Homer came from an Ionian aristocratic family. The language of the Iliad and Odyssey is an artificial subdialect that has never been spoken in life. Two categories of people are considered native speakers of the Homeric language: Aeds and Rhapsodes. Aeds are storytellers, creators of poems, semi-improvisers, they have a high position in society, so they had the right to change something in the poems. Homer mentioned Demodocus and Thamir the Thracian. The art of the Aeds is mysterious, since it is very difficult to remember so much text.
The plot of Homer's poems is the Trojan cycle of myths. It is associated with almost all mythology. The plot is local, but the time frame is short. Most of the motivations for the characters' actions are outside the scope of the work. Homer's poems always tell about the distant past. The Greek was pessimistic about the future. These poems are intended to capture the golden age.
Epic materialism is associated with the task of describing everything in full. Homer fixes his attention on the most ordinary things: a stool, carnations. All things must have color. Some believe that back then the world was described in two colors - white and gold. In Homer's poems, everything is colored: the clothes of goddesses, berries. The sea has more than 40 shades of color. The objectivity of the tone of Homeric poems. The creators of the poems had to be extremely fair. Homer is biased only in epithets. For example, the description of Thersites. Thersites is absolutely devoid of epic valor.
Epic comparisons. Striving for clarity of the image, the poet strives to translate each description into the language of comparison, which develops into an independent picture. All Homer’s comparisons are from the everyday sphere: battles for ships, the Greeks are pushing back the Trojans, the Greeks fought as neighbors for boundaries in neighboring areas. Achilles' rage is compared to threshing, when oxen trample grain.
The poems are written in hexameter - dactyl hexameter. Moreover, the last foot is truncated. In the middle there is a caesura - a pause that divides the verse into two hemistiches and gives it regularity. All ancient versification is based on a strictly ordered alternation of long and short syllables, and the quantitative ratio of stressed and unstressed syllables is 2:1, but the stress is not forceful, but musical, based on raising and lowering the tone.
Homeric question- a set of problems related to the authorship of the ancient Greek epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” and the personality of Homer. These problems were acutely posed by Friedrich August Wolf’s book “Prolegomena to Homer,” published in 1795.
Many scholars, called “pluralists,” argued that the Iliad and Odyssey in their present form are not the creations of Homer (many even believed that Homer did not exist at all), but were created in the 6th century. BC e., probably in Athens, when the songs of different authors passed down from generation to generation were collected and recorded. The so-called “Unitarians” defended the compositional unity of the poem, and thereby the uniqueness of its author.
New information about the ancient world, comparative studies of South Slavic folk epics and a detailed analysis of metrics and style provided sufficient arguments against the original version of the pluralists, but also complicated the view of the Unitarians. Historical, geographical and linguistic analysis of the Iliad and Odyssey made it possible to date them around the 8th century. BC e., although there are attempts to attribute them to the 9th or 7th century. BC e.
Different scholars have different assessments of how great the role of creative individuality was in the final design of these poems, but the prevailing opinion is that Homer is by no means just an empty (or collective) name. The question remains unresolved whether the Iliad and Odyssey were created by one poet or whether they are works of two different authors, although modern computer analysis of the text of both poems has shown that they have the same author.
This poet (or poets) was probably one of the Aeds, who from the Mycenaean era (XV-XII centuries BC) passed on from generation to generation the memory of the mythical and heroic past. There was, however, not a proto-Iliad or a proto-Odyssey, but a certain set of established plots and a technique for composing and performing songs. It was these songs that became the material for the author (or authors) of both epics. New in Homer's work there was a free processing of many epic traditions and the formation of a single whole with a carefully thought-out composition. Many modern scientists are of the opinion that this whole could only have been created in writing.
5. War and peace, gods and heroes in Homer’s Iliad. Images of Achilles and Hector. Features of Homer's epic style .
The Iliad begins with a conflict in the camp of the Achaeans besieging Troy. King Agamemnon kidnapped the daughter of the priest Apollo, for which a pestilence began in the Achaean army. Achilles criticizes Agamemnon. But he agrees to replace one captive with Briseis, who belongs to Achilles. The 9-year siege (I, 259) is on the verge of collapse, but Odysseus corrects the situation.
In the second canto, Homer describes the forces of the opposing sides. Under the leadership of Agamemnon, 1186 ships sailed to the walls of Troy, and the army itself numbered over 130 thousand soldiers. Various regions of Hellas sent their troops: Argos (under Diomedes), Arcadia (under Agapenor), Athens and Locris (under Ajax the Great), Ithaca and Epirus (under Odysseus), Crete (under Idomeneo), Lacedaemon (Spartans) Menelaus), Mycenae, Rhodes (under the command of Tlepolemus), Thessaly (the Myrmidons of Achilles), Phocis, Euboea, Elis, Aetolia, etc. On the side of the Trojans, under the leadership of Hector, militias of the Dardanians (under the command of Aeneas), Carians, Lycians, Meons, Mysians fought , Paphlagonians (under the leadership of Pilemen), Pelasgians, Thracians and Phrygians.
Since the Trojan War began with the abduction of Helen, in the third song her legal husband Menelaus and her actual husband, Paris, enter into combat. Menelaus wins the duel, but the goddess Aphrodite saves Paris and takes the wounded man away from the battlefield. Due to the fact that the fight did not end with the death of one of the opponents, it is considered invalid. The war continues. However, neither the Achaeans nor the Trojans can gain the upper hand. Immortal gods help mortals. The Achaeans are patronized by Pallas Athena, the Trojans by Apollo, Ares and Aphrodite. However, the fifth song tells how, in a cruel battle, even the immortals Ares and Aphrodite are wounded by the Achaean Diomedes. Seeing the power of Pallas Athena, the leader of the Trojans, Hector, returns to Troy and demands rich sacrifices be made to the goddess. At the same time, Hector shames Paris, who has hidden in the rear, and encourages his wife Andromache.
Returning to the battlefield, Hector challenges the strongest of the Achaeans to a duel, and Ajax the Great accepts his challenge in the seventh canto. The heroes fight until late at night, but none of them can gain the upper hand. Then they fraternize, exchange gifts and go their separate ways. Meanwhile, the will of Zeus leans towards the side of the Trojans and only Poseidon remains faithful to them. The Achaean embassy is sent to Achilles, whose army is inactive due to a quarrel between their leader and Agamemnon. However, the story about the misfortunes of the Achaeans, pressed to the sea by the Trojans, touches only Patroclus, a friend of Achilles. Countering, the Trojans almost burn the Achaean fleet, but the goddess Hera, who is favorable to the Achaeans, seduces and puts to sleep her husband, the god Zeus, in order to save her favorites. Seeing the Achaean ship set on fire by the Trojans, Achilles sends his soldiers (2500 people) into battle under the control of Patroclus, but he himself avoids the battle, holding his anger at Agamemnon. However, Patroclus dies in battle. First, Euphorbus hits him in the back with a spear, and then Hector deals him a fatal blow to the groin with a pike. The desire to avenge his friend brings Achilles back into the game, who, in turn, kills Hector by hitting him in the neck with a spear. At the end of the Iliad, a lawsuit unfolds over the body of Hector, which Achilles initially refused to hand over to the father of the deceased for burial.
The Olympian and pre-Olympic gods were a myth for the ancient Greeks. Each creature had its own sacred biography, its own expanded magical name, with the power of which it commanded and performed miracles. The myth turned out to be a miracle and a real object of faith. These were Zeus and Hera, Demeter and Poseidon, Athena and Hephaestus, Apollo and Artemis.
There are many religious and mythological contradictions in both poems. Zeus is the supreme god, but he does not know much of what is going on in his kingdom, he is easy to deceive; at decisive moments he does not know what to do; and in the end it is impossible to understand whom he defends, the Greeks or the Trojans. There is constant intrigue around him, often of a completely unimportant nature, some kind of domestic and family quarrels. Zeus is a very hesitant ruler of the world, sometimes even stupid. In the Iliad, Zeus, in direct speech, sends Apollo to bring Hector, who is lying unconscious on the battlefield, to consciousness, and then the poet himself says that Hector was awakened by the mind of Zeus. According to Hector, Zeus is going to help the Trojans take possession of the ships; however, this is not visible from the picture drawn here by the poet himself. Zeus invites the gods to fight according to their own choice, because otherwise Achilles will immediately defeat all the Trojans, but the river Xanthus sends Achilles to fight the Trojans on the assumption that Zeus has already decided the issue of Achilles defeating the Trojans.
The gods are constantly quarreling among themselves. Some of them stand for the Trojans, others for the Greeks. Zeus does not appear to have any moral authority. The appearance of the gods is also depicted contradictorily. Athena in the fifth song of the Iliad is so huge that she makes the chariot of Diomedes, which she entered, crack, and in the Odyssey she is some kind of caring aunt for Odysseus, whom he himself treats without much respect.
In depicting the general course of action, in the connection of episodes and individual scenes, “divine intervention” plays a huge role. Plot movement is determined by a necessity that lies outside the character of the characters depicted, by the will of the gods, by “fate.” The mythological moment creates that unity in the picture of the world that the epic is not able to grasp rationally. The Homeric interpretation of the gods is characterized by two circumstances: the gods of Homer are much more humanized than was the case in actual Greek religion, where the cult of fetishes, veneration of animals, etc. was still preserved; they are fully ascribed not only a human appearance, but also human passions, and the epic individualizes divine characters as vividly as human ones. Then, the gods are endowed - especially in the Iliad - with numerous negative traits: they are petty, capricious, cruel, unjust. In dealing with each other, the gods are often even rude: there is a constant squabble on Olympus, and Zeus often threatens to beat Hera and other obstinate gods. The Iliad does not create any illusions of the “goodness” of divine governance of the world. It’s different in the Odyssey: there, along with features reminiscent of the gods of the Iliad, there is also the concept of gods as guardians of justice and morality.
HECTOR is the central character of Homer’s poem “The Iliad” (between the 10th and 8th centuries BC). Son of King Priam of Troy, father of fifty sons and fifty daughters. Husband of Andromache, daughter of Getion, king of Thebes, killed by Achilles. In the Iliad G. is accompanied by the epithets “great”, “brilliant”, “armor-shining”, “helmet-shining”. He is the main defender of Troy, besieged by the Achaeans, led by Menelaus and Agamemnon. Book VI of the Iliad describes G.’s meeting with Andromache, who predicts his imminent death: “Your courage will destroy you! You do not spare the son the baby, nor the poor mother. And soon I will be a widow, soon the Achaeans will kill you in battle.” G. returns to the battlefield.
Book VII shows his single combat with Ajax, the son of Telamon, a friend of Hercules. Nobody won this fight. The opponents, making sure that their strengths were equal, exchanged gifts. In another duel, G. kills Patroclus, a friend of Achilles. Before his death, Patroclus predicts that G. will soon die at the hands of Achilles, who will avenge the death of his friend.
One of the climaxes of the Iliad is Book XXII, entitled The Murder of Hector. The gods are watching the duel between Achilles and G. Zeus sympathizes with G. and wants to save him, but the goddess Athena objects to him. The matter is decided by “two lots of death” cast on the scales. Athena helps Achilles kill G. Having won the duel, Achilles violated the body of the defeated enemy, tying him to a chariot and dragging him near the walls of Troy in front of G.'s parents. Andromache bitterly mourns the death of her husband. Book XXIV tells about the ransom of the body of G. by the Trojans. The Achaeans and the Trojans concluded a truce for eleven days so that the parents and people of Troy could mourn and bury G. After the fall of Troy, the widow of G. Andromache became a slave of Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles. Her fate is told in Euripides’ tragedy “Andromache” (5th century BC).
Achilles (Achilles) is the main character of the poem, a stern and unforgiving warrior. In response to the insult inflicted on him by Agamemnon, the supreme leader and leader of the Achaean army, which besieged Troy for 10 years, A. refuses to participate in the war. Because of this, the Achaeans suffer one defeat after another. But when the Trojan leader Hector kills A.’s friend Patroclus, A. forgets about his offense and reconciles with Agamemnon. The mighty A., patronized by the goddess Athena, shows miracles of courage on the battlefield and kills Hector in a duel, whose death marks the final defeat of the Trojans. A.'s image bears the typical features of a mythological epic hero, a courageous warrior, in whose value system the most important thing is military honor. Proud, hot-tempered and proud, he participates in the war not so much in order to return the king of Sparta Menelaus his wife Helen, kidnapped by Paris (this was the reason for the war with Troy), but rather in order to glorify his name. A. thirsts for more and more new exploits. He sees the meaning of his life in constantly risking his life.
6. The theme of fate and homeland in Homer’s Odyssey. The originality of the composition. Image of Odysseus. Features of Homer's epic style .
In terms of plot (mythological sequence of events), the Odyssey corresponds to the Iliad. But it tells not about military events, but about wanderings. Scientists call it: “an epic poem of wanderings.” The fate of Odysseus comes to the fore - the glorification of intelligence and willpower. The Odyssey corresponds to the mythology of late heroism. Dedicated to the last 40 days of Odysseus’ return to his homeland. That the center is return is evidenced by the very beginning.
Composition: more complex than the Iliad. There are three storylines in the Odyssey: 1) the Olympian gods. But Odysseus has a goal and no one can stop him. Odysseus gets out of everything himself. 2) the return itself is a difficult adventure. 3) Ithaca: two motives: the actual events of the matchmaking and the theme of Telemachus’ search for his father. Some believe that Telemachy is a late insertion.
For the first time, a female image appears equal to the male one - Penelope, the wise wife of Odysseus. Example: She spins a burial cloth.
The poem is more complex not only in composition, but also from the point of view of the psychological motivation of actions.
The main plot of the “Odyssey” refers to a type of tale widespread in world folklore about the “return of the husband” to the moment when his wife is ready to marry another, and upsets the new wedding.
The poem opens, after the usual appeal to the Muse, with a brief description of the situation: all the participants in the Trojan campaign, who escaped death, have returned safely home, only Odysseus languishes in separation from his family, forcibly held by the nymph Calypso. Further details are put into the mouths of the gods, who discuss the issue of Odysseus in their council. Athena, who patronizes Odysseus, offers to send the messenger of the gods Hermes to Calypso with an order to release Odysseus, and she herself goes to Ithaca, to Odysseus’ son Telemachus. In Ithaca at this time there are suitors wooing Penelope. Athena encourages Telemachus to go to Nestor and Menelaus, who have returned from Troy, to find out about their father and prepare for revenge on the suitors (book 1).
2nd book gives a picture of the Ithacan people's assembly. Telemachus complains about the suitors, but the people are powerless against the noble youth. The suitors demand that Penelope choose someone. Along the way, the image of the “reasonable” Penelope appears, using tricks to delay consent to marriage. With the help of Athena, Telemachus equips a ship and secretly leaves Ithaca for Pylos to visit Nestor.
Nestor informs Telemachus about the return of the Achaeans from Troy and about the death of Agamemnon, but for further news he sends him to Sparta to Menelaus, who returned home later than the other Achaean leaders.
Welcomed by Menelaus and Helen, Telemachus learns that Odysseus is captured by Calypso. The suitors, frightened by the departure of Telemachus, set up an ambush to kill him on his return journey (book 4). This entire part of the poem is rich in everyday sketches: feasts, holidays, chants, and table conversations are depicted. “Heroes” appear before us in a peaceful home environment.
A new line of storytelling begins. The next part of the poem takes us into the realm of the fabulous and miraculous.
In the 5th book, the gods send Hermes to Calypso, whose island is depicted with features reminiscent of Greek ideas about the kingdom of death (the very name Kalypso - “coverer” - is associated with the image of death). Calypso releases Odysseus.
Having escaped from the storm, thanks to the goddess Leucothea, Fr. Scheria, where happy people live - the Phaeacians, seafarers who own fabulous ships. Odysseus meets Nausicaa on the shore. (6 books)
Alcinous, with his wife Aretha, receives the wanderer in a luxurious palace (book 7) and arranges games and a feast in his honor, where the blind singer Demodocus sings about the exploits of Odysseus. O. is crying. (book 8). There is reason to think that, according to the original meaning of the myth, the Phaeacians are shipbuilders of death, carriers to the kingdom of the dead, but this mythological meaning in the Odyssey has already been forgotten, and the shipmen of death are replaced by fairy-tale people leading a peaceful and luxurious lifestyle.
Odysseus's tale of adventure occupies books 9-12 of the poem and contains a number of folk stories. The first adventure is still quite realistic: Odysseus and his companions rob the city of the Cyconians (in Thrace), but then a storm carries his ships along the waves for many days, and he ends up in distant, wonderful countries. At first, this is a country of peaceful lotus eaters, “lotus eaters.” Having tasted it, a person forgets about his homeland and forever remains a lotus gatherer. Then Odysseus finds himself in the land of the Cyclopes (Cyclops), one-eyed monsters, where the cannibal giant Polyphemus - O. blinds him.
The god of the winds, Aeolus, handed Odysseus a fur with unfavorable winds tied in it, but not far from their native shores, Odysseus’s companions untied the fur, sending them back to the sea. Then they again find themselves in the country of cannibal giants, the Laestrygonians, who destroyed all of O’s ships except 1, the cat then landed on the island of the sorceress Kirke (Circe). Kirka, like a typical folklore witch, lives in a dark forest, turns O’s companions into pigs, but O, with the help of a wonderful plant (Hermes helped), overcomes the spell and enjoys Kirka’s love for a year (book 10).
On Kirk's instructions, he goes to the kingdom of the dead in order to question the soul of the famous Theban soothsayer Tiresias. Odysseus talks with his mother, with his comrades, Agamemnon, Achilles, sees various heroes and heroines of the past (book 11)
Returning from the kingdom of the dead. Odysseus visits Kirka again, sails with his ship past the deadly Sirens, past Scylla and Charybdis.
The final episode of Odysseus's narrative depicts the cruelty of the gods and their contempt for human grief. On about. Trinacaria, where the herds of the god Helios (the sun) grazed, Odysseus and his companions were forced to linger because of the winds, and the food ran out. O. fell asleep, the companions killed the sacred animals, Zeus destroyed the ships. Odysseus was saved, thrown out by the waves onto the island. Ogygia, where he then stayed with Calypso (book 12).
The Phaeacians, having richly presented Odysseus, take him to Ithaca. The kingdom of fairy tales ends. Odysseus, turned by Athena into an old beggar, goes to the faithful swineherd Eumaeus (book 13). The hero's unrecognizability is a constant motif in the plot about the “return of the husband.” Unrecognition is used to introduce numerous episodic figures and everyday scenes. A string of images, friends and enemies of Odysseus passes before the listener, both of them believing in the possibility of his return.
Stay with Eumaeus (book 14) - an idyllic picture; a devoted slave, honest and hospitable, but tempted by difficult life experiences and somewhat distrustful, is depicted with great love, although not without slight irony. Here Odysseus meets his son Telemachus. (books 15 - 16). Odysseus appears in his home in the form of a beggar tramp. Odysseus's "recognition" is repeatedly prepared and again postponed. Only the old nanny Eurycleia recognizes Odysseus by the scar on his leg.
The denouement begins with the 21st book. Penelope promises her hand to the one who, bending Odysseus's bow, shoots an arrow through twelve rings.
O. reveals himself to the suitors and, with the help of Telemachus and Athena, kills them (book 22). Only after this does Penelope “recognize” Odysseus (book 23). The poem ends with the scene of the arrival of the souls of the suitors in the underworld, the meeting of Odysseus with his father Laertes and the conclusion of peace between Odysseus and the relatives of the murdered (book 24).
Odysseus is the most striking figure of the Ionian epic. This is not just a diplomat and practitioner, and certainly not just a cunning hypocrite. The practical and business inclination of his nature acquires its true significance only in connection with his selfless love for his native hearth and his waiting wife, as well as his constantly difficult fate, forcing him to continuously suffer and shed tears far from his homeland. Odysseus is primarily a sufferer. His constant epithet in the Odyssey is “long-suffering.” Athena speaks to Zeus with great feeling about his constant suffering. Poseidon is constantly angry with him, and he knows it very well. If not Poseidon, then Zeus and Helios break his ship and leave him alone in the middle of the sea. His nanny wonders why the gods are constantly indignant at him, given his constant piety and submission to the will of the gods. His grandfather gave him the name precisely as “the man of divine wrath.” The motive of love for the motherland. In the Iliad, canto 10 glorifies Odysseus in war. In the Iliad, he fights bravely and is even wounded, but Diomedes tries to keep him from fleeing and reproaches him for cowardice. Cunning, fantasy of cunning. Then he gets out of the cave under the belly of the ram, grabbing its wool, and thereby deceives the vigilance of the blind Polyphemus. Then he intoxicates the Cyclops and the cannibal and gouges out his only eye. Either he slips past the sirens, where no one has ever passed alive and well, then he makes his way into his own palace and takes possession of it. He himself speaks of his subtle cunning, and Polyphemus guessed that it was not the strength, but the cunning of Odysseus that destroyed him. Odysseus is a complete adventure, resourcefulness. He lies even when there is no need for it, but his patronizing Athena praises him for this:
If you were very thieving and cunning, who could compete with you?
Could use all sorts of tricks; it would be difficult for God too.
Always the same: a cunning man, insatiable in deceit! Really,
Even when you find yourself in your native land, you cannot stop
False speeches and deceptions that you loved from childhood?
Introducing himself to Achilles, he announces himself: I am Odysseus Laertides. I am famous among all people for my cunning inventions. My glory reaches to heaven.
Everyone praises Odysseus's love for Penelope. He was both the husband of Calypso, and, moreover, for at least seven years, and the husband of Kirka, and according to other sources, he even had children from them. However, he prefers returning to his homeland to immortality. He spent his nights with Calypso, and during the day he cried on the seashore. Odysseus also likes to assume the appearance of a merchant and entrepreneur: he is a very prudent owner. Arriving in Ithaca, he first of all rushes to count the gifts that were left for him by the Phaeacians. Finally, let us add to all that has been said the brutal cruelty shown by this humane and sensitive person. Tracking down the suitors, he chooses an opportune moment to deal with them and their corpses fill the entire palace. The sacrificial fortuneteller Leod tries to ask him for mercy, but he blows his head off. Melantius was cut into pieces and given to dogs to eat; Telemachus, on the orders of his father, hanged his unfaithful servants on a rope. After this wild massacre, Odysseus, as if nothing had happened, hugs the maids and even sheds tears, and then has a happy meeting with his wife.
So, Homer’s Odysseus is the deepest patriot, the bravest warrior, sufferer, diplomat, merchant, entrepreneur, resourceful adventurer, woman lover, wonderful family man and cruel executioner.
B7 “Works and Days” by Hesiod as an example of a didactic epic. The image of the "Iron Age". Originality of style.
Didactic literature- a symbol for various literary genres that introduce non-literary (philosophical, theological, scientific, practical-moral, etc.) material into ordinary forms of artistic and verbal creativity.
The decline of the heroic epic. Anthems and skits. Didactic and genealogical epic (Hesiod) The clan community was in decline. Private initiative grew. Individual owners came forward, for whom tribal authorities no longer had any meaning. And if Homer was the eve of class society, then Hesiod already reflects the orientation of man within the boundaries of class society. Mythology, already quite shaken in Homer, was directly transformed either into morality (didactic epic) or into a subject of collecting and cataloging (genealogical epic). If Homer's poems are addressed to representatives of the tribal nobility and glorify the exploits of heroes, Hesiod's listeners are his compatriots, the Boeotian peasants. In contrast to Homer, who extremely rarely teaches, Hesiod’s works are didactic, i.e. instructive, instructive character. At the very beginning of the poem “Works and Days” (v. 9 - 380) the poet’s discussion is given about the two Eris, goddesses of envy and discord. Next, Hesiod gives the tale of Pandora and a description of five centuries, as well as the fable of the nightingale and the hawk. The second part of the poem sets out pictures of the work of a farmer, a description of winter in Boeotia, talks about the poet’s attitude to work, women, and presents examples of all kinds of superstitions and practical advice. Hesiod pays great attention to the issue of a new understanding of the ethical categories of justice, called dike, and insolence or arrogance those. hybris, meaning the impudent arrogance of people when, blinded by the gods, they violate traditional norms and boundaries of behavior. Hesiod's style is the opposite of the luxury, verbosity and breadth of Homeric style. It amazes with its dryness and brevity. "Theogony". After the prologue dedicated to the Muses, a dry and prosaic list is given, first of the main deities, and then of the marriages of gods with mortal women. War with the Titans composition of the poem. "Works and Days". This poem is an example of a didactic epic and develops several themes. The first theme is based on preaching the truth, with the insertion of episodes about Prometheus and the five centuries (golden, silver, copper, age of heroes and iron, in which he himself lives). Belief in divine justice and in the only saving power of labor is the central idea of the poem. The second, main theme is devoted to field work, agricultural tools, livestock, clothing, food, etc. These verses talk about happy and unhappy days for work (for example, on On the 13th day you cannot start sowing, but this day is good for planting). The whole poem is peppered with various instructions that paint before us the image of a peasant who knows how and when he can arrange his economic affairs profitably. “Homeric Hymns” constitute a collection of 33 works, conventionally called hymns. They were created at different times, beginning. From the 7th century BC to the period of late antiquity. Most of them are proemies - short introductions before the recitation of a story about the deeds of one or another god. “Hymn to Aphrodite” dates back to 7-6 BC. It tells the story of Aphrodite’s meeting with the Trojan hero Anchises. Homer’s poem “The War of the Mice and Frogs” is a parody of the Iliad. It serves as convincing evidence of the decline of the heroic epic. The gods are reduced to the level of everyday characters.
Iron Age image. It seems to Hesiod that the fate of people is slow extinction, and from here his historical pessimism. He speaks with delight of the pre-Seussian time, when people flourished under the rule of Cronus. It was a golden age when mortals “knew neither grief, nor sorrow, nor toil.” There was no fierce rivalry between them, there were no painful contradictions between faith and life, “their soul was calm and clear.” They worked with joy, died, “as if engulfed in sleep.” But those times are gone forever. The next, silver generation is much worse; it gave birth to madmen who refused to serve the gods. Probably, the legend about them vaguely reflected the appearance of the Achaean newcomers who rejected the old cults, while the golden age could be a memory of the glorious times of Crete. The silver generation was followed by the copper generation of mighty heroes. But “the terrible power of their own hands brought them destruction.” The fourth period is the time of the heroes of the Trojan campaign. “A terrible war and a terrible battle destroyed them.” (Referring to the Battle of Trojan) And finally it came iron age - decline of humanity. People overwhelmed by greed and malice wage an endless struggle among themselves. The poet laments that he is destined to witness this dark era.
If only I could avoid living with the generation of the fifth century!
I would like to die before him or be born later.
The earth is now inhabited by iron men. There won't be
They have respite neither at night nor during the day from labor and grief,
And from misfortunes. The gods will give them heavy worries
But ahead Hesiod sees something even worse - the complete decrepitude of people; it seems to him that history is an inclined plane along which they slide into the abyss. The myth of the ages of mankind, resurrected in our days by Spengler and Toynbee, was known back in Babylon, where a pessimistic view of the world first developed. But Hesiod independently processed this topic in order to express his sad credo. The Boeotian singer was often compared to the prophet Amos. Indeed, this great contemporary of Hesiod also came from a peasant environment and also exposed social untruths. But the prophet's gaze was directed forward. He saw in history not only periods of regression, but also higher purposefulness. The Greek poet is entirely turned to the past: for him, the most beautiful thing that was on earth rests in the graves. Thus, wandering somewhere between the magic of his great-grandfather’s cults, the imperious Olympus and the irresistible thirst for justice, Hesiod forever remained in a vicious circle of contradictions, complaining about the fate that threw him into the darkness of the Iron Age.
B8. The main types of ancient Greek poetry: melika and declamatory lyrics. Elegy in the works of Theognis.
The term "lyric" does not belong to the era we are considering; it was created later, during the time of the Alexandrian philologists, replacing the earlier term “melika” (from melos - “song”), and was applied to those types of songs that were performed to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument, primarily the seven-stringed lyre, an invention which the myth attributes to the god Hermes. Nowadays, when people talk about Greek lyric poetry, they use this term in a broader sense, covering genres that the ancients did not recognize as “lyrical,” for example, elegies accompanied by the sounds of a flute.
It is necessary to distinguish between: 1) elegy, 2) iambic and 3) melika, or lyricism in the strict sense of the word; this latter, in turn, has numerous divisions depending on the content or cult task of the song, but the main one is its division into two categories - monodic lyrics performed by an individual singer, and choral lyrics. The difference between all these types was due to the fact that they arose from different types of folk songs, received their literary development in different areas of Greece and in different class situations, and each genre had its own theme, its own stylistic and verse features and even retained the dialect of that area , in which he first took literary shape. The genres developed independently and very rarely crossed with each other.
Elegy civil.
First of all, we meet in Greece from the very beginning of the 7th century. BC with a militant-patriotic elegy. Its most ancient representative is Callinus from Ephesus, who in his elegies exhorted the inhabitants of Magnesia to resist the Cimmerians who attacked them. There is reason to believe that Callinus was even older than Archilochus. Further known is Tyrtaeus (second half of the 7th century BC), about whom it was said that the Spartans once asked the Athenians for a commander in the second Messenian War (645-628) and that they sent them the lame schoolteacher Tyrtaeus, which allegedly inspired the Spartan troops, so that Sparta prevailed. Tyrtaeus wrote an elegy called "Benevolence", where he praised the good peaceful order and called for the defense of antiquity. In another elegy, “Soviets,” he expressed his soul as a patriotic warrior in a simple and artless form. Tyrtaeus is also credited with a war song during an attack, written by living anapests, called "Embatherium".
Love Elegy
Love elegy is a very subjective, personal lyric, its representative in the 7th century. BC is Mimnermus. The main theme of his elegies is love. He sings of the joys of youth and is terrified of approaching old age. He prefers death to old age and lack of pleasure. In discussions about human life, he is distinguished by a melancholic way of thinking. In 1937, Mimnermus’s poem “Smyrneida” became known, which spoke of the attack of King Gyges on the inhabitants of Smyrna. This is a military historical poem. Therefore, Mimnermus should be considered more a representative of the epic than of the lyric. In any case, in his work one can see a transitional stage from epic to lyricism.
ELEGY IN THE WORK OF FEO NIT MEGARSKY.
He was born around 546 BC. When the struggle between the aristocracy and democracy took place in Megara, due to the victory of the democratic party, Theognis went into exile for a long time, from where, after the victory of the aristocracy, he returned, however, without receiving his property back. Therefore, Theognis is characterized by passionate polemics, extraordinary irritation and contempt for people. About 1,400 verses have reached us, divided into two unequal parts: 1,280 verses - instructions to Theognis's favorite, Kirnu, and about 150 verses - a love elegy.
Since Theognis had even more instructions than Solon, they were subsequently used in the compilation of moral and instructive collections. Such a collection is Theognidovsky, which contains poems by Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, Solon, Archilochus and others. In particular, poems of love content are unlikely to belong to Theognis due to their too specific nature. in his poems we find a call to modesty and prudence (prudence is a gift of the gods, so happy is the one who has this gift), a call to honor the gods, advice to avoid the company of bad people, choose friends wisely, not to trust people, even relatives, to maintain friendship , help in trouble and preserve the old order.
The peculiarity of Theognis is his unusually passionate and at the same time gloomy aristocratic way of thinking. This is a preacher of violence and cruelty, even hatred of all these “loaders” and “ship rabble.” He wants to “press down the foolish mob with a strong heel, bend it under the yoke.” However, he treats the “noble” no better. The “noble” are mired in greed and money fetishism. Thus, in Theognis’s lyrics, public ideology is combined with deep personal emotion. Theognis’s clear anti-democratic ideology, his inexorable consistency in political
Pushkin: “You can only feel Homer.”
The author of the two epic poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey” is traditionally considered Homer. Homer (c. 8th century BC) is a legendary ancient Greek poet, considered the founder of ancient and European literature. Biographies report that he went blind (the word "Homer" in the Aeolian dialect means "blind", other possible meanings are "hostage", "prophet", "poet"), allegedly competed with Hesiod, and died on the island of Ios, where they were showing his grave. Based on these pseudo-biographies, according to scientists, conclusions can be drawn: the personality of Homer, if he really existed, is most likely connected with the city of Smyrna (the current Turkish city of Izmir) and with Fr. Chios, where in the 7th - 6th centuries. BC There was a family of singers - the "Homerids", rhapsodes, who considered themselves direct descendants and followers of Homer.
The question of the authorship of works attributed to Homer is difficult and practically impossible to resolve due to the loss of many texts. Until the Hellenistic era, many Greeks considered him the creator of not only the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also a whole series of “cyclic” poems associated with the myths of the Trojan War - these are the Thebaid, Cypria, the Lesser Iliad and etc. In addition, Homer was known as the creator of a cycle of 33 “Homeric hymns” glorifying the Olympian gods, and the humorous parody epics “Margit” and “The War of Mice and Frogs” (“Batrachomyomachy”), the Byzantine encyclopedia “Svida” considers a number more Homeric poems: "Amazonia", "Arachnomachia" ("War of the Spiders"), "Heranomachia" ("War of the Cranes"), etc. But Alexandrian scholars have already significantly narrowed the number of works of which Homer was listed as the author.
According to tradition, Homer did not know how to read and write, and his poems until the 6th century. BC were performed orally. The Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, trying to raise the importance of Athens as a pan-Hellenic cultural and religious center, took a number of measures, which included the creation of a special commission for editing and recording the Iliad and Odyssey - after all, by the 6th century. BC Homer was already for all Greeks the greatest authority in poetry, morality, religion, and philosophy. These records of two poems, which have not reached us in their original form, reveal the history of the existence and interpretation of Homeric texts, which lasts two and a half thousand years.
Epic poetry arose in the 10th century BC, the poetry of Homer - between the 9th and 8th centuries. These are the first written creations with which European literature began. Most likely, this is not the beginning of a tradition - the author refers to predecessors and even includes excerpts from predecessor poems in the text. "Odyssey" - Demodocus, Thamir the Thracian. Then parodies of Homer's poems appear - "Batrachomyomachy" - the struggle of frogs and mice.
Antiquity is not characterized by the usual definition of “epic”. "Epic" - "speech, story." It appears as a form of everyday story about an event important for the history of a tribe or clan. Always poetic reproduction. The subject of the image is the history of the people based on mythological perception. The artistic ancient epics are based on majestic heroism. Heroes of epics personify entire nations (Achilles, Odysseus). A hero is always strong with the strength of his people, representing both the best and the worst in his people. The hero of Homer's poems lives in a special world where the concepts “everyone” and “everyone” mean the same thing.
Studying the language of Homer's poems, scientists came to the conclusion that Homer came from an Ionian aristocratic family. The language of the Iliad and Odyssey is an artificial subdialect that has never been spoken in life. Until the 19th century, the prevailing point of view was that the content of both poems was poetic fiction. In the 19th century, they started talking about the reality of events after Troy was discovered by the amateur Heinrich Schliemann (in the last quarter of the 19th century).
Heinrich Schliemann was born in 1822 in Germany into the family of a poor pastor. On his seventh birthday, he received a colorful encyclopedia of myths and after that he declared that he would find Troy. He doesn't get an education. The story of his youth is very stormy: he is hired as a cabin boy on a schooner, the schooner is shipwrecked, Schliemann ends up on a desert island. At the age of 19 he goes to Amsterdam and gets a job there as a petty clerk. It turns out that he is very receptive to languages, so he soon goes to St. Petersburg and opens his own business - supplying bread to Europe. In 1864, he closed his business and used all the money to open Troy. He goes to places where she could be. The entire scientific world carried out excavations in Bunarbashi in Turkey. But Schliemann relied on Homeric texts, where it was said that the Trojans could go to the sea several times a day. Bunarbashi was too far from the sea. Schliemann found Cape Hisarlik and found out that the real reason for the Trojan War was economics - the Trojans charged too much for passage through the strait. Schliemann carried out the excavations in his own way - he did not excavate layer by layer, but excavated all the layers at once. At the very bottom (layer 3A) he found gold. But he was afraid that his unprofessional workers would plunder him, so he told them to go celebrate, while he and his wife carried the gold into the tent. Most of all, Schliemann wanted to return Greece to its former greatness, and therefore this gold, which he considered the treasure of King Priam. But according to the laws, the treasure belonged to Turkey. Therefore, his wife - Greek Sofia - hid the gold in cabbage and transported it across the border.
Having proved to the whole world that Troy really existed, Schliemann actually destroyed it. Later, scientists proved that the required temporary layer was 7A; Schliemann destroyed this layer while extracting gold. Then Schliemann conducted excavations in Tiryns and dug up the homeland of Hercules. Then excavations in Mycenae, where he found a golden gate, three tombs, which he considered to be the burials of Agamemnon (the golden mask of Agamemnon), Cassandra and Clytemnestra. He was wrong again - these burials belonged to an earlier time. But he proved the existence of an ancient civilization, as he discovered clay tablets with writing. He also wanted to conduct excavations in Crete, but he did not have enough money to buy the hill. The death of Schliemann is absolutely absurd. He was driving home for Christmas, caught a cold, fell in the street, was taken to a poor shelter, where he froze to death. He was buried magnificently; the Greek king himself walked behind the coffin.
Similar clay tablets have been found in Crete. This proves that a very long time ago (12th century BC) there was writing in Crete and Mycenae. Scientists call it “linear pre-Greek pre-alphabetic syllabary,” and there are two varieties: a and b. A cannot be deciphered, B has been deciphered. The tablets were found in 1900 and deciphered after the Second World War. Franz Zittini deciphered 12 syllables. The breakthrough was made by Michael Ventris, an Englishman, who suggested that the basis should be taken not from the Cretan dialect, but from the Greek dialect. So he deciphered almost all the signs. The scientific world was faced with a problem: why did they write in Greek at the time of its heyday in Crete? Schliemann first tried to determine the exact date of the destruction of Troy - 1200 BC. He was only wrong by ten years. Modern scholars have established that it was destroyed between 1195 and 1185 BC.
Two categories of people are considered native speakers of the Homeric language: Aeds and Rhapsodes. Aeds are storytellers, creators of poems, semi-improvisers, they have a high position in society, so they had the right to change something in the poems. Homer mentioned Demodocus and Thamir the Thracian. The art of the Aeds is mysterious, since it is very difficult to remember so much text. The art of the Aeds is clan-based; each clan had its own secrets of memorization. Some families: Gomerids and Creophilides. Most often they were blind, “Homer” means blind. This is another reason why many believe that Homer did not exist. Rhapsodes are only performers, they could not change anything.
In relation to the epic, the concepts of plot and plot are very different. Plot is a natural direct temporal connection of events that constitutes the content of the action of a literary work. The plot of Homer's poems is the Trojan cycle of myths. It is associated with almost all mythology. The plot is local, but the time frame is short. Most of the motivations for the characters' actions are outside the scope of the work. The poem “Cypria” was written about the causes of the Trojan War.
Causes of the Trojan War: Gaia (goddess of the earth) turns to Zeus with a request to clear the earth of some people, since there are too many of them. Zeus is threatened by the fate of his grandfather and father - to be overthrown by his own son from the goddess. Prometheus names the goddess Thetis, so Zeus urgently marries her to the mortal hero Peleus. At the wedding, an apple of discord appears, and Zeus is advised to use Paris by Mom, a malicious adviser.
Troy is otherwise called the kingdom of Dardanus or Ilion. Dardan is the founder, then Il appears and founds Ilion. Hence the name of Homer's poem. Troy - from Tros. Sometimes Pergamon, after the name of the palace. One of the kings of Troy is Laomedon. Under him, the walls of Troy were built, which cannot be destroyed. This wall was built by Poseidon and Apollo, people laughed at them, Laomedont promised a reward for the work. Aeacus treated the gods well, so he built the Sketian Gate - the only one that can be destroyed. But Laomedont did not pay, the gods became angry and cursed the city, so it is doomed to destruction, despite the fact that it is the favorite city of Zeus. Only Anchises and Aeneas, who are not related to the family of Laomedon, will survive the war.
Helen the Beautiful is the granddaughter of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, and the only daughter of Zeus by a mortal woman. At the age of 12, Theseus kidnapped her. Then everyone wanted to take her as a wife, Odysseus advised Elena’s father to let her choose for herself and take an oath from the suitors to help Elena’s family in case of trouble.
The Iliad covers a short period of time as events. Only 50 days of the last year of the war. This is Achilles' anger and its consequences. This is how the poem begins.
"Iliad"- a military-heroic epic, where the central place is occupied by the story of events. The main thing is the anger of Achilles. Aristotle wrote that Homer chose the plot brilliantly. Achilles is a special hero; he replaces an entire army. Homer's task is to describe all the heroes and life, but Achilles overshadows them. Therefore, Achilles must be removed. Everything is determined by one event: on the earthly plane, everything is determined by the consequences of the wrath of Achilles, on the heavenly plane - by the will of Zeus. But his will is not all-encompassing. Zeus cannot decide the fate of the Greeks and Trojans. He uses the golden scales of fate - the shares of the Achaeans and Trojans.
Composition: alternating earthly and heavenly plot lines, which are mixed towards the end. Homer did not break his poem into songs. It was first broken by Alexandrian scientists in the third century BC - for convenience. Each chapter is named after a letter of the Greek alphabet.
What is the reason for Achilles' anger? For 10 years, the Greeks ruined many surrounding policies. In one city they captured two captives - Chryseis (got to Agamemnon) and Briseis (got to Achilles). The Greeks begin to develop a consciousness of the value of their personality. Homer shows that tribal collectivity is becoming a thing of the past, a new morality begins to form, where the idea of the value of one’s own life comes to the fore.
The poem ends with Hector's funeral, although in essence the fate of Troy has already been decided.
In terms of plot (mythological sequence of events) "Odyssey" corresponds to the Iliad. But it tells not about military events, but about wanderings. Scientists call it: “an epic poem of wanderings.” In it, the story of a person replaces the story of events. The fate of Odysseus comes to the fore - the glorification of intelligence and willpower. The Odyssey corresponds to the mythology of late heroism. Dedicated to the last forty days of Odysseus’ return to his homeland. That the center is return is evidenced by the very beginning.
Composition: more difficult than the Iliad. Events in the Iliad develop progressively and consistently.
In "Odyssey" three storylines: 1) Olympian gods. But Odysseus has a goal, and no one can stop him. Odysseus gets out of everything himself. 2) the return itself is a difficult adventure. 3) Ithaca: two motives: the actual events of the matchmaking and the theme of Telemachus’ search for his father. Some believe that Telemachy is a late insertion.
Basically, this is a description of Odysseus’s wanderings, and in retrospective terms. Events are determined by retrospection: the influence of events from the distant past. For the first time, a female image appears equal to the male one - Penelope, the wise one - the worthy wife of Odysseus. Example: She spins a burial cloth.
The poem is more complex not only in composition, but also from the point of view of the psychological motivation of actions.
"The Iliad" is Leo Tolstoy's favorite work. The meaning of Homer's poems lies in moral values, they present them to us. At this time, ideas about morality were being formed. Relationship with materials. Heroism and patriotism are not the main values that interest Homer. The main thing is the problem of the meaning of human life, the problem of the values of human life. The theme of human duty: to the homeland, to the tribe, to the ancestors, to the dead. Life on a universal scale is represented as an evergreen grove. But death is not a reason for grief - it cannot be avoided, but must be met with dignity. Ideas about human friendship are formed. Odysseus and Diomedes, Achilles and Patroclus. They are all balanced. Problems - what is cowardice? Bravery? Loyalty to home, people, spouse? Faithful wives: Penelope, Andromache.
As mentioned earlier, Homer’s heroes collected the generalized traits of the entire people they represented. The images of warriors were varied. Homer did not yet have an idea of \u200b\u200bcharacter, but, nevertheless, he does not have two identical warriors. It was believed that a person is already born with certain qualities, and nothing can change during his life. This view undergoes a change only in the works of Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle. The amazing moral integrity of Homeric man. They have no reflection or duality - this is in the spirit of Homer's time. Fate is a share. Therefore, there is no doom. The actions of the heroes are not related to divine influence. But there is a law of double motivation of events. How are feelings born? The easiest way to explain this is by divine intervention. Homer's talent: the scene with Achilles and Priam.
Each warrior has the same set of qualities, but the images are unique. Each of the characters expresses one aspect of the national Greek spirit. There are types in the poem: elders, wives, etc. The central place is occupied by the image of Achilles. He is great, but mortal.
Homer wanted to depict the poetic apotheosis of heroic Greece. Heroism is Achilles' conscious choice. Epic Valor of Achilles: Brave, strong, fearless, war cry, fast running. In order for the heroes to be different, the number of different qualities is different - an individual characteristic. Achilles has impulsiveness and immensity.
Homer's characteristics: he knows how to compose songs and sings them. The second most powerful warrior is Ajax the Great. He has too much ambition. Achilles is fleet-footed, Ajax is clumsy and slow. The third is Diomedes. The main thing is complete selflessness, which is why Diomedes is granted victory over the gods. Epithets: Achilles and Odysseus have more than 40. In battle, Diomedes does not forget about the economy. The leaders of the campaign are depicted in conflict with epic laws. The authors of the epic write objectively. But Homer has many epithets for his favorite heroes. The Atrides have few epithets. Diomedes reproaches Agamemnon: “Zeus did not give you valor.” A different attitude towards Nestor, Hector and Odysseus. Hector is one of Homer's favorite heroes, he is reasonable and peaceful. Hector and Odysseus do not rely on the gods, so Hector is inherent in fear, but this fear does not affect his actions, since Hector has epic valor, which includes epic shame. He feels responsible to the people he is protecting.
Celebration of wisdom. Elders: Priam and Nestor. Nestor survived three generations of people, thirty years each. New wisdom: the intelligence of Odysseus. This is not experience, but mental flexibility. Odysseus is also distinguished by: all the heroes strive for immortality - it is offered to him twice, but he exchanges it for his homeland.
Homer first gives us the experience of comparative characterization.
- Song 3 of the Iliad: Helen talks about the heroes. Menelaus and Odysseus are compared. The image of Helen in the Iliad is demonic. In the Odyssey, she is a housewife. It is not her appearance that is described, but the elders’ reaction to her. We know very little about her feelings. In "Odyssey" it is different - there is nothing mysterious.
- - Features of the epic worldview and style
First, the volume of epic poems is always significant. The volume depends not on the desire of the author, but on the tasks set by the author, which in this case require a large volume. The second feature is versatility. Epic served many functions in ancient society. Entertaining - last but not least. Epic is a repository of wisdom, an educational function, examples of how to behave. The epic is a repository of information on history, preserving the people's understanding of history. Scientific functions, since it was in epic poems that scientific information was transmitted: astronomy, geography, crafts, medicine, everyday life. Last but not least is the entertainment function. All this is called epic syncretism.
Homer's poems always tell about the distant past. The Greek was pessimistic about the future. These poems are intended to capture the golden age.
- The monumentality of the images of epic poems
The images are elevated above ordinary people, they are almost monuments. They are all loftier, more beautiful, smarter than ordinary people - this is idealization. This is epic monumentality.
Epic materialism is associated with the task of describing everything in full. Homer fixes his attention on the most ordinary things: a stool, carnations. All things must have color. Some believe that back then the world was described in two colors - white and gold. But Wilkelman denied this; he was engaged in architecture. In fact, there are a lot of colors, but the statues are whitened by time. The statues were dressed, painted, decorated - everything was very bright. Even the Titanomachy on the Parthenon was painted. In Homer's poems, everything is colored: the clothes of goddesses, berries. The sea has more than 40 shades of color.
The objectivity of the tone of Homeric poems. The creators of the poems had to be extremely fair. Homer is biased only in epithets. For example, the description of Thersites. Thersites is absolutely devoid of epic valor.
Epic Style: Three Laws
- 1) The law of retardation is a deliberate stop of action. Retardation, firstly, helps to expand the scope of your image. Retardation is a digression, an inserted poem. Tells about the past or expounds the views of the Greeks. The poems were performed orally and during retardation the author and performer tries to arouse additional attention to the situation: for example, a description of the rod of Agamemnon, a description of the shield of Achilles (this description shows how the Greeks imagined the universe). Marriage of Odysseus's grandfather. Odysseus always had one heir in his family. Odysseus is angry, experiencing the wrath of the gods.
- 2) The law of double motivation of events.
- 3) The law of chronological incompatibility of simultaneous events in time. The author of epic poems is naive; it seems to him that if he depicts two simultaneous events at the same time, it will be unnatural. A striking example: Priam and Helen are talking.
Epic poems abound repetitions. Up to a third of the text is repetition. Several reasons: due to the oral nature of the poems, repetitions are properties of oral folk art, folklore description includes constant formulas, most often these are natural phenomena, equipment of chariots, weapons of the Greeks, Trojans - stencil formulas.
Decorating epithets, are firmly assigned to heroes, objects, gods (hair-eyed Hera, Zeus the cloud-catcher). The gods, as perfect creatures, deserve the epithet “golden”. Aphrodite is most associated with gold - the aesthetic sphere; for Hera it is sovereignty, power. Zeus turns out to be the darkest. All gods must be smart, omniscient. The Provider is only Zeus, although others too. Athena: intercessor, protector, irresistible, indestructible. Ares: insatiable for war, destroyer of men, stained with blood, breaker of walls. Often epithets are so fused that they contradict the situation: noble suitors in the house of Odysseus. Aegisthus, who kills Agamemnon, is blameless. These are all folklore formulas.
Epic comparisons. Striving for clarity of the image, the poet strives to translate each description into the language of comparison, which develops into an independent picture. All Homer’s comparisons are from the everyday sphere: battles for ships, the Greeks are pushing back the Trojans, the Greeks fought as neighbors for boundaries in neighboring areas. Achilles' rage is compared to threshing, when oxen trample grain.
Homer often uses description and narration through enumeration. He does not describe the picture in its entirety, but strings together episodes - the murder of Diomedes.
A combination of fiction with details of realistic reality. The line between reality and fantasy is blurred: a description of the Cyclops' cave. At first everything is very realistic, but then a terrible monster appears. An illusion of objectivity is created.
Poems written hexameter- six-foot dactyl. Moreover, the last foot is truncated. In the middle there is a caesura - a pause that divides the verse into two hemistiches and gives it regularity. All ancient versification is based on a strictly ordered alternation of long and short syllables, and the quantitative ratio of stressed and unstressed syllables is 2:1, but the stress is not forceful, but musical, based on raising and lowering the tone.
Main featuresearly epic style can be characterized as follows:
Firstly, this objectivity. The ancient epic style gives an objective picture of the world and life, without going deep into the psychology of the characters and without chasing details and details of the image. For a strict epic artist, the only important thing is the development of reality that takes place outside and independently of his personal consciousness, of his personal views and assessments. The only important thing is that this event actually happened; everything else is of secondary importance for the epic artist.
Surprisingly, everything depicted in Homer’s epic is interpreted as objective reality. There is absolutely nothing fantastic, fictitious or fabricated here just because of the subjective whim of the poet. Even all the gods and demons, everything miraculous is depicted in Homer as if it really existed. His calm narrative tone is characteristic of any fairy-tale plot. In the strict epic style there are no inventions or fantasies.
Secondly, "material" image of life. Instead of showing his own attitude to life, the epic artist focuses attention primarily on the external side of the events he depicts. Hence his constant love for visual, auditory and motor sensations, as a result of which one can often only guess about the psychology of the characters, but the external side is depicted with the greatest love.
Thirdly, traditionalism. The objective nature of the epic depiction of life is accompanied in a strict epic by the consciousness of the constancy of the laws reigning in it. This is natural for the artist’s objective approach to reality. Whoever approaches reality objectively does not limit himself to its random phenomena alone, but tries to penetrate into the depths of these phenomena in order to find out their patterns.
However, the strict epic artist loves to observe the constancy of life phenomena not only in the present, but also in the past, so that for him, strictly speaking, there is not even a particularly deep difference between the present and the past. He depicts primarily everything that is permanent, stable, age-old, obvious to everyone and recognized by everyone, previously recognized by everyone, ancient, ancient, and in the present obligatory for everyone. Without this fundamental traditionality, the folk epic loses its strict folk style and ceases to be epic in the proper sense.
Fourthly, monumentality. It goes without saying that all the above-mentioned features of the strict epic style cannot but make it stately, slow, devoid of fuss, important, sedate. The wide coverage of the present and the past makes epic poetry sublime, solemn, far from the subjective whim of the poet, who considers himself an insignificant and insignificant phenomenon in comparison with the majestic and national past. This deliberately exposed insignificance of the artist in front of the grandiose, broad life of the people turns his works into some kind of great monument of the past, which is why this entire feature of the strict epic style should be called monumentality.
Fifthly, heroism. It is not difficult to show that people are also depicted in the epic in a special style if they are understood as bearers of all these general properties of the epic. A person turns out to be a hero because he is devoid of small egoistic traits, but is always internally and externally connected with the life of the whole people and the cause of the whole people. He can be a winner or a loser, strong or powerless, he can love or hate - in a word, he can have various properties of the human personality, but all this is subject to one condition: he must, by his very essence, be in unity with the general and tribal life. The epic hero is not at all someone who is deprived of his personal psychology. But this psychology should basically be universal among the people. This makes him the hero of a monumental epic.
And finally balanced calm. They always talked a lot about the calmness of the epic, contrasting it with lyrical excitement. However, from the characteristics of the epic proposed above, it follows that epic calm is not at all the absence of great passions, some kind of indifferent attitude towards life. Epic calm arises in a poet if he is a strict epic artist, wisely contemplating life after great catastrophes, after huge national events on the widest scale, after endless hardships and the greatest suffering, as well as after the greatest successes and victories. This wisdom stems from the epic artist's knowledge of the constancy of the laws of nature and society. The death of individual individuals no longer worries him, since he knows about the eternal cycle of nature and the eternal return of life; the change of generations is like the change of foliage on trees. Contemplating world events in their centuries-long development, he receives from this not only balanced calm, but also inner consolation.
Summarizing the general features of the strict epic style, it must be said that it constant objectivity is distinguished by plastic traditional and monumental heroism, reflecting the eternal cycle and eternal return of national or tribal life.
Homeric poems were not just an artistic manifestation of the existence of a communal-tribal system; they received their final form already during the period of its decomposition and almost on the very eve of the slave system. Therefore, Homer, as an artist, already knew the complexity and depth of individual life, and could not be a completely disinterested and indifferent chronicler of life. His personal passions emerged, his political assessments matured, and a protest arose against various social aspects of the life around him. Therefore, the style of the Homeric epic, as well as its socio-historical basis, and its ideology are full of contradictions and are very far from that childish and primitive perception of life, which was often attributed to various researchers from the heights of European cultural development.
Homer's poems reflect centuries of national development and, in particular, not only the communal-tribal formation, but also its decomposition and the development of private property and private initiative. The strict epic style of artistic works could no longer remain at the stage of its ancient severity, beginning to reflect the individual development of man with new, much freer feelings and with the help of new, much more complex poetic techniques.
The significance of ancient Greek literature in the context of world literature. Periodization of ancient Greek literature. Language and writing of ancient Greek literature.
Greek literature is the foundation of European literature. A wide coverage of various issues, an unusually life-like portrayal of a person’s personality. Greek literature laid the foundation for the theory of style and fiction - rhetoric and poetics.
Archaic period of Greek literature (up to the 6th century BC): Greek folklore, Cretan-Mycenaean era (heroic tales and myths, 2 thousand BC); Homeric epic, tales of the Trojan War; Hesiod, lyrics.
Classical or Attic period (5-4 centuries BC): the emergence of theater and theatrical genres. The origins of historical, philosophical prose and rhetoric. The rise and crisis of Athenian democracy, the collapse of the polis system; (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes).
Hellenistic period (4th-1st centuries BC): the campaign of Alexander the Great, the combination of Eastern and Western mentalities. Art for art's sake. Alexandrian poetry, the emergence of novels; Plutarch.
Greco-Roman period (1st century BC - 5th century AD): the end point of Greek literature.
The earliest examples of writing are from the 8th century. BC – the style indicates borrowings from the Phoenician alphabet.
Until 3rd century BC there was no single language; all dialects belonged to the Indo-European group.
Aeolian (Asia Minor)
Dorian (Sparta)
Ionian (northern part of Attica and islands)
Attic (Athens)
All dialects were involved in the lyrics, the epic was written in Ionian, comedy - with elements of vulgarisms.
After the 6th century BC - Central Greek language.
3rd century BC - a single common Greek language, Koine.
Ancient Greek mythology. Periodization of ancient Greek mythology. Features of mythological consciousness among the ancient Greeks.
Mythology – images of phenomena, personification, nature and man and their relationship. Not only the epic, but also the lyrics are built on myths.
The Olympian deities are the 3rd generation of gods, preceded by Uranus and Gaia (generation of the Titans). They cannot overcome fate, which means they are not omnipotent. Anthropomorphic.
Chthonic (archaic, pre-Olympic period) – totemism, fetishism, animism. The earth with its constituent elements appears to the primitive consciousness as living, animate.
Olympic - Instead of small gods and demons, one main, supreme god Zeus appears, to whom all other gods obey. One of the features of the Olympic period is hierarchy (Zeus, Hades, Poseidon -> Hera, Hestia, Demeter -> Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Ares -> Dionysus, Hermes).
Hellenistic. Heroic mythology. A skeptical attitude towards the gods, the appearance of myths telling about the death of a hero or the punishment of heroes once loved by the gods. Ancestral curses. The classic example of death is trying to get to Olympus.
Each city had its own patron gods and patron hero. The Greeks tried to think about death as little as possible.
Pre-literary period. Conditions for the formation of the Greek epic.
The pre-literary period - worldview, labor activity, forms of oral folk art, from where its various forms (myths, fables) appear. They tried to explain natural phenomena using a system of images.
An Olympic mythology is being created. A myth is an image created by the people that changes over time. The appearance of heroes - characters who personify progress. Canon of Heroes (Hercules, Theseus).
Fairy tales have hardly been recorded in history. It was believed that this was a genre for the female half of the house.
Greek fable – images of animals, zoomorphism. Didactic folklore is a body of folk wisdom, consolidation of experience. A folk song is a labor and ritual song. Most often it is collective.
Socio-political factor: constantly under threat of invasion, attack, the need for protection arises.
Trojan mythological cycle and its historical basis. Homeric epic. "Iliad" and "Odyssey" - the main idea and structure of the poems.
Campaigns of the eastern tribes, wars with the Hittites or the invasion of the Achaeans into Asia Minor, which is recorded in various myths (Hercules’ campaign against Troy; the first campaign of the Amazons). For a long time, the poems were considered historical fiction. The long siege of Ilion formed the basis of the Iliad.
Troy actually died from a fire and, apparently, was set on fire by the enemy, since the city was not rebuilt for several centuries after the fire. However, another fortress (Troy VI), dating back to the “Mycenaean” time and also destroyed, comes much closer to the descriptions of the Homeric epic.
Characteristics of the Homeric epic ( Features of Homer's epic style):
A form of long poems that recount events of the distant past. Layering of eras. A story from the author's point of view.
Participation of the Olympic gods in the events and destinies of the heroes. The worlds of people and gods interact and often intersect.
Sequence of events. Lack of point of view, emotionality of the author.
Deliberate hyperbolicity. Idealization of people and situations.
Archaization of the story. The images of the heroes are removed from the features of real people.
Repetitions. The same poems can be spoken by different characters.
Homeric epithets. Definitions that are assigned in the epic to gods, heroes or objects.
Homeric comparisons. Necessary to clearly show the action, always aimed at him, and not at the hero.
Chronological incompatibility of individual events. The author cannot show the simultaneity of two actions.
Irregularity in the description of an event.
“The Iliad” is anger, a series of military scenes and battles between two heroes.
“Odyssey” - return after the war, everyday scenes.
The action of the Iliad is dated to the 10th year of the Trojan War, but neither the cause of the war nor its course are set out in the poem. The story as a whole and the main characters are assumed to be already known to the listener; The content of the poem is only one episode, within which a huge amount of material from legends is concentrated and a large number of Greek and Trojan heroes are depicted. The theme of the poem is announced in the very first verse, where the singer addresses the Muse, the goddess of the chant “Wrath, goddess, sing to Achilles.” The “anger” of Achilles, his refusal to participate in hostilities, thus serves as an organizing moment for the entire course of action of the poem, since only Achilles’ inaction allows the picture of the battles to unfold and show all the brilliance of the Greek and Trojan knights.
Homer does not give a direct description of the beautiful Helena: everyone has their own personal perception of beauty. She is shown only with the words “such a woman was worth the war!”
- “Odyssey”. The epic is not so much “heroic” as everyday and fairy-tale. The theme of the Odyssey is the wanderings and adventures of Odysseus returning from the Trojan campaign. Seafaring folklore. The Odyssey is more complex in composition than the Iliad. The plot of the Iliad is presented in a linear sequence; in the Odyssey this sequence is shifted.
Features of Homer's epic style. The poetic language of the Homeric epic.
Homer's poems are a classic example of epic, that is, a great epic poem. Their artistic merits are inextricably linked with the low stage of social development at which they arose. Homeric art is realistic in its orientation, but it is spontaneous, primitive realism; Homer's poems unfold a vast gallery of individual characters, all of these images are different; however, with all the diversity of individual characters, the characters do not oppose themselves to society. Military valor, wisdom, good manners in relations with people and respect for the gods - all these ideals of the tribal nobility stand unshakable for Homer's heroes, causing constant competition between them.
However, for all the vitality and humanity of Homer’s images, they are static, and internal development is inaccessible to them. The character of the hero is firmly fixed in a few basic features and shown in action, but in the course of this action he does not change. There is no analysis of internal experiences in the Greek epic.
The diverse reality reflected in the epic is depicted with extreme clarity, but this clarity also contains a lot of primitive things. It is achieved to a large extent by the fact that the artist immerses himself entirely in the depiction of details, regardless of their significance for the whole.
In the style of the poems, many elements have been preserved that go back to the song, semi-improvisational stage of the development of the epic. Gods, people, things - everything receives epithets.
The Homeric Question in Antiquity.
For antiquity, Homer was a real person, although there is no evidence other than mythological biography. Seven cities laid claim to being his birthplace. Homer's life span ranges from the 10th to the 9th centuries. BC
Homer receives the nickname "divine". In parallel with this, Xenophanes sharply criticizes him for reducing the image of the gods to the level of people.
Based on the position of the sole author (or two authors) of the Homeric epic, ancient criticism considered itself, however, to have the right to raise another question: whether the poems were preserved in their original form. Recognizing the Homeric epic as a model and norm of artistic creativity, a subject of “imitation” and “competition” for later poets, antiquity could not abandon the idea of primordial perfection, and therefore completeness” of each of the poems. The theorists of the Renaissance occupied the same position until the 16th century.
Homeric question in modern times.
In the 16th century “disputes between old and new” appear, between the followers of Homer and the Roman poet Virgil.
During the era of classicism in the 17th century. A negative attitude towards Homer's poems developed, and literary criticism found all sorts of shortcomings in them. Even then, Abbot d'Aubignac argued that the Iliad is not a single whole and is a combination of unrelated songs about the siege of Troy, that there was no single Homer, but there were many “Homers”, to the problems of “oral” creativity, the poetics of classicism was dismissive.
The first strictly scientific formulation of the “Homeric question” belongs to Wolf, who published “Introduction to Homer” in 1795. A trend in literature and aesthetics hostile to classicism established a fundamental difference between the “natural” folk and “artificial” book epic; Homer's poems belonged to the first category. Wolf admits that most of the individual songs included in the poems belong to one singer, whom he calls Homer; later singers composed a number of other songs, which were preserved in the rhapsodic tradition along with the original Homer and were combined with him.
The current state of the “Homeric question” can be reduced to the following provisions.
a) There is no doubt that in the material of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” there are layers of different times, from the “Mycenaean” era up to the 8th - 7th centuries. BC e. However, these layers do not lie in continuous masses in the poems; usually they are in a variegated mixture.
b) Equally undoubted are the elements of unity that link each of the poems into an artistic whole.
c) Along with the presence of a leading artistic concept, in both the Iliad and the Odyssey it is possible to establish a number of inconsistencies, contradictions in the movement of the plot, unfinished motives, etc.
d) It is also widely believed that the Iliad and Odyssey, already as large poems, were supplemented by a number of new episodes. The specific history of the composition of the Homeric epic remains, therefore, controversial.
Homeric epic in Russian literature. Translations of Homer.
The Iliad was first translated in its entirety by Gnedich in 1829. Gnedich managed, with sufficient closeness to the original, to reproduce heroism, which was combined here with high and magnificent solemnity. Although there is an abundance of Slavicisms.
Since Gnedich’s translation by the end of the 19th century. had already turned out to be outdated, there was a need to provide a translation of the Iliad in a simplified form, without Slavicisms and based only on the modern Russian literary language. Minsky undertook such a translation in 1896.
Veresaev's translation went even further than Minsky. Having used many successful expressions of Gnedich and Minsky, Veresaev nevertheless understands Homer in an overly folkloric way and tries to use various kinds of folk and pseudo-folk expressions, some of them even of a not entirely decent nature. Numerous naturalistic and even abusive expressions, which abound in Veresaev’s translation, met with criticism.
As for the Odyssey, its classic translation belongs to Zhukovsky and was made in 1849. In Zhukovsky’s translation, many names were written in an archaic way. Until very recently, this translation was the only one, since its high artistic merit was never questioned. Nevertheless, Zhukovsky allowed too much inaccuracy in his translation, introducing epithets that did not belong to Homer, various expressions and even entire lines and abbreviating others.
Taking into account all these features of Zhukovsky’s translation, Shuisky for the first time in almost 100 years decided to compete with Zhukovsky. Shuisky avoided the mentioned features of Zhukovsky's translation; however, striving for a literal rendering of the original, Shuisky constantly falls into excessive prosaism, unsuccessful versification, and the translator’s orientation towards an outdated text, which is now being corrected beyond recognition by the latest editors.
Finally, there is another translation of the Odyssey, which belongs to the above-mentioned V. Veresaev and has the same features as his translation of the Iliad.
Homeric hymns and cycle poems. Parodies of the heroic epic.
The name of Homer is associated with the “Homeric Hymns,” which contain 34 hymns dedicated to the Olympian gods. A type of short epic. The theme is related to the plots of the exploits of deities. The largest hymns are dedicated to Demeter and Apollo.
Cyclic poems or cyclic poems are arranged in a certain order, fit into a cycle:
Cyprians - the Trojan cycle, up to the campaign against Troy.
Ethiopia - events after the death of Hector; The Amazons come to the aid of the Trojans.
the small Iliad - the burial of Achilles, the destruction of Ilion, the return of the leaders (Odysseus, Nestor, Agamemnon).
Theban cycle – Oedipodium, Thebaid, Epigones (second siege of Thebes)
Parodies of the heroic epic (6-5 centuries BC) - the poem “Magrit”, with the hero “inside out”; “The War of Mice and Frogs” - epithets and repetitions of Homer are preserved, begins with a meeting of the gods.
Didactic epic - origin, worldview, style. Ethical and social views of Hesiod (“Works and Days”).
Didactic epic - edifying (late 8th century BC)
Created during the period of the emergence of policies. Poems are written about farmers, the author's view on certain problems is traced.
The first theme is based on preaching the truth, with the insertion of episodes about Prometheus and the five generations:
- “golden age” - a time of complete happiness.
- “Silver Age” - blood is shed for the first time.
- “Copper Age” - the emergence of weapons and war.
- “heroic age” - an age of brief improvement.
- “Iron Age” - the age of violence and vices.
This is the first time such a periodization has been encountered. For the first time, work and virtue are placed in the law established by the gods. The apotheosis of labor and justice, the peasant in Hesiod loves order and precision in everything. The work must convince that in order to improve your financial situation, you need to take the path of honest labor on your land, and not give bribes to judicial officials.
The episode "The Hawk and the Nightingale" illustrates the cruel power of power over talent. He who works long and honestly enjoys the respect of people and the protection of the gods; it is not work that disgraces a person, but inactivity. “Listen to the voice of truth, O Persian, and fear pride!”
Wealth according to Hesiod – harvest, land, family.
Cosmogonic picture of the world in Hesiod's Theogony. Epic poetry after Hesiod.
“Theogony” is the story of the origin of the world and the gods.
The change in social structures in pre-class society (for example, the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy) was reflected mythologically in tales about the struggle between older and younger gods and the victory of young gods over the old. The Greek gods turned out to be classified into different generations, and the humanized gods of the epic were the “youngest” in this system.
In the beginning, according to Hesiod, there was Chaos (“yawning void”), Earth and Eros. From Chaos and Earth, other parts of the universe arose in different generations - Erebus (Darkness), light Ether, Sky, Sea, Sun, Moon.
In Hesiod, however, they still fully retain their mythological character. Chaos and Earth are divine beings who give birth to new beings, who in turn marry each other and become the parents of other gods. Hesiod’s genealogy system includes not only those gods who served as the subject of real veneration in the Greek cult, but also the personification of those forces that seemed to him to influence people’s behavior: Labor, Oblivion, Hunger, Sorrow, Battles, Murders, Strife, False Speeches.
The myths reported by Hesiod about the "old" gods contain many archaic features that are usually eliminated from the Homeric narrative as too crude, for example the myth of Cronus devouring his own children for fear of losing dominion. The crowning achievement of the story is the victory of Zeus over the Titans and other monsters of the past. It is characteristic that Hesiod only briefly mentions those descendants of Zeus who entered the system of the Olympian gods and play a huge role in the Homeric epic, in the order of enumeration.
Social and political conditions for the emergence of ancient Greek lyric poetry, its main forms.
Archaic period - around 7th century. BC This refers to a poetic work that talks about the author’s feelings. Derived from the word "lyre".
In early forms, the connection with music was strictly obligatory, but gradually faded away.
Melody-solo lyrics
Choir.
The first was simple, the second was more solemn. The lyrics are preserved very poorly, mostly in fragments. The leading poets of the canons corresponded in detail (Alcaeus).
The earliest types of lyrics were elegy and iambic; they were the earliest to break away from musical accompaniment.
The difference between all these types was due to the fact that they arose from different types of folk songs, received their literary development in different areas of Greece, and each genre had its own theme. The genres developed independently and very rarely crossed with each other.
Ancient Greek elegy 7-5 centuries. BC – origin, poetic meter, theme. Elegies of Callinus, Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus.
An elegy in Asia Minor was a lamentation that was performed accompanied by a Phrygian flute. The ancient Ionian literary elegy does not have, however, an obligatory mournful character: it is a lyrical poem of instructive content, containing motivations and calls for important and serious action, reflections, and aphorisms. An external feature of elegy, which distinguished it from all other genres, is a special verse structure, the regular alternation of a hexameter with a verse of a slightly different structure, a pentameter, forming a stanza of two verses. The verse form of the elegy brought it closer to the epic; the themes often coincided with the thoughts that epic poets put into the mouths of their heroes; the language of the elegy was therefore close to epic, and the elegy easily spread throughout all regions of Greece without changing the characteristics of its dialect.
One of the oldest elegiac poets known to us was Kallin from Ephesus (in Asia Minor), who lived in the first half of the 7th century. Only one poem has survived from him - a call to defend the homeland from enemy attacks.
The theme of defending the homeland sounds even more clearly in the elegies of the Spartan poet Tyrtaeus (VII - VI centuries), who inspired the Spartans to fight. Addressing the Spartan troops, Tyrtaeus depicts the pitiful lot of a fugitive wandering with his family in a foreign land, the shame that covers a coward. He wrote marching songs filled with high civic feeling.
The motives of pleasure were developed by the Ionian Mimnermus (about 600), whom the ancients considered the first love poet, the creator of erotic elegy. Several small poems have survived from Mimnermus, but their content is not a personal feeling, but reflections on general topics, usual for Ionian elegy. He complains about the transience of youth and the hardships of rapidly approaching old age. The desired life expectancy is sixty years spent without illness or worries. The poetry of Mimnermus was not limited, however, to the motives of love and pleasure, and some of the fragments that have come down to us are devoted to political and military themes.
Political, social and didactic motives of the elegies of Solon and Theognis.
Theognis (late 6th - early 5th century BC) - spent most of his life in exile and poverty. There are a lot of calls for physical violence. He considered poverty to be the worst disease. He is credited with “Instructions to Cyrn” in the form of advice and instructions. Theognis believed that all punishments came from the gods. Among the instructions there are, along with traditional aphorisms about piety, respect for parents, a large number of poems on current topics, and they represent one of the most striking examples of the irreconcilable class hatred of the aristocrat and democracy that can be found in world literature. People from birth are divided into “good”, i.e. aristocrats, and “mean”. “The good” have all the virtues, they are brave, straightforward, noble; “mean” people are characterized by all the vices: baseness, rudeness, ingratitude; however, the “vile” become rich and become in power, while the nobility goes bankrupt, and the “noble” turns into a “low”. In relation to the “mean”, the “good” are allowed all means.
Solon (7-6 centuries BC) - a native of Athens, noble, but impoverished. Author of the elegies “Instructions to the Athenians” and “Instructions to Oneself.” He talks about people's lives, what happiness and prosperity are, about truth and untruth, poverty and wealth, and talks about the advantages of each decade. The term “citizen” itself appears for the first time in his works. Political and moralizing themes predominate, but their interpretation is not impersonal. Solon's arguments are mostly of a religious and moral nature. He reproaches both warring sides, the aristocracy. He sees divine punishment not in any natural disasters that occur, but in civil strife. The predominant tone of the poems is calmly exhorting, and only occasionally does the speech take on the character of a restrained but angry threat.
The main representatives of iambic poetry: Archilochus, Semonides of Amorgos, Hipponact of Ephesus.
Archilochus (7th century BC) - led a restless wandering life. I experienced unhappy love. He got along poorly everywhere and died in the war. Ancient critics, noting his great talent, said that the poison of his speech comes from the bile of a dog and the sting of a wasp, that he is “all blood and nerves.” His love is like a disease, like a passion. Homeric epithets, but in other senses, are used to emphasize the power of passion. Description of internal emotions without external signs. There was no concept of spiritual love, most often - carnal pleasures.
Semonides was a prominent figure in his community, the founder of a colony on the island. Amorghe, but the surviving poems do not contain political or civic motives. His instructive elegies and iambics are dominated by pessimistic reflections on the deceptiveness of human hopes, on the threats of old age, illness and death hanging over man. In the divine governance of the world, Semonides sees nothing but arbitrariness. The conclusion from the reflection is a call to enjoy the blessings of life while you can.
Hipponactus (second half of the 6th century) was recognized as the last classic of iambiography. He was famous for the directness and sharpness of his satire. For attacks on the tyrants who ruled in Ephesus, he was expelled from his hometown. Folklore iambic becomes his instrument of mockery of the pretentiousness of the culture of the rich and nobility; he seems to strive to outdo Archilochus in contempt for all literary decency, invariably portrays himself as a hungry beggar and a bully, uses the language of the street and brothels. Parody of high style is Hipponactus’s favorite technique. He parodies epic poetry, the style of hymns.
Ancient Greek melica. Types of melic poetry. Dorian melos (Terpander, Alcman) and Aeolian melos (Alcaeus, Sappho).
Melika was divided into choral lyric and solo. The Attic and Dorian meloses belonged to the choral.
Dorian melos is predominantly strict and close to religious songs, often solemn. Works of this kind were first dedicated to the gods, then to heroes, and then to mere mortals. Music came to the fore instead of subtle rhythmic accompaniment in elegies and iambics.
Terpander (7-6 centuries BC) - originating from the island of Lesbos, lived in Sparta. He is considered the reformer of the liturgical song called nom. Terpandra's nome was performed to the accompaniment of the cithara.
Alcman (7th century BC) - known for his parthenias - songs for a women's choir. There is no expressive facial expressions or fast dancing. They were distinguished by grace. Alcman also wrote hymns to Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Artemis and Aphrodite, as well as love poems. The themes of the lyrics are varied.
Aeolian melos. The lyrics developed subjectively, growing out of feelings and rural naivety of the worldview, although it ends with a colossal tension of personal feelings, including also the depiction of physiological states.
Alcaeus (7th-6th century BC) - composed songs of various genres. Political songs vividly reflect the struggle between the aristocracy and the democratic party. He was expelled from Lesbos. Compares the state to a ship caught in a storm. The description of a variety of brightly shining weapons, the feeling of being on the edge of death, a desperate situation between life and death - this is what catches the eye. Under the influence of the defeats of the aristocracy, the poet calls to forget himself in the pleasures of wine and love, and turns to Sappho with a declaration of love.
Sappho (7-6 centuries BC) – aristocrat; upon returning to Lesbos, she opened a school to teach girls science and music. The main theme is love. A symphony of feelings and sensations. Another main theme is nature, which is also imbued with erotic moods. Love for her is both bitter and sweet. Sappho also wrote hymns, of which the hymn to Aphrodite has been preserved, where she asks the goddess to take pity on her. There is more realism in the hymns. Songs for girlfriends - the theme is living together and working at school, mutual love, hatred and jealousy. Refined sensuality.
Anacreon. The meaning of Anacreon's lyrics in Russian poetry of the 18th-19th centuries. Encomii Ivika. Lyrical triad of Stesichorus.
Anacreon (second half of the 6th century) is Ionian, although he adheres to the Lesbian lyric poetry. Lived at the court of the Samian tyrant Polycrates. It is a symbol of graceful eroticism; it no longer has the seriousness that is characteristic of Sappho or Alcaeus. The works consist mainly of love and drinking songs, elegies, epigrams and hymns. The real glory of this name was created by the forged poems of the Alexandrian era, the so-called anacreontics. If in Anacreon himself Eros retains some serious features, then in Anacreontics he is a playful, entertaining image.
· Historical basis and time of creation of Homeric poems. G. Schliemann and Troy.
· Mythological basis and plot of Homeric poems.
· The concept of an epic hero and images of warriors in the poem.
· Moral issues of Homeric poems.
· The originality of the epic worldview and style.
· The Homeric question and the main theories of the origin of the poems.
Homer is traditionally considered the author of the two epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. Pushkin: “You can only feel Homer.” The authorship of Homer has not been proven, just as his existence has not been proven. He became a legend already in antiquity. Almost all Polis argue about the right to consider themselves his homeland. Epic poetry arose in the 10th century BC, the poetry of Homer - at the turn of the 9th and 8th centuries. These are the first written creations with which European literature began. Most likely, this is not the beginning of a tradition - the author refers to predecessors and even includes excerpts from predecessor poems in the text. "Odyssey" - Demodocus, Thamir the Thracian. Then parodies of Homer’s poems appear - “Batrachomyomachy” - the struggle of frogs and mice.
Antiquity is not characterized by the usual definition of “epic”. "Epic" - "speech, story." It appears as a form of everyday story about an event important for the history of a tribe or clan. Always poetic reproduction. The subject of the image is the history of the people based on mythological perception. The artistic ancient epics are based on majestic heroism. Heroes of epics personify entire nations (Achilles, Odysseus). A hero is always strong with the strength of his people, representing both the best and the worst in his people. The hero of Homer's poems lives in a special world where the concepts “everyone” and “everyone” mean the same thing.
Studying the language of Homer's poems, scientists came to the conclusion that Homer came from an Ionian aristocratic family. The language of the Iliad and Odyssey is an artificial subdialect that has never been spoken in life. Until the 19th century, the prevailing point of view was that the content of both poems was poetic fiction. In the 19th century, they started talking about the reality of events after Troy was discovered by the amateur Heinrich Schliemann (in the last quarter of the 19th century).
Heinrich Schliemann was born in 1822 in Germany into the family of a poor pastor. On his seventh birthday, he received a colorful encyclopedia of myths and after that he declared that he would find Troy. He doesn't get an education. The story of his youth is very stormy: he is hired as a cabin boy on a schooner, the schooner is shipwrecked, Schliemann ends up on a desert island. At the age of 19 he goes to Amsterdam and gets a job there as a petty clerk. Turns out. That he is very receptive to languages, so he soon goes to St. Petersburg and opens his own business - supplying bread to Europe. In 1864, he closed his business and used all the money to open Troy. He goes to places where she could be. The entire scientific world carried out excavations in Bunarbashi in Turkey. But Schliemann relied on Homeric texts, where it was said that the Trojans could go to the sea several times a day. Bunarbashi was too far from the sea. Schliemann found Cape Hisarlik and found out that the real reason for the Trojan War was economics - the Trojans charged too much for passage through the strait. Schliemann carried out the excavations in his own way - he did not excavate layer by layer, but excavated all the layers at once. At the very bottom (layer 3A) he found gold. But he was afraid that his unprofessional workers would plunder him, so he told them to go celebrate, while he and his wife carried the gold into the tent. Most of all, Schliemann wanted to return Greece to its former greatness, and therefore this gold, which he considered the treasure of King Priam. But according to the laws, the treasure belonged to Turkey. Therefore, his wife - Greek Sophia - hid the gold in cabbage and transported it across the border.
Having proved to the whole world that Troy really existed, Schliemann actually destroyed it. Later, scientists proved that the required temporary layer was 7A; Schliemann destroyed this layer while extracting gold. Then Schliemann conducted excavations in Tiryns and dug up the homeland of Hercules. Then excavations in Mycenae, where he found a golden gate, three tombs, which he considered to be the burials of Agamemnon (the golden mask of Agamemnon), Cassandra and Clytemnestra. He was wrong again - these burials belonged to an earlier time. But he proved the existence of an ancient civilization, as he discovered clay tablets with writing. He also wanted to conduct excavations in Crete, but he did not have enough money to buy the hill. The death of Schliemann is absolutely absurd. He was driving home for Christmas, caught a cold, fell in the street, was taken to a poor shelter, where he froze to death. He was buried magnificently; the Greek king himself walked behind the coffin.
Similar clay tablets have been found in Crete. This proves that a very long time ago (12th century BC) there was writing in Crete and Mycenae. Scientists call it “linear pre-Greek pre-alphabetic syllabary,” and there are two varieties: a and b. A cannot be deciphered, B has been deciphered. The tablets were found in 1900 and deciphered after the Second World War. Franz Zittini deciphered 12 syllables. The breakthrough was made by Michael Ventris, an Englishman, who suggested that the basis should be taken not from the Cretan dialect, but from the Greek dialect. So he deciphered almost all the signs. The scientific world was faced with a problem: why did they write in Greek at the time of its heyday in Crete? Schliemann first tried to determine the exact date of the destruction of Troy - 1200 BC. He was only wrong by ten years. Modern scholars have established that it was destroyed between 1195 and 1185 BC.
Two categories of people are considered native speakers of the Homeric language: Aeds and Rhapsodes. Aeds are storytellers, creators of poems, semi-improvisers, they have a high position in society, so they had the right to change something in the poems. Homer mentioned Demodocus and Thamir the Thracian. The art of the Aeds is mysterious, since it is very difficult to remember so much text. The art of the Aeds is clan-based; each clan had its own secrets of memorization. Some families: Gomerids and Creophilides. Most often they were blind, “Homer” means blind. This is another reason why many believe that Homer did not exist. Rhapsodes are only performers; they could not change anything.
In relation to the epic, the concepts of plot and plot are very different. Plot is a natural direct temporal connection of events that constitutes the content of the action of a literary work. The plot of Homer's poems is the Trojan cycle of myths. It is associated with almost all mythology. The plot is local, but the time frame is short. Most of the motivations for the characters' actions are outside the scope of the work. The poem “Cypria” was written about the causes of the Trojan War.
Reasons for the war: Gaia turns to Zeus with a request to clear the earth of some people, since there are too many of them. Zeus is threatened by the fate of his grandfather and father - to be overthrown by his own son from the goddess. Prometheus names the goddess Thetis, so Zeus urgently marries her to the mortal hero Peleus. At the wedding, an apple of discord appears, and Zeus is advised to use Parisa Mom, a malicious adviser.
Troy is otherwise called the kingdom of Dardanus or Ilion. Dardanus is the founder, then Il appears and founds Ilion. Hence the name of Homer's poem. Troy - from Tros. Sometimes Pergamon, after the name of the palace. One of the kings of Troy is Laomedon. Under him, the walls of Troy were built, which cannot be destroyed. This wall was built by Poseidon and Apollo, people laughed at them, Laomedont promised a reward for the work. Aeacus treated the gods well, so he built the Sketian Gate - the only one that can be destroyed. But Laomedont did not pay, the gods became angry and cursed the city, so it is doomed to destruction, despite the fact that it is the favorite city of Zeus. Only Anchises and Aeneas, who are not related to the family of Laomedon, will survive the war.
Helen is the granddaughter of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution. At the age of 12, Theseus kidnapped her. Then everyone wanted to take her as a wife, Odysseus advised Elena’s father to let her choose for herself and take an oath from the suitors to help Elena’s family in case of trouble.
The Iliad covers a short period of time as events. Only 50 days of the last year of the war. This is Achilles' anger and its consequences. This is how the poem begins. The Iliad is a military-heroic epic, where the central place is occupied by the story of events. The main thing is the anger of Achilles. Aristotle wrote that Homer chose the plot brilliantly. Achilles is a special hero; he replaces an entire army. Homer's task is to describe all the heroes and life, but Achilles overshadows them. Therefore, Achilles must be removed. Everything is determined by one event: on the earthly plane, everything is determined by the consequences of the wrath of Achilles, on the heavenly plane - by the will of Zeus. But his will is not all-encompassing. Zeus cannot decide the fate of the Greeks and Trojans. He uses the golden scales of fate - the shares of the Achaeans and Trojans.
Composition: alternation of earthly and heavenly plot lines, which are mixed towards the end. Homer did not break his poem into songs. It was first broken by Alexandrian scientists in the third century BC - for convenience. Each chapter is named after a letter of the Greek alphabet.
What is the reason for Achilles' anger? For 10 years they ruined many surrounding policies. In one city they captured two captives - Chryseis (got to Agamemnon) and Briseis (got to Achilles). The Greeks begin to develop a consciousness of the value of their personality. Homer shows that tribal collectivity is becoming a thing of the past, a new morality begins to form, where the idea of the value of one’s own life comes to the fore.
The poem ends with Hector's funeral, although in essence the fate of Troy has already been decided. In terms of plot (mythological sequence of events), the Odyssey corresponds to the Iliad. But it tells not about military events, but about wanderings. Scientists call it: “an epic poem of wanderings.” In it, the story of a person replaces the story of events. The fate of Odysseus comes to the fore - the glorification of intelligence and willpower. The Odyssey corresponds to the mythology of late heroism. Dedicated to the last forty days of Odysseus’ return to his homeland. That the center is return is evidenced by the very beginning.
Composition: more complex than the Iliad. Events in the Iliad develop progressively and consistently. There are three storylines in the Odyssey: 1) the Olympian gods. But Odysseus has a goal and no one can stop him. Odysseus gets out of everything himself. 2) the return itself is a difficult adventure. 3) Ithaca: two motives: the actual events of the matchmaking and the theme of Telemachus’ search for his father. Some believe that Telemachy is a late insertion.
Basically, this is a description of Odysseus’s wanderings, and in retrospective terms. Events are determined by retrospection: the influence of events from the distant past. For the first time, a female image appears equal to the male one - Penelope, the wise one - the worthy wife of Odysseus. Example: She spins a burial cloth.
The poem is more complex not only in composition, but also from the point of view of the psychological motivation of actions.
"The Iliad" is Leo Tolstoy's favorite work. The meaning of Homer's poems lies in moral values, they present them to us. At this time, ideas about morality were being formed. Relationship with materials. Heroism and patriotism are not the main values that interest Homer. The main thing is the problem of the meaning of human life, the problem of the values of human life. The theme of human duty: to the homeland, to the tribe, to the ancestors, to the dead. Life on a universal scale is represented as an evergreen grove. But death is not a reason for grief - it cannot be avoided, but must be met with dignity. Ideas about human friendship are formed. Odysseus and Diomedes, Achilles and Patroclus. They are all balanced. Problems - what is cowardice? Bravery? Loyalty to home, people, spouse? Faithful wives: Penelope, Andromache.
As mentioned earlier, Homer’s heroes collected the generalized traits of the entire people they represented. The images of warriors were varied. Homer did not yet have an idea of \u200b\u200bcharacter, but, nevertheless, he does not have two identical warriors. It was believed that a person is already born with certain qualities, and nothing can change during his life. This view undergoes a change only in the works of Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle. The amazing moral integrity of Homeric man. They have no reflection or duality - this is in the spirit of Homer's time. Fate is a share. Therefore, there is no doom. The actions of the heroes are not related to divine influence. But there is a law of double motivation of events. How are feelings born? The easiest way to explain this is by divine intervention. Homer's talent: the scene with Achilles and Priam.
Each warrior has the same set of qualities, but the images are unique. Each of the characters expresses one aspect of the national Greek spirit. There are types in the poem: elders, wives, etc. The central place is occupied by the image of Achilles. He is great, but mortal. Homer wanted to depict the poetic apotheosis of heroic Greece. Heroism is Achilles’ conscious choice. Epic Valor of Achilles: Brave, strong, fearless, war cry, fast running. In order for the heroes to be different, the number of different qualities is different - an individual characteristic. Achilles has impulsiveness and immensity. Homer's characteristics: he knows how to compose songs and sings them. The second most powerful warrior is Ajax the Great. He has too much ambition. Achilles is fleet-footed, Ajax is clumsy and slow. The third is Diomedes. The main thing is complete selflessness, which is why Diomedes is granted victory over the gods. Epithets: Achilles and Odysseus have more than 40. In battle, Diomedes does not forget about the economy. The leaders of the campaign are depicted in conflict with epic laws. The authors of the epic write objectively. But Homer has many epithets for his favorite heroes. The Atrides have few epithets. Diomedes reproaches Agamemnon: “Zeus did not give you valor.” A different attitude towards Nestor, Hector and Odysseus. Hector is one of Homer's favorite heroes; he is reasonable and peaceful. Hector and Odysseus do not rely on the gods, so Hector is inherent in fear, but this fear does not affect his actions, since Hector has epic valor, which includes epic shame. He feels responsible to the people he is protecting.
Celebration of wisdom. Elders: Priam and Nestor. Nestor survived three generations of people, thirty years each. New wisdom: the intelligence of Odysseus. This is not experience, but mental flexibility. Odysseus is also distinguished by: all the heroes strive for immortality - it is offered to him twice, but he exchanges it for his homeland.
Homer first gives us the experience of comparative characterization. Song 3 of the Iliad: Helen talks about the heroes. Menelaus and Odysseus are compared.
The image of Helen in the Iliad is demonic. In the Odyssey, she is a housewife. It is not her appearance that is being described. And the elders’ reaction to it. We know very little about her feelings. In "Odyssey" it is different - there is nothing mysterious.
Features of the epic worldview and style.
First, the volume of epic poems is always significant. The volume depends not on the desire of the author, but on the tasks set by the author, which in this case require a large volume. The second feature is versatility. Epic served many functions in ancient society. Entertainment comes last. Epic is a repository of wisdom, an educational function, examples of how to behave. An epic is a repository of information on history, preserving the people’s understanding of history. Scientific functions, since it was in epic poems that scientific information was transmitted: astronomy, geography, crafts, medicine, everyday life. Last but not least is the entertainment function. All this is called epic syncretism.
Homer's poems always tell about the distant past. The Greek was pessimistic about the future. These poems are intended to capture the golden age.
The monumentality of images in epic poems.
The images are elevated above ordinary people, they are almost monuments. They are all loftier, more beautiful, smarter than ordinary people - this is idealization. This is epic monumentality.
Epic materialism is associated with the task of describing everything in full. Homer fixes his attention on the most ordinary things: a stool, carnations. All things must have color. Some believe that back then the world was described in two colors - white and gold. But Wilkelman denied this; he was engaged in architecture. In fact, there are a lot of colors, but the statues are whitened by time. The statues were dressed, painted, decorated - everything was very bright. Even the Titanomachy on the Parthenon was painted. In Homer's poems, everything is colored: the clothes of goddesses, berries. The sea has more than 40 shades of color.
The objectivity of the tone of Homeric poems. The creators of the poems had to be extremely fair. Homer is biased only in epithets. For example, the description of Thersites. Thersites is absolutely devoid of epic valor.
Epic style: three laws.
1) The law of retardation is a deliberate stop of action. Retardation, firstly, helps to expand the scope of your image. Retardation is a digression, an inserted poem. Tells about the past or expounds the views of the Greeks. The poems were performed orally and during retardation the author and performer tries to arouse additional attention to the situation: for example, a description of the rod of Agamemnon, a description of the shield of Achilles (this description shows how the Greeks imagined the universe). Marriage of Odysseus's grandfather. Odysseus always had one heir in his family. Odysseus is angry, experiencing the wrath of the gods.
2) The law of double motivation of events.
3) The law of chronological incompatibility of simultaneous events in time. The author of epic poems is naive; it seems to him that if he depicts two simultaneous events at the same time, it will be unnatural. A striking example: Priam and Helen are talking.
Epic poems abound in repetition. Up to a third of the text is repetition. Several reasons: due to the oral nature of the poems, repetitions are properties of oral folk art, folklore description includes constant formulas, most often these are natural phenomena, equipment of chariots, weapons of the Greeks, Trojans - stencil formulas. Decorating epithets firmly assigned to heroes, objects, gods (hair-eyed Hera, cloud-busting Zeus). The gods, as perfect creatures, deserve the epithet “golden”. Aphrodite is most associated with gold - the aesthetic sphere; for Hera it is sovereignty, power. Zeus turns out to be the darkest. All gods must be smart, omniscient. The Provider is only Zeus, although others too. Athena: intercessor, protector, irresistible, indestructible. Ares: insatiable for war, destroyer of men, stained with blood, breaker of walls. Often epithets are so fused that they contradict the situation: noble suitors in the house of Odysseus. Aegisthus, who kills Agamemnon, is blameless. These are all folklore formulas.
Epic comparisons. Striving for clarity of the image, the poet strives to translate each description into the language of comparison, which develops into an independent picture. All Homer’s comparisons are from the everyday sphere: battles for ships, the Greeks are pushing back the Trojans, the Greeks fought as neighbors for boundaries in neighboring areas. Achilles' rage is compared to threshing, when oxen trample grain.
Homer often uses description and narration through enumeration. He does not describe the picture in its entirety, but strings together episodes - the murder of Diomedes.
A combination of fiction with details of realistic reality. The line between reality and fantasy is blurred: a description of the Cyclops' cave. At first everything is very realistic, but then a terrible monster appears. An illusion of objectivity is created.
The poems are written in hexameter - dactyl hexameter. Moreover, the last foot is truncated. In the middle there is a caesura - a pause that divides the verse into two hemistiches and gives it regularity. All ancient versification is based on a strictly ordered alternation of long and short syllables, and the quantitative ratio of stressed and unstressed syllables is 2:1, but the stress is not forceful, but musical, based on raising and lowering the tone.
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The epic as a literary genre goes back to the folk epic song (see p. 55). Tales of the Trojan War, which apparently took place in the 13th-12th centuries. BC e., took shape over several centuries and were put into artistic form by the Aeds; historical facts have acquired a generalized and exaggerated character; elements of mythology were mixed into them. This is how two great epic poems arose: the military-heroic “Iliad” (the song about Ilion - Troy) and the fabulously everyday “Odyssey”, which tells the story of the return of Odysseus, one of the heroes of the war, to his homeland. Their final edition is attributed to one of the Aeds, whom tradition calls Homer. The historically typical image of a wandering singer is intertwined in the legend preserved for us by ancient authors with all sorts of fantastic inventions. This indicates the absence of any reliable information about Homer already in ancient times. According to the testimony of the ancients, seven cities argued for the honor of being called the birthplace of Homer: Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodes, Argos and Athens. Sometimes other cities were named, since the couplet in which they were listed had several variants. Sources only agree that the poet died on the island of Ios. The interpretation of the name Homer already occupied the ancients. It was considered a common noun meaning “blind.” Later researchers interpreted this name in different ways: they saw in it an indication of a closely knit class of singers, and the name of an ancient Thracian singer, and simply the poet’s own name. Homeric question. The absence of any information about the personality of Homer, as well as the presence in the poems of contradictions, stylistic inconsistencies and plot inconsistencies gave rise to the “Homeric question”, i.e. a set of problems associated with the study of the Iliad and Odyssey, and primarily with the authorship of these poems. Already in 1664, the French abbot d'Aubignac expressed the idea that the Iliad was composed of individual epic songs about the siege of Troy and was not a single work of one author. In the 18th century, when classicism was replaced by the romantic trend in literature, the awakening interest in folk poetry and the past led to the fact that in the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” they began to see works created by peoples in ancient times, and in the name of Homer - collective, general name of the author of Greek epic literature. At the end of the 18th century. this idea was supported by the German scientist F.A. Wolf; in his book “Introduction to Homer,” published in 1795, we find a truly scientific formulation of the question, which marked the beginning of a systematic study of the Homeric epic. Wolf considered the Iliad to be a collection of various songs composed at different times by numerous poets, among whom Homer was the most famous. He argued his opinion mainly by the lack of writing in Homeric times and numerous contradictions in the text of the poems. The first argument is not entirely convincing, since from the 8th century. BC e. writing gradually comes into use, the second remains in force to the present day. Indeed, there are contradictions and compositional inconsistencies in the poems. Thus, in Book V of the Iliad, Diomedes wounds Aphrodite and Ares, and in Book VI he says: I never dared to fight the deities of Olympus.10 (Il., Book VI, Art. 129). Book III of the Odyssey tells how Telemachus and Athena, who accompanied him in the guise of a Mentor, come to Pylos and see many people gathered for a sacrifice. Soon, however, it turns out that in front of them is just Nestor’s family. Examples of compositional inconsistencies include the following. In Book III of the Iliad, Helen, the culprit of the war, rises with the Trojan king Priam to the city wall and shows him the famous Achaean (Greek) heroes who have been fighting at Troy for a long time and are undoubtedly known to Priam since the beginning of the war. The duel between Paris and Menelaus, sung in Book III of the Iliad, should obviously have taken place at the beginning of the war, and not at the end of it. Book VII tells about the construction of a wall by the Achaeans, which was supposed to protect their ships from attack. It is obvious that the Greeks had to build this wall, if not immediately upon arrival under the walls of Troy, then, in any case, not in the tenth year of the war. Thus, although the Iliad tells the story of the events of the 10th year of the war, a number of the episodes described in it, according to the logic of things, should have happened earlier. Song X of the Iliad tells the story of the night raid of Odysseus and Diomedes, who penetrated the enemy camp. This scene is completely unrelated to the overall plot; The unity of the poem would not only not have suffered, but would probably have benefited if this episode had been removed from the text. This kind of chronological inconsistency, the introduction of motifs that could have been dispensed with, made it possible to think that the Iliad is not a work not only of one or two poets, but also of individual creativity in general. In the discussion that flared up on the Homeric issue, two main hypotheses emerged: analytical, that is, dividing the epic into separate independent works, and unitary, defending the unity of the poems. F.A. Wolf adhered to the analytical theory. Unitarians highlight the moments of unity and artistic integrity, and the particular contradictions of the poems are declared, on the one hand, by later insertions, distortions, and on the other, by the oral nature of the poet’s work: performing the songs of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey” many times, the Aeds, naturally, could make additions and vary their story. For example, in the episode with the delegation sent by Agamemnon to Achilles, not the plural, but the dual number is used. This indicates that in the original version of the text there were two messengers, and the third person - old Phoenix - appeared later: the poet needed the old man in order to introduce an element of edification into the speeches of the delegation - he tells Achilles a similar incident that happened to him in the days his youth ended badly. The idea of introducing Phoenix's speech into the text could have come to the poet during the next performance of the Iliad. Unitarians explain some chronological inconsistencies by the poet’s artistic goals. For example, the fact that Helen shows Priam the heroes of the Achaeans is caused by the poet’s desire to introduce his audience to them: after all, the poem does not contain a story about the beginning of the war, and the author is forced to talk about the heroes, describing the events of the 10th year of the war, i.e. a time when Priam* undoubtedly knew them. In addition to the analytic and unitary theories, there were various compromise theories. For example, supporters of the “core core” theory assumed that the original text gradually acquired additions and insertions made by different poets; not one, but three or four poets participated in the composition of the epic, hence the first, second, third editions, etc. Representatives of another theory saw in Homer’s poems a unification of several “small epics.” For example, Adolf Kirchhoff believed that there are four independent narratives in the Odyssey: the journey of Odysseus before he came to Calypso; journey from Calypso Island to Ithaca; journey of Telemachus; Odysseus's return to his homeland (arrival in the guise of a beggar and reprisal against the suitors). There are other points of view about the origin of the Iliad and Odyssey, but all of them in one way or another come down to the question of the relationship between the personal and collective creativity of the authors of the Homeric epic. Most modern researchers, and in particular the Soviet scientist I.M. Tronsky, the author of a fundamental work on the history of ancient literature, adhere to the unitary theory. Nevertheless, the specific history of the formation of the Homeric epic is a question that has not yet been resolved. Whether the final treatment of both poems belongs to the same author or different - in both cases it must be assumed that the Iliad was composed before the Odyssey, as evidenced by the picture of material culture and social relations depicted in these works; The later origin of the Odyssey is indicated by the more complex composition of this poem, as well as the glorification of the resourcefulness of the mind in this poem and the interest in foreign countries manifested in it, characteristic of a society that had entered the phase of trading relations. Time and place of creation of the Iliad and Odyssey. Cicero, Pausanias and other ancient authors brought to us information about the scientific commission created by the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, which worked on the work of Homer and arranged the disparate parts of the Iliad and Odyssey in the right order. This indicates the existence of a recording of Homeric poems in the 6th century. BC e. and means that the completion of the poems dates back to the VIII-VII centuries. BC e. An analysis of social relations and material culture reflected in the poems leads scientists to the conclusion that this is unlikely to have happened earlier. Homeric society is a pre-class society, people live in tribal associations. At the head of the tribes are “kings” - clan elders who were military leaders, priests and judges, but their power was limited: already in the first book of the Iliad it is said that the issue of handing over Chryseis to her father was decided by the people’s assembly. And although Agamemnon is dissatisfied with his decision, he still has to obey him. The lifestyle of the kings is quite democratic, they behave like ordinary people, they are not afraid to criticize them. In the XIX book of the Iliad, Odysseus says: You, mighty Agamemnon, go ahead and be more just to another Achaean: there is no humiliation for the ruler "Seek reconciliation with your husband, whom he himself insulted. (Il., book XIX, art. 182-184 The words of Agamemnon himself testify to the democratic way of thinking of the kings: No, do not look at the race, even if it were the most powerful (Il., book X, art. 239). is on the verge of decomposition and transition to a slave system: there is already property and social inequality, a division into “the best” and “the worst”; slavery already exists, which, however, retains a patriarchal character: slaves are mainly shepherds and domestic servants, among whom are domestic servants. there are the privileged: such is Eurycleia, the nurse of Odysseus; such is the shepherd Eumaeus, who acts quite independently, rather as a friend of Odysseus than as his slave. Trade already exists in this society, although it occupies a very small place in the thoughts of the author. Greek society VIII-VII centuries. BC e., on the verge of transition to a slave system. The material culture described in the Iliad and Odyssey convinces us of the same thing: the author is well acquainted with the use of iron, although, striving for archaization (especially in the Iliad), he points to the bronze weapons of warriors. The poems are written mainly in the Ionian dialect, with an admixture of Aeolian forms. This means that the place of their creation was Ionia - the islands of the Aegean Sea or Asia Minor. The absence of mentions in the poems about the cities of Asia Minor testifies to the archaic aspirations of the poet glorifying ancient Troy. Composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey. The content of the Iliad and Odyssey is based on legends from the cycle of myths about the Trojan War, which apparently actually took place in the 13th-12th centuries. BC e. (see pp. 51-53). The Iliad, a military-heroic poem, tells the story of the events of the 10th year of the war, caused by a quarrel between the bravest of the participants in the campaign, Achilles, king of Fthya, and the leader of the army, Agamemnon, who took his captive Briseis from Achilles. Insulted, Achilles refused to take part in the battles and returned to the army only after the death of his best friend Patroclus. Avenging the death of his friend, he entered into a duel with the leader of the Trojan army, Hector, who was responsible for the death of Patroclus, and killed him. "Odyssey" is a fairy-tale poem. It tells about the events that took place after the end of the war, about the return to the homeland of one of the Greek military leaders, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and about his many misadventures. In the Iliad, stories about the actions of people on earth alternate with scenes on Olympus, where the gods, divided into two parties, decide the fate of individual battles (since the final outcome of the war has long been predetermined). In this case, events occurring simultaneously are presented as occurring sequentially, one after another (the so-called law of chronological incompatibility). The plot of the action of the Iliad is the anger of Achilles; the events described in the poem are caused by this anger, and the entire plot is a sequential presentation of the phases of Achilles’ anger, although there are deviations from the main plot line and inserted episodes. The climax of the plot is the duel between Achilles and Hector; The denouement is Achilles returning to Priam the body of Hector, whom he killed. The composition of the Iliad is distinguished by some symmetry in accordance with the moral principles of the poet. At the beginning of the action, the old man Chris turns to Agamemnon with a request to return his captive daughter to him and receives an arrogant refusal, clearly condemned by the author. This refusal entailed the wrath of Achilles and many bloody events that took place near the walls of Troy. At the end of the poem, another old man, Priam, comes to Achilles with a request to return Hector’s body to him and is not refused - this is an act worthy of the hero of a humane poet. The Odyssey is more complex in composition than the Iliad: the 24 books of the Odyssey fall symmetrically into four parts: the first - Odysseus leaves the island of Calypso, wanders the sea and reaches the country of the Phaeacians; the second is Odysseus in the land of the Phaeacians; third - Odysseus in his homeland; fourth - Odysseus in his house. But the most remarkable thing in the structure of the Odyssey is the first method of transposition in world literature - a presentation of past events in the form of Odysseus's story. It is noteworthy that the stories about monsters and fantastic events are concentrated in the story of Odysseus himself; the author, striving to rationalize the myth, does not seem to participate in this distortion of reality. (Homer’s humanism. One of the reasons for the immortality of Homer’s epic is humanism, manifested in the glorification of life and man with his high moral qualities. First of all, Homer glorified man’s courage, valor, love of country, loyalty in friendship, wisdom in advice, respect for old age and etc. Although all these qualities are understood differently at different times, in different social conditions, given in a generalized form, they turn out to be consonant with all eras and all peoples. The main character of the Iliad, Achilles, is proud, terrible in his anger; personal resentment forced him to neglect his duty and refuse to participate in battles; nevertheless, he has moral concepts that ultimately force him to atone for his guilt before the army; his anger, which forms the core of the plot of the Iliad, is resolved by magnanimity. the Achaean army, unjustly offended by Agamemnon. But the Achaeans find themselves in a difficult situation, they need the help of Achilles, and Agamemnon sends his people to him with a request to return and a promise to atone for the insult inflicted on him. Achilles refuses to return - this is psychologically wrong: the pride inherent in Achilles prevents him from doing this. But a sense of duty, a sense of patriotism does not allow him to come to terms with the defeat of the Achaeans, and he gives the armor to his friend Patroclus so that he can drive the Trojan army away from the Greek ships. When Patroclus dies, Achilles forgets about his anger: his love for his friend turns out to be stronger than his pride. He feels double guilt: violation of duty to the army and guilt for the death of Patroclus. Now he cannot help but return, just as he could not return before. He rushes into battle with tenfold force, puts the Trojans to flight, kills the Trojan commander Hector and desecrates his body, avenging the death of his friend: his cruelty is justified by feelings of anger and grief. But when old Priam, an unhappy father who has lost his son, comes to him and asks to give him Hector’s body for burial, Achilles’ heart softens. He is touched by the elder’s position, his courage (after all, Priam came unarmed to the enemy camp), and his anger is resolved by generosity. Agamemnon's gifts and repentance do not soften him, but the old man's tears do; this celebration of the hero’s humanity is one of the manifestations of Homer’s humanism. The life-affirming mood of the poems is sometimes overshadowed by mournful thoughts about the brevity of life. Thinking about the inevitability of death, Homeric heroes strive to leave a glorious memory of themselves. Achilles says: Likewise, if I have been assigned an equal share, I will lie down where I am destined; but first I will achieve shining glory! (Ill., book XVIII, art. 120-121). The poem glorifies military valor, but the author does not at all approve of war, which leads to the worst of evils - death. This is evidenced both by individual remarks of the author and his heroes, and by obvious sympathy for Hector and other defenders of Troy, who are the suffering side in this war. This is what Zeus says to his son Ares: You, most hated by me among the gods who inhabit the sky! There is only one strife, abuse and murder are only pleasant to you! (Ill., book V, art. 890-891). In the X book of the Iliad, Nestor teaches Diomedes: He is lawless, rootless, a homeless wanderer in the world, who loves internecine warfare, terrible among people! (Ill., book X, art. 63, 64). Odysseus, persuading the soldiers to forget about home and continue the war, speaks of the necessity of such behavior, of the need for war as a painful mission: War is painful, and it is joyful for the sad to return to home. (Ill., book II, art. 291). The author's sympathies belong to the waves of both warring countries, but the aggressiveness and predatory aspirations of the Greeks cause his condemnation. In Book II of the Iliad, the poet puts into the mouth of the warrior Thersites speeches condemning the greed of the military leaders. Although the description of Thersites’ appearance indicates the author’s desire to express his condemnation of his speeches, these speeches are convincing and essentially have not been refuted by anyone, so we can assume that they are in tune with the poet’s thoughts. It should not be forgotten that Aed was forced to take into account the interests of aristocratic circles, which could not approve of Thersites’ speech, for “he always sought to insult kings, despising decency.” But condemnation of the war sounds not only from the lips of this seemingly negative character. The valiant Achilles himself, preparing to return to the army to avenge Patroclus, says: Oh, let the enmity from the gods and from mortals perish, and with it the hateful Wrath, which drives even the wise into frenzy! (Ill., book XVIII, art. 107, 108). It is obvious that if the glorification of war and revenge had been the poet's goal, Achilles' anger would have been resolved by the murder of Hector, and this would have ended the action, as it was in one of the cyclical poems (see. With. 67). But for Homer, what is important is not the triumph of Achilles’ victory, but the moral resolution of his anger. Life, as imagined by Homeric heroes, is so attractive that Achilles, met by Odysseus in the kingdom of the dead, says that he would prefer the hard life of a day laborer to reigning over the souls of the dead in the underworld. At the same time, when it is necessary to act in the name of the glory of the homeland or for the sake of loved ones, Homer’s heroes despise death. Realizing that he was wrong in avoiding military action, Achilles says: Idle, I sit before the courts, the earth is a useless burden. (Ill., book XVIII, art. 104). Homer's humanism, compassion for human grief, admiration for the inner beauty of man, his courage, loyalty to patriotic duty and mutual affection reaches its clearest expression in the scene of Hector's farewell to Andromache (Iliad, book VI, art. 390-496). Artistic features of the Homeric epic. The images of Homer's heroes are static, that is, their characters are illuminated somewhat one-sidedly and remain unchanged from the beginning to the end of the action of the poem, although each character has his own face, different from the others: in Odysseus the resourcefulness of the mind is emphasized, in Agamemnon - arrogance and lust for power, in Paris - pampering, in Helen - beauty, in Penelope - the wisdom and constancy of a wife, in Hector - the courage of the defender of his city and the mood of doom, since he must perish, like his father, and his son, and Troy itself. The one-sidedness in the depiction of heroes is due to the fact that most of them appear before us only in one situation - in battle, where all the traits of their characters cannot appear. Some exception is Achilles, since he is shown in a relationship with a friend, and in a battle with an enemy, and in a quarrel with Agamemnon, and in a conversation with the elder Priam, and in other situations. As for the development of character, it is not yet available to Homer and the literature of the pre-classical period; We find attempts at such an image only at the end of the 5th century. BC e., in the tragedies of Euripides. The poet is also inexperienced in depicting the psychology of his heroes, their inner world. We learn about all the internal impulses of these people from their behavior, from their words; In addition, to depict the movements of the soul, the poet uses a very unique technique: the intervention of the gods. For example, in the first book of the Iliad, when Achilles, unable to bear the insult, takes out his sword to attack Agamemnon, someone suddenly grabs him by the hair from behind. Looking back, he sees Athena, the patroness of the Greeks, who does not allow murder. Another example. Aphrodite took Paris away from the battlefield and ordered Helen, who had climbed the city wall, to return home. Elena is indignant at her husband, believing that he fled from the battlefield and refuses to return to the coward. But the goddess of love threatens her, and Helen submits. Usually, the intervention of the gods provides the motivation for a conscious decision that replaces an instant impulse. The lack of psychological characteristics of the heroes is partly explained by the tasks of the genre: an epic, which is based on folk art, usually tells about events, about the affairs of some group, and is of little interest to an individual person. Psychological analysis is a phenomenon associated with the analysis of an individual’s character. Homer’s gods are anthropomorphic: they have all human weaknesses and even vices that are not characteristic of the heroes of the Iliad, differing from people only in immortality and power (and even then relative, since heroes in battles sometimes injure the gods) - Homer’s Olympus is basically built according to model of human society during the period of the tribal system. The stylistic means used by the poet testify to the organic connection of the Homeric epic with its folklore origins; in terms of the abundance of epithets, Homer's poems can only be compared with works of folk art, where most of the nouns are accompanied by definitions. Achilles alone in the Iliad is endowed with 46 epithets. Among the epithets of the Iliad and the Odyssey there are a large number of “constant” ones, that is, intended for any one hero or object. This is also a folklore trait. In Russian epics, for example, the sea is always blue, the hands are white, the fellow is kind, the girl is red. In Homer, the sea is noisy, Zeus is the cloud suppressor, Poseidon is the shaker of the earth, Apollo is silver-bowed, the maidens are slender-ankled, Achilles is most often fleet-footed, Odysseus is cunning, Hector is helmet-shining, etc. II. The detail and detailed descriptions characteristic of the Homeric epic are especially clearly manifested in such a frequently used poetic device as comparison: Homeric comparisons are so developed that they sometimes turn into independent stories, as if divorced from the main narrative. In this case, the material for comparison is most often natural phenomena: flora and fauna, wind, rain, snow, etc. He rushed like a city-dwelling lion, hungry for a long time for Meat and blood, which, with a courageous soul, wants to kill the sheep, in their enclosure is fenced to break into; And, although he finds rural shepherds in front of the fence, guarding their flock with vigorous dogs and spears, He, having not experienced it before, does not think of escaping from the fence; Sneaking into the yard, he kidnaps the sheep, or he himself falls under the blow first, pierced by a spear from the mighty hand. This is how the soul of Sarpedon, like a god, directed. (Ill., book XII, art. 299-307). The Homeric epic of hyperbole is related to folklore: in the XII book of the Iliad, Hector, attacking the gate, throws a stone at it that two of the strongest men would hardly lift with levers. The voice of Achilles, running to rescue the body of Patroclus, sounds like a copper trumpet, etc. The so-called epic repetitions also testify to the folk song origin of the poems: individual verses are repeated in full or with slight deviations, and such verses in the Iliad and Odyssey there are 9253; thus, they constitute a third part of the entire epic. Repetitions are widely used in oral folk art because they make it easier for the singer to improvise. At the same time, repetitions are moments of rest and relaxation for listeners. Repetitions also make it easier to hear what you hear. For example, a verse from the “Odyssey”: A young woman with purple fingers rose from the darkness (translated by V. A. Zhukovsky) switched the attention of the poet’s audience to the events of the next day, as it meant that morning had come. The above quotes can also give an idea of the sound of hexameter - the poetic size of the epic, giving a somewhat elevated, solemn style to the narrative. In Russia, interest in Homer began to manifest itself simultaneously with the assimilation of Byzantine culture and especially increased in the 18th century, during the era of Russian classicism. The first translations of Homer into Russian appeared during the time of Catherine II: these were either prose translations or poetic translations, but not hexametric ones. In 1811, the first six books of the Iliad were published, translated by E. Kostrov in Alexandrian verse, which was considered an obligatory form of epic in the poetics of French classicism, which dominated Russian literature at that time. A complete translation of the Iliad in original size was made by N. I. Gnedich (1829), and the “Odyssey” by V. A. Zhukovsky (1849). Gnedich managed to convey both the heroic character of Homer’s narrative and his humor, but Gnedich’s translation is replete with Slavicisms, so that by the end of the 19th century. it began to seem *too archaic. Therefore, experiments in translating the Iliad were resumed; in 1896 a new translation of this poem was published by N. I. Minsky based on the contemporary Russian language, and in 1949 a translation by V. V. Veresaev in an even more simplified version was published. The inaccuracies made by Zhukovsky in the translation of the Odyssey prompted P. A. Shuisky and V. V. Veresaev to make new translations of this poem, the first appeared in print in 1948, the second in 1953. However, Zhukovsky’s translation of the Odyssey is still considered the best artistically. A detailed presentation of the history of the experiments in translating Homer into Russian and their analysis are given in the book by A. N. Egunov “Homer in Russian translations of the 18th-19th centuries.” (L., 1964).
