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Would you like life? Or do you prefer glory; it’s an either or choice, the gods
say to Sage Markandeya’s mother. She chooses a brilliant but short-lived son
(who eventually goes on to trick Death with his devotion, but that’s another
story). In The Iliad the hero Achilles makes a similar choice. Contrast his
meteoric rise and fall with the twenty-year-long Odyssey of Ulysses. The wily
hero has to suffer all kinds of hardships before getting home to yet another
fight. Incidentally, he was a staunch peacenik at heart, and unsuccessfully
pretended madness to avoid being drafted to the Trojan War. In contrast, the
young hero of the Iliad is the GenNext Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise type. He crowns a
flamboyant life of brave deeds with an early, glorious death in action. In
contrast, the conquering hero of The Odyssey is a mature war veteran with
greying temples and a fraying temper.
Eventually, of course, he wins back his kingdom and is reunited with his wife
and he also goes on to reign wisely over a happy country blessed with riches.
That’s the fate the blind prophet Teiresias foretells for Ulysseus during his
untimely trip to the Underworld – a gentle death coming from the sea “in a sleek
and wealthy (liparos) old age: and around are people in prosperity and happiness
(olbioi)”.
This is a different sort of glory. It’s born out of human triumph over divine
wrath. It celebrates the victory of true grit over a bad hand dealt by fate.
Naturally, this is more in tune with the lives of ordinary mortals who are made
heroic by their dogged refusal to surrender to ‘destiny’. It’s the heroism of
Leningrad, which wears down the fabled German war machine. Its’ the heroism of
Satyagraha which brings the mightiest empire on earth to its knees without
firing a shot. It also represents the hard-won victory of the life instinct
(Eros) over that of death (Thanatos).
Ironically, when Ulysses meets the spirit of Achilles in the netherworld, the
wily hero remarks that being such an outstanding leader Achilles must be running
the place. “You must be joking,” Achilles replies testily. “By God, I’d rather
be a slave on earth for another man, or some dirt-poor farmer who scrapes to
keep alive, than rule down her over all the breathless dead. “This only means
even a few days of life on Earth are worth more than all that deathly glory in
Eternity. Enjoy every moment before you lose it. You’ll never get it back.
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