[SECOND Post From Milton-L]
Subject: In praise of Achilles, was Re: Hero of Paradise Lost From: Carrol Cox
Michael Bryson wrote: If complaints regarding the "whining" or "weeping" of Achilles are anachronistic now, what were they when Plato has Socrates object in the _Republic_
You can criticize other claims I made by reference to the _Republic_ -- one could almost use a text macro saying something like "except for Plato's Republic" and place it automatically before every historical claim. For example my claim that PL is the first great and full expression of a world view grounded in the "abstract" or "isolated" individual. Plato expresses this when he argues that the character of states comes from the character of their inhabitants.
But yes Plato was being anachronistic when he complained about how Homer treated the Gods and Heroes. That is perhaps even motivated by vulgar (immediate) motives -- getting in a sneer at leaders of the populace in democratic Athens. (I won't try to defend this if anyone objects -- but part of the fun of reading the _Republic_ is identifying those occasional passages in which Plato seems to be attacking not just democracy in general but the Athenian _demos_ of his day in particular.)
Back a half century or so some Marxists* (inaccurately) invented an Athenian Merchant Class which was almost a capitalist class. They were wrong, but the attacks by various aristocratic writers on money and on commodity production (as marginal as such production was) do foreshadow actual capitalist-aristocrat conflicts of later times. Plato predates the triumph but not the first appearance of commodity production. Aristotle on value is exemplary here. A sandal may have two uses, to wear or to sell -- however, he can't help but add, the latter use is unnatural. A friend once described Marx as Aristotle with an attitude.
{*I am thinking particularly of George Thomson, who had a number of things wrong but was nevertheless a Marxist from whom I learned a great deal at one time.}
But back to Achilles -- readers do really miss so much if they take a sneering attitude towards him, or if they see his tragedy from the perspective of later theories about tragic flaws. The story is not how he brings tragedy on himself but how he bears up under tragedy imposed on him by the nature of things. Sending Patroclus into battle is neither a flaw nor even a mistake, but an action which subsequent and unpredictable events turned into horror. Hence his comparison of Priam to his own father.
Such were the the shining gifts given by the gods to Peleus from his birth, who outshone all men beside for his riches and pride of possession, and was lord over the Myrmidons. Thereto the gods bestowed an immortal wife on him, who was mortal. But even on him the god poured evil also. There was not any generation of strong sons born to him in his great house but a single all-untimely child he had, and I give him no care as he grows old, since far from the land of my fathers I sit here in Troy, and bring nothing but sorrow to you and your children. And you, old sir, we are told that you prospered once. . . .
(24.634ff)
Achilles is a less malleable hero than any of his epic successors, from Odysseus down to "ego, scriptor cantilenae," and for that reason perhaps subsequent writers tended to either ignore him or (like Plato and Shakespeare) slander him. He can't, in contrast to Aeneas or Adam or the Son in PR, be ripped out of context In this he resembles another towering protagonist often trivialized by critics, Fanny of _Mansfield Park_. In context, neither needs any critical apologies. - Carrol {Note: This reference to Aeneas, Adam, & the Son is explained in a later post.}
[THIRD Post from Milton-L]
Subject: In praise of Achilles, was Re: Hero of Paradise Lost From: Carrol Cox
John Leonard wrote: What man in his right mind (let's be honest) would want to rule some pimple in the Adriatic, growing older [clip] Is the _oikos_ really as compelling a reason as all that?
Yes --IF THE "READER" ASKS THE QUESTION. Modern literature, at least from Milton on, forces the reader to make such judgments continuously. See the endless debates some decades ago about Milton's "signpost sentences": each of those sentences forces a free judgment. That is, each time the text forces a complex judgment of some sort, the reader in his/her isolation temporarily forms a society (where none existed before) between him/herself and the narrator, who also comes from nowhere (stripped of social relations).
But in the world of Odysseus (see M.I. Finley's fine book of that title) the inseparability of oikos/person is given. When Odysseus is furthest from home, trapped in the cave of Polyphemous, he is "no man" not just as a joke but in simple truth. And when he first shows up in his own palace he does so as a _thes_ -- very inadequately translated as "beggar." A _thes_ is a man without an oikos, a nothing. (In Book 11 Achilles says he would rather be the lowliest _thes_ alive than foremost in Hades.) It is a given of the poem that Odysseus to be Odysseus must struggle to return to his _oikos_. No choice is involved -- for poet, for audience (who listen, along with the poet, as the Muse tells the tale), or for character. Contrast the three opening lines
Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways . . . (Odyssey)
Of man's first disobedience . . . (PL)
And then went down to ship . . . (E.P., Canto I)
In the first, story, poet, and audience are one. In the second and third, poet and reader are abstract until through a series of choices they form a temporary society where none had existed before.
Odysseus does not create or build his _oikos_ (so your reference to "ruling" is misleading), it creates him, he is of it. The question, "What man in his right mind (let's be honest) would want to rule [whatever]?" brings us back to a society of windowless monads, making abstract choices through which they form (or seem to form) a society where none existed (or seems not to have existed) before. That endless repetition of forced free (detached, intrinsically meaningless) choices is what empties the present of meaning in capitalism, transferring all reality, all meaning, to an endlessly receding abstract future.
To return to Odysseus -- as soon as, bringing a modern Miltonic or novelistic perspective to the poem, we began to see Odysseus as making an abstract free choice, and to see ourselves (as isolated readers) forced to judge that choice, the poem simply goes "poof"! As you say, seen as a choice, no sane man would give up immortality for _either_ a wife or for rule of a pimple. And yet the poet bases his whole poem, a poem about a man characterized above all as a man of intellect, on the making of that choice. Clearly one is not to ask the question, to see it as a choice. - Carrol
{Note. What is involved here is in part the commonplace, unfortunately not always a commonplace observed on maillists, that one honors context, the whole, in commenting on a poem - or a political argument. Christian Gregory made this point in a post on Derrida:
"So Derrida didn't often speak of deconstruction b/c he didn't see it as a procedure. I think, in his mind, he was someone who read, reread, and rewrote texts from different traditions. And I think he always followed the good advice Carrol got--he always looked at texts, paraphrased and used them in their strongest form. And he knew very well how to do traditional scholarship--read _Dissemination_ if you want proof of that."
I assume Christian was referring to the following from one of my recent posts: "Grad school can be of some use at times. I was taught at Michigan that when I criticized a position, I should paraphrase it in its strongest form, not make up opponents to knock over." One of the members of my committee, Arthur Eastman, nailed me several times for failing in this in commenting on some critic of Pope. Honoring this principle (as in the case of getting Achilles right) requires one not to isolate single small points from their whole context to comment on. Again, as I mentioned in my original post on "bad taste," browsing through my own posts I find I've done that too often. Nevertheless, useful political discussion is impossible unless the principle is followed for the most part. Carrol}
To be continued