We Will Never Be Here Again Homer
The Homer We Want
Homeric Multiformity in the Misinformation Historic period
Everything is more beautiful because nosotros're doomed. You volition never exist lovelier than you are now. We will never exist here once again.
— Homer
I know my Homer, and I like to recall that I can spot him when I see him. But when I opened a souvenir from my father and found this quotation inscribed inside, my conviction wavered. Ane Google search followed another, and then began my katabasis into the beguiling world of Homeric misquotations.
Homeric misquotation has a long history, as does its study. Accusations of misquotation of Homer'southward epics date back at least to the sixth century BCE. Plato and Aeschines fabricated liberal apply of the Homeric texts, and Alexandrian critics censured the misquotations of others while surely engaging in the same themselves. But it is frequently difficult to evidence that a line attributed to Homer is not genuine. This has become an even more vexed enterprise recently, with the ascension of the theory of Homeric multiformity, which holds that lines that differ from the traditional text are not necessarily any less 18-carat, despite their difference. For adherents of this theory, authentic Homeric poetry is to be found in quotations, merely also in apparent misquotations.
Some cases, however, are clearer than others. The quote my male parent lovingly wrote out, for case, dates back all of fourteen years, to Wolfgang Petersen's Troy. (Squeamish endeavour, Dad.)
Though information technology postdates Homer past more than two and a half millennia, this has become 1 of the most popular Homeric quotations of the decade. It is attributed to Homer in every internet quotation repository, from AZ Quotes to Quotissimo, and frequently ranks among Homer'south best quotations. I Googled "Iliad quotes," and it was the first event I saw.
Homer'south influence on after literature is well known, merely the literary influence of Homeric counterfeits is a story that remains to be told. This apocryphal has proven particularly productive for new fiction of the young developed and, ahem, adult varieties. It appears in Lizzy Ford'southward Omega, Jenny Valentine'southward Fire Colour One, and Sam Millar'south The Bespoke Hitman. In Her Secret Rose , it is quoted equally West. B. Yeats's "favorite lines from Homer," and in Merlin's Son it is attributed to Achilles by Meteor, 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 upwardly 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 along the wall similar a cadger. 'Listen to this: "Everything is more beautiful considering we're doomed. You lot will never be lovelier than you are now. We volition never be here again."'
Pinpricks dance along my skin as I bring together Seth on the wall. These lines actually do encapsulate this unabridged morning.
In Cass Alexander'southward Working for It, Brad Pitt's existential reflection serves equally a kind of Horatian injunction to seize more than but the 24-hour interval:
She reads information technology silently then looks at me. I hold her gaze for only a 2nd before she looks downwardly again and reads the quote aloud.
'Any moment might be our concluding. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. Y'all volition never be lovelier than you are at present. We will never be here again.'
Serendipity, indeed.
She smiles and moves back to her seat, inches abroad from me.
'Homer?'
I nod.
'I'm non surprised you chose something from the Iliad. That what information technology's from, correct?'
Of course, she knows where information technology's from. Her intellect is staggering, when she chooses to use information technology. I nod again.
Half a page afterward: "Her hands quickly go to my hair and she pulls. Hard."
Of Homeric quotations in popular circulation, roughly a tertiary tin can be classified as not Homer, the wrong Homer, or Homerically-based simply, actually, not Homer. These quotations often resonate with Homeric themes, but their sentimentality, evocation of Christian morality, or even their very quotability give them away. (For all Homer's poetic virtues, brevity is — let's be honest — not the soul of his wit.)
Non Homer
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend, equally to find a friend worth dying for.
This attractively chiastic adage is frequently attributed to Homer and has been ranked amidst Homer'south twelve- and ten-all-time quotes. It is included in such anthologies equally Everlasting Wisdom, Life Lessons of Wisdom & Motivation, 3,000 Astounding Quotes, Time, Times and a Dividing of Time, Bang-up into Super Brains with 6,000 Supreme Quotes, and Warrior Daytimer. You can get it on a affiche, send it equally an due east-menu, or buy information technology for a friend, printed on a hoodie or engraved on wood.
The quotation evokes Achilles' relationship with Patroclus and might plausibly have come from Achilles' mouth, if Achilles had been a Romantic era aristocrat with a significantly milder disposition. The actual origin of this apothegm, however, is Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761) by Henry Home of Kames. One 'r' and a world away from Homer.
It behooves a father to exist blameless if he expects his child to be.
This precept ticks several Homeric boxes: it sounds archaic, it measures children past their fathers, and it features 1 of Homer'due south favorite adjectives, clean-living. One might imagine it existence spoken by Nestor or Priam or even Odysseus. Just, again, its pithiness betrays its inauthenticity. It is attributed to Homer by all the usual suspects, but also by this book about astrology, this non-profit, these anthologies of inspirational quotations, and these three books on parenting. The Homeric attribution has fifty-fifty been extended to Homer Simpson, who makes no pretense well-nigh what he expects from him children: "Kids, yous tried your best, and you failed miserably. The lesson is: never endeavour."
The axiom is aboriginal, just no Homer is responsible. Instead, it originates with Plautus' Pseudolous, where, in Paul Nixon's (1932) translation, Callipho says, "It behooves a begetter to be blameless, if he expects his son to exist more clean-living than he was himself."
I know not what the future holds, just I know who holds the future.
Attributed to Homer here, here, hither, here, here, and hither, this first appeared in "Known Only to Him," written and recorded by Stuart Hamblen in 1952 and recorded past Elvis eight years after. The line was often excerpted and quickly became anonymized. By January 1960, Martin Luther Rex Jr. ascribed it to "somebody" and past 1979 information technology was credited to an "one-time divine." In the confusion, it has since been attributed not only to Homer, but also to Martin Luther King Jr., Oprah Winfrey, Ralph Abernathy, and Tim Tebow, in apparently the aforementioned process by which The Office's Michael Scott quotes himself quoting Wayne Gretzky's "You miss 100% of the shots y'all don't take."
Requite me a place to stand and I volition motility the world.
Despite its vague reminiscence of Homeric boasting, this is the famous dictum of Archimedes, not Homer, notwithstanding many citations to the opposite. The Archimedean maxim is kickoff deeply attested in Pappus of Alexandria's Synagōgē: δός μοι, φησί, ποῦ στῶ, καὶ κινῶ τὴν γῆν (8.1060).
The journey is the thing.
How would Homer even have said this, and why? Information technology is attributed to Homer hither, here, here, here, hither, here and hither, and it makes the cut of Homer's elevation-twenty list. It smacks of twentieth-century mindfulness movements, and the commencement attestation of the phrase that I can find is Ivan Kane'south "The Journeying Is the Matter," in the September 1978 issue of Michigan Alumnus, when the idea that the journeying is the destination! was not yet quite so cliché. In the world of the Odyssey, the journeying is the thing, sure— the affair that's ruining everybody's lives.
Incorrect Homer
I didn't lie! I just created fiction with my oral cavity!
Odysseus, is that you? Quotesss, Quotefancy, and Quotissimo seem to retrieve so. Though he once played Odysseus on telly, the source of this chip of sophistry is Homeric in the idiotic, non the Iliadic, kind of fashion. Interestingly, the original line ("I was writing fiction with my oral fissure!") has been modified, perhaps to arrive audio more believably bardic.
Non not Homer, merely … non Homer
Out of sight, out of mind.
In addition to various internet quotation repositories, several idiom dictionaries claim that this phrase originates with Homer. The Macmillan Book of Proverbs, Maxims, and Famous Phrases (1948), for example, writes that this phrase "has been proverbial since Homer's time," an assertion that is reiterated by A New Lexicon of Eponyms and Gabay'south Copywriters' Compendium and is repeated verbatim by The Dictionary of Clichés, The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms, and Two is a Company: Dictionary of Pair Idioms.
It is hard for me to call up of an idiom that is more obviously not Homeric. In a world where people tin can 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's island.
Athena: Father, my heart is torn for Odysseus, miserable man,
who suffers on a sea-girt island, far from his friends.
Don't you recollect Odysseus — all his sacrifices to you?
Zeus: No.
The End
And then why is Homer credited as the originator of the phrase? Because in 1869 Reverend Lovelace Bigge-Wither published his Nearly Literal Translation of Homer'south Odyssey, which renders 1.242 (oíkhet' áïstos ápustos) as "He's gone out-of-sight — out-of-mind!" The inadequacy of this translation is pointed upward past what follows: "and-to-me hath left | Woes only-and-tears: nor only him I weep for | At present." Odysseus may be "nameless and unknown," as Wilson translates, but he is anything but out of Telemachus's listen.
There is the heat of Love, the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper, irresistible — magic to make the sanest man get mad.
The net loves this quote. It's on all the quotation repositories, it's the inspiration for the title of an episode of Star Trek: Discovery ("Magic to Make the Sanest Homo Go Mad"), and it has made its way into fiction likewise. In Myrna Chocolate-brown'due south A Season of Mists, Da uses information technology (without attribution!) in a letter to his lover, and in Martin Millar's The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies, a lovestruck Luxos quotes information technology to Aristophanes the playwright:
'Did you even talk to her?'
'No,' admitted Luxos. 'Only we shared some pregnant eye contact. I tell you lot,
information technology'due south the real thing.
There is the heat of Dearest,
the pulsing rush of Longing, the lover's whisper,
irresistible-magic to make the sanest man go mad.[']
'I've never thought you were that sane, Luxos. And don't quote Homer at me.'
Yes, okay, the quote is Homeric, but Fagles' many translational liberties, combined with its decontextualization, make its actuality awfully hard to recognize. In Iliad 14, Hera asks Aphrodite to lend her love and desire, ostensibly so that she tin can fix her parents' sexless wedlock. Aphrodite agrees and easily Hera the belt "wherein lies dearest and want and flirtation, bait that steals the listen even of the wise" (fourteen.216–17). Homer'south dear has no "heat," his longing has no "pulsing rush," his flirtation is neither "irresistible" nor "magic," and its power isn't restricted from women, as in Fagles' version.
The clemency that is a trifle to us can be precious to others.
Beyond internet databases, you can find this Homeric proverb quoted anywhere from nursing textbooks, holiday giving guides, books well-nigh hotel management, and spiritual handbooks, including Daily Breadstuff For Your Mind and Soul, Becoming Fully Human: The Greatest Celebrity of God, A Earth Tour of Wisdom: Finding Inner Peace, Learning Through Living, and Bleedership: Biblical Offset-Aid for Leaders. This one has found its manner to fiction as well. In Sandy James' Fringe Benefits, hot new instructor Nate Ryan gets his way with his boss, Dani Bradshaw, all thank you to his power to quote Homer:
Nate took her hand, stroking her duke with his thumb. 'I'd be really grateful, Dani. And it will only exist temporary.' His eyes shone with sense of humour as the corners of his mouth rose with a lopsided smile. '"The clemency that is a trifle to the states tin can be precious to others."'
The man could fucking quote Homer. How could she ever turn him down?
'Fine. You tin live in my basement.'
I wonder what's going to happen in that basement.
As with Fagles' pulsing rush of magical man-love, this proverb's quotability is due more to the translator than the translatee. In Odyssey half dozen, Nausicaa instructs her attendants to expect after Odysseus, "since foreigners and beggars are from Zeus, and even a small gift is welcome" (half-dozen.207–8). The original doesn't take near the same axiomatic or Christian force as Rieu's, which owes equally much to the Biblical story of the widow'south mite as it does to Homer.
Two friends, ii bodies with one soul inspired.
This is Pope's rendition of a significantly less quotable Homeric original. When the Myrmidons enter battle in Iliad 16, Patroclus and Automedon atomic number 82 the way: "Two men were armed in forepart of all: Patroclus and Automedon, having one intention — to wage state of war at the caput of the Myrmidons" (sixteen.218–20). Though Homer's version speaks only to the bloodlust that the two men share, Pope'due south translation has made Homer a poster boy for Aristotelian friendship. By 1910, Pope's translation could exist cited as Homer's definition of friendship; in 1928 information technology was quoted as the ideal of friendship; and in 1971 it could be used to demonstrate that "Homer rated friendship very high." To paraphrase Richard Bentley, it'south pretty verse, Mr. Pope; but information technology isn't Homer.
In that location is an former story, related in the scholia to Dionysius Thrax, of how we came to have our Iliad and Odyssey. In circulation for many years subsequently the poet'southward death, Homer's chiliad epics had started to atomize. Damaged by earthquakes, fires, and floods, diverse scraps of Homer lay scattered across the Greek world. Seeking renown for himself and the restoration of Homer'due south poems, Peisistratus, ruler of Athens, put out a phone 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 ain, to brand the most of the king's offer. When Peisistratus had gathered all that he could, he invited seventy-ii grammarians to arrange the nerveless fragments equally each thought all-time. Having made their arrangements, each grammarian presented his work to a committee of his peers, and from seventy-two Homeric medleys they judged Aristarchus's to be the all-time.
The story is fictitious (Aristarchus was born 3 hundred years afterward Peisistratus died); merely, like these quotations, its spuriousness does not negate its resonance. Every bit in the scholiast's story, and 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-two Hellenists get jobs, a lot of people brand money for supporting the arts, and we all accept epics to savor. Homer's public image and the ideas erroneously ascribed to him do good from their mutual clan. Homer gets to audio like Shakespeare, and words of wisdom from Christian cowboys that might take faded from the obscurity of their source survive, feeding and feeding on Homer's fame. Like Peisistratus and the seventy-ii grammarians, when nosotros look to Homer for a quotable phrase, we become the Homer we want, not the Homer we have. And maybe that'southward the manner it has always been.
This article is role of the Diacritical Remarks column
Neb Beck is a PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. He explores origins of some other sort @GreekEtymology, and you tin can notice more of his writing here.
ritenourcasse1943.blogspot.com
Source: https://eidolon.pub/the-homer-we-want-7e7299acdfe2
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