Speak, Memory

[Terrance]

Paul Mackin wrote:
> 
> Even apart from the possibilities of medium-scale
> elaboration, the  Iliad and the Odyssey exemplify certain of the minor
> inconsistencies of all oral poetry, and occasionally the composer's
> amalgamation of traditional material into a large-scale structure shows
> through. Yet the overriding impression is one of powerful unity.

This Unity, if in fact it exists, may owe it's apparent
cohesiveness to Modern ideas about Greek oral tradition, 
poetry, Epic, "lyric poetry", writing, and Modern studies of
the Oral arts, of which, despite the fact that a book is
published on the subject almost every week, we know very
little in the way of facts.  Many scholars agree that (Iliad
and Odyssey,)  are unified thematically. The Poet is free to
mix and match or even juxtapose groups of verses relating
loosely to a single theme even if there is no real logical
interconnection. This may be the case, but those that take
this approach often reduce the thematic complexities while
emphasizing the complexity of technique, a technique that
looks very Modern or would you believe PostModern, where an
associative, anthologizing is woven into the powerful unity
by permitting  the re-utilization of texts already
available, these may be part of the traditional repertory,
some written some oral,  or the works composed by the poet
himself for other occasions, often for an analogous
character, which brings me back to V. and how Stencil and
Fausto remind me of Cherry Coke, but I digress, and  a lot
of the scholarship, not that I've read a duffle bag full of
books on this subject, so busy reading Derrida you know, but
I do read the reviews of these books, and well, yes it's
almost like the scientists that extrapolated, is that the
correct term?, oh my grammar is shameful!, but it is like
the scientist that goes out looking for life in the Universe
assuming that a planet like our earth will be out there 
captured by a star like our sun, so the study of other oral
traditions to fill in the gaps in what can be known about
"Homer(S)" seem to be speculations about, often as
creative,  dare I say,  as the poet who may have caused the
alphabet to be introduced so as to record his hexametros. 

"Wise I may not call them...he who cannot rise above his
compilations and compositions, which he has been long
patching and piecing, adding some and taking some away, may
be justly called poet or speech-maker or law-maker." 
Plato's Socrates, Phaedrus