I | INTRODUCTION |
Homer, the name traditionally assigned to the author
of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two major epics that have
survived from Greek antiquity. Nothing is known of Homer as an individual, and
in fact it is a matter of controversy whether a single person can be said to
have created both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Linguistic and
historical evidence, however, suggests that the poems were composed in the Greek
settlements on the west coast of Asia Minor sometime in the 8th century bc.
II | HOMER’S ILIAD |
Both of the epics attributed to Homer deal
with legendary events that were believed to have occurred four centuries before
their composition. The Iliad is set in the final year of the Trojan War,
fought between the Greeks and the inhabitants of the city of Troy. The legendary
conflict forms the background for the central plot of the story: the wrath of
the Greek hero Achilles. Insulted by his commander in chief, Agamemnon, the
young warrior Achilles withdraws from the war, leaving his fellow Greeks to
suffer terrible defeats at the hands of the Trojans. These losses force
Agamemnon to negotiate with Achilles, but Achilles refuses, claiming that his
mother, the sea-goddess Thetis, has told him he has a choice: either a short
life with great glory if he fights at Troy, or a long life in obscurity if he
returns home. But after the greatest Trojan warrior, Hector, kills Achilles’
close friend Patroclus, Achilles, filled with fury, turns his wrath against the
Trojans and kills Hector. The poem closes as Achilles surrenders the corpse of
Hector to Priam, Hector’s father and the Trojan king, for burial. Achilles
recognizes a certain kinship with Priam as they both face mortality and utter
bereavement.
III | HOMER’S ODYSSEY |
The Odyssey narrates the return of
the Greek hero Odysseus from the Trojan War. The opening scenes depict the
disorder that has arisen in Odysseus’s household during his long absence: A band
of suitors is living off of his wealth as they woo his wife, Penelope. The epic
then tells of Odysseus’s ten years of traveling, during which he has to face
such dangers as a giant, man-eating Cyclops (Polyphemus) and such subtler
threats as the goddess Calypso, who offers Odysseus the choice of immortality if
he will abandon his quest for home and become her husband. The second half of
the poem begins with Odysseus’s arrival at his home island of Ithaca (see
Itháki). Here, exercising infinite patience and self-control, Odysseus tests
the loyalty of his servants, plots and carries out a bloody revenge on
Penelope’s suitors, and is reunited with his son, his wife, and his aged
father.
IV | OTHER WORKS ATTRIBUTED TO HOMER |
Besides the Iliad and the
Odyssey, the so-called Homeric Hymns, a series of relatively short poems
celebrating the various gods, have also been attributed traditionally to Homer
because their style resembles that of the epics.
V | HOMER’S EPIC STYLE |
Scholars generally agree that Homer’s epic
poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, were composed by oral methods
rather than by means of writing. An essential feature of oral composition,
especially of lengthy epics, is that the verses are constructed largely from
ready-made verbal formulas that allow the poet time to improvise parts of his
narration to suit the needs of the audience.
These traditional formulas—groups of two or
more poetic words—are used either by the poet or by predecessors to fit various
metrical positions in the line and to describe recurrent situations in the
narrative. Thus a formula like “Him then in answer addressed the godlike,
patient Odysseus” can be used whenever the poet wants to introduce a reply by
Odysseus. The poet can cleverly vary the formulas to suit the poem’s needs.
Sometimes the formulaic passages extend over several lines, as when Homer
describes the launching of a ship or the preparation of a meal.
In other words, the oral poet uses far more
prefabricated material in building his poem than the pen-and-paper poet. The
fact that the poet is composing for listeners and not for readers lessens the
risk that the repetitions may become monotonous. As in listening to music, the
audience at a fast-moving recital of poetry welcomes recurrent themes and
motifs, provided that the general pattern and movement hold the audience’s
attention.
Both Homeric epics are written in an elaborate
style, using language that is artificial and full of conventions
(familiar literary devices). The language of the epics incorporates dialects
from a broad geographical and chronological range. Nobody ever spoke Homeric
Greek. Within the range of dialects in the Iliad, scholars have
identified some aspects that are of a later age than others, thus suggesting
that they are the creation of the final composer of the Iliad. The
similes (figures of speech that draw comparisons), for example, fall into
this category.
The metrical form of the Homeric epics is
dactylic hexameter—that is, lines of six feet, each foot consisting of three
syllables, one long syllable followed by two short syllables. The rhythm of
dum-diddy is an example of a dactyl—a long syllable and two short
syllables. In some feet, a spondee (two long syllables) is substituted
for a dactyl, creating the rhythm dum-dum instead of dum-diddy.
Unfortunately, the stresses in the English language make the meter difficult to
duplicate satisfactorily.
In addition to the stresses that made possible
the rhythms of dactylic hexameter, ancient Greek had other qualities that
contributed greatly to the pleasing sounds of Homer’s poetry: a finely graded
range of vowels and consonants, and accents that represented different pitches.
Homer greatly exploited both qualities in his verses. Sometimes, too, he
achieves remarkable onomatopoeic effects, in which words imitate the
sounds of objects or events they are describing. Other noteworthy features of
Homer’s style in both poems are his extended similes (such as the comparison of
the Achaeans to bees in the Iliad), striking metaphors (such as the “lily
voices” of cicadas), and archaisms (expressions and techniques from
earlier periods). He employs his combined resources of sound, imagery, and sense
to support his narrative and enrich his characterization in the Iliad and
the Odyssey alike.
Stylistically no significant distinction can
be made between the two Homeric epics, although some modern scholars have
believed that they were composed by different people. The Iliad deals
with passions, with insoluble dilemmas. It has no real villains; Achilles,
Agamemnon, Priam, and the rest are caught up, as actors and victims, in a cruel
and ultimately tragic universe. Homer makes his audience feel tremendous
sympathy for the fall of the enemy of the epic’s hero. In the Odyssey, on
the other hand, the wicked are destroyed, right prevails, and the family is
reunited. The gods themselves care about justice. Here rational intellect—that
of Odysseus in particular—acts as the guiding force throughout the story.
VI | THE “HOMERIC QUESTION” |
The modern text of the Homeric poems was
transmitted through medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, themselves copies of
now-lost ancient manuscripts of the epics. From classical antiquity until
recently, Homer’s readers may have distrusted the tales describing him as a
blind beggar bard of Chios (in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo), and some have
argued that portions of the texts, such as the concluding scenes of the
Odyssey, were added by another hand. However, they generally believed
that Homer was a poet (or at most, a pair of poets) much like the poets they
knew from their own experience. They believed that the Iliad and the
Odyssey, although based on traditional materials, were independent,
original, and largely fictional.
In the last 200 years, however, this view has
changed radically, following the emergence and continuing discussion of the
“Homeric question”—namely, by whom, how, and when were the Iliad and
Odyssey composed? A universally accepted answer has yet to be found. In
the 19th and 20th centuries the so-called analysts argued that
inconsistencies in the works proved that the poems were collections, or
accumulations, of short, independently composed lays, simple narrative
poems. The unitarians, on the other hand, argued that these
inconsistencies were insignificant or imaginary, and that the overall unity of
the epics proved that each was the product of a single monumental composer who
gave final form to the traditional epics.
More recently, scholarly discussion of the
Homeric question has centered on the theory of oral-formulaic composition.
According to this theory, the elaborate system of poetic diction found in the
Homeric epics was developed over many generations by bards who performed the
poems for aristocratic patrons. Since writing was not yet common and since the
oral epics developed before the advent of writing, these bards had to perform
without the aid of a written text. However, instead of composing and memorizing
fixed works, they built up over time a vast stock of verbal formulas that
enabled them to improvise long poems on heroic topics more or less
spontaneously. These formulas extended from short phrases in the Homeric epics,
such as “swift-footed Achilles,” to long scenes that depict repeated or
stereotypical actions, such as the arming of a warrior, a duel, or the eating of
a meal. The poet was free to alter or recombine elements of the longer formulas
to suit the context.
No one view on the Homeric question has
prevailed, but it is fair to say that practically all commentators would agree
that tradition had a great deal to do with the poems’ composition and that each
epic bears evidence that suggests a single final creator. Meanwhile,
archaeological discoveries of the last 125 years, especially those of German
archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, have shown that some aspects of the
civilization Homer described were not entirely fictional. Homer preserves
isolated elements of the society of Troy at the time of the Trojan War, but for
the most part the Homeric epics preserve an idealized view of the aristocratic
society of the 8th century bc. The
epics, therefore, can be considered historical documents to a certain extent,
and discussion of this facet of them has constantly been intertwined with the
debate on the question of their creation.
VII | HOMER’S INFLUENCE |
In a direct way Homer was the parent of all
succeeding Greek literature. Drama, historiography, and even philosophy all show
the mark of the issues, comic and tragic, raised in the epics and of the
techniques Homer used to approach them. For the later epic poets of Western
literature, Homer was the greatest influence (even when, as in the case of
Italian poet Dante Alighieri, the poets did not know the works of Homer
directly). But for his most successful followers, curiously enough, his work was
as much a critical and comic target as a model. The Aeneid of Roman poet
Virgil, for instance, is a refutation of the individualistic value system of the
Homeric epic; and the most Homeric scenes in Paradise Lost, by English
poet John Milton—those stanzas describing the battle in heaven—are essentially
comic. As for novels, such as Don Quixote (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615),
by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, or Ulysses (1922), by Irish writer
James Joyce, the more Homeric they are, the more they lean toward parody and
mock epic.
Among English translations of Homer, the
versions of George Chapman (1616) and Alexander Pope (Iliad, 1715-1720;
Odyssey, 1725-1726) stand out as permanent classics. In contemporary
English verse, the reader can choose among several versions, including the
highly literal renditions (1951, 1967) of American poet Richmond Lattimore and
the versions (1961, 1974) of Robert Fitzgerald, another American poet, which
tend to be freer and are often considered more readable. The Iliad
(1990) and The Odyssey (1996) of American poet and translator Robert
Fagles find a middle ground between Lattimore and Fitzgerald. More recently,
Stanley Lombardo, professor of classics at the University of Kansas, has
produced translations of the Iliad (1997) and Odyssey (2000) in a
fast-paced, modern idiom based on his own performances of the epics.
No comments:
Post a Comment