The Heroic and the Mundane

Jailor: You understand my position, sir, there's nothing I can do; I'm a plain, simple man and just want to keep out of trouble.
from Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons.

μὴ δή μοι θάνατόν γε παραύδα, φαίδιμ’ Ὀδυσσεῦ.
βουλοίμην κ’ ἐπάρουρος ἐὼν θητευέμεν ἄλλῳ,
ἀνδρὶ παρ’ ἀκλήρῳ, ᾧ μὴ βίοτος πολὺς εἴη,
ἢ πᾶσιν νεκύεσσι καταφθιμένοισιν ἀνάσσειν.
Homer, Odyssey, 11.488-491.

Let me hear no smooth talk
Of death from you, Odysseus, light of councils.
Better, I say, to break sod as a farm hand
for some poor country man, on iron rations,
than lord it over all the exhausted dead.
Homer, Odyssey, trans. Fitzgerald, 11.577-581.

'For little price,' he said, 'do Elven-kings sell their daughters: for gems, and things made by craft. But if this be your will, Thingol, I will perform it. And when we meet again my hand shall hold a Silmaril from the Iron Crown; for you have not looked the last upon Beren son of Barahir....
Then Beren and Lúthien went through the Gate, and down the labyrinthine stairs; and together wrought the greatest deed that has been dared by Elves or Men. For they came to the seat of Morgoth in his nethermost hall that was upheld by horror, lit by fire, and filled with weapons of death and torment.
from J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion.

Of all the themes chosen by the poets, none has endured so long as the tale of the heroic. It is in the earliest epics, earlier even than the Odyssey. It is a greater theme than romance, though romance, ordinarily a lyric condition, occasionally rises to it. Did a man know every language every spoken, and had he read every work ever written, were he to find and record only the smallest part of only the most profound writing upon the heroic, he should have to sit in his high-tech library for months.

There is something in the hero of song and music. It is in the music of his laugh which disdains an enemy. It is in tears as tragedy inevitably strikes, and more than once in the same place. It is in the murmur and thanks of the poor in spirit who look on and suffer. It is in the deep chorus of the sea which carries him from his home, and washes him back upon it. It is in tender words for his lover, O three graces in one, my Beauty, Joy, and Plenty. It is in the glad tidings of victory, and it is in the dull silence of defeat. And this is why the earliest poets chose to sing their stories in song, for they heard this music, which is the trilling echo of divinity, the shadow of Glory.

And yet the poet finishes the song, and the hero must die, after all of his sufferings, and sometimes in the midst of them, and what must be done after it is finished? Even Beren the Befriended died in battle, but was brought back in resurrected body only at the strange mercy of the gods. And the gods were moved by the lamentation of Lúthien daughter of Melian, who miraculously found the thread of song to tell her sorrow in some wayward weft of the eternal fabric lost long ago, so that no woman is ever likely to repeat her deed.

A man may only bear so much divinity before it kills him. Prospero abdicates his power that he might return to Italy with his newly-wedded daughter and son. The mundane has its place, in which the crowds share, and in which the hero must share if he is to live well. For heroism always depends upon extraordinary grace. Homer knew this, and that is why his heroes have the blood of gods in their veins, why gods smith their armour, why gods advise and protect them. But there is an ordinary grace for the ordinary existence - for marriage, for labour with the hands until evening, for quiet and a simple gravestone. If a man is to leave this ordinary existence, he must be called. There is grace appointed for such times. But the man who leaves without a call presumes upon God's extraordinary grace. He commits sacrilege. To avoid this, the hero must study when it is fitting to subdue and to suffer, and when it is fitting to walk away.

Richard Wagner's Ring cycle idolizes the most pernicious form of modern heroism- the heroic romance. Here is Brunnhilde in the early part of the Götterdämmerung, speaking of the ring, now a love-token from Siegfried, to her Valkyrie sister Waltraute:

Ha! know'st thou what 'tis to me?
How canst thou grasp it, loveless maid!
More than Vahalla's rapture,
more than the fame of gods is this my ring:
one glance at its lustrous gold,
one flash of its holy fire
more is to me e'en than all the heaven's aye-enduring delight.
For blissfully there shineth the love of Siegfried.
Love of Siegfried!
O might but its rapture be told thee!
that lives in the ring.
Go hence to the holy council of gods!
And of my ring tell o'er to them my words:
(rather more slowly) from love I never will turn,
of love they never shall rob me,
though into ruins
Valhalla's splendor should fall!

To the credit of Wagner's genius, Brunnhilde indeed sees the ruin of Valhalla. The love she snatched with Siegfried from out of the ordinary life, without marriage, communal covenant, or obedience, can only find consummation in life through consumption in a fiery death. Having forsaken the gods, the lovers must play their own sacrificial lambs in order to atone for their sacrilege.

That death is no death proper for men, and moreover it is quite ridiculous when we jump out of myth and into the present. Practically speaking, whatever the commercials suggest, there is only a small need for heroism. These days, if it is possible at all, to be heroic is to suffer deeply with stubborn charity, and who goes looking for that? Perhaps only Christians and event-coordinators, and anyway it will come to them unhoped for in its due time. But still the best of life is to be had in the mundane, ordinary existence: "Territory, status, and love, sing all the birds, are what matter: ... a place I may go both in and out of."

Of course ordinary men and women must have fun and adventure too: there is a place for theatre and the make-believe epic, and that is one of the chief reasons we love the writings of G.K. Chesterton. But the really demanding sort of heroism in which Chesterton himself lived - the deadly seriousness, the fury, and the compassion that churns the gut - to hold these things in one's soul is a rare calling. Be wary of taking it up, and be ready to lay it down. (These days we have too many wannabe heroes calling themselves pundits. You can tell this by the way they contrive in themselves feelings of shock and horror, for effect. Sadly, many cases practice the art so often, they either deceive themselves into thinking that their horror is real, or they lose their capacity to feel anything else.)

Those who are summoned to heroism must remember that the dark valley of heroism is called the Terrible. It is, to put it lightly, a rather unpleasant place. It also happens to be impossibly difficult to mess and win through it. And the character of impossibility is precisely what allows for a heroic situation, for the stonewall defiance against the impossible is precisely what stamps the rare title of hero upon a man or a woman. But if it is impossible, how is it accomplished, and how is anyone called a hero? Here is the answer. Every hero's success, and every pedestal of fame, must inescapably come as a gift of God, since it is only God's Mercy which has the power, at the last moment, to turn the tables upon doom. Only divine Pity completes the impossible quest. So it must be whenever a man burning with desire attempts the indestructible to destroy or the free to possess.

Then, if all that can be done is in good faith done, whether Pity has broken the spell, or whether the quest has failed, greatness must breathe a sigh of relief: it must diminish, and go into the West (which is the old world for Home).