#WingedWordsWindsday: 11/17/2021 -- In Tenebris Lux: Reflections on Homer

 

WINGED WORDS WINDSDAY

Compiled by Rob Chappell (@RHCLambengolmo)

Vol. 1, No. 3: November 17, 2021

 

In Tenebris Lux: Reflections on Homer

“Ad Niniannam, Sibyllam Caecam et Animam Caram”

Editor’s Note

                In recent months, I have been doing a lot of reminiscing about Homer, the legendary epic poet of ancient Greece – thinking not only about the poems and tales ascribed to him, but also about Homer as a literary character himself. As a Classics major at the University of Illinois during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Homer was an inspirational figure to me because I have lived all my life with low vision, and he was widely believed in antiquity to have been blind. Here is a short introduction to Homeric studies, along with my favorite poem about Homer, and a short Homeric hymn to the Muses.

 

Excerpts from Chapter 35 of The Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)

                Homer, from whose poems of the Iliad and Odyssey we have taken the chief part of our chapters of the Trojan War and the return of the Grecians, is almost as mythical a personage as the heroes he celebrates. The traditionary story is that he was a wandering minstrel, blind and old, who travelled from place to place singing his lays to the music of his harp, in the courts of princes or the cottages of peasants, and dependent upon the voluntary offerings of his hearers for support.

                The prevailing opinion of the learned, at this time, seems to be that the framework and much of the structure of the poems belong to Homer, but that there are numerous interpolations and additions by other hands. The date assigned to Homer, on the authority of Herodotus, is 850 BC.

 

“In tenebris lux.” (Latin)

“In the darkness is the Light.”

 

“To Homer”

By John Keats (1795-1821)

Standing aloof in giant ignorance,

Of thee I hear and of the Cyclades,

As one who sits ashore and longs perchance

To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas.

So thou wast blind; -- but then the veil was rent,

For Jove uncurtained Heaven to let thee live,

And Neptune made for thee a spumy tent,

And Pan made sing for thee his forest-hive;

Aye on the shores of darkness there is light,

And precipices show untrodden green,

There is a budding morrow in midnight,

There is a triple sight in blindness keen;

Such seeing hadst thou, as it once befell

To Dian, Queen of Earth, and Heaven, and Hell.

 

Homeric Hymn #25: “To the Muses and Apollo”

Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White (1914)

                I will begin with the Muses and Apollo and Zeus. For it is through the Muses and Apollo that there are singers upon the Earth and players upon the lyre; but kings are from Zeus. Happy is he whom the Muses love: sweet flows speech from his lips.

                Hail, children of Zeus! Give honor to my song! And now I will remember you and another song also.

 

In this detail from The Parnassus by Raphael, Homer is wearing a crown of laurels atop Mount Parnassus, with Dante on his right and Virgil on his left.