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"He (Narcissus) has to make a choice without having all the knowledge. He does not know the direction or source of the sound, he does not know the music that the sounding melody of the sound creates in him, he sees the story, the background behind many small events on which his existence is built. (...) He must choose. But what between? And what makes your choice justified at all?” (Pseudo 2012. Chapter. The Artist) The “other,” the different is at first glance indefinable. It is the mass, the formless, the unknown, often the rejected. It is the unwanted, sometimes the hated. It is who and what is “different.” How are others different? In any way. In color, smell, hair, eyes, shape, because they are either leaner or heavier: either state is supremely unbearable because it is not normal, right? When I encounter the other’s culture—which in some respects seems more “uncultured,” such as their language, which I do not understand and seems like strange jabbering, and no stranger can understand me, even though I talk to them loudly, slowly, practically going syllable by syllable, saying, “dooo yoooouuu understand?”—they look at me like I’m from Mars. The “other” causes confusion. Who are they at all? At the same time, it is completely foolish to imagine this distinction as only between “residents” or “non-residents”, “those who speak the same language” or “those who speak different languages.” That is because difference appears even in the selfsame. For those with a minimal sensitivity in a philosophical sense, the “other” is there even among those who live here, even among those who speak one language Odysseus, when he arrives in the land of the Phaeacians, is warmly received by the king’s daughter, snowy-armed Nausicaa. He is the other, the stranger. The servants, in contrast to their mistress, are terrified of him. The brave and crafty Odysseus—the “other”—appears naked in front of the princess and her no less beautiful servants, who are washing clothes in the creek. They are clean. The “other” is dirty, smelly, not even dressed, and he comes from the sea, which is to say he comes from afar. And whoever
