so the entire flat land was dried up with Hephaestus burning ...Hephaestus and Achilles rejoice in the drying blast: on the other hand it is the river which keeps fertile the
vegetation of Troy and which supplies irrigation for the gardens. The simile draws attention to the
destructive reversal of nature when fire burns water. At Odyssey 5.3888". Odysseus is lifted on a wave
and sees the coast of Phaeacia in the distance:
And as welcome as the show of life again in a father
is to his children, when he has lain sick, suffering strong pains,
and wasting long away, and the hateful death spirit has brushed him,
but then, and it is welcome, the gods set him free of his sickness,
so welcome appeared land and forest now to Odysseus ...This is indeed the first moment at which there is hope that Odysseus will survive after all, and will
eventually live to see his family. When he is at last safe in the arms of Penelope it is a simile which
reminds us of the feats of endurance that Odysseus has had to go through:
And as when the land appears welcome to men who are swimming,
after Poseidon has smashed their strong-built ship on the open
water, pounding it with the weight of wind and the heavy
seas, and only a few escape the grey water landward
by swimming, with a thick scurf of salt coated upon them,
and gladly they set foot on the shore, escaping the evil;
so welcome was her husband to her as she looked upon him ...(23.233 ff)
To regard the thematic interaction of these two similes as coincidence seems absurd; to attribute it to
tradition seem scarcely less implausible.
In recent years there has been something of a reaction against Milman Parry and the approach to Homer
through tradition that he opened up. There has been a feeling that this approach has failed to deliver the
great insights it claimed it would reveal. It is true that it cannot resolve the sort of large questions about
Homer's place within and against the tradition which I have been raising; it is still very important,
however, and especially on the level of the formulaic phrase, the basic unit from which Parry started. The
reason is not just that the exigencies and pressures of oral composition help to explain away the
infelicities and inconsistencies that so exercise the analysts; this is a petty gain, merely making excuses.
There are much more important insights to be won. The whole inimitable rapidity and directness of
Homeric poetry may be seen as the benefit of the oral tradition. In a writing poet 'pius Aeneas' or 'bold Sir
Bedivere' are in danger of becoming precious, but in Homer the unobtrusive reiteration of such
characteristics seems perfectly natural. Thanks to the repeated phrases and scene-sequences we are in a
familiar world where things have their known places. It is a world which is solid and known, and yet at
the same time coloured by the special diction with an epic nobility. Robes, beds, sheep, springs,