Читать книгу The Erotic Motive in Literature - Albert Mordell - Страница 16

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Brandes said in his book on Shakespeare:

"As, knowing the life and experiences of the great modern poet, we are generally able to trace how these are worked upon and transformed in his works, it is reasonable to suppose that in olden times poets were moved by the same causes, acted in the same way, at least those of them who have been efficient. When we know of the adventures and emotions of the modern poet, and are able to trace them in the productions of his free fancy; when it is possible, where they are unknown to us, to evolve the hidden personality of the poet and—as every capable critic has experienced—to have our conjectures finally borne out by facts revealed by the contemporary author, then we cannot feel it to be impossible, that in the case of an older poet, we might also be successful in determining when he speaks earnestly from his heart, and in tracing his feelings and experiences through his work, especially when they are lyrical, and their mode of expression passionate and emotional."

Just as we can build up a picture of a modern author from dreams he reports, we can do the same with ancient authors.

I have tried to build up a portrait of the author of the Achilles-Patroclus episodes in the Iliad, from a dream repeated there—that of Achilles in the twenty-third book. It is remarkable that no portrait of Homer, or whoever was the author of the books dealing with Achilles, has thus far been constructed. Whether we assume that one man or more wrote the Iliad, we may draw one inevitable conclusion: That the parts of the poem in which Achilles figures contain the clue to the author of those sections. It is assumed generally that Homer wrote those sections. Homer sang his own troubles through his hero as a medium. Unconsciously his own traits and personality crept in. The great tragedy of Achilles's life was the death of his friend Patroclus; his master passion was friendship. It does not require psychoanalysis to detect beneath the great grief of the warrior, Homer's own despair. The poet sings of the bereavement of his hero in too poignant a strain for any one to doubt that in Patroclus he was not bewailing some loss of his own. We need not hesitate in saying, to judge by the manner in which the poet treats of friendship, and writes of it with his heart's blood as it were, that some friendship was the crown of Homer's existence. He no doubt also suffered a terrible crisis when he lost his friend, as is only too apparent, through parting or by death. When the blow befell him, he was drawn to the one incident of the many in connection with the Trojan war, the legend centring around Achilles and Patroclus. Why did he not choose some other feature of which there were so many and with which other poets dealt? The very choice of the subject apart from the internal treatment furnishes the proof he could not help but choose that which interested him most because of some experience in his own life. He had now an opportunity of registering his sorrows and adding personal matters while singing his tale. Life had become empty to him and his only consolation was to put his pangs into song. He even wished to die.

The key to these deductions is furnished by a section of the twenty-third book, of about fifty lines, of which John Addington Symonds says, "There is surely nothing more thrilling in its pathos throughout the whole range of poetry." Achilles sees Patroclus in his dreams, who recalls to him their youthful days and asks to be buried with him and foretells Achilles's own death. The warrior promises to grant his friend's requests and pleads: "But stand nearer to me, that embracing each other for a little while, we may indulge in sad lamentation." Achilles tried in vain to touch him, and told his comrades afterwards: "All night the spirit of poor Patroclus stood by me, groaning and lamenting, and enjoined to me each particular and was wonderfully like unto himself." All this has too authentic and personal a touch for any one not to feel that Homer was reporting a dream of his own and was attributing it to Achilles. The poet had also spent restless nights and saw his dead friend before him "wonderfully like unto himself"; the dream was very vivid to him, and more so if as tradition reports he was blind.

No indeed, Homer was no mere spectator reciting Achilles's troubles in an objective manner. He had a great sorrow of his own and he did not go out of the way to counterfeit one. He sang his own loss; he told his own dream; Achilles was the medium through which he told the world of his own troubles. Patroclus's prophecy that Achilles would die soon shows that Homer after his loss had wished he too would die, and Homer must have dreamt that his own end would come soon, in accordance with the principle that we often dream as happening or about to happen what we wish to take place. He saw his friend in his dream just as we all do because we wish our friends to be still with us. This dream then is the clue to the tragedy of Homer's life.

So Homer had loved a friend and suffered. Like Patroclus, he hoped his friend wanted to be buried with him; at least Homer wanted to have his own bones repose near those of his friend. What the nature of the friendship was we cannot say; it may have been homosexual, a love which was common among the later Greeks. But it did have the element of passion. We know now the chief event of Homer's life. What the details were we cannot say. It is rather unsafe to guess. But there are a few facts that appear, whose import is significant. Achilles, we recall, resolved to fight the Trojans again only because they killed Patroclus. He was now ready to forget Agamemnon's wrong to him in depriving him of his captive woman. He knew that by his new resolve he would lose his life. He was willing to die for his friend. Homer's love for his friend was also so great that he too would no doubt have given up his life for him. This I believe establishes the passionate element in the friendship of both warrior and poet.

Again, Achilles blames himself for Patroclus's death. Had he not withdrawn from the fight, the Trojans would not have gained any victories and not have killed his friend. In short, he had been too sensitive, proud and sulky; he had been too easy a prey to anger and revenge. Now he was suffering remorse. This indicates that Homer had quarrels with his friend. We know by psychoanalysis that people who lose by death a loved one feel guilt stricken if in life they had hostile wishes against the person; in fact they attribute the death to these secret emotions. The remorse is a reaction to the hostile wishes, and it is possible, but I do not wish to press this point, that Homer's friend was either ostracised or shunned by many for some idiosyncrasy or event in his past life for which he was not to blame and hence the poet loved him the more. Patroclus reminds Achilles in the dream that as a child, he, Patroclus, had killed a playmate. This detail would not have been invented by a poet writing impersonally. Homer thought of some event in the life of his own friend.

But the real deduction nevertheless remains I believe unassailable, that the master passion of Homer's life was friendship, that Achilles contains much of the poet unconsciously and that many of the moods and passions given to him were Homer's own. Homer also suffered a terrible loss and sang of it by emphasising the despair of Achilles at Patroclus's death which made him forget Agamemnon's wrong. The great warrior's calamity was to him a sadder blow than the loss of his captive woman, with whom he had fallen in love, proving that with Homer, as with Achilles, friendship was stronger than the love passion. The fact that so little of love appears in the Iliad has often excited comment. It is true the war was fought on account of a woman, but there is almost nothing of romantic love in the poem. This is because Homer had probably never felt love as he had known friendship. That love as a tender emotion existed, we know from the lyric poems written not very long after Homer. If a man writes works in which he says so little about love for women, it may be because he has never had such love. That Homer was altogether indifferent about women, however, is not likely. Some critic will some day study the women in Homer from a psychoanalytic viewpoint. Women figure more in the Odyssey; it is unlikely that the same man wrote both poems; and Samuel Butler has tried to prove that the Odyssey was written by a woman. This is not so absurd as it seems; at any rate some woman's influence made itself felt in the writing of that poem.

It is only right to conclude that the same motives and principles of singing which actuated later poets prompted the earlier ones. If Milton appears in Lucifer, Goethe in Faust and Mephistopheles, Shakespeare in Hamlet, there can be no question Homer has drawn himself in Achilles and an intimate friend of his in Patroclus.

After having formed this theory, I discovered the following significant passage in Plato's Republic, Book X, "For we are told that even Creophylus neglected Homer singularly in his lifetime."