Mr. Murray's Lecture on the Iliad

Mr. Gilbert Murray delivered the fifth of his series of lectures on Greek Traditional Poetry last evening in the Lecture room of the Fogg Museum. The special subject of the lecture was "The Iliad as a Great Poem."

Criticism, said Mr. Murray, has to a great extent shattered the former conception that the Iliad was written by one man--Homer. Even if the poet had a name, we know nothing of him. It seems more probable that he was an imaginary ancestor, invented to receive the worship of his admirers. It is at any rate assured that the incomparable poet did not write the whole Iliad, but that it was a work of successive ages, and probably, at the end of a long period of gradual development, fell into the hands of some great poet. Although criticism may reveal a hundred joints in the construction of the Iliad, it rarely can disclose faults in the style; for there is nothing more striking about the poem than the uniformity of splendor in which it was written. In some manner a great Homeric style was built up which could be reproduced by the ordinary minstrel without effort, provided he had been trained along that line. In the works of these ancient minstrels we are brought face to face with something more august than mere individual genius.

The subject of the Iliad is perhaps considered second rate, as Achilles is not a very sympathetic hero; and were it not for his misery and repentance at the end, most readers would dislike him because of his arrogance and self-conceit. There are in the poem many inconsistencies, such as various descriptions which cannot be thought out, and similes which are not strictly applicable. In examining various instances of these inconsistencies the conclusion seems to be that the high poetic value of the Iliad must be considerably detracted from. We see many of the similes and descriptions taken over ready-made from order books or traditions, and although we might think this to be fatal to originality, we must consider the exact meaning of the term. We should regard a work of art original when it produces an impression of a living source. What really shows art is intensity of imagination on the part of the poet, which makes us feel upon opening the book that we are in a different world and that we have a live interest in the people and affairs of that world. This has been attained by many writers at various times, but it is prevalent in the Iliad through all the ordinary acts of life. Thus given this fiery intensity of imagination and Homeric style of expression we need not be surprised at the extraordinary greatness of the Iliad.

Generation after generation of poets steeped itself in this Epic spirit and each gave itself up to the tradition of its predecessors. No one dreamed of vying with Homer, but only of serving and exalting him. After all these various traditions had been handed down, it probably fell to the lot of some great poet to combine them into one great work. In reading this work we must overlook the inconsistencies, and regard it in a spirit of sympathetic imagination, for behind it is an intensity of imagination, not merely of one great poet, but the accumulated emotion of generations