget. <…> And if the characters of Satyricon (of Petronius. — A. S.), even more so, those of Fellini Satyricon, are contemporary, unsure of everything people, the Iliad would require thousands of pre-Gospel, one-dimensional persons, with eyes knowing no doubt65.

Here are both the juxtaposition of artistic principles and the scale of the Italian Federico Fellini and his American colleague Steven Allan Spielberg, and the comparison of the Iliad with the ancient and the new (Fellini’s) Satyricons. These sub- jective observations made by Petr Vayl may seem trenchant, but it is not, as I understand, so much about rebukes given to Spielberg and the irony about the Spielberg art. Almighty (and ‘omnivorous’) S. A. Spielberg is the author of science fiction thrillers Jaws (1975) and two parts of Jurassic Park (1993 and 1997), a crime drama The Sugarland Express (1974), adventure tale Hook (1991), an epic historical drama Munich (2005), a war-historical dramas Schindler’s List (1993) and Saving Private Ryan (1998), a crime drama Catch Me if You Can (2002), an historiographic biopic Lincoln (2012), a science fiction thriller Minority Report (2002), an action adventure tetralogy about Indiana Jones (a recent Internet post says that the American director is working on the fifth part of this adventure series) and dozens of other successful projects. Jack-of-all-trades, indeed. Yes, S. A. Spielberg can dramatize everything! “He can – he doesn’t give a damn”, notes Vile. But the main thrust of the fore-quoted piece is that “Fellini never filmed the Iliad…”

Luca Canali, a famous Italian Latinist, expert in Petronius, who was a scholarly consultant for FS, spent “a whole year at the production set” (the film shoots lasted from November 1968 to May 1969), when interviewed by Nicola Pace about Fel-lini66, never mentioned either Homer or the Homer themes. Chances are that the scholar says nothing about Homer and the Homer motifs because the interviewer asks him questions about the Latin language, Petronius’ novel and Roman litera-ture67. L. Canali may have forgotten about certain aspects, for almost 40 years has passed since the work on FS (the interview took place in Rome in the early 2007). But may the director have concealed (out of modesty? as Ch. Chandler points out, see above) his hubristic intentions to create his own Iliad?

• Yet, we find direct references to Homer’s poem in FS⁶⁸. Fellini includes allusions to and reminiscences of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Some below-mentioned coincidences may seem far-fetched, some fortuitous, but I shall try to define them and make brief comments.

• 4.    EVERYTHING STARTS WITH THE HERO’S RAGE

The main theme of the Iliad is the main hero’s rage. In the first verse Homer speaks about Achilles Peleus’ wrath that brought endless troubles to the whole Greek army at Troy. The word wrath (μῆνις) starts the poem. Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, — appeals the poet to the goddess begging her to tell everyone what happened to the Achaeans after they had lost the warrior Achilles (Hom. Il. 1. 1–5):

The wrath do thou sing, O goddess, of Peleus’ son, Achilles, that baneful wrath which brought countless woes upon the Achaeans, and sent forth to Hades many valiant souls of warriors, and made themselves to be a spoil for dogs and all manner of birds…69

Fellini’s film starts with the passionate soliloquy of Encolpius [FS, 00:00:58 ff.].

<…> And who condemned me to this solitude? He who bears the mark of every known vice, who by his own admission should be banished — Ascyltos! He won his freedom through whoring and keeps it the same way. He gambled away his youth. He sold himself as a woman, even when approached as a man. And that shameless Giton? On the Day of the Virile Toga he wore a woman’s stole. His mother had already convinced him not to act like a man. In jail he was a whore, capable of forsaking the oldest of friendships. Shame on him! He’s a disgrace! And now, wrapped in each other’s arms, they spend entire nights together... and laugh at me [FS, 00:01:14–00:02:01].

It should be noted that such an introduction is missing in Petronius’ Satyricon. The novel, as it reached us, opens with a literary and critical prologue speaking about poets, orators and painters of the past as compared with those contemporary ones; it mentions Greek and Roman classics: Pindar, Sophocles, Euripides, Thucydides, Plato, Demosthenes, Lucilius, and Cicero. This peculiar prooemium ends with a poetic improvisation “in the vein of Lucilius” (Petr. Sat. 1–5). En-colpius’ soliloquy “Ergo me non ruina terra potuit haurire?..” — the pun of which begins FS — is found in the middle of Petronius’ novel (Petr. Sat. 81). The ancient Satyricon speaks about the hero’s grievance (ibid.): “But they (Ascyltos and Gi-ton. — A. S.) shall suffer for it. I am no man, and no free citizen, if I do not avenge my wrongs with their hateful blood (Nam aut vir ego liberque non sum, aut noxio sanguine parentabo iniuriae meae)”70. Petronius uses the word iniuria a dozen times, but only on several occasions this is related to the main hero: Petr. Sat. 10 (in me-moriam revocatus iniuriae); Petr. Sat. 81 (loc. cit.); Petr. Sat. 91 (Dignus hac iniuria fui?) and Petr. Sat. 131.

Fellini’s Encolpius is forever blasphemous, using obscene comparisons, but in the beginning the other heroes do not hear him. His frenzied speech is addressed to the camera — to the audience. The introductory scene “Encolpius’ wrath” is meant to present the protagonist to the audience. Yet, contrary to the Iliad, the hero’s wrath is not the main topic of FS. After having retrieved his own (obtaining Giton for just one night), Encolpius immediately forgets his grievance. He behaves in the same vein the following morning, after his young mates had split up the jointly acquired property and Ascyltos again abducted Giton. But the “beginning” of Fellini’s film is similar to that of the Iliad: in violent rage Encolpius promises “countless woes” to all his offenders and his offenders are none other than his mates.

Who and what is Achilles fuming with rage at, after abandoning the Achaean army and wishing to avenge his partisans? — At the “King-of-kings”, Agamemnon, elected Commander of all the Greeks at Troy. He had captured the maiden belonging to Peleus. In the presence of the whole military assembly, Agamemnon Atreus offended the most outstanding chief of the Achaean army. Achilles’ rage is so great that it reaches Mount Olympus (with the help of his mother, Thetis) and aggravates the conflict among gods. And, as the saying goes, it is the usual “cher-chez la femme” thing. Agamemnon, in response to the loss of his concubine, Chryseis, whom he had to return to her father, deprives the proud-hearted Achilles of his concubine, Briseis: Hom. Il. 1. 182 sqq.; and Hom. Il. 1. 322 sqq., 336 sqq. (Achilles gives away Briseis and takes his oath); Hom. Il. 1. 391 sqq. (the hero tells his mother what had happened and implores her to take vengeance); Hom. Il. 2. 688–690: “For he lay in idleness among the ships, the swift-footed, goodly Achilles, in wrath because of the fair-haired girl Briseis, whom he had taken out of Lyr-nessus after sore toil…”71

Also, the rage of the protagonist of FS at the beginning of the story is aimed at a particular offender72. Encolpius is angry with his partner Ascyltos, who abducted Giton, a handsome youth. But both the fellows bear the brunt. The reason for of this rage in both Homer and Fellini is the protagonist’s object of passion: Achilles’ μῆνις because of the concubine Briseis, Encolpius’ ira and odium (“baneful wrath”) owing to the effeminate Giton.

• 5.    NOTES ON COMIC AND EROTIC PARALLELS

The main characters in FS are students, rather, former students, or “perpetual students”. In the scene of division of their scanty possessions, Encolpius says to Ascyl-tos, “We’re both students of literature, yet we’ve become the laughingstock of the whole city” [FS, 00:18:40–00:18:53]. Both the wayward fellows are well-versed in Ancient literature, including the Greek literature. Indicative in this sense is the episode at the Suicide Villa73. When the heroes enter an empty house, they see imagines majorum — wax sculptural portraits and masks of ancestors sitting on the table

[FS, 01:15:58–01:16:20]. Ascyltos sneers: “The ancestors of the owners! … My word, so many sentries!” He grasps one of the masks, and, waving his stick, mischievously recites the lines from Archilochus about the short and bow-legged, yet powerful in spirit, warrior who is better than a splendid-haired, exquisite strategist: οὐ φιλέω μέγαν στρατηγὸν οὐδὲ διαπεπλιγμένον / οὐδὲ βοστρύχοισι γαῦρον οὐδ’ ὑπεξυρημένον… (Archil. fr. 114 West; “I don’t love a tall leader, or one striding far, or one who takes pride in his hair or shaved head. No, give me a shorter man, who looks bowed near the shins but who is sure on his feet, and strong of heart…”).

This pictorial quotation from Ancient Greek classics may reveal an indirect reference to the author of the Iliad. It is telling that the Ascyltos, a literary artist man-qué, recites not certain lines from the heroic poem about the great war and its glorious warriors (abundant in military poignancy), but, on the contrary, a fragment of the poem by the same author of the archaic age, which had borrowed little from Homer’s ethos74. Rather, Archilochus demonstrates the lack of interest in the former heroic system of values (remember his verse about the forsaken shield which the enemy, got hold of, but the poet boasts that he managed to flee from the battle field “unburdened”: Archil. fr. 5 West). As G. S. Kirk, “Here (in Archilochus. — A. S.) is nothing, or practically nothing, of the old heroic ideology based on reputation and honour. <…> Rather the poet looks out on his world cynically, appraisingly, without excessive expectation — aware of his own selfhood and its limitations as he confronts the unyielding environment without flinching”75. So, Fellini’s humour is that this inserted episode in FS the citation from Archilochus serves to highlight, in the ethic sense, antiheroic and, probably, anti-Homeric nature of the main heroes of the film. Thereby, this topos can also be deemed as an intertextual parallel of Homer’s epic and ethos – another comical allusion in Fellini’s vein. And if, knowing Ascyltos’ ethos, we take οὐ φιλέω literally: “I don’t love”, then, the fandangle scene with the hero jumping around the room with sacred imagines majorum can be regarded as implicitly erotic.

Various comical “homerisms” are found in the scene of the grandiose feast at Trimalcheo’s, where Fellini makes great play with the famous cena Trimalchionis in Petronius’ novel76. Here are ridiculous “citations” from the classics, which the vulgar rich host keeps pouring forth, and his comparing himself to the ingenious Ulysses, and the words addressed to a guest: “Give us some Homer!... I like to hear Greeks while I’m eating” [FS, 00:32:20–00:32:28]. Other examples of naturalism and the grotesque can be found in Fellini’s film (which does not call for comment) and in Homer’s poems, not only in the adventure-tale Odyssey, but also in the stern heroic Iliad77.

In Petronius, lovers often call themselves “brother” (frater) and “sister” (soror): Petr. Sat. 9; 11; 13; 25, etc.; especially telling is the episode in which the poor En-colpius got enmeshed in the affair with Circe (yet another parallel with the Homeric couple of Odysseus and Circe): Petr. Sat. 126–130. Such a reference can be found in other Roman authors: Catullus (Carm. 100), Martialis (Epigr. II. 4; III. 88; IV. 16; VIII. 81 et al. loc.) and many other sources78.

The ancient Satyricon has a passage (129. 1) in which Encolpius compares himself to Achilles (to be more precise, to anti-Achilles, who is incapable of a “heroic deed”): “I tell you, brother, I do not realize that I am a man, I do not feel it. That part of my body where I was once an Achilles is dead and buried (Crede mihi, frater, non intellego me virum esse, non sentio. Funerata est illa pars corporis, qua quondam Achilles eram)”79. The mythic Achilles, the hero of the Trojan cycle, is “a soldier”, and his weapon is a sword. Petronius speaks about a totally different kind of “tool”. The hero confesses to his lover Giton that when his “sword” was hard he regarded himself as “Achilles”… in the erotic art. Encolpius/Polyaenos confesses in a letter to matron Circe: Illud unum memento, non me sed instrumenta peccasse. Paratus miles arma non habui (Petr. Sat. 130).

In Fellini’s film, Encolpius uses a similar comparison when talking with his ‘brother’ Ascyltos. He complains that his sword is blunted [FS, 01:45:03]. It is clear that it is not about arms, but about pars corporis. In FS such an obscene reference to the protagonist of Homer’s Iliad is akin to the spirit of Petronius’ novel. FS frequently recurs to the sexual debility that befell Encolpius / quasi-Achilles through the comparison to a blunted sword: “I am a soldier with a blunted sword”. And Eu-molpus in the Garden of Delights: “There’s a friend of yours. Now he’s a soldier without a weapon, his sceptre isn’t working”.

If Encolpius is an allusion to the sword-bearer Achilles (or, again, anti-Achilles: quondam Achilles eram), then the Fellinian couple, Encolpius and Ascyltos, is a parallel with the Homeric couple, Achilles and Patroclus80. The latter two were inseparable and bound to each other since childhood. Yet, in the Iliad they are shown as friends, and if “brothers”, then only at arms (military, surely). Direct indications to their love affairs of these two heroes are missing, though here scholars’ opinions differ81. Josho Brouwers in “Romantic Love in Homer” writes:

It should be pointed out that romantic love in the Homeric poems always takes the form of a relationship between a man and a woman. Nevertheless, there have been many attempts at interpreting the bond between Achilles and Patroclus as essentially homosexual82. To later ancient authors, theirs was a pseudo-pederastic relationship (italics mine. — A. S.); <…> Evidence for the existence of homosexual love between men in either the Iliad or the Odyssey is tenuous to nonexistent83.

• C. Warwick in his article on post-Homer representation of relations between Achilles and Patroclus in the classic Greek Literature writes: What Achilles and Patroclus feel towards each other in the Iliad is something altogether unusual, it is love transcending ordinary human relations⁸⁴; but “the Iliad does not characterize Achilles and Patroclus as pederast lovers…”⁸⁵ Cf. Thomas Hubbart’s speculation in the article published in the new Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World on Greek and Roman sexualities (2014):

• 6.    ON DEATH IN THE FINALE

The Homeric epics make no explicit reference to homosexual desire or acts between the two (Achilles and Patroclus. — A. S.) <…> Epic tradition is generally reticent about same-sex love because, whatever may have been going on in Crete or Sparta at this time, it lacked sufficient pan-Hellenic status to be acknowledged in poems that were meant to appeal to all Greeks. Homosexuality is thus left as a possible reading for those members of the audience inclined to it, but it nowhere forces itself upon us86.

A later ancient tradition, represented by Aeschylus (Myrm. fr. 135–137 TGF 3, Radt), Pindar (Olymp. 10. 16–19), Sophocles (Achill. am. fr. 149, 153, 157 TGF 4, Radt) — (?), Xenophon (Sym. 7. 31), Plato (Sym. 179e–180b and 208d), Aeschines (Contra Timarch. 133, 141–150), Hellenic and Roman authors, points to the intimate context of relations between Achilles and Patroclus. Here is a quotation from Plato’s erotic dialogue The Symposium (179e sq.):

…because having learnt from his mother that he would die as surely as he slew Hector, but if he slew him not, would return home and end his days an aged man, he bravely chose to go and rescue his lover Patroclus, avenged him, and sought death not merely in his behalf but in haste to be joined with him whom death had taken. For this the gods so highly admired him that they gave him distinguished honour, since he set so great a value on his lover. And Aeschylus talks nonsense when he says that it was Achilles who was in love with Patroclus ; for he excelled in beauty not Patroclus alone but assuredly all the other heroes, being still beardless and, moreover, much the younger, by Homer’s account87.

There are a lot of literary works on the union of Achilles and Patroclus88. In the post-Homeric time, these heroes of the Trojan cycle of myths often were shown as paragons of loyalty of soldiers-lovers89. Petronius in the first part of the novel portrays an erotic love triangle: Encolpius — Giton — Ascyltos. Then Giton stays with the main hero, and Ascyltos falls out of the story: having taken advice given by Eu-molpus (Petr. Sat. 98–99), Encolpius, together with Giton, having got rid of the rival — Ascyltos — embark on a ship. The ancient Satyricon does not describe the scenes of love of Encolpius and Ascyltos90.

The film highlights the homoerotic theme. Encolpius and Ascyltos are coevals, lovers, (‘brothers’), partners, henchmen, but, first and foremost, they are rivals91. Fellini makes Giton a gender surrogate of a mistress, of both Encolpius and Ascyltos, who, through claiming the young handsome boy, seek to straighten out their personal relations.

Showing the history of wanderings of ancient Roman “mother’s darlings”92, Fellini communicates the post-Homer tradition presenting the couple of Achilles-Patroclus as true lovers par excellence. In FS, sexual relations are not only spoken about by the heroes themselves, but there are episodes that illustrate their intimacy. For example, the scene in the abandoned villa, where the fellows, infatuated with each other, forget about an attractive Negress. In the first part of the film, the heroes argue over Giton, but later this handsome youth disappears from the story, and both ‘brothers’ stay true to each other.

The main heroes on FS, like Achilles and Patroclus in the Iliad (contrary, again, to those in Petronius’ novel) stay together until one of them dies. Homer’s Patroclus dies at the hand of Hector (Hom. Il. 16. 818–863), and Fellini’s ‘Patroclus’ dies in the finale. No heroism here, naturally. Ascyltos was killed by a man who coveted the heavily-lined purse that they were careless enough to boast of on the jetty on their way to Oenothea, the sorcerer. In the fight on the shore, the wretched boatman stabs Ascyltos with a sword. Encolpius, in the same way as at the beginning of the film, shouts for his ‘brother’, only to find him dead in the grass by the shore, and he mourns his death [FS, 01:56:44–01:57:33]. Fellini’s ‘Achilles’ does not arrange for the funeral feast, nor does he avenge his perished friend; FS is not a heroic work, on the contrary, it is anti-heroic93.

For comparison: in Petronius, Ascyltos does not die, he simply drops from the story. For the last time, Ascyltos appears in an inn where he comes looking for Giton, the youth who deserted him (Petr. Sat. 97). Then Encolpius flees, and the rival friends never meet again (in any case, according to the survived fragments). Ascyltos is altogether missing from the last third of the Satyricon (98–141), his place is now occupied by ‘brother’ Giton. Only once (out of jealousy and enmity, not of grief) does the main hero remembers his old buddy: in Petronius Sat. 133, Encolpius asks Giton about the night when Ascyltos took him away.

By the end of the novel, Petronius ostensibly forgets about the deuteragonist Ascyltos. And Fellini holds him one of the main (second in importance) characters, starting from the scene in the Roman bath to the last but one scene on the shore before the final episode with the devouring of Eumolpus’ cadaver. Throughout the entire second part of FS, Ascyltos follows his partner through “labyrinths” of Ancient Rome94. The death of the deuterogamist in the film is the finishing line in the story of the narrator. It is after the death of Ascyltos that Encolpius starts another round of his adventures (of which the audience will never know anything).

• 7.    THE UNITY OF ACTION, TIME SPAN, MAGNITUDE, FRAGMENTARITY, FRAME ENTEGRITY AND DIGRESSIONS

  In the first chapters of Aristotle’s Poetics, which speak of imitation of action, the ancient philosopher notes (Poet. 8, 1451a):

A plot is not unified, as some think, if built round an individual. Any entity has innumerable features, not all of which cohere into a unity; likewise, an individual performs many actions which yield no unitary action. <…> But Homer <…> structured the Odyssey round a unitary action of the kind I mean, and likewise with the Iliad. Just as, therefore, in the other mimetic arts a unitary mimesis of an action, should be of a unitary and indeed whole action95.

Indeed, in his myths (μῦθοι), Homer mastered “unity of action” (μία πρᾶξις), and “unity of mimesis” (μία μίμησις) of such action to perfection. In the heroic epic Iliad, the poet does not portray all the ten years of the Greek war for Troy and the return home of all the Achaean warrior kings, and in the nostalgic adventure Odyssey he does not narrate the whole hero’s journey. Both poems have their narrative cores: Achilles’ wrath (the Iliad) and the return home of Odysseus the king/Penelope’s faithfulness in awaiting her spouse (the Odyssey). The poem about war says nothing of the causes of the conflict between the Achaeans and the Trojans, neither is there courtship of Helen by her suitors, nor a bone of contention, nor the mustering of heroes for a march, nor accounts of the events of the first nine years of the war… The Homeric bard never speaks about the heroic and tragic end of the events at Ilion. Achilles, Ajax, Priam, Hecuba, Paris … they are all alive in the Iliad. Although the fall of the doomed city is still just weeks or months away, Odyssey has not come up yet with an artful trick of the wooden horse — Danaum donum. Troy is still whole and impregnable. The poem about Ithaca’s king says nothing about the birth of the hero, his young years and injuries sustained during the hunt, nor how the ingenious Laertes feigned madness when the suitor kings were preparing for the march on Troy, there is no mention about death of Odyssey at his son Te-legonus’ hand, either… All this is redundant for the “unity of action”. The Odyssey is not a biography of the mythic hero; it is a poem about the return and expectations.

The Iliad gives one episode of the tenth year of the war. As is well-known, the poem spans only several days. Alexey F. Losev in his book on Homer counts the number of the eventful days in the Iliad96 and in the Odyssey97 and arrives at the following conclusions: 1) “the time span in the Iliad is 51 days”, but “only 9 days of the last year of the war are well accounted for”98; 2) “In the Odyssey, of 40 days only 9 are full of more or less important events <…> Of 10 years of Odysseus’ peregrinations, the poem portrays only the last days before his return to Ithaca and several days in Ithaca”99. A. F. Losev points at the total chronological span of 51 days of the Iliad in another place100.

Igor E. Surikov in his book Homer gives the total number of days in both poems (50 in the Iliad and 40 in the Odyssey101) with reference to the history textbook on ancient literature by N. A. Chistyakova and N. V. Vulikh102; cf. “If everything told in the Iliad happens in fifty days, then the events in the Odyssey fill forty days” 103. In Sergey I. Radzig (1940): “all action [the Iliad] takes only fifty days of the decadelong siege of Troy by Achaeans <…>. All action [the Odyssey] coincides with the last forty days of his (Odysseus’. — A. S.) journey…”104 And cf. in the afore-mentioned American monograph on the Russian novel by F. T. Griffiths and S. J. Rabinowitz: “The Iliad says what needs saying about the Trojan War by recounting forty days or so in the last year of the siege”105 — here the number of days in the heroic poem is lowered down. For the discussion about number in Homer and the analysis of eventful days, see “The Anatomy of the Iliad” by Lev S. Klein106. According to

A. F. Losev, the numbers of eventful days in the poems is 9107. The narration of the Iliad and the Odyssey is compact, integral, dimensional and concentrated on one theme.

The content of FS is also a “cut” from Encolpius’ life story — a “median” part of his adventures. The unity of action of this work is determined by the story of relations between the main hero and Ascyltos. Thus, the deliberately-puzzling film by Fellini proves more integral that the fragmentary novel by Petronius. It also encompasses only several eventful days (the total count is hardly possible here, but this is of no consequence). The movie has no beginning (as if it “has not survived”) — the author plunges the audience into action. In the first scene Encolpius begins his soliloquy in which he scolds and curses his rivals. But the audience learns something from these angry words about the hero himself: that he is a wanderer, exiled from his country, a killer fleeing from law… [FS, 00:00:58–00:01:13]. At the end, Fellini’s Satyricon abruptly ends in the mid-sentence: “On an island covered with tall, fragrant grasses... I met a young Greek who told me that in the years ...” [FS, 02:01:04–02:01:25]

The last words uttered by the narrator (the story is told by the protagonist En-colpius) allow us to think that only now the most interesting things are about to start happening, that his future travels will surpass everything already said about his peregrinations. The hero sets out on a long journey together with his new friends in search of adventure. Yet, like the fragments of extant ancient texts and remains of artefacts, Fellini’s film has no end — as if it has been “devoured by time”. The director fantasized:

I imagine how in the distant year 4000 our descendants will come across a vault containing the long-forgotten film of the 20th century and a projector to watch it with. “What a pity!” — an archaeologist would sigh, having watched something entitled Fellini Satyricon, — “It has no beginning, middle and end. How strange!”108

In both works — the Iliad and FS — the text is determined by frame composition. Homer starts his poem with Achilles’ wrath and his quarrel with Agamemnon and ends it with a scene when Priam the Trojan King buys out the body of his son Hector and the protagonist represses his anger. The circular composition of the Iliad is created by the evolution of the protagonist’s disposition. “Achilles not so much embodies a certain ethos as marks the change in the ethos, be it only with the events of his personal change – from implacability and cruelty to leniency and clem-ency”109. In his monograph The Change of Achilles’ Temper R. G. Apresyan notes:

The last book of the Iliad (i.e., book 24. — A. S.) describing the encounter of Priam and Achilles is the pinnacle of this heroic epic poem, and the final episode affirms the values of reconciliation, compassion and charity110.

The composition of the structure of Fellini’s work set in ancient Rome is also circular. In spite of its “openness” (as if without a beginning and end), theatrical “disruption” of the text with deliberately missing linking episodes, this film has a closed structure111. In the first shots of FS, the screen is blank — a grey outside wall of a building marked with dark streaks; the final episode shows walls decorated with coloured frescoes112. These frescoes in the finale of FS decorate the inside walls of a Roman building, of which only ruins have been ‘preserved’, like the ancient frescoes in Pompeii and Herculaneum113. “It is highly appropriate”, notes J. P. Sullivan, “that the last glimpse the audience has of the film’s antiheroes, Encolpius and Giton, is in a freeze-framed faded fresco of Pompeian colors”114. In fragments of these frescoes, the audience recognizes many characters of Fellini Satyricon, as if created by an Ancient Roman artist115. Fellini illustrates, “In the end all these people, whose lives were so real to them, are only fragments of frescoes”116.

I shall highlight yet another point, which I spoke about in another article117, here I shall only repeat myself. In the first scene of FS, Encolpius begins his fiery monologue standing with his back to the audience, facing a concrete wall. While in the end of the film, the blow-up shows a serene face of the main hero facing the camera. As it seems to me, this about-turn of the protagonist and the wall/walls in the

1 Apresyan 2013, 164; cf. ibid., 190 ff.

Apresyan 2013, 130; see in this book, chapter 4 ‘Charity’ (Apresyan 2013, 130–160).

Sinitsyn 2018c, 79–81; Sinitsyn 2021b, 96–101.

For detailed treatment of the screen-wall and the wall in the Iliad as a “great-screen

image”, see Salnikova 2018, 147–155.

• ¹¹³    Hough‐Dugdale 2020, 245–246: “The scene then cuts to a close‐up of Encolpio against a sparkling sea‐screen. The frame freezes and morphs itself into a painting, as if to insist on creating rather than capturing an image. Finally, the camera pulls back to reveal that the portrait of Encolpio is really one of several frescoes of the film’s main characters, painted on crumbling walls, alternative “screens” foregrounded while a distant sea‐screen all but fades into the background”.

• ¹¹⁴    Sullivan 2001, 260.

• ¹¹⁵    Aldouby 2013.

• ¹¹⁶    See Fellini, Chandler 2002, 195.

• ¹¹⁷    Fellini, Chandler 2002, 195.

8. IN LIEU OF CONCLUSION: REVISITING DISCUSSION

first and the last episodes — the whole, but bare wall in the beginning, and fragmentary, yet with frescoes, in the finale — create “the frame” of the film’s composition.

The Iliad and the Odyssey contain numerous brief and extensive diversions from the main theme, which refer to earlier events or predict the forthcoming ones. Inserted episodes in Homer’s epic are of different nature: illustrative, comparative, and explanatory. Digressions are also found in FS, though they are few. For example, a story about the Matron from Ephesus [FS, 00:45:50–00:49:35] and the story told by a warden of the Garden of Delight about the magic fire of Oenothea [FS, 01:48:10–01:51:00].

Especially indicative in FS is the diversion about the widow of Ephesus. This story may well be the most well-known passage in Petronius’ Satyricon (it was very popular in the medieval and in the early modern periods118. Yet, Fellini “modernized” the legend to avoid “unnecessary” allusions to the Christian crucifixion119. In Petronius, the poet Eumolpius on board a ship (Petr. Sat. 111–112), tells an intriguing story, as an example of women’s ingenuity, about the inconsolable widow and a sympathizing soldier only to amuse his fellows with gags and giggles (Petr. Sat. 110). While in the film, it is told, all at once, by one of Trimalchio’s guests in the tomb of the nouveau riche. In FS, the plot does not call it; it is a cut-in episode. And the authors of the film use the following link to pass to this story: after the rehearsal of Trimalchio’s burial and the mourning of the ‘deceased’ rich man, the extravagant narrator, crowned with a wreath, begins like this,

No one’s ever been able to tell us what the realm of the dead is like, whereas we all know how we like to linger in the land of the living. Who doesn’t know the story of the young lady of Ephesus? [FS, 00:45:40–00:45:53]

When shooting the well-known Satyriconian parable, the author of his own fanciful Satyricon may have used the method of inclusion of a cut-in episode for the sake of the very principle of diversion.

Fellini never made his Iliad. But, as it seems, the problem was not only because he lacked “the eyes knowing no doubt” (a quotation from P. Vayl at the beginning of the article). In his “extremely subjective” work, the great Italian master often re- sorted to literary sources: Edgar Alan Poe’s stories (short motion picture Toby Dammit, 1968), Giacomo Casanova’ memoirs “Story of My Life” (The Casanova) (Il Casanova di Federico Fellini, 1976), the novel “The Poem of Lunatics” by Ermanno Cavazzoni (Fellini’s last film The Voice of the Moon). But to his ‘ancient’ name, Fellini has only one picture — it is his Satyricon, which became a unique experience of plunging into the Roman antiquity120. And Homer is, as the saying goes, a special case… And doubts must have been in Fellini himself, in his attitude to the Homeric source, in his reminiscences of erstwhile childhood perception of the classical monuments, a special feeling of the rhythm of epic poems and, most probably, in his sacred awe of the first Poet of European culture.

Yet, the coincidences — direct or indirect, explicit or implicit — testify to the intertextual confluence of Fellini’s “historical and illusory” film and the standard ancient epic. We should speak about the supreme influence of Petronius and other ancient novelists and, indirectly, — through him and others — about Homer’s impact. Yet in a number of cases, Fellini recedes from the Roman origin, thereby nearing the Ancient Greek storyteller. It is not about the epic quality of FS, with its inherent heroism, encyclopaedic learning and magnitude (both in the sense of immensity and pomposity).

However, the identified coincidences (in a number of cases with reservations that they are indirect) may be consistent literary topoi since it has been already noted that “any story is but the Iliad or the Odyssey”121. Anyway, in some places the Italian director seems to have gone by Homer, turning to advantage his themes, motifs, and art principles. We may say that in his antiquity oriented work Fellini partly managed to make one of “haunting dreams” come true, having externated in his Satyricon his child’s dream-game of Homeric heroes.

I admit that in respect to FS such a question formulation — not the Iliad and Fellini, but Fellini Iliad — is provocative. There are surely more differences than coincidences in Homer and Fellini, while the latter defy provability and they are just intuitively felt. But the afore-described parallels may be of interest for further discussion about the art of the Italian master.