277 / 298
Vico’s Ring
277
innerung (In early societies, historical memory is not a given. Interest in the
past does exist only insofar as this past is relevant to the present. […] So if a
society, after an interval without historical consciousness, develops such con-
sciousness and along with it myths located in a distant past, likely they repre-
sent historicizing fictions rather than genuine historical memory)» (
ibid.
, pp.
327, 328).
Ch. Ulf seemingly takes the same position: «Die heroisierte Vergangenheit
stellt eine von der Gegenwart des Autors aus betriebene poetische Fiktion dar.
[…] Auch können die als Erzählung über the Vergangenheit angelegten Texte,
wie Mythen und auch Epen, keine ehemals gültige Ethik oder eine frühere
<Ordnung> tradieren, sondern spiegeln die Projektion aktueller Wünsche ei-
ner bestimmten sozialen und/oder politischen Gruppe in eine konstruierte
Vergangenheit wider (The past presented as heroic constitutes a poetic fiction
produced from the perspective of the present time of the author. […] Fur-
thermore, the texts, such as myths and epics, too, that are purported to be
narratives about the past, cannot transmit an ethic in force formerly, or an
earlier <order>, but rather reflect the projection into a constructed past, of
the current aspirations of a certain social and/or political interest group)» (Id.,
Was ist und was will “Heldenepik”: Bewahrung der Vergangenheit oder Orientierung für
Gegenwart und Zukunft?
, in
Der neue Streit um Troia
, ed. by C. Ulf, cit., pp. 262-
284, pp. 281, 283). This begs the question, of course, how this would differ, in
principle and/or degree, from modern, or any kind of, history-writing, a
thorny subject obviously outside our subject matter.
B. Patzek adduces a different and more “technical” reason for questioning
the theory of oral transmission over a span of centuries: «Bekannt ist, daß das
Gedächtnis der Menschen mündlicher Kulturen an ihre menschliche Umge-
bung und örtliche Umwelt gebunden ist und selbst in diesem Fall die kom-
munikative Konsistenz des Gedächtnisses mehr als drei Generationen nicht
überdauert (It is known that the memory of people in oral cultures is linked to
their community and local surroundings, and that even in that case, the com-
municative consistency of memory does not last longer than three genera-
tions)» (Id.,
Die homerischen Epen im Spiegel ihrer geschichtlichen Tradition: Oral Poetry
und
Oral Tradition
, in
Der neue Streit um Troia
, cit., pp. 245-261, p. 259).
561
Haddock refers to «attitudes of mind», «modes of thought», «
Weltan-
schauung
[worldview]», «thought-structures», «attributes of […] characters» (Id.,
Vico’s “Discovery of the true Homer”
, cit., pp. 591, 592, 594).
562
J. Mali,
The Rehabilitation of Myth
, cit., p. 199. Caponigri highlighted the
reverse epistemic direction: «[…] the process of the formation of the poetic
myth may begin in the idealization of an historical figure. What must be ob-
served immediately, however, is that the actuality of this figure is of indiffer-