The Idea of the Hero
Sep. 6th, 2007 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
audentior_ito"yet so long as man projects an image of himself in myth and art, so long as he somehow tries to justify this image or deplore it, the notion of the hero is certain to stay alive. This not merely a matter of nostalgia. The very concept of man is bound up with that of the hero.
At his best the ancient hero had something of the divine in him. God, demigod, godlike, or intimate with the gods, he provided a transcendental link between the contingencies of the finitie and the imagined realm of the supernatural. Time and the timeless, man's moral state and the realm of eternal laws, were brought through him into conflict with each other. Through him also these orders overlapped." ~ Victor Brombert
"The heroic stance, to begin with, is a matter of relationships--with the supernatural, with society or the "group", with the self."
"Odysseus' s return from the world of gods and monsters back to the world of men is heroic not merely because of the dangers overcome and the courage and skill displayed but because of his proud alleigance to his mortal condition."
"Does the hero owe it to himself to be unique, or is he truly himself only when he becomes representative?"
THE HERO IN LITERATURE ed. Victor Brombert
At his best the ancient hero had something of the divine in him. God, demigod, godlike, or intimate with the gods, he provided a transcendental link between the contingencies of the finitie and the imagined realm of the supernatural. Time and the timeless, man's moral state and the realm of eternal laws, were brought through him into conflict with each other. Through him also these orders overlapped." ~ Victor Brombert
"The heroic stance, to begin with, is a matter of relationships--with the supernatural, with society or the "group", with the self."
"Odysseus' s return from the world of gods and monsters back to the world of men is heroic not merely because of the dangers overcome and the courage and skill displayed but because of his proud alleigance to his mortal condition."
"Does the hero owe it to himself to be unique, or is he truly himself only when he becomes representative?"
THE HERO IN LITERATURE ed. Victor Brombert
