Achilles besought by Priam for the Body of His Son Hector, Photo Credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art
“Arms and the man I sing who, forced by fate/And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expelled and exiled, left the Trojan shore” (The Aeneid, I, 1-3).
All of us have a desire to be part of a larger story. Almost everyone generally remembers playing with toys as a kid and creating imaginary stories full of adventure, monsters, and heroic triumphs. At its heart, these little moments of glee and childish innocence are grounded in the search for meaning and purpose, and understanding of who we are, and if you will, why we are, right here, right now. It’s a deeply ingrained part of our nature as human beings, and as adults, we continue, albeit in what we believe to be a more sophisticated manner, this quest for understanding. Once we reach it, typically after a long and grueling road, we rejoice, saying along with Odysseus, “…,” as do those who return to their Ithacas, rejoicing that the weary labors that we undertook in order to reach the new shore are over.
Yet, often when we think we have found this purpose, we find the road we know we must travel to be a hard one, and the difficulties often intensify In one of the most subtly dramatic moments of the Gospels, after Christ forgives Peter for Peter’s denial during Christ’s passion, saying, “Feed my sheep,” Christ then predicts, “Verily, verily I say unto you, When you were young, you dressed yourself, and walked where you would: but when you shall be old, you shall stretch forth your hands, and another shall dress you, and carry you where you would not” (Jn 21:17-18). This passage, which the Gospel writer says signified “by what death he [Peter] should glorify God” (Jn 19), shows that often at the moments of greatest joy and hope, we perceive great sorrow and pain that accompanies or awaits us.
Pardoning this rather dreary reflection, we find in the literature of the Core Curriculum and the West more broadly a serious attempt to engage with these weighty themes. It is often reflected very heavily in the poets of the classical and medieval traditions, with whom we learn how to suffer. For many of the students taking Literature Humanities, these themes of suffering are often discussed, but are often not really understood within the more beautiful messages of the human spirit’s ability to overcome great challenges.
In the first book commonly read in the Literature Humanities sequence, Homer’s Iliad, Priam goes in Book 24 to confront Achilles on the death of Priam, he cries, “Woe is me, that am all unblest, seeing that I begat sons the best in the broad land of Troy, yet of them I avow that not one is left, not godlike Nestor, not Troilus the warrior charioteer, not Hector that was a god among men, neither seemed he as the son of a mortal man, but of a god: all them hath Ares slain, yet these things of shame are all left me, false of tongue, nimble of foot, peerless at beating the floor in the dance, robbers of lambs and kids from your own folk.” Homer in the preceding moment does not shy away from portraying the moment of a sort of reconciliation between Priam and Achilles, instead showing in vivid detail the painful moment of Achilles remembering his aging father and Patroclus alongside Priam, who recalls his son Hector, for whose body he comes to beg, even kissing the hands of Achilles in his dejection. It is hard to imagine a moment more clearly showing the tragedy of the vicissitudes of life, and the changing fortunes of men, even those as seemingly blessed as a king like Priam. For undergraduates, who will no doubt experience challenges in their lives, what a better method of being able to embrace such suffering than to willingly submit to the sufferings of the world, and even to kiss the hands that caused such changing fortunes. This redemptive message of forgiveness, when viewed in the light of the tragedy of Priam’s sons and the death and destruction of the war against Iliam, is something that has tropological significance in the lives of students, it is a reminder of an ideal which students can aspire to emulate when they, like Priam, though hopefully in a less grievous ordeal, undergo life’s difficulties.
As the poet Virgil of a later period would fancifully relate of this same war in The Aeneid, Aeneas tries to comfort his fellow Trojans shortly after the fall of Ilium and the death of his own wife by bidding them to adopt a courageous disposition:
“Endure, and conquer! Jove will soon dispose.
To future good our past and present woes.
With me, the rocks of Scylla you have tried;
th’ inhuman Cyclops and his den defied.
What greater ills hereafter can you bear?
Resume your courage and dismiss your care,
An hour will come, with pleasure to relate
Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate.”
The endurance to which Aeneas exhorts his fellow men comes out vividly in these words, which communicate the need for persistence despite the travesty of the collapse of Iliam. Aeneas beckons his men to spurn the constant cares presented by worrying about the past, but rather, remain open and firm in seeking the future. This here, for many undergraduates encountering this book for the first time, is a great example of the type of attitude that allows one to overcome the great challenges that fate presents, and the beauty of being able to confidently remain strong in one’s convictions in spite of these changing fortunes.
Often, troubles that we endure can be indirectly caused by our own doing, and stories that demonstrate this same tragedy of falling into great struggles that we ourselves cause can allow us to sympathize with the plight of others. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, there is the sad recounting of the mythic story of Daedelus and Icarus, in which Ovid notes the pride of Icarus and his consequent fall:
“Proud of his success,
the foolish Icarus forsook his guide,
and, bold in vanity, began to soar,
rising upon his wings to touch the skies;
but as he neared the scorching sun, its heat
softened the fragrant wax that held his plumes;
and heat increasing melted the soft wax—
he waved his naked arms instead of wings,
with no more feathers to sustain his flight.
And as he called upon his father’s name
his voice was smothered in the dark blue sea,
now called Icarian from the dead boy’s name.”
Ovid poignantly describes this tragic flight for Icarus as a matter of the outcome of the prideful person, who chooses to abandon his guide and tries “to soar,” only to crash into the water and only be remembered by the name. The devastation of Daedelus, who grieves over the loss of Icarus, is communicated through the subsequent verses, and Icarus’s “transformation” from a young, active man to a drowned corpse remains haunting to readers even today. It is a great warning of the tragedies of life, and how quickly one’s fortunes can turn in moments of great trial.
In coming to Columbia and investing time and energy in the Core Curriculum, we find not only an entertaining project that helps us become more “culturally aware” or able to understand certain antiquated references that we come across occasionally, but we also encounter books with moral significance, books that can teach us a great deal about the nature of our lives. The history of the Core can teach us how certain instructors desired to instill this passion for lifelong learning in their students, but even more valuable is the recognition that we learn alongside many of these writers, who were intimately acquainted with the great struggles that characterize human life. As we seek to learn together in our classes, it’s worth pondering how we might be able to learn alongside these great poets and thinkers, who teach us how to not soar too high, how to remain composed in times of stress, and even how to mourn and grieve heroically