It has been quite a long time since I last read Homer, and this past week I had to mentally adjust to the non-direct, circular quality of the Iliad. I had to refamiliarize myself with verbal exchange that consisted of lengthy speeches issued from one character to the other. Because the characters do not respond to each other succinctly, one gets the feeling that they are lecturing to an invisible audience.
In short, I had to get used to reading epic poetry, which is an entirely different experience than one would have hearing it episodically and with variations of performance, as I would imagine to be the case of Homeric audiences. Havelock says, "Epic had been par excellence the vehicle of the preserved word through the Dark Age." (47) This idea of the "preserved word" is worthy of attention here, since it seems almost paradoxical to present a notion of "preserved word" vis-a-vis the stories in the Iliad. If Greek stories of gods and humans, warfare and ritual were passed orally (assuming this is preliterate Greece), they probably did not exist in the sense of "preserved", as a 1-1 copy of one story to the next, but as variations of each other. They were imitations, and one might consider Havelock's analysis of Plato, and the latter's problems with Homer, in light of this chain of imitation, of poor imitations.
This leads me to one of main question (posed by Havelock) in this week's reading: what exactly is Plato's problem with mimesis? According to the classicist, Plato applies the term to a variety of Homeric contexts. Is Plato's problem with mimesis a question of the act itself, coming from the poet, or mimesis in the context of epic poetry? I am inclined to think that Plato's issue with imitation lies in the genre, and most crucially, in the experience, of listening to and absorbing the messages of epic poetry over and over again. In Plato, this sort of "brainwashing" of the listeners and audiences of epic poetry is antithetical to the engagement of Socratic dialogue, and as a form of paideia, only a weak copy (as Dan mentioned) of existing, deeper bodies of knowledge. I.e., if you want to learn about making a boat, don't ask Homer to give you a lecture, ask the boatmaker or sailor.
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I have never read Homer's piece before so this week's reading was a bit difficult for me to follow. And, after reading Haveock's article, I was even more confused about Plato's concern. But I came to a similar conclusion as you have made, even though.. I still don't fully understand Plato.
ReplyDelete"preserved word" -- thoughts:
ReplyDeleteWe have been progressively more meticulous, efficient, and effective in our preservation methods, have we not?
Of course, it's not just words that we have attempted to preserve. Besides the abstract things (ideas, etc.), we have also attempted to preserve normal objects, images, sound, moving images, moving images with sound (one day we'll watch the 'feelies' like in Huxley, I'm sure. We already do, a bit. Somebody go get Jarod Lanier.)
It seems like so far the things we have become best at preserving are words and mathematics (I leave the abstract things for a deeper analysis), including programs/algorithms. It seems like we will become ever more effective at preserving the other media as well, as all becomes digitized. and that's that...
I think the question of how we preserve and pass on information is central to our semester's work: how do these change over time and with different available technologies?
ReplyDeleteDo you see the concepts of mimesis - or information preservation - as relating to your own life today? Feel free to include your thoughts about how ideas from the reading strike you as relevant to questions or concerns you have about the present. Think of these ideas as tools that you get to pick up, turn over, and use or discard as you see fit. It's fun to read peoples' thoughts as they go through this process.