Wounding and Death in the'Iliad': Homeric Techniques of Description

177 Pages·2003·183.697 MB·English

by  Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich

WOUNDING AND DEATH
* IN THE
*
Homeric Techniques of Description
Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich
Translated by Gabriele Wright and Peter Jones
Preface by Peter Jones
Appendix by K.B. Saunders
Duckworth
First published in 2003 by
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© 2003 by Wolf-Hartmut Friedrich
Translation © 2003 by Peter Jones and Gabriele Wright
Appendix © 2003 by K.B. Saunders
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may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the pubhsher.
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from the British Library
ISBN 0 7156 2983 2
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Contents
*
If
Foreword ix
Preface by Peter Jones xi
Introduction [5] 1
I. Phantasmata [11] 7
II. Truth to Life [30] 23
Additions to I and II: A. Pseudo-Realism [43] 34
B. Low Realism [52] 41
III. Strict Style [64] 53
Appendices
I. The Duels in T and H [84] 71
II. Harpalion and Lycaon [97] 82
III. Sarpedon [103] 88
I V. N : S : n [113] 97
Notes 103
Index [120] 127
Appendix by K.B. Saunders 131
Introduction 131
Phantasmata 137
Pseudorealism 147
Low Realism 151
Other Problematic Wounds 153
Conclusions 161
Notes 162
References in square brackets are to the original
page numbers of Friedrich’s text.
v
¥ Preface
f
Peter Jones
Friedrich argues that different styles in the Eiad indicate different
authors. His conclusions will not find many supporters: indeed, since
the need to believe in a single composer of the Iliad seems to be almost
an article of faith in western scholarship at the moment, it is hard to
think of any case that would. The fact that Homer’s poetry is oral in
nature certainly weakens, if it does not destroy, many of the tradi­
tional arguments for multiple authorship, but that single fact does
not automatically preclude the possibility that the work of more than
one oral poet may help to constitute today’s text. After all, we can at
the moment say nothing for certain about the conditions of the
production of epic poetry in Homer’s time, let alone how the Eiad
came to be in the form we have it. But if we were to make any case at
all for multiple authorship, my sense of the matter is that style would
be an important determining factor. However far one may justify the
content of \j/ 297- co 5481 on thematic grounds, for example, I find its
stylistic ineptitude quite inconsistent with most of the rest of the
Odyssey.2 In this context it is interesting that oral stylistics is a field
that remains, if not exactly virgin, then pretty thinly ploughed.3
Such judgements can be perilously subjective, and Friedrich is well
aware of the problem. His Introduction is suitably scathing about
earlier efforts to carve up the Eiad stylistically and aesthetically (see
e.g. [5-7]),4 and his own solution is to produce stylistic and aesthetic,
or value, judgements by restricting himself to comparing like with
like - in this case, battle scenes [8] - and distinguishing between
authors on grounds of the varying levels of plausibility or implausi-
bility of the wounds and deaths suffered by the heroes [10].
This is where the medical interest of Friedrich’s work lies. Two
points need to be made. First, as Kenneth Saunders argues in his
Appendix, Friedrich’s categories range over a spectrum of physical
possibilities, so that his distinctions between 'fantasy’, ‘pseudo-realism’
and low realism’ are not as sharp as they might be. Second, though
Friedrich does indeed argue on medical grounds for the plausibility
xi
i
Preface
or otherwise of a wound, he had no strict need to since, for literary
purposes, it is the effect of the description on the imagination of the
reader that counts. Herein, of course, lies the potential weakness of
Friedrich’s analysis: what seems plausible or implausible to him may
not in all cases have seemed so to the poet (just as, indeed, the death
of Thoon will appear fantastic to the twenty-first-century doctor, but
a layman might see little more to it than a hearty blow to the spine).
For all that, since ancient scholia thought it worth commenting on
some of the grislier wounds, often for moral purposes, the awareness
of different styles of wounding is not a modern prejudice. We may
summarise the situation today as follows: it is rather as if a doctor, an
art-historian and a man-in-the-street were to react to (say) all the
arrow wounds in all the paintings of St Sebastian’s martyrdom. The
categories likely’ and 'unlikely’ would have different meanings to all
parties (diagnosis of the consequences for St Sebastian of an arrow
piercing the liver would not come into the art-historian’s thinking, for
example, nor would artistic genre come into the doctor’s thinking, and
neither criterion would come into the layman’s), but the conclusions
of the one would not necessarily invalidate the perceptions of the
others.
By way of exemplifying Friedrich’s method, I take the scenes in
which a warrior, and/or his attendant charioteer, are killed, after
being rendered somehow helpless [llff.]. The scene in which Idome-
neus kills Asius and Antilochus then kills Asius’ (nameless) attendant
who is at his wits’ end, hunched up in the chariot (N 387ff.), seems to
Friedrich a model piece of action. But the scene at II 399ff., where
Patroclus kills Pronous and then his terrified, hunched attendant
Thestor, seems to him far less satisfactory: Thestor’s terror is not
related to Pronous’ death, and Thestor (who is named) is a nobody
anyway, elevated into importance by being pictured in a lengthy
simile which describes him as being hooked and lifted out of the
chariot like a fish out of water, an image Friedrich finds fantastic.
Things worsen at E 576, where Menelaus kills Pylaimenes ('standing
stock still’, for reasons Friedrich guesses may be related to the
'terrified attendant’ theme); and Antilochus then kills his attendant
Mydon with a sword-blow to the head. Friedrich points out that the
poet does not make clear that Pylaimenes is even in, or indeed
anywhere near, his chariot at the time, and finds the death of Mydon
even more fantastic - falling out of the chariot to stick upside down
in the sand before being kicked over by the horses. Friedrich now
turns to N 434ff. Here Alcathous is not in a chariot, but on foot. He too
is incapable of action - this time because Poseidon has put him in a
trance and shackled his limbs - and his armour gets a special mention
because it 'rings out drily’ as the spear cuts through into his heart,
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Preface
whose ‘dying palpitations shook the spear to the very butt’.5This, says
Friedrich, is a magical, nightmarish scene, full of special effects.
On this basis Friedrich starts to cast his net wider over the poem,
and gradually it emerges [40] that much of N and S is a combination
of realistic and unrealistic warrior-actions, that the realistic episodes
relate only to the wounding and retreat of Priam’s sons, and the
additional material helps to delay the major battle between Ajax and
Hector, which should surely start at N 802 but does not in fact occur
till S 402 (in which, as a climax to the ‘retreat’ theme, Hector too, the
most important of Priam’s sons, gives way). Friedrich draws some
parallels with the series of Greek woundings in A, and concludes that
fantastic scenes, constructed by some other poet, have been added to
the realistic scenes in N and S, and that one of the purposes is to
highlight heroes like Meriones, who are generally associated with
such scenes and whom he sees as typical of ‘newcomers’ to the epic,
introduced in its final stages; not being able to compete with the
established heroes, they are described in such way as to offer stronger
literary stimuli to the audience [78] .6 In other words, small-scale
analysis by style can have wider ramifications for conclusions about
composition.
This summary pursues only one thread among a large tapestry, but
it shows, broadly, how Friedrich works. It is, of course, ironical that
at one point he uses the phrase ‘variation and theme’ in relation to
scenes like the death of Asius’ charioteer and its multiforms [17], since
in musical composition that phrase celebrates above all unity of
authorship. But Friedrich also talks in terms of ‘motifs’, language
with which neither the musician nor the oral critic would have
complaints. And this, surely, is the point. Friedrich’s method of work­
ing is entirely compatible with that of the oralist - comparing scenes
in terms of motifs - even if the oral critic would deny that it is thereby
possible to reach conclusions about authorship of the sort to which
Friedrich is drawn. Indeed, Friedrich’s work is used consistently by
Bernard Fenik in his definitive Typical Battle Scenes in the Iliad
(.Hermes Einzelschriften 21, Wiesbaden 1968), and even Fenik, com­
mitted to the view of an oral Homer as he is, still acknowledges that
there may be something to be said for e.g. Friedrich’s view of interfer­
ence in N and S. Fenik writes (157):
‘The traditional explanation for this situation [i.e. why Hector
and Ajax do not fight at N 382] is simple: the section between
lines N 832 and S 402 has been inserted into an originally unified
context, splitting it apart and arresting its conclusion. It is,
indeed, difficult to escape the conclusion that something has
gone seriously awry here, however it may have happened. The
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Preface
feeling that N 832 and 5 402 belong together is further strength­
ened by their stylistic relation, as Friedrich has established. One
of the stylistic categories that he isolated is what he calls ‘bioti-
scher Realismus’. This is a manner of describing things or events
simply and straightforwardly, but with an eye for detail. It is to
be contrasted, for example, with that style which describes
details that are weird, fantastic, or grisly, or the monumental
style where details are held to a minimum and only what is
necessary or most important is described. Friedrich concludes
[39, this translation]: Tor if we contemplate all the passages in
which books N and E show the “true-to-life” style which observes
meticulously, is concerned about motivation, and is sober rather
than effusive, then from all the individual fights, the following
stand out: [40] The death of Asius and his charioteer N 384-401;
Deiphobus’ appearance N 156-8, his attack on Idomeneus N
402-12, but above all his wounding and his retreat N 527-39;
Helenus’ duel with Deipyrus, his attack on Menelaus, his
wounding, retreat and nursing by Agenor N 576-600; Hector’s
attack N 803-8 (cf. N 145-8), his duel with Ajax, his wounding,
fainting and rescue E 402-39 (his awakening is to be included, O
240-3). This selection according to stylistic criteria brings to­
gether material which is separated by much material of a
different nature. This obscures the idea which links together the
pieces that have been emphasised: Priam’s sons are wounded
one after the other....’
These are startling observations, and a check of all the fighting
in N and S will show that Friedrich is right. This particular
stylistic tendency appears only in these two books and, with the
exception of N 384-401 (the death of Asius and his charioteer), it
is always in connection with one of the sons of Priam, who are
wounded one after the other. Other explanations for this stylistic
phenomenon besides ‘disturbance of the original context’ are
possible. The poet could have had scenes in mind from another
poem, his own or somebody else’s, from which he borrowed, and
where these men’s woundings were related in this particular
style.7 Perhaps the deaths and woundings of certain persons
were more fixed in the tradition, stylistically and otherwise,
than we might expect. But the transition from one of these
stylistically identifiable sections to another where the style is
different, and vice versa, is not abrupt or difficult elsewhere as
it is here between N 832 and E 402. It is this combination of
stylistic relatedness and the abrupt break at N 833, plus the
thematic connection of N 832 with E 402, that forces the conclu­
sion that some violent disturbance has taken place.’
xiv
Preface
This is, I think, striking confirmation that Friedrich’s approach to
style is on the right lines; and Janko too, even though he rejects the
idea of interference in this passage, finds persuasive Friedrich’s
style-based analysis [25] that ‘the crescendo of horror contributes to
the [Trojan] rout’.8
If Friedrich’s general approach to style is, then, compatible with
oral practice ^nd may still be able to make a useful contribution to our
understanding of it, what of his broader concerns with layers of
authorship? fiere the case is more difficult to make. Yet I still think
there is much that oral poetics can learn from the now old-fashioned
analytical view of Homeric epic, Friedrich’s or anyone else’s. First,
then, a very brief review of the history of analysis.
In his Prolegomena ad Homerum (1795), the German scholar F.A.
Wolf decisively articulated what some other scholars had felt for some
time: that more hands were involved in the production of our Iliad
and Odyssey than just the one.9 His reason was that Homer could not
have used writing. His poems must therefore have been preserved by
rhapsodes, whose faulty memories and desire to intervene corrupted
the original words. Further, in Wolf’s view, no oral poet could produce
works of such size: for who on earth could ever listen to them? So he
concluded that Homer composed short, oral lays c. 950 BC; that these
were taken over and expanded by rhapsodes for four centuries; and
(when writing became available) enlarged even more by ancient
literary editors, who put the poems in the form we have them today
and were responsible for their high degree of artistic unity. The job of
scholarship was therefore to decide what was Homeric, and what was
not - the Homeric question. ‘Analysis’ had begun, and with it the long
battles between analysts themselves and the wider conflict between
analysts and ‘Unitarians’, who were committed to the view that there
was one, and one composer only, of the Iliad}0
Howard Clarke provides a useful summary of the main theoretical
hares that Wolf’s successors set running.11 Did Homer, for example,
compose one or more short songs himself, or did he assemble short
songs composed by others into a larger structure? Was the Uiad once
a brief poem - say, about Achilles’ anger - which was then expanded?
If so, was it expanded by the addition of episodes, or by enlarging
existing episodes? And where did Homer feature in all this? Further,
what evidence did one prioritise to determine an answer to these
questions - language? logic? style? history? How far should we apply
our canons of taste to a primitive illiterate like Homer? Analysts used
images like peeling away layers (as of an onion) to get to an original
core, or sorting out pieces (like a puzzle), or dough into which new
ingredients were blended, or a house with superstructures added, or
a series of layers, like a cake (see e.g. [80-1], where Friedrich himself
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Preface
comes up with the idea of a three-colour, and at times strongly
speckled, stylistic ‘map’).
But we are all oralists now. We take the view that, by and large, a
single ‘Homer’ was responsible for the Iliad as we now have it; that
its unique size is indicative of a special poetic effort, generated by
whatever inclinations and social and poetic circumstances; that
‘Homer’ comes at the end of a tradition of oral story-telling going back
hundreds of years (so that ‘Homer’ has, in a sense, inherited the work
of hundreds of earlier oral poets); and that his art consists in the
unique way he has re-worked these traditional, typical materials
devised to enable the oral poet to recite in the first place - from phrase
and sentence at one level to ‘theme’ and story-pattern at larger levels
- into the masterpieces we have today. Images of onions, houses,
dough and cakes are irrelevant to this unique, individual process -
though perhaps they would not be if we had any evidence of what an
Riad looked like in the hands of earlier poets.
The strength of the German analysts in my view is that they
imagine all sorts of alternative, shorter Riads which might pre-date
our Riad, and then try to trace their development into our Riad by
suggesting (on various, often aesthetic or logical, grounds) how the
expansion took place. In so doing, analysts had to envisage the
narrative implications of earlier Riads with, and without, the epi­
sodes that our Riad possesses. This surely is the point at which
oralists should become interested, since addition, expansion and
contraction of episodes is at the heart of oral epic technique and
thoroughly exemplified in the Riad we possess. What, for example,
would the Riad lose without (say) Thersites, the catalogue of ships,
the duel between Ajax and Hector in 0, or the seduction of Zeus? What
does it gain, with them?
On the much larger scale, if you assume that the earliest Riad told
how Achilles, insulted by Agamemnon, withdrew from battle, lost
Patroclus to Hector and returned to take successful revenge, the poet
could have got by without any of the ethical dimension that our Riad
possesses. Much of the first half of the Riad would therefore have
been redundant. But if you want to explore the idea of what an insult
might mean to a man like Achilles, and you conceive of an embassy to
Achilles and his rejection of it, then not merely do you add I but you
must also add © in order to motivate the embassy in the first place.
What then if you conceive of an Achilles so enraged by Patroclus’
death that he refuses to hand back Hector’s corpse? That will require
the poet to think about how to end the tale - it will no longer be a mere
revenge story - and will generate further ethical considerations that
may motivate Q. and deepen exploration of the person of Hector (and
therefore, perhaps, suggest the idea of Z). A poet who wanted to use
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Preface
the interaction of the heroes further to create a framework within
which to e.g. examine the rights and wrongs of the Trojan war will
then probably find a place for Menelaus, Paris and Helen - and
Pandarus too.12 And so on. I hasten to add that I am not proposing
that the Iliad was constructed like this, or that these were the
thought-processes that motivated the poet of the Riad: I simply point
out that in purely narrative terms one decision leads to another, and
that oral poetry is by its very nature a highly fluid form.
This is wfiere the sort of analysis beloved of nineteenth-century
scholarship can, in my view, be so stimulating. To ask in the light of
Friedrich’s work e.g. ‘what would be the implications for the structure
of our Riad if it did not have N S O in their present form, or if Meriones
and Meges did not feature, or if Sarpedon died in E’ is not to ask
counter-factual questions for the sake of it but is to force oneself to
confront the narrative implications of different sorts of Riads and in
so doing to understand more clearly the structure and priorities of
this one.
One could do worse, for example, than start by considering the
implications of Walter Leaf’s analysis of the Riad in his great com­
mentary on the poem (Macmillan 1886-8), especially the table in vol.
II, p. xi with its eight columns, each (broadly) representing a different
poet’s contribution. On Leaf’s analysis, the real star of the show,
introducing 0,1 and Q. and adding much of X, seems to me to be poet
IIIB, but authorship is not the point: this sort of analysis opens up
major narratological questions about the Riad that oral poetics
should (in my view) be trying to address, but currently does not.13
Notes
1. We use Friedrich’s convention for indicating books of the Riad and
Odyssey, i.e. letters of the Greek alphabet, capitals for the Riad, minuscules
for the Odyssey.
2. See P.V. Jones and G.M. Wright, Homer: German Scholarship in Trans­
lation (Clarendon 1997), pp. 38-41, and the translation of Erbse’s essay on the
linguistic problems associated with the end of the Odyssey (263-320). R.D.
Dawe, The Odyssey: Translation and Analysis (Book Guild 1993) takes these
matters very much further in a shamefully enjoyable 879 pages, wielding his
flaming obelos against the True Believer to awesome effect.
3. See e.g. R.P. Martin, The Language of Heroes (Cornell 1989) passim,
especially pp. 159ff.
4. References in square brackets are to the page numbers of Friedrich’s
text.
5. Translations from Homer: The Riad by E.V. Rieu, revised by Peter Jones
(Penguin 2003).
6. Nasty slayings are restricted to Agamemnon and Achilles alone among
XVII