The Nature of Heroes

 

 

The constellation Hercules. Source: Atlas Coelestis. Johannes Hevelius drew the constellation in Uranographia, his celestial catalogue in 1690. This image has been modified from the original.  The original image can be found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hercules_Hevelius.jpg.

 

 

The Nature of Heroes

 

    “The dreams of boys and men…”

 

 

The Songs of Heroes

 

"Sing, goddess, of Achilles ruinous anger

Which brought ten thousand pains to the Achaeans,

And cast the souls of many stalwart heroes

To Hades, and their bodies to the dogs

And birds of prey."

 

     �"The opening lines of the Iliad

 

"Full many a wonder is told us in stories old,

of heroes worthy of praise, of hardships dire,

of joy and feasting, of weeping and wailing;

of the fighting of bold warriors, now ye may hear

wonders told."

 

     �"The Niebelungenlied

 

"For three and twenty years the hall

Of Tara's King was razed and burned

On Harvest Eve.  But none recall

Who from that eldritch sleep returned

The harping of the evil elf �"

In mystery was Tara cloaked �"

Until young Finn McCool himself

The right of rest and board invoked

One summer's end, and joined their feast."

 

     �"Marie Marshall's poem about Finn mac Cumhaill

 

 

"When the king was horsed thore,

Launcelot lookys he upon,

How courtesy was in him more

Than ever was in any mon.

 

     �"Sir Thomas Mallory, Le Morte d'Arthur

        Harleian Library (Manuscript 2,252),

        British Museum

 

 

 

The Nature of Heroes

 

        What is it that inspires Man? Throughout history, and across cultures, songs and legends abound. Wide-eyed children listen to these stories around hearth and camp fires, captivated by the adventures of old, of legends of heroes and deeds beyond the accomplishment of ordinary men. Yet to make these heroes come alive and to touch the soul, they always have their human failings. Achilles has his vulnerable heel, the place he was held as a child when he was dipped into the river Styx. He was a mortal man given to outrageous acts of rage^[1]. Siegfried, the Germanic hero of the Nibelungenlied^[2], and made famous in Wagner’s Ring Cycle^[3], is filled with boyish naiveté. However he is ever the hero. His vast strength and god-given skills are wielded almost without notice except by those around him. Just as Achilles, too soon he tragically found his mortal doom.

        The general schema of the hero legend is simple. The hero’s attributes are: (1) god-like abilities such as skill, cunning, strength, agility, speed, (2) serious, tragic human flaws, and (3) ultimate ruin because of these flaws. There are broad similarities among legendary heroes. The sword Sigmund, Sigurd’s father, draws from Barnstock is similar to the sword drawn by King Arthur from the stone. The story of Sigurd eating the heart of the dragon is similar to the Irish story of Fionn mac Cumhail eating the salmon of knowledge he had been preparing for his mentor, Finn Eces. Siegfried's invulnerability and his weak point (his shoulder) are similar to those of the Greek hero Achilles, the Persian hero Esfandyar, and the Duryodhana story of India's Mahabharata epic. Achilles had his heel and Siegfried had his shoulder (covered by a leaf when he bathed in the dragon’s blood). The Persian Esfandyar had his eyes closed while bathing in a pool of invulnerability, and the Indian Duryodhana, protected his groin from his mother's invulnerability-conferring gaze after he bathed in the Ganges. Each fell through this vulnerable human attribute.

        The similarity between these legends is staggering. They seem to arise from a common reverence for fallible human heroes with god-like abilities. Can this commonality in the details be coincidence? Perhaps the similarities can be explained by legends and tales slowly spreading by word of mouth over centuries and millennia. However this does not explain the infatuation of all cultures with these stories and why they are so commonly adopted.  This speaks more to common values, desires, and dreams in all of the world’s cultures. It seems that more than anything, the universally accepted attributes of the hero show that we are indeed all one people.

 

 

©2009, Richard Puetter

All rights reserved.

---

Notes

^[1]Achilles was known for his horrible rages. Indeed his rages had much to do with the course of the Trojan War. Much of the theme of the Iliad concerns itself with how the war tempered his rage.

^[2]The Nibelungenlied, or The Song of the Nibelungs, is a poem written in Middle High German. The Siegfried character runs throughout Norse legend. Earlier references refer to this dragon killing hero as Sigurd (Old Norse: Sigurðr) in the Völsunga saga, or Sivard Snarensven, a hero of several medieval Scandinavian ballads.

^[3]Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen , of four operas: (1) Das Rheingold, (2) Valkyrie, (3) Siegfried, and (4) Götterdämmerung.

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

Mortal men are capable of godlike accomplishments. The pharoahs were worshipped as gods. We still cannot cut marble as perfectly with a laser as the ancients did with special tools. We didn't know how the colliseum was put together until we began taking it apart and found cedar tumbler pins still intact inside the air tight fittings. To me, the real heroes are the men with great minds like Pythagorus, Archimedes, Da Vinci and others. Like the Greeks who built free standing sculptures that the Romans could not copy after they murdered the artists. So much knowledge has been LOST! Imagine what it would have been like to roam through the Mousion in Alexandria when the Pharos Lighthouse was still standing. I love to think about such things. Our imaginations and creative genius have brought us far but superstition and fear have impaired much of our scientific journey. I believe we once had greater knowledge than we have now of certain things but in times of ignorance the knowledge was destroyed and called witchcraft. This was a most interesting write. I enjoyed.

[Ellen Hammond]

You have done your homework, I see. LOL Your observation and hypothesis seems quite plausable. All of mankind has also tended to seek not just heroes but something or someone greater than man, such as a Creator or God. This was an interesting and mind stirring read.

[Richard Longbow]

I believe the concept you're describing is called an archetype. The same is true with regards to pyramids, which were in Egypt as well as Central and South America. It makes me wonder if our brains evolved some artistic mechanism that binds us. This short essay is very well organized and interesting. I didn't know mythologies had so much in common with each other. Surely, the major religions of today have taken mythology from the religions of the past and repackaged them. I like how your essay is organized as well. Well done!