Dwa mitologiczne pojedynki: Dawida z Goliatem, Hektora z Achillesem

Abstract

The author of the article examines two mythological duels: Hector and Achilles’ and David and Goliath’s . They serve completely different literary and ideological goals. In the first duel, two godly heroes stand to fight: Achilles for his fame and revenge for Patrocles, and Hector for his motherland. In the other, the fight is chiefly of religious character; David’s hands are the instruments of the Hebrew God’s victory, and the fight is set in the beginning by the narrator: it is obvious that David is going to win, because God is on his side. Setting small David against big Goliath is a rhetorical device, to a large extent; the smaller the knight, the greater the victory of his God. This duel is a fragment of the Book of Samuel, which, in its whole text, expresses the monarchist and monotheist (Jehovic) ideology, which determines the propaganda character of the duel. In the article, both stories are treated as mythological and fictitious (literary), and all the notions important for their analysis, such as justice, values, sacrum, or God, are treated as belonging to the presented world of the narration and only as such, without being related to the actual religious life. All the above makes the article provide a new, different, and thus polemical presentation of the two mythological duels: the Greek one and the Hebrew one.