NPPF: Intertextual Space (Shades Of Gaddis)

[Keith McMullen]

"Why has not man a microscopic eye?" writes Alexander Pope; "For this plain
reason: man is not a fly." What of Argus, equipped with one hundred eyes to
watch over the king's daughter turned into a heifer by a jealous goddess;
how many images of the heifer did he see? how many leaves to the bracken
where she browsed? And after the death of Argus (his eyes transplanted to
the peacock's tail), this wretched heifer, the metamorphosis of Io, was
visited by a gadfly sent by a jealous goddess, and driven frenzied across
frontiers until she reached the Nile. What did the gadfly see? And Argus,
suffering the distraction of one hundred eyes: did he sit steady? or move
distracted from distraction by distraction, like the housefly now dashing
and retreating in frenzy against the windowpane, drawn to a new destination
the instant it halted, from the shade-pull to the floor, from there to the
lampshade, back to the baffling window glass. No Argus, this miserable
Diptera, despite its marvelous eyes guardian of nothing; for where was the
heifer? Below, perhaps. From the high ceiling the housefly careened to the
molding across the room, thence to the lampshade, to a green muffler, a pair
of socks on the floor, and so to the sleeping face which it attended with
custodial devotion, until the blinking unmicroscopic eyes came open, and
Otto lay awake.

The Recognitions
Wm. Gaddis
p. 202