On the Nature of Poetry: An Appraisal and Investigation of the Art Which for 4000 Years Has Distilled the Spoken Thoughts of Mankind

By Kenneth Verity

The entire history of Western poetry is surveyed in this study, from the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern period. Two hundred poems extracts are included, and 10 poets are covered in depth, with critical appraisals of their lives and work. Problems of translation in poetry are carefully considered, and the book provides a working definition of poetry, calling it a form of expression human beings turn to when they need to say something important in a memorable way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers
• Release date: Jun 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9780856833816

Book preview

Authors

Author’s Preface

THE INTENTION in this book is to examine and analyse the essential nature of the phenomenon we call poetry; to seek an understanding of the power this art form exerts over mind and heart; to comprehend its potency; and to explain its perennial ability to command the respect of mankind. This examination will not attempt to explain away the inhering mystery nor allow aesthetic quality to be diminished by the process of literary analysis. I believe that sensitive observation may render the veils of poetry transparent without assailing its eternal supremacy in the Arts. The poetic Muse was, is, and will remain, foremost among the nine.

The sheer scale of the subject necessitates a certain compression in presentation. Since all major extant poetry is freely accessible, and to alleviate constraints of space I have used as examples representative extracts rather than complete poems. In quoting fragments of poetry, often tantalizingly brief, the expectation is that their power cumulatively, will convey an impression of poetry as a whole.

Gestalt, the German word meaning ‘form’, ‘pattern’, ‘configuration’, connotes the integration of a series of detailed perceptions into a complete experience or meaningful wholeness – an entity which is more than the sum of its parts. This book arose out of the certain knowledge that such a gestalt must exist as an emanation from poetry itself and that answers to questions about poetry lie within poetry. In these pages poets speak for themselves: poetry is its own voice. Where deductions are made or inferences drawn, they often stem from the poetry itself or from the actions and statements of poets.

The principal ideas constituting the foundation and coherence of art, music, and literature are also found in poetry. But poetry, more often than other forms of art, has been a vehicle for inspiration, in the sense that it surpasses old ways of seeing, hearing, thinking, and reacting. Poetry continues to be pre-eminent in evaluating and articulating the riches of the human spirit.

Just as in painting and sculpture, there is fine and gross, successful and unsuccessful, so it is with poetry. Since appreciation of any form of art arises in the mind and breast of the beholder, general taste and preference are subject to change. Nevertheless, the works of master poets have enjoyed a consistently high evaluation and have transcended cultural boundaries. If we examine the structure and development of poetry, its mysterious essential ‘quality’, though difficult to define, gradually declares itself. The flow and turn of the lines draw the perceptive reader unerringly towards the essential meaning behind the spoken word, to the silence beyond sound. The best verse exemplifies the principle, ‘Less is more’. Where there is understatement or omission, it is the more significant for having occurred in the context of poetry. Poetry formulates truth without recourse to religion or philosophy. To say it ‘awakens the soul’ is another description of its power to remind us that our innate knowledge is more trustworthy than any imposed external dogma or received morality. Poetry ‘works’ because it acknowledges the universality of human psychology; it unites emotion with reason and tempers imagination with understanding. In the work of the master poets, individuality is usually presented in the context of universality. For expressing spiritual freedom, beauty and love, poetry is the perfect vehicle. As an art form it is of its time but timeless: it is now, but it expresses eternity.

The work of certain writers reveals competence of such a high order that during the qualitative survey in this volume, ten poets seem naturally to have merited the description master poet. The master poet is a gentle guide who leads us by an extension of our own understanding; who by his ‘absence of ego’ reveals the manifest presence of the ‘universal Self’. In his hands poetry is a direct pointing to reality. Shakespeare wrote:

And, since you know you cannot see yourself

So well as by reflection, I, your glass,

Will modestly discover to yourself

That of yourself which you yet know not of.

Julius Caesar, Act I, Scene ii

The essential self is manifested at the expense of the personality and, as though to demonstrate this, Shakespeare seems almost transparent. As the subjective shadow cast by individuality diminishes, the objective reality is accorded more of its own radiance. Master poets cast no shadow; they do not stand in the light.

Introduction

Maturing as a poet means maturing as the whole man.

W.B. Yeats

THE FINEST POETRY is consonant with wisdom, and by means of this universal language the poet speaks for the human race. With characteristic certitude Emerson defined the role of the poet: ‘He stands among partial men for the complete man.’ Poetry, like language, develops with the civilization from which it springs and of which it is a central part. Embodied in poetry is the influence of each successive culture from which it drew its inspiration and to which it gave expression. The unbroken stream of poetry carries resonances of the growth and decay of civilizations, the vicissitudes of wars, the effects of migrations and trading, the influences of religious belief. It expresses the aspirations and disappointments of the human race. As an art form, the phenomenon of poetry has developed in concert with the progress of mankind and, in early societies, we see the beginnings of poetry.

The remains of the earliest human beings, unearthed in Java, China and elsewhere, are thought to be at least half a million years old. Although Palaeolithic cave art demonstrates the superb skills of the early artists who decorated the walls of their rock shelters and caves, the culture had not yet invented writing. The span of time from that remote era to about 5000 BC is, therefore, usually referred to as prehistoric, or preliterate.

Early Civilization

Poetry had its beginnings in the East with four gifted races, each with a distinguished culture, who flourished more than 4,000 years ago. The Hamitic people founded an empire in Egypt under great dynasties of kings; accounts of their deeds have come down to us in hieroglyphic inscriptions. The Semitic race which conquered Chaldea, uniting Sumer and Akkad, left records of their civilization on tablets of cuneiform inscriptions. The Turanian race founded a vast kingdom in China, where they evolved a sophisticated system of art, and a highly articulate literature. The Aryans were a pastoral expansionist people who flourished in India, with a fully developed language and a tradition of highly talented bards. (see Chapter 11 – India, p.235).

It was along the banks of rivers that the first civilizations were found: Mesopotamia straddled the Tigris and the Euphrates; Egypt stretched along the Nile; India arose along the Indus and the Ganges; and China expanded eastwards from the region of the Wei and the Hwang Ho.

The lower areas of land enclosed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – in what is now Iraq – were known in ancient times both as Babylonia and Mesopotamia (from the Greek, meaning ‘between rivers’). The delta of this river system was called Sumer.

If the skill of writing and the advent of the city reveal the emergence of civilization, then the people of Sumer deserve the credit for having created the first civilization in world history. It was the Sumerians, speaking a non-Semitic language, who are credited with evolving the cuneiform system of writing and the earliest significant poetry. They are also considered to have invented wheeled vehicles and the plough. Writing leaves a record of poetry enabling later generations to appreciate both the extant poems and their preceding oral tradition.

The discovery in Egypt of cylinder seals similar in shape to those used in Sumer attests to contact between these two areas towards the end of the fourth millennium BC. There is a strong possibility that the Mesopotamian and Egyptian systems of writing were related.

The Beginnings of Western Culture

With a clear indebtedness to the Egyptians and Mesopotamians, the inhabitants of Crete, Troy, and Mycenae created a wealthy, sophisticated commercial culture. But in 1250 BC the Mycenaeans went to war against the Trojans, their power collapsed and the Aegean World was plunged into the so-called Dark Age. Then, around the 10th century BC a historic change occurred in this region; the Bronze Age gave way to the Iron Age throughout the Mediterranean area. In what we now call Greece, a culture arose which was to form the foundation of Western Civilization. By the 5th century BC, its accomplishments were such that subsequently this period has been regarded as one of the great eras of human achievement. Significantly, at this time in India, Buddhism was developing into a major spiritual and cultural force.

Poetry in Ancient Greece

During the first 300 years of the Iron Age, the epic poems known as the Iliad and the Odyssey were composed. Because these works deal with heroic themes, the early Iron Age has also been called the Heroic Age. As the years passed, Greek myth and religion became a mixture of folk-tales, primitive customs and traditional rituals that arose during the Heroic Age but, at the time, had not been structured into a coherent system. This task was undertaken by the poet Hesiod. The Greek people had always turned to their deities for explanations of natural phenomena and for an understanding of those psychological characteristics that they had come to recognize as part of themselves. But questions of social morality required human rather than divine solutions. For this, the Greeks looked to art and literature, rather than to prayer, for guidance and instruction. Within this context, the vast scale of the poet’s work is succinctly expressed in the celebrated remark: ‘Homer gave the Greeks their heroes; Hesiod their gods.’ It seems clear that, by quality of imagination and nobility of purpose, these men of genius defined the identity of a civilization. Their influence on ancient literature (prose as well as poetry) was persistent and profound. Epics by bardic poets depicted the exploits of warriors and heroes in long poems embodying a blend of history and legend. In the Heroic Age, especially in times of war, these poets helped to cultivate a sense of tribal identity and national pride; in periods of peace they extolled the virtues of farming and artisan craftsmanship.

The history of humanity is graced by the presence of the Greeks, the first people to be conscious of man’s powers and his potential. They confronted the old world with reason and were aware of the ever-present mysterious and ineffable. We who are their descendants exult in their ascendancy and are mindful of our debt to them.

European Poetry and its Perspective

Centuries later, poetry in Europe during the Middle Ages reflects a turn away from activity in the outer physical world to an inner realm of dream, vision, and speculation. The visionary poet, writing in allegory (see Glossary), deals with the origins and ends of things and with punishments and rewards. Divine intervention and displeasure are no longer wreaking havoc and indulgence of whim upon hapless victims of ‘Fate’. With the development of Christianity, men are held to be responsible for their sinful behaviour and they develop a sense of guilt. Rewards and punishments are set out like a tariff in allegorical descriptions which chart the journey of the soul.

Humanism Enters Poetry

With the Renaissance, poetry expresses and celebrates the arrival and development of humanism (see Glossary). This leads later to an exploration of human psychology, so ably presented by Shakespeare in his sonnets and his use of soliloquy in the great plays. From this important precursor, there developed the more tenuous spiritual psychology of W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot.

Searching for Beginnings

The unfolding of poetry, this most careful art, began in the Ancient World. Poetry, like existence itself, is an ever-present force in human civilization. Time, man’s measure of elapsed existence, is just one dimension of poetry’s development. With the perspective of chronology we can look into the past for significant early examples of the poet’s art.

1

The Ancient World

THE SO-CALLED ‘Ancient World’ was the place where very early examples of poetry originated. Mesopotamia (with Assyria to the north and Babylonia to the south) was the geographical region where the square-tipped reed was busy and clay tablets were receiving the cuneiform impressions of poetry some 4,000 years ago.

Epic of Gilgamesh

The most famous of all Sumerian rulers was Gilgamesh, who ruled at Uruk around 2700 BC. A series of legends accrued to his name, one of which developed into a superb early work of poetic expression.

Originally composed in the Sumerian language (c2000 BC), the Epic of Gilgamesh was eventually inscribed on clay tablets (in their own tongue) by Babylonians, Hittites, and others. The hero of the epic, Gilgamesh, was purportedly a king of ancient Erech who sought to gain the secret of immortality. An account of his travels, which was widely known in its time, includes the story of a cataclysmic flood. In its details which are recorded on Tablet XI, it bears a striking resemblance to the biblical story in Genesis. There is however a major difference. In the epic the deities inflicting the flood are, somewhat improbably, impelled by annoyance at being disturbed in their sleep by noisy mortals – in contrast to the God of the Hebrews who acts from moral disapproval. The most complete version of the great myth is the Akkadian copy. Its tablets were found in the library of the Assyrian monarch Assurbanipal.

Here are some lines from the Epic of Gilgamesh taken from Tablet XI:

Utnapishtim said to him [Gilgamesh]:

I will reveal to you, Gilgamesh, a hidden matter –

It is a secret of the gods that I will tell you.

The secret to be imparted is, in fact, an instruction:

Man of Shuruppak, son of Ubar-Tutu,

Tear down your house, build a ship!

Give up your possessions and seek life.

Despise property – keep the soul alive!

Take aboard the ship the seed of all living things.

The epic goes on to describe a flood of cosmic proportions, a deluge that inundates the Earth:

The gods were frightened by the deluge;

They cowered like dogs crouched against the wall.

Ishtar cried out like a woman in travail –

The sweet-voiced mistress of the gods moaned aloud.

*

On Mount Nisir the ship came to a halt –

The mass of rock holding the ship fast.

For a fifth, and a sixth day – Mount Nisir held the ship fast

Allowing no motion.

When the seventh day arrived,

I set free and sent forth a dove which later returned.

*

Then I released and sent forth a raven.

The raven departed and seeing the waters reduced

Began to eat, circle, caw and did not return.

Then I released all creatures to the four winds

                and offered a sacrifice –

I poured a libation on the mountain-top.

Based on a translation by E.A. Speiser

Egyptian Poetry

To the west of Sumer lay Ancient Egypt, where many poets were at work. Nothing now remains with which Egyptian religious poetry can be compared; Babylonian (the only contemporary poetry) is entirely different in concept and viewpoint. There seems no doubt that from the earliest times in man’s history, poetry of many kinds existed – as an oral tradition. There is no known record of a true poem in Egypt until the Sixth Dynasty. Egyptian poetry uses four main poetic elements in common use at the time:

Parallelism of members, that is repetition of the same idea in different words, for example: ‘Thy word is a lantern unto my feet and a light unto my path.’ Its chief Egyptian use is in epithets applied to the Deity: ‘King of kings’, ‘Lord of lords’, ‘Ruler of rulers’.

Rhythm was used, but because the Egyptians wrote without vowels or vowel-points, it is difficult to know where stress should fall.

Alternate solo and refrain. When used in religious poetry, it is often in the form of a litany with the priest chanting solo and the people answering with a refrain in chorus. Such litanies are found in the early Pyramid Texts. (Psalm 136 is a good example of a similar litany used later in the somewhat derivative Hebrew religious poetry.)

Paronomasia (play on words or punning) occasionally occurs in Egyptian poetry, but the absence of vowels makes it difficult to recognize.

Rhymed verse and alliteration are unknown in the poetry of Egypt.

The Pharaoh (Āmenhotep IV) who ruled from 1379 to 1362 BC, single-handedly attempted a total reform of Egyptian religious and political life. He replaced the multitude of deities of traditional religion with just one – the Sun God Āton – and changed his own name to Ākhenaton (‘the servant of Āton’). The image worshipped is frequently described as being the ‘sun disc’, yet the inscriptions make it clear that the Āton was regarded by the king as being the creative force of the Universe that was manifested by the sun. The god itself had no image. To make his changes more effective, and to elude the influences of the priests at the royal court of Thebes, Ākhenaton moved the capital to a new location – known today as Tell el-Amarna. His sweeping and revolutionary religious reforms gave rise to a new lightness, naturalism, grace, and elegance in art. But these reforms were not to last long. The belief in a single god, who ruled the Universe, threatened the priests who had a vested interest in preserving the old polytheistic traditions. As a result, after his death, Ākhenaton’s successors branded him a heretic and fanatic, excising his name from any monuments that had survived him. These upheavals prepared the ground for a new tranche of fine poetry. It was during this period of the New Kingdom (1570-1185 BC) that a remarkable work of poetry was composed. To give some flavour of the theology behind the change, here are some lines from the beautiful Hymn to Āton found on the walls of the tomb of Eye:

You appear full of beauty on the horizon of heaven –

You, the living Āton, origin of life!

When you are risen on the eastern horizon,

Every land is filled with your beauty

*

When you are set beyond the western horizon,

The land is in darkness – as though in death.

*

Darkness is a shroud; the earth is in stillness,

For he who made it rests in his horizon.

At daybreak, when you rise at the world’s edge,

When you shine as the Āton by day,

Darkness is dispelled as you give your rays.

*

Creator of seed in women,

You who make fluid into man,

*

You are life-force, you your very self,

For we live only through you.

Based on a translation by J.A. Wilson

Egyptian religious poetry is almost entirely anonymous. An exception is the Hymn to Thoth by Haremheb, a professional writer in the Court of Ākhenaton:

Hymn to Thoth

Praise to Thoth, child of the Sun, as Moon arising in beauty,

Lord of brightness, Light of the gods, all praise and worship are thine.

*

Judge of mankind to whom the laws of the gods are entrusted for enforcement.

*

Obtaining truth at the Weighing of Souls, you weigh every heart in the balance;

Just and exact are the scales of the Lord, facing the doer with the deed.

*

Time and Eternity wait upon your Word,

The Word which abides for ever.

Translation from the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology

Poetry and the Biblical Tradition

One of Egypt’s geographical neighbours on the shores of the Red Sea was Israel. The earliest Hebrew poetry dates from the period 1350-1090 BC and is largely Egyptian both in outlook and form. From the year 1000 BC to 961 BC King David was on the throne and it was around this period that the formation of the Scriptures into written form occurred. It was the beginning of the Iron Age in the region; during the reign of Solomon the iron-tipped plough was developed and the armies used iron war chariots. This era was the height of ancient Israel’s cultural power. After the death of Solomon a civil war resulted in the split of the Northern Kingdom (Israel) away from the Southern Kingdom (Judah). At this time a major body of poetry was about to be brought together – the Psalms of David.

The Psalms

The Psalms are believed to have been compiled around 950 BC. The 150 psalms in the Bible are Hebrew poems composed, for the most part, to be sung at religious ceremonies, or services, in Solomon’s time. This ancient Hebrew poetry has a characteristic and distinctive style; its essence is parallelism. Parallelism means, very simply, that a thought expressed in a line (or a series of lines) is re-expressed in different words in successive lines. It is a common device in chants and other ritual pieces. Antithetical parallelism is where the idea expressed in one line is contrasted in its successor. The very first poem in the Psalms uses both types of parallelism:

Blessed is the man

that walks not in the counsel of the wicked;

nor stands in the way of sinners,

neither does he sit in the seat of scoffers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,

That law on which he meditates day and night.

He is like unto a tree

planted by a river of water

yielding its fruit in due season.

Such a tree is of a leaf that does not wither;

In all he does, he prospers.

The wicked are not so;

but rather, are like chaff driven away by wind.

The wicked shall not survive the judgement,

neither will sinners flourish in the congregation of righteous people.

The Lord knows the way of the righteous;

He will ensure that the way of the wicked shall perish.

Based on the translation in the Authorized Version

In the Old Testament, after the wisdom of the Proverbs and the strictures of Ecclesiastes, comes the majestic poetry of Solomon’s song.

Song of Solomon

The Song of Solomon, one of the books of the Old Testament, is a love idyll, sometimes interpreted as an allegory of the union between the Deity and the body of His followers.

Based on the translation in the Authorized Version

In whatever way the import of this poetry is interpreted, its beauty of imagery is superlative.

The theological culture of Israel would provide the ethical ideal of a tradition that was to persist for some 3,000 years. The development of poetry, however, was to continue elsewhere – beyond the northern shores of the Mediterranean Sea – in Greece. The earliest great era of poetry in which we might expect to find master poets at work is the thousand or so years in which the Greeks and Romans evolved their civilizations. An approximate but convenient representation of this period (which was pervaded throughout by Greek influence) is set out below:

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DEVELOPMENT OF GREEK AND ROMAN CULTURE

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2

The Greeks

AN EXAMINATION of the Graeco/Roman periods in greater detail is helpful since they formed the context within which some important poets were at work. The next figure expands the outline of events in the Prehistoric Period:

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GENERAL HISTORICAL EVENTS – PREHISTORIC PERIOD

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Notes:

1 Mycenae lies in the north-east corner of the Argive plain, nine miles from the sea; the name Mykene is not Greek but Carian. The city was first inhabited at the beginning of the Bronze Age (3000 to 2800 BC), but the culmination of its power and prominence occurred between 1400 and 1150 BC.

2 Between the years 900 and 700 BC the Homeric epics Iliad and Odyssey were being compiled.

3 During the 8th century BC Hesiod’s Works and Days and the Theogony were composed.

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Throughout the first era (Prehistoric or Heroic periods) the most outstanding literary achievements were the works of Homer and Hesiod.

Homer the man is an entirely unknown poet. The date by which his great poems received their final shape is conjecturally put somewhere between the 12th and the 9th century BC. The Iliad is an epic of warfare and debate full of energy, splendour, and tragic pathos. The charm of the Odyssey emanates from its narrative account of wondrous adventure, its descriptions of social life, and certain scenes of tender and delicate beauty. The two epics are different but akin in that their heroes and principals are presented as ideal men. Moreover, both stories combine divine and human action. Homer was essentially an oral poet whose writing is imbued with freshness and simplicity. His sureness of touch is maintained at a high level and his work has the dignity and finished eloquence necessary in the literary epic. Matthew Arnold (1822-88) summarized the Homeric style as, ‘swiftness; plainness in thought, nobility of diction’.

The later poetic genera developed from three principal themes: worship of the gods; private life; the life of the community.

Heroic poetry aimed at the creation and perpetuation of a heroic ideal; the epic style adorns all that it touches. As the rhetor, Dio of Prusa, says of Homer: ‘he praised almost everything – animals and plants, water and earth, weapons and horses’. He mentioned nothing without somehow honouring and glorifying it. Even the one man whom he abused, Thersites, he called ‘a clear-voiced speaker’.

The Iliad (15,693 lines) is an account of the ten-year Siege and Fall of Troy and, within that context, the story of Achilleus (Achilles). He is the tragic hero: magnificent, but human and imperfect. His tragedy is the result of free choice by a will that falls short of omniscience and is disturbed by anger. Any extract can do no more than give a flavour of the essence of an epic like the Iliad, but the following lines show how Homer, making use of homely simile, temporarily detaches his epic narrative from its usual heroic war-like imagery:

But just as at that time when the woodcutter makes ready his supper in the wooded glens of the mountains, when his arms and hands have grown weary from cutting down the tall trees, and his heart has had enough of it, and the longing for food and for sweet wine takes hold of his senses; it was at that time that the Danaans, by their manhood, broke their battalions.

Translated by Richmond Lattimore

The central figure of the Odyssey is Odysseus, King of Ithaca, favourite of the grey-eyed goddess Athene. It is thought that the Odyssey (12,110 lines) was put into its present form by one man who used existing Ionian poems and added to them. The story describes a series of adventures: the ten-year homeward journey of Odysseus from the smoking ruins of conquered Troy; the land of the Lotus Eaters; the cave of the man-eating giant; the island of Circe the Witch; the Underworld; the rock of the Sirens, the hazard of Scylla and Charybdis; the Sun God’s pastures; the grotto of Calypso the Nymph – and home at last, into the arms of his faithful Queen Penelope.

The lady to whom the wandering Odysseus returns was ‘circumspect’ Penelope – ‘she, shining among women’. Early in the epic poem, Antinous (II.116) describes the being of Penelope:

Athena has bestowed on her

Wisdom of mind and excellence of skill

In manifold beautiful devices

Beyond all others.

Based on a translation by J.W. Mackail

Only imagination can conjure an image of this epic lady, but in the Acropolis Museum, Athens are many sculptures of Archaic Greek maidens (Korai ) who bear contemporaneous resemblance to high-born ladies of Homer’s era.

No extract from the Odyssey can catch the grandeur of the whole, but the following lines show its clarity of descriptive detail and a glimpse of the interaction between mortals and the Divine World:

Then resourceful Odysseus spoke in turn and answered him: ‘Never fear, let these concerns not trouble your thinking; but let us go to the house which lies here next to the orchard, for there I sent Telemachos on ahead, with the oxherd and the swineherd, so that they could most quickly prepare our dinner.’

So he spoke, and the two went into the handsome dwelling; and when they had come into the well-established dwelling place, there they found Telemachos, and the oxherd and swineherd, cutting up a great deal of meat, and mixing the bright wine.

Meanwhile the Sicilian serving-maid bathed great-hearted Laertes in his house, and anointed him with olive oil, then threw a handsome mantle about him. Also, Athene, standing by the shepherd of the people, filled his limbs out, and made him taller and thicker to behold than he had been. He stepped forth from the bath, and his son looked on in amazement as he saw him looking like one of the immortal gods to encounter.

So he spoke to him and addressed him in winged words, saying: ‘Father, surely some one of the gods who are everlasting has made you better to look upon for beauty and stature.’

Translated by Richmond Lattimore

From the outset, Odysseus is a man equipped to manage adroitly almost any situation. In coping with Circe’s enchantment Odysseus is aided by a god. Unable to subdue him with either supernatural powers or womanly wiles, Circe surrenders herself, imploring him to come to her bed. He avoids submitting to her destructive power but this does not mean that her positive feminine values must be rejected. On the contrary, the heroic individuality of Odysseus is in part defined by his capacity to encounter the essence of the female principle without being overwhelmed by it.

Homer’s own term for a poet is aoidos, ‘singer’. Although his lengthy poems would take many hours to sing, they were capable of achieving complex literary and psychological effects. Nothing like this influence had existed in the more anecdotal and episodic songs of his predecessors.

The Homeric Epic differs from all other Greek poetry (and from all poetry with which most of us are familiar today) in one major respect: many of its compositional elements are phrases, not individual words; two examples are ‘the wine-dark sea’ and ‘grey-eyed Athene’. This device generates lines, or parts of lines, which are virtually ready-made. Homer made much use of this formulaic fixed phrase-unit, the compound-epithet, relating it by association with a major god or hero. He structured the device according to the amount of space remaining to be filled in each hexameter (verse consisting of six feet). For example, in the Odyssey, the hero is described variously and repeatedly as: ‘god-like Odysseus’, ‘resourceful Odysseus’, ‘much-enduring Odysseus’, ‘the great Odysseus’, ‘the long-suffering Odysseus’. With such descriptive compound-epithets the poet wooed his listeners and supported the singer’s memory. For example, from his innovative and resourceful stock of phrases he drew 10 or 20 times on such adjectives as ‘swift-footed’ and ‘silver-footed’. Thus rhythm combined with familiarity held the wrapt attention of his hearers.

The Supremacy of Homer

The poet Homer is a master. In the Odyssey he rarely loses control over detail or structure during his long narrative. Tension is subtly modulated, incidents are developed powerfully and then expanded into an eloquent, persuasive and imaginative epic. Characters are progressively created by similes, epithets, speeches and actions, to emerge as ‘men’ who have since lived on in the imagination of the human race. Whatever the arguments over attribution, the greatness of the Iliad and Odyssey is indisputable.

The mythical content of the Odyssey has led some critics to attempt an allegorical understanding of Homer’s work. But such an interpretation of Greek literature could not develop until philosophy had begun to acquire a degree of independence, and an abstract, that is non-mythical, language of its own. Despite this, many admirers of the wisdom and inspiration of Homer and Hesiod, who value the ideas of the developing philosophy, have sought to find similar ideas expressed in an earlier poetry. The modern view is that deliberately written allegories are rare in Greek, and are never extensive; therefore any attempts to accord such a treatment to Homer are spurious.

In the Republic, Plato alludes to the description of Homer as ‘educator of all Greece’. In the 6th century BC the Greek philosopher and poet, Xenophanes, said of Homer that he was ‘the source from which all men have taken their wisdom since the beginning of time.’ This appraisal was widely endorsed when subsequently his two great works formed the basis of education and culture throughout the Greek and Roman world. Ideas evolved, but admiration for Homer was to continue undiminished. Nor was reverence for this master poet restricted to the ancient world. In The Divine Comedy (Inferno IV), Dante described Homer as the greatest of all poets. In the Parnassus fresco in the Vatican, Raphael depicts him placed prominently to the left of Apollo. Homer’s influence continued through to the 20th century and was an inspiration for James Joyce’s important novel, Ulysses (the Latin form of Odysseus).

The Homeric Hymns

Mention should perhaps be made of the so-called Homeric Hymns. These were preludes and mythical tales in honour of the gods of various sanctuaries, written in the diction, style and verse forms of the epic poets. They were not the work of great poets, but were nevertheless written by skilled versifiers with a useful competence. Here is an example; it is the Hymn to the Delian Apollo,* intended to be recited at the religious festivals on the sacred island to celebrate the birth of the god in Delos. The momentous event of the god’s birth is described with a distant charm and an economy of words:

And as soon as Eilithyia the goddess of sore travail set foot on Delos, the pains of birth seized Leto, and she longed to bring forth; so she cast her arms around a palm tree and kneeled on the soft meadow, while the earth laughed for joy beneath her. Then the child leapt forth into the light, and all the goddesses raised a cry.

Translated by D.M. Garman

Hesiod (8th century BC) is the earliest identified Greek poet after Homer. Very little is known of Hesiod the man, and most of that is gleaned from ‘asides’ in his Works and Days. Born in the shadow of Mount Helicon, he lived most of his life in Ascra on land inherited from his merchant father. He was probably a bachelor whose main occupation was writing poetry. He won a poetry prize at Euboea during the funeral games of Amphidamas:

I won the contest with a song and took off an eared tripod; and this I set up as an offering to the Muses of Helicon, where they first had made me a master of melodious singing.

Translated by Richmond Lattimore

The principal works of Hesiod are the Theogony and the Catalogue of Women (or Eoiai). The latter survives only in fragments, but to it are attached, as excursus, the Shield of Herakles and the Works and Days. The scale and sweep of his vision were matched by succinctness. In his Theogony Hesiod describes the sequence of Creation simply and concisely:

First Chaos came, then broad-bosomed Earth,

The everlasting seat of all that is,

And Love.

In his Works and Days, Hesiod depicts a world very different from that of the Homeric nobility. The land of Greece always demands hard and constant labour from its country people and, as Herodotus the Greek historian (c484-432 BC) puts it, ‘Poverty is native to Greece.’

The poetry of Hesiod contains much ancient peasant wisdom and alludes to mysteries of the earth in words which bring to life the very grass at the roadside, the richness of the multi-hued earth and the harsh life of men who work the soil. His lines record ageless precepts on the conduct of everyday life and the worth of supportive neighbours, willing to assist with problems:

neighbours come as they are to help;

your relatives will dress first!

Hesiod speaks for the hard-pressed peasants of his own day; he was interested in social justice and how to survive a harsh world with grace and comfort. Hesiod is no less an educator than Homer. In his Works and Days, a key concept is arete (‘virtue; the activity of reason’). ‘Best of all’, says Hesiod, ‘is the man who considers everything for himself and sees what is going to be right in the end.’ Before presenting his separate precepts Hesiod defines the aim of work as arete.

Because he alludes to the gods who guard justice and morality in a context of moral rightness and lawful rule, he was called Vates (sacred bard). In a sense, Hesiod was the first theologian and therefore to some extent the first philosopher. Homer was neither, as is acknowledged by Socrates and Plato. Herodotus recognized in Homer and Hesiod the main authors of Grecian beliefs, noting how they set out the names, generations and attributes of the gods, together with appropriate forms of worship. But it was Hesiod’s masterly hand that definitively systematized the generation and genealogy of the gods, a pantheon taken only partially from Homer.

The general reader of the Theogony, while admiring particular episodes such as the story of Prometheus, may not discern a coherent purpose or much sign of a unified structure in the poem. The genealogical catalogues seem encyclopaedic but dull, and for a fuller appreciation of this poem the reader benefits from the help of later scholars.

The complex grouping of Hesiod’s catalogue of events resolves into three major categories:

The manifest totality derives from two primal powers:

In other religious systems of the world this fundamental duality would be variously expressed: ‘Unmanifest and Manifest; ‘Undifferentiated and Differentiated’; ‘Purusha and Prakriti’; ‘Heaven and Earth’, etc. From these dual forces, Hesiod establishes a pattern of progressive differentiation. He describes a process of proliferation stimulated by an immanent, creative energy which he calls Desire and which he sees as a primordial cosmic power.

Two other myths in the Theogony – the birth of Aphrodite and the story of Prometheus – account for, and develop, the theme of male dominance in the human cosmos under the dispensation of Zeus. Since Zeus’ power is based on politics, his distinctive attribute is not strength but statesmanship. This quality Hesiod calls metis (‘cunning’ or ‘wisdom’), although the word cannot be satisfactorily translated. Zeus is said at one point to be ‘full of immortal wisdom’.

Hesiod is not ponderous when dealing with moral issues such as attempts to evade poverty by seizing what belongs to others, or mistreatment of friends, family or the helpless. Here is an extract from the Works and Days:

Goods are not to be grabbed; much better if God lets you have them. If any man by force of hands wins him a great fortune, or steals it by the cleverness of his tongue, as so often happens among people when the intelligence is blinded by greed, a man’s shameless spirit tramples his sense of honour; lightly the gods wipe out that man, and diminish the household of such a one, and his wealth stays with him for only a short time. It is the same when one does evil to guest or suppliant, or goes up into the bed of his brother, to lie in secret love with his brother’s wife, doing acts that are against nature; or who unfeelingly abuses fatherless children, or speaks roughly with intemperate words to his failing father who stands upon the hateful doorstep of old age; with all these Zeus in person is angry, and in the end he makes them pay a bitter price for their unrighteous dealings.

Translated by Richmond Lattimore

Hesiod’s Power as a Poet

Hesiod, in the prelude to the Works and Days, declares to his brother that he will tell the truth. This deliberate purpose is something new, not found in Homer. Hesiod’s poetry is thus a noble characterization of the man himself as the Greek poet-prophet who seeks, through his deeper insight into the structure of the world, to lead mankind along the right path.

In an age when science was rudimentary, technology simple and spiritual knowledge undeveloped, the poet Hesiod used myth as a medium for explaining how things are and for the assertion of a recommended code of conduct. The word myth (from the Greek muthos) means: ‘word, speech, tale, legend’; ‘fictitious traditional story or legend embodying