ABSTRACT
The Homeric poems have not only had a profound influence on Western literature, from Virgil to James Joyce and beyond, their continued study has also deepened our appreciation of epic and heroic poetry in general. The world of the Iliad and the Odyssey, this "wide expanse... That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne” (Keats), has become a familiar world for the Western reader, guiding him when he first approaches epic traditions other than that of Ancient Greece. But while a knowledge of the Iliad and the Odyssey might help us in the understanding and interpretation of both Western and non-Western epic poetry, the study of contemporary or near-contemporary traditions of oral epic poetry can also throw light on the Homeric poems themselves. Turkic oral epic poetry was brought to the attention of comparativists as early as 1885 when Wilhelm Radloff pointed out the relevance of Kirghiz epic poetry to the Homeric question in the preface to the fifth volume of his monumental Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens:
I believe that the dispute about the "Homeric question" has led to such irreconcilably opposing views mainly because none of the factions has understood — or could indeed understand — the true essence of the aoidos. The singer of Kirghiz epic poetry is a perfect example of an aoiddSy as the Homeric songs themselves describe him.1 1
Neither the ’’analysts” nor the "unitarians” have, however, taken up Radloff s suggestion to settle their dispute by a close study of Kirghiz oral epic poetry. Quite apart from Homeric scholars like U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who have denied the legitimacy of compar ing the Iliad or the Odyssey to oral epics such as those collected by Radloff, the references to Radloff s material in Homeric scholarship are generally slight and superficial. E. Drerup included Kirghiz epic poetry in his survey of oral epics, as does M. P. Nilsson in his discussion of the origin and transmission of epic poetry, but neither seems to have made any close study of the texts edited by Radloff.2 When in the 1930s the "Homeric question" was finally tackled by investigating a living tradi tion of oral epic poetry, it was not possible for Western scholars to do any field work on the Turkic traditions in Central Asia. Milman Parry and Albert B. Lord turned to Yugoslavia instead, but they were both aware of the importance of Turkic material for the study of the "Homeric question," as is shown by several references to Kirghiz and Turkic epic poetry in their writings.3
