Nagy masterfully deconstructs the myth of the solitary genius, showing that the greatest epics are actually the collective heartbeat of a civilization refined over centuries. This perspective shifts our focus from the mystery of an individual to the enduring power of communal storytelling.
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The Surprising Source of Homer’s Genius | Harvard’s Gregory Nagy
Added:I've been reading Homer's Odyssey here in Ithaca, where they proudly display a statue of Homer. But what if they got it wrong? What if Homer never wrote the Iliad or the Odyssey?
What if Homer never existed in the first place? This is not some wild conspiracy theory, but the considered conclusion of my guest Harvard's Gregory Nage after a lifetime of research. Professor Naj is one of the most respected Homerists alive who's published over a dozen books on Homer and his defining contribution is to uncover who or I really should say what produced the home epics. If you are at all engaged in creative work, if you're interested in how to build creative cultures and creative countries, then this is an incredibly important conversation because the Iliad and the Odyssey are two of the most important creative acts in the Western tradition. and learning about how they are made will help you gain a fundamentally new perspective on your own work [music] as it has mine. I came in quite skeptical of Professor Naj's claims and I left with a radically new understanding of my own craft. And specifically, we're going to examine two surprising claims from Professor [music] Naj. The first is that the home epics were not written. They were not written down, composed, edited, memorized, and then performed. They were composed orally on the fly, which means that the ancient Greeks developed a method to compose 12 to 15,000 line long epic masterpieces on the fly.
>> They learned how to speak a language much better in doing deep dives. That's [music] language prime, language square, language cubed.
>> The second radical claim is that Homer is not the name of an individual, but is the name of a process. There was not single moment where the home epics were composed but rather it was at a millennial long process which culminated in a series of Athenian festivals which professor Naj will help us bring to life. This is the real history of how we got epics.
I want to take us back to uh the 20th century. this idea that Homer, whoever this person, this tradition is, was manipulating on a textual level, >> but then Lord and Perry came in with their theory of oral composition. So, give us an overview um about um Lord and Perry, their work in Yugoslavia, and what the conclusions of that are.
>> Yes. So, what did they see, Perry and Lord, when they were collecting oral traditions in Yugoslavia? Well, they were up against somebody like Abdul Majedovich who could who could compose thousands of verses, let's call them lines. Um, >> extemporaneously >> extemporaneously. And at one point, Albert Lord says in his 1960 book, Singer of Tales, Abdul Majtovich is our Yugoslav Homer, quote unquote, more or less.
This caused how of protest in the world of Greek and Roman literature studies as you can imagine. But the thing was he could do something in may I say it this way 11 lines or um 11,000 lines.
>> Yeah.
>> Oral poetics can be expansion and compression.
>> Yeah. And it depends on the circumstances of performance. One of the big breakthroughs of Perry in in the 1920s already when he was doing the field work with his student Albert Lord is it has nothing to do with text.
um to do oral poetry or oral tradition in general, you don't need the medium of writing and therefore you don't need the cognitive process of reading which by the way is not universal.
Anthropologists can tell you that different cultures um mentally do reading in a different way and so there's no reliance on the technology of writing. You know people are prejudiced about oh if somebody is not using the technology of writing they must be illiterate. Um you need literacy to have genius. And there was this prejudice and this was again a breakthrough for Perry and Lord is some of the most wonderful compositions ever recorded.
How you record it is another matter are oral compositions.
>> I see. So to summarize for our audience, uh they went to a mostly pre-iterate society that still carried a oral poetic tradition and they were able to find these oral Homeresque poets who would just use orality to listen to compositions and then to and then to are able to regenerate it on the fly without the any manipulation on text. Tell me about the audience interaction of Yugoslavia and extrapolate that to the early Helenic period.
>> I want you to imagine a predecessor of Perry called the Radloff and Radloff back in the old days. This is in the 1800s. He went to a huge festival where two rival sultans were under the same tent and they had rival audiences that were dependent on the genealogies of Sultan one and Sultan 2. And so then the Aken the Kirkas oral poet is going to do an epic where the ancestors of these two rival sultans are engaged in warfare back in the heroic age supposedly. Wow.
>> And so what he does and this is something that Vladlov noticed and then Perry was fascinated with it when he read about it is the Aken the oral poet would make contact with Sultan one when he was doing one kind of narrative about the heroic age >> contact as in looking at him or >> eye contact eye contact. And then when there was a different register that was more in favor, but he had to be very careful. He made eye contact with Sultan number two, >> right?
>> And and so could I just say in in medieval Ireland, you see best how an oral poet has to function in in Irish traditions and we know this from documentation from the medieval times.
uh the oral poet who was called um a philly which means the one who sees the philly was jeritically immune as he traveled from one tuat which means petty kingdom to another by jeretical immunity that means that um unlike let's say the kilas aken who had to had was stuck with two rival two rival patrons shall we uh the patronage would keep changing. So what are you going to do if you're an itinerant oral poet and where every petty kingdom has its different way of talking about the heroic past but they're all formulaic and they're all you know oral oral poetry bound.
What you do is you try to shade over what makes things different from one petty kingdom and another petty kingdom and you try to highlight what makes them similar and that's what homeriic poetry is >> right is the extent of audience interaction not just in home poetry but with all these traditions we've seen at large that kind of eye contact or is there audience participation right because think about something that our audience might be more familiar with stand-up comedy Yes, >> sometimes the audience gets involved through heckling and then the comedian then takes up that that on and runs with that. Is is that kind of participation ever included or >> the thing is that um ho how do we find a recording of such a performance right >> uh you know once you get into the technology of writing >> right these traditions are killed off >> they're killed off u but on the other hand there's no such thing um in any oral poetry that survives where um you don't have audio audience response that's positive. If I'm an oral poet and people are sitting like this, >> I need I I know I need to change my act.
It's not landing.
>> And so so remember I talked about compression and expansion, right?
>> Compression and expansion. And that's why in the Odyssey where Odysius is telling Odicius's adventures that's from from Rapsidity 9 all the way to the beginning of Raps City 13 is is uh at one point he's saying to the king and queen am I talking too long and they say you can you can tell your story all night long.
>> Right. In other words that encodes a tradition of how poets are able to perform.
>> Well then you can expand.
>> Right. Right. But but but if somebody has if you have only a small elite group and >> they look like they're bored and yeah [clears throat] >> then you compress compress compress compressed. What we have in our in our Iliad and Odyssey is a a very refined um prehistory and history of performer audience interaction where shall we say audience approval results in every time you reperform at a big festival. Every time you do that it can get less and less variation to it. If um I if the history of the tradition is like that in other kinds of >> right >> u traditions they may want more more more variety >> right so in some an analogy would be the stand-up comedian trying different bits before they go on the Netflix show they're going to these local taverns essentially trying different bits see what lands different variations and then when they go to the big festival they give the great >> example uh the movie, My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Um, that started from uh standup comedy and and the person who who created the movie version, which is, shall we say, a fixed text, is a stand-up comedian who had probably gazillion different ways of doing My Big Fat Wedding for a stand-up audience.
>> Right. So, do you think Homer existed?
And if he didn't exist, how did we still end up with the Iliad and the Odyssey?
>> Let's talk about Homer, the name >> because, you know, it's not that I don't believe in Homer, it's that they did believe in Homer. And I don't like to say believe in. For them, it was a a social reality. Because here's the thing, etmologically, homeos means homo and arisco, which is together and fit together like a carpenter. So, it's the joiner. That's the older English word for carpenter.
But it also means hostage. And how did it mean hostage? Well, it's because in myths about Homer, he is um growing up in his birthplace, Smyrna. Um Smyrna is besieged by non-Greek Lydians. And so what happens in in that shall we say prehistoric time is that the only way to make peace is to exchange a hostage, >> right?
>> That binds communities together.
>> You've got it. And so that's why the hostage is the joiner because guess what? Homer volunteers to be the hostage. But the trouble is the Libyans have a very nasty custom which is if the hostage givers um default on the agreement that they made with the hostage takers, if there is a default, then the Lydians have a right to blind >> the hostage. And so Homer is blinded because uh he he integrates Greekeaking people by >> sacrificing sacrificing himself and that's how in a sense that's the perfect symbol also for an oral poet because an oral poet cannot cannot use the technology of writing.
>> Wow.
>> Wow. There's so many layers.
>> Isn't that amazing?
>> There's another layer I want to point out.
>> Which is in Odysius uh Odyssey 8, Deodicus.
>> Yeah.
>> Who is probably the most famous poet that's portrayed in in Homer. He's also blind. And this is what he said. This is what Homer says.
The faithful barred the muse adored above all others true but her gifts were mix with good and evil both. She stripped him of sight but gave the man the power of stirring rapturous song.
>> That sounds like Pope I I I think you used the perfect translation but but what you quoted which is beautiful Jonathan >> why is that a gift? Why is why why is the blindness a gift? because then you have inner vision and not just superficial outer vision.
And um so what happens is and and in in the same rap city raps city 8 when when the blind singer sings his first of three songs um he fin and fin means he illuminated the words of the song. He made it come alive and and visualized by us because our imagination imagination is inner vision. He >> he he gave up sight so that we could have sight.
>> We could have sight.
>> Interesting.
>> He illuminated the song. In other words, the song now no longer sounds, it shines.
>> Wow. Okay. So again, to to use a very secular analogy, people who are blind, they have heightened other senses.
>> Yes. Yes. And and and so that's why it's a gift. It's because it's because they're given such a sensitivity. Yes.
>> To the language to to to to orality to to to audio that and they can then give that gift to us.
>> And imagine he gives up his he gives up his eyesight because he's a joiner. He joins all Greeks. So he's a hostage because hostages are people who are blinded because of a default of a treaty. Okay. But that that that defaulting preserves the Greek speaking community.
>> So here's my question for you. The Iliad of the Odyssey, these are tens of thousands of lines. And when the people are pointing to a single genius, I think what they're gesturing at perhaps is the the subtle foreshadowings, right, that you have, for example, in book one of the Iliad where uh uh Brillias his father is coming in to bargain with him.
Agamemnon says no. He calls Apollo and uh Apollo casts these plagues and then something very similar happens on the same beach with Achilles in book one.
And then when Patrick dies in book 18, a similar sequence happens, a similar event, right? Other people have have gestured at how book one of the Iliad and book 24 of the Iliad are mirrors of each other. So here's my here's my challenge for you. If I'm composing an 18,000word epic poem in my head, >> how do you explain these intricate seemingly literary details that require right now all of our attention to to to get right?
>> Well, how does that happen in in in in just uh yeah, just extemporaneous oral composition? Well, the trick is that um you weren't doing this for the first time and in fact um you may have been doing it times and not only that you have the pressure of doing it even better than your predecessor and it's said most beautifully when Omar invokes the muse the goddess of absolute memory and and tell me because I need to hear it from you so I can tell my my my let's call them audience and he says at one point from all these possibilities the way you talk about all the possible ways to do it tell tell me also in other words muses have told singers of tales before now they're telling me >> right >> and I'm better than you >> right? Tell me not only what happened, but how to say it.
>> But how to say it even better than all my predecessors because I'm not only collaborating with all my predecessors, I'm competing with them. That's part of oral tradition.
>> Right? So um I I want to elaborate a bit on this idea of formula and theme for our audience because this is quite crucial to one of their key discoveries of arguing that Homer is comparable to what they saw in Yugoslavia, right?
Because what they found in Homer is remarkable economy is is the word they used. Yes.
>> That for the same kind of meter, let's take the example of epithets. Uh it's always gayeyed Athena. If you want that specific meter, it's it's godlike Achilles. For every number of syllables and every picture they were trying to paint, there's only usually one way to say it. And what they saw was that the Yugoslavic oral poets were also demonstrating this kind of economic uh efficiency. And the claim is that exists in Homer, it does not exist in Virgil.
And because that is part of the constraints, the cognitive constraints of oral composition. Is that right?
>> Harry had an escape clause. Let's give an example of Odysius. Odysius is the ephilos in a certain slot. So that's his fixed epithet in the meter. So you're talking about theme and and and meter.
And so meter says in a certain position, this is your default. I'm saying default. However, Perry himself said they're not only fixed epithets, they're particularized epithets. And that's an exception.
>> A good one is Odyssey one line one and mus.
And I go to the next line, but let's not go. Polon, which I'd like to translate as a man who can turn into many things or persons.
Uh if it were just a fixed epithet as everywhere else in that metrical slot, it would be the eilon, not polit, >> right?
>> Whoops. So that means that means it's not 100% economical.
>> I want to ask you if you think the artistry of it all suffers a bit because how formulaic it can be. Now you said that there's an escape clause which is like polyropon, right? like like many turns like there are ways where you don't have to follow it. It's not every time Athena must be great but when you look at the most used instance of Athena is greateyed the the sea is described as wine dark the wine dark sea even when it's bright out in the poem. So it seems like the constraints of oral poetry, let's say not if it it doesn't enforce it restricts the author from being able to use more appropriate epithets in parts of the po poem. So therefore, do you think that's a limitation of its artistry that it becomes so formulaic that it can't use the most accurate epithet always when it needs to?
>> Yes. But when we say accurate epithet, it it's as if um everything happened one single time.
>> And but the thing is this art form is is something where um when you heard that um the dawn was rosy fingered. You might have been four years old and then you hear it when you're my age. How many times have you heard it before? It's an expectation. It's uh what >> it grounds it anchors >> it anchors the real world so to speak and and but the real world can have variations. So let's go back to the man of many turnings shall we say um it's not the only time that this particularized epithet happens. um much later on in the Odyssey when the witch Cersei is falling in love with the unnamed um Odysius. He hasn't been named yet, but he's he's already outwitted the witch. And he says, and she says, um, "Are you by any chance Odysius Polythropos about whom Hermes has told me so much?"
And then if you if you now switch compositions to homem to Hermes times there Hermes is polythropos because Hermes mercury is mercurial which is what polythropos really means >> and so what I'm saying is there can be sort of specialized ways of of identifying somebody and then there are comfortable ways where oh this is what I heard 500 times already.
>> Right? In other words, >> your response to me is the formulaic quality of it can give it a certain general u familiarity that is artistic in its own sense and it makes the moments when you break from that formula like polo even more even more shocking.
Hold on. Athena is no longer great in this sequence. There must be something here.
>> Jonathan, I love your style. You're a very quick study. [laughter] >> Thank you. Um, let me give you a quote because now I want to push you because you still have to explain how we got the text.
>> We sure do.
>> So, so now um I want to push you on the writing process. Here's a quote uh from your book home questions.
>> The Greek poetic inscription in the earliest period before 550 B.CE is not conceived as a transcript of performance of a short poem. It is rather conceived as a poem. I want you to explain that.
And because this writing down is conceived as an an authoritative equivalent to performance.
>> Yes.
>> So yeah, explain that to me. Yeah, >> absolutely. So when you see something written down, for example, looking at an inscription and you're the passer by and and there's an inscription on, let's say, a gravestone and the gravestone says, "Stop. Start reading." Reading.
and you start reading and you you try to put the sounds together. It's your voice that is putting the sounds together.
It's it's the inscription that's speaking to you, but you have to lend your voice to it because otherwise it doesn't come alive.
>> I see. In other words, the direction of ontology flips. Yes.
>> Before 550 or before the sixth century in in a sense now we think well oral composition uh the text is what grounds it. This is the reverse. You're saying the inscription is actually generated by the sound that you create in your mind.
>> And could I tell you what what really amuses me is let's go to the city state of Corinth that still has W's or we in the trade call it digama. Let's say Doric, you still have W. In Ionic, you don't have W anymore and you haven't.
the prestige language. If I'm a Dorian in Corinth, I I want I want the verses that are going to be on my gravestone uh to be in ionic, not in Doric, but I have W's where ionic doesn't. So, the the formulaic stuff that is written is commissioned. It's composed by not the person who's going chip chip chip. It it's it's like this.
>> It's an oral mind.
>> It's an oral mind. But then somebody has to write it down. But hey, I happen to be a Doric speaker. So I put W's into the thing which aren't pronounced anymore.
>> Interesting.
>> So in other words, I can prove to you that the earliest poetic inscriptions are are composed and then somebody has to has to put it on stone.
>> Yeah. Let me give you another quote from that same book. Thus, even as late as the second half of the fifth century, the era of Herodotus, the actual writing down of any given text could still be viewed as tantamount to the production of yet another performance. This is what we have been talking about. To the extent that the technology of writing could produce a text that conferred a level of authority parallel to that conferred by an actual performance.
>> In the histories of Herodotus, the written text is not only an equivalent to performance, it is considered the authoritative equivalent. Something happened in fifth century.
>> Yeah.
>> That >> the ontology flipped. Suddenly the written text is priority.
>> Well, but if I may give me a chance to say the first paragraph of Roditus because and I'll translate it. So, Exisanthrop.
So this is the public manifestation the public demonstration of the research of Heroditus of Helicarnasis with the purpose of bringing it out that those things that come from humans should not become eancent and that deeds great and wondrous performed by Helens and by non-Helines alike should not be without glory, without cleos and that is performative.
>> So the writing implies >> imitates the or oral performance.
>> It not only imitates it, it makes sense only if you read it and you lend your voice to it.
>> Hold on. But but Herodotus is written, right?
>> Well, yeah, but but but it's still I'm >> I see you're challenging my claim that that at that time writing was more prestigious. You're you're you're saying even the first paragraph borrows the prestige of orality, >> right?
>> And and the fact that I I love the fact there's one point where Herodithus decides to um to talk about um who died and and who gets a good name, which would be poetically a cleos. So in another medium that would be poetry but here it's it who gets a good name and the same word apodexis happens here.
It's like saying oh it it's too bad he didn't have any deed to be famous to be talked about.
>> Okay.
>> And and that means that means it it's like you know you know sometimes you hit bullseye and sometimes you miss.
>> Okay. So this is a fascinating answer.
You're essentially saying even in Heroditus's time they're borrowing the prestige of orality for the written work. But but at a certain point the written word did become more prestigious. So so tell us about that.
>> Okay. But what what changed? What what changed?
>> Time.
>> Yeah. But but is it is it because papyrie were more easy cheaper to produce and then or is it because uh um >> Yeah. Uh I think most classicists will tell you that reading Thusidities is much much harder than reading Heroditus.
It's because he really did compose everything for for >> for reading.
>> For reading.
>> I see.
>> Well, I shouldn't say everything because when he does speeches, I take it back.
When he does speeches, then it's a different register.
>> Right. So you're saying something about the complex production needed required a different medium and that medium became more prestigious through that comp complicated kind of >> and and then thusidities will even say he says look what I'm doing is is not an agonisma is not a contest speech where I'm showing off how I'm speaking in public.
It's rather a um ecta sia. It's a possession that is meant to last forever. So it's like putting putting a papyrus in a vault.
>> Yeah.
>> It's not a publication.
>> Yeah.
>> You have to be privileged to find the vault. Do I have the combination?
>> I'm kidding.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And and you know I I know colleagues who think that when Thusidities put this all together. It was like um you know in cold war movies a microfilm is only only people who really care about world politics and who want who want to have real power in world politics should have access to it because it's it's it's secrets. It's state secrets.
It's all sorts of >> historical things that I hate to put it this way um ignorant people just just will mess up. I um this is coming from a writing bias of course, but the reason I like writing so much and why I thought it was actually a more natural medium for the poets is because of their concern of undying glory. Cleos and and a book obviously is immortal in a way a speech act is not.
>> Yeah.
>> And so I guess first that's just an observation. I'm curious what you have to do with that where it's it seems to be more fitting actually of the ambition of poetry to be immortal that it's written down. But the second thing is didn't that bother the poets that that you would create this great song it would you know it exists in one instance of time and then it's gone there wasn't really an alternative >> right interesting >> there wasn't an alternative and all I'm saying about about Thusidities is I think you've nailed it this is what Thusidities is all about is I need writing I need the technology of writing but he's not necessarily sure about how to get it out there.
>> Yeah, that's so fascinating because obviously if you >> uh uh magnify this trend >> to the complexities of today's scientific and technological age, it's not compatible with oratory at all. You can't orate a uh blueprint for a computer chip, right? And but but now I think >> professor, you're slightly pulling me more and more to this prestigious oral frame, i.e. viewing oral as as primary.
I just realized Plato's dialogues are oral that that they are written down to be oral. And of course at the end of the Fedris there's a famous critique of books that books are these dead external things and and when you listen to Cicero defend the importance of oratory >> it's it's embodied >> oratory makes it embodied. Right.
>> So, so let's do for example um the library of Alexandria which has um at its centerpiece the corpse of Alexander the Great. This is what he wanted. But he wanted his corpse to be mummified because in terms of Egyptian religion, not in terms of Greek religion, the mummification is the pathway to immortalization to be brought back to life again. Mhm.
>> And so the idea of the library is there are all these dead letters and when you pick up a scroll of papyrus and you read out loud the words come alive just as Osiris the proto Egyptian um dead person will come alive will have a resurrection letters will have a resurrection if you pick up the book and read it and of course St. Augustine says to le pick up the book and read it.
>> Interesting. Right.
>> So I understand that writing can be a powerful way of metaphorizing bringing the word back to life. And if I may please talk about Plato and Plato's fidel, don't you find it fascinating that um when um people reminiscing about the death of Socrates um and it's a fidel this this person who was there when when Socrates died and and he says well who were the other people who were there Socrates asked Fido who is the witness and and Fido says well there's XYZ etc. And what about Plato? Oh he aros he was not up to it. Now what does that mean? People think that it means literally he sent out because he's not mentioned anywhere. It's as if he weren't there. But he is there because how can he channel what this friend Echrates remembers? Or maybe he's the one who remembered. So I can play with that forever. But that's so interesting.
This is the only place except for Plato's apology where in the writings of Plato, Plato mentions himself.
>> So in other words, he channels the living the living voice. But it's not just the voice. It's the dialogue of Socrates because that's the whole point of of the fedo which is don't worry if Socrates dies the word that he he initiates in dialogue with with whoever wants to engage in dialogue that must never die that must keep living. This is a a completely wild thought, but I think given the reinvention of video, um, oratory may potentially make a comeback.
That, by the way, that's why that's why I find your I mean, what we're doing right now is fleeting before the invention of cameras and audio. Yes, I agree.
>> But now it it both has that living embodied quality and now it could be also made immortal. And so maybe videotaping oral performance is is a is a synthesis of of the two.
>> I agree. Oh, I agree.
>> Yeah. So, um, we talked about Lord Perry and how this oral composition um, overturned the kind of debate with with analysts and unitarians that all assumed writing in texts as the most prestigious, as the most onlogically real. Yeah.
>> Now, I want to move on to what you're known for, which is this crystallization process. Because if I understand you correctly, >> um, Lord and Perry, even though they think the text >> may have been orally composed, they were open to a oral dictation way of how he got the text. In other words, there might have been one great Homer at one of these festivals and everyone just thought, "This is so much better than everyone else. Let's write it down so we don't lose it."
>> Yes.
>> That's not your claim, right? you had you developed a a different crystallization claim which I'm going to summarize for the audience and I'm gonna follow up with a question. So >> perfect.
>> Early second millennium to the middle of the 8th century there was all these different random poets and random taverns and that's when the homeriic ideas really were engendered.
>> Yes.
>> And then you have a more panh helenic period. This is middle of the 8th century >> to the middle of the sixth and this is when interstate festivals started started creating. You have these different festivals. there there more central points. There's more kind of uh uh uh crystallization.
>> And then you have in Athens from the middle of the sixth to the later part of the fourth.
>> This is the the allimp important panathna festival.
>> Exactly.
>> That's that that Athens holds that is even more centralized. Before it was various interstate now it's all centralized. And then you have a further standardization period from the 4th all the way to when the really the vulgate the standard edition is formed in the second the second century.
>> So here's my question for you.
At which point was critical for the genius of Homer? In other words, was it the second millennium to eight? Was that period of like let a thousand flowers bloom? Was that what was really important? Or was it the interstate festival where we had rival competitions but still some structure? Or was the pana in Athens where you had the best tastes of people judging these poets?
like what point was mo most critical to forming some of the greatest literature in all of human history.
>> There are different moments of genius in every different phase of the evolution.
>> And the nice thing about um a crystallized oral tradition is that some of the earliest moments of genius can be preserved alongside some of the latest.
>> And I must give you an example. Um, Iliad raps at E6. Hector is about to go off and have his last moments of life because he's going to be on the battlefield and he'll be killed by Achilles.
And we kind of already know it. And so he says goodbye to his loving wife Andromeaki for the last time. And the baby of Hector and Andromeaki is is being held. and he leans over to kiss the baby for the last time. But the baby sees the horsehair that is streaming from the the the warrior's helmet and the horsehair cascades down and the child freaks out and starts crying.
And at that point, Andromeaki smiles through her tears.
And so Hector takes off his helmet and kisses the boy for the last time. And now I turn to an observation that a a dear friend, the late Emily Dickinson Townsen Vermule, what a name, who was a wonderful archaeologist, said about that scene. She said that perception of humanity where a warrior says goodbye for the last time could not have happened before I think she said400 B.CE. It goes all the way back to the middle of the second millennium BCE.
>> It couldn't have happened >> anytime later because they didn't have that kind of helmet.
>> I see. I see. So the idea that the horse that the horse uh hair >> would go down. I see. So what you're trying to say is one of the most brilliant and touching scenes of the of the Iliad is a crystallization process from part of the genius before the 1500s.
>> Yes. So the genius runs through um the entire period of homeriic evolution.
>> Got it.
>> It's it's just that the way it all hangs together, it all crystallizes pretty damn good.
>> Yeah. And why did you choose the word crystallization there?
>> Because it's pretty.
[laughter] >> It's beautiful. I like the word crystallization because if I just talk about fluid phases of oral tradition and then they become rigid phases, then you think of rigor mortise. You know, if you get totally rigid, it could be death. So that's why I I thought I got to come up with a a a more beautiful metaphor. So how about a crystal crystallization for something fluid that becomes yeah um something something solid but beautiful at the same time. My favorite example is the ballet for glorico in Mexico and this is beautifully written up by an anthropologist and any Peterson Royce called an anthropology of dance. So I want you to think of this wonderful idea where you know dance is also um shall we say improvisational and it's body movement so it can be included in song.
So to me it's also analogous to oral tradition and you have these dozens and dozens of different Mexican communities that have very different kinds of of dance traditions. And so and so this ballet company, this national ballet company recruits the very best dancers from each of these communities. And when they first do their thing, they tend to show off their individuality a lot more.
But the more they work together, guess what happens? Um their repertoire [clears throat] >> crystallizes.
>> Crystallizes. And instead of having 20 different ways of the thing happening, there's eventually just one way. But the problem is the more beautiful and crystalall-like it becomes, the more easily it gets shattered.
And so how to avoid the shattering >> and the analogy is the shattering would be the tradition being lost.
>> You know, something bumps into it and it all it all shatters.
>> It's too delicate or >> it's too delicate, >> right? It's like that poem by Sudi Prud about the broken vase vase in don't touch it because it'll all come apart. So that's what eventually happens to oral traditions unless you write it down.
>> Um okay. So now we understand your claim of this crystallization. It wasn't single moment dictation. No.
>> Now I want to understand your arguments for it. Tell us about the evidence that makes you think it couldn't have happened in the way that Lord Perry thought it did. Why couldn't have one outstanding individual in one of these early interstate festivals just done such a better job than everyone else and then someone said we must write this down and that becomes canon. The text becomes fixed. What evidence do we have or what arguments do you have that explains why that can't be? Well, uh to me it's anthropology 101 that when you look at all the oral traditions of the world again it's a matter of competition and collaboration.
>> In other words, they're it's always changing. We haven't found one tradition that >> Yeah. And and uh and the latest performer will always say, "I'm better than the previous ones."
>> Interesting.
>> And sometimes they are, sometimes they're not.
>> Right. Um you're going to make a similar claim about a lot of the West treasure traditions.
>> Yes. So Sophocles wrote Sophocles.
Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare. Homer did not write Homer.
>> Correct.
>> Hessiad did not write Hessi. Safo did not write Safo.
>> Correct. For me.
>> For you. When you compare these traditions that come from for you these centuries long, sometimes millennial long crystallization process.
>> Beautifully said.
>> With the traditions that are just written down by a single mind like >> Soples. Yes.
>> What do what differences do you see? In other words, if I just uncovered a manuscript today and I blind and I blind you from all the details around the manuscript, [clears throat] I say, >> "Is this an does this come from an oral tradition, performance tradition, or a written immediately dictated tradition?
How can you tell?"
>> I I can tell I can tell um in the case of ancient Greek because that's where Perry and Lord >> Yeah. um could say well the way you can tell Greek oral traditions is formula and meter or how how um meter um interacts with formula but if I go for example to modern Greek which is still oral they don't have um the kind of meter that ancient Greek had it's now also stress-based not it's like Germanic I see and it's still oral but you have to develop different linguistic criteria >> right so so It's mainly that formula meter. Is there anything about the the theme or what what the story is about or the unity between or or that's all the same you can't tell.
>> If you want to use the word theme, it's shall we say the the building block of meaning versus formula, the building block of form. So [clears throat] it's form and content. Form and meaning.
That's all it is. But you can't universalize those things. So I'm saying oral does not necessarily have to be even defined in terms of formula and and meter. That that's something you're very comfortable with in the Greco Roman world. But but in other traditions, even in modern Greek traditions, it really doesn't help.
>> So I I actually love that distinction that you drew out. Formula is about the form. Theme is about the meaning. And you're saying if I gave you a secret Greek ancient Greek manuscript, you you'll be able to tell from the formula, right?
>> Oh, yeah.
>> But my question is, is there anything about the theme that would separate the two categories? Is the oral theme a lot more have have a more ring structure because that's how they memorize things whereas whereas the written theme can be much more multi-threaded. Okay.
>> Oh, yes. Oh, I think you nailed it.
Interesting. you're a very good interviewer because you can say things better than than I'm trying to say it, but it's exactly right. And the magic word is ring composition, but you know, people have been playing with ring composition before Perry and Lord, >> right? It it's just that it really is one of the most basic aspects >> and for our audience the ring composition is like a abc uh b a like it's something that it's a singular it's a singular thread whereas written can be multi multi which way it can go every which way >> right um do you think this kind of more singlethreaded uh uh theme is a limitation to the form in the sense that for writing you can do so much. It can be sprawling. You can jump from place and and time. You you don't seem to be able to do that with the oral composition just because of the cognitive demands of the listener as well as the composer.
>> Is that a limitation in some sense? Is that a is that a is that a weakness of the form in some sense?
>> I think it's an integration. And maybe let me take you to a federation of 12 city states in Asia Minor, Anatolia.
These 12 states had a festival called the festival of all the Ionians because they they thought of themselves as the cream of the cream of all Ionians.
And and the way it worked is that is that um the 12 cities each had four rapsidities of what are 48 rapsidities to perform and it's all taking turns Jonathan it's taking turns it's again collaboration and yes there's competition but the collaboration so I just want you to get away from the single mind We're talking about an evolution. An evolution that is societally grounded in a very strict federation where the whole principle of keeping them together politically uh socially.
>> Yeah.
>> Is to take turns in order. In order means organization.
And so you can't separate in oral tradition social organization from poetic organization. And that's why dear Jonathan, if you want to compliment an oral poet, you say that's a great cosmos that you did. Well, cosmos can mean the universe world >> which is the world which is organized.
It has chaotic parts in it, but it's ultimately an overarching organization cosmos.
It's also the law code of any individual community. for example at Sparta uh where their law code was orally transmitted. We know this and where juristprudent um authorities came together every year and they were never supposed to write it down. So you do the law code of Sparta.
That's also a cosmos.
It gets better. uh if um if I'm in a festival and I'm I'm wearing my costume that is societally part of the large hole as for example in the 12 cities city states of Ionia my good looks my my bell figura is my cosmos and that's how we get cosmetics so you go all the way from the the macrocosm if I can put it that way of the universe the ordered universe, the macrocosm of society which is our law code which has to be orally transmitted and then all the way to the to your individual. I know we moderns and postmoderns we love the individual >> right >> but the individual is part >> right >> of of an organization and and and the verbal art and the political art they have to come together >> right so in other words this is a response to my singlethreaded ring composition versus multi-threaded response because you're saying don't see that as a limitation see that as a welcome to order >> it's a welcome to order that's exactly right >> right right that's helpful um I want to now raise a few challenges clear to your crystization theme.
>> Um the first one is it's very interesting that the the Odyssey and the Iliad do not overlap.
>> In fact, despite how sprawling they are, they make a big deal about just missing each other and all the right points.
>> And it seems like the Odyssey clearly has an awareness of the Iliad, right? So here's my question. Um, for me what that suggests is that there is a unitary mind of some sort that said, hey, I'm going to write about this here. I'm going to write about that there. Whereas if I had these traditions, right, that's what you're suggesting. I would have thought some author wanting to some poet, sorry, wanting to show off like you said, would say, "No, no, in the Odyssey, I'm actually going to retell Hector and drama in a drama key because that was so amazing." So, doesn't the fact that they just miss each other imply that there's some kind of uh unifying mind rather than these sprawling traditions?
>> I loved everything you said until you said sprawling >> because tradition doesn't have to be sprawling because sprawling to me suggests oh just every rich way. So, here's the thing about the Iliad and the Odyssey. Um, I can show you that the very name of Achilles and the very name of Odysius, their names are interchangeable in the Iliad and the Odyssey. They fit exactly where the names fit in each respective epic. So, in other words, >> meter wise or >> meterwise meterwise. So here's where um you know Perry and Lord's insistence on how meter and wording let's say are so important and how they work together is that it's clear that the evolution of our homeic Iliad is Achilles epic because that's the most wellplaced formula for every imaginable situation in the dactillic examter which is what we in the trade call the meter And similarly, Odysius is the one person who dominates and who really shapes every possible formulaic placement of the name Odysius. And they match metrically perfectly. They match perfectly just as the mega epic of the Iliad 15,000 plus verses long. The mega epic of the Odyssey 12,000 plus verses long match just as you said beautifully is they're complimentary they're structurally twins >> right but doesn't that high complimentarity imply that there were there was this unifying mind orchestrating this >> well if you want to say the unifying mind starts in 1600 BCE and lasts till the 3rd century BCE fine >> okay but let me ask you let me as this for me that's mind.
>> Yeah. But let let me ask you directly here which is these traditions where at at least in the early phases there was very little constraints for these individual poets to do their performance let's say in performing performing the Odyssey why wouldn't I also want to scoop up a little bit of the best of the Iliad to add to my own lust >> which you do you do >> right >> you do um my book best of the aans the whole book really comes from 10 lines in Odyssey raps city 8 which is a microad So yeah, there's the mega Iliad which is 15,000 plus verses long and then there's the microiad which is smack in the middle of Odyssey 8 which is the first song sung by the blind singer which is paraphrased in 10 lines 10 lines compression 15,000 plus lines expansion.
>> I see. So in other words, you're actually disagreeing with my original premise that they kind of perfectly miss each other. You're saying no, there is a lot of >> Oh, they they systematically steer clear of each other when they want >> or when they want at will, >> but but they are totally complimentary.
>> Let me give you another potential challenge uh from a fellow scholar called Richard Jenko about your crystallization process.
>> And I admire him, but I disagree with him. Great. And so let me flesh out the kind of critique for the audience first, which is that he did some very detailed linguistic analysis or so he claimed.
>> And he claimed that the linguistic features of the Alien Odyssey are strictly in the 8th century, which raises the question, well, if this is a continuing tradition all the way until the 4th, it wasn't crystallized until finally crystallized till the second century, >> why would these attic Greeks still be using how could they imitate so well these archaic forms? Do you agree with his linguistic read that it is 8th century? Well, I'll say statistically uh there's a there is more of old stuff in the Iliad than there is in the Odyssey than there is uh in the Home Americans. And I'm deliberately going through his percentages and and those are all very interesting things to look at and I I respect what he was trying to do. But the problem is that sometimes even if you look at an individual verse um what the point of reference of that verse may be at the first part of the verse may be 1600 and the second part may be a fifth century BCE. So so it can be a thousand years apart.
>> You're saying in the same sentence linguistic features transform so radically. So, so sure Richard is right to say that the Iliad has more archaeisms than the Odyssey which has more archaeism. If you look at the whole thing, but if you start looking at individual parts of the Iliad, individual parts, >> there's actually a lot of modern >> Oh, there or or super ancient.
>> Interesting. So it's it's just how it >> but but but help help me understand that because in these festivals um you know if I'm using English from 400 years ago let alone 800 years ago today people aren't even going to be able to understand that. So why yeah why doesn't that is it because the old format just has so much prestige is is that why >> well here's the thing oral tradition is pretty efficient because it's a structure just as society is supposed to be a structure right so guess what in in any given community if a word goes out of business if it no longer exists um then the only way you can preserve it is to is is is to have is to slot in um newer word in the same metrical position >> and that is what you see there are distinctively post 8th century >> so so there's constant replacement but then there also but this is unusual where there's just no other available word that can take the place of the older word so then you and you know what we call it in the business a homeriic gloss >> is where Oh, nobody really understood it anymore. And so then you have different interpretations. Um, and uh, but you know, that's the way it is in all archaic oral traditions. There'll be, may I put it this way, a zone of translucence.
Almost everything is translucent. You can see through from from one side to the other side, almost the other side.
And then there are others where you can only see a certain bit and you can't see further in. So um but then the prestige work. So for example um in homeic poetry you read nucto which should mean in the milking time of night. What is that? Okay. So I I'm sure that in the fifth century BCE when at the Panathanic festival you have the superstar performers um you know really controlling everything when they get to that. Oh, it means probably something the way modern translators do it in the dead of night. You just figure out something, right?
>> But why is it milking time of night?
Guess what? the the the transition from day to night has to do with the spiral path of the cattle of the sun.
>> And so you see what I'm doing? It's a spiral. It's getting bigger and bigger.
It must be summer.
Oh, now it must be winter. Now cut that through the with the horizon.
It just looks like spirals that get narrower and narrower. So guess what?
What the cattle of the sun do at night is they go back to their stalls so they don't appear in the sky anymore. They're they're somewhere beneath the horizon.
That's why that's why the night is when the cattle of the sun are in the barn getting milked.
>> I see. Here's one more challenge for you and your crystallization view. um by the latest 6th century BC we already have authors whether it's Xenophanes or it's Theogynes of Reggium who talk about Homer as canonical in some sense these was uh giving a allegoric defense of of reading of reading Homer >> very good >> and so but in your timeline 6th century wasn't really crystallization hadn't really happened to to a strong extent yet >> um yeah defend That isn't that a problem for your view that that for them to talk about these as almost these canonical texts? Why is that not an issue?
>> Well, it's getting there in the second century. So, for example, um I'm I'm pretty sure that we already had uh 24 rapsidities of the Iliad and 24 rapsidities of the Odyssey. But what was inside the rapidities would have been very different.
And not only that, even in Athens, there was not only Iliad and Odyssey, but there was the epic cycle. And maybe if I could go back to the epic cycle, a cycle does doesn't really say what it was meant to be. So in Home, Kuclo means chariot wheel.
And the idea is that um the the greatest challenge for um somebody who makes artifacts, that is to say a craftsman, is to make a chariot wheel, a perfectly balanced chariot wheel. And preferably from the standpoint of homeic diction it should have only four spokes which means you have to be even more careful because there's less there's less support so to speak to make sure that this perfect circle. Um and by the way when you talk about ring composition you understand that the chariot wheel is moving right.
as it moves.
Sure, there's things that you keep coming back to ABA as you were saying ABA ABA or can be many many more complications, right? But the track that you make is linear.
So there's circular and linear interaction and and that means sure you still come back from A to B but you've gone further on your track which means which means there there is there are different things to talk about. Sure Iliad one has a ring composition match in Iliad 24 but in the meantime >> it's developed. it's developed >> right and and tie this back to my question about xenonophanes and and theogynies and how it resolves that. So, so um when you have let's call it reception and by reception I mean interaction with um with performance traditions if you think not so much in terms of somebody composing something out of nothing which is um something I try to resist always um when when xenophones or or or these when they criticize Homer they're criticizing ing what is performed at festivals >> where the the the the great moment of performance is a composition by this mythologized person called Homer.
>> I see.
>> Okay. And and that you know that means that that um they're criticizing the reception. It's not so much they're criticizing >> this text that they have on their in this book.
>> Exactly. It's just what you hear.
>> I see. So one way to defend your thesis against these mentions is to say >> we have an undue bias and preference for the text.
>> Exactly. It's like the reading public.
>> Exactly. In other words, um what originality meant or what the text meant or what identity even meant in the oral tradition. It's the same poem. If I do 11,000 lines or if I do a 100 lines for them, it's the same. For them, this is all Homer. It's not one is real, Homer, one is >> Thank you. That's exactly right. And and to to say it even further, um I'd love to amuse you by saying, you know, we have this um concern about is it original or is it not, but think of what original means. going back to the origins um being able to have something that is here in the present but reaching all the way back to the notional origin or when we say oh this is radical what does that mean going back to the roots so even when you study how um we in English use the word original and radical it has to do with somebody who is innovative by always being able to update all the way back >> from the present to the past.
>> That's that kind of tradition because you know we have a bad press for tradition. Oh, tradition. Um, I want to be untraditional. Well, if you're untraditional, then you're you're cutting your links to the past.
>> Your roots are up in the air. You have no nutrients to grow.
>> Fine. Fine. I mean, you know, sometimes >> that works. Um I want to move on a bit and talk about the penithnaic festival because this is the my favorite >> important choke point in your theory about how it gets distilled and unified and the key key process to to uh uh to to crystallize it. So as as I understand it, it's essentially a political tool to channel Athenian imperial ambition and commerce to invite everyone from Greece to come over and to cultural propaganda to put it lightly.
>> So here's my question for you. We often think politics corrupts art, but if you look at the great art of history, Virgil was just literally writing propaganda.
He was he was literally just paid to write propaganda. Beethoven's fifth obviously is a propaganda for Napoleon and your claim is that Homer is Athenian imperial propaganda. So when does politics corrupt an art and when does politics elevate an art?
>> It depends. [laughter] It depends. One of my favorite anecdotes has to do with Virgil. And Virgil is the best Homer expert there is. And I I've discovered that in my old age. So I'm going to tell you something that we learn from. It's anecdotal. something we learned from the writings of Tacitus and it has to do with the historical fact that some of Virgil's greatest hits were performed in theaters um in the Roman Empire. So I want you to imagine a theater full of people and they're listening to Virgil's words being performed presumably by an actor. All right. And then somebody in the audience says, "Oh, look. Virgil's here in the audience and everybody stands up even though Augustus is there in the audience. So I'm saying ideally the poet should outrank the emperor and that's what that's what Tacitus's u subversive narrative is all about is that the person who really got respect and who really shall we say embodies what whatever propaganda if you talk about it politically but if you talk about it as a society's aspirational aspirational self-identification and you and I both know how it can be horribly abused but but the art form itself uh can be notionally pure.
>> Okay. So describe the pan Anthony festival so in more detail and why it was made so pure and why it was this such great distillation process. to give you an example. Uh let's go back to um Iliad Rapsidy 6, please.
>> Where where I think most of us modern and post-modern readers would say that's the most heartbreaking part where where Hector and Andromeaki, these two world famous lovers say goodbye for the last time. And where you have the scene where the little boy um um cries because scared of the horsehair helmet and and and and where when they say goodbye um you know that feeling where you you really love somebody but they happen to be going away on let's say a flight at the airport and so you both say goodbye and one person turns one way the other person turns the other way. in homeriic Greek there um Hector is very resolute so he never turns back. He goes straight to what his eventually will be his doom and his death. But Andromaki every time she she figures well if I look back at him and he looks back at me that means I think you'll die. So I so he's she doesn't want that to happen. Hector doesn't want that to happen but Andomiki can't resist. So she keeps swiveing her head. Enthrop she keeps living. She keeps swiveing her head to have one last look because she she kind of knows and and you know that kind of scene it's the Trojans who how shall I say it when the sympathy >> Yeah.
>> of us moderns and postmoderns. Guess what? In Athenian reception, it was the Trojans, not the Aans.
>> So, it's not like, oh, the Akans are our ancestors. Look, in in in the Iliad, how much do you hear about the Athenians?
There's just one point and they're kind of second banana to the Bosians. And so, Athenians are nowhere. So Thusidities when he stages the big funeralaration of Pericles he says um we don't need Homer to be a praise poet for us but the implication is we own Homer. So so we don't have to be mentioned as as as the glorified proto Greeks because there aren't any Athenians except for one exception in the Iliad. In some sense, Athens was so confident that it didn't need it didn't need the Panathan to glorify oh my god like Thesius and >> right because what glorifies Athens is that they're the custodians of the tradition because other city states neglected it.
>> This is wonderful. Maybe I can help distill this this for you which is crystallize. crystiz >> politics corrupts art when art is made in service of politics. Think Nazi propaganda.
>> Yes.
>> Politics elevates art when political authority is derived from being the protector of artistic tradition.
>> There you go.
>> Right. Athens claimed its legitimacy because it was the >> defender and the creator of this great Right. And that tradition is primary.
Their legitimacy almost follows from that. Right.
>> And and here's a specific example, however, is that the actual heroic deeds.
Um there was an athletic event that happened to be um shall we say engaged in at the Panathan, the same festival where the Iliad and the Odyssey were performed. And I think by the fifth century probably not not all 24 rapsidities of either but the best parts and and so this athletic festival had to do with reenacting chariot warfare in the Iliad which really >> really in the Panathania. Wow.
>> Yes. Yes. And and and here's here's the trick which is which is this is the only kind of chariot race where you have not only the driver who's on the right side of the platform of the chariot but you also have what is called the oppobatees the one who steps off very euphemistic and he is wearing a full hoplight armor and people have estimated that really weighs you down you know shield breastplate greavves you name and sword of course. And what happens in the chariot race where you have these two two people on each racing chariot going counterclockwise and it's very dangerous and and the chariot is going full speed and at a predetermined time. What has to happen is the Apobates, the one who's who's costumed as a as a warrior of, you know, from the fifth century, but evoking the ancient heroic times. He has to grab the the the left rail of the chariot.
And here's his here's his sword. And then he steps off the platform, but the chariot is going full speed. Then he steps off the other one. He has to hit the ground running. He has to go so fast because otherwise he's dead.
And sometimes they get run over. I' I've traced in one of my research projects and a very interesting fourth century description of how deathdeying this was.
Only Athenian men were eligible to compete in the chariot race of the Apobai. The same event, the same festival where the Iliad was performed, which in the middle of which it's all chariot warfare.
>> Wow. This is fascinating. you you make a big deal about how the poet uh is portrayed within Homer itself, but now you're you're saying there's even more parts of the Iliad like the chariot racing that we find in the later parts of Iliad that is also in these helenic festivals. Here's a question I had. Um one important thing about the crystallization process is someone mandated the relay the the relay like you have to start off from where the previous guy came came about.
>> Why was that rule mandated? because that's the way you have organization you and I dear Jonathan talked about um you know is this organized is you know the genius of unitarian >> thinking totality well that happens if you go A to Z and you don't you don't mix up the order you can't mix up the order >> you can't because if you do that >> people be confused or >> and and that means you're you're messing up the social structure as as well as the poetic structure because there >> as well as the individual structure all the way from the cosmos to the cosmetic.
>> There you go. There you go.
>> And so here's my question.
>> How did writing factor into this entire process from the start of the panel? Was it >> hey let's record this phrase down that was cool all the way like yeah walk me through from six to to or or 8 to 2 century how writing interacted and did that solidify the text more and >> or the tradition?
>> Not really. No, not not really except that the oral tradition uh after the glory days of Athens um was no longer really um a really living performance tradition or it wasn't the way it used to be in Athens >> after sixth century >> after fifth century afterth and fourth century >> after fifth that it became recitation for more and more >> recitation you know the librarians at Alexandria they couldn't care less about um how it was performed in front of 20,000 people in Athens, >> they just wanted the text.
>> They wanted the text. And and by that time, you had professional reciters um who would who would um they'd still memorize, but >> right, >> it was pretty uh >> the muses were gone, so to speak.
>> The muses were gone. The muses were gone. But could I go back because I love the way you talked about the social and the artistic um organic cohesion, >> right? And so maybe just to wrap up the writing kind of idea. So your claim is by the 4th century uh when certainly when scholars in Alexandria was receiving these texts that kind of tradition or a little later uh and and even in Athens as well it become solidified and in that interim period when orality was still dominant the reason they wanted to record it was was what exactly was was hey this is a cool thing to have or like let's you know we have this new technology like >> well but you know the thing is I can't think of any one overriding historical reason and that's why in poetry as performance I talk about transcript where you know it's written down but we don't know why and then script where you have to go by the script and then scripture where you no longer have any performance to deal with >> right right >> and I do see those three phases in the evolution of homeriic poetry um in the first millennium >> right so for various reason it could be political thing. It could be gradually cryst um I I want to move on um to another part of the festival which is the feast.
>> The feast.
>> The same word is used for sacrifice as well as feasting.
>> Yes.
>> Tell us about that. And also tell us about >> how the gods join men in feasting.
>> Oh my goodness. both temporally with the first men in the golden age but also with this weird group of atheopes where they are at the edge of the world and it was said that the gods would go to the edge of the world just to feast with them. So, so tell us about the >> signific heroic world.
>> Right. Right. So tell us about the significance of >> even in Plato our our super intellectual philosopher when he stages the tameus the dialogue of the taas and that that dialogue and the krito those dialogues are supposedly happening with Socrates on the eve of the panathna festival >> and and I have a whole book where I try to show that um it it's all a way of may I put it this way philosophy channeling homeriic performance because homeriic performance for the Athenians was called musik which doesn't mean music it means the art of the muses >> and it has to do with all verbal art and and the big plonic revolution is well or thanks to Socrates is that muske becomes not only a container for philosophy but philosophy as the best mus >> right >> so that's but but Plato can't get rid of >> all the metaphors all the comparisons of philosophy with with homeriic performance right >> because the dialogue is is is all on the eve of the panathnic festival where tomorrow and guess what the word is dice sacrifice that's the one word that Plato Socrates can use as an omnium gather cover all if you say the sacrifice it is the festival or if you like the feast is the festival >> is the sacrifice >> and it's the sacrifice >> um but but draw out this connection between yeah feast and and religion and sacrifice because it's not very it's not very obvious to the modern man why this gluttonous eating thing is is connected to the the greatest cultural festivals as well as the divine >> in a way uh for me the the smoking pistol is in um in the Odyssey again when King Alinoas or Alcinos uh says let's have a um a third performance by Deodicus the blind singer of tales and that has to be in the context of a dice >> which is again it's a feast but in later Greek it's also the word for synctici we would call it part for the whole the sacrifice where an animal is sacrificed and then um and then divided up and cooked and and then feasted on that is if you say that that's already the same as saying the whole festival. So in a sense um the three performances of the blind poet in Odyssey 8 and then the performance of Odysius who goes from 9 to 10 to 11 to 12 and then spills over into 13.
that is a replication of the festival of the panathona in in other words it's a proto festival the whole thing it it's it's three performances by the blind bard who's a kind of proto homer >> and it's connected to feasting because he performs over dinner because demonic performs over >> that is the the way to do it >> I see um when we think about let's say the Indian epics the the vadas they're clearly religious texts Um, but when we think about Iliad and Odyssey today at least, we think about them as secular or at best cultural texts. But >> I don't.
>> Yeah, you don't. So I I want to hear about that. Also, there's this idea that when we sing about Achilles, we we bring him to we resurrect him. We call him in as God. So tell us about the religiosity of these epics.
>> Okay.
heroes in um in old Greek poetry, in archaic Greek poetry are not just characters in what we call epic or by the time we get to the fifth century in drama and then in other forms of verbal art, they're not just characters in poetry. They were actually worshiped as proto ancestors.
>> And I say proto ancestors, they were worshiped pretty much the way people worship their ancestors and ancestor worship, which is definitely not like worshiping the divinities. So they're sort of halfway between. It is religious in the sense that people people used to worship these same characters that are doing the action of the Iliad and doing the action of the Odyssey.
>> It's a it's a cult. They're they're channeling them to to help them win a war or to or to give them good fortune >> or help them in war is the number one way. And uh and you know even in Plato's Fido um there there's like shall we call Heracles to come to the rescue? Mhm.
>> And so that's everywhere. It's everywhere.
>> And this is so fascinating because one explanation for why this is such great uh a beautiful literature is the amount of care they put into it because it was religious because it was it's not just a rap battle. It's not just a cultural it's not just a political thing. It's like building the cathedrals, right?
Like why are the cathedrals so beautiful? It's because every worker working on it had this kind of reverence for it. Um here here's my next question which is some of the greatest minds of even of modernity claimed that their genius ideas were channeled rather than thought. This could be Tesla who who claimed that he had revelation dreams of the schematics he eventually built. This is Rammenujan the the mathematician who literally says a Indian Hindu goddess gives me my mathematical formulas.
When when the poet was channeling the muse, did they have a similar conception there?
>> Yes, they did. Because as Homer, let's say, or the character of Homer says in Rap City 2 of the Iliad, is you've got to help the muses because you are goddesses and and well, I'll do the last part again.
Yeah, this guy knows the transl. That was a beautiful translation. And we know nothing. In other words, um um I wasn't there. I Homer wasn't there. But you muses, you goddesses of absolute memory.
You were there. You saw everything and you heard everything. Therefore, you know everything.
>> And they mean that. And and they and and they mean that in the same way when you in the same way the Christian today who does the Nian, right? like they're actually talk thinking they're talking to a real entity.
>> Yeah. Yeah. No, it's real. It's for them um absolute reality because uh all I have to do is listen to what I hear and especially because I Homer am blind.
Therefore, I never have to see anything even in the present.
>> I I just visualize things >> through time.
>> I see. Fantasy.
>> It's a visualization. Um, here's the thing I find most relevant and surprising and interesting about the the festivals, which is usually when you look at there's a there's a term today called audience capture. It's when you're trying to write to please an audience and then it destroys the art.
Right.
>> Yes. Yes.
>> And however, the the opposite happened.
This is like the political point. The opposite happened in the Panathan where these epics were improved over and over and over again until they became the greatest some of the greatest works of mankind. Exactly.
>> Um why why like tell tell us about the selection. Was it just because the Athenians tastes were so good >> that that to to please them also meant to create the best art? Yeah.
>> Well, I used to be so um put off by all the terrible things that happen in Greek myth >> uh which were very important for them to repeat. So what's wrong with them? Why did not just humans larger than life humans the heroes were but even the divinities why did they do so many things that are so morally repulsive?
The key is repetition at festivals. So the festival comes round predictably at the right time, the right place and then at the festival um there is a um repetition but every time you repeat it's never exactly the same just as an oral performance you never have exactly the same unless it it completely crystallizes and it gets it gets better. Well, it gets more and more refined, however you want to say it. But that also comforts me because the idea is is um we're processing things that are I'm making up the percentages. 80% wonderful and 20% really uh reprehensible.
And I can't justify everything that gods and and heroes do. And nobody should.
Nobody should. They're horrible things.
But the thing is that and Aristotle would say it this way in the poetics that what we do is we process our own emotions. We bring our own emotions into this larger than life emotional world of heroes and gods interacting where um they're larger than life and and we're not larger than life, but we make up for all the all the impurities because it's a constant a constant process of purifying. Let's say purifying instead of um pitifying. Yeah.
>> And and what would that word be?
Katharsis or let's pronounce it the way English speakers pronounce it, katharsis. Yeah, >> it's purification.
>> So this is again this is my key key question which is um usually pandering to an audience or trying to please an audience. Think about a terrible movie that Hollywood made just >> to make a box office hit.
>> They usually are terrible artworks. And yet for some reason after catering to the audience for hundreds of years it only made it better and better and better. So what exactly is the selection mechanism between these tellings? Is it just the the applause of the of the audience? Is it a reward by the ruler of Athens? And is it because the audience tastes were just so refined that that actually catering to the audience was a perfect uh direction towards art or why?
Yeah.
>> Well, but the the mindset is it's the same thing over and over again. Of course, it's not exactly the same thing, but the sameness means that you don't have to please. You just have to get it right.
>> Wait, hold on. But I thought you said in the however many hundred years of the Panathanian festival that was part of the selection mechanism that made the eventual product so genius. So, so there must have been some se like there there must have been a direction of change from in the festival. But but to be to be realistic, I'm not saying that it always got better. Who knows? There may have been periods where it got worse and then it got better again. But notionally, it's supposed to get better and better and better because it's now.
It's adjournamental. It's dating up to today. And so ideally, and even if we don't get it right, there'll be the next season and the next season. Um, but is it a line that goes on forever? No, it's a circle, >> right? Sometimes it it may get worse and and Yeah. And um what are they trying to win in the pose? Is it the praise of the crowd? Is it is it patronage from a few aristocrats? Those are very different selection pressures.
>> Well, they they can certainly benefit from it, but that's not the built-in purpose. You know, maybe instead of thinking about um verbal art, let's talk about something like customary law, >> please. Yeah.
>> I love the way Heroditus, the so-called father of history, >> um talks about the Spartans >> and um this can go back to Cosmos. He's the one who says that the Spartans call their law code of customary laws their cosmos, which is their universe, but it's also their society, right? And it has to be reconstituted every year. And there are these um juristprudent authorities who come together at a festival called warding off the wolf [snorts] luro.
>> Okay. And and the the so-called founder and of course this is something that myth does. It retrojects all of evolution to the beginning um great moment. So, hi, we're Spartans and we have a lawgiver and the lawgiver gave us centuries ago. They try to count the centuries our law code and we have preserved it exactly as he gave it to us >> um year after year after year orally orally. So, and and we guarantee it's the same as when like Ergas did it. Of course, there has been evolution from from the proto time of Lyerus and the present time as recorded by Herodotus.
A lot of evolution that's >> but that's not what's emphasized. Your point is their emphasis is that it's the same thing and that's why what he gave us way back when is what we still have and and it's our jurist prudent authorities who can guarantee it at the festival. All right. So if you think of that as let's say in this case it's not the proto lawgiver it's the proto poet.
It's the joiner it's the one who puts society together. And sure, every community has their own version of it.
But but technically what we have in the course of centuries and centuries is is that it's exactly that. Oh, but the trouble is um you know if we talk about the sixth century, the next valley they say, "Oh, no, it's our version." No, no, no, it's our version, right? And that's where I come up with the model of panhelanism which is also I think understandable when we go back to medieval Irish law and and the the poet who when he moves from one pettic kingdom to another is jeritically immune. So he has to level out what is different and he has to highlight I'll even say shade over what is different and highlight what is the same. Greg's favorite word is notionally the same, >> right?
>> You and I know better, >> right?
>> Just as we know better that Spartan customary law evol evolved >> big time through time. It evolved but to make it to make it it's not so much being pleased by it. The pleasure comes from oh wow it is beautiful.
>> That's fascinating. Um, and this resolves a key question I had about your work, which you made a very odd claim initially when I read it, which is the wider the diffusion, the more unitary it is. And I was super surprised by that because I thought, well, if you're going to sing in a tavern over here and you're singing in the tavern over there, then it should be more different. But the intuition is >> they did care about originality, but what originality meant for them is radically different from us.
>> And you use the word origin and you use the word radical. I'm so glad.
>> Yeah. Yeah. you're [clears throat] a very good dialogic partner.
>> Right. Right. Because for them >> um it's not recreating the exact same text. It's it's uh channeling the same themes and and channeling the same stories and that's why but but they all do claim I am the like I am channeling the original. Right.
>> I do it better than any of my predecessors.
>> Right. Let me give you a quote about uh the importance of mimisis in performance.
>> Oh, I love that. Good. For Plato, a lament must be implicitly a lament in quote unquote real life, where real living persons mourn for a real dead person in a song that marks a real occasion. While a Thrronos in tragedy is supposedly an imitation of fiction, where makebelieve persons mourn for a makebelieve dead person in a song that merely imitates a real occasion. As we now see, however, from a deeper reading of Mimisis as reenactment, the songs of lamentation in state theater are really archetypal. They are prototypes as it were of the real life laments of real life people. Beautiful.
>> Far from being an intended imitation of a real life genre, >> the dramatized Thrrenos of Athenian state theater can be seen as an intended model. There's an authority inherent in Mimisis. And this authority confers an absolute status upon the person or thing to be reenacted. When the rapso performs Andramaki's lament, he is emphasis mine.
Andrami >> sing her lament just as he is Homer.
when we hear in the home poems tell me muses.
>> Yeah, I love it.
>> This is a radical claim. This is a radical claim.
>> It is.
>> Not only are you rejecting Plato who's saying that uh artistic performance is a lesser imitation of the real.
>> Yes.
>> You're making three claims that get increasingly stronger.
>> Yeah.
>> The first claim is that the artistic rendition imitation is typological. So it's okay. So it's originary in some way.
>> The second claim is identity. He is Homer. He is And drama key. You are channeling Achilles.
>> And the strongest claim you make is that >> No. No. It's not the real life that gives authority to the performance.
>> It's the performance that gives authority to the real life.
>> Exactly.
>> Defend that.
>> Yes. Yes. So that when when you hear grandma singing a lament, uh that's a reenactment of heroic singing of a heroic lament.
>> But she isn't in drama key. She's grandma, right?
But but but that but but the thing is when grandma sings a lament it's just a lament. When Andromeaki sings a lament it's an Athenian state theater.
That's the difference and that's the feast. That's the context of the ultimate feast.
>> Okay. So what >> so that's what absolutizes you see.
>> So what you're trying to say is two things. One is there's a genuine religious component in which the people metaphysically are transformed into the people they sing about. And number two, it is the panthana festival that grounds real life.
>> Exactly.
>> That gives meaning to their real life.
>> That's it.
>> And not the Plato one where it's reversed.
>> Exactly. Got it.
>> And and we can understand why Plato is against um theater. And uh I should cite my favorite authority on that is Alexander Namas. He just does brilliant things on you know for I'm joking but for Plato the is like TV >> on the um on the spectrum between kind of genius and tradition you know the unitarians on our one side they're the most romantic.
>> You're almost on the other side right you're saying it's it's tradition. My question is, does your model still leave room for individual genius who seriously elevated it to such a high degree? And I'll I'll give you a very modern example. Uh Marvel superheroes, right?
>> Uh you know, they were created out of decades ago and recently the MCU, the cinematic universe, had a massive rise in the quality of their production, which culminated in Avengers, Endgame, and Infinity War. These great products by the Russo brothers.
>> Yes. and their creation was so great. I think if Marvel still exists in 100 years when we look back it they might be the homer of that tradition right they might have defined a genre so drastically that we can still say okay this is a tradition but it's their genius that stands out does your model leave any room for that where there might have been one or two singers that just elevated it to such a radical degree >> but but you know even the word genius it has to do with what's inborn And I hate to say it, but um we can play a similar game with as we did with the word original, with the word radical.
um what what I would say about what we admire um in in today's um um let's say fictions because because we still don't think of superheroes as people who really exist in real life I don't think >> but but we we have a sense of wonder about them and that's why isn't it interesting that wonder is a a very strong word whereas wonderful we linguists would say is bleached.
Wonderful. Wonderful. But if I say that's a wonder that's French say oh and and in life of Homer traditions where where the um the importance of Homer is mythologized and there are many many different versions but generally what happens is Homer comes to a community and starts performing and they experience thalma. A thma is a wonder and and it's like it's wondrous. I'm not saying wonderful cuz that's bleach wondrous. It's something that Oh, and in a sense I think it's technology that makes superheroes so wondrous.
And in a sense um that's why I'm not against writing because the technology of writing can do so many different ways of of um trying to recreate the joy of performance, >> right? However, um let's ignore the romantic intuitions of genius and just take my question directly, which is do you allow for individuals, no matter what source of their creativity is, to have elevated the tradition so much so that it might as well make sense to define the tradition a after them or or is this thousand-y year long period it's it's incremental more more than >> I think in oral tradition that's very hard. I mean everybody tries it in oral tradition um what Holly studies which is Ferdosi the man of paradise he's got this wonderful poetic name uh 10th century um uh in 11th century CE and he says at one place oh my all the previous poets who did this epic are dust I am the living transmitter so you know there's that competitiveness but the competitiveness still depends on any genius to >> build tradition collaborating with all the previous whether they were geniuses by our terms or not. Instead of saying genius, let's just say um there more skilled performers and less skilled performers. That's always been the case.
>> But but take the the case of Caesar.
People have written about the death of Caesar. I feel like Shakespeare elevated that to to a radical degree.
Do do you allow for that kind of again not it doesn't seem incremental it seems paradm digmatic >> I know what you want me to say which is that even in oral tradition >> there can be >> there could be somebody who's just so head and shoulders >> better than anybody else that somehow we got to preserve this guy.
>> Yeah.
>> Um my problem is that's more more like what Benedetto Croche says about genre and and genre. Okay. um you know everybody's in some kind of genre or we used to think that but then he finds somebody like Shakespeare and he is I'll say it in Latin sui geneneris of a genre of his own in other words it's almost like you have to transcend whatever medium you're working with >> and Shakespeare exists so why can't that exist in the in the hathaic festival >> but isn't it interesting that even Shakespeare survives in during his lifetime um only in quartos whereas Ben Johnson and we don't think of him as as good as Shakespeare he he made sure that there is a folio edition of all of his stuff >> right >> in his lifetime Shakespeare doesn't even have anything um um definitive and you know people talk about the bad hamlet versus the good hamlet >> which is what the variant that we And and if I want to be a naughty person, I'll say, "Is the bad hamlet really a bad hamlet or is it just our reception?" Because we're so into um the transmission, which for us is dictated by um our being used to how things are performed by the book, so to speak. So, >> right, I'm being I'm being open-minded. So, so you're saying on one hand, yes, there could have been someone head and shoulders above, but you're saying that's more of a written paradigm than the oral paradigm, which is more >> That's all I'm saying. And that's why I'm saying is that but but even in written paradigms, people figure if somebody's head and shoulders above everybody else, then they've broken free of the je, >> right? But that that's the illusion, right? I see. Professor, thank you so much for fascinating interview. Thank you so much. You're the best.
Vince Perry and Lord people have studied dozens and dozens scores and scores of oral traditions and not all oral traditions have the kind of metrical superstructure. By metrical I mean rhythm and rhythm regulation as does it just happens. Homeriic poetry and South Slavic poetry. Interesting. There are many oral traditions that are proved to be oral traditions because they don't require the technology of writing and we know it >> that don't have that formula.
>> Don't have formulas.
>> Interesting.
>> It's not like that. So here's where the linguist Chsky might help us. He talks about the surface structure of language and the deep structure of language. And so oral tradition is always formulaic in the deep structure, but on the surface it may not be the same words. It may not be >> right >> words conditioned by the rhythmical context and all those other things.
There's so much variety.
>> Yeah. So help me understand this. I thought the reason Perry and Lord believed it was valid to extrapolate the oral composition and not textual composition that they saw in Yugoslavia to Homer was because they shared these remarkably similar formulaic features.
>> Yes.
>> But now you're telling me not all oral traditions shares these features.
>> So surely that's a knock against their argument. No, >> not really. It's just that their their fall guy, so to speak, was Roman poets like Virgil, who of course were not oral poets.
>> I see. So, so I see that the claim is that writing never exhibits this kind of this kind of feature. Is is that right?
Oral sometimes does or does not, but writing I I.e. the existence of such features mandates an it's an oral text, but the lack of it does not preclude.
>> There you go.
>> Interesting. And if you understand Prague school linguistics and Roman Yakobson's idea of marketkedness, the best example is for example um night and day. I can say I I've worked on this um this essay for nine days.
I can say I worked on this essay for nine nights. Did you notice that when you say night days that can include nights but when you say nights that excludes days.
>> So this violates Aristotle's principle of non-contradiction but languages do and and what I'm saying is oral tradition is unmarked versus written tradition which has all sorts of restrictions.
>> Interesting. I I um this is what's confusing to me because for me it seems like the cognitive demands of oral tradition just being able to compose extemporaneously almost like a rap battle or or jazz, right, >> is is a lot more cognitively constraining. And therefore, it seems like any text you could produce orally, if you sat down, you could also produce with writing, but not the reverse. So, I'll give you one example. I believe there was a scholar in the late 20th century, Edard Visser.
>> Yeah.
>> Who tried to use Homer's oral formula and write out his own catalog of ships, I believe.
>> Yes. Yes.
>> And I believe he was able to do that.
So, so that's another challenge to the claim that this this feature of being highly formulaic is always oral poetry.
>> Yeah. But Fiser did that because he he he wanted to show >> it was possible.
>> It was possible. But Virgil would not have liked that. Right. What about this challenge? Um Larry Benson, another scholar, when he analyzed he he analyzed old English poetry which we know is written and he claims to have found similar kind of formulaic methods. Do do you agree with his his >> not quite because um Anglo-Saxon meter is much too different.
>> It's just a luck of the draw that South Slavic meter is more comparable. M >> um but when you deal with Germanic meters where the idea isn't long versus short, the idea is what kind of stress you have, it's a completely [music] different ballgame. And so, so again, you have to radically rethink what so-called meter is because um Germanic meters are so different.
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