Considered the first poet of the Mediterranean world, Homer makes the beginning of the literature written in ancient Greece. Of course, long before, one can talk about a Greek civilization (Mycenaean culture begins in the second millennium H.), but the first known work is that of Homer and through it, the Greek spirit enters the universal circuit.
Iliad and Odyssey – The two great Homeric epic – bring a complex conception, synthesizing the main myths and beliefs of ancient Greece and proposing two existential models: the heroic and the initiatory journey.
The subject. In Iliad there is a period (53 days) of maximum tension of the last year of the Ahe War against Troy. In the center of the action lies angerto Achilles, triggered by King Atrid, Agamemnon. Offended and angry, Achilles refuse to fight, and Agamemnon, deceived by the gods and blinded by pride (which is about that), leads the Greeks for defeat. When Patrocle is killed in battle by Hector (the son of the Trojan King, Priam), Achilles cry and decide to avenge him. His weapons deeds speed up the fall of Troy, but he pays with the life of Gloria acquired.
Odyssey transposes the adventure of returning home of the victorious hero – Ulysses. The road from Troy to Itaca is the symbolic road from heroic to domestic. But also a path of finding and death. That is why it includes a series of trials: the temptation of the senses (sirens), confrontation with polyphem, the love of the witch Circe, the descent into hell, etc.
Homeric poems bring to the fore two human prototypes: the Achilles and Odyssey Being. About Achilles there was a lot like the prototype of the ancient hero, an incarnation of the Greek ideal Kalon Kai Agathon – nice and good (precept found in other times).
Half god and almost immortal (except the vulnerable heel) Achilles is effeminate, supersensible, invaded by tears when Agamemnon confiscates his prey, but at the same time inflexible and angry. In fact, his anger is the subject Iliadwhich begins as follows: The goddess sings the wrath that was over-Ahil, the Pelean. From this anger comes the intolerant spirit, again an acquisition of the ancient hero, but in the case of Achilles he converts into a symbol of unleashed suffering, which makes him unable to give the forgiveness of the Trojans who implore him; Moreover, one snatches his liver and waved it before his eyes, and Hector's body crawls him through the powder and desecrating him. This barbarian impetuosity comes from an exacerbated cult of friendship, because Patrocle's death causes him to enter into the fight, to forget about the anger that Agamemnon had caused and to kill without choice. If Ghilgameș's death frightens Ghilgameș, Achilles anger him. Both of the characters deal with the friend's funeral, but Achilles do it with a grandiloCvennce that indicate another cultural code: he burns 40 young Trojans, captured for this purpose, and organizes sports and great banquets, to whom the appearance of Patrocle's spirit ends. Achilles is a typical solar hero for the ancient world and therefore, says Gilbert Durand, “he cannot stir his cutesis. It could be said that transcendence forces this primitive dissatisfaction, to this impulsivity that the gesture of the action reflects.”[1]
Iliad reveals a universe governed by Moir (Destiny), which is why each character receives his death with resignation, as a sentence. As in Ghilgameș's poemand here comes the idea that only the one who remains in the memory of the living has peace beyond the grave. Achilles shown in a dream the spirit of Patrocles who asks him to place his body in the grave, that is to make his appropriate rituals-because otherwise he cannot enter the gate of Hell (Canto XXIII). Patrocle's soul is depicted as an smoke which disappears tearing.
In this existence, in which fate (Moir) Each one is already stable (for example, Achilles know that he will die in front of the gates of Troy), the gods seem to be incarnations of feelings or witnesses of a written story. In the Homeric world, and in the Greek, in general, there is no guide of the soul beyond death.
Odyssey He tells the return of Ulysses's home – theme then resumed in many important works of mankind. To the antipod of Achilles, Ulysses, a character who also appears in Iliadis a labyrinthine being, and, as Lessing remarks, rules the world only with look. He is WISE. His path around the world seems somewhat similar to Ghilgameș's road, because Ulysses also meets numerous obstacles. However, Ulysses' journey is that of a winner. He introduced the capping horse into the city of Troy, ending the war. Neither the sword of Agamemnon, nor the wrath of the Achileic hero, almost invincible, have managed to overcome the fortress. Only Ulysses's cunning proved irrefutable. Therefore, his journey to Itaca, the place of his birth, resembles a ritual of purification or immortalization of the winning hero.
Of his adventures, the descent into Hell is particularly interested; The hero enters the world beyond to find out his future from the blind prophet, Tiresias. For this, Ulysses makes a pit in which the blood of the sacrificed animals pours, and the souls of the dead are called by the force of life; any shading who drinks this blood speaks the truth.
As in Ghilgameș's poemand in Homeric poems the vision of death is gloomy. Ahile says that if they had a choice, they would prefer to be the servant of a poor man than the master of hell. After death, the soul fly as a dreamlack of force and feeling (Song XI) and is depicted as a slightly shattering shadow. And the endeavor of the goddess Tetis to hide her son, on Achilles, in a temple, among the virgins, proves the general horror in the face of death, but also the permanent hope in changing destiny.
Homer's poems are a synthesis of Greek thinking, in which he coexists admiration for the gods and the dissatisfaction with their power, the joy of living, the heroic honorability, the cult of friendship, the victor's truffle and the duty of the revenge.
Rich clothing, described much more detailed than in Ghilgameș's epicopulence, relationships between people, thoroughly presented, give a complex image on a refined world, with a broad spiritual opening. In fact, the Homeric world does not appear closed between divine limits, for beyond the gods is the source of life. In Iliadthe birth of the world, lies in OCEAN primary or, as Hypnos says, the god of sleep, the obstinacy of all the gods lies in Ocheanos(XIV, 246).
Literary, Homeric poems, especially Iliadthe first exemplary creations of mankind are considered. Homer transfigures a simple story, in an amazing expression through construction and poetic images. First, it requires in literature the brief, syntagmatic characterization, specific to the epic style and known today as the name of Homeric metaphor: Ulysses the wise oneAchilles the fast one of the footZeus the one with black eyebrows and together. These appreciations attached to the character's name, as a unanimously accepted rating (and which in the old Greek is played by a single word), have been the main way of characterizing the character in the humanist and Renaissance literature, but it is constantly in literature.
Also, the living paintings that depict numerous characters, captured in a symbolic picture (for example the presentation of the gods participating in the Troy war as a show) adds solemnity and fixes the story in an expanded space. At the same time, the memorable attitudes, in which the characters are surprised, become from here the epic. Thus, Agamemnon is presented by dressing his royal clothes (II, 42-54), Hera-combing (XIV, 171), Achilles in battle (XX).
The two Homeric poems express the vision that is the basis of the whole Greek culture in an exceptional artistic formula. Petru Creia makes the observation that what gives the Iliad “the height of a duration” is the extraordinary confidence that the characters have “in fame and glory beyond death”.
On the account of Homer are put on hymns, most of the gods, and a parody at Iliadentitled War of mice with frogs (Batrahomihia). Physignnthos (face-goggled) is a noble frog that invites Psiharpax into his palaces (inhap-films), just escaped from a cat's mouth. On the way, as he transports the guest on his back, the frog is scared of a snake and escapes it in the water. As he died, the mice demanded revenge, and his words are heard. From here begins the great battle, which transfigures into Burlești images scenes that obviously remind of Iliad. However, Batrahomihia It seems to be a late writing, maybe from the 6th centuries. H, bonding with the Homeric era only by the subject.
From the Homeric poems, I would first put the vision of the world: the universe was born from the waters, over people and gods master Moirbeyond death is only terrible suffering, but descending into hell (during life) can be a way of knowledge.
On the other hand, Homer retains the same existential model of the ancient world, between heroic and travel.
Bibliography
Homeric – IliadPublishing House of the Romanian Cultural Foundation, 1995 (Trad. George Murnu)
Homer – Odysseyvol. I-II, Tineretului Ed., 1966 (trad. by Eugen Lovinescu)
Homer – Hymns. War of mice with frogsEd. Minerva, 1971 (trad. Ion Acsan)
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing – Laocoonin the anthology from Apollo La FaustMeridiane Ed., 1978, (p. 141); trad. by Lucian Blaga.
Er Dodds – The dialectic of the Greek spiritMeridiane Ed., 1983 (p. 34.); trad. Catrinel Pleșu.
Erwin Rohde – PSYHé, Ed. Meridiane, 1985, (p. 49.); trad. Mircea Popescu.
Peter Creia – Cathedral of lightsEd. Humanitas, 1997 (studies on Homer, Dante, Shakespeare)
[1] G. Durand – The anthropological structures of the imaginaryEd.Univers, 1977, p. 197From Doina Ruști – The encyclopedia of humanistic culture for hasty people2004.
