@owen69884

7 months ago

First, I'll say I'm very impressed by the people you've interviewed on your channel: Barry Strauss and Gregory Nagy as well as Robin Lane Fox. That right there is an all-star line-up (even though I have my issues with Gregory Nagy's evolutionary model). This was a quite illuminating video. A few points: I also have the impression that the Iliad being composed using writing as tool is the current consensus. Caroline Alexander makes a good argument for this, which my own experience supports. Further, although this has not been sufficiently remarked (or remarked at all?): as an Ionian Greek, Homer must have known the Anatolian (Trojan) versions of the legend; his audience, which included Ionian Greeks, Greco-Anatolians, and Anatolians, would have also known them. This probably accounts for much of the knowledge of Troy and the Trojans' portrayal in the Iliad. Homer may have visited the site of Troy, as Robin says, but what is more important is that the Anatolian versions of the legend would almost certainly been written (in Luwian). Even if Homer could not read them (likely?), he would have had access to them through his Anatolia colleagues. So while the comments about "composition in performance" are well-taken, it seems likely that Homer was aware of written versions of the legend and could have appreciated the utility of writing to compose an epic, allowing him to address his subject in a new way, which does not conform to the modes of songs/poems that are composed just orally (the methods would have been combined). So the Iliad, while composed to be presented orally , I think can be said to the be the birth of Western literature because it was literature and has been recognized as such ever since. I was also very glad to hear Robin emphatically defends that Homer, whoever he was, was a singular genius. Works such as the Iliad are not composed by "committee" -- that is, not by an organic process taking centuries. The examples presented in defense of that "evolutionary" view (including those be Gregory Nagy) are not the Iliad, and are not much like the Iliad. I wish there had been more time to hear his thoughts on Emily Wilson's translation of the Iliad, as I'm about to read it. I loved Caroline Alexander's and while I liked Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey, I think she has a high bar to clear. Robin's comment about her mistranslation of "rage" is telling. I've understood the word used to mean "supernatural rage" or "rage of the gods" as opposed to the rage of mortals. It would have nice to hear more of his thoughts on that (I found some of Emily Wilson's word choice in the Odyssey unsatisfying -- calling Odysseus a "complex man" doesn't really cut it -- although I like other things she's written about, especially in regards to some of the more misogynistic phraseology that has been put in, when the ancient Greek would seem to say something else). I was also glad to hear Robin's comments on Homer's use of "flashbacks". That's very instructive since not only does it happen with Helen, but also when Hector chews out Paris and Paris go out to fight Menelaus. We know Helen has been in Troy for 20 years -- Hector certainly did not wait 19+ years to get snippy with his "little brother" over the whole affair, and a duel of over Helen should have happened at the start of the war, not near the end of it. Homer apparently inserted these "flashbacks" because they are crucial to the story and could not be left out of his vignetted version. I don't think I quite agree with Robin about what Zeus was thinking when Thetis prevailed upon him -- it wasn't any "stinger"; that view depends on our current understanding of the legend, which my research suggests was not Homer's understanding. Rather, he was thinking (more prosaically) of how pissed Hera was going to be and how that was likely going to blow back on him (which it did). Lastly, C.S. Lewis' phrase "ruthless poignancy" is the best description of Homer and the Iliad I've heard. I hadn't heard it before and I'm glad I now have! Thank you for the video!

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