Plenty of room for manoeuvre there,
then; or so one would suppose. But does ‘The Literature
of War’ refer solely to artistic production inspired
by or dealing with war? Or does it also include historical
accounts and analysis of war? The reference to ‘Ancient
Greek literature on war’ is only deceptively useful,
as ‘literature’ could be read in its more
imaginative sense as referring to Homer’s Iliad
or Aeschylus’ The Persians, at the expense
of its more quotidian application, which would permit
Herodotus’ Histories. Thucydides is cited
as the first war correspondent (a designation he might
not have been entirely content with), but while it moves
the remit outside the parameters of imaginative literature,
it still problematises Herodotus, who was writing about
events retrospectively, from secondhand accounts.
Of course, perplexity as to the status
of historiography as a somehow tainted literary representation
or a scientific objective recounting is nothing new,
with E. H. Carr’s What Is History? (1961),
for long the standard text for students entering the
field, provoking fierce responses like that of Geoffrey
Elton’s The Practice of History (1967),
because of his relativism and his rejection of contingency
as an important factor in historical analysis; that
is, his almost proto-Baudrillardian notion of history
as a partisan pursuit, written by the winners, or at
least by those with vested interests or their own agendas.
Elton, on the other hand, was a strong defender of the
traditional methods of history and was appalled by postmodernism,
seeing the duty of historians as empirically gathering
evidence and objectively analyzing what it had to say.
Fittingly, the Carr-Elton debate can be seen as a latter
day reenactment of perceptions surrounding the virtues
and drawbacks of Herodotus vis-à-vis Thucydides
as historians of Ancient Greece, the methodology espoused
by each echoing the practice of their predecessors.
For it is with ‘The Father of
History’, as Cicero called him, that I intend
to begin, regardless of whether or not his historical
writings qualify as literature, or even if they can
more aptly – depending on how you choose to define
your terms – be classified as literature rather
than history; and despite the fact that, at least as
early as Plutarch’s pamphlet On The Malignity
of Herodotus, he has also been known as ‘The
Father of Lies’. The focus will be on discussing
the reliability of Herodotus’ Histories,
specifically exploring to what extent his Athenian sympathies,
which he freely admits, colour his account of the reasons
for Xerxes’ invasion of Greece in 480 BC, and
the extent of Greek unity in resisting that invasion.
The chief problem with trying to evaluate the reliability,
or otherwise, of Herodotus’ treatment of the Persian
wars is that the basis of the assessment, given the
dearth of other contemporaneous records with which to
compare it, is invariably Herodotus himself: his comments
on his own work are contained within that work.
We get a good impression of Herodotus’
honesty from the frank manner in which he admits his
Athenian sympathies, in expressing the opinion that
Athenian resolution saved Greece from Persian conquest,
however unpopular that opinion might be. Born in Halikarnassos
around 484 BC, after extensive travels Herodotus migrated
to the imperial city of Athens, like many intellectuals
of his time. He was known to the city’s leading
men, and loved democracy and praised it as responsible
for Athens’ vigour and prosperity. It is therefore
easy to see that his bias in writing would be towards
Athens. Still more important is the fact that most of
his informants were Athenians, which would obviously
affect his presentation of the material. The prejudice
of Athenian informants stands out in the treatment of
cities for the parts they played in 480; and it is the
prejudice of Athenian informants after Athens’
quarrel with Sparta and reversal of alliances, that
is, after 464, when the work was written. Athens from
then on was friendly to Argos and to Thessaly, and this
accounts for the gentle treatment accorded these powers,
both of which had joined the Persians. Thebes, on the
other hand, which had also joined the invader under
compulsion, is treated in a disparaging manner and even
its contingent at Thermopylae is libelled. This is because
Thebes was Athens’ enemy both then and later.
The Phocians, who had a reasonably good war record,
are rewarded with the derogatory comment that this was
only out of hatred for the Thessalians. If the Thessalians
had resisted the Persians, no doubt the Phocians would
have joined them (VII.30). The reason is that, whereas
Thessaly was in alliance with Athens during all the
time that Herodotus was writing, Phocis, after being
in the same camp from 457 to 447, had gone back to that
of Sparta. The cities on the patriotic side fare no
better, and show how disastrously misled Herodotus was
by his Athenian friends. Aegina, he knew, had won high
praise for good work at Salamis, but he describes them
as slow to give Apollo his share of their prize of valour
(VII.122), an Aeginetan as proposing the mutilation
of Mardonius’ body and, absurdly, the island’s
wealth as ‘originating’ from the purchase
of golden ornaments looted on the field of Plataea by
Sparta’s helots, who thought they were bronze.
Corinth is the most conspicuous victim of this unfairness.
He depicts their admiral Adeimantus as a coward and
a fool (VIII.5), and holds the Athenian version that
at Salamis the Corinthians hoisted sail and fled. But
he does save his reputation for honesty by writing:
‘The Corinthians deny this and say that they were
among the foremost in the battle; and the other Greeks
support their version’ (VIII.94). Athens and Corinth
were at war from 461 to 445, and probably soon after
the peace of 445 Herodotus sailed for Thuria, and failed
to get other opinions.
So the implication of all this is
that it is important when reading Herodotus on the Persian
Wars to look out for the bias of his sources, whom he
only rarely names. There are also obvious discrepancies,
for he writes as though he knows well what was said
in councils of war, both Greek and Persian. The chances
of this are slight, since the facts of the discussions
would not be known to the men in the ranks, with whom
Herodotus talked some thirty years later. That he believed
them, if indeed he did, reflects a strong oral ‘saga’
tradition which it did not occur to him or anyone else
to question, or at least to exclude. It should be added,
however, that Herodotus was not totally incapable of
objectivity, and often when a sentence begins with ‘It
is said’ or ‘They say’ it is our signal
to doubt him, or rather, what is recorded. As Herodotus
himself says: ‘Throughout the entire history it
is my underlying principle that it is what people severally
have said to me, and what I have heard, that I must
write down.’ (II.123) After all, the Greek word
‘historia’, from which our own specialised
meaning is derived, meant ‘research’ or
‘inquiry’, rather than the definitive account.
It is hardly Herodotus’ fault if no other version
survives.
So, while from an early twenty-first
century perspective, Herodotus may seem more like a
chronicler rather than an analyser, it is important
to remember history’s origins in storytelling,
and the influence of Homer’s Iliad and
Odyssey – the stories from both of which
were recited orally long before they were ever written
down – on Herodotus’ mindset and methodology.
Indeed, in an echo of those tales told around a campfire,
which rhymed to facilitate ease of memorisation, it
is believed that Herodotus would have given public readings
from his Histories in Athens. For this reason,
we may find it more understandable that he is nebulous
about the differences between tradition and history,
and that he did not always realise that eye witness
accounts of the same event can vary. If literature is
what is written, and Herodotus was writing history,
we should not forget the debt both literature and history
owe to the oral tradition.
Herodotus lived in a time when oral
traditions were still preserved with care, and he probably
gained most of his information this way. Most scholars
believe that even without extraordinary means, oral
traditions, cultures, and memories can remain fresh
for three generations. The Persian Wars were still within
the three-generation span when Herodotus did his research,
and he spoke to living witnesses of the great invasion.
By the fifth century, Greek culture
was beginning to organize itself with historical learning
in mind. Temples and Oracles were beginning to collate
their records and temple archives were beginning to
gain some acclaim. There are records that show by 403
BC Athens had a central archive in the Metroon, the
temple of the Mother of the Gods, and some sources claim
that the records there went back as far as the sixth
century. Though we have little evidence, it is probable
that other temples outside of Athens kept records not
just of temple matters but secular ones as well. These
document collections, however, would prove of little
help to Herodotus.
The documentary evidence that is so
valued among modern day historians was simply of no
use to Herodotus. In the first place, the temple archives
that housed what little documentary evidence there was
did not open their doors to every wanderer who happened
by. Unless a document was published – which means
it was inscribed and set in a public place – the
average person would not have had access to it, let
alone been able to read it. Herodotus cites twenty-four
inscriptions, half of them Greek, half not. Some of
these he wrote down, some he recalled from memory (II.125),
but for the most part Herodotus does not value documentary
evidence very highly – the reason was not that
it was unavailable, but that it was inaccessible.
Herodotus followed the same patterns
of research and inquiry that have been par for historical
investigations in the centuries that followed. He interviewed
witnesses, both first and second hand, looked into documentary
evidence, even travelled the same paths his Histories
would go, all in an attempt to preserve the events,
and to tell his story as it actually happened. But every
historian, even the first, consciously and unconsciously
shapes his narrative and judgements so as to convey
a perception of his subject in a persuasive manner.
The historian, by his delivery and style, has the power
to distance the reader from the subject at hand or,
by a simple twist of phrasing, invite them into the
drama he creates. An ideal flow of events would be one
in which one page describes one event, in an endless
flow of history which begins at the beginning and ends
at the ending. This, however, is a dream which no realistic
historian even attempts to attain, and Herodotus was
no exception. Herodotus interrupts the rhythmic progress
of his history with privileged scenes – special
incidents special only because Herodotus chose them
– designed to develop themes that may not become
apparent until hundreds of pages later. He inflates
the incidents that he tells of with dramatic detail,
while at the same time deflating, or even ignoring,
other episodes – sometimes days, weeks, or even
centuries go unrecorded, all for the sake of dramatic
telling.
An example of this can be seen in
the seventh book of the Histories. Herodotus
wanted his audience to see the wonders that Xerxes accomplished
in crossing his army over the Hellespont on the ill-fated
invasion of Greece (VII.54-56). To place us there, Herodotus
tells the story from the point of view of a local Hellespontine
who watches and relates the story in awe. Whether this
person was actually there or not, or even if he ever
spoke of such an event to Herodotus or not, is not really
the point. The story is painstakingly told as if it
were happening at that time, and the eye-witness narrator
draws the reader in so that he or she is no longer looking
into a window to the past, but instead is a participant
in it.
Despite the literate culture in which
he lived and worked, there are still numerous elements
in the Histories which hark back to the epic
days of old. One of the key characteristics of epic
poetry is the use of extensive catalogues, best exemplified
by the listing of ships in Book II of the Iliad.
This catalogue is paralleled by Herodotus' listing of
the invasion force of Xerxes, and to a lesser extent
the lists of Ionian cities, Greek fleets, and so on.
He lists those city-states loyal to the Hellenic League,
and those who were disloyal, as well as those who took
part in the various battles scattered throughout his
account, such as the naval forces at Artemisium. Genealogy,
also a key component in the Homeric narrative, plays
an important role for Herodotus. Of course, this may
be for more practical concerns than a simple reverence
for the epic poet. In cultures which preserve their
history orally, genealogies and king-lists provide the
best and in some cases only means of dating a past event.
It may be known that something occurred in the tenth
year of King X, but exactly how many years ago that
was is unclear. By estimating the number of years between
generations, however, it is possible to count backwards
and estimate approximately how long ago an event occurred.
Herodotus was also given to interrupting
a speech or other dramatic moment to make sure his audience
had followed the story correctly up to that point. In
Book V, for instance, he interrupts Aristagoras' speech
by inserting, ‘While speaking, he was pointing
to the map of the earth that he carried around engraved
on his tablet (V.49). This hardly seems relevant, especially
since Herodotus had described the map earlier in the
same paragraph. For a literate man, reading the Histories,
there would be no need to repeat the description of
the map – he could easily back up a few lines
and re-read the description if it pleased him. This
repeating of the description is a throwback to the days
of oral epic poetry, where elements were repeated because,
obviously, in lengthy recitals of epic poetry, with
attendant fuss and movement in the crowd, there must
have naturally been some loss of attention and comprehension.
Herodotus draws the reader into his
work through the use of other old-time epic devices.
In the text of his work, the words and forms he uses
also serve the same purpose. He consistently uses the
second person singular in his work, the vocative case,
almost as though he were talking to the reader personally.
For instance, when discussing his (erroneous) belief
that all Persian names end in ‘-s’ he writes,
‘On searching this out, you will find
no exceptions to this among their names.’ (I.139)
This also allows Herodotus to permit his readers to
hold different beliefs, by showing the existence of
different points of view.
Herodotus' use of digression is also
a leftover device from Homeric times. At first glance,
the numerous digressions in Herodotus' narrative seem
like haphazard placements of material, sometimes relevant,
more often not. This view, however, comes from a modern
interpretation of the style of historical writing. The
contemporary historian also arranges his narrative in
a dramatic form, but he or she uses footnotes, endnotes
and citations to show the inner workings, or raw data,
of his work. These notes allow the historian to share
sources and present tangential information, and provide
the basis of opinions. Herodotus, however, was not able
to use such conventions as footnotes or endnotes (or,
for that matter, pages, chapters, or books). Because
of this, his digressions had to be placed more carefully,
so that he could make his point without losing his audience.
The digressions are also a throwback to the ring composition
technique of Homer, where a linear narrative is temporarily
interrupted for a cycle of three interlaced stories,
before being resumed.
One of the biggest problems many historians
have with Herodotus is his use of direct speeches in
the later books of the Histories, for example
when Xerxes gives his reasons for the invasion of Greece
(VII.8-13). It is clear that there is no way Herodotus
or his sources could have obtained word for word transcripts
of the speeches of local Greek leaders, much less Xerxes
and the other Persian emperors. Therefore we must accept
that these speeches were made up by Herodotus, or his
sources, for some greater purpose. While the dramatic
speech is certainly a throwback to the epic days, it
performs another function. Recent scholars have pointed
out that in Greek history, the narrative is used to
relate historical events, while the personal speeches
are reserved to provide rational explanation for these
occurrences. These dramatic speeches are often used
by Herodotus both to give his impression, and to reveal
his opinion, of a character; his understanding, and
explanation of, a policy; and, most importantly, to
keep his audience interested in the progress of the
tale.
From the foregoing, the fictional
techniques employed in the earliest historical writing
will be evident. One of the traits that separate Herodotus
from many historians who came after him is the way in
which he relates to his audience. He uses humour, irony,
and sarcasm in a way few have since, especially in the
way he relates to the unbelievable, or demonstrably
false, portions of his history. Indeed, it may be Herodotus'
use of baser literary constructs which make his Histories
so appealing to casual readers, and so disliked by professional
historians. Herodotus may have been at the forefront
of the historical revolution in Greece, but he clearly
was descendent from a long literary line. He made the
jump from the epic poems of Homer to secular history,
but he did not forget the roots from which his genre
came. It is possible that Herodotus employed the same
structures and methods of the epic poet because of the
similarities in their work. Herodotus was not a blind
poet, but his did tell a tale. He was not honoured as
telling the stories of gods and men, but he still sought
to make a living by entertaining others. Herodotus used
tried and trusted ways of telling a great story, and
incorporated them into his Histories when it
was committed to paper. To do this he abjured the high-minded
Greek rhetoric favoured by the philosophers, and instead
chose the epic language of one of the greatest storytellers
ever.
In this context, it should be noted
that the words which have been used of him are not always
as rude as ‘liar’ would suggest to us. Again,
etymology comes to our aid. Cicero’s ‘fabulosus’
might better be translated as ‘storyteller’,
reminding us of Thucydides’ announcement that
he, for a change, is not going to indulge in such publicity-hunting
to please the masses (I.22); while, if the explicit
word ‘pseustes’ is often employed, it might
be pointed out that to this day in Greek ‘psemmata’
– ‘lies’ – is often less insulting
than it sounds to us, meaning ‘Nonsense!’
rather than ‘That said with intention to deceive’.
Although Herodotus’ overall
emphasis lay on the actions and characters of men, he
also attributed an important role to divinity in the
determination of historical events. Thucydides, in contrast,
largely eliminated divine causality in his account of
the war between Athens and Sparta, History of the
Peloponnesian War, establishing a rationalistic
element which became the defining characteristic of
subsequent Western historiography. For Thucydides, history
was in the most fundamental sense a strictly human affair,
capable of analysis and understanding entirely in terms
of known patterns of human behaviour, without the intervention
of the supernatural. Although Thucydides never mentions
Herodotus by name, he voices his veiled contempt for
his predecessor in the opening of his own work:
The absence of an element of romance
in my account of what happened, may well make it less attractive to
hear, but all who want to attain a clear point of view of the past, and also
of like or nearly like events which, human nature being what is, will probably
occur in the future – if these people consider my work useful, I
shall be content. It is written to be a possession of lasting value, not
a work competing for an immediate hearing. (I.22) |
However, it would be wrong to surmise
that this represents the real judgement of Thucydides
about the achievements of his forerunner. After all,
he paid Herodotus the high compliment of beginning
where The Histories left off, implying that
there was no need to go over that ground again. Furthermore,
Thucydides paid Herodotus the even higher compliment
of grasping and accepting, as virtually no other contemporary
had done, the great discovery the Father of History
had made: namely, that it was possible to analyse
the political and moral issues of the time by a close
study of events, of the concrete day-to-day experiences
of society, thereby avoiding the abstractions of the
philosophers on the one hand, and the myths of the
poets on the other.
But do Thucydides’ much vaunted
passion for accuracy and concomitant contempt for myth
and romance in compiling this factual record of a significant
conflict render this version of the events he treats
of more reliable than Herodotus’ work on an earlier
period? Thucydides’ extreme scepticism did not
extend to the myths and poems as a whole. The poets
may ‘exaggerate the importance of their themes’,
and the chroniclers ‘are less interested in telling
the truth than in catching the attention of their public’,
but their main narratives are accepted as historical
fact. What is really telling, however, is that Thucydides
uses speeches and digressions with almost as great a
frequency as Herodotus did, even if he prefaces their
inclusion with apologetic caveats, a kind of ancient
proto-postmodern way of assimilating the grand lessons
of a preceding modernism, and presenting them in a more
self-conscious manner. Furthermore, unlike Herodotus,
Thucydides never names his informants, and
on only two occasions does he say that he was a direct
participant: he suffered from the plague, and he was
a general at Amphipolis. So, we are compelled to take
Thucydides on faith almost as much, if not more so,
as we are Herodotus. He left no ground for re-examination
or alternative judgement. We cannot control the reliability
of his informants, since they are not named. We cannot
check his judgement of what was irrelevant, since he
omitted it ruthlessly, unlike the more inclusively generous,
if sometimes sloppy, Herodotus; or of what he decided
was a false report or wrong explanation, since he left
that out too.
The concept of historiography as representation,
which can easily shade into fiction, while being presented
as factual truth, has correlatives in our own time.
Herodotus’ treatment of the Persian invasion implies
an underlying conflict between the absolutism of the
East and the supposedly free institutions of the West,
between Persian monarchy and Athenian democracy. Without
too much of a stretch, it could be argued that Herodotus
was indulging in an early species of what Edward Said
has subsequently termed, after the title of his 1978
book which almost single-handedly founded postcolonial
studies, Orientalism.
Said’s originality was evident
in the way he defined the subject of his book. Orientalism
is, first, an academic specialisation: a topic studied
by archaeologists, historians, theologians and others
in the West who are concerned with Middle Eastern and
North African cultures. But Said added two further meanings
to the term. Orientalism is also something more general,
something that has shaped Western thought since the
Greeks: namely, a way of dividing up the world between
the West and the East. What appears to be a simple geographical
fact is, says Said, actually an idea. The division of
the world into these two parts is not a natural state
of affairs, but an intellectual choice made by the West
in order to define itself. The third meaning for Orientalism
is more historically specific. Since the latter part
of the eighteenth century, when European colonialism
in the Middle East developed most fully, Orientalism
has been a means of domination, a part of the colonial
enterprise. Said argues that colonialism is not only
about the physical acts of taking land, or of subjugating
people, but is also about intellectual acts. The academic
study of the Orient is unthinkable outside its colonial
context and vice versa. So, rather than just an innocent
scholarly topic, Orientalism is a general way of imagining
the world’s divisions and a specific mechanism
for furthering the colonial quest.
Following Foucault, Said describes
the Orient as a product of discourse; that is, not as
something in the world that is discovered and analysed,
but as something created by Western institutions and
ideas. The definition of the Orient is a means of regulating
it; the apparent truths discovered are in fact ideas
circulated and accepted as part of Western colonial
activity in the Middle East. The sense of the Orient
as a discursive construct, in turn, enables Said to
make one of his most important and striking arguments:
what the West believed it had discovered about the East
tells us little about the colonised cultures, but much
about the coloniser’s. The texts and disciplines
that comprise Orientalism – historical narratives
like that of Herodotus, analyses of religion, travel
writing, etc – reveal the values and preconceptions
of the West, of the way people in Paris or London, or
indeed fifth century Athens, wanted to see themselves,
their fears and ambitions and prejudices. In particular,
the image created of the East is used as a means of
constructing one’s own identity. The picture of
the East functions as a distorting mirror image, enabling
the West to say that whatever they are, we are not.
This emphasises the way in which a duality, often referred
to as a dyad, is set up: West and East, us and them.
An unlikely literary example of these
attitudes comes from the pen of the late Russian poet
and Nobel laureate, Joseph Brodsky, in his essay ‘Flight
from Byzantium’. Indeed, so vitriolic is his repugnance,
it is tempting to speculate that he is intentionally
verging into parody:
The delirium and horror of the East.
The dusty catastrophe of Asia. Green only on the banner of the Prophet.
Nothing grows here except moustaches. A black-eyed, overgrown-with-stubble-before-supper part of the world. Bonfire embers
doused with urine. That smell! A mixture of foul tobacco and sweaty
soap and the underthings wrapped around loins like another turban.
Racism? But isn’t it only a form of misanthropy? And that ubiquitous
grit flying in your muzzle even in the city, poking the world out of
your eyes – and yet one feels grateful even for that. Ubiquitous concrete,
with the texture of turd and the colour of an upturned grave. Ah, all that
nearsighted scum – Corbusier, Mondrian, Gropius – who mutilated the
world more effectively than any Luftwaffe!
Snobbery? But it’s only a form
of despair. The local population in a state of total stupor whirling its time
away in squalid snack bars, tilting its heads as in a namaz in reverse
toward the television screen, where somebody is permanently beating somebody else
up. Or else they’re dealing out cards, whose jacks and nines are the
sole accessible abstractions, the single means of concentration. Misanthropy?
Despair? Yet what else could be expected from one who has outlived
the apotheosis of the linear principle?
From a man who has nowhere to go back
to? From a great turdologist, sacrophage, and the possible author
of Sadomachia? |
Brodsky even goes on to argue that: ‘By divorcing
Byzantium, Western Christianity consigned the East to
non-existence, and thus reduced its own notion of human
negative potential to a considerable, perhaps even a
perilous, degree.’ He also implies that: ‘…the
anti-individualistic notion that human life is essentially
nothing – i.e., the absence of the idea that human
life is sacred, if only because each life is unique’,
originates in the East, and that Western Christianity’s
neglecting the experience supplied by Byzantium is the
reason why college campus killers are classed as mentally
ill, and presumably suicide bombers are labelled religious
fanatics, as opposed to just plain evil. If supposedly
enlightened Western humanists can harbour such sentiments,
what hope can there be for reconciliation and mutual
understanding?
In an essay entitled, with a phrase
she borrowed from Said’s book, ‘The Imaginary
Orient’, the art historian Linda Nochlin discusses
the work of French Orientialist painters such as Delacroix
and Gerome, paying particular attention to the latter’s
The Snake Charmer, the image which graced
the cover of the original edition of Orientialism.
She argues that these paintings are not the accurate
depictions of Oriental life they seem to purport to
be, but are fantasies which would be better understood
as imaginative inventions, rather than true images.
In this, she may presume too much about the intentionality
of the painters – all art, after all, being
a representation; but she goes on to propound that
these imaginative fantasies also have a political
purpose, that is to remind the viewer that it is the
West that is the locus of morality, representing as
they do a decadent culture which needs either moralising,
or rescuing from its own inexorable decline, and so
help to justify Western intervention in the East.
To be sure, in Herodotus’ day
it was the Persian Empire that was the aggressor, looking
to colonise Greece, and the united city-states, including
Athens, were merely defending themselves. The notable
difference in our day is that it is the democrats who
are doing the invading, with the sanctioning intention
of toppling an absolute ruler. However, Herodotus’
contention that democracy was the cornerstone of Athenian
superiority, and his praise of it as responsible for
Athens’ pre-eminent position, might make us mindful
of the justifications invoked for the invasion of Iraq
by the United States and Britain, and the continuing
conflict there. And while bringing the benefits of democracy
and freedom to a former dictatorship was the general
goal of the invasion, the proximate goad was the supposed
presence of weapons of mass destruction within the jurisdiction
of that regime, a piece of ‘intelligence’
which was subsequently exposed as a faulty, if useful,
fiction. However, that the reason for going to war ultimately
proved to be another instance of imaginative invention,
every bit as much a representation (or version, or spin)
as elements of Herodotus’ Histories,
has not bothered the advocates of invasion unduly since
it has been discovered, evidence that people are still
as enthralled by mythic embroidery masquerading as objective
fact as they ever were.
There are, of course, some problems
with Said’s notion of Orientalism. Firstly, his
analysis can serve to further polarise Western and non-Western
culture. Secondly, he does not give sufficient weight
to the idea that all cultures are created by cross-cultural
exchanges, even if one of the parties is in a less powerful
position than the other. That the concept of ‘hybridity’
has sprung up as a response to postcolonialism is no
surprise. Examples from twentieth century musical history
are the crossover of blues, jazz and soul in America,
and reggae and ska in Britain. (To be sure, white music
has always borrowed heavily from black music, frequently
without proper accreditation, which can result in the
process being cast as yet another example of colonial
cultural pillaging, rather than friendly exchange and
sharing; but this is a large topic, which could form
the subject matter of a separate study, in essay or
book format.) Relevant contemporary examples, again
from the field of popular music, would be the emergence
of Turkish hip-hop in Germany, and African hip-hop and
world music in France, both movements which feature
not only immigrants, but mixed-race groups – a
phenomenon that is much slower to take hold in America,
although the racial and cultural eclecticism of groups
like T.V. On The Radio offer some hope for a new direction
there.
So, Herodotus’ prejudices, however
freely he admits them, and the notion of history as
a representational construct rather than a collection
of chronological facts, carry resonances to this day.
In the case of my own country, Ireland, plays by Brian
Friel like Translations and Making History
engage with how history is made, and remade. But, since
we are in Greece, and Western society may be regarded
as the product of the conflux of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian
cultures, of Athens and Jerusalem, both of which flourished
in close proximity to the East, as represented by Byzantium,
perhaps it can be suggested that fruitful avenues of
study would be the work of writers, whether they are
native to this region or not, who have engaged with
the conflicts between clashing cultures in this geopolitical
area, and the accommodations that have been reached,
for example Damascus Gate by Robert Stone,
and My Name is Red, and Snow, by Orhan
Pamuk. Inside this golden triangle, we may learn that
ancient history is not so different from our own, so-called
modern, version; and that the phrase ‘the art
of the historian’ may come more freighted than
we would like to imagine.
Forthcoming in The Literature of War: Proceedings
from the Durrell School of Corfu Conference,
May 2007, Cambridge Scholars Press, Newcastle, September
2008.
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www.durrell-school-corfu.org