Art in all its forms is a mark of social development and a reflection of the times. No society develops without a clear marked development in arts and culture. In fact, “cultured people” are refined people drawn from exposure to the Arts.
Arts give humans a certain polishing. In Inside Literature we are curious to discover the gradual development of Arts. Since we are moving towards poetry now, we want to see some poems from different periods. We may not be able to see all the periods at once, but we will examine some in this edition.
The first is the oldest known poem titled, Epic of Gilgamesh. It is written in the Mesopotamian language. The poet is unknown. It is said to be about 4, 000 years old. Gilgamesh is an epic poem and below are a few lines from the long epic poem:
“He who saw all, who was the foundation of the land.
Who knew everything, was wise in all matters.
Gilgamesh, who saw all, who was the foundation of the land.
Who knew (everything), was wise in all matters.”
This poem was discovered by Theodore Kwasman, an American expert on Mesopotamian language and script. Although the poem is being discovered in parts in different world’s museums, and in excavations in the Middle East, and about 20% of the 15, 000 word long poem is still missing, archeologists are hopeful that the whole poem will soon be discovered.
Some scholars believe that the Biblical Flood Story of Noah is based on this story. Well, that’s the most laughable thing I ever read. Reading the few lines of The Gilgamesh which is also called, “The One Who Saw All” and “Surpassing All Other Kings,” one can easily see that it sounds like something patterned after the Bible, both in its form and its subject.
We should also remember that Arts reflect society and not vice versa. Is it possible that a whole religion’s faith would be based on a poem instead of the other way round!
It must be noted that researchers are still working on this vast archeological discovery, especially in British Museum Back Room.
Homer’s Iliad, an epic poem, is the second oldest poem after The Gilgamesh. It is older than The Odyssey which is dated 8th C BC. Historians put the time around 750 BC. Both The Iliad and The Odyssey are said to be passed down by bards, orally, long before they were written down. Both poems are attributed to Homer, the ancient Greek poet.
The Iliad is about the events in the 10 year siege against the city of Troy, a city in modern Turkey, by a coalition of Greek states. The reason for this war, according to the Iliad, is because a Spartan queen by name, Helen of Troy is abducted by Paris, a prince of Troy son of king Priam of Troy.
The poem is set near the end of the 10th year, and spread over a few weeks. In it, you have characters like Achilles, Hector, Agamemnon, Hermes, Paris, Patrooculus, Menelaus, Aphrodite, etc., very famous names of the classical Greek legend.
Contained in the Iliad is the fact that the siege has taken its toll against the Greek troop sent to recover Helen. According to a translation by Richmond Lattimore, the poem reads:
“’timbers of our ships have rotted away and the cables are broken and far away are our wives and our young children.”
The Iliad reads further: “sons of the Achaians (Greeks) outnumber the Trojans – those who live in the city, but there are companions from other cities in their numbers, wielders of the spear to help them.”
The above shows a stalemate in which the invading army was unable to take the city and the Trojans are unable to push them back into the Mediterranean Sea.
The poem tells of different events during the war, including a duel between Menelaus or Menelaos, the king of Sparta (husband of Helen) and Paris. The duel winner is to receive Queen Helen as prize thus ending the war, but the gods intervene, breaking up the duel, and the war continues.
Hector and Achilles engage in another duel, with Hector, the Trojan warrior running around Troy three times while the Greek warrior, Achilles, chases him. Finally, Hector gets killed as the gods force him to face the Greek warrior.
Of course epic narratives are heroic stories. Ancient stories and arts are full of characters of heroic deeds. But, as the world developed, things begin to get tidier as laws and law enforcement agencies begin to protect lives and properties, and unruly individuals are sentenced and put away in the prisons. Things begin to become more orderly, and art has new themes, beliefs and practices to focus on.
The Odyssey is a sequel to the Iliad. So, it continues the story of The Iliad, about the 10-year siege against the city of Troy.
Written about 8th BC, The Odyssey is an epic poem of heroic battle against mystic beings in the protagonist’s struggle to return home after the battle of The Trojan War. His wife, Penelope, and their son, Telemachus, try to fend off suitors seeking their daughter, Ithaca’s hand in marriage as they wait the return of the head of the family, Odyssey, who is known as Ulysses in Roman mythology.
It is in the Odyssey, the continuation of the story of the Iliad, that readers learn how the Greek won the Trojan War. It is a very famous story. The Odyssey tells briefly how the Greeks sent Troy a gift carried in the famous “Trojan Horse”, but concealed in it, are warriors within.
According to the translation by A. T. Murray (in Perseus Digital Library), the Odyssey reads,
“What a thing was this, too, which that mighty man wrought and endured in the carven horse, wherein all we chiefs of the Argives were sitting, bearing to the Trojans death and fate!”.
Aeneid is the fourth oldest poem in the world. It is a Latin epic poem by Virgil written (between 29 – 19 BC) and tells of the sack of Troy after the 10 year siege by the Greeks. It is the story about how a Trojan named Aeneas (the son of a Trojan prince, Anchises and Venus, the goddess of love) and his compatriots flee Troy.
He would later found a place of safety and order in Rome for himself and his countrymen. So, they set sail on the Mediterranean Sea to go to Italy.
However the Roman poet, Virgil, did not finish the 12 books long poem before his death.
Beowulf is the fifth oldest poem in the world. It is an Old English poem, an epic believed to have been written around 8th and 11th century AD when England had converted to Christianity. This is because the story has a mixture of pagan and Christian practices and beliefs.
It is believed that the poet must be Anglo-Saxon since he set a story of Scandinavian theme in a Scandinavian setting while living in England. The poem is also written in the Anglo-Saxon language or Old English. The poet is anonymous and is simply referred to as the Beowulf poet.
England, it should be recalled, was invaded and conquered by the Angle and Saxon tribes who emigrated from Europe. They therefore had a similar heritage with the Danes, Swedes and the Geats – these are some of the tribes who appeared in the epic poem.
The earliest printed edition of the poem was 1815.
Beowulf had no title when it was discovered. Since the setting is Scandinavian, and the hero of the epic is also Scandinavian from the province of Gaeltes, it was then natural to name it after the Scandinavian hero Beowulf. He is the protagonist in the poem whose exploits and character form the theme of this vernacular European epic. The poem has 3, 182 alliterate lines.
Beowulf is a story of heroism and grandeur, written in the alliterative verse style. It is set in the pagan world of 6th Century Anglo-Saxon Scandinavian nation, now, Denmark and Sweden in the tradition of Geatish culture.
The story is about how a man named Beowulf rescued the Danes and their king, Hrothgar. These people have suffered at the hands of a monster named Grendel who pillaged their land for over 12 years.
Beowulf kills this evil monster, Grendel. His (Grendel) mother attacks the people and Beowulf defeats her too. He goes home to Geatland now, Gotaland in modern Sweden; and becomes king of the land for 50 years. Then, he battles a dragon and kills it, but gets mortally wounded by the dragon. His attendants cremate Beowulf after his death and erect a tower in his memory.
The next period in Literature we will look at, is the time such great writers as Shakespeare, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw, etc., were writing. This period is known as the Jacobean period because of the reign of King James, because the period slid into the reign of Queen Elisabeth the first, it is sometimes called, the Jacobethan period, then The Elizabethan period. We take sample poems from some of the poets of the period.
William Shakespeare:
My Mistress Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun
My mistress eyes are nothing but the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music has a far more pleasing sound,
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
Here is the first stanza of George Herbert, a contemporary of Shakespeare;
The Pulley
When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessing standing by,
“Let us,” said He, “pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.”
And two lines from Richard Crashaw’s poem read:
On Our Crucified Lord, Naked and Bloody
Th’ have left Thee naked, Lord, O that they had;
This garment too I would they had denied.
What we want to establish in this edition of Inside Literature, is to observe the concern or the preoccupation of poets of different periods in history. It is pleasing to note that man’s preoccupation or concern in early times was God, the Creator, Himself; after this, is followed the period of heroic worship when art begins to focus on outstanding achievements of men called heroes.
Noteworthy too is the fact that as time progresses, writers began to leave out the interference of “gods” in the activities of human struggles as found in the Greek and Roman legends.
Towards the Jacobean and Elizabethan periods, attention began to shift to carnal needs. However, the interest in the Creator wasn’t far from the thoughts of writers as shown by Crawshaw’s and Herbert’s poems.
