The Pindaric Mind: A Study of Logical Structure in Early Greek Poetry

189 Pages·1985·3.615 MB·English

by  Thomas K. Hubbard

THE PINDARIC MIND
MNEMOSYNE
BIBLIOTHECA CLASSICA BATAVA
COLLEGERUNT
A. D. LEEMAN • H. W. PLEKET • C. J. RUIJGH
BIBLIOTHECAE FASCICULOS EDENDOS CURAVIT
C. J. RUIJGH, KLASSIEK SEMINARIUM, OUDE TURFMARKT 129, AMSTERDAM
SUPPLEMENTUM OCTOGESIMUM QUINTUM
THOMAS K. HUBBARD
THE PINDARIC MIND
LUGDUNI BATAVORUM E. J. BRILL MCMLXXXV
THE PINDARIC MIND
A Study of Logical Structure in Early Greek Poetry
BY
THOMAS K. HUBBARD
LEIDEN E. J. BRILL 1985
ISBN 90 04 07303 5
Copyright 1985 by E. j. Brill Leiden, The Netherlands
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or
translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, microfiche
or any other means without permission .from the publisher
PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS BY E. J. BRILL
CONTENTS
Preface ... ........ ....... ........................................ .... ........... vu
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I. Relations of Measure .. . .. .. .. . . . . . . .. .. . .. .. .. .. . . . . . . .. .. . .. . .. .. .. . 11
1. Near/Far . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2. Brach us/M akros . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 7
3. Oikeion/Allotrion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4. Early/Late . . . . .. . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
II. Relations of Manner.................................................. 71
1. Malthakos/ Trachus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
2. Euthus/Skolios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
3. Alatheia/ Pseudos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
III. Relations of Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
1. Physis/ Techne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 7
2. Merit/Reward ..... ......... ....... ... .......... .... ... . ........... 124
IV. The Subject/Object Relation .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. . . . .. ... . .. . .. .. .. .. .. . . 133
1. Myth ................................................................ 133
2. Prayer ... ......... ......... ..... ........ ..... .. ........ .... .......... 141
3. Gnome .. ........ .... .. .. .. ... . ...... .... .... .. ...... ... . . ......... .. 143
4. The First Person .. .. . . .. . .. . . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . .. .. ... .. .. 145
5. Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
6. Xenia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156
7. Ploutos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Index of Passages Cited . . .. .. . . . .. .. .. . .. . . .. . .. .. . . . . . .. .. . . . . .. .. .. . . . . . . . 173
General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

PREFACE
This work has a personal history, and two particular debts which need
to be acknowledged. The first is to the late Elroy Bundy, under whose
guidance I first encountered Pindar in the Fall of 1975. My period of
study under him was very brief; it was my first term as a student of Com-
parative Literature at Berkeley, and his last. But his lectures deeply im-
pressed me with the importance of viewing Pindar and early Greek
poetry within the broader, synchronic framework of ancient rhetorical
tradition. As will be clear to readers of my work, I have put this insight to
a rather different use from Bundy's original intention; what he chose to
view as conscious rhetorical formulae or conventions recurring
throughout the course of ancient tradition, I prefer to analyze as deeply
ingrained habits and categories of thought ("logical structures") which
are assimilated from generation to generation and applied with increas-
ing degrees of self-conscious definition. Accordingly, my methodology
has swerved from the path of orthodox "Bundyism." Nevertheless, I
must acknowledge that many of the problems and concepts which this
work elaborates are flowers sprung forth from the seeds which he planted
over eight years ago.
Bundy did not live to provide the nurture for those seeds. I moved on
to Yale University for the completion of my doctorate, and in the literary-
critical hothouse of New Haven, amidst the steamy vapors of
structuralism, post-structuralism, and that fire-breathing dragon-
"deconstruction" -I became firmly convinced both of the necessity for a
well-articulated theoretical basis to interpretation of early Greek texts
and of the illusory nature of New Critical claims to methodological objec-
tivity. It is within this environment that my ideas on Pindar began to
grow and take shape, finally blooming forth in 1979-80 as a disserta-
tion-"Polar Structure in the Odes of Pindar: Toward a Dialectical
Theory.'' The original project was envisioned as a treatment of Pindar's
logic within the context of Pre-Socratic philosophy; constraints of time
and patience sharpened the focus to stress the central relation of Pindar's
thought to Heraclitus' coincidentia oppositorum.
It is here that I must acknowledge my second, and perhaps greatest
debt, which is to the director of that dissertation-Thomas Cole. I found
in him a sympathetic and enlightened advisor, who is to be commended
not only for his many hours of painstaking analysis and discussion of the
work in at least three stages of execution, but also for his countless con-
structive insights and suggestions which have led to its betterment at
VIII PREFACE
more places than I can remember. Only those who have worked with him
in such an undertaking can appreciate the extent of his patience,
generosity, and acuity.
After considerable refinement and condensation, that dissertation has
developed into the present monograph. Here, I must express my thanks
for the encouragement and advice of the many friends and colleagues
who have read all or part of the work at one of its stages-including Ann
Bergren, Victor Bers, Kevin Crotty, Andrew Ford, Michael Simpson,
Heinrich von Staden, and David Young. I feel that I have gained even
from the criticism of those who may disagree with my approach. I extend
my gratitude to Professor W. J. Verdenius for his comments, and for
agreeing to publish this work in the Mnemosyne-series. Acknowledgement
is made to Dr. Eric J. Weller, Dean of the Faculty of Skidmore College,
for Faculty Development Grants in support of the book's preparation and
production. And lastly, my thanks go to Brill's for their cooperation.
Needless to say, any remaining faults are exclusively my own.
December 13, 1983
Saratoga Springs, New York
INTRODUCTION
Pindar is a "difficult" poet. He is well known for his lexical and
metrical innovations, density of metaphor, flexibility of word order,
tangential digressions, obscure connections, contradictory gnomes, am-
biguous references, and frequent ellipses of thought and syntax; many
critics have also seen in him a degree of political, literary and religious
allusiveness quite without parallel in archaic Greek poetry. Pindaric
criticism of the last two centuries' has therefore understandably viewed
its task as one of simplification. The historical allusion, key idea ( =
Grundgedanke), key word, key symbol, and even the objective "victor-
praise" have all served as critical strategies for centering the text and
thus reducing its structural elaboration into a more tractable comprehen-
sibility. But these methodologies, while often calling attention to impor-
tant aspects of a poetic text, tend to privilege one of its sections or
elements to the neglect of others, and so to leave more unaccounted for
than accounted for. A survey of the salient problems of Pindaric inter-
pretation will, I believe, justify this conclusion.
Criticism since the time of Boeckh has focussed on the question of the
ode's unity amid the competing claims of its "subjective" and "objec-
tive" programs or intentions-the "subjective" personal intention of the
poet (his historical or literary allusions, personal admonitions to the vic-
tor, or didactic lessons) and the ''objective'' generic function of the poem
(glorification of the victor, his family, his city, and the athletic contest). 2
Critical trends over the past two centuries have distinguished themselves
largely in terms of the varying emphasis which they have chosen to place
upon one or the other of these programs. Much nineteenth-century
scholarship favored the subjective aspect; more recently, the pendulum
has swung in the opposite direction.
Schadewaldt's Der Aujbau des pindarischen Epinikion proposed to show the
formal mediation of subjective and objective programs. But Schadewaldt
fails to reveal a logical nexus which establishes the relevance of the sub-
jective intention to the objective encomiastic context, and vice versa. The
1 For a more complete survey of past scholarship than it is possible to offer here, cf.
Young (1970) 1-95.
2 Fundamentally, the "subject" is the poem's first person ( = the poet, or laudator),
while the "object" is the poem's second person ( = the addressee, or laudandus). Cf.
Boeckh (1821) II:2, 6f., and Boeckh (1872) VII, 384ff. For a broader theoretical treatment
of the subjective and objective modes of interpretation, see Boeckh's Encyclopaedia ( =
Boeckh (1968) 49-51).
2 INTRODUCTION
conventional apparatus which Schadewaldt catalogues and analyzes is
too often only a series of apologetic formulae attempting to rectify what is
still felt as a fundamentally awkward dualism.
Bundy's Studia Pindarica has fulfilled a valuable corrective function by
encouraging critics to turn their attention away from the historical ex-
planations which had until his time provided the basis for much "pro-
grammatic" interpretation. Bundy's radical innovation was twofold: (1)
he denied the existence of any subjective program ( = expression of the
poet's own political, literary, ethical, or religious attitudes) unless strictly
subordinate to the objective program ( = praise of the victor), and (2) he
rejected the paradigmatic, or metaphorical basis of previous traditions of
unitarian criticism (which saw the ode and its constituent parts as
metaphorical translations or expansions of an overdetermined center,
whether it be Dissen's Grundgedanke, Norwood's "symbol," Mezger's key
word, or whatever) in favor of a theory of interpretation which seeks to
show the ode's unity in purely linear, syntagmatic terms. 3 This second
aspect of Bundy's work can be seen as a constructive outgrowth of
Drachmann's brilliant and devastating Moderne Pindarfortolkning (which
sharply condemned nineteenth-century unitarian theory) and
Schadewaldt's analysis of the conventional apparatus.
Bundy's work has provided a more sophisticated terminology for the
analysis of conventional elements and their sequential connection. This
systematization has been furthered by the work of Thummer, Hamilton,
Greengard, and Pavese. Yet Bundy himself recognized the theoretical
limitations of his system. "Conventional" criticism may run the risk of
becoming a breed of neo-analyticism which views the poem strictly as a
chain of rhetorical formulae, but denies it any intellectual depth or value.
Literary c01wention should not be regarded as an autonomous entity
in itself; it is necessarily compounded out of many individual decisions by
individual artists, and these individual decisions may progressively
deviate from inherited practice. Even when a poet stays strictly within the
bounds of tradition, he still has a broad range of choice as to how he uses
convention and what particular content he will infuse into that conven-
tional framework. Since Bundy and his followers are interested primarily
in charting the horizontal axis of contiguity ( = line-by-line progression),
they have neglected this vertical axis of selection:4 although "Bundyist"
3 For the distinction between the "paradigmatic" ( = metaphoric) and "syntagmatic"
( = metonymic) functions of language, cf. Saussure 122-131, and Jakobson 58ff. The
distinction is that between the vertical substitution of equivalent or contrary linguistic
elements for one another (also called "selection") and the horizontal sequence of
linguistic elements which group together into a syntactical unit (also called "contiguity").
• The important, but largely neglected work of Pavese (particularly Pavese ( 1968) and
Pavese ( 1979)) has made some impressive steps in the direction of helping us understand