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Homer and Modern Oral Poetry: Some Confusions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

G. S. Kirk
G. S. Kirk
Affiliation:
Trinity Hall, Cambridge
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Extract

One of the curious things about Homeric studies is the way in which, although opinions in this field fluctuate violently, from time to time certain among them tend to become crystallized for no particular reason and are then accepted as something approaching orthodoxy. It is to try to delay such a crystallization, if it is not already too late, that I direct this brief coup d'ail at some current opinions on whether Homer—for the sake of clarity I apply this name in the first instance to the monumental composer of the Iliad—used the aid of writing, and in general at the value of comparative inferences based on the heroic poetry of modern Yugoslavia.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 3-4 , November 1960 , pp. 271 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1960

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References

1 G. L. Huxley, to whom I am indebted for his helpful comments on this paper, has pointed out that there are grounds for ascribing a far higher degree of accuracy in oral transmission to the Rigveda than to any European poem whose history can be reconstructed. Wackernagel, for example, concluded that despite certain deficiencies ‘darf die Dberlieferung des RV als einzigartig treu bezeichnet werden’ (Altindische Grammatik [Gottingen, , 1896], xii f.).Google Scholar The situation is complex, and the history of the Rigveda before its codification by die diasceuastic schools is in large measure impossible to reconstruct. Even the date of this codification is unknown; it was long after the composition of the earlier hymns, which may provisionally be placed in the sixteenth or fifteenth century B.C., but it was also many centuries before the first written text, the earliest indication of which points to the tenth or eleventh century A.D. The transmission over the intervening period, as in the pre-codification period, was exclusively oral, and an ‘extraordinary fidelity’, to use Renou's phrase, was guaranteed by special precautions on the part of the original diasceuasts as well as by the religious veneration in which the details of the text were held. On all this one may consult with profit Renou, L. and Filliozat, J., L'Inde classique (Paris, 1947), i, pp. 270–8Google Scholar and especially §§ 515–20, 530–5; for refer-ing me to mis and other sources I am most grateful to Professor W. S. Allen. Verbal accuracy in the transmission of the Rigveda was greatly aided by its sacrosanct character; but this need not diminish its implications for the possibility or impossibility of verbatim oral transmission, to the assessment of which the Vedic poetry is directly relevant. Classical scholars and students of the oral epic require the help of expert Vedists in this extremely difficult field; and in particular one may ask for attention to be given to the distinction between verbal and syntactical accuracy within the verse on the one hand, and accuracy in the preservation of an original order of verses and diemes on the other.