Literature and Arts c-14
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hieros ‘sacred, holy’ This word cordons off a space that is reserved for the gods. Temples and their precincts for example are sacred to a specific god. Certain kinds of ritual action often take place in sacred space, and other kinds of action is forbidden. In the beginning of the Oedipus at Colonus, the townspeople of Colonus are upset that Odysseus treads on a grove that is sacred to Poseidon and Prometheus and the founding hero Colonus: All that I myself know, you will hear and learn. This whole place is sacred [hieros]; 55 august Poseidon holds it, and in it lives the fire-bearing god, the Titan Prometheus. But as for the spot on which you tread, it is called the Bronze Threshold of this land, the Staff of Athens. And the neighboring fields claim Colonus, the horse-rider, for their ancient ruler; 60 and all the people bear his name in common as their own. Such, you see, xenos, are these haunts. They receive their tîmê not through story, but rather through our living with them. hubris ‘outrage’ (etc.) vs. dikê ‘justice’ (long-range), ‘judgment’ (short-range) The three categories of hubris: (1) human, e.g. Antinoos, (2) animal, (3) plant (undergrowth or overgrowth, such as excessive wood / leaf production). [Metaphors of dikê: (1) straight line and (2) thriving cultivation = cultivated field / garden / orchard / grove / vineyard / etc.] Hubris is the opposite of dikê, that is, (1) crooked line and (2) failing cultivation = desert or overgrowth. In epic, heroes are characterized by their hubris. Achilles is compared to a beautiful plant that flourishes in a garden, but too quickly. Likewise Achilles commits acts of atrocious violence that would have been morally repugnant to the ancient Greek song culture. But after death, in cult, heroes are proponants of justice, prosperity, and fertility. They correct in death what went wrong in life. kakos ‘bad, evil, base, worthless, ignoble’; kakotês ‘state of being kakos; debasement’ Kakos is the polar opposite of agathos (and its superlative form aristos). Compare the following formulation from Euripides’ Herakles. Throughout the first half of this play, King Lykos is said to be kakos: Yet I consider you wise [sophos] in this one thing that, being the coward [kakos] you are, you fear the offspring of the brave [aristos]. kerdos, pl. kerdea ‘gain, profit; desire for gain; craft employed for gain; craftiness’ kharis, pl. kharites ‘reciprocity, give-and-take, reciprocal relationship; initiation of reciprocal relationship; the pleasure or beauty derived from reciprocity, from a reciprocal relationship; gratification; grace, gracefulness; favor, favorableness’ The concept of kharis can be illustrated by the following excerpt from Philostratus’ Heroikos [this second-century CE text is not one of the readings for our course]. In it a vine-dresser in the sanctuary of the hero Protesilaos describes his relationship with the hero to a visiting Phoenician: Phoenician: But, vinedresser, do you live a reflective way of life? Vinedresser: Yes, indeed, with the handsome Protesilaos. Phoenician: What connection is there between you and Protesilaos, if you mean the man from Thessaly? Vinedresser: I do mean that man, the husband of Laodameia, for he delights in hearing this epithet. Phoenician: But what, indeed, does he do here? Vinedresser: He lives [zêi] here, and we farm [geôrgoumen] together... Vinedresser: Let us enter the vineyard, Phoenician. For you may even discover in it something to give cheer [euphrosunê] to you. Phoenician: Let us enter, for I suppose a pleasant scent [breath] comes from the plants. Vinedresser: What do you mean? Pleasant? It is divine! The blossoms of the uncultivated trees are fragrant, as are the fruits of those cultivated. If you ever come upon a cultivated plant with fragrant blossoms, pluck rather the leaves, since the sweet scent comes from them. Phoenician: How diverse [poikilê] is the beauty [hôra] of your property, and how lush have the clusters of grapes grown! How well-arranged are all the trees, and how divine is the fragrance of the place! Indeed, I think that the walkways [dromoi] which you have left untilled are pleasing, but, vinedresser, you seem to me to live luxuriously since you use so much uncultivated land... Vinedresser: At first, we spent our life in a city, and we were provided with teachers and studied. But my affairs were really in a bad way because the farming was left to slaves, and they did not bring anything back to us. Hence it was necessary to take loans with the field as security and to go hungry. And yes, on arriving, I tried to make Protesilaos my advisor, but he remained silent, since he was justifiably angry at me because, having left him, I lived in a city. But when I persisted and said that I would die if neglected, he said, “Change your dress.” On that day, I heard this advice but did nothing; afterwards, examining it closely, I understood that he was commanding me to change my way of life. From that point on, after I was suitably dressed in a leather jacket, carrying a hoe, and no longer knew my way to town, Protesilaos made everything in the field grow luxuriously for me. Whenever a sheep, a beehive, or a tree became diseased, I consulted Protesilaos as a physician. Since I spend time with him and devote myself to the land, I am becoming more skilled than I used to be, because he excels in wisdom.
The chorus of a tragedy plays an intermediary role between the audience and the characters in the play, providing a lens through which the audience can interpret the drama. They reflect and comment on the action in a way that links them to both the characters with whom they interact on the stage and the real people in the audience, for whom they speak. A chorus can also provide different perspectives on the action, and it is often the chorus that conveys the background information crucial for understanding the events of a play. In the Herakles of Euripides, Herakles returns to Thebes just after he has completed his labors and he is at the very peak of his good fortune and fame. As he returns, the chorus sing and dance a choral ode into which the narrative of his labors are compressed. kleos plural klea: glory, fame (especially as conferred by poetry); that which is heard Kleos is the glory a hero receives after death when he is remembered. This remembrance can take many forms: an athletic contest in the hero’s honor (and often at the site of the hero’s tomb); a religious ritual in which the hero’s life is remembered (such as the marriage ritual honoring Hippolytos as described at the end of Euripides’ Hippolytos); a continuing line of descendants (as seen in the case of Anchises in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite); or, significantly in a song culture such as ancient Greece, through the performance of a song that tells the story of the hero’s ordeals, such as the Iliad for Achilles. achilles is seen performing these types of songs in Scroll 9 of the Iliad when Odyseus, Ajax, and Phoinix come to his tent and find him singer klea andrôn ‘the glories of men’. Achilles actually says in the Iliad that he has a choice between this kind of glory and a long but obscure life. He says to his friends: “My mother tells me that there are two ways inw hcih I may meet my end [telos]. If I stay here and fight, I shall not have a return [nostos] alove but my glory [kleos] will be imperishable [‘aphthiton’]; wherea if I go home my name [kleos] will perish, but it will be long before the end [telos] shall take me.” The adjective aphthiton, “imperishable, unwilting” gives the metaphor for kleos of a flower that never wilts or dies but remains forever fresh and fragrant in full bloom; this metaphor can be extended to a young man like Achilles who dies so prematurely. These rituals are a form of compensation for the hero’s death. Because such a death can never be made up for, the even must recur over and over again, on a seasonal or annual basis. For a modern exmplae of a memorial that incorporates the idea of a seasonal recurring remembrance, compare the St. Gaudens memorial on the Boston Common. This memorial was specifically constructed so that on the Summer Solstice, the faces of the black soldiers, who are not as prominent in the composition as their white officer, are lit up and they are highlighted most of all once a year. koros ‘being satiated; being insatiable’ In Hesiod, Pindar, Herodotus, and much of Greek tragedy, there is an idea that too much material prosperity is a dangerous thing. Human run the risk of a precipitous fall whenever they are at their greatest heights of good fortune. Compare the following passages from Aeschylus and Pindar for this tension: Pindar, Pythian 8: This island, this polis of dikê, did not fall away from the Graces [Kharites], connected as it is to the kleos-making achievements [aretê pl.] of the Aiakidai. It has achieved a perfect fame, [25] going back to the very beginnings. It is a subject of song for many, as its nurturing earth sprouts the greatest heroes [hêrôes] in victory-bringing contests and in violent battles. And these things stand out, radiant, for men as well. But I have no time to linger in putting up to view [30] the whole story in its full length, with lyre and pleasurable song, for fear that overindulgence [koros] may come and cause displeasure. No, let my sacred obligation to you get under way right now, my boy, which is speeding straight ahead in front of my feet, and which is the nearest, of all beautiful things, to the here and now, taking flight by way of my craft.
But let there be such wealth as brings no distress, enough to satisfy 380 a sensible man. For riches do not protect the man who in his insatiability [koros] has kicked the mighty altar of Dikê into obscurity. kosmos ‘arrangement, order, law and order, the social order, the universal order’ kosmos can encompass many meanings, inncluding ‘cosmos; constitution; beauty of song’ (also ‘beauty of adornment’). This word is in direct contrast with the key word atê, which conveys what can go wrong in the trajectory of the hero (in the genre of epic) and in the trajectory of society as symbolized by the hero (in the genre of tragedy). The word kosmos conveys what must go right both for the hero and for society as symbolized by the hero. In order to have kosmos, society must have dikê. The genre of epic does not ordinarily use words like kosmos or dikê (in the sense of long-range ‘justice’). The genre of wisdom poetry (as in Hesiod and Theognis) does use them. So also does the genre of tragedy. The historical period of ancient Greece (starting roughly at 600 BCE) is reflected more directly by wisdom poetry and by tragedy than by epic. (The genre of epic screens out references to the perspectives of the historical period.) Wisdom poetry may talk about the ultimate city of dikê and ultimate city of hubris (as we see in the Works and Days of Hesiod), but that is always in terms of prophetic pronouncements about an ultimate future. The “here-and-now” is the Iron Age, with an unpredictable mixture of dikê and hubris. But there are heroes of justice for each city. The city would worship such heroes as lawgivers. Lawgivers or quasi-lawgivers are heroes of dikê on a local level. They are figures who have been mythologized by their respective communities (even though some of them can be reconstructed as historical figures), and they are credited with having created for the community the sum total of all customary law. In most myths of lawmakers, they are represented as creating all the laws on the occasion of some crisis-point in the state. Compare the key word krisis. Here are some lawgivers who are venerated as heroes by various different cities: Sparta: Lycurgus Athens: Solon Megara: Theognis
Over the span of one century, the city of Megara experienced all three forms of government. Note that any of the three forms of government could call itself a kosmos. The poetry of Theognis is a good introduction to tragedy. Nietzsche describes Theognis as the ideal spokesman of Greek nobility. We may think of “nobility” here primarily in moral rather than socioeconomic terms. Theognis’ polis of Megara used to be one of the greatest cities. It was also the mother-polis (= metropolis) of another great city, Byzantium. Theognis 11-14 implies that the Trojan Expedition was launched from Megara. Here we come to one of the most crucial definitions of the medium of song in the song culture of the ancient Greeks. The context is this: the Muses have just arrived at the wedding of Kadmos, who was considered the prototypical founding hero of the city of Thebes, which was considered the mother-polis (= metropolis). They are quoted as singing the following mystical formula: “whatever is beautiful is philon” - Theognis lines 15-18. In the “code” of this formula, we see encoded the concept of kosmos as simultaneously “universe” and “song” and “constitution.” To appreciate more the idea of kosmos as a “constitution,” as a corpus of customary laws that were created for a community by a culture hero, read about the kosmos of Lycurgus of Sparta in Herodotus. The lawgiver as culture hero is an exponent of dikê. Just as dikê is in synchrony with seasonality, with the smooth working of the kosmos as cosmos, so also the ideals of the culture hero, even though that alienates him from the ambiguous world of the present, of the here-and-now. “I am not able to please all,” declares Theognis at line 24, just as Zeus cannot please all when he operates the cosmos with his weather. Similarly Solon: “I cannot please all.” Let us end by considering the agenda of the song in kosmos. Its “ideology” is this: the beauty of song is both the cause and the effect of social order. That is the essence of kosmos. According to this ideology, song encompasses all social agenda, including the whole range of human emotions (love, hate, grief, anger, fear, pity, and so on). The genre of tragedy, as we will see, aims at kosmos by exploring all these agenda in heroic terms. Looking beyond ancient Greece, we may compare the genre of Classical opera. Mozart’s Queen of the Night aria in The Magic Flute is a splendid example of the cultural impetus to make “kosmos” a reality.
Compare the word krisis ‘judgment, crisis’, abstract noun derived from krinô ‘judge, distinguish, make distinctions’. Note also:
The ability to sort out poetic “truth” from “lies” is a central requirement of both the epic poet and and an epic hero like Odysseus. We can think of Penelope’s dream in Odyssey 19 as a critical test for both the poet and hero. Penelope must sort out whether or not her dream about the geese is one of the true or false variety. Odysseus likewise must use his critical skills to read Penelope’s agenda and interpret her ainos correctly. Finally, the epic poet must choose an ending to Odysseus’ tale. Will Odysseus make the right judgements as he assesses the loyalty of his philoi in Ithaka, or will he trust in a false friend and fail in his nostos? Will the poet tell the “true” story, or will he get it wrong and tell pseudea (lies)? mantis ‘seer, prophet’ Greek heroes were often believed to have prophetic powers after death. Teiresias is a hero who has prophetic powers even while still alive (in Greek literature such as the Oedipus Tyrannus). He warns Oedipus about his origin and the murder of his father, but Teiresias is harshly rebuked by him. Teiresias is closely associated with god Apollo, with whom Oedipus can be seen to have an antagonistic relationship. As Oedipus gets closer to death in the Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus’ own prophetic powers increase. mênis ‘supernatural anger’ There are three basic categories of ANGER that heroes can experience in Homeric and dramatic poetry: A) mênis - an emotion so powerful that it becomes coextensive with the combined forces of nature in the cosmos, so that the hero’s anger becomes a cosmic sanction: see Leonard Muellner, The Anger of Achilles: Mênis in Greek Epic (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1996). B) kholos - an open-ended chemical chain-reaction; it can be visualized as yellow bile or venom; since Hera nursed Thetis who nursed Achilles, the venom of Hera is already flowing in the veins of Achilles even before he ever has his quarrel with Agamemnon: see Joan V. O’Brien, The Transformation of Hera: A Study of Ritual, Hero, and the Goddess in the Iliad (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), especially ch. 4 (“Hera’s Iliadic Venom”). C) kotos - a time-bomb that ticks away until it explodes at exactly the right moment in the plot of the narrative, which is coextensive with the plotting of the angry hero who is nursing this emotion for its well-timed explosion as a theatrical climax for all to see and to sing about forever. The most celebrated kotos scene in Greek literature is the killing of the suitors by Odysseus in the Odyssey. In the Iliad, the most important of these is mênis: see focus passage Iliad I 1ff: “Sing, O goddess, the anger [mênis] of Achilles son of Peleus, which brought countless pains [algos pl.] upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul [psukhê] did it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs [5] and birds, and the Will of Zeus was fulfilled.” Another important kind of heroic anger in the Iliad is kholos. As a prime example, I cite Iliad I 188ff: The son of Peleus [= Achilles] felt grief [akhos], and his heart within his shaggy breast was divided [190] whether to draw his sword, push the others aside, and kill the son of Atreus [= Agamemnon], or to restrain himself and check his anger [kholos]. While he was thus of two minds, and was drawing his mighty sword from its scabbard, Athena came down [200] from the sky (for Hera had sent her in the love she bore for them both), and seized the son of Peleus by his golden hair, visible to him alone, for of the others no man could see her. Notice that the akhos ‘grief’ of Achilles here instantly metastasizes into kholos ‘anger’. (Compare the reaction of Meleager in Iliad IX, when he hears the lament of his wife Kleopatra over the imagined destruction of their city. It is first grief and then anger.) So far we have examined the contexts in which two words for ‘anger’ are different from each other. But there are also contexts where they overlap dramatically. The other kind of heroic anger is kotos - a time-bomb that ticks away until it explodes at exactly the right moment in the plot of the narrative, which is coextensive with the plotting of the angry hero who is nursing this emotion for its well-timed explosion as a theatrical climax for all to see and to sing about forever. In the Iliad, Achilles experiences all three variations on the theme of anger. Mênis is associated above all with Zeus in the Iliad. But Apollo conceives mênis in Iliad I when his priest Chryseis is mistreated by Agamemnon, and sends a plague upon the Achaeans. The only other mortal that is said to have mênis in the Iliad is Aeneas. It is likely that the Iliad is alluding to an epic song tradition about the mênis of Aeneas. [See G. Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans, p. 73 note 2, and pp. 265-266.] menos power, life-force, activation (divinely infused into cosmic forces, like fire and wind, or into heroes); a partial synonym of thûmos (see entry); a partial synonym of mênis (see entry). The joining of menos and thûmos is seen in the Iliad in Achilles’ threatening words to Hektor (Iliad 22.346-347): I wish that somehow my menos and thûmos impelled me to slice you up and eat your meat raw, for the things you did. Both words there point to an inner working, a center of feeling or motivation in the human psyche.
Zeus the Father orders that I have splendid Persephone brought back up to light from Erebos, back to him and his company, so that her mother may see her with her own eyes and let go of her wrath and terrible mênis against the immortals. For she [Demeter] is performing a mighty deed, to destroy [root phthi-] the tribes of earth-born humans, causing them to be without menos, by hiding the Seed underground--and she is destroying [root phthi-] the tîmai of the immortal gods. She has a terrible anger, and she refuses to keep company with the gods. Instead, far removed, she is seated inside a temple fragrant with incense. She has taken charge of the rocky citadel of Eleusis. Demeter’s mênis, a cosmic anger, has cosmic consequences for the menos, the power to sustain life, for mortals. Yüklə 2,12 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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