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Homer, the Author- 750
BC
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We know almost nothing
for sure about the storyteller who is given credit for composing the
earliest and greatest works in Western Literature. Tradition tells us he
lived somewhere around 750 BC, was from the island of Chios off the west
coast of what is now Turkey and was an old blind man who wandered the
countryside reciting his two great epic poems The Iliad and
The Odyssey. We call
him Homer, though that may have been a pseudonym, or the equivalent of a
stage name, or it may have been a title for a poet who performed in a
certain style. We are not
even sure that the composer of these works is one man or many. We are forced therefore
to make a number of guesses based on evidence from within the text of
his two great works. First,
there is a unity of style in each of the works that suggests single
authorship and the differences in style between the works is no more
than one might expect from different ages in a man’s life.
If we assume the works are created by one man more assumptions
can follow. Such as, he
must have been trained as a youth to be a storyteller. Judging from Homer’s
works a storyteller needed a thorough knowledge of the stories of the
gods, and the heroes that made up the aggregation of classic Greek
stories. He needed to be
trained to improvise poetry as he told his story so he could maintain
the rhythms of the epic poet. He
needed to be trained to memorize the names and identities of the many
characters in a story. He
needed to be trained to break a story down into its themes and typical
scenes in order to be able to create a structure he could follow as he
told his story. Storytellers in
Homer’s time occupied a very important place in their society.
Not only were they the primary source of entertainment, (There
was also music, dancing and singing and games but storytellers were the
main attraction.) But they
were also the keepers of the History, Theology, Knowledge, Culture and
Language of the peoples of the islands of the Aegean Sea and the lands
surrounding it. In a world
without writing they were the glue that held the Greek speaking peoples
together. We believe most of the
stories the storytellers sang were traditional stories.
Stories handed down from storyteller to storyteller, from
generation to generation for hundreds of years, in some cases maybe more
than a thousand years. Stories
of heroes and gods, of magic and monsters and there was usually,
somewhere in the story a beautiful princess who fell in love.
Stories like “The Labors of Hercules”, “Jason and Medea”,
“Perseus and the Medusa”, “Oedipus” and the stories of the
Trojan War. One of the stories from
the cycle of Trojan War stories was a story called “The Wrath of
Achilles”. The events
within this story so closely parallel the events in Homer’s “The
Iliad” that one can safely assume Homer used it as inspiration.
But Homer wanted to do more with his story than just tell another
story of heroes and gods, magic and monsters and the love of a beautiful
princess. He wanted his
story to be about the nature of man, about what man is. (Or was back
when heroes and gods walked the earth together.) He wanted to explore a
whole universe of human experience.
The experience of man and woman under the stress of war that
brings out the best and worst that is in them. To do this he needed a
new way of telling a story. He
needed a way, which would more deeply display the ambitions and emotions
of man. He either invented
or used more effectively than ever before the story telling devise of
telling a story with dialogue. That
is, Homer gives the characters in his story long speeches which are
answered with long speeches from other characters and these speeches
clash against each other with great dramatic effect.
But, more importantly,
Homer is speaking his story he is not writing it, so these speeches are
not reported to the audience by Homer.
Homer does not quote what the character is saying.
He becomes the character who is speaking.
He takes on the voice of the character, he speaks with the
passion and purpose of the character. What this method of
story telling does is it opens a window for the audience to see deep
into the heart and soul of the character in a way that is not possible
otherwise. Homer does not
need to attempt to describe the anger of Achilles, he becomes Achilles
and the audience can see and feel the anger for themselves.
They can see and feel the joy when a loved one returns home safe
from the war, or the heartbreak when he does not.
They can see, as Homer becomes the character, behind the words
the character speaks, just as they can when observing real people.
They can see the virtue and attractiveness of a character for
themselves (or lack of it). They
do not need to be told by Homer who is the good guy and who is the bad. This revolutionary way
of telling a story together with an awesome understanding of human
nature together with an amazing ability to construct a story and to lead
an audience from scene to scene made the works of Homer in his own day,
and for hundreds of years after to be considered the greatest story
teller of them all. From the glory days of the Hellenic empire till today Greek children have learned the language and rhythms of poetry by reciting Homer. They learned the use of language by transcribing The Iliad or The Odyssey. They learned the virtues of bravery, honor and glory and the vices of cowardliness and veniality by reading Homer. No other author outside of those in the Bible has had a great an effect of the shape of Western Culture as this one storyteller of 2,700 years ago.
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