#epic poetry

Sorry I don’t make the rules

Who was this mythical storyteller? A singing bard-poet, (aoidoi)-dramatically orating the epic tales for aristocratic banquets or bawdy taverns? A collective of poets-refining their work over generations? The unfortunate truth is, we just don’t know.

Homer is thought to have existed around 800-700 B.C. and is credited as the creator and poet of the epics; “The Iliad” (15,693 lines) and “The Odyssey” (12,109 lines). Homer existed during a time when Linear B had been lost, or the Greek “dark ages.” So the poets of this time sung their tales in song-like structures, passing the oral art form down form generation to generation. Therefore, its unlikely Homer made up these tales, but inherited and refined them from older tales that had been passed down in the oral tradition. To complicate things further, Between the epics, there are variations in narrative style, vocabulary, and geographic expertise, which lead many scholars speculate that The Iliad and Odyssey were written by different authors.

Unfortunately, there are no biographical details within the epics to give us insight into the author(s). However, In the Odyssey, there is a blind bard poet character, Demodocus, who recites his poetry to the royal court. Some have suggested that this character was created by Homer as a reflection of himself. This is a fun and tempting parallel to draw. Similar to how we might get the reflection of Shakespeare’s voice through Hamlet when the prince describes to his players the the philosophies of theatre acting. The portrayal of a blind poet also creates a nice symbolic parallel to the Norse God Odin, who, sacrificed an eye in exchange for divine wisdom. Indeed, the Greek bards saw themselves as divinely inspired by “the Muses”; the inspirational goddesses of the creative arts. Through Homer, the elegant oral form crafted these classics, and, incredibly, we can still hear the song like syntax and repetitions in the texts. 

A popular complaint I’ve seen  about the Epic III Broadway changes is that the older version is “more poetic.” As a poet, that bothers me because the Broadway version is poetic, too, just less attention-drawing to its own language. And thinking about what the differences actually are, I realized something:

Concept Album/NYTW Epic III is an epic poem. Broadway Epic III isn’t —it’s a lyric poem. Not just in the sense that it’s lyrics to a song, but as a different genre entirely. And they are both excellent examples of their respective genres.

So, what’s the difference between epic and lyric poetry?

Epic poetry is a long narrative in verse that deals with gods and heroes, often making use of elaborate extended metaphors and evocative epithets to describe characters and events from an observer’s perspective. Ancient Greek examples include the Iliadand the Odyssey.

Lyric poetry is a) shorter, b) focuses on the poet’s own experience and state of mind rather than a narrative, and c) uses personal pronouns and emotional, relational language rather than descriptive epithets. The most famous Ancient Greek example of a lyric poet is Sappho.

Looking at the text of each version of Epic III, we can see these different techniques and priorities in play:

Orpheus uses epithets liberally in all the Epics, NYTW and Broadway, usually to describe Hades, but not always. Epic II is a masterclass in epithets:

King of diamonds, king of spades / Hades was king of a kingdom of dirt / Miners of mines, diggers of graves (Concept/NYTW)

King of silver, king of gold / And everything glittering under the ground / Hades is king of oil and coal / and the riches that flow where those rivers are found (Broadway)

King of mortar, king of bricks / The River Styx is a river of stones (Both)

Concept/NYTW’s Epic III opens with three stanzas of epithet-heavy language (king of iron, king of steel andHades is king of the scythe and the sword) and uses them to build up an extended metaphor contrasting king and man, hard and soft, hammer and nail. It then goes on to describe in exquisite detail the scene of Hades first seeing and falling in love with Persephone:

But even that hardest of hearts unhardened
Suddenly when he saw her there
Persephone, in her mother’s garden
The sun on her shoulders, the wind in her hair

The smell of the flowers she held in her hand
And the pollen that fell from her fingertips
And suddenly Hades was only a man
With the taste of nectar on his lips

I, too, wish these stanzas had been kept—they’re absolutely beautiful. They are also wholly descriptive and predominantly physical. Hades’ emotions are abstracted and distanced from the scene. Persephone has no interiority whatsoever. It is a sonorous, metaphor-rich, but acutely third-person account of what happened.

This distance makes sense given Orpheus’ role in the NYTW production. He is an observer, a witness, an activist. He is deeply attuned to the injustices of what is happening around him and uses his poetry to share his observations of those injustices with the world. What he lacks is attunement to the emotional needs of other people, especially Eurydice. The triumph of his Epic is piercing commentary, making Hades see the consequences of his actions and just how different he has become from the man who first fell in love with Persephone.

Broadway’s version keeps the epithets limited to the first few lines (king of shadows, king of shades / Hades was king of the underworld). Orpheus doesn’t linger on physical description. The point is not to retell the story, but rather, to reframe it. Because Orpheus drops a bomb at the end of this section. He abandons the third person and introduces an “I”:

I know how it was because he was like me / A man in love with a woman

(Side note: The language in the first section of Broadway Epic III is very plain, but the poetry is still there! I partially blame Patrick Page—not in a bad way!—for interjecting in the middle of the first stanza, because when you put the text in quatrains, some gorgeous slant rhymes and vowel resonance shows up:

King of shadows, king of shades
Hadeswas king of the underworld
But he fell in lovewith a beautiful lady
who walked up above in her mother’s green field

He fell in love with Persephone
who was gathering flowers in the light of the sun
and I know howitwasbecausehe was like me
A man in love with a woman

I’ll admit some of the lines in isolation are not very good. I don’t like a man in love with a woman, but I’d say it has roughly the same quality as all that he loves is a woman / a woman is all that he loves, and the benefit of only taking up one line instead of two.)

Then come the la la la las, much earlier in Broadway than in NYTW because they have a new significance that completely changes the context of Orpheus’ song. Orpheus asserts “he was like me” and then proceeds to vocalize the exact feeling that Hades had without words. He then addresses Hades directly, in second person—something NYTW only does in the very last stanza—using the language of his own declaration of love. This is important because it shows that Orpheus isn’t just putting himself in Hades’ shoes—he’s putting Hades in his own. The moment of connection, of empathy goes both ways.

And the language of that love? It’s just as rich as the Persephone in her mother’s garden stanza, but the focus is not on exterior detail, but interior:

You didn’t know how and you didn’t know why
but you knew that you wanted to take her home
You saw her alone there against the sky
It was like she was someone you’d always known

And the slant rhymes? The assonance and consonance? *chef’s kiss*

It was like you were holding the world when you held her
Like yours were the arms that the wholeworldwas in
And there were no words for the way that you felt
So you opened your mouth and you started to sing

Orpheus‘ thesis(”he was like me”) adds new context to the last section of the song, whose words are almost identical to the NYTW version. When Broadway Orpheus sings what has become of the heart of that man, he’s talking about himself as well. What would become of his own heart if he were to become like Hades? His moment of insight into Hades fears and weaknesses becomes a confession of his own insecurities:

See how he labors beneath that load
afraid to look up and afraid to let go

and

He’s grown so afraid that he’ll lose what he owns
But what he doesn’t know is that what he’s defending
is already gone

There’s a prescience to these lyrics when applied to Orpheus. Because this is a predestined tragedy, Orpheus has already lost Eurydice. And while walking out of Hadestown, his greatest fear is that Eurydice won’t be following him—that he’ll lose what he owns. And there’s another parallel: Hades is afraid to look up, while Orpheus is afraid to look back and afraid to keep going.

The final stanza differs only slightly between the two songs:

Where is the man with his hat in his hands
Who stands in the garden with nothing to lose? (NYTW)

Where is the man with his arms outstretched
To the woman he loves, with nothing to lose?(Broadway)

Again, the NYTW lyrics are descriptive and external, while the Broadway lyrics are emotional and relational. Epic poetry and lyric poetry.

And, while the songs are called “epics,” as befits the son of Calliope, the Muse of Epic Poetry, the lyric form has an Orpheus connection as well: traditionally, lyric poems were sung to the accompaniment of a lyre.

In conclusion, both Epic IIIs are valid. Neither one is more poetic than the other. They’re just different kinds of poetry.