As I’ve learned during the past eight years: democracy cannot be fruitful without an educated, engaged citizenry. Perhaps we can finally put the time of anti-intellectualism behind us.

For in my heart and soul I know this well:
the day will come when sacred Troy must die, [. . .]
That is nothing, nothing beside your agony
when some brazen Argive hales you off in tears,
wrenching away your day of light and freedom!
–Hector to Andromache, the Iliad, VI.396-97, 405-07

Book VI of Homer’s Iliad shows the contention in the heart of Hector, Ilium’s champion, but also a husband and new father: he is torn between his responsibilities as a hero to his people and as a the head of the household. Like so many soldiers going off to battle today, Hector is a new father who must risk his life to maintain his people’s way of life. Hector knows that Troy is doomed, but he must do his duty as champion and prince, even though it means the enslavement of his wife and child. In Hector’s plight, we see what is perhaps the utmost position of humanity in war: to lose does not mean just the death of the hero, but his death precipitates the death of the society that he protects.

At least one characteristic of the hero in the Iliad is his resolve to meet fate bravely. Hector communicates this belief to Andromache, before returning to the battlefield:

Like Oedipus’ anagnoresis, Hector’s position is much the same: while we cannot avoid our fate, we can decide how we’ll meet it. Our actions are our responsibility, even though, as Achilles muses in Book IX, death will claim us all: “The same honor waits / for the coward and the brave. They both go down to Death” (IX.386-87). In fact, while Hector and Achilles both seem to be considering death — under the extreme circumstances of war, what else would one think about? — they both approach it differently.

Hector is a family man, but he is a champion first. Even though his status as the son of Priam and Hecuba is a factor, his pride affects his position, and stokes his responsibility to his people: “I would die of shame to face the men of Troy / and the Trojan women trailing their long robes / if I would shrink from battle now, a coward” (VI.389-91). Hector is concerned about his place — and his perceived place — as champion; he must not let his people down. He even admonishes his brother Paris for not doing his duty, for languishing in his room instead of fighting. Yet, in this resolve — a resolve that will be put to the test in Book XXII — Hector’s responsibility will also win him glory and renown.

Achilles, on the other hand, questions the validity of this position. Since breaking with Agamemnon and the rest of the Achaeans, Achilles has obviously had some time to think about life. In Book IX, Agamemnon’s forces have been beaten back nearly to the ships and an embassy of heros is sent to Achilles to attempt to win him back to the battle, while Achilles sulks by his ships. After being surrounded by death, Achilles considers whether or not he should accept his responsibility as a hero. After all, he has two choices:

Achilles has decided to choose the latter course; he is determined to set sail the next morning, having lost faith in the leadership and subsequently lost faith is his hero’s pride and glory. The champion of the Greeks even advises the others to flee, since defeat seems nigh (IX.507). It’s only after Patroclus’ death that Achilles is reminded of his duties to king and country, though he is motivated by that rage begun by Agamemnon and stoked to its full fury by Hector, and does his duty, establishing his fame, but cutting his life short.

Hector does his duty for his people, but Andromache’s lament for Hector and their son in Book XXII shows how duty to country is not always compatible to duty to one’s family. Yet, the death of the family is a microcosm of the reality of the Trojans: their culture, as it is now, is doomed. Hector’s death means the inevitable defeat of Troy.

Apparently, this idiot climbed up on the roof of Circe’s barn, or some other obscure part of her house, and proceeded to drink enough wine to cause him to pass out. There he slept, like a drunken little piggie, all night, until the voices of the crew preparing to leave woke him up. Maybe he was still drunk, but he stirred and fell off the roof — probably forgot he had climbed up there “to taste the cool night” — breaking his neck, and killing himself instantly. A true hero’s death, no?

In all their hasty preparation to get out of town, no one saw Elpenor fall, nor did they miss him at all. Instead, they sailed straight to hell; only then did they encounter his shade. Odysseus seemed surprised as he listened to his dead oarsman’s sob story. The latter asks Odysseus to return to Aiaia — apparently Circe’s island is on the way to hell — and give him a proper burial: “Heap up the mound there, and implant upon it / the oar I pulled in life with my companions” (XI.87-88). Now, I’m not one to knit-pick (OK, maybe I am), but you’d think they’d miss one of their oarsmen. Maybe Elpenor had halitosis, BO, or some other execrable quality that the rest of the men found offensive, so he had no friends, relegated to spending time on roofs with bottles of wine. Maybe he was too stupid to have any friends. Yet, if he made it through the Trojan war, he can’t be too dumb.

Anyway, I’m just wondering what this episode is doing in the text in the first place. It spans three books, X-XII, and just seems to be an afterthought — another repetitive incident to annoy students and professors alike.

I will assume that since Books IX though XII are narrated by Odysseus, the Elpenor episode is important to his journey and personal growth somehow. Perhaps the Odysseus that forgets Elpenor on Aiaia is not the same one that returns to bury him after chatting with the Underworld’s grim gathering of shades. Maybe seeing the shade of his dead crewman, even someone as seemingly insignificant as an oarsman, struck Odysseus in a way that seeing the heroes of the Trojan war doesn’t. Or, seeing Elpenor in the same state that Achilles and Agamemnon are in finally makes him realize that death is the great leveller. No matter one’s position while alive, everyone comes to the same place eventually. Therefore, everyone deserves to be treated fairly and humanely while alive. This lesson is similar to the one that Gilgamesh eventually brings home to Uruk.

Sounds good, and I wish I could believe it, but much of Odysseus’ subsequent actions suggest that he does not learn this lesson, or is still learning it as he travels home. Sure, he returns to bury Elpenor, but lets Circe talk him into traveling past the sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, and other perils as well. This he does without even seeing if there was another way, knowing full well that his men would be eaten by Scylla, perhaps swallowed by Charybdis, and lose their lives on the Island of the Sun. However, we do see the integral parts that the swineherd and cowherd play in Odysseus’ subsequent battle with the suitors; had it not been for them, Odysseus might not have been victorious.

Poor confusing Elpenor: you’ll be remembered as an idiot who fell off the roof, but one who became important after Odysseus’ life lesson in the underworld. Any other ideas about Elpenor?

Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek – it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
–Toni Morrison

Lately, I’ve been rethinking the contextual use of language. The more I teach writing and reading, the more I understand the need to use language strategically — to make it your own. Words must be carressed and nurtured, like a newborn. They must be used rhetorically: rhetoric here suggests a time and a place for everything, a kairos. Language is not used in isolation; therefore, every situation is rhetorical, textual even. I think that we often forget that words can be violent, and sometimes we need reminders.

A command of language gives one power. As we command that language — itself a metaphor for control — in our ever-increasing public utterances, we need to be even more thoughtful before we lash out with the cudgels of thoughtlessness and fear. In the ethical interpretation of literature, one looks at the value systems represented in the text and makes judgments on whether or not characters act “in good faith.” Good faith is not dictated by one’s isolated and absolute perspectives on the way things ought to be. Good faith is not practiced by labeling — using language — acts or people as evil out of context. Good faith requires a knowledge of one’s surroundings in order to work. Good faith requires us to look critically and thoughtfully and compassionately at the circumstances before pronouncing sentence.

Perhaps we should indulge in some revisionary mythmaking. We should often ask ourselves, in the words of Salman Rushdie in The Satanic Verses, “What kind of idea am I?” Verses addresses the theme of language as violence: that the moral majority has the power of description, and those whom they describe have no choice but to succumb to that description — to become evil, amoral, a threat. If you hear often that you are wrong, you’re eventually going to believe it. While we might not do physical harm to the other, the psychological impact of the majority is an oppressive, often violent act that hurts not only the other, but also the oppressors themselves. Have you ever wondered how difficult it is to practice Judiasm in this country? Ever wondered how difficult it is to black? A woman? Gay? Do we need to make others’ lives even more difficult by wielding the weapons of violent rhetoric?

I understand that mythology is a powerful force, and overcoming myths that marginalize might be a Sisyphean effort for all of us. Yet, as Morrison states in her Nobel Prize speech, “it’s in our hands.” We control language, and therefore reality. We will all die, but it’s how we live through our stories that’s important:

We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.

What language does for us is in our hands. We need to make up stories that are inclusive, not exclusive and damning. We need to find out what stories to pass on.

Along these lines, see Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck” for a much more eloquent expression of this idea. Oh, and Michael Moore’s recent letter is fun and germane.

Seemingly, poetry, no matter when or where it was written, still has life. Eliot uses this idea as a basis for his aesthetic theory; this idea, too, represents the only really lucid point of his essay. Indeed, any poetry read or experienced by a reader has a life, even though it may have been written centuries ago. While Eliot’s canon is composed of traditional figures — Homer, Donne, Dante, Shakespeare — his idea may transcend that boundary and include marginal expressions. In Eliot’s system, the poet acts as the catalyst, incorporating the expression of the old into the new, but the poet does not ultimately matter in continuing artistic expression.

Reminiscent of Aristotle, the poet’s function is cathartic. Poetry combines both “feelings” and “emotions” and gives them a form. These feelings are not new, but the poet’s expression of them needs to be to have some relevancy to the poet’s age, the poet himself, and the literary tradition. Theses feelings are also not conscious within the poet when composing — the poet does not “recollect” feelings and emotions, but allows them to speak through the verse. Eliot’s explanation as to how this process happens occurs in a mystical realm that remains, at least in this essay, ineffable. Eliot states that “poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality” (33). Poetry engages emotion, and through that engagement, provides a release. This release is not one of poetical personality, but is seemingly controlled by that ineffable and mystical experience sug-gesting Plato’s communion with the forms.

Like Aristotle’s definition of catharsis, Eliot’s is also vague in the sense of who experiences the catharsis, the poet of the reader. More so than Aristotle, Eliot’s poet seems to experience the release, but would not a reader, too, want (or need) to escape emotion and personality? Eliot indicates that the act of poetical composition is a “continual surrender” of the poet’s personality to “something which is more valuable” (30). This “process of depersonalization” seems to place more emphasis on poetical tradition and readership than it does on the poet. Indeed, the contemporary poet’s expression, because it alters the entire tradition, remains important, but the poet’s individual experiences and emotions become diminished to the point of irrelevancy (29). The poet is a repository, a receptacle for storing impressions and images that are then combined in unique, unexpected ways in the medium (31, 32). The medium, then, and not the poet, becomes more important. Therefore, the readership (the poet is also a reader) of the tradition and the tradition’s relevancy to that readership becomes paramount.

This readership, then, sets the value of the individual poet by placing the poet’s work among the work of the dead poets (29). How much of this placement and judgment, I must wonder, is an unconscious process? And would literature be what it is today without the conscious or unconscious influence of the dead poets? Eliot states, supporting a traditional notion of the canon, that the art of the dead writers is precisely “that which we know” (30). Would there have been a Shakespeare without a Dante, a Donne without a Shakespeare? Indeed, would our language, culture, values, emotions have developed the same way had it not been for the dead poets? At the risk of supporting Harold Bloom, I must agree with Eliot. The canon is the canon because it has made us who we are. Even though much of it represents jaundiced views, sexist language, racial inequalities, it remains a statement of who we are and how we have evolved. Will an African-American understand Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress”? Yes, I think he will because he lives in our culture. Will a lesbian have the capacity to grasp the ruminations of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary? Again, yes, I believe she will. Will the white, Jewish male be capable of empathizing with Alice Walker’s The Color Purple? Yes, yes, and again, yes. Each of these has added its own recreation of the of the stuff of art. Each has its own medium and experiences, but still represents an expression of humanity.

Vico suggests that every literature professor has the responsibility of choosing the best authors of the canon to include in her/his curriculum. Eliot’s essay supports this notion by advo-cating, at least implicitly, the notion of canon, for the works that stand the test of time (30). That is, the professor’s selection of literature must have a continuing relevance for each generation; its significance must conform to the tradition of the dead poets and artists (29). This tradition, Eliot suggests, does not mean a blind conformity to style and medium, but a tradition of greatness that incorporates novelty and difference into its ever-increasing folds (28, 29). Bloom suggests, in The Western Canon, that canonical usually began as a violent reaction or rebellion to current trends. This heterodox movement, adds Eliot, conforms by its non-conformity: “To conform merely [to previous forms of art] would be for the new work not really to conform at all” (29-30). The tradition, usually perceived as a pejorative criticism, becomes the way of the canon. This idea, then, does not isolate the canon to the elite, but opens the canon up to new possibilities of expression to new poets with new experiences. All poets, then must conform to tradition to produce new expressions of old artistic ideas — ideas that are nothing less than humanity.

However difficult it might be to agree with and support Pope’s conclusion, it must be accepted as the premise if any subsequent interpretation is to prove fruitful. Can Pope be serious? Does he really believe that “If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav’n’s design / Why then a Borgia, or a Cataline” (Man I.155-6)? I suggest exchanging “Borgia” with “Hitler” and “Cataline” with “Stalin” to provide some twentieth-century perspective. Pope seems to commit a logical fallacy be comparing moral action with natural occurrences – as if the hurricane has a choice about destroying New Orleans. Well, explains Pope, God created human morality and natural phenomena; therefore, his design, no matter how it appears distorted to our limited perspective, is correct. Pope also suggests that we have a restricted position on the universe because we see only a fraction of God’s creation on Earth: “’Tis but a part we see, and not a whole” (Man I.69).

Echoing Milton, Pope’s thesis in Essay on Man is to “vindicate the ways of God to Man” (Man I.16). In his exculpation, Pope suggests that God made the best of possible creations, evidenced by his omniscience and the Great Chain of Being:

Of Systems possible, if ’tis confessed
That Wisdom infinite must from the best,
Where all must full or not coherent be,
And all that rises, rise in due degree;
Then, in the scale of reas’ning life, ’tis plain
There must be, somewhere, such a rank as Man;
And all the question (wrangle e’er so long)
Is only this, if God has plac’d him wrong? (Man I.43-50)

Between animal and angel, man must be content with his position on the great chain—knowing that God has placed him correctly. The above passage might suggest a lack of free-will governing man, in which case, Pope has no business criticizing. However, Pope’s oeuvre suggests that while man might not be able to change his position in God’s great hierarchy, and the presence of evil is an integral part of the system, man does have the power to improve himself within his own sphere. Yet, since man’s nature is fallen, corrupted, marred in Christian terms by original sin, men are not inherently benevolent, nor rational. In Jonathan Swift’s words, man is not the “rational animal,” but only “rationis capax,” i.e., capable of reason. So men need guidance to be the best men they can be; enter, then, the satirist and critic.

Out of this belief comes the Neoclassical idea that because man’s nature is flawed, restraint is important. Man should be distrustful of his inner impulses, and self-knowledge of man’s frailty is the beginning of wisdom, shown by some of Pope’s advice to the critic:

Be sure your self and your own Reach to know,
How far your Genius, Taste, and Learning go;
Launch not beyond your Depth, but be descreet,
And mark that Point where Sense and Dulness meet. (Crit. 48-51)

While this know thyself applies to the individual, seemingly Pope suggests also that man know his place in the order of things. This moral instruction, for the Neoclassicists, appears to be the purpose of literature and criticism.

The form of poetry may support this statement. The heroic couplet is exact and constraining, relying on the precise turn of phrase rather than long-winded prose to make its point. Pope suggest in his prologue to Essay on Man that he uses verse to make his points more memorable and that he “could express them more shortly this way than in prose itself” (121). The Neoclassical poet relies on wit to make his points, and since Pope is only second to Shakespeare in pithy aphorisms, he seems to have succeeded. Pope gives a concise (and probably the best I have read) definition of wit: “True Wit is Nature to Advantage drest, / What oft was Thought, but ne’er so well Exprest” (Crit 297-8). The heroic couplet, then, provides an example to man on how to approach morality. The couplet is precise and restrained, just like man should do to his animal nature.

Also, Pope suggests to the critic, one must be know the ancients, and know them well for

A little Learning is a dang’rous Thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian Spring:
There shallow Draughts intoxicate the Brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. (Crit 215-8)

Echoing Cicero in his De Oratore, Pope states that the true writers and critics must know what they are talking about, and the best education lies in the ancient poets and philosophers, for “You then whose Judgment the right Course wou’d steer, / Know well each Ancient’s proper Character” (Crit 188-9). Pope also gives rules for the writing of poetry beginning with “The Sound must seem an Echo to the Sense” (Crit 365). His subsequent lines illustrate masterfully the rules they give. Pope suggests that “Nature’s chief Master-piece is writing well” (Crit 724). Seemingly if one follows Pope’s advice in his Essay on Criticism, one will, by writing well, be morally upright and restrained. So the role of the writer, critic, and satirist is a moral one.

Basically, to Pope, the satirist is one who defends Virtue and attacks Vice whatever the consequences; he is one who supports friends and attacks those who are enemies of the truth no matter what their social position or seeming importance. The satirist is one who cares for his country, its people, and their way of life. Dunces affect us all, and “When Truth or Virtue and Affront endures, / Th’ Affront is mine, my Friend, and should be yours” (Dunciad 199-200)

Aristotle’s semiotic may be visualized as a triangle which represents the text. The triangle’s various points are labeled “writer,” “reader,” and “reality” (or subject matter). Each of these elements interact to create the text, but existing texts — one of Eliot’s points — also influence the various points of the semiotic. Indeed, art, reality, and subjectivity cannot be separated. Eliot uses a catalyst as an analogy for this process. A strip of platinum present when mixing oxygen and sulfur dioxide, a sulfurous acid is formed; the platinum remains unaffected. If the platinum represents the poet’s mind, then, Eliot states, the oxygen and sulfur dioxide are emotions and feelings that affect and are affected by the poet’s mind, producing a new work of art, or the text. Interestingly enough, the feelings, or words and phrases used to create the text, and emotions exist in all three elements of the semiotic. A creator of art cannot live in a vacuum; s/he must have the influences of feeling and emotion — especially those feelings and emotions of past texts — or his/her mind will remain unaffected.

As mentioned above, the history of literature forms a whole. The artist’s new creation will, in the artist lives within a society, necessarily be affected by this rich tradition. In fact, escaping the history of writers would be impossible, unless the artist was born and raised on Mars. The dead poets, states Eliot, are our culture — they are what we know. While the artist is undoubtedly influenced by his/her particular, temporal culture, represented by the outside of the semiotic — the history of literature, i.e. that many texts that constitute its wholeness, is both present within the artist’s text and the history of the culture in general. Everyone has heard the expression “All the world’s a stage,” but how many people know it is from Shakespeare’s As You Like It? Eliot’s point seems valid. While not all artists have had the affect on society that Shakespeare has had, even Shakespeare was influenced by previous artists, fitting him into the textual wholeness of our culture.

But in order for a text to conform, it must rebel. Eliot makes the distinction between a work just aping its predecessors and one that is original. The latter, while an act of rebellion, is necessary in order to be creative and new, thus adding to the history of art. By rebelling, new art conforms. Yet, Eliot cautions, the poet must not search for the new emotions — this activity will only lead to the “perverse” — but s/he must look for new feelings and mediums for expressing them.

The poet, however, is not the most important element in Eliot’s semiotic. He suggests that the fusion that takes place between the poet’s mind, emotion, and feeling makes art — not the poet’s personality, but her/his medium. The medium lets unique “impressions and experiences combine in particular and unexpected ways” to form the original text (“Tradition” 31). Eliot suggests, by way of example, Keats feelings and reactions to the nightingale have nothing to do with the bird itself, but the bird, possibly because of its estimation in society, was able to evoke those feelings on that particular occasion. Indeed, the text, for Eliot, represents the most important part of the semiotic, for it is a most interesting and original combination of the other elements that is simultaneously universal and very particular.

Finally, Eliot emphasizes the text, not the poet, as the focus of his study. He suggests that the escape from personal history and emotions will endow the artist with the ability to create a new text. In an escape from the particular, and a surrender to the unconscious wholeness of the semiotic, a new expression of feeling may be created — a new text added to the rich historical tradition of our culture’s artistic expression, changing both the present and the past.