Achilles We Will Never Be Here Again
The Homer Nosotros Want
Homeric Multiformity in the Misinformation Age
Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you lot are now. We will never be hither once again.
— Homer
I know my Homer, and I like to think that I can spot him when I see him. Merely when I opened a gift from my father and institute this quotation inscribed within, my confidence wavered. Ane Google search followed some other, and so began my katabasis into the fallacious world of Homeric misquotations.
Homeric misquotation has a long history, every bit does its study. Accusations of misquotation of Homer'due south epics date back at least to the sixth century BCE. Plato and Aeschines made liberal use of the Homeric texts, and Alexandrian critics censured the misquotations of others while surely engaging in the same themselves. Simply it is often difficult to prove that a line attributed to Homer is non genuine. This has become an fifty-fifty more vexed enterprise recently, with the ascent of the theory of Homeric multiformity, which holds that lines that differ from the traditional text are not necessarily whatever less genuine, despite their difference. For adherents of this theory, authentic Homeric poetry is to be found in quotations, only also in apparent misquotations.
Some cases, still, are clearer than others. The quote my begetter lovingly wrote out, for instance, dates back all of 14 years, to Wolfgang Petersen'due south Troy. (Nice try, Dad.)
Though it postdates Homer by more than two and a one-half millennia, this has get one of the most popular Homeric quotations of the decade. Information technology is attributed to Homer in every internet quotation repository, from AZ Quotes to Quotissimo, and ofttimes ranks among Homer'south best quotations. I Googled "Iliad quotes," and it was the first result I saw.
Homer's influence on afterwards literature is well known, merely the literary influence of Homeric counterfeits is a story that remains to be told. This counterfeit has proven particularly productive for new fiction of the immature adult and, ahem, adult varieties. It appears in Lizzy Ford'south Omega, Jenny Valentine's Fire Colour Ane, and Sam Millar'southward The Bespoke Hitman. In Her Cloak-and-dagger Rose , it is quoted as W. B. Yeats'due south "favorite lines from Homer," and in Merlin's Son it is attributed to Achilles by Falling star, son of Merlin and Princess Accolade. (Other characters include Diotima, Héloïse, and Darwin.) In Below Wandering Stars, unlikely friends (and future lovers?) Gabi and Seth cozy up together when Seth reads out a passage from the Iliad:
Seth puts on his sunglasses, takes off his backpack, and pulls out the Iliad, stretching forth the wall similar a lizard. 'Heed to this: "Everything is more than beautiful because we're doomed. You will never exist lovelier than you are now. We will never be hither again."'
Pinpricks dance along my skin as I bring together Seth on the wall. These lines really do encapsulate this entire morn.
In Cass Alexander's Working for It, Brad Pitt's existential reflection serves every bit a kind of Horatian injunction to seize more than but the twenty-four hour period:
She reads it silently then looks at me. I hold her gaze for only a second earlier she looks down once more and reads the quote aloud.
'Any moment might be our last. Everything is more than beautiful considering we're doomed. You will never exist lovelier than you are now. Nosotros will never be hither over again.'
Serendipity, indeed.
She smiles and moves back to her seat, inches abroad from me.
'Homer?'
I nod.
'I'g not surprised yous chose something from the Iliad. That what it'southward from, right?'
Of course, she knows where it'south from. Her intellect is staggering, when she chooses to utilise it. I nod again.
Half a folio later on: "Her hands quickly go to my hair and she pulls. Difficult."
Of Homeric quotations in pop apportionment, roughly a third can exist classified as not Homer, the incorrect Homer, or Homerically-based merely, really, not Homer. These quotations oftentimes resonate with Homeric themes, but their sentimentality, evocation of Christian morality, or even their very quotability give them abroad. (For all Homer's poetic virtues, brevity is — let's be honest — not the soul of his wit.)
Not Homer
The difficulty is non and so keen to die for a friend, equally to detect a friend worth dying for.
This attractively chiastic aphorism is frequently attributed to Homer and has been ranked among Homer's twelve- and ten-best quotes. Information technology is included in such anthologies equally Everlasting Wisdom, Life Lessons of Wisdom & Motivation, 3,000 Phenomenal Quotes, Time, Times and a Dividing of Time, Keen into Super Brains with 6,000 Supreme Quotes, and Warrior Daytimer. You lot tin get it on a poster, ship it as an eastward-card, or buy it for a friend, printed on a hoodie or engraved on wood.
The quotation evokes Achilles' human relationship with Patroclus and might plausibly accept come up from Achilles' mouth, if Achilles had been a Romantic era aristocrat with a significantly milder disposition. The bodily origin of this apothegm, however, is Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761) by Henry Abode of Kames. One 'r' and a world away from Homer.
Information technology behooves a male parent to be blameless if he expects his child to be.
This axiom ticks several Homeric boxes: it sounds archaic, it measures children by their fathers, and it features i of Homer's favorite adjectives, blameless. Ane might imagine information technology existence spoken by Nestor or Priam or even Odysseus. Merely, over again, its pithiness betrays its inauthenticity. It is attributed to Homer by all the usual suspects, merely also by this book most astrology, this non-profit, these anthologies of inspirational quotations, and these 3 books on parenting. The Homeric attribution has even been extended to Homer Simpson, who makes no pretense about what he expects from him children: "Kids, yous tried your all-time, and yous failed miserably. The lesson is: never endeavor."
The axiom is ancient, but no Homer is responsible. Instead, information technology originates with Plautus' Pseudolous, where, in Paul Nixon's (1932) translation, Callipho says, "It behooves a father to be blameless, if he expects his son to be more blameless than he was himself."
I know non what the future holds, simply I know who holds the future.
Attributed to Homer here, hither, hither, hither, here, and here, this commencement appeared in "Known But to Him," written and recorded by Stuart Hamblen in 1952 and recorded by Elvis eight years later. The line was oft excerpted and speedily became anonymized. Past January 1960, Martin Luther King Jr. ascribed it to "somebody" and by 1979 it was credited to an "one-time divine." In the confusion, information technology has since been attributed not only to Homer, just also to Martin Luther Male monarch Jr., Oprah Winfrey, Ralph Abernathy, and Tim Tebow, in plainly the same process by which The Function's Michael Scott quotes himself quoting Wayne Gretzky's "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."
Requite me a place to stand up and I will move the globe.
Despite its vague reminiscence of Homeric boasting, this is the famous dictum of Archimedes, non Homer, nevertheless many citations to the contrary. The Archimedean saying is first securely attested in Pappus of Alexandria's Synagōgē: δός μοι, φησί, ποῦ στῶ, καὶ κινῶ τὴν γῆν (viii.1060).
The journeying is the thing.
How would Homer even have said this, and why? It is attributed to Homer here, here, hither, here, here, hither and here, and it makes the cut of Homer's height-twenty list. Information technology smacks of twentieth-century mindfulness movements, and the showtime attestation of the phrase that I can discover is Ivan Kane'south "The Journey Is the Thing," in the September 1978 result of Michigan Alumnus, when the idea that the journey is the destination! was not yet quite so cliché. In the earth of the Odyssey, the journey is the thing, sure— the thing that's ruining everybody's lives.
Wrong Homer
I didn't prevarication! I just created fiction with my mouth!
Odysseus, is that you? Quotesss, Quotefancy, and Quotissimo seem to think and then. Though he once played Odysseus on tv, the source of this bit of sophistry is Homeric in the idiotic, not the Iliadic, kind of way. Interestingly, the original line ("I was writing fiction with my mouth!") has been modified, perhaps to make it sound more believably bardic.
Not non Homer, but … non Homer
Out of sight, out of mind.
In improver to diverse internet quotation repositories, several idiom dictionaries merits that this phrase originates with Homer. The Macmillan Volume of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous Phrases (1948), for example, writes that this phrase "has been proverbial since Homer'southward time," an assertion that is reiterated by A New Dictionary of Eponyms and Gabay's Copywriters' Compendium and is repeated verbatim by The Dictionary of Clichés, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, and Two is a Company: Lexicon of Pair Idioms.
Information technology is hard for me to think of an idiom that is more obviously non Homeric. In a earth where people tin be forgotten when they're away, the plots of the Iliad and the Odyssey fall to pieces. Odyssey: opening scene. Athena sees Odysseus, stranded on Calypso'due south island.
Athena: Father, my center is torn for Odysseus, miserable homo,
who suffers on a bounding main-girt isle, far from his friends.
Don't y'all remember Odysseus — all his sacrifices to yous?
Zeus: No.
The Finish
And then why is Homer credited equally the originator of the phrase? Because in 1869 Reverend Lovelace Bigge-Wither published his Almost Literal Translation of Homer's Odyssey, which renders 1.242 (oíkhet' áïstos ápustos) as "He's gone out-of-sight — out-of-listen!" The inadequacy of this translation is pointed upward by what follows: "and-to-me hath left | Woes only-and-tears: nor only him I weep for | Now." Odysseus may be "nameless and unknown," as Wilson translates, but he is anything but out of Telemachus'southward mind.
There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible — magic to make the sanest man go mad.
The internet loves this quote. Information technology's on all the quotation repositories, information technology's the inspiration for the title of an episode of Star Trek: Discovery ("Magic to Brand the Sanest Homo Go Mad"), and it has made its manner into fiction too. In Myrna Brownish's A Flavor of Mists, Da uses information technology (without attribution!) in a letter of the alphabet to his lover, and in Martin Millar'southward The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies, a lovestruck Luxos quotes it to Aristophanes the playwright:
'Did you even talk to her?'
'No,' admitted Luxos. 'But we shared some significant eye contact. I tell y'all,
it'due south the existent thing.
There is the oestrus of Beloved,
the pulsing blitz of Longing, the lover'due south whisper,
irresistible-magic to make the sanest man go mad.[']
'I've never idea you were that sane, Luxos. And don't quote Homer at me.'
Yes, okay, the quote is Homeric, only Fagles' many translational liberties, combined with its decontextualization, make its actuality awfully hard to recognize. In Iliad 14, Hera asks Aphrodite to lend her dearest and desire, ostensibly then that she can fix her parents' sexless marriage. Aphrodite agrees and hands Hera the chugalug "wherein lies love and desire and flirtation, allurement that steals the mind even of the wise" (14.216–17). Homer's love has no "rut," his longing has no "pulsing rush," his flirtation is neither "irresistible" nor "magic," and its power isn't restricted from women, equally in Fagles' version.
The charity that is a trifle to the states tin can be precious to others.
Across internet databases, you tin find this Homeric maxim quoted anywhere from nursing textbooks, holiday giving guides, books about hotel management, and spiritual handbooks, including Daily Staff of life For Your Mind and Soul, Condign Fully Homo: The Greatest Glory of God, A World Bout of Wisdom: Finding Inner Peace, Learning Through Living, and Bleedership: Biblical First-Aid for Leaders. This i has found its way to fiction too. In Sandy James' Fringe Benefits, hot new teacher Nate Ryan gets his way with his boss, Dani Bradshaw, all thanks to his ability to quote Homer:
Nate took her manus, stroking her knuckles with his pollex. 'I'd be really grateful, Dani. And it will only exist temporary.' His optics shone with humor as the corners of his mouth rose with a lopsided grinning. '"The charity that is a trifle to us can exist precious to others."'
The human being could fucking quote Homer. How could she always turn him down?
'Fine. You lot can alive in my basement.'
I wonder what's going to happen in that basement.
Every bit with Fagles' pulsing blitz of magical man-beloved, this saying'southward quotability is due more to the translator than the translatee. In Odyssey 6, Nausicaa instructs her attendants to look later on Odysseus, "since foreigners and beggars are from Zeus, and even a pocket-sized gift is welcome" (half dozen.207–8). The original doesn't have nearly the aforementioned axiomatic or Christian force every bit Rieu'due south, which owes equally much to the Biblical story of the widow's mite as it does to Homer.
Ii friends, ii bodies with one soul inspired.
This is Pope's rendition of a significantly less quotable Homeric original. When the Myrmidons enter boxing in Iliad sixteen, Patroclus and Automedon atomic number 82 the way: "Two men were armed in front end of all: Patroclus and Automedon, having one intention — to wage war at the head of the Myrmidons" (sixteen.218–twenty). Though Homer'south version speaks simply to the bloodlust that the 2 men share, Pope's translation has made Homer a affiche boy for Aristotelian friendship. By 1910, Pope's translation could be cited as Homer'due south definition of friendship; in 1928 information technology was quoted as the platonic of friendship; and in 1971 it could be used to demonstrate that "Homer rated friendship very high." To paraphrase Richard Bentley, it's pretty poetry, Mr. Pope; merely it isn't Homer.
In that location is an old story, related in the scholia to Dionysius Thrax, of how we came to have our Iliad and Odyssey. In circulation for many years after the poet's death, Homer'south g epics had started to atomize. Damaged past earthquakes, fires, and floods, diverse scraps of Homer lay scattered across the Greek world. Seeking renown for himself and the restoration of Homer's poems, Peisistratus, ruler of Athens, put out a call: Whosoever of you possesses verses of Homer, bring them to me, and you shall receive compensation to match your contribution. Entrepreneurial Greeks flocked to Athens, bringing verses of Homer, supplemented with several of their own, to make the well-nigh of the king's offer. When Peisistratus had gathered all that he could, he invited lxx-two grammarians to suit the collected fragments as each thought best. Having made their arrangements, each grammarian presented his work to a committee of his peers, and from seventy-ii Homeric medleys they judged Aristarchus's to exist the best.
The story is fictitious (Aristarchus was born three hundred years after Peisistratus died); but, like these quotations, its spuriousness does not negate its resonance. As in the scholiast'due south story, so with these popular quotations, the questionable attribution of verses to Homer is a win-win. In the story, Peisistratus gets prestige, Homer isn't forgotten, 70-2 Hellenists get jobs, a lot of people make money for supporting the arts, and nosotros all have epics to enjoy. Homer's public epitome and the ideas erroneously ascribed to him benefit from their common association. Homer gets to sound like Shakespeare, and words of wisdom from Christian cowboys that might have faded from the obscurity of their source survive, feeding and feeding on Homer'due south fame. Like Peisistratus and the seventy-ii grammarians, when nosotros await to Homer for a quotable phrase, we get the Homer nosotros want, not the Homer we have. And maybe that's the way it has always been.
This commodity is part of the Diacritical Remarks cavalcade
Bill Beck is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. He explores origins of another sort @GreekEtymology, and y'all tin find more than of his writing here.
Source: https://eidolon.pub/the-homer-we-want-7e7299acdfe2
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