0550
On heroes: some are born, some are reluctant. The effect on the rescued is the same; whereas the effect on the hero is different: the former readily embrace heroism, the latter are conflicted. Many conflicted heroes grow to accept the conflict, but never completely reconcile it. They do it only in honor of the rescued--all the while they themselves feel vulnerable and abandoned, awaiting their own hero to rescue them. It won't matter if the hero was born or made.
What is, or was, the heroic? What is a hero?
A good answer was given by the late Robert Warshow when, in an essay on Western films, he said: "A hero is one who looks like a hero." Warshow was saying essentially what Margaret Bieber had said in her book on the Greek theatre, that the hero is an actor. The two statements, especially Professor Bieber's, make it plain that the idea of the hero is only secondarily a moral idea; to begin with, [p. 84] it is no more so than the grace of a dancer is a moral idea. Nowadays our colloquial language makes the idea of the hero more or less coestensive with one of the moral qualities originally thought to be essential to it: 'hero' is our word for a man who commits an approved act of unusual courage. But in the ancient literary conception of the hero, courage is only a single element, and although it is essential, it is not in itself definitive. It is virtually taken for granted in a man who is favoured by the gods, as the hero is presumed to be, and who is even endowed with certain inherited traits of divinity. This favour or heritage of divinity makes itself fully apparent. The dignity it confers on the man is not latent, to be revealed or discerned eventually, but is wholly manifest in word and deed, in physique and comportment. It announces and demonstrates itself. The hero is one who looks like a hero; the hero is an actor--he acts out his own high sense of himself.
What is, or was, the heroic? What is a hero?
A good answer was given by the late Robert Warshow when, in an essay on Western films, he said: "A hero is one who looks like a hero." Warshow was saying essentially what Margaret Bieber had said in her book on the Greek theatre, that the hero is an actor. The two statements, especially Professor Bieber's, make it plain that the idea of the hero is only secondarily a moral idea; to begin with, [p. 84] it is no more so than the grace of a dancer is a moral idea. Nowadays our colloquial language makes the idea of the hero more or less coestensive with one of the moral qualities originally thought to be essential to it: 'hero' is our word for a man who commits an approved act of unusual courage. But in the ancient literary conception of the hero, courage is only a single element, and although it is essential, it is not in itself definitive. It is virtually taken for granted in a man who is favoured by the gods, as the hero is presumed to be, and who is even endowed with certain inherited traits of divinity. This favour or heritage of divinity makes itself fully apparent. The dignity it confers on the man is not latent, to be revealed or discerned eventually, but is wholly manifest in word and deed, in physique and comportment. It announces and demonstrates itself. The hero is one who looks like a hero; the hero is an actor--he acts out his own high sense of himself.
