Hacker News Reader

Comment by woodruffw | Hacker News Reader

Is this really the case?

The two archetypal Western ancient fictions, the Iliad and Odyssey, display emotion front and center: Agammenon's greed and jealousy, the love between Achilles and Patrocles (and the former's rage at the latter's death), and Priam's mourning all come to mind. Similarly for the Odyssey, a story about nostalgia in the most literal sense: the pain of Odysseus's estrangement from his family, entangled with the pain of returning as a stranger. Homer even refers to him epithetically as "many-pained" and of "many-sorrows."

That's a small sample size, but the same can be seen in Roman love poetry: Horace does not hide the emotions of his subjects[1].

[1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Odes_(Horace)/Boo...

View on HN

I guess you are replying to the subject line instead of the actual article because your post makes no sense in the context of the article.

As the article says, "In ancient literature, emotions were predictable reactions to external actions or events."

All you've done is list people having predictable reactions to external actions and events.... Just like the article says ancient literature did.

Most of our emotions are predictable reactions to external actions or events. Fortunately, modern literature hasn't completely forgotten this.

The article is not very consistent, because it also states that «in medieval or classical texts, “people are constantly planning, remembering, loving, fearing, but they somehow manage to do this without the author drawing attention to these mental states.” This changed dramatically between 1500 and 1700».

The classical Greek tragedies certainly did draw attention to the mental state of their characters. I remember a long monologue of Euripides' Andromache that I would sum up as "This life is too hard. Why did I have a son? I shouldn't have, as my care for him doubles my suffering. But I should not lament, I should act and die for my son."

While the Euripides is an excellent counterpoint, you’re not acknowledging the clear rhetorical turn that started with the western novel (or shakespeare, I guess).

That's the thing.

While we don't deny the "clear rhetorical turn that started with the western novel (or shakespeare)", I (and I think the parent) believe that this turn was in fact a return (to what e.g. ancient Greek, Chinese, etc literature did: talk about feelings) and not some wholly new direction.

Greek literature doesn’t have THAT much feelings. There’s nothing remotely in the realm of Hamlet in all of ancient greek lit to my knowledge. Calling it a return is a massive stretch of the Euripides example—I always viewed his works more like sitcoms than having any realistic human characters.

Try Cassandra from the tragedy Agamemnon by Aeschylus. Her psychological torment from having her true predictions go unheeded is every bit as relatable as Hamlet's suffering for very similar reasons. She is an incredibly sympathetic person, not at all a sitcom character.

I’ll have to check it out!

There’s also Sappho, although I’m much less surprised poetry is personal.

>As the article says, "In ancient literature, emotions were predictable reactions to external actions or events."

Ancient Greek tragedy has no more "predictable reactions" than a modern work of fiction would have -- it goes into depth about the ambivalence of a character's feelings for example.

Besides the article also says that people in ancient literature didn't openly talk or display their emotions, except through action (tearing their hair, etc). That's patently wrong even for the Iliad, and doubly so for Odyssey.

The article also bizarrely seems to restrict to literature after the fall of Rome and up to the 15th century or so, as if that constitutes the whole of being "ancient"...

Also, have the author read millennia old Greek, Chinese, etc poetry? They'll find all kinds of inner monologues and discussions of feelings.

  My heart is no mere mirror
  That cannot comprehend.
  Brothers I have, but may not
  On brothers e’en depend.
  Tush! when I go complaining
  ’Tis only to offend.
  No stone this heart of mine is,
  That may be turned and rolled;
  No mat this heart of mine is,
  To fold or to unfold.
  Steadfast and strict my life is;
  Nought ’gainst it can be told.
  Yet here I sit in sorrow,
  Scorned by a rabble crew.
  My troubles have been many,
  My insults not a few.
  Calmly I think—then, starting,
  I beat my breast anew.
  O moon, why now the brighter?*
  O sun, why now dost wane?
  My heart wears grief as garments
  Inured to soil and stain.
  Calmly I think—then, starting,
  Would fly—but all in vain.

From "The Odes of Pei", several centuries B.C.

I can't see a translation like that without attempting to provide a simpler, more contemporary one myself:

My heart is not a mirror, it doesn't reflect accurately. Even though I have brothers, I can't rely on them. If I tell them my opinion, I will meet with their rage.

My heart is not a stone, it cannot be turned. My heart is not a mat, it can't be rolled up. My character is excellent, there's nothing to nitpick.

My grieving heart is anxious, I am hated by the crowd of fools. I meet with many tragedies, and receive many insults. Silently, I think about my situation, startled awake I beat my breast.

The sun and the moon, why have you grown small? The sorrow in my heart, like dirty laundry. Silently, I think about my situation. But there's no way to fly away.

This flows nicely, but I feel obligated to pick a few nits:

Unless you sourced the original Greek, that's technically not a translation -- it's an interpretation of a translation. Every time you rewrite something like this (especially between languages) it's a "lossy" process and diverges further from the content, sentiment and emotions of the original.

Secondly, the original clearly made efforts to preserve certain properties of the original, such as its metrical structure. While it's a legitimate topic for debate whether it's worth trying to preserve such things in a translation, that IS something present in the original, present (however poorly) in the translation, and absent from your reinterpretation.

Again, not that yours was bad, just pointing out that there are tradeoffs in translation and that "reads better to the modern ear" is often in tension with other advantages.

Perhaps the author thinks the analysis is shallow due to the heroic nature of the heroes's emotions, which separates them from the common man.

Although I think the greek tragedies have a higher level of psychoanalytical sophistication that would only be matched in the 19th century.

The Icelandic sagas certainly also portrays emotions. The characters are very much driven by emotions. The point is it is displayed entirely through their actions, not by internal monologue or direct description of their mental states like in 19th century literature.

Ancient lyrical poetry like Sappho on the other hand is direct expression of feelings. Ecclesiastes (in the Bible) is a monologue about the narrators feelings and mental state.

So it seems to more like a question of genre and narrative style rather than some kind of mental development of humanity. The sagas are not fiction, they are supposed to be about actual historical figures and events. You don't know what a historical figure actually thought and felt, only what they said and did. There are some examples in the sagas where characters directly express their feeling through poetry.

In the wise words of the robot devil,

> You can't just have your characters announce how they feel! That makes me feel angry!

I interpeted “feelings” as “explicit emotional introspection”. There’s a little of this in the Oddysey, but the first book I can think of that clearly does this is Don Quixote.

It’s absolutely absurd to interpret the article as saying writers didn’t acknowledge emotion.

>I interpeted “feelings” as “explicit emotional introspection”. There’s a little of this in the Oddysey

Huh? There's lots of this in Oddysey. Even more so in ancient tragedy, and whole lots in lyrical poetry, Sappho etc.

Note I said “a little”, not “little”. You can quibble about the amount but I was trying to explicitly say that the Oddysey IS an example of this in ancient lit.

Still nothing compared to Macbeth or Hamlet, though.

A Persian poet like Hafez [1], who lived in the 14th century, also deals pretty extensively with feelings, much more so than a lot of novelists and poets from today's age. Granted, I've only read him in translation but even so I remember that his poetry left a definite mark on younger me.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafez

Hafez's poems are not fiction. They don't have a plot, they are just pure expressions of emotions.

I am curious to know if Ferdowsi ever talks about feelings in Shahnameh [0]. I cannot remember any such instances, but I have only ever read small parts of it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahnameh

While it's autobiography rather than fiction, the Confessions of St. Augustine explore the author's state of mind as deeply as any modern work I can think of. It was written around the end of the 4th Century AD. [0]

But this article started with an example from the middle ages rather than the ancient world, so lets look there as well. Medieval literature does explore human feelings quite deeply. The stories of Chaucer (Canterbury Tales), Dante (Inferno, etc.), and Boccaccio (Decameron) exhibit characters with a rich internal life. Arguing to the contrary mostly proves you have not read them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_(Augustine) (Edit, left this out.)

Lots of "talk about feelings" in the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BC); or even the Old Testament, for that matter...

Such a disappointing article.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com