Homer is known to be the founder of the written poetry in the Western cultural history. His works are the first fixed examples of Greek poems that are currently available to the historians. Even though there are still numerous disagreements on the quantitative quality of his writings, the two masterpieces of the world’s literature the Odyssey and the Iliad are commonly assigned to Homer. It is, therefore, particularly curious, how the samples of the first century’s creations can still resonate with the public’s perception of the modern reality. The key to this puzzle might be the fact that Homer enlightened the everlasting issues that remain close and clear to the society whenever they are discussed. Meanwhile. Homer’s biography is not that evident; the facts concerning his life and work are often ambiguous and contradictory. Thus, historians of all time have exerted considerable efforts to examine the preserved data and to create an ultimately accurate interpretation of the Homer’s life story (Latacz 18).
To begin with, one should point out that the current historical database does not possess the evidence consistent enough for proving the existence of a real human called Homer. The shortage of precise facts leaves open the possibility of the existence of several versions. Some people stick to the idea that Homer was the name of a literary school of the relevant period in Greece. Others suggest there could have been several personalities named Homer that commonly contributed to the creation of the world-known chef-d-oeuvres (Bloom 9).
Nevertheless, the followers of the classic version are inclined to believe that the genius poet Homer did exist, and it was he who showed the power of his talent in the Iliad and the Odyssey. Although Homer is typically depicted as a blind man, no documents that would argue for this supposition have ever been discovered. Neither can one refer to any record that would reveal the poet’s date or place of birth. In the course of time, several Greek towns such as Smyrna, Kyme, and others have been rivaling for the title of the Homer’s motherland. Though there is no objective chance to settle this dispute, the scientists tend to point out Smyrna as the most probable variant of all the rest (Latacz 25).
The first written testimony on which all the further theories are based is the preserved “Life of Homer” belonging to the unknown Greek author. The story is frequently assigned to the early Greek historian Herodotus, who lived in the second century. Despite the fact that the narration is of highly mythological character, numerous historians take this story or some of its aspects as an entering wedge for want of anything better.
According to the “Life”, Homer was born in Kyme, but his grandfather’s rage prompted Homer’s mother to move to Smyrna. Although the poet’s social status is not emphasized, it is evident from the text that he came from a non-eminent folk family. The text contains frequent implications to the poet’s talent, including the fact, that according to the legend’s plot, Homer easily started teaching at school and achieved significant results in this profession due to the outstanding abilities of his intellect power (Hägg 136).
The narration has several references to the poet’s poems via the names of its characters. One can suppose that this was done intentionally to prove the autobiographical character of Homer’s works. The “Life” suggests that the poet was not initially Homer but received this named after he got blind. As it is put in the story, Homer finished his life on the island Ios, which is, in fact, similarly mentioned in several historical documents. Whereas, the major part of the legend is evidently based on Homer’s poems, its validity cannot be rejected at least owing to the impossibility of the rebuttal (Latacz 18). The principal point about the “Life of Homer” is that the author depicted him in the way that was aimed at proving the autobiographical character of Odyssey by all means. For this reason, for instance, Homer is described as a keen traveler.
A different rendering of the Homer’s life story is represented by another biographical text called “The Context of Homer and Hesiod.” Though being considerably shorter, this interpretation is believed to be closer to the mark than its larger predecessor (Hägg 142). The unknown author provides several suggestions upon Homer’s birthplace and comes to the conclusion that it is Ithaca where the poet was born. He also mentions Homer’s noble family.
The suggestion that the poet could have been of a distinguished birth seems to be more reasonable than the Herodotus’s assumption that he was a son of folks. While looking through the key thematic of the Homer’s poetry, one can hardly presume this man could have ever been obliged to perform any kind of hard work. A prominent Homerologist Joachim Latacz claims that Homer’s language and the selected plot “have originated from a total concentration and a consistent ends-oriented thinking typical of the aristocratic view of life and humankind” (Latacz 33).
As well as the Herodotus‘s version, “The Context” includes a description of Homer’s traveling experience; however, here it is less detailed and more emotional. Although there are some points hinting at Homer’s blindness, the disorder or its cause are never mentioned directly. Whereas the character of the last poet’s days is alike in both the stories, the details are slightly different. Thus, In “The Context”, Homer arrives at the island of Ios in his declining years. According to the author, it is not an illness that becomes the reason for the poet’s death, but an accident of the man’s unlucky fall (Hägg 142). One should point out that whatever truthful or, on the contrary, improbable any of the stories might seem, none of them can be seriously treated as they date back to the period five decades later than Homer presumably lived.
Regardless the fact that Homer turned out to be the first Greek poet who managed to put his creations into writing, there is general agreement that he belonged to the old traditional oral literature school, and the language he used in his poems is a perfect validation of this fact. However, it remains unclear, whether Homer’s text writing was inspired by his wish to earn a living, or whether it was the appearance of a written tradition that encouraged the poet to create these great masterpieces. To all effects and purposes, it is undoubted that the literary monuments extant serve as a unique source for the ancient language study (Rutherford 15).
While there are numerous poems assigned to Homer, the Greek poet is generally associated with the Odyssey and the Iliad. These stories in verse astonish the reader with their size and expressive power. The narrations are referred to the heroic poetry popular in Greece at that period. What makes the works so prominent is that, in fact, they represent the first examples of poetic textuality in the Western culture. Whereas the Iliad seems to be aimed at depicting the current social environment, the Odyssey reminds a diary that keeps the record of the course of events (Latacz 17). Historians point out the stylistic value of Homer’s poetry along with the high aesthetic level of its content.
In conclusion, one should note that the impact Homer’s poetry had on the literature culture can hardly be over-estimated. Even though both his remarkable works, the Iliad, and the Odyssey, have little to do with the reality depiction, their plot stories became a source of inspiration for succeeding poets and writers. Homer did not just become the founder of the Greek textuality; he also introduced the new genres of a saga and a folk-tale in the Western culture (Rutherford 3). The appearance of the Iliad and the Odyssey signified not only the development of the writing tradition but the qualitative change of the poetry in general. Therefore, Homer’s life and work have been of significant value to the world’s historians and philologists up to the present. It is indeed, hard to believe that a poem created about twenty hundred years ago can still have influence on the current literature environment. Nevertheless, every course in language and writing has a lecture devoted to Homer and his principal poems at the top of the program’s list.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. Homer, New York, New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009. Print.
Hägg, Tomas. The Art of Biography in Antiquity, New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print.
Latacz, Joachim. Homer, His Art and His World, Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Print.
Rutherford, Richard Burr. Homer, New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Print.