THE (ALMOST) UNDELETED

Thought it was time to get this one going. I seem to take on even more when I have too much to do. Now that I work two full time jobs I thought I might as well take this on as well.

I've been thinking about something for awhile now and would like to see what the rest of you think about it.

Odin is not only the god of battle, but also the god of wisdom and poetry. I do not believe that this is necessarily exclusive to Norse Myth, but I like Odin so I'm putting it here.

I'm curious to see what you think the connections between battle and poetry are. I'm reminded of the phrase, "They compose songs to their knives."

In days of old
When men were bold
But few could read
Or write,
Poetry served
As memory,
To keep the histories
Straight.

(Don't you hate when there's no rhyme, for no reason?)

I'm reminded of the Iliad, and Heike Monogatari (The Tale of the Heike)....

I can't believe I didn't think of that (not the poem). I was thinking about the passions associated with the struggles of life and romanticizing it all.

Well...when yer sittin' around with the yobs celebrating after a battle in yer mead hall, having someone compose a song or two commemorating your victory is probably more fun than going over the score histories of the last games of "ball of the foot" and "toss ye olde pig bladdy".


Samurai were expected to be able to compose a memorable death poem and write it down in a beautiful flowing hand just before the wetwork, should they mess up colossally and be ordered to commit seppuku.

But then, the Japanese always were a bit odd.

Did Minerva have poetry too? She had war and wisdom. Seems to me we could have used her in the last few years. But anyway, are there any other mythos where the war/wisdom deity has poetry too?

Apollo was more the poetry dude among the Greek gods, right?

But he was kind of a jack-of-all-trades, IIRC: poetry, a bit of healing, some prophecy, drove the sun chariot, did a bit of fighting, raped his share of girls and boys, etc.

I'm drawing blanks on pantheons Indian and Chinese/Japanese.