Goethe, and notably in Shakespeare.
The pun of Ulysses rests upon the duplicity inherent in the negative;
no-man is the man, especially to Polyphemus, whose brain cannot span
the two sides of the punning idea, who is not two-eyed but one-eyed by
nature, and this one eye is soon put out by the man with two eyes. Such
is the earliest instance of what may be called the Play of the
Negative, which is still subtly ensconced in the spoken and written
word, and winds in an elusive game of hide-and-seek through all
Literature. Many men, both writers and readers, are its victims, like
Polyphemus.

And all these floating metaphysical gossamers are found in Homer! Yes,
but not in a metaphysical form; Homer's organ is poetic, he lived in
the age ere philosophers had dawned. Still he too had before him the
problems of the soul and of the world. Nor would he have been a true
Greek unless he had grappled with this Play of the Negative, which had
some marvelous fascination for the Greek mind. It is the leaven working
in the Sophists with their subtle rhetoric, in Socrates with his
negating elenchus, in Plato with his confounding dialectic. Homer, as
the prophet of his people, foreshadowing all forms of Greek spirit and
of Greek literature, bring to light repeatedly this Play of the
Negative.

The modern German, in more respects than one the spiritual heir of the
ancient Greek, has not failed to give evidence of his birthright in the
same direction. Kant's Critique, and Hegel's Logic are the most
desperate efforts to grasp this slippery, double-doing and
double-thinking Negative, infinitely elusive, verily the old Serpent.
But the supreme attempt is the modern poetic one, made by Goethe in his
Faust poem, in which is embodied anew the mighty Negative, who is now
none other than the devil, Mephistopheles. Thus the last world-poet
reaches across the ages and touches elbows with the first world-poet in
a common theme.

Thus Ulysses nullifies the Cyclops, inflicting three deprivations
through his three means: the charred stick takes away vision, the
strong wine takes away strength, the ambiguous pun prevents help. The
pun also announces covertly to Polyphemus the nature of the power which
is undoing him, but he does not and cannot understand that. But the
problem of Ulysses is not at an end with simply nullifying the Cyclops;
he and his companions are not yet outside of the cave. Herewith we come
to a new stage of process.

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