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How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics

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This vast tome is a masterpiece of comparative Indo-European poetics. It investigates the nature, form and function of poetic expression and ancient literature among an impressive variety of Indio-European peoples. The author uses the traditional comparative method to identify the genetic intertextuality of particular themes and formulas common to all the daughter languages of ancient Indo-European. The work comprises seven sections and 59 chapters. The first chapters of part 1 explain the comparative method, concepts like synchrony and diachrony and pinpoints the various Indo-European cultures in terms of genre, space and time. The rest of part 1 considers the role of the spoken word in Indo-European society and its preservation across time.

In chapter 3: Poetics as Grammar, Watkins analyses the expression "Oats, peas, beans, and barley grow," demonstrating how the word order, alliteration and assonance form a perfect ring-composition. This formulaic utterance now functions only to amuse children, but in its essential semantics, formulaics and poetics it must have been continuously recreated on the same model over six or seven thousand years. He proves that is the central "merism" of an ancient Indo-European harvest song or agricultural prayer, by quoting from the Hittite, Homeric Greek, the Atharvaveda and the Zend-Avesta!

Selected text analyses an case studies from Anatolian, Celtic, Greek, Indic and Italic are found in chapters 7 - 11 of part 2, followed by the analyses of inherited phrasal formulas, stylistic figures and hidden meaning through chapters 12 to 16.

The remainder of the book presents the evidence for a common Indo-European formula in the expression of the dragon - or serpent-slaying myth. Over thousands of years this formula occurs in the same linguistic form as it existed in the original mother tongue. This formula is the vehicle for the central theme of a proto-text that has endured for millennia, a precise and precious tool for typological and genetic investigation in the study of literature and literary theory. It is thus of immense value to literary historians, literary critics and philologists.

I found chapters 50 - 59 of particular interest, as it deals with the application of the formula to the medicine of incantation in a variety of Indo-European traditions, and includes a discussion of the poet as healer.

This work is an opus magnum, and it took me months to read it. Even so, I cannot claim to have grasped all the complexities of the fascinating text in which more than 30 familiar and obscure languages are quoted. I strongly recommend this masterpiece to those interested in ancient history, language and its structure, and to literary critics.

The book concludes with 27 pages of references, an index of names and subjects, an index of passages, and an index of words quoted from the various Indo-European languages.

Your first impression will involve picking your jaw up off the floor. Here we have examples from Vedic Sanskrit, Old Irish, Greek, Latin, Old English, Hittite, and dozens more obscure, ancient, or dead languages like Umbrian and South Picene, all marshalled in support of the argument that it is possible, not only to reconstruct the language spoken by the ancient Indo-Europeans, but also to reconstruct some of their oral literature, and the cultural role of ancient bards in the courts of nameless chieftains.

The marshalled evidence of the rhetoric of these ancient literatures is indeed impressive. Many parts of it --- specifically, the parts that discuss the various metres of the ancient poems, and suggest ways in which the sound changes of which we have evidence may suggest that these verse forms stemmed from common ancestors --- are convincing.

But the difficulty in parts of the book's argument is its failure to exclude other possibilities --- such as borrowing, loan-translations, or simple independent invention --- of the phrases and images it argues are inherited. Some of them, like the inherited phrase meaning "everlasting fame," are more convincing than others, if only because not only the idea, but the root words themselves, are inherited. We know from comparing Classical, Hindu, and Germanic mythologies that some god-names were inherited.

But when the book argues in favour of an inherited myth that says "a hero kills a dragon (or some other foe)," we're dealing with subject matters that are known to exist in literatures other than Indo-European ones. After all, this is what heroes do. It is unclear even whether these motifs are commoner in Indo-European literatures than elsewhere. Some attention needs to be paid to the possibility of other explanations, and why the hypothesis of inheritance is the likeliest among them.

With enormous learning, grace, and brilliant insight into the arts of anicent poetry, Calvert Watkins illuminates whole areas of human linguistic experience. Time and again a small detail in an ancient text, under his patient eye, will open itself to reveal the roots of poetry in the oldest strata of human experience left to us. What Watkins can do with a simple children's poem or an old Russian nursery rhyme puts most contemporary "language" criticism to shame.

I enjoyed this book although I am best termed a "lay person" and the book is (necessarily and appropriately) written in a technical style. Other reviewers have addressed the content and worth of the book. I will try to give an idea of its "readability" for the non-specialist.
I frequently found exact understanding somewhat difficult and did gloss a number of passages as just too difficult to be worth the return (to me) of greater effort. Also, at times it almost seemed as if the author was pulling together a series of journal articles and quite possibly the book could have been twenty to thirty percent shorter without much, if any, sacrifice of material. Despite this, I never felt like hurrying nor that my time was being wasted - I found a number of new and interesting ideas that are clearly understandable by an interested reader. Also, the author neither talks down to his audience nor tries to impress with difficult terminology. Furthermore, at several points I sensed the underlying enthusiasm and reverence the author feels toward his work and I occasionally caught the sense of "beauty" as several threads came together.

FINALLY, a thorough understanding of the roots of the poetic material that we all learned when taking the classics. A thorough exploration of both epic and lyric poetic methods and the methods behind them that are used to this day.

The first dozen chapters or so read a bit like a bibliography, making frequent references to other authors (both contemporary and otherwise) and to things that are addressed quite a bit later in the book. This does not make the work so easily readable, but when dealing with comparative Indo-European poetics, one cannot expect a light-summer read.

I thoroughly enjoyed this work. I found that Dr. Watkins' ability to find common roots for everything from the Odyssey to childhood rhymes that we all learned to be both engaging and informative. I gained not only a deeper appreciation for the Classical and Homeric Greek, Avestan and Sanskrit literature that I have enjoyed since my days as s student, but also for everyday language.

If you are interested in any sort of Proto Indo-European studies, this is a must-read.

The "indo-european" language family covers just about all of Europe, North and South America, South and South West Asia and Australia. English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Greek, Latin, Farsi, Hindi and all of the Baltic's, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. The language from which all these languages came is unknown, but scholars call it "Proto Indo European." The Indo European language family has received more attention from philologists and linguists over the last century then the rest of the world's language families combined.
One of the more interesting issues surrounding Proto Indo European is the extent to which we can reconstruct the shared culture of Proto Indo European people through language as manifested in religious ritual, myth and poetry. How To Kill A Dragon is an attempt to work back to the primal Indo European myth- the HERO SLAYING THE DRAGON. The first portion of the book is devoted entirely to setting up the idea of a shared Indo European poetic vocabulary. Watkins looks at the use of alliteration, oppositions and "merisms" (the use of two individual terms to compromise a larger whole- like "men and cattle" to refer to the sum of earthly possessions.)
Unfortunately, I couldn't follow of all of it because I CANT READ THE GREEK ALPHABET but the analysis that included languages written in a Latin script was convincing. The Indo-Europeans had a common vocabulary of ritual and myth that is simply impossible to ignore. The argument goes into the folder of "we are all one human race."
The second portion, concerning the formulation of the foundational Indo-European myth "HERO SLAYS SERPENT" is again- very convincing. Watkins then moves the clock forward and shows the way that this poetic language manifests itself in Homeric Epic Poetry, Scandinavian Epic Poetry and the Rig and Artha Veda. Perhaps the most interesting and novel portion of his argument is the analysis of the Hittite version of the myth, which Watkins straight forwardly claims is the direct inspiration for the Greek versions. In fact, it in his analysis of little known Hittite tablets where Watkins really, really shines. If I were to follow up on one aspect of this book (which, after all, was published in 1995) it would be what else scholars have learned about the relationship between Hittite ritual and Greek myth.

In addition to its use as a philology textbook (and it is great in this regard), the subject matter may be of great interest to people studying a more specialized aspect of the poetics-- namely the liturgical and magical traditions of the Indo-Europeans. In this area it is indispensible (along with the works of Dumezil, Polome, and others).

This isn't just a philology textbook-- it contains many keys for unlocking previously obscure areas of Indo-European studies relating to their magical and religious traditions.

This book starts with an essential visit to and discovery of Indo-European poetics. For one it does not take poetics in the Aristotelian meaning of the term that privileges dramatic texts, theater, performed poetics. The author defines the poet within a wider frame, that of the custodian and professional of language. He has to remember (at first, write and read later) all that is important for the community: its past, its important people, the laws, but also the medical knowledge, and the religious knowledge. As such the poet is at the very same time a priest, a poet, a doctor, ,a lawyer, a healer, a wizard, etc. He controls language in its abstract conceptualizing power and he performs pragmatic tasks that require knowing and reciting (to some type of music) texts. As such he is the custodian and preserver of the knowledge of the community. Thus he has a second power, that of developing that language, writing and reciting all kinds of texts to entertain the community, politically manage it, laud its leaders, etc. Watkins righteously insists on this essential point. As such poetry and religion merge together, the poet is the priest and vice versa. The author goes further and declares there is some original, specific and stable Indo-European pragmatics and poetics. All I-E poetry comes from the same melting pot or the same mould. And he insists on the fact some common formulas can be found. Here he works along two lines. One, etymology and the history of words, only words. Two, the formulas of words based on some words that semantically build a mainly semantic knot. He follows one such formula: HERO - SLAYS - DRAGON, that leads him to interesting remarks including the reversal of the killing. But he does not question the thematic functions behind the change. He satisfies himself with nominative and accusative. So he is kind of short. Short because it is not enough to say that the instrument can be stated as the nominative or the accusative of the verb. That shows the meaning he gives, SLEW, is an interpretation. It is difficult to say Peter SLEW the hammer, meaning the hammer was used by Peter to slay someone or something, even if we can easily conceive of the instrument slaying the victim. That fact questions the value of the verb. Is it SLAY or is it "IMPOSE a certain behavior to X within the frame of killing movements (?), vast arm movements (?)" In fact here he does not capture the dynamic meaning of the verb that initially meant some movement. In other words SLAY is not a simple verbs. It means many things according to the point of view. The agent, the patient, the instrument or whatever do not carry the same vision or value of the action. In more abstract terms a relation is dynamic (necessarily in I/E), expressing a change from one place to another, or from one state to another. The I/E word behind SLAY is typical of that dynamism. It definitely expresses the movement of the tool used to kill, and the change from one state to another for the victim: "AGENT causes VICTIM to shift from state A (ALIVE) to state B (DEAD)" versus "AGENT causes INSTRUMENT to move in a certain way (so that it may kill PATIENT)". The second thing that is deficient is that he centers his approach too much on the sole Indo-Iranian culture. He should have understood the Indo-European branch met with other cultures and there were many osmoses, exchanges, etc. I am absolutely sure that the proximity and rivalry of Indo-European peoples with Semitic peoples and particularly the Jews, produced some exchanges that Watkins does not even consider in the sole dimension of Christianizing Indo-European traditions. He speaks of Beowulf too little and neglects the superimposing of a Christian reading of Semitic origin (it is pure Semitic in origin?), and is it only Scandinavian or Indo-European, or is it already a mixture before it being Christianized? The question is open. Let's look for a solution.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines