How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics

by Calvert Watkins

In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that stretch as far back as the original common language. Thus, Watkins reveals the antiquity and tenacity of the Indo-European poetic tradition.

Watkins begins this study with an introduction to the field of comparative Indo-European poetics; he explores the Saussurian notions of synchrony and diachrony, and locates the various Indo-European traditions and ideologies of the spoken word. Further, his overview presents case studies on the forms of verbal art, with selected texts drawn from Indic, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Armenian, Celtic, and Germanic languages.

In the remainder of the book, Watkins examines in detail the structure of the dragon/serpent-slaying myths, which recur in various guises throughout the Indo-European poetic tradition. He finds the signature formula for the myth--the divine hero who slays the serpent or overcomes adversaries--occurs in the same linguistic form in a wide range of sources and over millennia, including Old and Middle Iranian holy books, Greek epic, Celtic and Germanic sagas, down to Armenian oral folk epic of the last century. Watkins argues that this formula is the vehicle for the central theme of a proto-text, and a central part of the symbolic culture of speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language: the relation of humans to their universe, the values and expectations of their society. Therefore, he further argues, poetry was a social necessity for Indo- European society, where the poet could confer on patrons what they and their culture valued above all else: imperishable fame.

Genres: History, Poetry, Linguistics, Nonfiction, Language, Mythology, Ancient History

613 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Calvert Watkins was an American linguist and philologist, known for his work in comparative Indo-European poetics. He was the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Linguistics and the Classics at Harvard University and later went to serve as Distinguished Professor in Residence of the Department of Classics and the Program in Indo-European Studies at UCLA.

Reviews

[Timons Esaias · Rating 5 out of 5]

While 999 out of a thousand readers would find this book too difficult and obscure for words, I must say that it has been one of the most challenging and interesting non-fiction works I've ever had the privilege to study. I bought it and started reading it soon after it first came out, but around page 70 I felt I needed to stop and study some Hittite before continuing. Not to mention that I'd written down so many research questions at that point that it would take months to "catch up" with my outstanding questions.

I got so much from those first 70 pages that I'd have given the book five stars based on that experience alone.

Well, I explored Hittite (I could maybe order coffee in Hittite, except they didn't have coffee back then), I followed the research notes, and I learned many details of ring structure. And this year (yeah, I know, after two decades) I decided it was time to push on through the rest of the book. Did I comprehend it all? No, especially as my understanding of Classical Greek, Avestan, and Sanskrit is poor. But I could grasp the general outlines of the thing, which is sufficiently mindblowing.

So, what the book does, is explore the existence and use of a formulaic construction in the early poetics of a number of Indo-European Language Group languages, to see if they are consistent enough to suggest that the formula dates back to Proto-Indo-European, and what it would have been in that language. The formula is, simply, HERO SLAY SERPENT, with the possibility of WITH A WEAPON or WITH A FRIEND but not both.

What the book uncovers is that this formula persists across thousands of years, retaining not just the phrase but the same words (though shifting as the languages shift and break apart), and being used poetically in a surprising consistent series of poetic forms, usually framed with a ring structure to show its central importance, and with a number of poetic games played simultaneously at the same time. The formula appears not just in epic poetry, but also in prayers, charms, legal codes, and medical formulas. It is as though it's in our DNA.

Along the way you discover just how clever folks like Pindar and Homer and the Vedic poets were, not to mention the Icelandic skalds and Old Irish bards. And you see, in the tradition and the practice, endless evidence of an Indo-European philosophical belief: that words have power, that words persist beyond death, that the right words can cure what ails us.

The process of exploring this three-word phrase and its travels through history is unbelievably enlightening. The book is dense, and overwhelming, and difficult to describe. It's very, very technical, and the author expects you to go look up what you don't understand; but I never felt that he was using the technical language to impress. He just uses it to be clear and precise.

If you have an interest in where our poetics came from, or an interest in the Indo-European language, you'll probably want to look into this volume at some point. If not, though, leave it alone.

[It doesn't come until near the end, but the relationship between the terms DRAGON and WORM, in light of this formula, is wonderfully fraught. Talk about double meanings...]

[Koen Crolla · Rating 2 out of 5]

Often engaging, never convincing.

Watkins' premise is that it's possible to use the comparative method to reconstruct specific formulaic constructions, metrical styles, and other figures of poetic speech of Proto-Indo-European, and it's important not to let the book's mountain of (variably relevant, variably credible) philological trivia and more than occasional deliberate obscurantism hypnotise you into not noticing that this premise is false. The thing about the comparative method in linguistics isn't just that it lets us take two words in two related languages and let us reconstruct a common proto-form that we can automatically date to the time they were one language; it's that in reconstructing the proto-language it lets us construct a set of rules by which we can confidently distinguish true cognates from borrowings (and have a rough impression for when they were borrowed)—something that isn't possible even in principle when it comes to any aspect of poetics.
Obviously when dealing with significant parallels in substantial bodies of work across relatively shallow time depths, it's usually possible to say something sensible about them, but Watkins spends more time spuriously projecting trivial two-word fragments (like the overexposed κλέος ἄφθιτον) across thousands of years, and when he does try to apply his method to something more significant—"the" titular dragon-slaying myth—the best he can do is to come up with hypergeneric formulas ("HERO SLAY ADVERSARY") which, for all their insipid vacuity, don't even fit the evidence properly and require endless variation.

Did (to focus on a specific) the Proto-Indo-Europeans have a dragon-slaying myth? Probably; almost everyone did, Indo-European or not. Are literally any of the details recoverable using Watkins' methods? Clearly not.

[Robert Nield · Rating 4 out of 5]

Watkins makes a very diligent effort to reconstruct some proto-Indian European poetic features, leaning mainly on classical and Homeric Greek and Vedic Sanskrit but with many intriguing forays into other languages, from Hittite to Old English. I think the major case, which is that you can use the body of evidence that exists across the world of Indo-European poetry to learn about inherited features of poetics from Proto-Indo-European, is carried, while the detail in investigating this offers us innumerable fascinating insights.

The most compelling major suggestion for me was the existence of a strophic liturgical prose/poetry of Indo-European provenance. In terms of smaller individual items, my favourite of the convincing cases were for the poetic patrimony of the club-wielding hero and of the inheritance of a Python/Typhon from Hittite. It is really powerful to reconsider a lot of classic Greek poetry, especially tragedy, in light of the arguments about poetic vocabulary and register drawn out by the book. There are also some less solidly established but intriguing and enjoyable speculations aroundthe asvamedha, PIE eschatology and the linguistic evidence which might point to a “Wilusiad” (i.e. a comparable Anatolian narrative covering the events of the Iliad).

Watkins occasionally indulges in jargon (some justified, some perhaps not); my personal bugbear is the term ‘marked’ (i.e. poetic/elevated) which is used very widely to lend a kind of scientific veneer to the overall flow of discussion. I think it’s often more distracting than helpful to point to ‘line-initial’ or ‘discourse-initial’ words as being therefore ‘marked,’ especially in the context of very long poems.

From a recommendation point of view, this is not a book for the general reader. There are a couple of ways you could make it a bit more approachable (translating quotes in other modern languages seems like the polite thing to do for your reader; you could also reign in the tendency to give individual words from texts in semi-reconstructed or earlier forms with digamma/vocalic rs etc where that form is not explicitly relevant to the argument being made) but we should rather focus on how diligently it has been presented, the consistency of the transliteration and good, clear translations. The real obstacle to understanding is just the nature of what’s being discussed and I can’t see someone without at least something of an Indo-European language background getting as much out of it. How to Kill a Dragon is a feat of ambitious and earnest scholarship, which will continue to bring great joy and insight to a small and peculiar readership.

[Dralex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long ago when studying classical Greek I learnt a linguistic fact that was perhaps trivial and yet it quite fascinated me: in some English words derived from Greek an initial 'h' corresponds to an initial letter 's' in words derived from Latin. Think hemi-/semi-, hypermarket/supermarket, etc. This is because Greek and Latin are both descended from a language, now lost except by way of reconstruction, referred to as Proto-Indo-European. Recently I started reading more about what we know about PIE, and this led me to Watkins' HTKAD. This book goes beyond the development of words and languages; its concern is to reveal how poetic themes and cultural items can be seen to be inherited by the range of languages that developed out of PIE.
Watkins was a superb linguist. (It was said of him that if there were a train full of people speaking some European language, he'd have learnt the language by the time he'd walked from one end of the train to the other!) For me, it was a wonderful thing and a delight to be able to benefit from decades of learning and research from a brilliant mind.
Nevertheless, it's not an easy read. It uses technical vocabulary, and it is, naturally, filled with examples in various languages. Even with an interest in Watkins' subject, I don't think I'd have been able to cope if I hadn't a strong background in classical Greek, which gave me a way into the book.
The book can be recommended unreservedly as a masterpiece of scholarship. But enjoying the book will depend upon a reader's interest - and to some extent their background - in the subject, and willingness to tackle a fascinating but dense text.

[Matthew Colvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew.”

Watkins seems to know all the literature of the Indo-European languages like the back of his hand: Avestan, Sanskrit, Old Irish, Norse, Germanic, and of course Latin and Greek. The erudition is astonishing; the close readings are revelations. For the non-linguist, however (I knew only two of his languages), there can be tedium as he unfolds his demonstration. Fortunately, all passages are translated. Even without knowledge of the languages, you can feast on a banquet of comparative mythology.

If you liked Martin West’s _Indo-European Poetry and Myth_, you will enjoy Watkins. (And vice-versa.)

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

A specialist textbook overusing academic language? Well I never! See:

He compared the identical Greek cadence known as the paroemiac or 'proverb' verse, from its frequency as proverbial utterance occupying the second half line or hemistich of a dactylic hexameter, and proposed as Indo-European metrical prototype a 'gnomic-epic decasyllable'.

But it's interspersed with fascinating little tidbits such as:

The Hittite Law Code prescribes capital punishment for bestiality with pig, dog, or cattle, but states that for a man with horse or mule it is not an offense, but 'he cannot become a priest'.

A masterwork in its field written by a genius, clearly, but only readable to those with a formal education in the stuff.

[Jim Bisso · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterwork from one of the last of the Indo-European philologists.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's neat that it's a book on where the dragon myths came from....
but i think it goes off the cliff with the Indo-European fanaticism

I think one of the major failings with Chomsky and his 'form' of linguistics is he comes up with strangely-bizarre theory of mind of these 'rules in the brain', yet it doesn't really wish to admit creativity into the nature of language.

And the same goes here, you have myths and poems and you start a theory where 'themes of SLAY:DRAGON, and SLAY:DRAGON:WITH FRIEND and all this 'verse' follows the choo choo train. It might be true with some god-names.

And then there is the whole Greek language thing.... did a few pieces come from the East and the South, and do we accept all the guesses of the PIE cult?

---

Prodigiously learned; but does he make his case?
8/10

Your first impression will involve picking your jaw up off the floor. Here we have examples from Vedic Sanskrit, Old Irish, Greek, Latin, Old English, Hittite, and dozens more obscure, ancient, or dead languages like Umbrian and South Picene, all marshalled in support of the argument that it is possible, not only to reconstruct the language spoken by the ancient Indo-Europeans, but also to reconstruct some of their oral literature, and the cultural role of ancient bards in the courts of nameless chieftains.

The marshalled evidence of the rhetoric of these ancient literatures is indeed impressive. Many parts of it - specifically, the parts that discuss the various metres of the ancient poems, and suggest ways in which the sound changes of which we have evidence may suggest that these verse forms stemmed from common ancestors - are convincing.

But the difficulty in parts of the book's argument is its failure to exclude other possibilities - such as borrowing, loan-translations, or simple independent invention - of the phrases and images it argues are inherited.

Some of them, like the inherited phrase meaning "everlasting fame," are more convincing than others, if only because not only the idea, but the root words themselves, are inherited.

We know from comparing Classical, Hindu, and Germanic mythologies that some god-names were inherited.

But when the book argues in favour of an inherited myth that says "a hero kills a dragon (or some other foe)", we're dealing with subject matters that are known to exist in literatures other than Indo-European ones.

After all, this is what heroes do. It is unclear even whether these motifs are commoner in Indo-European literatures than elsewhere.

Some attention needs to be paid to the possibility of other explanations, and why the hypothesis of inheritance is the likeliest among them.

S. Gustafson

[Joseph Leake · Rating 4 out of 5]

A work absolutely brimming with fascinating material (the level of erudition here is astounding), but it must be read with skepticism of its central premise. While there's no doubting the often-surprising tenacity of oral formulaic traditions, the claim that folklore and poetry can be reconstructed on analogy with phonetic reconstruction is false -- phonetic reconstruction relies upon establishing regular correspondence, while popular oral poetry and storytelling are prone to an almost bewildering degree of variation, even while simultaneously maintaining traditional phrases and elements: this unpredictability makes reconstruction on the scale proposed by Watkins a dubious enterprise. Still, if one goes in armed with a cautionary skepticism, there is a lot to take away and consider here; and the fascinating tidbits and insights along the way are a major reason to read this work.

[Andy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Informative but very dense and academic. I don't have any real base in linguistics or poetry and I don't read Greek or have much experience with the Vedas or Iranian texts, so much of this book was, at least for now, impenetrable for me. I still learned things and it puts forward interesting ideas. It seems to make decent headway towards its thesis but I can't really judge how well. I wouldn't recommend this for anyone who isn't at least doing advanced undergraduate linguistics and poetics. It would also probably be helpful to have a passing knowledge of several languages since he quotes a number of passages in both French and German without translation. Being able to read Greek (even without comprehension) would also be highly useful here. I wouldn't say don't read it if you're new or unversed, but be prepared for a difficult time unless you have the background.

[kienn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"For society, the poet like the priest is indispensable. It is they who subdue the entropic tendencies of the universe, suppress or rework the elements of chaos, continually renew the world as cosmos, and assure increase, wealth, and continuity of offspring."

indo european poetics with case studies and examples... very insightful. not versed in this subject area but i got something from it

[Dinah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is a excellent book. Good Job.

[Renée · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterwork but sometimes for someone only vaguely familiar with metrics quite difficult to get through. I must admit I skipped some chapters (I hate that I wasn't taught Greek!) in order to advance more than 1 or 2 pages per 30 minutes ;-)
Professor Watkins is of course a genius in his field and it is a pity that there doe not exist a Nobel prize in this category.

[K.V. Johansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this a fascinating read. I don't have the background to follow all his arguments, and certainly lack the quantity of languages to do so, thus having to take his discussion of Hittite cognates, for instance, on trust, but all in all it was very thought-provoking. I'd like to go back and read some parts of it again, with a Greek dictionary on hand, when I have time.

[Aleksandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a classicist, interested in literature and mythology, but not specializing in linguistics, it was a difficult and very demanding read. Watkins' work is dense and multi-layered, it required of me a long and careful reading process and a lot of attention, but it was definitely worth it.

[Alfred · Rating 3 out of 5]

An overly academic, for my purposes, analysis of Indo-European storytelling, including the structure and content.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dense. Not for light reading. May need to come back to it...

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please see my review at Celtic Scholar

[Diana · Rating 4 out of 5]

This has the most arresting title I've ever seen on a linguistics book. It's well worth the read as the author explicates ancient poetic language, showing how it derives from Proto-Indo-European.

[ⓈⓃⓄⓌ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting, but ultimately absurdly dense for the average idiot like myself