I have been following Alexander's footsteps through the documentary film by Michael Wood. I had read about him as a young Greek warrior, fearless and daring, but in bits and pieces. After watching the film, however, I realized that I had not really known about him well.
Myth and facts are so comingled in the life of Alexander, that now it is difficult to tell the authenticity of the folklores and written stories. The film is fascinating in capturing the spirit of Alexander through visual imagery and movements: the project captured the spirit of Alexander well, the spirit of restlessness and adventure, and his quest and desire to know more about the world and even to conquer it. When I saw what Alexander saw, it made it more real. If history is imagination into the past, then the film captures that imagination and makes it into a reality.
The irony is that he could conquer only what he knew. The land beyond him across the Indus river remained dark and mysterious, disheartening Alexander who reached his limit. Like a fog, the mysterious world laid in front of him, beckoning him to softly dash through it with his sword and shield, only to surround him completely. When he stopped from further conquest, he had left behind not an uncontested territory but his imagination and thirst for knowledge.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
1 comment:
W. W. TARN: Alexander the Great and theUnity of Mankind. (From the Proceedingsof the British Academy, vol. XIX.) Pp. 46.London : Milford, 1933. Paper, 2s. 6d. IN this thoughttul and thought-compelling paper Dr. Tarn presents Alexander in a somewhat unfamiliar light as the first propounder of the gospel of universal goodwill among mankind. The main lines of his argument are that ( I ) Alexander visualized nothing less than this ; (2) among earlier Greek thinkers 6p6uoiawas usually meant to begin and end at home ;(3) the Stoic 6p6vora was in the first instance borrowed from Alexander, and then reduced from a vital force to an inert gas by equation with the pre-existent cosmic harmony. The crux of this theory may be sought in Eratosthenes'account of Alexander's philosophy(quoted by Strabo, 1. 66). Here Alexander's 6pbvora is confined to the select class of cd85~ipoi&v8per. But the context suggests that (unlikethe Stoics) Alexander reckoned the sheep as far more numerous than the goats. Dr. Tarn admits that the germs of Alexander's idea might be found in earlier Greek thought. It may be worth recalling that Alcidamas reckoned all men as @v'ucr ihehBrpor, and that Isocrates sold the pass of Greek privilege when he defined Hellenism as a matter of culture,not of race. But, as Dr. Tarn aptly insists, Alex ander's o,u^ voza connoted more than absence of racial privilege, and the king reckoned it his duty not merely to recognize fraternity which others had brought about, but himself to sow its seeds on every soil (except the stoniest). Dr. Tarn's paper confirms the view which he has put forth elsewhere-a view also expressed in Wilcken's great work on Alexander-that the Macedonian king was not only one of theancient world's great practitioners, but one of its great visionaries. ,V.CARY.C'niversity of London.
Post a Comment