Lyric Texts and Lyric Consciousness: The Birth of a Genre from Archaic Greece to Augustan Rome

249 Pages·1994·1.59 MB·English

by  Paul All Miller

LYRIC TEXTS AND LYRIC
CONSCIOUSNESS
LYRIC TEXTS AND
LYRIC
CONSCIOUSNESS
The Birth of a Genre from
Archaic Greece to Augustan
Rome
Paul Allen Miller
London and New York
First published 1994
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
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© 1994Paul Allen Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Miller, Paul Allen
Lyric texts and lyric consciousness/Paul Allen Miller.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographic references and index.
1. Classical poetry—History and criticism. 2. Lyric poetry
—History and criticism. I. Title.
PA3019.M55 1994
884′.0109–dc20 93–21184
ISBN 0-203-97461-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-10518-8 (Print Edition)
To Ann
Tess, Livia, and John
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
1 THE SUBJECT OF THE TEXT 1
2 EPOS AND IAMBOS OR ARCHILOCHUS MEETS THE 9
WOLFMAN
3 DE GENERIBUS DISPUTANDUM EST 37
4 THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS: CATULLUS 53
AND THE BIRTH OF THE COLLECTION
5 A POET’S PLACE: SAPPHO AND THE MELIC 79
DISCOURSE OF ARCHAIC GREECE
6 SAPPHICA PUELLA: THE TRIPLE-FACETED OBJECT 101
OF CATULLAN DESIRE
7 ROME, ALEXANDRIA, AND THE POLITICS OF 119
LYRIC
8 HORACE, MERCURY, AND AUGUSTUS 139
9 CONCLUSION: OF WRITINGS AND SUBJECTS 167
Appendix I 177
Appendix II 181
Notes 183
References 213
Index 233
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book could not have been written without the help of far more
people than it would ever be possible to mention here. Still, I must try
and give credit to those debts which appear most outstanding. Three
mentors in particular have helped form my thoughts about this project
and guide my intellectual progress for a number of years, Professors
Wayne Rebhorn, Carl Rubino, and Barbara Gold. Without their
patience, encouragement, and remonstrations, I would have never left
the gate. Two other formative influences on my thoughts about
literature, theory, and philosophy must also be acknowledged: Professor
Leonard Schulze, who first introduced me to literary theory and whose
lasting influence on my work is greater, I am sure, than either he or I is
fully aware; and the late Professor E.D.Francis, who first impressed
upon me the decisive importance of book structure in the interpretation
of Hellenistic and Roman poetry.
Thanks need also to be given to Professors Douglass Parker, Ramón
Saldívar, and Jean-Pierre Cauvin, who served valiantly on a dissertation
committee unlike any other; to Professor David H.J. Larmour for
reading parts of this book, discussing it with me, and, in his role as
managing editor of Helios, for making available to me the page proofs
of a forthcoming edition on Catullus; to Professor Susan Stein for
reading and discussing Chapter 5 with me; to Professor Charles Platter
my friend and collaborator; to Professors Wendy McCredie, Kim
Robertson, William Hutton, Elizabeth Vandiver, and to C.Gordon
Vincent, Rino Pizzi, and all the members of the CP and BBQ for
countless evenings of listening to me rave like a madman about this
project; and to my parents for supporting all my educational endeavors.
Debts of gratitude are also owed to Texas Tech University for
a Research Enhancement Grant which helped me complete this book;
and to Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, Maryland) for
allowing me to reprint portions of my articles “Horace, Mercury, and
vii
Augustus, or the Poetic Ego of Odes 1–3,” from the AmericanJournal
of Philology 112.3 (1991), as part of Chapter 8, and “Sappho 31 and
Catullus 51: The Dialogism of Lyric,” from Arethusa 26.2 (1993), as
parts of Chapters 5 and 6. They also kindly granted permission to
reproduce portions of Frank Nisetich’s translations of “Pythian 11” and
“Olympian 5” from Pindar’s Victory Odes (1980). The translations of
Sappho 1, 16, 31, and Alcaeus 308 and 338 are reprinted by permission
of the publishers and the Loeb Classical Library, Greek Lyric (vol. 1),
translated by D.A. Campbell, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, © the President and Fellows of Harvard College 1982. The
translation of Archilochus 5 is reprinted by permission of the
publishers, GreekLyrics, translated by Richmond Lattimore, Chicago,
111.: University of Chicago Press, © 1949, 1955, and 1960. Havelock,
Eric; TheLiterate Revolution in Greece and Its Cultural Consequences,
© Princeton University Press 1982, reprinted by permission of
Princeton University Press. Every effort has been made to reach
copyright holders for all materials used. The author would appreciate
any further information which might be available.
My greatest debt is owed to my wife, Ann Poling. She has proofread
various versions of this text countless times. She has put up with
sleepless nights and nameless anxiety. She has listened to me drone on
when she would have rather been doing almost anything else. I could
never have done it without her.
All remaining faults are, of course, my own.
viii
1
THE SUBJECT OF THE TEXT
Between the generality of the meaning of words…and… the
uniqueness of the acoustic event which occurs when an
utterance is proffered, there takes place a process that
permits the linkage of the two, which we call enunciation.
This process does not suppose the existence of two physical
bodies…but the presence of two (or more) social entities….
The time and the space in which enunciation occurs also
aren’t purely physical categories, but a historical time and
social space.
(Todorov 1984:39–40)
The poet’s audience, the readers of a novel, those in the
concert hall—these are collective organizations of a special
type, sociologically distinctive and exceptionally important.
Without these distinctive forms of social intercourse there
are no poems, no odes, no novels, no symphonies. Definite
forms of social intercourse are constituent to the meaning of
the works of art themselves.
(Bakhtin/Medvedev 1985:11)
The purpose of this work is to present a model for studying the history
of lyric as a genre. My specific claim about the nature of lyric poetry is
that what is now generally considered lyric—a short poem of personal
revelation, confession or complaint, which projects the image of an
individual and highly self-reflexive subjective consciousness (see
among others Schelling 1913:1–3; Lukács 1973: 63–64; Frye 1971:249–
50; Culler 1975:164–70)—is only possible in a culture of writing.
Indeed it is the lyric collection which spawns the lyric consciousness as
we know it. For only the collection, with its inherent potential for