INDO-EUROPEAN POETRY & MYTH PAPER

by M.L. West

The Indo-Europeans, speakers of the prehistoric parent language from which most European and some Asiatic languages are descended, most probably lived on the Eurasian steppes some five or six thousand years ago. Martin West investigates their traditional mythologies, religions, and poetries, and points to elements of common heritage. In The East Face of Helicon (1997), West showed the extent to which Homeric and other early Greek poetry was influenced by Near Eastern traditions, mainly non-Indo-European. His new book presents a foil to that work by identifying elements of more ancient, Indo-European heritage in the Greek material. Topics covered include the status of poets and poetry in Indo-European societies; meter, style, and diction; gods and other supernatural beings, from Father Sky and Mother Earth to the Sun-god and his beautiful daughter, the Thunder-god and other elemental deities, and earthly orders such as Nymphs and Elves; the forms of hymns, prayers, and
incantations; conceptions about the world, its origin, mankind, death, and fate; the ideology of fame and of immortalization through poetry; the typology of the king and the hero; the hero as warrior, and the conventions of battle narrative.

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

539 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Martin Litchfield West was an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. His many publications include Ancient Greek Music (OUP, 1992), The East Face of Helicon (OUP, 1997), and Indo-European Poetry and Myth (OUP, 2007).

Reviews

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good heavens, is this a superb and invaluable book. Following a comparative philological method, classicist M. L. West examines parallel mythological motifs in far-flung Indo-European cultures and languages and carefully suggests various reconstructions of a prototypical Indo-European mythology from which these common motifs derived. Even viewed solely as a compendium of motifs in the vast Indo-European culturo-linguistic zone, this book is a contribution of the highest order. Coupled with this reconstructive analysis, this book sinks very deeply indeed into the old roots of gods and heroes and ancient ideas of the cosmos.

What emerges is an Indo-European mythology that was populated by gods who embody natural phenomena, and who are not much involved with the creation of the cosmos or the maintenance of a moral order. The primary concern of this mythology is the activity of the hero, who is of a masculine type, primarily concerned with adventure, conquest, the winning of wives and lands, and the overcoming of death by winning glorious renown. The goddess makes little contribution to this vision, which is focused on military adventurism rather than fertility.

This book paints an extraordinary and vivid portrait of the common cultural heritage of cultures spread from Ireland to Persia, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean -- an enormous and diverse area that shared a set of fundamental stories that are strikingly uniform in tone and style. It is hard to imagine a book that invites the reader to dig as deeply into the roots of mythology or to think as deeply about the nature of poetry. This is a remarkable achievement.

This book is NOT recommended for the beginner ... A basic understanding of philology and some familiarity with the main mythological traditions touched upon -- particularly Greek mythology, Zoroastrianism, and Vedic Hinduism -- is highly recommended.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

M.L. West has always been interested in how myths were shared across the Classical world. In the 1990s, he wrote a monograph titled The East Face of Helicon on how Greek epic drew heavily from the Near East. Thinking about what the Greek tradition kept from the Indo-European heritage common to many cultures of Europe and Asia led him to this much vaster project. Indo-European Poetry and Myth aims to synthesize and extend research on what aspects of the literature of antiquity – and even the Lithuanian and Latvian songs collected in the early modern era – go back to Indo-European times.

The opening two chapters cover Indo-European poetry, revealing common poetic metaphors and principles of versification from Ireland to India. The bulk of the work, however, consists of comparisons of the mythologies of the Indo-European peoples, which West treats exhaustively with each chapter divided into a myriad of subthemes. For example, chapter 5 “Sun and Daughter” consists of the following sections:

The divine Sun. The Sun as a deity. Attributes; the all-seeing god. Oaths by the Sun.––The Sun’s motion conceptualized. The solar wheel. The solar steed(s). The solar boat. The dark side of the sun. How old is all this?––Further mythical motifs.––Cultic observance. Salutation of the rising and setting sun. A taboo.––Dawn (and Night). Attributes; imagery. Dawn’s lovers. The Dawn goddess and the spring festival.––The Daughter of the Sun. The Vedic evidence. The Baltic and Slavic evidence. The Greek evidence. Daughters of the Sun in other traditions. Astronomical interpretations. Ritual aspects.––Conclusion.

Because the subject is explored so exhaustively and the presentation is so dense, very few are going to read the whole thing. I have been keenly interested in Indo-European linguistics for years, but even I found myself skimming a few parts. However, there’s no denying that the book brings together in a single volume all the divergent research going on among specialists in the various languages.

But the great flaw of this text is that it is too much a collection of earlier work on the subject, and thus reflects much speculation that has been overturned by later research. For example, West links a number of Greek words to Sanskrit or Iranian words, but Beekes’ recent work shows these Greek words to be borrowings from the Pre-Greek substrate language and not inherited from Indo-European. (Indeed, Beekes has conclusively shown that Pre-Greek was non-Indo-European, but West at one point even incorporates into the text the obsolete idea that Greece was inhabited by another Indo-European people before the Greeks, the old “Pelasgian hypothesis”.)

So, I can recommend this to readers with an interest in the subject, but be prepared to take everything with a grain of salt (or more). A second edition with a more critical approach would do much to remedy this infelicity.

[Rogue Podcast · Rating 5 out of 5]

Downright comprehensive.

[mateusz szum era · Rating 5 out of 5]

nevermind we're so back chat

[Koen Crolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

Feels more like a personal reference work documenting a few decades of casual research than a book synthesizing information in a meaningful way. Haphazard structure aside, West systematically refuses to look at the context of neighbouring non-IE societies to determine which features are genetically Indo-European and which are areal borrowings, rendering any pretence at reconstruction suspect. The result is a work that, for all its exhausting length, can never be much more than frustratingly shallow.

[Matthew Colvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Breathtaking erudition, delivered in a readable style. West has set himself to trace out the features of Indo-European poetry and myth from the preliterate period, using a method akin to stemmatics in textual criticism or to historical linguistic reconstructions. As a classicist, I particularly enjoyed the connections with literatures of cultures other than Greece and Rome: Ireland, Germany, Armenia, India, Old English, etc.. It is rather staggering to think of someone knowing all these languages, let alone having enough familiarity with the various epics to produce a book of this sort.

The warning in one of the other reviews below is accurate: you won't get the most out of the book unless you already know a good deal of mythology and preferably some classical languages. While West is scrupulous to translate the Old Irish, Sanskrit, Armenian, and other less commonly studied tongues, he frequently leaves Greek and Latin untranslated.

[Joseph Leake · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have noted, proceed with caution: a number of the connections drawn out here are fanciful, and West often cherry-picks, ignoring evidence from the wider Indo-European context that wouldn't support (or would contradict) his inferences. The book is by no means without merit, and has a lot of good material; but I don't recommend it to readers not prepared to separate the wheat from the chaff. Much sounder starting places are Calvert Watkins' "American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots" and (better still) Carl Darling Buck's "Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages."

[Volsung]

An extremely useful, philological, language-based approach to its subject matter. ("Archaeology through words," as another reviewer aptly puts it.) Absolutely fascinating; but there is cause to be skeptical over certain more speculative interpretations (especially where underlying assumptions which are not foregone conclusions underlie the argument). Some conclusions are more sound than others. Extremely valuable book, however.

[Thom Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author describes himself as "a stranger in Paradise with a clipboard". Aye, and for 100 bucks, I wish this read better than a well-ordered file cabinet. Anyway, someone had to venture forth to try and make sense of it all.

[LIST of parallels at end of back DJ blurb:]

[Almielag · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of this is a real stretch but no less fun for that.

[Taylor Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

The breadth and depth of information is great. My only complaint is the structure. I didn’t come away with it with a comprehensive overview of the material. I would have preferred to have it organized more like a story, or at least a concluding chapter that ties everything together. It’s still fine as a reference work, it’s just not as interesting or effective as it could have been.

[Rick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this. By no means a light read, but the breadth of sources cited makes this an invaluable resource for those interested in the mythemes and poetic traditions of the IE diaspora. Plus, West flashes a surprisingly great sense of humor here and there.

[H · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my "grab when the house is burning down" books. Must have.

[Sara Anjos · Rating 3 out of 5]

partes boas e partes ruins.

[Judyta Szacillo · Rating 3 out of 5]

As enjoyable as my experience with this book has been overall, I would advise to approach it with caution. It is very readable – provided you are really interested in the subject as it’s quite a heavy volume. The matter is arranged in a very clear and comprehensive way. There is huge wealth of knowledge gathered there – but not all of it is up to date.

I’m reluctant to make claims to be expert in anything to be honest, but there are some things that I know a wee bit about. One such subject is early Irish history, so I was able to note a number of inaccuracies and/or out-of-date statements in the fragments devoted to this subject – and one or two passages that in my opinion demonstrated that the Author had not read the works he was referencing.

I have seen evidence of this sin before in other books by other authors. It is arguably a legitimate way of referring the reader to other literature, but it’s good manners to admit that the references are quoted after someone else’s work. Not everyone can be bothered with good manners though – after all, there is very little chance that someone’s going to notice.

Another grudge that I have against this book is that, on several occasions, the Author doesn’t provide translations of quotes from other languages – Latin, French, or German. My Latin is a bit rusty, I had one year of French 20 years ago, and in German I can say ‘Ich liebe dich’ and ‘auf wiedersehen’. I can’t imagine I’m the only one who is bothered by this.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a fascinating read – and undoubtedly a lot of hard work went into producing this book. But in my opinion a book of such scope should have been done collaboratively, because it’s just not possible for one person to know it all. This book not only contains some out-of-date material, but it is also in itself a product of an out-of-date scholarly culture where one was expected to produce their own ‘opus magnum’. Nowadays, a project like this would probably have several authors specialised in a range of relevant subjects. For one person, it is just too much to manage efficiently.

[Artist Jen · Rating 1 out of 5]

It wasn't what I was hoping for by the title. I was hoping for a book that would gather together what little science, anthropology and archaeology knows about the Indo-Europeans and their stories. The myths and legends and things they believed. Instead, it's a very academically wordy book with much guessing as to what these people believed by taking root words and trying to make them match up with things the author believes makes sense using Greek and Roman and Slavic texts. Phrases like "it has been suspected" are used a ton in this book. There are no epic poems or coherent Myths in this text at all. If you know your Greek and Roman myth, then you already know all the stories in this book.

[Maya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please see my full review at Celtic Scholar

[Simon Kearns · Rating 5 out of 5]

Other than a decent dictionary, this is possibly the most valuable book I have on my shelf in terms of being a writer.

Archaeology by means of words.