homer and classical philology

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Homer and ClassicalPhilology

Nietzsche

W o r k r e r o d

u c e d w i t h n o

e d i t o r i a l r e s

o n s i b i l i t



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At the present day no clear and consistent opinion seems to be held regarding Classical Philoogy. We are conscious of this in the circles o

the learned just as much as among the followers of that science itself. The cause of this lies iits many-sided character, in the lack of an abstract unity, and in the inorganic aggregation oheterogeneous scientific activities which ar

connected with one another only by the nam"Philology." It must be freely admitted that phlology is to some extent borrowed from severother sciences, and is mixed together like

magic potion from the most outlandish liquorores, and bones. It may even be added that likewise conceals within itself an artistic elment, one which, on æsthetic and ethicgrounds, may be called imperatival—an ele

ment that acts in opposition to its purely scientific behaviour. Philology is composed of hitory just as much as of natural science oæsthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours tcomprehend the manifestations of the ind



vidualities of peoples in ever new images, anthe prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives t

fathom the deepest instinct of man, that ospeech; æsthetics, finally, because from variouantiquities at our disposal it endeavours to picout the so-called "classical" antiquity, with thview and pretension of excavating the ide

world buried under it, and to hold up to thpresent the mirror of the classical and everlasing standards. That these wholly different scentific and æsthetico-ethical impulses hav

been associated under a common name, a kinof sham monarchy, is shown especially by thfact that philology at every period from its orgin onwards was at the same time pedagogicaFrom the standpoint of the pedagogue, a choic

was offered of those elements which were othe greatest educational value; and thus thascience, or at least that scientific aim, which wcall philology, gradually developed out of th



practical calling originated by the exigencies othat science itself.

These philological aims were pursued somtimes with greater ardour and sometimes witless, in accordance with the degree of culturand the development of the taste of a particulaperiod; but, on the other hand, the followers o

this science are in the habit of regarding thaims which correspond to their several abilitieas the aims of philology; whence it comes abouthat the estimation of philology in public opinion depends upon the weight of the personalties of the philologists!

At the present time—that is to say, in a periowhich has seen men distinguished in almo

every department of philology—a general uncertainty of judgment has increased more anmore, and likewise a general relaxation of interest and participation in philological problems. Such an undecided and imperfect state o

public opinion is damaging to a science in tha



its hidden and open enemies can work witmuch better prospects of success. And philoogy has a great many such enemies. Where d

we not meet with them, these mockers, alwayready to aim a blow at the philological "molesthe animals that practise dust-eating ex professand that grub up and eat for the eleventh timwhat they have already eaten ten times befor

For opponents of this sort, however, philologis merely a useless, harmless, and inoffensivpastime, an object of laughter and not of hatBut, on the other hand, there is a boundless an

infuriated hatred of philology wherever aideal, as such, is feared, where the modern mafalls down to worship himself, and where Helenism is looked upon as a superseded anhence very insignificant point of view. Again

these enemies, we philologists must alwaycount upon the assistance of artists and men oartistic minds; for they alone can judge how thsword of barbarism sweeps over the head oevery one who loses sight of the unutterab



simplicity and noble dignity of the Hellene; anhow no progress in commerce or technical industries, however brilliant, no school regula

tions, no political education of the massehowever widespread and complete, can proteus from the curse of ridiculous and barbaroffences against good taste, or from annihilation by the Gorgon head of the classicist.

Whilst philology as a whole is looked on witjealous eyes by these two classes of opponentthere are numerous and varied hostilities iother directions of philology; philologists themselves are quarrelling with one another; intenal dissensions are caused by useless disputeabout precedence and mutual jealousies, buespecially by the differences—even enmities—

comprised in the name of philology, which arnot, however, by any means naturally harmonised instincts.

Science has this in common with art, that th

most ordinary, everyday thing appears to it a



something entirely new and attractive, as metamorphosed by witchcraft and now seefor the first time. Life is worth living, says ar

the beautiful temptress; life is worth knowingsays science. With this contrast the so hearrending and dogmatic tradition follows in theory, and consequently in the practice of clasical philology derived from this theory. W

may consider antiquity from a scientific poinof view; we may try to look at what has happened with the eye of a historian, or to arrangand compare the linguistic forms of ancien

masterpieces, to bring them at all events undea morphological law; but we always lose thwonderful creative force, the real fragrance, othe atmosphere of antiquity; we forget that pasionate emotion which instinctively drove ou

meditation and enjoyment back to the GreekFrom this point onwards we must take noticof a clearly determined and very surprisinantagonism which philology has great cause tregret. From the circles upon whose help w



must place the most implicit reliance—the artitic friends of antiquity, the warm supporters oHellenic beauty and noble simplicity—we hea

harsh voices crying out that it is precisely thphilologists themselves who are the real opponents and destroyers of the ideals of antiquitySchiller upbraided the philologists with havinscattered Homer's laurel crown to the winds.

was none other than Goethe who, in early life supporter of Wolf's theories regarding Homerecanted in the verses—

With subtle wit you took awaOur former adorationThe Iliad, you may us sayWas mere conglomerationThink it not crime in any way

Youth's fervent adoratioLeads us to know the verityAnd feel the poet's unity.

The reason of this want of piety and reverenc

must lie deeper; and many are in doubt as t



whether philologists are lacking in artistic capacity and impressions, so that they are unabto do justice to the ideal, or whether the spir

of negation has become a destructive aniconoclastic principle of theirs. When, howeveeven the friends of antiquity, possessed of sucdoubts and hesitations, point to our presenclassical philology as something questionabl

what influence may we not ascribe to the oubursts of the "realists" and the claptrap of thheroes of the passing hour? To answer the later on this occasion, especially when we con

sider the nature of the present assembly, woulbe highly injudicious; at any rate, if I do nowish to meet with the fate of that sophist whwhen in Sparta, publicly undertook to praisand defend Herakles, when he was interrupte

with the query: "But who then has found fauwith him?" I cannot help thinking, howevethat some of these scruples are still sounding ithe ears of not a few in this gathering; for themay still be frequently heard from the lips o



noble and artistically gifted men—as even aupright philologist must feel them, and fethem most painfully, at moments when h

spirits are downcast. For the single individuathere is no deliverance from the dissensionreferred to; but what we contend and inscribon our banner is the fact that classical philoogy, as a whole, has nothing whatsoever to d

with the quarrels and bickerings of its individual disciples. The entire scientific and artistmovement of this peculiar centaur is benthough with cyclopic slowness, upon bridgin

over the gulf between the ideal antiquity—which is perhaps only the magnificent blossoming of the Teutonic longing for the south—anthe real antiquity; and thus classical philologpursues only the final end of its own bein

which is the fusing together of primarily hostiimpulses that have only forcibly been broughtogether. Let us talk as we will about the unatainability of this goal, and even designate thgoal itself as an illogical pretension—the aspira



tion for it is very real; and I should like to try tmake it clear by an example that the most significant steps of classical philology never lea

away from the ideal antiquity, but to it; anthat, just when people are speaking unwarranably of the overthrow of sacred shrines, newand more worthy altars are being erected. Leus then examine the so-called Homeric questio

from this standpoint, a question the most important problem of which Schiller called a scholastic barbarism.

The important problem referred to is the quetion of the personality of Homer .

We now meet everywhere with the firm opinion that the question of Homer's personality

no longer timely, and that it is quite a differenthing from the real "Homeric question." It mabe added that, for a given period—such as oupresent philological period, for example—thcentre of discussion may be removed from th

problem of the poet's personality; for even now



a painstaking experiment is being made to rconstruct the Homeric poems without the aiof personality, treating them as the work o

several different persons. But if the centre of scientific question is rightly seen to be wherthe swelling tide of new views has risen up, i.where individual scientific investigation comeinto contact with the whole life of science an

culture—if any one, in other words, indicates historico-cultural valuation as the central poinof the question, he must also, in the province oHomeric criticism, take his stand upon th

question of personality as being the really fruiful oasis in the desert of the whole argumenFor in Homer the modern world, I will not sahas learnt, but has examined, a great historicpoint of view; and, even without now puttin

forward my own opinion as to whether thexamination has been or can be happily carrieout, it was at all events the first example of thapplication of that productive point of view. Bit scholars learnt to recognise condensed belie



in the apparently firm, immobile figures of thlife of ancient peoples; by it they for the firtime perceived the wonderful capability of th

soul of a people to represent the conditions oits morals and beliefs in the form of a personaity. When historical criticism has confidentlseized upon this method of evaporating appaently concrete personalities, it is permissible t

point to the first experiment as an importanevent in the history of sciences, without considering whether it was successful in this instancor not.

It is a common occurrence for a series of striking signs and wonderful emotions to precedan epoch-making discovery. Even the experment I have just referred to has its own attra

tive history; but it goes back to a surprisinglancient era. Friedrich August Wolf has exactlindicated the spot where Greek antiquity dropped the question. The zenith of the historicoliterary studies of the Greeks, and hence also o



their point of greatest importance—the Homeric question—was reached in the age of thAlexandrian grammarians. Up to this time th

Homeric question had run through the lonchain of a uniform process of development, owhich the standpoint of those grammarianseemed to be the last link, the last, indeedwhich was attainable by antiquity. They con

ceived the Iliad and the Odyssey as the creationof one single Homer; they declared it to be psychologically possible for two such differenworks to have sprung from the brain of on

genius, in contradiction to the Chorizontewho represented the extreme limit of the scepticism of a few detached individuals of antiquity rather than antiquity itself considered as whole. To explain the different general impre

sion of the two books on the assumption thaone poet composed them both, scholars soughassistance by referring to the seasons of thpoet's life, and compared the poet of the Odysey to the setting sun. The eyes of those critic



were tirelessly on the lookout for discrepanciein the language and thoughts of the two poembut at this time also a history of the Homer

poem and its tradition was prepared, accordinto which these discrepancies were not due tHomer, but to those who committed his wordto writing and those who sang them. It wabelieved that Homer's poem was passed from

one generation to another viva voce, and faulwere attributed to the improvising and at timeforgetful bards. At a certain given date, abouthe time of Pisistratus, the poems which ha

been repeated orally were said to have beecollected in manuscript form; but the scribes, is added, allowed themselves to take some liberties with the text by transposing some lineand adding extraneous matter here and ther

This entire hypothesis is the most important ithe domain of literary studies that antiquity haexhibited; and the acknowledgment of the disemination of the Homeric poems by word omouth, as opposed to the habits of a book



learned age, shows in particular a depth of ancient sagacity worthy of our admiration. Fromthose times until the generation that produce

Friedrich August Wolf we must take a jumover a long historical vacuum; but in our owage we find the argument left just as it was athe time when the power of controversy departed from antiquity, and it is a matter of in

difference to us that Wolf accepted as certaitradition what antiquity itself had set up onlas a hypothesis. It may be remarked as mocharacteristic of this hypothesis that, in th

strictest sense, the personality of Homer is treated seriously; that a certain standard of inneharmony is everywhere presupposed in thmanifestations of the personality; and thawith these two excellent auxiliary hypothese

whatever is seen to be below this standard anopposed to this inner harmony is at once swepaside as un-Homeric. But even this distinguishing characteristic, in place of wishing to recognise the supernatural existence of a tangib



personality, ascends likewise through all thstages that lead to that zenith, with eveincreasing energy and clearness. Individualit

is ever more strongly felt and accentuated; thpsychological possibility of a single Homer ever more forcibly demanded. If we descenbackwards from this zenith, step by step, wfind a guide to the understanding of the Ho

meric problem in the person of AristotlHomer was for him the flawless and untirinartist who knew his end and the means to atain it; but there is still a trace of infantile crit

cism to be found in Aristotle—i.e., in the naivconcession he made to the public opinion thaconsidered Homer as the author of the originaof all comic epics, the Margites. If we go stifurther backwards from Aristotle, the inabilit

to create a personality is seen to increase; morand more poems are attributed to Homer; anevery period lets us see its degree of criticismby how much and what it considers as Homeric. In this backward examination, we in



stinctively feel that away beyond Herodotuthere lies a period in which an immense flooof great epics has been identified with the nam

of Homer.

Let us imagine ourselves as living in the time oPisistratus: the word "Homer" then comprehended an abundance of dissimilarities. Wha

was meant by "Homer" at that time? It is evdent that that generation found itself unable tgrasp a personality and the limits of its manfestations. Homer had now become of smaconsequence. And then we meet with thweighty question: What lies before this periodHas Homer's personality, because it cannot bgrasped, gradually faded away into an emptname? Or had all the Homeric poems bee

gathered together in a body, the nation naivelrepresenting itself by the figure of Homer? Wathe person created out of a conception, or the conception out of a person? This is the real "Homer



question," the central problem of the personaity.

The difficulty of answering this question, however, is increased when we seek a reply in another direction, from the standpoint of the poems themselves which have come down to uAs it is difficult for us at the present day, an

necessitates a serious effort on our part, to understand the law of gravitation clearly—thathe earth alters its form of motion when another heavenly body changes its position ispace, although no material connection uniteone to the other—it likewise costs us somtrouble to obtain a clear impression of thawonderful problem which, like a coin lonpassed from hand to hand, has lost its origin

and highly conspicuous stamp. Poetical workwhich cause the hearts of even the greatest geniuses to fail when they endeavour to vie witthem, and in which unsurpassable images arheld up for the admiration of posterity—an



yet the poet who wrote them with only a holow, shaky name, whenever we do lay hold ohim; nowhere the solid kernel of a powerfu

personality. "For who would wage war witthe gods: who, even with the one god?" askGoethe even, who, though a genius, strove ivain to solve that mysterious problem of thHomeric inaccessibility.

The conception of popular poetry seemed tlead like a bridge over this problem—a deepeand more original power than that of eversingle creative individual was said to have become active; the happiest people, in the happest period of its existence, in the highest activitof fantasy and formative power, was said thave created those immeasurable poems. I

this universality there is something almost intoxicating in the thought of a popular poem: wfeel, with artistic pleasure, the broad, overpowering liberation of a popular gift, and we delight in this natural phenomenon as we do i



an uncontrollable cataract. But as soon as wexamine this thought at close quarters, we involuntarily put a poetic mass of people in th

place of the poetising soul of the people: a lonrow of popular poets in whom individualithas no meaning, and in whom the tumultuoumovement of a people's soul, the intuitivstrength of a people's eye, and the unabate

profusion of a people's fantasy, were oncpowerful: a row of original geniuses, attacheto a time, to a poetic genus, to a subject-matter

Such a conception justly made people suspcious. Could it be possible that that same Nature who so sparingly distributed her rareand most precious production—genius—should suddenly take the notion of lavishin

her gifts in one sole direction? And here ththorny question again made its appearancCould we not get along with one genius onlyand explain the present existence of that unatainable excellence? And now eyes were keenl



on the lookout for whatever that excellence ansingularity might consist of. Impossible for it tbe in the construction of the complete work

said one party, for this is far from faultless; budoubtless to be found in single songs: in thsingle pieces above all; not in the whole. A seond party, on the other hand, sheltered themselves beneath the authority of Aristotle, wh

especially admired Homer's "divine" nature ithe choice of his entire subject, and the mannein which he planned and carried it out. If, however, this construction was not clearly seen, th

fault was due to the way the poems werhanded down to posterity and not to the poehimself—it was the result of retouchings aninterpolations, owing to which the original seting of the work gradually became obscured

The more the first school looked for inequalties, contradictions, perplexities, the more enegetically did the other school brush aside whin their opinion obscured the original plan, iorder, if possible, that nothing might be le



remaining but the actual words of the originepic itself. The second school of thought ocourse held fast by the conception of an epoch

making genius as the composer of the greaworks. The first school, on the other hand, wavered between the supposition of one geniuplus a number of minor poets, and another hypothesis which assumed only a number of su

perior and even mediocre individual bards, bualso postulated a mysterious discharging, deep, national, artistic impulse, which showitself in individual minstrels as an almost indi

ferent medium. It is to this latter school that wmust attribute the representation of the Homeric poems as the expression of that mysterous impulse.

All these schools of thought start from the asumption that the problem of the present formof these epics can be solved from the standpoint of an æsthetic judgment—but we muawait the decision as to the authorised line o



demarcation between the man of genius anthe poetical soul of the people. Are there chaacteristic differences between the utterances o

the man of genius and the poetical soul of the peple?

This whole contrast, however, is unjust anmisleading. There is no more dangerous a

sumption in modern æsthetics than that opopular poetry and individual poetry, or, as it usually called, artistic poetry. This is the reation, or, if you will, the superstition, which folowed upon the most momentous discovery ohistorico-philological science, the discoverand appreciation of the soul of the people. Fothis discovery prepared the way for a cominscientific view of history, which was until then

and in many respects is even now, a mere colection of materials, with the prospect that newmaterials would continue to be added, and thathe huge, overflowing pile would never be sytematically arranged. The people now unde



stood for the first time that the long-felt poweof greater individualities and wills was largethan the pitifully small will of an individua

man;[1] they now saw that everything trulgreat in the kingdom of the will could not havits deepest root in the inefficacious and ephemeral individual will; and, finally, they now dicovered the powerful instincts of the masse

and diagnosed those unconscious impulses tbe the foundations and supports of the socalled universal history. But the newly-lighteflame also cast its shadow: and this shadow

was none other than that superstition alreadreferred to, which popular poetry set up in opposition to individual poetry, and thuenlarged the comprehension of the peoplesoul to that of the people's mind. By the misap

plication of a tempting analogical inferencpeople had reached the point of applying in thdomain of the intellect and artistic ideas thaprinciple of greater individuality which is trulapplicable only in the domain of the will. Th

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masses have never experienced more flatterintreatment than in thus having the laurel of genius set upon their empty heads. It was imag

ined that new shells were forming round small kernel, so to speak, and that those pieceof popular poetry originated like avalanches, ithe drift and flow of tradition. They were, however, ready to consider that kernel as being o

the smallest possible dimensions, so that themight occasionally get rid of it altogether without losing anything of the mass of the avalanche. According to this view, the text itse

and the stories built round it are one and thsame thing.

[1] Of course Nietzsche saw afterwards thathis was not so.—TR.

Now, however, such a contrast between popular poetry and individual poetry does not exiat all; on the contrary, all poetry, and of courspopular poetry also, requires an intermediar

individuality. This much-abused contras






therefore, is necessary only when the term indvidual poem is understood to mean a poemwhich has not grown out of the soil of popula

feeling, but which has been composed by non-popular poet in a non-popular atmophere—something which has come to maturitin the study of a learned man, for example.

With the superstition which presupposes poeising masses is connected another: that populapoetry is limited to one particular period of people's history and afterwards dies out—which indeed follows as a consequence of thfirst superstition I have mentioned. Accordinto this school, in the place of the gradually decaying popular poetry we have artistic poetrythe work of individual minds, not of masses o

people. But the same powers which were oncactive are still so; and the form in which theact has remained exactly the same. The greapoet of a literary period is still a popular poein no narrower sense than the popular poet o



an illiterate age. The difference between them not in the way they originate, but it is their difusion and propagation, in short, tradition. Th

tradition is exposed to eternal danger withouthe help of handwriting, and runs the risk oincluding in the poems the remains of thosindividualities through whose oral traditiothey were handed down.

If we apply all these principles to the Homerpoems, it follows that we gain nothing with outheory of the poetising soul of the people, anthat we are always referred back to the poeticindividual. We are thus confronted with thtask of distinguishing that which can havoriginated only in a single poetical mind fromthat which is, so to speak, swept up by the tid

of oral tradition, and which is a highly impotant constituent part of the Homeric poems.

Since literary history first ceased to be a mercollection of names, people have attempted t

grasp and formulate the individualities of th



poets. A certain mechanism forms part of thmethod: it must be explained—i.e., it must bdeduced from principles—why this or that in

dividuality appears in this way and not in thaPeople now study biographical details, envronment, acquaintances, contemporary eventand believe that by mixing all these ingredientogether they will be able to manufacture th

wished-for individuality. But they forget thathe punctum saliens, the indefinable individucharacteristics, can never be obtained from compound of this nature. The less there

known about the life and times of the poet, thless applicable is this mechanism. When, however, we have merely the works and the namof the writer, it is almost impossible to detethe individuality, at all events, for those wh

put their faith in the mechanism in questionand particularly when the works are perfecwhen they are pieces of popular poetry. For thbest way for these mechanicians to grasp indvidual characteristics is by perceiving devia



tions from the genius of the people; the aberrations and hidden allusions: and the fewer dicrepancies to be found in a poem the fainte

will be the traces of the individual poet whcomposed it.

All those deviations, everything dull and belowthe ordinary standard which scholars thin

they perceive in the Homeric poems, were atributed to tradition, which thus became thscapegoat. What was left of Homer's own indvidual work? Nothing but a series of beautifuand prominent passages chosen in accordancwith subjective taste. The sum total of æsthetsingularity which every individual scholar peceived with his own artistic gifts, he now calleHomer.

This is the central point of the Homeric errorThe name of Homer, from the very beginninhas no connection either with the conception oæsthetic perfection or yet with the Iliad and th

Odyssey. Homer as the composer of the Ilia



and the Odyssey is not a historical tradition, buan æsthetic judgment.

The only path which leads back beyond thtime of Pisistratus and helps us to elucidate thmeaning of the name Homer, takes its way othe one hand through the reports which havreached us concerning Homer's birthplac

from which we see that, although his name always associated with heroic epic poems, he on the other hand no more referred to as thcomposer of the Iliad and the Odyssey than athe author of the Thebais or any other cyclicepic. On the other hand, again, an old traditiotells of the contest between Homer and Hesiodwhich proves that when these two names wermentioned people instinctively thought of tw

epic tendencies, the heroic and the didactic; anthat the signification of the name "Homer" waincluded in the material category and not in thformal. This imaginary contest with Hesiod dinot even yet show the faintest presentiment o



individuality. From the time of Pisistratus onwards, however, with the surprisingly rapidevelopment of the Greek feeling for beauty

the differences in the æsthetic value of thosepics continued to be felt more and more: thIliad and the Odyssey arose from the depths othe flood and have remained on the surfacever since. With this process of æsthetic separa

tion, the conception of Homer gradually bcame narrower: the old material meaning of thname "Homer" as the father of the heroic eppoem, was changed into the æsthetic meanin

of Homer, the father of poetry in general, anlikewise its original prototype. This transformation was contemporary with the rationalistcriticism which made Homer the magician outo be a possible poet, which vindicated the ma

terial and formal traditions of those numerouepics as against the unity of the poet, and gradually removed that heavy load of cyclical epics from Homer's shoulders.



So Homer, the poet of the Iliad and the Odysseis an æsthetic judgment. It is, however, by nmeans affirmed against the poet of these epic

that he was merely the imaginary being of aæsthetic impossibility, which can be the opinion of only very few philologists indeed. Thmajority contend that a single individual waresponsible for the general design of a poem

such as the Iliad, and further that this individual was Homer. The first part of this contentiomay be admitted; but, in accordance with whaI have said, the latter part must be denied. An

I very much doubt whether the majority othose who adopt the first part of the contentiohave taken the following considerations intaccount.

The design of an epic such as the Iliad is not aentire whole, not an organism; but a number opieces strung together, a collection of reflections arranged in accordance with æsthetic rules. It is certainly the standard of an artist



greatness to note what he can take in with single glance and set out in rhythmical formThe infinite profusion of images and inciden

in the Homeric epic must force us to admit thasuch a wide range of vision is next to impossble. Where, however, a poet is unable to observe artistically with a single glance, he usually piles conception on conception, and en

deavours to adjust his characters according to comprehensive scheme.

He will succeed in this all the better the morhe is familiar with the fundamental principleof æsthetics: he will even make some believthat he made himself master of the entire subject by a single powerful glance.

The Iliad is not a garland, but a bunch of flowers. As many pictures as possible are crowdeon one canvas; but the man who placed themthere was indifferent as to whether the grouping of the collected pictures was invariabl

suitable and rhythmically beautiful. He we



knew that no one would ever consider the colection as a whole; but would merely look athe individual parts. But that stringing togethe

of some pieces as the manifestations of a grasof art which was not yet highly developed, stiless thoroughly comprehended and generallesteemed, cannot have been the real Homerdeed, the real Homeric epoch-making even

On the contrary, this design is a later producfar later than Homer's celebrity. Those, therfore, who look for the "original and perfect design" are looking for a mere phantom; for th

dangerous path of oral tradition had reached iend just as the systematic arrangement appeared on the scene; the disfigurements whicwere caused on the way could not have afected the design, for this did not form part o

the material handed down from generation tgeneration.

The relative imperfection of the design munot, however, prevent us from seeing in th



designer a different personality from the repoet. It is not only probable that everythinwhich was created in those times with con

scious æsthetic insight, was infinitely inferior tthe songs that sprang up naturally in the poetmind and were written down with instinctivpower: we can even take a step further. If winclude the so-called cyclic poems in this com

parison, there remains for the designer of thIliad and the Odyssey the indisputable merit ohaving done something relatively great in thconscious technical composing: a merit whic

we might have been prepared to recognisfrom the beginning, and which is in my opinioof the very first order in the domain of instinctive creation. We may even be ready to pronounce this synthetisation of great importanc

All those dull passages and discrepancies—deemed of such importance, but really onlsubjective, which we usually look upon as thpetrified remains of the period of tradition—arnot these perhaps merely the almost necessar



evils which must fall to the lot of the poet ogenius who undertakes a composition virtuallwithout a parallel, and, further, one whic

proves to be of incalculable difficulty?

Let it be noted that the insight into the modiverse operations of the instinctive and thconscious changes the position of the Homer

problem; and in my opinion throws light upoit.

We believe in a great poet as the author of thIliad and the Odyssey—but not that Homer wa

this poet.

The decision on this point has already beegiven. The generation that invented those numerous Homeric fables, that poetised the myt

of the contest between Homer and Hesiod, anlooked upon all the poems of the epic cycle aHomeric, did not feel an æsthetic but a materisingularity when it pronounced the nam

"Homer." This period regards Homer as b



longing to the ranks of artists like OrpheuEumolpus, Dædalus, and Olympus, the mythcal discoverers of a new branch of art, to whom

therefore, all the later fruits which grew fromthe new branch were thankfully dedicated.

And that wonderful genius to whom we owthe Iliad and the Odyssey belongs to this thank

ful posterity: he, too, sacrificed his name on thaltar of the primeval father of the Homeric epiHomeros.

Up to this point, gentlemen, I think I have bee

able to put before you the fundamental phlosophical and æsthetic characteristics of thproblem of the personality of Homer, keepinall minor details rigorously at a distance, on th

supposition that the primary form of this widespread and honeycombed mountain known athe Homeric question can be most clearly observed by looking down at it from a far-oheight. But I have also, I imagine, recalled tw

facts to those friends of antiquity who take suc



delight in accusing us philologists of lack opiety for great conceptions and an unprodutive zeal for destruction. In the first place, thos

"great" conceptions—such, for example, as thaof the indivisible and inviolable poetic geniuHomer—were during the pre-Wolfian perioonly too great, and hence inwardly altogetheempty and elusive when we now try to gras

them. If classical philology goes back again tthe same conceptions, and once more tries tpour new wine into old bottles, it is only on thsurface that the conceptions are the same: ev

rything has really become new; bottle anmind, wine and word. We everywhere fintraces of the fact that philology has lived icompany with poets, thinkers, and artists fothe last hundred years: whence it has now

come about that the heap of ashes formerlpointed to as classical philology is now turneinto fruitful and even rich soil.[2]






[2] Nietzsche perceived later on that this statement was, unfortunately, not justified.—TR.

And there is a second fact which I should likto recall to the memory of those friends of antiquity who turn their dissatisfied backs oclassical philology. You honour the immortmasterpieces of the Hellenic mind in poetr

and sculpture, and think yourselves so mucmore fortunate than preceding generationwhich had to do without them; but you munot forget that this whole fairyland once laburied under mountains of prejudice, and thathe blood and sweat and arduous labour oinnumerable followers of our science were anecessary to lift up that world from the chasminto which it had sunk. We grant that philolog

is not the creator of this world, not the composer of that immortal music; but is it not merit, and a great merit, to be a mere virtuosand let the world for the first time hear thamusic which lay so long in obscurity, despise






and undecipherable? Who was Homer prevously to Wolf's brilliant investigations? A gooold man, known at best as a "natural genius," a

all events the child of a barbaric age, repletwith faults against good taste and good moralLet us hear how a learned man of the first ranwrites about Homer even so late as 178"Where does the good man live? Why did h

remain so long incognito? Apropos, can't yoget me a silhouette of him?"

We demand thanks—not in our own name, fowe are but atoms—but in the name of philologitself, which is indeed neither a Muse nor Grace, but a messenger of the gods: and just athe Muses descended upon the dull and tomented Bœotian peasants, so Philology come

into a world full of gloomy colours and pitures, full of the deepest, most incurable woeand speaks to men comfortingly of the beautful and godlike figure of a distant, rosy, anhappy fairyland.



It is time to close; yet before I do so a fewwords of a personal character must be addedjustified, I hope, by the occasion of this lecture

It is but right that a philologist should describhis end and the means to it in the short formuof a confession of faith; and let this be done ithe saying of Seneca which I thus reverse—

"Philosophia facta est quæ philologia fuit."

By this I wish to signify that all philologicaactivities should be enclosed and surrounde

by a philosophical view of things, in whiceverything individual and isolated is evaporated as something detestable, and in whicgreat homogeneous views alone remain. Nowtherefore, that I have enunciated my philolog

cal creed, I trust you will give me cause to hopthat I shall no longer be a stranger among yougive me the assurance that in working with yotowards this end I am worthily fulfilling th



confidence with which the highest authoritieof this community have honoured me.

homer and classical philology

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