I tend to dislike literary judgments (though I'm constantly violating my own principles), but I would say that "western" literature" divides in two parts, one the Iliad, the other everything else. And while the whole is quite wonderful, the last book is what makes it a world in itself. Another poster brought out the centrality of food in that book -- and Achilles serving with his own hands the father of his enemy. Food in fact is one of the motifs that hold the poem together. When Achilles rejoins the Achaian army, he wants immediately to launch the attack; others insist they must eat first, but Achilles refuses to eat until he has slaughtered Hektor. His feasting, then, with Priam marks his return to humanity (he had been _more_ than human, like a god: his flaming armor in his pursuit and slaughter of the fleeing Trojans had marked his identity with Hephaistos, god of fire, provoking the response of the River God. Athena, of course, was already at this time a godess of intellect as well as war, & it is ambiguous whether it is the wisdom of Achilles himself or the advice of the goddess or both which prevents him from drawing his sword on Agamemnon. One may grasp this poem with an indefinite number of 'suumaries,' each bringing its own emphasis. Achilles grasping of mortality as his share (moira) is surely one of those many different stories, all told at once but only a few graspable by the reader at any one time.
The word I most want but did not include in the brief post below was _quiet_: that is the essential tone of the endings of both PL and the Iliad. One critic spoke of the final lines of PL as A&E descending from the Mountain of Eden to meet us, the readers, on equal terms. Something similar can/should be said of the Godlike Achilles: he puts off godhood to join us, the readers or the original auditors.
Carroi
-----Original Message----- From: On Behalf Of Carrol Cox Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 8:29 PM To: 'John Milton Discussion List' Subject: [Milton-L] Final lines -- an observation
I have been thinking about the marvelous final line of the Iliad, a line of great power even in translation:
And so the Trojans buried Hektor breaker of horses.
What first strikes me is the use of a formula in the final line of a long epic. I'm not a classical scholar, and it is many years since I read anything on the use of such formulae. But it seems to me that in the final line it can't really be serving merely a metrical purpose: the bard surely had plenty of time to compose the line without help of a formula. He must have wanted it there! It is precisely, it seems, the commonplace, deliberate commonplace, of this last line that is so striking. And it raises for me an interesting resemblance between the Iliad and PL. Both poems are stuffed as it were with immortal actors; in both poems the immortal actors disappear as we approach the close, and we are left not only with mere mortals, but mere mortals engaged in the most commonplace of activities: seeking shelter for the night or burying the dead.
And these musings led me to Johnson's final 'summing up' of PL: It is second to the Iliad among epics only because it was not the first. And why should this matter in literary judgment? I think the answer is that this dramatic commonplace of the endings of the two poems, however striking the second time around may be, and Milton's ending is certainly striking, that it calls up its great predecessor makes a difference.
Mere musing, but perhaps someone will also find it interesting.
Carrol