Robert Kanigel’s book on Milman Parry and the oral transmission of epic poems has many wonders, including a short section on Ernest Renan’s view of “primitive” literature.
Renan said we can’t understand it “unless we enter the personal and moral life of the people who made it; unless we place ourselves at the point of humanity which was theirs, so that we see and feel as they saw and felt; unless we watch them live, or better, unless for a moment we live with them.”
Compare this with two of Wittgenstein’s famous remarks:
• “If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.”
• “And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life.”
Today we have a form of life in which writers write. What they make is their property. Taking the work of others without attribution is plagiarism.
Other peoples in other times and places have had a form of life in which poets sing songs. The myths they sing of are common goods. Each singer is free to interpret the common legends — within the bounds of that form of life.
One example of boundaries: The Greeks did not think of their gods as moral examples. The gods murdered, raped, connived, gossiped and did other despicable things. But if you look at statues and paintings of Athena, you will never find a hint of violent emotion on her face. There could not be any rage or horror in the countenance of a goddess whose essence was balanced and rational.
Individual emotion is essence of personality in the art and literature of our form of life.
In the ancient Greeks’ form of life, that just wasn’t within the realm of possibility for some of the characters in their stories.
• Sources: Robert Kanigel, Hearing Homer’s Song; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021, p. 101. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations; Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, N.D. The first quotation is in Part II, p. 223. The second is in Part I, paragraph 19.
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