Homeric poetry

“ The muse has much to say that is untrue but resembles truth. Homeric art, however, understood the secret of humanising the stories of the gods as effectually as the stories of tribes and kings. And this Homeric art took captive the fancy of the listeners, that is, the fancy of the whole nation as soon as it gave ear to the poetry of Homer. Homer gave to the Greek his gods, and all the Greek gods turned into men with the gift. He gives us a complete picture of nature too, he teaches us to see what surrounds us, and the sorrows and joys that condition our brief life under the sun. ”

“ We are to show, then, that the Epics, being, as wholes, free from such inevitable modifications in the picture of changing details of life as uncritical authors always introduce, are the work of the one age which they represent. This is the reverse of what has long been, and still is, the current theory of Homeric criticism, according to which the Homeric poems are, and bear manifest marks of being, a mosaic of the poetry of several ages of change. ”

“ The peculiarity of the Homeric poetry, which defies translation, is its union of the simplicity characteristic of an early age with a sustained elevation of style, which can be explained only as due to individual genius. ”

“ After this survey of ancient criticism, he proceeds to point out some of the characteristic features of the Homeric poems. He enquires what is understood by natural poetry, or the poetry of nature; shews that it is perfectly compatible with art—that there is a wide difference between the natural and [ix] the rude—that Homer is distinguished as much for delicacy of perception, accuracy of delineation, and sagacity of judgment, as for fertility of fancy and energy of passion. ”

“ Read his five lectures on translating Homer, and observe how exclusively the critic's mind is occupied with the form as distinguished from the substance of the Homeric poetry. Even when he concerns himself with the greatest modern poets,--with Shakespeare as in the preface to the earlier edition of his poems, or with Goethe in reiterated poetical criticisms, or when he again and again in his poems treats of Wordsworth,--it is always the style and superficial doctrine of their poetry, not the individual character and unique genius, which occupy him. ”

“ It contains much that is addressed to the deepest feelings of our common nature, and, despite of the long interval of time which lies between our age and the Homeric—despite the manifold changes of customs, habits, pursuits, and the advances that have been made in civilization and art—despite of all these, the universal spirit of humanity will recognize in these scenes much of that true poetry which delights alike all ages, all nations, all men.—Felton. ”

“ But, greatly as we admire the generous enthusiasm which rests contented with the poetry on which its best impulses had been nurtured and fostered, without seeking to destroy the vividness of first impressions by minute analysis—our editorial office compels us to give some attention to the doubts and difficulties with which the Homeric question is beset, and to entreat our reader, for a brief period, to prefer his judgment to his imagination, and to condescend to dry details. ”

“ In the presence of antiquity, the mind that is susceptible to poetry and art feels itself placed in the most pleasing ideal state of nature; and even to this day the Homeric hymns have the power of freeing us, at any rate, for moments, from the frightful burden which the tradition of several thousand years has rolled upon us. ”

“ A lover of poetry and a poet by nature, the whole plan of his work, the tone and character of his thoughts, and a multitude of words and expressions, show him to have been perfectly familiar with the Homeric writings. ”

“ It has been well said by Professor M. Müller, in an able Essay [20] on ‘Comparative Mythology,’ that ‘abstract speech is more difficult, than the fulness of a poet’s sympathy with nature.’ Thus it was not so much that poetry usurped the office of religion, as that their respective functions brought them of necessity to a common ground and a common form of proceeding. Homer saw, heard, or felt the action of the sun, the moon, the stars, the atmosphere, the winds, the sea, the rivers, the fountains, the soil ”

“ Looking at the realm of nature, to search out a varied organism, which would supply a powerful apparatus of instruments operative upon man to a presiding intelligence, the Greek naturally made Ζεὺς the king of Air. But had he merely wanted a symbol by which nature itself was to speak, how could he have forborne to choose the Sun?
3. There is, indeed, an extended use in Homer of the imagery of Nature-Powers. But however prominent as poetry, this is altogether subordinate as religion. ”

“ Since, moreover, the Homeric masterpieces of poetry were older than any masterpiece of art, for Homer had observed nature with the eye of an artist before either Phidias or Apelles, the artists naturally found ready made in his poems many valuable observations, which they had not yet had time to make for themselves. These they eagerly seized upon, in order that, through Homer, they might copy nature. ”

“ They in vain by allegorical interpretations of the Homeric Poems sought artificially to create a harmony between the two. In modern times Science has preceded Poetry and Mythology, which cannot be Mythology, without being universal and drawing into its circle all the elements of the then existing culture, Science, Religion and even Art, and joining in a perfect unity the material not only of the present but of the past. ”

“ The so-called Theos on earth, in fact, is not Theos at all. Here comes one of the strongest antitheses between Homeric and non-Homeric, between the reformed Olympian religion and the old savage stuff from which it was made. Homer drew clear the line between mortal and immortal, between God in Olympus and man here. And most early Greek poetry rings with the antithesis. Μὴ μάτευε Ζεὺς γενέσθαι. θνητὸν ὄντα θνητὰ χρὴ φρονεῖν. By the fifth century the time was long past when ‘gods and mortal men strove in Mêkônê’, and the gods had carried the day. ”

“ Those who maintain the Homeric poems to have been written from the beginning, rest their case, not upon positive proofs, nor yet upon the existing habits of society with regard to poetry--for they admit generally that the Iliad and Odyssey were not read, but recited and heard,--but upon the supposed necessity that there must have been manuscripts to ensure the preservation of the poems--the unassisted memory of reciters being neither sufficient nor trustworthy. ”

“ If we apply all these principles to the Homeric poems, it follows that we gain nothing with our theory of the poetising soul of the people, and that we are always referred back to the poetical individual. ”

“ HOMER AS A POET AND AS A PROBLEM. The perennial youth of the Homeric poems is without a parallel in the history of art. No other imaginative works have so nearly succeeded in bidding defiance to the ‘tooth of time.’ Like the golden watch-dogs of Alcinous, they seem destined to be ‘deathless and ageless all their days.’ Nor is theirs the faded immortality of Tithonus—the bare preservation of a material form emptied of the glow of vitality, and grown out of harmony with its environment. ”

“ To this open display of unadulterated nature it must be ascribed, that Homer has fewer pas sages of doubtful meaning than any other poet either in the learned or in modern languages. I have read of a man, who being, by his ignorance of Greek, compelled to gratify his curiosity with the Latin printed on the opposite page, declared that, from the rude simplicity of the lines literally rendered, he formed nobler ideas of the Homeric majesty, than from the laboured elegance of polished versions. ”

“ Not eminently endowed with discursive intellect,—not gifted with that power, Homeric in kind and more than Homeric in degree, which might meet the old mythic imaginations on, or rather above, their own level, and out of them, together with the material which modern time supplies, build in the skies new architectures, wherein not only the feeling, but the imagination also, of future ages might house,—our poet comes with Semitic directness to the heart of the matter: he takes the divine Yea, though it be but a simple Yea, and no syllable more, in his own soul, and holds childlike by that. ”

“ Can we contemplate that ancient monument, on which the "Apotheosis of Homer" is depictured, and not feel how much of pleasing association, how much that appeals most forcibly and most distinctly to our minds, is lost by the admittance of any theory but our old tradition? The more we read, and the more we think--think as becomes the readers of Homer,--the more rooted becomes the conviction that the Father of Poetry gave us this rich inheritance, whole and entire. ”

“ The Homeric poems make much of the religious side of human nature, and the poet chose in order to give to his action and issue a superhuman dignity to set that action in the presence of the gods themselves. ”

“ And here the Goddess utters a remark which the student may well ponder: "Some things thou wilt think of in thine own mind, but a God will suggest others." Again the Homeric dualism—the human and the divine—and also their harmony; the two elements must come together in every high thought or action. The double relation of the individual—to himself and to the God—is necessary for all worthy speech; his own activity and that of the deity run together in true discourse as well as in true action. So the whole poem is made up of man's self-determined energy and the interference of the Gods ”

“ Was it Homer or Shelley that grasped Reality? This is not a question of literary excellence; it is a question of the sense of life. And—oddly enough—it is a question to which the intellect has no answer. The life in each of us takes hold of it and answers it empirically. The normal man is Homeric, though he is not aware of the fact. ”

“ There is an inner Homeric world, of which his verse is the tabernacle and his poetic genius the exponent, but which offers in itself a spectacle of the most profound interest, quite apart from him who introduces us to it, and from the means by which we are so introduced. This world of religion and ethics, of civil policy, of history and ethnology, of manners and arts, so widely severed from all following experience, that we may properly call them palæozoic, can hardly be examined and understood by those, who are taught to approach Homer as a poet only. ”

“ We see the strong attempt of the poet to get beyond limitation in its twofold appearance: first he will transcend the external boundary of the Homeric horizon, that of the sea stretching far to the westward; still more emphatic is his effort to transcend the limits of finite thinking and to reach an infinite realm, which is the goal of the spirit. ”

“ A theorist who believes that the Homeric poems are the growth of four changeful centuries, must present a definite working hypothesis as to how they escaped from certain influences of the late age in which much of them is said to have been composed. ”

“ The Homeric poems are like a broad lake outstretched in the distance, which provides us with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full and marvellous, but which is entirely dissociated by an interval of many generations from any other records, except such as are of the most partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which they have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost profane to compare them. ”

“ It is in this way that the poem embraces the totality of the most objective life, that is, the eternal condition of Hell, of Purification, and of Paradise; and it is on these indestructible foundations that the characters of the actual world move in their particular personalities, or rather they have already moved, and are henceforward rendered moveless, together with their action and being, in the everlasting righteousness, and are themselves eternal. The Homeric heroes indeed endure in our memories through the song of the Muse. ”

“ But it would not, of course, explain how, before Pisistratus, during four or five centuries of change, the new poets and reciters, throughout the Greek world, each adding such fresh verses as he pleased, and often introducing such modern details of life as he pleased, kept up the harmony of the Homeric picture of life, and character, and law, as far as it confessedly exists.
To take a single instance: the poems never allude to the personal armorial bearings of the heroes. ”

“ Homer had accustomed Greeks to look for two elements in any complete expression of human energy—first, an account of a man’s deeds, then an image of his mind in the report of his words. The Homeric heroes are exhibited both in action and in speech. ”

“ It is time to close a work which we have woven, like a crown from a beflowered and variegated field, and which we offer to Muses. And we, we shall not lay it to the heart if any one censures us, because the Homeric poems contain the basis of evil things, if we ascribe to him various political, ethical, and scientific discussions. ”

“ But the flights of poetry can seldom bear to be shackled by homely truth, and if we are to receive the fine imagery, that places the summit of this rock in clouds brooding eternal mists and tempests—that represents it as inaccessible, even to a man provided with twenty hands and twenty feet, and immerses its base among ravenous sea-dogs;—why not also receive the whole circle of mythological dogmas of Homer, who, though so frequently dragged forth as an authority in history, theology, surgery, and geography, ought in justice to be read only as a poet. ”

“ Without rashly assuming the solution of unsolved or insoluble problems, one may venture to assert that the Homeric epics owe their present form neither to purely religious awe nor merely to conscious and deliberate artistry, but to a poetic apprehension of the world operating upon the data of the savage cults and rituals, the animism, totemism, and magic, which anthropology is gradually deciphering under the palimpsest of their obliterating splendour. ”