THE GENIUS BEHIND HOMER

(This is a comment on young Nietzsche’s lecture Homer and Classical Philology.)

In an earlier section I have already expressed my opinion regarding the identity of Homer. It is curious how Nietzsche in his 1869 Inaugural lecture Homer and Classical Philology delivered at the University of Basel parallels some of my main points and concerns, but arrives at the opposite conclusion. This entry, therefore, focuses on the Homer Question in Nietzsche’s lecture, and reiterates my own position with his argument in mind.

The Iliad and the Odyssey are monumental works of genius, and making one step further they are the works of a genius. Such is Nietzsche’s well-argued point, and so far I am in full agreement with him. Furthermore he is passionately opposed to the unwarranted fancy of a number of classical scholars to ascribe Homer’s masterpieces to some sort of collective national genius, the soul of the people, thus de-personalizing them, and presenting them merely as a gradual and painstaking process of literary development, which may have amounted to a comprehensive effort in time spread over several centuries, on the part of scores of creative “retellers,” weaving diverse plots from different sources, and spicing them up with their own input, to produce a giant, and incredibly complex canvass, which has come down to us under the symbolic nametag of “Homer.”

No, not according to Nietzsche! Thankfully, he insists that the Iliad and the Odyssey do have an author. But there is a big snag here: that author is… not Homer!

According to Nietzsche’s argument,--- “the name of ‘Homer’ from the very beginning has no connection either with the conception of aesthetic perfection, or with the Iliad and the Odyssey. As the composer of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer is not a historical tradition, but an aesthetic judgment.

It is, however, by no means affirmed against the poet of these epics that he was merely the imaginary being of an aesthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists, indeed. The majority say that a single individual was responsible for the general design of a poem such as the Iliad, and, further, that this individual was Homer. The first part of this contention may be admitted; but, in accordance with what I have said, the latter part must be denied.

We believe in a great poet, as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey,--- but not that Homer was this poet.

The decision on this point has already been given. The generation that invented those numerous Homeric fables, that poetized the myth of the contest between Homer and Hesiod [Certamen Homeri et Hesiodi] and looked upon all the poems of the epic cycle as Homeric, did not feel an aesthetic, but a material singularity, when pronouncing the name “Homer.” This period regards Homer as belonging to the ranks of artists like Orpheus, Eumolpus, Daedalus, and Olympus, the mythical discoverers of a new branch of art, to whom all the later fruits, which grew from the new branch, were, therefore, thankfully dedicated. And the wonderful genius to whom we owe the Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to this thankful posterity-- he, too, sacrificed his name on the altar of the primeval father of the Homeric epic: “Homeros.”

How old was Professor Nietzsche when he fathered this argument, twenty-five? Brilliant scholarship, but he would never have become my soul mate with this! I am quite sure that an older Nietzsche would never be so cocksure in playing the role of the conventional critical historian of world literature. He would, predictably, manage to brew some delicious controversy then and there, but not of the nature of his Homeric argument in the Basel lecture which we are now discussing.

But let me have my counterargument now. First, I repeat that the Homer lecture shows Nietzsche at twenty-five already a masterful thinker and an artist of literary expression. As such, he would certainly have very much impressed me, had this lecture been the first work of his that I had come across. But his argument is shallow and not controversial enough to stand on its own merit. Now, let us get into some detail.

We both agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey did have an author. I knew it, of course, since early childhood. It was part of my immersion into world culture, which had shaped my aesthetic taste, my thinking, and my whole being. The name Homer for me is an integral part of that culture and he has been known to me as the author of two monumental Greek masterpieces, the Iliad and the Odyssey. To deny this cultural fact will be an attack on the integrity of Western Civilization, and that, for the following reason:

We know that world culture is rooted in folklore, mythology, fable and, to use Nietzsche’s own term coined by him later, in monumental history, which itself consists mostly of legends and mythology, not to mention other forms of created fiction. The fictional element in culture is readily recognized and embraced. We are accustomed to the legend of Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, having been raised by a lupa, but we do not want to kill the charm of the legend by questioning whether this lupa had come out of a jungle or she had been a prostitute from a lupanarium. We read Herodotus and Plutarch without wanting to question their veracity and factuality, because we realize that after thousands of years which have passed, everything must be a legend, and we are looking for more imposing perennial values in these legends, rather than their veracity and factuality.

Had it been possible to establish the actual name of the creator of the Iliad and the Odyssey, it would have been the duty of the philologists and historians to reveal it, and have it etched on the pedestal, where stands the statue of the old bearded man, whom we have always known as Homer. But, by now, this would be an impossible feat, and we owe it to the genius behind these great epics not to leave the author’s pedestal empty, without any figure on it, and the figure itself, without any name inscribed underneath. And so, in honor of that genius, let us have such an explicitly named figure of him, and for the lack of any other proper name to give him, let us call him by that consummately venerable name, sanctified by the millennia of the human civilization and tradition, which is the name of Homer.