Poul Anderson suggests in this essay that Homer celebrated heroism and sf writers celebrate science.
Virgil/Vergil followed Homer and began his epic:
"Arma virumque cano." (I sing of arms and a man.)
Anderson's Genesis begins:
"The story is of a man,..."
-Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), PART ONE, I, p. 3.
An epic beginning! - which continues:
"...a woman, and a world. But ghosts pass through it, and gods. Time does, which is more mysterious than any of these." (ibid.)
We know how mysterious time is.
Virgil: arms and a man;
Anderson: a man, a woman, a world, ghosts, gods and time.
(Virgil also has gods and ghosts but does not mention them in his introduction.)
17 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And there's also the example of Dante. He begins the DIVINE COMEDY very similarly, like this: "Midway this way of life we're bound upon,/I woke to find myself in a dark wood,/Where the right road was wholly lost and gone" (HELL, Canto I, 1-3, trans. by Dorothy L. Sayers, Penguin Books, 1973).
Ad astra! Sean
"I sing the wrath of Achilles".
Or for the Odyssey:
"Sing to me of the man, Muse,
The man of twists and turns..."
It's an interesting contrast. You have Achilles, who chose fame over length of days, who's a creature of wrath and pride and concern with his personal honor.
Then you have Odysseus, who never wanted to go to Troy, who when there simply wanted to get the war over with as fast as possible so he could get home to his wife and son -- and who cried tears of joy when he finally embraced Penelope again.
All Achilles can do is fight... and even there, as the Greek saying went: "It wasn't Achilles who took Troy."
Odysseus can fight -- very effectively, since he uses his head too -- but he can also steer a ship, spin a tale, figure out a stratagem, make a bed with his own hands, plow a field...
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
You are right! My quote from Dante did not FIT in with the quotes from these other poems.
Ad astra! Sean
I wish I had been familiar with the two Homeric opening lines.
Milton:
"Of man's first disobedience and the fruit..."
Kaor, Paul!
I thought of Milton as well, but I should have been thinking more of analogies to Homer and Virgil.
One of the essays written by Dorothy L. Sayers' was a comparison of Dante's COMEDY with the poem of Milton. I agreed with her that in many ways Dante's work was superior to that of Milton's.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
James Blish agreed with you.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That I had not known! Frankly, it was a hard, long struggle for me to read PARADISE LOST. I found it heavy, ponderous, and often boring. It wasn't fun or often INTERESTING to read.
By comparison, Dante's COMEDY had none of these flaws. He knew how to write and tell an interesting story, how to make a reader want to continue reading. Which is what any writer has to do first!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Only the first few books of PL are of high quality.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
It's been so long since I last tried to read PL! But I'm sure the most interesting parts are only in the first few books of the poem. What I recall most was of how hard a struggle it was to read PARADISE LOST.
Give me Dante's COMEDY any day of the week!
Ad astra! Sean
Milton was being deliberately archaic and using "high" diction; Dante wasn't. For example, he wrote in the vernacular, not Latin.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I think it can be possible to write in interesting ways using "high" diction, but Milton failed to do that.
Yes, Dante wrote in the Tuscan Italian vernacular of his time. He wrote in ways that would appeal to many kinds of people.
Ad astra! Sean
Milton was writing at the tail-end of the period when it was thought that English had to become "Latinate" in order to be fit for serious subjects.
Some people still think that it is wrong to split an infinitive in English because it is impossible to split it in Latin where an infinitive is only one word:
esse, to be;
ire, to go;
venire, to come;
etc.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Both: and the original Douai-Reims Bible, was marred by this excessive devotion to Latin. Albeit, the translators of the D-R did coin many useful taken from Latin into English. And it was in some ways a more accurate version than the Anglican AV.
Ad astra! Sean
The AV is better -writing-. It's not a particularly good -translation-, but it's superior literature.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
But that's not good enough for me, in a work as crucially important to Christians as the Bible. Your own comments about the persistent MIS-translation of Exodus 22.18 simply brings home to me the urgent necessity of the Scriptures being accurately translated. So if, despite its English being too awkwardly Latinate, the D-R was better than the AV, then the former should be preferred.
Actually, of course, as I'm sure you know, the OT of the DR was repeatedly revised and modernized by Bishop Challoner, Vicar Apostolic of the London District, in the 1750's.
Ad astra! Sean
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