Nestor: Poetic Memory in Greek Epic

260 Pages·2013·6.806 MB·English

by  Keith Dickson

NESTOR
POETIC MEMORY IN GREEK EPIC
KEITH DICKSON
GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
r995
Copyright C 199 5 by Keith Dickson
All rights reserved
library of CongreuC atalogin1-in-PublicatDioant a
Dickson, Keith.
Nestor : poetic memory in Greek epic / by Keith Dic:luon.
p. cm. - (Alben Bates Lord studies in oral tradition ; vol. 16)
(Garland reference library of the humanities ; vol. 1923)
Includes bibliographical referencesa nd index.
ISBN 0-8153-2071-6 (alk. paper)
1. Homer-Characters-Nestor. 2. Epic poetry, Greek-History and
criticism. 3. Nestor (Greek mythology) in literature. 4. Trojan War in
literature. S. Aged men in literature. 6. Memory in literature. 7. Homer.
Odyssey. 8. Homer. Iliad. I. Tade. Il. Series. m. Series: Garland
reference library of the humanities ; vol. 1923.
PA4037.D46 1995
883' .01--dc20 95-12542
CIP
Printed on acid-&ee,2 50-year-life paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Fay & Sam
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
1. Naming Nestor: The Muse at Pylos
1. Introduction 3
2. A Typology of Elders 10
3. Name and Character 20
4. Naming Nestor 25
2. Nestor as AOIDOS: Narrative Authority
1. Introduction 47
2. The Narrator as Prophet 50
3. The Muse at Pylos 64
4. A Fusion of Visions 85
3. Nestor as Intercessor: Figures of Mediation
1. Introduction 101
2. Ethos 104
3. Situation 111
4. Response 125
5. Ironic Mediation 144
4. Nestor as Host: Nostos and Hospitable Death
1. Introduction 157
2. Patroklos at the Threshold 160
3. Telemakhos at Pylos 181
4. Nestor among the Sirens 195
5. Conclusion 213
Bibliography 227
Passages Discussed 247
General Index 249
Vii
Acknowledgments
Very preliminary work on this book was begun under the
auspices of a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer
Seminar in the Humanities Grant in 1989. It was helped along
toward completion by a Purdue Research Foundation Summer
Faculty Research Grant in the following year, as well as by a
research leave from the Department of Foreign Languages and
Literatures at Purdue Univenity during the Fall 1991 semester.
I am grateful for this; like the best kind of support, it was
timely and unobtrusive, andn o strings were attached.
If there are few individuals to whom I am directly
indebted, the burden of debt to each is that much greater,w hile
the burden of responsibility of coune remainsm ine alone. These
few chiefly include John Miles Poley, for guidance in the early
and fragile stages of this work, and for welcome support at the
end; and John Peradotto, for a model of clarity, rlgor, and
intellectual vitality over the last two decades. Thanks are also
due to Ann Astell, John Kirby, Anthony Tamburri, and Deborah
Starewich, and to a number of anonymous editon, each in their
own way, for useful comments and advice at crucial points en
route.
Chapter 2 represents a revised and expanded version of my
essay, "Kalkhas and Nestor: Two Narrative Strategies in Iliad
1," which appeared in Artthusa 25.2 (1992). I am grateful for
permission to republish this material. Parts of Chapter 1 and 3
appeared earlier in less developed form in Oral Tradition8 .1
(1993), as "Nestor Among the Sirens," and in Oral Tradition5 .1
(1990), as "A Typology of Mediation in Homer."
ix

NESTOR

1
Naming Nestor:
The Muse at Pylos
1. INTRODUCTION
What better way to begin a work on storytelling than with
a simple piece of narrative? Tantalizingly brief, a fragment
stripped of most embellishment, sketching little more than a
few iconic gestures-a name, a place, a posture struck, a swift
and apparently final reaction-yet at the same time also a tale
suggestively rich with allusion? Like many fragments, this one
is found nested in another tale that is itself embedded in a tale
that is a fragment of an even larger story. They say that the
men who sailed to fight at Troy under Nestor's command hailed
from the fabled towns of Pylos and lovely Arene, from Thryon
and strong-built Aipy, Kyparisseeis and Amphigeneia, from
Pteleos and Helos (II. 2.594-600):
§1
' .. Kai. t.wp1.ov, lvea TE:M ouaaL
aVTOµE:VOI0. ciµvp1.v TOV 0p~1.KaT Taucravc io1.6i;s,
olxa>-.(T)9E:Vl6 vTa TTap'E vpuTOVo lxa>-..1.fios·
O'TE"":' UTyOa ' p E': UX, OµE:VOVSI.K' T)O, "E:µE€1.:, ,v T, TE:a"p v au' Tal' .
Moucra1c. iE:(601.E:KVo, upm 61.0Sa ly1.6xo1.o·
al SEx: o>-..waciµevatT TT)pove iaav, avTa.p cioiS~v
9E:O'TTE:CJclTi4)>Vi >-..0VTKOa i. E:KA€Aa9ov Kl.9ap1.crT\J.V
. . . and Dorion, where the Muses
met Thamyris the Thraciana nd stopped him from singing
as he came from Oikhalie and Oikhalian Eu.rytos;
for he swore, boast:ingh e would win, even if the very Muses
~ against him, the cfaughterso f z.eus who holds the aigis.
But m their anger they impaired him, and took away
wondrous song,a nd made him utterly forget his harping.
The shortest stories are sometimes the best: they engage
and empower us as readers, make us work, conscript us into the
3
4 N•"''"I Nntor
task of actively g~rating nvaning along with ttw narration of
a tale. To this extent, they wrve ~rtl.pt t"Vffl btttter than
longer tales do to thematiu tJw r«it auumpt,ON dull guide
the process by which meaning ii gerwratN in Nrr•tivn, thus
exposing the complicity that Hiatt ~twHn 1torytellt'r and
audience.1 for it ia ellipsis far more than m1btt1Ushnwnt th.lt
reveals the truly productive depth of n.urahm; in what is left
unsaid or else merely suggested, the implicit boundArin within
which stories orient themselves COIM alowJy into v~w--or into
earshot, in the case of talet that are heard rather th&n read
(as now) from a page silently. Beneath or behind or beyond or
around or within every tale-no metaphor quite captures this
relation properly-is the far broader context within which the
tale is situated, and upon which it depends for its meaning. To
be sure, this is a context whose contours are largely shaped by
the prejudices and expectations of the community dult makes up
its audience. Such expectations constitute a ~ptive horizon
that is in some respects fixed, in others quite pliable and open
to refiguration. Aspects of its fixity concern us more at this
point. For the more homogeneous the audience is in the
presuppositions with which it receives a tale, the lees the tale
actually needs to say outright, the more it can simply take for
granted as already given since already well understood.
But these assumptions in tum are themMlves to a large
extent influenced by prior tales received on other occasions by
the same audience; it is chiefly in terms of what it has heard or
read before that the audience apprehends and understands this
story. It is with reference to this fact that we speak of the
"intertextuality" of narratives. Eagleton's remarks (1983: 138)
on the subject of literate texts of course apply equally-perhaps
even more closely-to works that are orally composed and
transmitted:2
AU literary texts are woven out of other literary texta, not in
the conventional sense that they bear wthe :tr:ac:els eofh "inrfaluesncee"
but in the more radical sense that every or ~t
is a reworking of other writin~ which p e or surround the
origina) wori. There is no such thing as literary "originality",
no such thing as the "first" literary work: all literature is
"intertextual". A specific piece of writing thus_ has no clearly
defined boundaries: it spiUs over constar:atly into the works
clustered around it, Sffl._eratinga hundred different perspectives
which dwindle to vanishing point.