Homeric kleos and the Western Film

M.M. Winkler: Homeric kleos and the Western Film43 Homeric kleos and the Western Film Martin M. Winkler I In The Idea of Epic J.B. Hainsworth observes that "at the beginning of Uterature, when heroic poetry reached society as a whole [,]... society listened; in die twentieth century society views." He goes on to point out that "the modem heroic medium is film, and not necessarily the productions that are held in highest critical regard."1 In the American cinema the genre most closely linked to the heroicromantic tradition of European literature, especially in epic and tragedy, is the Western. According to French film critic André Bazin the Western is "die American filmpar excellence."2 Although modem critics, particularly scholars in film studies and American studies, frequently refer the epic qualities of Westerns back to "the myth of the West," there has been little detailed examination to determine where in these films such features are actually to be found. The present paper, which continues my earlier work on the subject, is intended partially to fill this gap. It focuses on the fundamental aspect of the traditional concept of heroism in myth and Uterature: the hero's everlasting fame even beyond death. My point of reference is, naturally, the earliest surviving work in European Uterature, die Homeric Iliad. Achilles, its central hero, is the greatest warrior in the Trojan War because he consciously chooses a short heroic life in war with subsequent death on the battlefield over a long and easy but forgettable existence. Achilles says so himselfin Book 9 ofthe Iliad:3 1 J.B. Hainsworth, The Idea ofEpic (Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford 1991) 148. 2 A. Bazin, "The Western: or the American Film par excellence" (1953); repr. in What Is Cinema?, H. Gray, trans., vol. 2 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London 1971) 140-48. Bazin regards the "ideal Western" as "made up solely ofunalloyed myth" (page 143). 3 All quotations from the Iliad are according to the translation by R. Lattimore, The Iliad of Homer (Chicago and London 1951). 44Syllecta Classica 7 (1996) For my mother Thetis the goddess ofthe silver feet tells me I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city ofthe Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly. (9.410-416) Achilles' reward will be what the poet calls kleos aphthiton (Iliad 9.413), "unperishing glory"—the eternal remembrance of his deeds in the epic songs which future generations will recite about him.4 With the Iliad establishing the pattern, conquest of death through the preservation of everlasting glory constitutes the ultimate achievement of heroism throughout the European epic and mydiic tradition. In order to attain this kind of immortality, the archaic Greek hero must have proven himself as the aristos Achaidn, "the best of the Achaeans." In die Iliad this fundamental epithet describes different heroes at different times but is most prominently associated with Achilles. His father, the hero Peleus, had instructed his son "to be always best in battle and pre-eminent beyond all others" (11.783). The words of the Lycian hero Sarpedon, a son of Zeus who fights on the side of the Trojans, to his comrade-in-arms in Book 12 of the Iliad spell out the archaic heroic code in detail: Glaukos, why is it you and I are honoured before others with pride of place, the choice meats and the filled wine cups in Lykia, and all men look on us as if we were immortals, and we are appointed a great piece ofland by the banks ofXanthos, good land, orchard and vineyard, and ploughland for the planting of wheat? Therefore it is our duty in the forefront ofthe Lykians to take our stand, and bear our part of the blazing of battle, so that a man of the close-armoured Lykians may say of us: "Indeed, these are no ignoble men...