Indianapolis Times, Volume 39, Number 180, Indianapolis, Marion County, 6 December 1927 — Page 11

DEC. 6, 1927.

agviimTiQN — —

"TT seems so irrelevant that the tale as Homer tells it is not true, and that his men and women, and doubtless some of his gods, ard* apparently the creatures of his lordly imagination; it is so well invented and so vivaciously recounted, that if tins facts were different, so much the worse for the facts. Beauty has its rights as well as truth, and the Iliad is more important +han the Trojan war. Nor does it matter that Homer is only a name, made vivid for us by Hellenic scultptors as a blind and meditative bard, but otherwise as mystical as the Helen to whom the Greeks ascribed the first settlement of their land. No one knows where the poet was born, and ‘'Seven cities claimed great Homer dead. Where living Homer begged his daily bread." Th# oldest and latest dates assigned to birth vary by some 460 years so that his variability in time rival? his uncertainty in space. Before th age cf Pericles innumerable poems were laid at his door; one by one they were taken from him by the critics cf Athens and Alexandria, until only the Iliad and the Odyssey remained; and now these, too, have been stolen from him by merciless research. The denudation of Homer is complete. It is followed with his dismemberment. The Odyssey, it appears, is not by the same hand or hands as the Iliad; it belongs to a considerably later age, and complains that too much poetry has already been written, and that most gteat themes have been worn to death. None the less its vivid theme wears well; and the story of Ulysses’ wanderings is one of the delights of classic literature. Let us read it in the simple flowing blank verse of Bryant, or in the excellent prose of Myers, Leaf and Lang; and let us take it as the Greeks heard it, in small instalments, one book or episode at a time. Only so shall we relish it. nun THE Iliad (1. e., the story of Ilium or Troy) remains the first great cultural production of Greek life. It came into being long before men thought of putting it into written form.

Writing had been taught to the Greeks by the Phoenicians about 900 B. C., but many generations passed before the new art passed from the uses of commerce to the luxury of literature. The poems were carried down in the memory of bards, who wandered from city to city, reciting parts of the immortal story at games or feasts, adding to it, apparently, from age to age. Not till the sixth century before Christ were the various parts woven together into one poem and committed to writing, and even then their form was so different from ours that Aeschines (340 B. C.) quotes extensive passages which cannot be found in our editions. Such bards and recitations were to ancient Greece what writing and 'books are to us. They Were first of all the vehicle through which primitive lore was transmitted and ancient deeds recorded and glorified. Every nation’s literature begins with such epics, sagas or vedas— Mahabherattas, Nibelungenlieds, Beowulfs or Chansons de Roland. They are the natural literary expression of a nation’s childhood, as of the individual’s, and they take something of the place of our patriotic narratives. Who knows, but that our own , heroic history is as full of legends as Homer’s Iliad? Literature begins as mythology, telling of gods; graduates into legend, telling of heroes, and at last distinguishes fiction from history, telling of men. It is probable that the Iliad w*s Bible as well as history to the early Greeks, and carried down their theology and the stories of their gcds. and if we may believe Herodotus, Homer and Hesiod made the Greek religion, and assigned to the deities their titles, honors and crafts, and told what they were like, in body and soul. It is true that the poem handles these celestial worthies with a blasphemous freedom. Even the finest of them are but deified ancestors, great heroes who, after their earthly toil, are now freed from the stacks of earning a living or staying with one wife. The mightiest of them is Zeus (Jupiter), the god of the sky, and let he is almost the clown of Homer’s story-—hoodwinked at every step# quarreling with Hera (Juno> like any earthly husband and surrounded by minor deities who intrigue with the assiduity of an Oriental court- * So there are two letvels or stories in the Iliad; the battles of the Greeks and the Trojans are duplicated, by the war of the gods in the air. No wonder that with this double conflict it is the liveliest epic in all literature. It is not complex art or thought like the plays of Shakespeare or Euripides; these men were far deeper souls than Homer and their work is of a higher and maturer kind. But the Iliad was addressed not to the mind, but to the ear; it could ndt afford profundity, since it had to be understood as rapidly as it was heard. Above all, it had to be popular, and, therefore, it had to be a story. * 9 a OUR literature today is a literature of analysis, motive and thought; for we lead intricate and subtle lives, in which action, as the

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early Greeks knew it is a rare exception, found chieily in the press. We have lost the unity of primitive behavior, and we ask for introspection and mental conflict in our fiction; man has become an animal that looks within, hesitates, doubts and thinks. But in Homer’s day life was action, and Homer was action’s prophet. And his verse and style are aalso dictated by the action; through his incomparable hexameter the story runs on like some broad and majestic stream; so that those who are prepared to understand the mythology of the gods and the genealogy of the heroes are caught and held as by the river that rushes to make Niagara.' Almost at the outset Homer reminds himself how incredible it is that a great army should go so far to fight ten years for even as' fair a lady as Helen. What if the Trojan Paris, handsome to the point of worthlessness had stolen the wife of Menelaus, surly brother of King Agamemnon? Suddenly ,amid the bustle of the camp, sounds the voice of the common man, Thersites, protesting against war. Homer ridicules him mercilessly:— "Os the multitude Who came to Ilium, none so base as he— Squint-eyed, with one lame foot, and on his back A lump, and shoulders curving toward the chest." But Thersites argues his case well: "What wouldst thou more. Atrldes iAgamemnon)? In thy tents are heaps of gold; Thy tents are full of chosen damsels, given To thee before all others by the Greeks, Whene'er we take a city. Dost thou yet Hanker for gold, brought by some Trojan knight. A ransom for his son, whom I shall lead— I or some other Greek —a captive bound? . . . 11l it beseems a prince like thee to lead The sons of Greece, for such a cause as this, Into new perils. O ye coward race! Ye abject Greeklings, Greeks no longer, haste Homeward with all the fleet, and let us leave This man at Troy to win his trophies here." (Bryant. 11. 281-296.) It is true that Ulysses, a man of powerful wind, succeeds in talking Thersites down: "When forth He sent from his full lungs his mighty V. voice, / And words came like a fall of winter snow, No mortal then would dare x to strive with him For mastery in speech." —— Bryant. 111. 275-279.) But the mighty Agamemnon makes a sorry figure both in this brawl and in the story; so that the reader does not thrill very warmly to Homer’s careful acceptance of monarchy as best. The real hero

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of the drama is Hector. Achilles is tolerable, despite his petulance, because he loves his friend; but no scene into which he thrusts his plaintive tongue or murderous spear compares with the parting of brave and quiet Hector from Andromache, or Priam’s broken pleading for the body of his son (jßryant, vi., 508-629; xxiv., 600 f.). Is it any wonder that Euripides was to find in these moments the core and summit of tho tragedy? And in the midst of it all such poetry as this, beautiful even in lame rendition:— "Thus made harangue to them Hector; and roani?)i the Trojans applauded; Then Pom the yoke loos'd their warsteeds sweating, and each by his chariot Tethered his horses with thongs. And then tney bruognt irom the city. Hastily, oxen and goodly sheep, and wine honey-hearted. . . . Firewood they gathered withal; and then from the plain to the heavens Rose on the winds the sweet savor. And these bv the highways of battle Hopeful sat through the night, and many their watch-fires burning. Even as when in the sky the stars shine out round the night-orb. Wondrous to see. and the winds are laid. and the peaks and the headlands Tower to the view, and the glades come out, and the glorious heaven Stretches itself to Its widest, and sparkle the stars multitudious. Gladdening the heart of the toil-wearied shepherd—even r rount'ess ’Twixt the black ships and the river of Xanthus, glittered the waten-fires

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THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

Built by the horse-taming Trojans by Ilium . . . Meanwhile the war-wearied horses, champing spelt and white barley. Close by their chariots, waited the coming of gold-thoned dawn. ( VIII. End.) (Copyright. 1927, by Dr. Will Durant) (To Be Continued) GETS TEXAS ‘U’ POSITION Tech Graduate Made Business Research Assistant Arthur'Henry Hert of Indianapolis was recently honored with a position as research assistant in

the department of marketing, buro&u of business research, University of Texas. Hert is a graduate of the ’22 class at Technical High School. His undergraduate training was received at the School of Commerce and Ad m inistration, University of Chicago, where he obtained the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy In 1926

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When in Indianapolis he makes his home with his parents at 441 Dorman St. He is a member of Acacia fraternity. Mrs. Carrie Puckett, 54, is reported missing from her home, 1530 S. East St. Friends said she wore a black plush coat, velvet dress, shell rimmed glasses and black shoes.

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