| Popis: |
How is it that we still today find so much power in an ancient epic poem? It seems that every generation reads the Iliad with fresh eyes. I have argued in a recent book that the significance of the Trojan War and the lessons taught by it have changed with each new era of history, and that today no less than in the fifth century BCE, when Athenian tragedy flourished, do we look to the legendary past in an attempt to make sense of present conflict.1 In this essay I look at several modern attempts to learn lessons from the Trojan War, including the example provided to us by the French philosopher Simone Weil's remarkable essay, "The Iliad, or the Poem of Force," which she wrote in 1939 during the war between France and Germany and just before the occupation of France by the Nazis. Ultimately, I am going to compare some of the arguments made in Weil's essay about the theme of force in the Iliad to some of the underlying assumptions of the 2004 blockbuster film Troy, with which the essay has a remarkable affinity. In this way I hope to show that this movie, the most spectacular of instances to date of reading the Iliad in the twenty-first century, 2 is only the latest example of a type of reading that stretches back as far as the seventh century BCE, and perhaps even earlier.Before coming to either of those works, however, it is necessary to examine the way that the Iliad presents war, since it is the Iliad that is the ultimate source text for both the movie-makers and Simone Weil. This essay is divided, therefore, into two parts. In the first, I argue that the Iliad, the first and paradigmatic representation in literature of conflict between East and West, has a remarkable appreciation for the consequences of war for both sides, and especially for its victims: the warriors on the losing side, the women that get taken captive, and their children. By highlighting the mortality of the hero and the death of warriors at the peak of their youth and beauty, the laments, imagery, and similes of Homeric epic mourn both sides equally. In the second part of the essay, I trace the continuum of this equanimity in the literary, artistic, intellectual, and performance traditions of later centuries that seek to learn from Homer. In the end, I will compare the way in which both Weil and the makers of Troy have used the character of Briseis to grapple with the conflicts of their own times, highlighting the effects of war on the powerless by way of her character. My conclusion speculates about the nature of the Iliad as a didactic text and why so many generations of audiences have sought truth in the Iliad.I The Victims of WarIn Greek literature, appreciation for the consequences that war brings about for its victims has a long history, beginning with the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey.3 This is particularly true of the plight of the female victims of war. In Book 8 of the Odyssey, Odysseus is famously compared to a lamenting woman, fallen over the body of her husband, as she is being dragged away into captivity.The renowned singer sang these things. But Odysseus melted, and wet the cheeks below his eyelids with a tear. As when a woman laments, falling over the body of her dear husband who fell before his city and people, attempting to ward off the pitiless day for his city and children, and she, seeing him dying and gasping, falling around him wails with piercing cries, but men from behind beating her back and shoulders with their spears force her to be a slave and have toil and misery, and with the most pitiful grief her cheeks waste away, So Odysseus shed a pitiful tear beneath his brows.4 (Odyssey 8.521-31)The simile is so striking because the generic woman of the simile could easily be one of Odysseus' own victims.5 Although the woman of the simile does not actually speak, the language of the simile has powerful associations with the lamentation of captive women elsewhere in epic, with the result that the listener can easily conjure her song. … |
