Papers by MAGGEL AVGI ANNA
ΘΕΜΑΤΑ ΛΟΓΟΤΕΧΝΙΑΣ, 28 , 2005
THE ATHENS REVIEW OF BOOKS, 128, MAY, 2021
ΤΟ ΔΕΝΤΡΟ, 181-182,, 2011
ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΗ, Τετραμηνιαίο Περιοδικό της Τέχνης της Ποίησης, 2017
Centre for odyssean studies. The Upper and The Under World in homeric and archaic epic. Proceedings of the 13th International Symposium on the Odyssey. Ithaca, August 25-29, 2017 Editors Μenelaos Christopoulos Machi Paϊzi-Apostolopoulou, 2020
The Odyssey is the story of a wanderer, of an explorer ‘who saw many men’s cities and he discover... more The Odyssey is the story of a wanderer, of an explorer ‘who saw many men’s cities and he discovered many men’s minds.’ Odysseus travels backwards and forwards in place and time telling his adventures and his painful past in his journey from Troy to various provinces, from Calypso’s fairy Ogygia to the land of the Phaiakians, from the mythical Underworld to Ithaca itself. In Odyssey V the sea hurls Odysseus against the rocks and then tears him away, ripping the skin from his hands as he tries to grasp the rocks. The shipwrecked hero is washed up on the coast of Phaiacia, where he finds shelter in a bed of fallen leaves (Odyssey V 488-491). This is the place where Nausica discovers him alone and exhausted.
In his journey to the Underworld (Od. XI) Odysseus sees the shade of his mother Anticleia who warns him that Penelope is still waiting for him, but she, his mother, could not endure her son’s loss and she killed herself. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is foreshadowed by the image of the couple’s bed carved by Odysseus himself from an olive tree (Od. XXIII) and the recognition scene between Laertes and his son (XXIV).
Much of Micheal Longley’s response to Homer is based on these episodes in the Odyssey focusing on the themes of Odysseus’ sense of vulnerability and experiences, his homecoming, his relationship with epic figures. The Irish poet who read Classics at the Trinity College Dublin, reworks the Homeric scenes of turbulence and suffering making ‘lyric, not epic, a major medium for Homer reception’.
The present paper intends to explore the Homeric resonances from Odyssey in the light of the Homeric poems of the poet Michael Longley who focuses on the heroic figure of Odysseus and his vulnerable journey in time and space. From Homer’s epic to Irish contemporary poetry, Michael Longley’s poetic affiliation with Homer is not only central to his work but it also ‘allows the reader to hear the ancient text without previous knowledge of it’.
ΈΡΚΥΝΑ Τεύχος 18ο, 2020 Πρακτικά Συνεδρίου (Β΄ Μέρος) (Δημοσίευση εργασιών μετά από κρίση των μελών της Επιστημονικής Επιτροπής) , 2020
Η αντίληψή μας για τον ανθρωπισμό και την κλασικότητα που χαρακτηρίζουν τα παραδεδομένα κείμενα τ... more Η αντίληψή μας για τον ανθρωπισμό και την κλασικότητα που χαρακτηρίζουν τα παραδεδομένα κείμενα του παρελθόντος, υπόκειται σε μια διαρκή διαδικασία μετάλλαξης, η οποία καθορίζεται από την πρόσληψη της αρχαιότητας σε κάθε εποχή. Η παρούσα εισήγηση εστιάζει στην επίδραση αυτού του μετασχηματισμού στις έννοιες του ανθρώπινου και του κλασικού στοιχείου σε σχέση με τα Αρχαία Ελληνικά στην σύγχρονη εκπαίδευση, και προσεγγίζει τα ακόλουθα ερωτήματα: Μπορούμε να ισχυριστούμε ότι τα Αρχαία Ελληνικά χρειάζονται μια αναπροσαρμογή του Κανόνα των αρχαίων κειμένων και συγγραφέων στο Πρόγραμμα Σπουδών του 21ου αιώνα; Οι ιδέες της διαχρονικότητας, της εθνικής κληρονομιάς και του ανθρωποκεντρισμού στο Πρόγραμμα Σπουδών των Αρχαίων Ελληνικών συμβαδίζουν με την πρόσληψη της αρχαιότητας μέσα από την διαρκή ανακάλυψη των έργων του παρελθόντος; Η εισήγηση διερευνά την υπόθεση ότι η αποδέσμευση του κλασικού στοιχείου από ιδεολογικές και χρηστικές αναφορές θα μπορούσε να προσδώσει στα αρχαία κείμενα μια ώθηση επαναπροσδιορισμού της κλασικής παιδείας στο σύγχρονο εκπαιδευτικό σύστημα. Ένας ‘Νέος Ουμανισμός’ στην εκπαίδευση, όπου η ιστορικότητα συνδιαλέγεται με τον μοντερνισμό, θα μπορούσε να αναδείξει τα ‘Σύγχρονα’ Αρχαία στην εξέλιξη του ανθρωπιστικού curriculum προς μια παιδαγωγική και επιστημονική δομή ανοικτή σε όλους.
Λέξεις κλειδιά: ανθρωπιστικό curriculum, Κλασικός Κανόνας, κλασική παιδεία, Ουμανισμός, κλασικότητα, αρχαία ελληνική γλώσσα, μετάφραση.
Τα Ποιητικά, Τριμηνιαίο Περιοδικό Ποίησης, https://tapoiitika.wordpress.com, 2018
John Malcolm Brinnin (1916-1998)
«Είμαι τόσο γνωστός όσο αξίζω να είμαι»
―Εισαγωγή-Επιλογή-Μετάφ... more John Malcolm Brinnin (1916-1998)
«Είμαι τόσο γνωστός όσο αξίζω να είμαι»
―Εισαγωγή-Επιλογή-Μετάφραση: Αυγή-Άννα Μάγγελ―
Ο John Malcolm Brinnin γεννήθηκε στις 13 Σεπτεμβρίου 1916 στο Χάλιφαξ της Νέας Σκοτίας στον Καναδά και πέθανε στις 25 Ιουνίου 1998 στο Key West της Φλόριδα στην Αμερική. Έζησε στην πόλη Ντητρόιτ του Μίσιγκαν και δίδαξε λογοτεχνία στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Βοστώνης, του Κοννέκτικατ και στο Harvard. Το 1955, η Poetry Society της Νέας Υόρκης απένειμε στον Brinnin το Χρυσό Μετάλλιο για Διακεκριμένη Υπηρεσία στην Ποίηση, και το 1963, μετά την έκδοση της συλλογής του Selected Poems, το Πανεπιστήμιο Μίσιγκαν του απένειμε το Μετάλλιο της Εκατονταετηρίδας για Διάκριση στη Λογοτεχνία. Λίγο αργότερα, ο Brinnin εκλέχτηκε μέλος στην Αμερικανική Ακαδημία Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών.
In the study of Greek drama the shift of attention from speech to silence seems to follow a theor... more In the study of Greek drama the shift of attention from speech to silence seems to follow a theoretical approach borrowed from the semiotics of modern theatre. 1 It is challenging to treat silence as a distinct subject particularly because ancient Greek drama has been associated with the dominance of speech and word in the plays. To quite a large extent, silence in ancient drama is interwoven in the alternations of speakers and the shifts of dialogue. The very close contact and relationship between speech and silence makes it more difficult to explore the meaning of silence in the network where speakers and silent persons are in constant interaction. 2 While speaking actors are interacting with silent persons, both parties seem to contribute to the texture of the dialogue with their verbal and non-verbal conduct. Non-verbal behavior and any action which aligns with a visual rather than an aural context should be considered in relation to silence. Moreover, silent action refers to a number of typical activities in the plays such as the movement of a non-speaking person, the silent entrances and exits of the characters, the composition of a silent tableau, the marching of a silent procession, a silent prayer or a silent supplication, silent gestures, the silent presence of an actor.
Α variety of major and minor figures occupy the stage of Greek drama in a way that performers who... more Α variety of major and minor figures occupy the stage of Greek drama in a way that performers who contribute to the staging of a play are not virtually confined to the limited number of the three actors. This statement does not imply that the notorious " three-actor rule " of the antiquity can be contended with an enlarged theory which would advocate an unlimited cast of actors. Such an idea belongs to a modem perception of theatre-making where a different actor corresponds to each role so that a free number of actors as well as any availability in the combination of performers is allowed in a modern theatrical production. Accordingly, the conventional assumption of the use of the three actors in the Greek theatre is a factor which qualifies significantly the shaping of the dramatic dialogue and the staging of the play. However, beyond this fundamental principle of Greek theatre, a wider range of performers were needed to act on the ancient Greek stage so that drama extended the possibilities of speech and action in the dialogical scenes of a theatrical production. At this point, I would suggest that mute performers in tragedies may also be considered as acting performers who operate in different levels of dramatic importance and may produce a considerable amount of impact in the shaping of the dialogue by their non-speaking presence. The present paper will discuss the shaping of the dramatic dialogue with particular reference to the combinations of the dialogical encounters between speaking actors, while taking into consideration that non speaking parts have always been an important issue in the staging of the Greek plays. In this respect, the following argument owes a great deal to the theoretical analysis of dramatic dialogue inferred by Andrew K. Kennedy, who contends that " a study of dialogue as verbal interaction-both existential and stylistic-can only benefit from any study of the non-verbal elements of drama which illuminates the total sign system of the theatre. " ' The opening scenes in Sophocles' tragedies will be used as an example in order to illustrate the function of the dialogue between actors with different roles.2 These references aim at the elaboration of the idea that there can be observed a design of dramatic dialogue in Greek drama, which bears affinities with other theatrical genres, but its structure is also highly conventional in the patterning of the dialogical encounters on the ancient Greek stage. Structural features and pecularities of dramatic dialogue Before I proceed further with the dialogical encounters of the acting persons on the Greek stage, it would be appropriate to make some preliminary remarks for the structure of dialogue in its theatrical context. This reference is not virtually confined to the dramatic dialogue in the theatre of antiquity, but it might encompass the dialogical pattern of plays of different periods and dramatic genre.3
HORHAN PAMUK 'MONSIEUR FLAUBERT, C' EST MOI!: ΟΡΧΑΝ ΠΑΜΟΥΚ 'Ο ΦΛΩΜΠΕΡ ΕΙΜΑΙ ΕΓΩ!'
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ODYSSEUS’ FRAGILE JOURNEY THROUGH TIME:
AN EPIC APPROACH FROM HOMER TO MICHAE... more AVGI-ANNA MAGGEL
ODYSSEUS’ FRAGILE JOURNEY THROUGH TIME:
AN EPIC APPROACH FROM HOMER TO MICHAEL LONGLEY.
The Odyssey is the story of a wanderer, of an explorer ‘who saw many men’s cities and he discovered many men’s minds.’ Odysseus travels backwards and forwards in place and time telling his adventures and his painful past in his journey from Troy to various provinces, from Calypso’s fairy Ogygia to the land of the Phaiakians, from the mythical Underworld to Ithaca itself. In Odyssey V the sea hurls Odysseus against the rocks and then tears him away, ripping the skin from his hands as he tries to grasp the rocks. The shipwrecked hero is washed up on the coast of Phaiacia, where he finds shelter in a bed of fallen leaves (Odyssey V 488-491). This is the place where Nausica discovers him alone and exhausted.
In his journey to the Underworld (Od. XI) Odysseus sees the shade of his mother Anticleia who warns him that Penelope is still waiting for him, but she, his mother, could not endure her son’s loss and she killed herself. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is foreshadowed by the image of the couple’s bed carved by Odysseus himself from an olive tree (Od. XXIII) and the recognition scene between Laertes and his son (XXIV).
Much of Micheal Longley’s response to Homer is based on these episodes in the Odyssey focusing on the themes of Odysseus’ sense of vulnerability and experiences, his homecoming, his relationship with epic figures. The Irish poet who read Classics at the Trinity College Dublin, reworks the Homeric scenes of turbulence and suffering making ‘lyric, not epic, a major medium for Homer reception’.
The present paper intends to explore the Homeric resonances from Odyssey in the light of the Homeric poems of the poet Michael Longley who focuses on the heroic figure of Odysseus and his vulnerable journey in time and space. From Homer’s epic to Irish contemporary poetry, Michael Longley’s poetic affiliation with Homer is not only central to his work but it also ‘allows the reader to hear the ancient text without previous knowledge of it’.
European Cultural Centre of Delphi, Proceedings , 2007
International Conference by MAGGEL AVGI ANNA
WISE MEN AND POETS IN ARCHAIC GREECE: PITTACUS AND ALCAEUS IN THE POLITICS OF MYTILENE
The 7th a... more WISE MEN AND POETS IN ARCHAIC GREECE: PITTACUS AND ALCAEUS IN THE POLITICS OF MYTILENE
The 7th and the 6th centuries BCE was an era of political change all over Archaic Greece. The aristocratic regime of the cities was challenged by inner conflict between aristocratic families or by individuals who were supported by the people of the city against their rulers. Usually, the tyrants benefited by a crisis in the Greek society and convinced the people that the traditional aristocracy was not able to defend their rights. In this case, the ‘tyrant’ positioned himself in opposition to the aristocracy and endeavored to replace them in their constitutional functions. Some ‘tyrants’ (like the Cypselids of Corinth or Polycrates of Samos) usurped power and imposed an arbitrative governance that justified their negative picture that the Classical period developed for tyranny in Greece. In general, the diversified meaning of a ‘tyrant’ is attributed to a single man who won the trust of the demos and ruled the city with unrestricted power. But their sophisticated aspect seems to be that a number of tyrants like Pittacus and Solon corresponded to the tyrannos/sophos profile who managed to obtain a permanent position in the list of the Seven Wise Men and a positive appraisal for their practical efficiency in politics. On the other side, Alcaeus, the poet of Lesbos, belonged to the elite class who contributed with his invectives against the bad fame of the tyrant Pittacos in Mytilene.
The present paper intends to explore the political knowledge in the poetry of Alcaeus in relation to the practical success of his opponent statesman Pittacus and to discuss the quality of wisdom which is attributed to the tyrant rather than the poet. In the Aeolic city of Mytilene the struggle between the aristocratic Penthilids and the Cleanactids eventually led to the rise of tyranny. The testimony of Alcaeus is valuable because he wrote several political poems renouncing the tyrant Melanchrus, who was overthrown by Pittacus and Alcaeus’ brothers, and the tyrant Myrsilus with whom Pittacus allied and betrayed his allegiance with Alcaeus. The poet was twice exiled first after the failure of his plot against Myrsilos, and then when Pittacus chose to ally with Myrsilus. When Myrsilus died, the citizens of Lesbos entrusted Pittacus with despotic power for the purpose of protecting them against the exiled nobles at the head of whom were Alcaeus and his brother Antimenidas.
In historical terms it is doubtful whether Pittacus deserved so many reproaches against him written in the form of the monodic odes of Alcaeus. Was Alcaeus right to attack Pittacus as a tyrant who usurped power to the detriment of the citizens or his reproaches were not reflecting the real state of politics in Lesbos? And was Pittacus a typical tyrant (Alcaeus Z 24, Page), a monarch (Strabo xiii.617), a legislator like Solon of Athens, or a clever man who possessed the knowledge to rule efficiently his city and the wisdom to retire from power when he accomplished his duty? The picture of Pittacus that is transmitted by Alcaeus’ poetry blurs the political action of Pittacus who later was included in the list of the Seven Sages of the Archaic Greece (Plato Prot. 343c). Pittacus, like Solon in Athens, gained the reputation of a wise man and his wisdom is attested by Herodotus (1.72.2) and Plutarch who includes both rulers in the Dinner of the Seven Sages. The popular election of Pittacus does not presuppose the ‘struggle of the poor against the rich, or of the commons against the nobility’ but it might allude to the fact that the populace recognized that Pittacus ‘possessed the qualities of statesmanship’ which granted him the labeling of ‘a wise man and successful governor’ (D.L.Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, 1979, p.176). At an earlier time, Pittacus in alliance with Alcaeus led the Mytileneans in a successful war for Sigeum against the Athenians, and the Mytileneans rewarded him for his services with the supreme power in the city (Diog. i.74). In the same war, Alcaeus dropped his arms and fled, and the Athenians hung them up in the temple of Athena, while in single combat Pittacus killed Phrynon, the Olympic victor sent by the Athenians (428V(a) Str.13.1.38, (b)Hdt.5.94-95).
According to Aristotle, Pittacus was a maker of laws and not a reformer of the constitutions (νόμων δημιουργός, ἀλλ’ οὐ πολιτείας, Ar. Pol. 1274b 18). He was elected by the people in the political position of aisymnetes to suppress the power of the aristocrats and make reforms to the laws in more equality (Arist. Pol.,1285a 30ff). It is unlikely that the people of Mytilene perceived Pittacus as a tyrant or regretted having made him aisymnetes. Alcaeus wrote against him like a man who feels betrayed and angered because Pittacus allied with his opponent Myrsilus breaking his oaths and deserting his comprades, ‘a cardinal offense in the scheme of Homeric values’ (Donlan, W. The Aristocratic Ideal and Selected Papers, 1999, p. 62, cf. G1, D12 Page, and MacGlew J.F. Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece, 1993, p.96). He labels Pittacus a ‘tyrant’ (X9, 1-9 Page, cf. Z 24 Page), a ‘low-born’ (κακοπατρίδας Ζ 24) and he warns the citizens that this man ‘will soon turn the city upside down’ (H 2 Page). However, the Mytileneans did not ‘listen’ to the poems of Alcaeus who exhorted them to overthrow the tyrant and they licensed him to govern for ten years from 590 to 580 BC. Pittacus laid down power leaving the city in peace and order (Diog. Laert. i.75). Alcaeus, the lyric poet, failed to be a political person and he was all the time on the loosers’ side.
Though Pittacus is a lesser known lawgiver, he can be compared to Solon the lawgiver of Athens who was a moderate politician and his reforms paved the way to democracy. But unlike Solon who wrote his political beliefs in poetry and he remained famous for his elegies, Pittacus was known for his laconic apothegms in the mannerism of utterances of the Seven Sages. At that time of crisis, Pittacus demonstrated a leadership of political pragmatism over the idealism which conveyed the aristocratic values of the noble families to which Alcaeus himself belonged. It seems that Pittacus in the Aeolic Mytilene had the reputation of a wise politician, a σοφός, because he acted as a mediator to stabilize the political crisis of the city in a period when the progress from aristocracy to democracy experienced similar upheavals in the city-states of the Archaic world.
In the place of the wisdom of the poets like Homer or Hesiod who spoke by divine revelation, in the ‘Age of Tyrants’ the wisdom of worldly expertise was ‘performed’ by different kinds of wise men. These wise men, most of Asia Minor, possessed different skills from carpenters and engineers to statesmen including famous tyrants, or eventually they were intellectual thinkers like Thales of Miletus who also was one of the Seven Sages for his practical wisdom. It is assumed that the wise men of the Archaic Greece were a disparate group of individuals who ‘operated in a social and political arena in which knowledge was demonstrated by a performer to an audience in a public or a private gathering’ (Nightingale A.W. in (ed.) Taplin O., Literature in Greek and Roman Worlds, 2000, p.160). Their wisdom derives from the combination of practical action and utterances in maxims in the right time (καιρός), and they are different from the early ‘philosophical’ thinkers like Xenophanes, Parmenides or Embedokles who wrote hexameter poetry rivaling Homer and Hesiod. Instead, the genres of Greek poetry –recited or sung- were related to performance contexts like a symposium or a public event in the city. Likewise, the songs of Alcaeus were performed in the small sympotic group of his aristocratic companions in order to unite them against their political enemies and shape the politics for their own club (cp. ‘the poetry of hetaireia’, Kurke L.,’The Strangeness of ‘song culture’: Archaic Greek poetry’, in Taplin O. as above, p. 64 and 75).
Fränkel suggests that ‘men should have awarded the garland of σοφία at that time to the politician rather than the poet’. He thinks that ‘the individual speaker of poetry contributed to its own downfall because he was taking his subject matter from everyday life.’ (Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy, 1975, p. 239). If this is true how we can account for the popularity of Alcaeus’ songs during the classical period, and even more, the attempts of the Lesbians to preserve some of his songs in writing too? The reflections of Alcaeus’ poetry should not probably be restricted in the social and political context of his time but rather to be extended ‘on the vicissitudes of political life in the city-state for the audiences of the fifth century Greece’ (cf. Yatromanolakis D., ‘Alcaeus and Sappho’, in Budelmann F. Greek Lyric, 2009, p. 214).
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Papers by MAGGEL AVGI ANNA
In his journey to the Underworld (Od. XI) Odysseus sees the shade of his mother Anticleia who warns him that Penelope is still waiting for him, but she, his mother, could not endure her son’s loss and she killed herself. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is foreshadowed by the image of the couple’s bed carved by Odysseus himself from an olive tree (Od. XXIII) and the recognition scene between Laertes and his son (XXIV).
Much of Micheal Longley’s response to Homer is based on these episodes in the Odyssey focusing on the themes of Odysseus’ sense of vulnerability and experiences, his homecoming, his relationship with epic figures. The Irish poet who read Classics at the Trinity College Dublin, reworks the Homeric scenes of turbulence and suffering making ‘lyric, not epic, a major medium for Homer reception’.
The present paper intends to explore the Homeric resonances from Odyssey in the light of the Homeric poems of the poet Michael Longley who focuses on the heroic figure of Odysseus and his vulnerable journey in time and space. From Homer’s epic to Irish contemporary poetry, Michael Longley’s poetic affiliation with Homer is not only central to his work but it also ‘allows the reader to hear the ancient text without previous knowledge of it’.
Λέξεις κλειδιά: ανθρωπιστικό curriculum, Κλασικός Κανόνας, κλασική παιδεία, Ουμανισμός, κλασικότητα, αρχαία ελληνική γλώσσα, μετάφραση.
«Είμαι τόσο γνωστός όσο αξίζω να είμαι»
―Εισαγωγή-Επιλογή-Μετάφραση: Αυγή-Άννα Μάγγελ―
Ο John Malcolm Brinnin γεννήθηκε στις 13 Σεπτεμβρίου 1916 στο Χάλιφαξ της Νέας Σκοτίας στον Καναδά και πέθανε στις 25 Ιουνίου 1998 στο Key West της Φλόριδα στην Αμερική. Έζησε στην πόλη Ντητρόιτ του Μίσιγκαν και δίδαξε λογοτεχνία στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Βοστώνης, του Κοννέκτικατ και στο Harvard. Το 1955, η Poetry Society της Νέας Υόρκης απένειμε στον Brinnin το Χρυσό Μετάλλιο για Διακεκριμένη Υπηρεσία στην Ποίηση, και το 1963, μετά την έκδοση της συλλογής του Selected Poems, το Πανεπιστήμιο Μίσιγκαν του απένειμε το Μετάλλιο της Εκατονταετηρίδας για Διάκριση στη Λογοτεχνία. Λίγο αργότερα, ο Brinnin εκλέχτηκε μέλος στην Αμερικανική Ακαδημία Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών.
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ODYSSEUS’ FRAGILE JOURNEY THROUGH TIME:
AN EPIC APPROACH FROM HOMER TO MICHAEL LONGLEY.
The Odyssey is the story of a wanderer, of an explorer ‘who saw many men’s cities and he discovered many men’s minds.’ Odysseus travels backwards and forwards in place and time telling his adventures and his painful past in his journey from Troy to various provinces, from Calypso’s fairy Ogygia to the land of the Phaiakians, from the mythical Underworld to Ithaca itself. In Odyssey V the sea hurls Odysseus against the rocks and then tears him away, ripping the skin from his hands as he tries to grasp the rocks. The shipwrecked hero is washed up on the coast of Phaiacia, where he finds shelter in a bed of fallen leaves (Odyssey V 488-491). This is the place where Nausica discovers him alone and exhausted.
In his journey to the Underworld (Od. XI) Odysseus sees the shade of his mother Anticleia who warns him that Penelope is still waiting for him, but she, his mother, could not endure her son’s loss and she killed herself. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is foreshadowed by the image of the couple’s bed carved by Odysseus himself from an olive tree (Od. XXIII) and the recognition scene between Laertes and his son (XXIV).
Much of Micheal Longley’s response to Homer is based on these episodes in the Odyssey focusing on the themes of Odysseus’ sense of vulnerability and experiences, his homecoming, his relationship with epic figures. The Irish poet who read Classics at the Trinity College Dublin, reworks the Homeric scenes of turbulence and suffering making ‘lyric, not epic, a major medium for Homer reception’.
The present paper intends to explore the Homeric resonances from Odyssey in the light of the Homeric poems of the poet Michael Longley who focuses on the heroic figure of Odysseus and his vulnerable journey in time and space. From Homer’s epic to Irish contemporary poetry, Michael Longley’s poetic affiliation with Homer is not only central to his work but it also ‘allows the reader to hear the ancient text without previous knowledge of it’.
International Conference by MAGGEL AVGI ANNA
The 7th and the 6th centuries BCE was an era of political change all over Archaic Greece. The aristocratic regime of the cities was challenged by inner conflict between aristocratic families or by individuals who were supported by the people of the city against their rulers. Usually, the tyrants benefited by a crisis in the Greek society and convinced the people that the traditional aristocracy was not able to defend their rights. In this case, the ‘tyrant’ positioned himself in opposition to the aristocracy and endeavored to replace them in their constitutional functions. Some ‘tyrants’ (like the Cypselids of Corinth or Polycrates of Samos) usurped power and imposed an arbitrative governance that justified their negative picture that the Classical period developed for tyranny in Greece. In general, the diversified meaning of a ‘tyrant’ is attributed to a single man who won the trust of the demos and ruled the city with unrestricted power. But their sophisticated aspect seems to be that a number of tyrants like Pittacus and Solon corresponded to the tyrannos/sophos profile who managed to obtain a permanent position in the list of the Seven Wise Men and a positive appraisal for their practical efficiency in politics. On the other side, Alcaeus, the poet of Lesbos, belonged to the elite class who contributed with his invectives against the bad fame of the tyrant Pittacos in Mytilene.
The present paper intends to explore the political knowledge in the poetry of Alcaeus in relation to the practical success of his opponent statesman Pittacus and to discuss the quality of wisdom which is attributed to the tyrant rather than the poet. In the Aeolic city of Mytilene the struggle between the aristocratic Penthilids and the Cleanactids eventually led to the rise of tyranny. The testimony of Alcaeus is valuable because he wrote several political poems renouncing the tyrant Melanchrus, who was overthrown by Pittacus and Alcaeus’ brothers, and the tyrant Myrsilus with whom Pittacus allied and betrayed his allegiance with Alcaeus. The poet was twice exiled first after the failure of his plot against Myrsilos, and then when Pittacus chose to ally with Myrsilus. When Myrsilus died, the citizens of Lesbos entrusted Pittacus with despotic power for the purpose of protecting them against the exiled nobles at the head of whom were Alcaeus and his brother Antimenidas.
In historical terms it is doubtful whether Pittacus deserved so many reproaches against him written in the form of the monodic odes of Alcaeus. Was Alcaeus right to attack Pittacus as a tyrant who usurped power to the detriment of the citizens or his reproaches were not reflecting the real state of politics in Lesbos? And was Pittacus a typical tyrant (Alcaeus Z 24, Page), a monarch (Strabo xiii.617), a legislator like Solon of Athens, or a clever man who possessed the knowledge to rule efficiently his city and the wisdom to retire from power when he accomplished his duty? The picture of Pittacus that is transmitted by Alcaeus’ poetry blurs the political action of Pittacus who later was included in the list of the Seven Sages of the Archaic Greece (Plato Prot. 343c). Pittacus, like Solon in Athens, gained the reputation of a wise man and his wisdom is attested by Herodotus (1.72.2) and Plutarch who includes both rulers in the Dinner of the Seven Sages. The popular election of Pittacus does not presuppose the ‘struggle of the poor against the rich, or of the commons against the nobility’ but it might allude to the fact that the populace recognized that Pittacus ‘possessed the qualities of statesmanship’ which granted him the labeling of ‘a wise man and successful governor’ (D.L.Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, 1979, p.176). At an earlier time, Pittacus in alliance with Alcaeus led the Mytileneans in a successful war for Sigeum against the Athenians, and the Mytileneans rewarded him for his services with the supreme power in the city (Diog. i.74). In the same war, Alcaeus dropped his arms and fled, and the Athenians hung them up in the temple of Athena, while in single combat Pittacus killed Phrynon, the Olympic victor sent by the Athenians (428V(a) Str.13.1.38, (b)Hdt.5.94-95).
According to Aristotle, Pittacus was a maker of laws and not a reformer of the constitutions (νόμων δημιουργός, ἀλλ’ οὐ πολιτείας, Ar. Pol. 1274b 18). He was elected by the people in the political position of aisymnetes to suppress the power of the aristocrats and make reforms to the laws in more equality (Arist. Pol.,1285a 30ff). It is unlikely that the people of Mytilene perceived Pittacus as a tyrant or regretted having made him aisymnetes. Alcaeus wrote against him like a man who feels betrayed and angered because Pittacus allied with his opponent Myrsilus breaking his oaths and deserting his comprades, ‘a cardinal offense in the scheme of Homeric values’ (Donlan, W. The Aristocratic Ideal and Selected Papers, 1999, p. 62, cf. G1, D12 Page, and MacGlew J.F. Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece, 1993, p.96). He labels Pittacus a ‘tyrant’ (X9, 1-9 Page, cf. Z 24 Page), a ‘low-born’ (κακοπατρίδας Ζ 24) and he warns the citizens that this man ‘will soon turn the city upside down’ (H 2 Page). However, the Mytileneans did not ‘listen’ to the poems of Alcaeus who exhorted them to overthrow the tyrant and they licensed him to govern for ten years from 590 to 580 BC. Pittacus laid down power leaving the city in peace and order (Diog. Laert. i.75). Alcaeus, the lyric poet, failed to be a political person and he was all the time on the loosers’ side.
Though Pittacus is a lesser known lawgiver, he can be compared to Solon the lawgiver of Athens who was a moderate politician and his reforms paved the way to democracy. But unlike Solon who wrote his political beliefs in poetry and he remained famous for his elegies, Pittacus was known for his laconic apothegms in the mannerism of utterances of the Seven Sages. At that time of crisis, Pittacus demonstrated a leadership of political pragmatism over the idealism which conveyed the aristocratic values of the noble families to which Alcaeus himself belonged. It seems that Pittacus in the Aeolic Mytilene had the reputation of a wise politician, a σοφός, because he acted as a mediator to stabilize the political crisis of the city in a period when the progress from aristocracy to democracy experienced similar upheavals in the city-states of the Archaic world.
In the place of the wisdom of the poets like Homer or Hesiod who spoke by divine revelation, in the ‘Age of Tyrants’ the wisdom of worldly expertise was ‘performed’ by different kinds of wise men. These wise men, most of Asia Minor, possessed different skills from carpenters and engineers to statesmen including famous tyrants, or eventually they were intellectual thinkers like Thales of Miletus who also was one of the Seven Sages for his practical wisdom. It is assumed that the wise men of the Archaic Greece were a disparate group of individuals who ‘operated in a social and political arena in which knowledge was demonstrated by a performer to an audience in a public or a private gathering’ (Nightingale A.W. in (ed.) Taplin O., Literature in Greek and Roman Worlds, 2000, p.160). Their wisdom derives from the combination of practical action and utterances in maxims in the right time (καιρός), and they are different from the early ‘philosophical’ thinkers like Xenophanes, Parmenides or Embedokles who wrote hexameter poetry rivaling Homer and Hesiod. Instead, the genres of Greek poetry –recited or sung- were related to performance contexts like a symposium or a public event in the city. Likewise, the songs of Alcaeus were performed in the small sympotic group of his aristocratic companions in order to unite them against their political enemies and shape the politics for their own club (cp. ‘the poetry of hetaireia’, Kurke L.,’The Strangeness of ‘song culture’: Archaic Greek poetry’, in Taplin O. as above, p. 64 and 75).
Fränkel suggests that ‘men should have awarded the garland of σοφία at that time to the politician rather than the poet’. He thinks that ‘the individual speaker of poetry contributed to its own downfall because he was taking his subject matter from everyday life.’ (Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy, 1975, p. 239). If this is true how we can account for the popularity of Alcaeus’ songs during the classical period, and even more, the attempts of the Lesbians to preserve some of his songs in writing too? The reflections of Alcaeus’ poetry should not probably be restricted in the social and political context of his time but rather to be extended ‘on the vicissitudes of political life in the city-state for the audiences of the fifth century Greece’ (cf. Yatromanolakis D., ‘Alcaeus and Sappho’, in Budelmann F. Greek Lyric, 2009, p. 214).
In his journey to the Underworld (Od. XI) Odysseus sees the shade of his mother Anticleia who warns him that Penelope is still waiting for him, but she, his mother, could not endure her son’s loss and she killed herself. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is foreshadowed by the image of the couple’s bed carved by Odysseus himself from an olive tree (Od. XXIII) and the recognition scene between Laertes and his son (XXIV).
Much of Micheal Longley’s response to Homer is based on these episodes in the Odyssey focusing on the themes of Odysseus’ sense of vulnerability and experiences, his homecoming, his relationship with epic figures. The Irish poet who read Classics at the Trinity College Dublin, reworks the Homeric scenes of turbulence and suffering making ‘lyric, not epic, a major medium for Homer reception’.
The present paper intends to explore the Homeric resonances from Odyssey in the light of the Homeric poems of the poet Michael Longley who focuses on the heroic figure of Odysseus and his vulnerable journey in time and space. From Homer’s epic to Irish contemporary poetry, Michael Longley’s poetic affiliation with Homer is not only central to his work but it also ‘allows the reader to hear the ancient text without previous knowledge of it’.
Λέξεις κλειδιά: ανθρωπιστικό curriculum, Κλασικός Κανόνας, κλασική παιδεία, Ουμανισμός, κλασικότητα, αρχαία ελληνική γλώσσα, μετάφραση.
«Είμαι τόσο γνωστός όσο αξίζω να είμαι»
―Εισαγωγή-Επιλογή-Μετάφραση: Αυγή-Άννα Μάγγελ―
Ο John Malcolm Brinnin γεννήθηκε στις 13 Σεπτεμβρίου 1916 στο Χάλιφαξ της Νέας Σκοτίας στον Καναδά και πέθανε στις 25 Ιουνίου 1998 στο Key West της Φλόριδα στην Αμερική. Έζησε στην πόλη Ντητρόιτ του Μίσιγκαν και δίδαξε λογοτεχνία στο Πανεπιστήμιο της Βοστώνης, του Κοννέκτικατ και στο Harvard. Το 1955, η Poetry Society της Νέας Υόρκης απένειμε στον Brinnin το Χρυσό Μετάλλιο για Διακεκριμένη Υπηρεσία στην Ποίηση, και το 1963, μετά την έκδοση της συλλογής του Selected Poems, το Πανεπιστήμιο Μίσιγκαν του απένειμε το Μετάλλιο της Εκατονταετηρίδας για Διάκριση στη Λογοτεχνία. Λίγο αργότερα, ο Brinnin εκλέχτηκε μέλος στην Αμερικανική Ακαδημία Γραμμάτων και Τεχνών.
ODYSSEUS’ FRAGILE JOURNEY THROUGH TIME:
AN EPIC APPROACH FROM HOMER TO MICHAEL LONGLEY.
The Odyssey is the story of a wanderer, of an explorer ‘who saw many men’s cities and he discovered many men’s minds.’ Odysseus travels backwards and forwards in place and time telling his adventures and his painful past in his journey from Troy to various provinces, from Calypso’s fairy Ogygia to the land of the Phaiakians, from the mythical Underworld to Ithaca itself. In Odyssey V the sea hurls Odysseus against the rocks and then tears him away, ripping the skin from his hands as he tries to grasp the rocks. The shipwrecked hero is washed up on the coast of Phaiacia, where he finds shelter in a bed of fallen leaves (Odyssey V 488-491). This is the place where Nausica discovers him alone and exhausted.
In his journey to the Underworld (Od. XI) Odysseus sees the shade of his mother Anticleia who warns him that Penelope is still waiting for him, but she, his mother, could not endure her son’s loss and she killed herself. Odysseus’ return to Ithaca is foreshadowed by the image of the couple’s bed carved by Odysseus himself from an olive tree (Od. XXIII) and the recognition scene between Laertes and his son (XXIV).
Much of Micheal Longley’s response to Homer is based on these episodes in the Odyssey focusing on the themes of Odysseus’ sense of vulnerability and experiences, his homecoming, his relationship with epic figures. The Irish poet who read Classics at the Trinity College Dublin, reworks the Homeric scenes of turbulence and suffering making ‘lyric, not epic, a major medium for Homer reception’.
The present paper intends to explore the Homeric resonances from Odyssey in the light of the Homeric poems of the poet Michael Longley who focuses on the heroic figure of Odysseus and his vulnerable journey in time and space. From Homer’s epic to Irish contemporary poetry, Michael Longley’s poetic affiliation with Homer is not only central to his work but it also ‘allows the reader to hear the ancient text without previous knowledge of it’.
The 7th and the 6th centuries BCE was an era of political change all over Archaic Greece. The aristocratic regime of the cities was challenged by inner conflict between aristocratic families or by individuals who were supported by the people of the city against their rulers. Usually, the tyrants benefited by a crisis in the Greek society and convinced the people that the traditional aristocracy was not able to defend their rights. In this case, the ‘tyrant’ positioned himself in opposition to the aristocracy and endeavored to replace them in their constitutional functions. Some ‘tyrants’ (like the Cypselids of Corinth or Polycrates of Samos) usurped power and imposed an arbitrative governance that justified their negative picture that the Classical period developed for tyranny in Greece. In general, the diversified meaning of a ‘tyrant’ is attributed to a single man who won the trust of the demos and ruled the city with unrestricted power. But their sophisticated aspect seems to be that a number of tyrants like Pittacus and Solon corresponded to the tyrannos/sophos profile who managed to obtain a permanent position in the list of the Seven Wise Men and a positive appraisal for their practical efficiency in politics. On the other side, Alcaeus, the poet of Lesbos, belonged to the elite class who contributed with his invectives against the bad fame of the tyrant Pittacos in Mytilene.
The present paper intends to explore the political knowledge in the poetry of Alcaeus in relation to the practical success of his opponent statesman Pittacus and to discuss the quality of wisdom which is attributed to the tyrant rather than the poet. In the Aeolic city of Mytilene the struggle between the aristocratic Penthilids and the Cleanactids eventually led to the rise of tyranny. The testimony of Alcaeus is valuable because he wrote several political poems renouncing the tyrant Melanchrus, who was overthrown by Pittacus and Alcaeus’ brothers, and the tyrant Myrsilus with whom Pittacus allied and betrayed his allegiance with Alcaeus. The poet was twice exiled first after the failure of his plot against Myrsilos, and then when Pittacus chose to ally with Myrsilus. When Myrsilus died, the citizens of Lesbos entrusted Pittacus with despotic power for the purpose of protecting them against the exiled nobles at the head of whom were Alcaeus and his brother Antimenidas.
In historical terms it is doubtful whether Pittacus deserved so many reproaches against him written in the form of the monodic odes of Alcaeus. Was Alcaeus right to attack Pittacus as a tyrant who usurped power to the detriment of the citizens or his reproaches were not reflecting the real state of politics in Lesbos? And was Pittacus a typical tyrant (Alcaeus Z 24, Page), a monarch (Strabo xiii.617), a legislator like Solon of Athens, or a clever man who possessed the knowledge to rule efficiently his city and the wisdom to retire from power when he accomplished his duty? The picture of Pittacus that is transmitted by Alcaeus’ poetry blurs the political action of Pittacus who later was included in the list of the Seven Sages of the Archaic Greece (Plato Prot. 343c). Pittacus, like Solon in Athens, gained the reputation of a wise man and his wisdom is attested by Herodotus (1.72.2) and Plutarch who includes both rulers in the Dinner of the Seven Sages. The popular election of Pittacus does not presuppose the ‘struggle of the poor against the rich, or of the commons against the nobility’ but it might allude to the fact that the populace recognized that Pittacus ‘possessed the qualities of statesmanship’ which granted him the labeling of ‘a wise man and successful governor’ (D.L.Page, Sappho and Alcaeus, 1979, p.176). At an earlier time, Pittacus in alliance with Alcaeus led the Mytileneans in a successful war for Sigeum against the Athenians, and the Mytileneans rewarded him for his services with the supreme power in the city (Diog. i.74). In the same war, Alcaeus dropped his arms and fled, and the Athenians hung them up in the temple of Athena, while in single combat Pittacus killed Phrynon, the Olympic victor sent by the Athenians (428V(a) Str.13.1.38, (b)Hdt.5.94-95).
According to Aristotle, Pittacus was a maker of laws and not a reformer of the constitutions (νόμων δημιουργός, ἀλλ’ οὐ πολιτείας, Ar. Pol. 1274b 18). He was elected by the people in the political position of aisymnetes to suppress the power of the aristocrats and make reforms to the laws in more equality (Arist. Pol.,1285a 30ff). It is unlikely that the people of Mytilene perceived Pittacus as a tyrant or regretted having made him aisymnetes. Alcaeus wrote against him like a man who feels betrayed and angered because Pittacus allied with his opponent Myrsilus breaking his oaths and deserting his comprades, ‘a cardinal offense in the scheme of Homeric values’ (Donlan, W. The Aristocratic Ideal and Selected Papers, 1999, p. 62, cf. G1, D12 Page, and MacGlew J.F. Tyranny and Political Culture in Ancient Greece, 1993, p.96). He labels Pittacus a ‘tyrant’ (X9, 1-9 Page, cf. Z 24 Page), a ‘low-born’ (κακοπατρίδας Ζ 24) and he warns the citizens that this man ‘will soon turn the city upside down’ (H 2 Page). However, the Mytileneans did not ‘listen’ to the poems of Alcaeus who exhorted them to overthrow the tyrant and they licensed him to govern for ten years from 590 to 580 BC. Pittacus laid down power leaving the city in peace and order (Diog. Laert. i.75). Alcaeus, the lyric poet, failed to be a political person and he was all the time on the loosers’ side.
Though Pittacus is a lesser known lawgiver, he can be compared to Solon the lawgiver of Athens who was a moderate politician and his reforms paved the way to democracy. But unlike Solon who wrote his political beliefs in poetry and he remained famous for his elegies, Pittacus was known for his laconic apothegms in the mannerism of utterances of the Seven Sages. At that time of crisis, Pittacus demonstrated a leadership of political pragmatism over the idealism which conveyed the aristocratic values of the noble families to which Alcaeus himself belonged. It seems that Pittacus in the Aeolic Mytilene had the reputation of a wise politician, a σοφός, because he acted as a mediator to stabilize the political crisis of the city in a period when the progress from aristocracy to democracy experienced similar upheavals in the city-states of the Archaic world.
In the place of the wisdom of the poets like Homer or Hesiod who spoke by divine revelation, in the ‘Age of Tyrants’ the wisdom of worldly expertise was ‘performed’ by different kinds of wise men. These wise men, most of Asia Minor, possessed different skills from carpenters and engineers to statesmen including famous tyrants, or eventually they were intellectual thinkers like Thales of Miletus who also was one of the Seven Sages for his practical wisdom. It is assumed that the wise men of the Archaic Greece were a disparate group of individuals who ‘operated in a social and political arena in which knowledge was demonstrated by a performer to an audience in a public or a private gathering’ (Nightingale A.W. in (ed.) Taplin O., Literature in Greek and Roman Worlds, 2000, p.160). Their wisdom derives from the combination of practical action and utterances in maxims in the right time (καιρός), and they are different from the early ‘philosophical’ thinkers like Xenophanes, Parmenides or Embedokles who wrote hexameter poetry rivaling Homer and Hesiod. Instead, the genres of Greek poetry –recited or sung- were related to performance contexts like a symposium or a public event in the city. Likewise, the songs of Alcaeus were performed in the small sympotic group of his aristocratic companions in order to unite them against their political enemies and shape the politics for their own club (cp. ‘the poetry of hetaireia’, Kurke L.,’The Strangeness of ‘song culture’: Archaic Greek poetry’, in Taplin O. as above, p. 64 and 75).
Fränkel suggests that ‘men should have awarded the garland of σοφία at that time to the politician rather than the poet’. He thinks that ‘the individual speaker of poetry contributed to its own downfall because he was taking his subject matter from everyday life.’ (Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy, 1975, p. 239). If this is true how we can account for the popularity of Alcaeus’ songs during the classical period, and even more, the attempts of the Lesbians to preserve some of his songs in writing too? The reflections of Alcaeus’ poetry should not probably be restricted in the social and political context of his time but rather to be extended ‘on the vicissitudes of political life in the city-state for the audiences of the fifth century Greece’ (cf. Yatromanolakis D., ‘Alcaeus and Sappho’, in Budelmann F. Greek Lyric, 2009, p. 214).
Θ.Ε. ΕΛΠ21 ΑΡΧΑΙΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ & ΠΡΩΙΜΗ ΒΥΖΑΝΤΙΝΗ ΛΟΓΟΤΕΧΝΙΑ
ΑΡΧΑΙΑ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΛΟΓΟΤΕΧΝΙΑ
ΚΕΙΜΕΝΑ ΠΟΙΗΤΙΚΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΖΟΥ ΛΟΓΟΥ
ΑΥΓΗ-ΑΝΝΑ ΜΑΓΓΕΛ
ΟΚΤΩΒΡΙΟΣ 2009