[lit-ideas] Sung Heros -- And What's Left of Them (Is: Epos)
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:20:26 EDT
McCreery is looking for foundational myths based on the power of the Word. I
mentioned Gk. 'mythos' and 'logos' as worth researching, and threw Latin
'verbum' for good measure. Now I add Gk.
"epos"
which originally meant 'word' too.
What can prove more the power of 'epos' than to have, today, the very
_words_ that Peleus, Achilles's father, said to Achilles before Achilles's
coming
of age.
"Try always to be the best"
This ideal of 'arete', could ONLY have been transmitted through 'epos'
(Homer's word in this case). I cannot find the exact quote by Peleus -- in
Greek
-- but surely all Western civilisation is based on that precept -- however
demanding someone or other may find it today (I for one agree with Bowra that
it
would have made of Achilles one of the most pretentious men on earth).
I recently acquired a rather expensive book by G. Dawson, called "Soldier
Heroes", about adventure, empire and masculinity. It basically concentrates on
the deeds of the 60-year old officer sung hero of the Indian Mutiny. Dawson's
point is that through myths and epos like that a hero is created by being
sung. Only with the Great World, he claims, this trend was found obsolete,
when
the intelligentsia started to 'sing' of the 'unsung heros'. But cfr. a Rupert
Brooke (sung hero) with a less sung hero like Wilfred Owen who basically had
to sing himself his own deeds.
In these 'epos', it's the content -- the moral code of the warrior -- that
gets transmitted. It would ONLY be through an illiterate medium -- deeds being
sung around the camp fire.
It was only later the MONKS, who had nothing better to do, who transcribed
those sung heroes and their epos onto old parchments.
Cheers,
JL
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