Muse

Divine Gifts

"The herald came near, bringing with him a singer, very trusted, whom the Muse loved exceedingly. She gave him both a good thing and a bad thing. For she took away from him his eyes but gave him the sweetness of song." The gifts of the gods are ambiguous and double-edged. Read more

Homeric Iliad 1.1–67

As you well know the first word of the poem, mēnis, indicates ‘anger’, as both Greg and Lenny have so carefully discussed. This first word establishes a tone or mode for the complete work as anger is exchanged through an economy of metaphors with violence, death, grief, lamentation, and ultimately with kleos itself as the final price of an heroic life: that is, the poetic medium of this narrative song.… Read more