"Arkady and Boris Strugatsky - The Secret of Homer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Strugatski Arkady)

"He's learnt it already," said one of the boys.
"Is that true?" I asked.
"Oh no. I just read the textbook you were talking about. That's all."
"Don't believe him," said a chorus of voices. "Artem knows the 'Iliad' by heart."
"Is that true, Artem?"
"Well, yes."
I asked him a number of questions. Choosing his words without difficulty, Artem
answered me in the language of Homer. His pronunciation was not perfect, but that
fault could be easily eliminated.
Then, about ten days ago, Artem and I had an argument. We had just been
reading the place in the "Aethiopis", that tells how Achilles, having mortally wounded
Penthesilea, the queen of the Amazons, divests her of her helmet, his trophy by right
of victory, and suddenly, struck by her beauty, falls in love with the dying woman.
"It is thought that Arctinus of Miletus, the author of this poem, was a pupil of
Homer's," I remarked.
"I don't doubt it," said Artem. "What a scene!"
"Smashing!" said one of the boys.
"Really, friends," I said, turning to the whole class, "can't you find a better
sounding expression than 'smashing' ?"
"Emotion does not always dictate euphonious expressions. You know that better
than anybody else," returned Artem.
"But such masterpieces as the 'Aethiopis', the 'Iliad'. .."
"In expurgated translationsтАФyes. Homer's heroes are live people. Sometimes
tender, sometimes stern, but they always have a ready tongue. Achilles shouts at
Agamemnon: 'You sot, you son of a bitch!', but the translator hums and haws and
thinks up idiotic wordsтАФ'Wine-bibber! Dog-like man!' And how Zeus abuses
Hera!"
Artem gave a short laugh.
"That's where Homer is great," he continued. "In everything an artist, in
everything a poet. Anyone else would have started the story of the Trojan War with
Adam, but Homer plunges straight into what is most important and most vivid:

"Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O Muse, The vengeance, deep and
deadly; whence to Greece
Unnumbered ills arose."

"Perhaps you are right," I began carefully, approaching the subject of that day's
lessonтАФ"the Homeric Question", "but the whole point is that Homer never existed...
."
"What do you meanтАФnever existed. That can't be!" cried the lads.
 "No, Homer never was. There was a collective creatorтАФhundreds of bards who
clothed the original nucleus of the legend in a poem of surpassing beauty."
"Is that absolutely certain?" asked Artem.
"Absolutely and I personally hold the same opinion. In the seventeenth century
the Abbe d'Aubigniac expressed doubts about the existence of Homer, pointing out
a large number of contradictions, and since then the research carried out by Grote
and Hermann, and before them by Wolf, has confirmed this completely. There had
been arguments about it before in fact, but opinion of Aristarchus that Homer
created the 'Iliad' in his youth and the 'Odyssey' much later, in his old age,
prevailed."