Outward Flourishes

Gnawed fresco of a Mycenaean lady with a necklace. A glimpse into the past and a memento on the passage of time.

Exactly how much in poetry – and classical heroic poetry in particular –  is indebted to the lofty evocation of  ancient ages and eroded human figures of glistening fame is something best left unquantified, but it is easy to see how such an element may serve to differentiate a poem such as the Aeneid or Iliad from even the most artful compositions of the AD era. This is even applicable to literary works as accomplished as Beowulf – more rooted in folklore (and therefore whose mode of transmission may be argued to be continuously angling for ways to remain contemporary, even as it is recounted down)  — or Paradise Lost, which seeks to reinterpret the contemplation of the past through one of the central religious myths of Western Civilization (in itself, a canonical report of a fall from grace where at least two temporal dimensions are irrevocably opposed).

Even The Lusiads (a work without parallel that continues to be overlooked by international academia) remains an epic poem written by someone who was very close in time to the protagonists of the maritime journeys which it sought to glorify. The juxtaposition of Vasco da Gama’s travels with the machinations and impulses of the traditional Olympian pantheon is ingenious in the way that it attempts to illuminate the heroes with that old Hellenic light – therefore removing them from the “normal” or “regular” world that was very much in place even at the time of its literary conception -  but it ultimately fails to vanquish the overwhelming proximity in years. The final result is that even today The Lusiads still reads like a powerful reminder of the dormant potential in a contemporary race rather than the Pan-Hellenic celebration of an extinct breed of sea-faring heroes.

In fact, it wasn’t until the 20th century that one of our poets composed a seminal work with the clear intention to evoke and reinterpret the golden age of Discoveries from afar, and this was no other than Fernando Pessoa himself, who took The Lusiads and the historical heritage of the nation as the stuff of true myth – with an adequately Portuguese component of deep longing and hopeful quiescence (Message).

The Homeric way of narrating the feats of an ancient age is not particularly subtle. Several combatants in the fields of Ilion, their lances exhausted, their swords ineffectual, sometimes turn to hurl the occasional giant boulder lying on the battleground, rocks the likes of which — the poet assures us — no man of today would be able to lift. But these men, these god-like (isotheos) beings such as Ajax the Telamonian or koruthaiolos Hektor, made short work of it.

These ancient figures are also not particularly god-fearing in any modern sense of the term. God-like creatures must only be aware of the existence of higher powers, more or less in the same way they are expected to endure their capricious interference without open revolt. Devotion is required even as dependency is abhorred (Apollo’s deference to Chryses’ pleas is more of an exception than a common occurrence), and at least one  scholar is quick to remark that there are no words directly corresponding to “god-fearing” or “god-loving” in either Homeric poem (and I, not knowing any Greek, am going to have to take his educated word for it).

So the lesson is clear: the impressively clad bronze Achaeans have no need for the gods in order to achieve their kleos (glory). Such dependence is reserved for the following generation of men who, as Hesiod beautifully put it:

“never rest from labour and sorrow by day, and from perishing by night”

(Works and Days, 176-8, also quoted in M. I. Finley’s World of Odysseus)

See, this is why the last parts of the Odyssey can be so fascinating. After the cheerful slaughtering of the suitors, Odysseus is found scolding his servant for her outward and public exultation regarding the massacre. It’s as if our hero is finally saying that though he was in his right to reassert his status as lord of the house, there must be no celebration of those horrendous actions. This is a weather-worn Odysseus speaking, a product of the Homecoming of Ilion, and though he is still capable of pulling his own weight like a true Homeric hero (one should not forget he still casually orders the execution of the twelve female servants with particular cruelty), he understands altogether too well that a new age of man is perhaps about to begin.

In this new age, the rhapsodos assumes a higher degree of importance. To date, the style and structure of the Homeric poems still have a powerful effect on both orator (now reader) and scholarly audiences alike. So it is easy to imagine how in the early days, Homer and other aedos were the foremost bridges between two ages, albeit essentially contemporary ones; men delighting in the privilege of being the vehicle of ancient glory, with the added right to count themselves comrades of those eagerly listening.