Homeric Similes
“These similes serve to take the reader away from the battlefield for a brief while, into the world of pre-war peace and plenty. Often, they occur at a moment of high action or emotion, especially during a battle. In the words of Peter Jones, Homeric similes ‘are miraculous, redirecting the reader’s attention in the most unexpected ways and suffusing the poem with vividness, pathos and humor’.” ~ https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Homeric_simile
“As when in the sky the stars about the moon’s shining are seen in all their glory, when the air has fallen to stillness, and all the watch places of the hills are clear, and the high shoulders, and the ravines, as endless bright air spills from the heavens, and all the stars are seen, to make glad the heart of a shepherd; such in their numbers blazed the watchfires.” ~ The Iliad, book VIII, lines 555 to 560.
A wilting lily when it comes to gore
And slaughter in the Iliad, I shrink
Inside when shaft of spear goes through the core
Of warrior, or when sword brings out the stink
Of warm intestines. I am not a Greek
With guts of iron inside my soul. I read
The lines and flinch away to more oblique
Hurrahs of words. I have a modern need
For similes made exquisite in turn
Of logic, long in elegance of clause,
Scenes sweet as honey stored in graceful urn,
And cannot gulp from violence’s vase.
I turn away from viciousness, and rush
To beauty,[1] abhorring that sliced throat gush.
[1] “Homeric similes (analogies) have the added effect of:
- a) Injecting lyrical, image-based poetry or abstraction into the concrete action (things don’t just happen; they happen with poetic depth)
- b) Thus elevating the action, the plot from things simply happening (Hector speaking) to things happening beautifully, majestically, with dramatic import and universal significance
- c) Providing symbolic points of reference for the action: comparisons to lions, boars and deer, eagles etc would have had deep, significant and even spiritual resonance for the original Greek audience, who associated each of these animals with specific symbolic qualities (some of which still resonate with us); a lion was always violent, a deer always passive, bird-flight a sign from the gods and certain birds and animals associated with the presence of specific gods (Hector’s words thus beat down on Patroclus as the portent of Patroclus’ impending death)
- d) Suspending time: as we read, our attention shifts from imagining the immediate action – the Greek soldier taking a spear in the gut – to the image offered by the simile, and for a second time seems to This pause, and the attending incursion of the analogous image, slows the action down and: associated with the presence of specific gods (Hector’s words thus beat down on Patroclus as the portent of Patroclus’ impending death).
- e) Ultimately, in conjunction with all the other factors, elevates the action toward a far deeper, possibly spiritual, significance: we are no longer in the realm of action but rather in the realm of meaning” http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/engl257/Ancient/homeric%20similes.htm