Adam Parry, The Language Of Achilles

Achilles is thus the one Homeric hero who does not accept the common language, and feels that it does not correspond to reality. But what is characteristic of the Iliad, and makes it unique as a tragedy, is that this otherness of Achilles is nowhere stated in clear and precise terms. Achilles can only say, "There was, after all, no grace in it," or ask questions that cannot really be answered: "But why should the Argives be fighting against the Trojans?" or make demands that can never be satisfied: ".. . until he pays back all my heart-rending grief.''l2 Homer in fact, has no language, no terms, in which to express this kind of basic disillusionment with society and the external world. The reason lies in the nature of epic verse. The poet does not make a language of his own; he draws from a common store of poetic diction. This store is a product of bards and a reflection of society: for epic song had a clear social function.'3 Neither Homer, then, in his own person as narrator, nor the characters he drama- tizes, can speak any language other than the one which reflects the assumptions of heroic society, those assumptions so beautifully and so serenely enunciated by Sarpedon in book 12. Achilles has no language with which to express his disillusion- ment. Yet he expresses it, and in a remarkable way. He does it by misusing the language he disposes of. He asks questions that cannot be answered and makes demands that cannot be met. He uses conventional expressions where we least expect him to, as when

he speaks to Patroclus in book 16 of a hope of being offered material gifts by the Greeks, when we know that he has been offered these gifts and that they are meaningless to him; or as when he says that he has won great glory by slaying Hector, when we know that he is really fighting to avenge his comrade, and that he sees no value in the glory that society can confer.'4 All this is done with wonderful subtlety: most readers feel it when they read the Iliad; few under- stand how the poet is doing it. It is not a sign of artistic weakness: Homer profits by not availing himself of the intellectual terminol - ogy of the 5th century. Achilles' tragedy, his final isolation, is that he can in no sense, including that of language (unlike, say, Hamlet), leave the society which has become alien to him. And Homer uses the epic speech a long poetic tradition gave him to transcend the limits of that speech.

adam parry, the language of achilles

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the iliad stoicism in fact could not save her

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