LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

Recent Research

      A new line with regard to the choral lyric of Pindar and Bacchylides has been taken by Barbara Kowalzig, whose central hypothesis is that the fragments of Pindar and Bacchylides, sung by choruses representing their state of origin, contain myths which reflect local, or regional, history.²¹ That is, the myths which they relate are aetiological in the sense that they give an aition or grounding, to the social history of the performers and recipients of one such example of choreia. An example: Pindar’s sixth Paian tells—among other things—of Neoptolemus’ death and burial at Delphi. Kowalzig argues that this myth somehow reflects the ambivalent position of the Amphictyons at Delphi: they exert control over Delphi but are not actually the local owners of the cult. Neoptolemus’s position can be seen as somehow analogous: an opponent of Apollo, yet buried, and given hero worship within the cult precinct. Similarly Kowalzig examines missions to the Delia festival during the period of Attic hegemony: cities positioned themselves with respect to the Delian League by contributing—or staying away—from the festival. One might say that they voted by their dances.²² With great attention to detail and vast scope of the socio-political history of each cult locality she attends to, Kowalzig has illuminated above all the socio-historical dimension of the myths sung by Pindar and Bacchylides, with particular focus on their cult poetry. Myth is never innocent in these compositions, but rather encoded history, or even politics.

The dissertation by Yuriy Lozynsky (2014) takes up the gauntlet thrown down by Kowalzic, and Furley and Bremer, in the sense that he argues against a monocausal interpretation of cult lyric in favor of a plurality and hierarchy of factors in their composition. Yes, they employ hieratic rhetoric (Furley and Bremer), and reflect local socio-political realities (Kowalzig), but there are other factors as well, and Lozynsky makes it his job to show the various components, or layers of significance, in these texts. The key ingredient in his work is that of “stakeholders,” that is, the various parties who are involved and interested in the presentation of a cult hymn.²³ Of course there are the gods, the actual addressees of a hymn, but the human side is not simply the audience. Lozynsky identifies “hosts,” for example, the Delphians, or Delians, where the hymns are performed, the presenters, who are usually a trained chorus, perhaps from a different city, such as Athens or Thebes, the poet who composes the hymn, and perhaps other performers such as musicians. His thesis quite rightly points to the performance context of cult hymns, and how the various stakeholders influence the shape and content of the hymnic text. This work could perhaps be linked to the essay by Carey, which seeks to identify the identity and singing voice of monodic compositions and choral works.²⁴ The important point here is the way singers “construct” their identity and “negotiate” a relationship with the deity or entity hymned.

An interesting development was also marked by Laura Swift’s monograph on sacred songs mirrored in Attic drama.²⁵ The idea here—one anticipated in more rudimentary terms by Furley and Bremer in Greek Hymns—was that the choruses of Greek drama frequently sing songs which are “like” cult hymns or traditional songs but embedded, of course, in the dramatic context. Her book is less focused on the formal attributes of choral lyric and how they recur in tragic choruses; she concentrates more on the imagery and context suited to the lyric forms and how these are mirrored in tragedy. An example is the paianic song in Sophokles’ OT in which the chorus sing a long paian which forms the parodos of the play. The audience is perhaps led to believe in salvation when it hears this type of song, but, if so, it is deceived, as the play gradually leads to disaster. Similarly in Euripides’ Ion, paianic song in honor of Apollo by the chorus, stands in contrast to Apollo’s negative role in the play. There is, in the opinion of Swift, a tension between paianic mood and the development of the play.²⁶ She also considers epinician, a genre which traditionally and socially celebrates great deeds, but the epinician sung by the chorus in Euripides’ Herakles leads to an ironic effect when juxtaposed with Herakles’ butchering of his family. One might in fact align the thrust of this work with the older subject of tragic irony, but played out in a new arena. Here the tragic motif examined is the choral song imitating genres of choral lyric placed contrapuntally to the development of the tragedy. Another aspect of her work is the alignment of gender in choral song and the heroine of the play. Thus, partheneia and hymenals for female leads and epinikia and paians for men. The choral lyrics here are not always, it seems, placed contrapuntally to the plot; if I understand her correctly, the third stasimon of Euripides’ Helen, a notoriously difficult piece, can be seen as a kind of partheneion in that Demeter must become reconciled to her daughter’s gender (i.e., sexuality), which is achieved by her taking on the character of Oreia Mater and “receiving” Aphrodite’s gift. It is not surprising that many choruses in tragedy are cast in the mold of existing models of choral lyric; Swift’s book takes up this motif and, not contenting herself with identifying types of choral song, she asks how these contribute to audience reception by bringing with them generic expectations.

      Thus new research has turned the microscope on the social and historical background of choral lyric (Kowalzig), the tiered structure of performance (Lozynski), and the reception of lyric genres in Attic tragedy (Swift). Turning now to some new or less well-known texts we may begin with the magnificent new series of Sapphic fragments which have come to light, even if partly under questionable circumstances.²⁷ The poems which have been rediscovered are not purely religious but they contain religion, and this, after all, is typical of much of cult lyric: the poems often contain a religious element, vital to the composition of the whole, and yet not dominating it.

      New Discoveries of Sappho

The so-called “Old Age Poem” shows the poet lamenting her old age, although there is no overt indication that the subject is a female, like Sappho herself.²⁸ One could read it as a general indictment of old age. The poem opens on a religious, if conventional, note: the children (probably a fictional girl chorus) are to “employ the fine gifts of the violet-bosomed Muses and the fine-voiced tortoise-shell which loves song.”²⁹ Note that the “song-loving tortoise-shell” evokes a well-known myth here: how Hermes found the “original” tortoise, eviscerated it, and turned its shell into an instrument which “loved song.”³⁰ The opening has evoked both the Muses with a particularly feminine epithet (ἰοκόλπων), and Hermes who turned the tortoise to music. Then the poem progresses, listing the unwelcome attributes of advancing age: wrinkled skin, stiff joints, gray hair, depression. All these things, the text says, “I lament much. But what can I do?” (τὰ ‹μὲν› στεναχίσδω θαμέως· ἀλλὰ τί κεν ποείην;). A gnōmē follows, then the poem suddenly plunges into myth: “they say Dawn of the rosy arms, <overcome> by Love, carried Tithonus off to the ends of the earth, since he was beautiful and young, but nevertheless grey old age overcame him in time, he who was married to an immortal wife.” Is myth religion? Intuitively we will probably say yes.³¹ The second but last word indicates that a religious dimension is implied: Tithonos aged like a mortal; but his wife and captor, Eos, was immortal. Hence the whole poem suddenly acquires a religious dimension. Everything Sappho has said about advancing old age should be set in relation to immortality. It is not just that mortals age: we are mortals, unlike Eos, who was taken in by Tithonos’ beautiful youth.³² Thus the poem begins with the Muses and ends with Eos; between these immortal brackets humans enjoy—or endure—their life span, their youthful beauty close to divinity at first, but withering unpleasantly and inevitably with the passing of time (χρόνωι). Thus the Greek belief in gods and men frames this poem. Perhaps not a difficult or complicated structure, but nevertheless vital to the full message, to use an unfashionable word.

      The new “Brothers Poem” is framed with a similar, but overt, contrast between mortal and immortal.³³ We are not quite sure what the context is, as the first stanza is mostly missing. The speaking voice is not identified, and the addressee is also left open. I am tempted to think Sappho left these parameters deliberately undetermined: the poem is, to an extent, open-ended. The speaker admonishes an addressee that she is “always going on about Charaxos returning with a full

Скачать книгу