The Poetics of Supplication

253 Pages·1994·4.926 MB·English

by  Kevin Crotty

THE POETICS OF
SUPPLICATION
A volume in the series
MYTH AND POETICS
edited by Gregory Nagy
A full list of titles in the series appears at the end of the book.
THE POETICS OF
SUPPLICATION
Hon1er's Iliad and Odyssey
KEVIN CROTTY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 1994 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press,
Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1994 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
@The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-I984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Crotty, Kevin, 1948-
The poetics of supplication : Homer's Iliad and Odyssey I Kevin Crotty.
p. cm. - (Myth and poetics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8o I 4-2998-6
I. Homer-Criticism and interpretation. 2. Epic poetry, Creek-History and
criticism. 3. Rites and ceremonies in literature. 4· Rites and ceremonies
Greece. 5· Sympathy in literature. 6. Oral tradition-Greece. 7. Grief in
literature. 8. War in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PA4037.C685 I994
883'.oi-dc2o 94-2026I
For Anna Brodsky
Contents
Foreword, by Gregory N agy
IX
Preface
Xl
PART I. PITY AND SUPPLICATION IN THE ILIAD I
I Eleos and Book 24 of the Iliad 3
2 Fathers and Sons and the Warrior Society 24
3 Eleos and the Warrior Society 42
Memory and Supplication
4 70
5 Supplication and the Poetics of the Iliad 89
PART 11. SuPPLICATION AND PoETICS IN THE
ODYSSEY I05
6 Telemachus' Supplication I07
7 Morality and the Belly I30
8 Supplication and Narrative I6o
9 Song and Philotes I8I
Conclusion 2II
Bibliography 2I7
Index Locorum 227
General Index
234
Foreword
Gregory Nagy
The Homeric Iliad cannot give us the last word on Achilles. De
spite the claims of various recent studies, including an influential con1-
mentary on the last of the twenty-four books of the Iliad, the hero of
this epic does not come to terms with our own expectations of his
humanity }le encounters face to face, in the epic's near-final scene
wh~n
of vicarious gg~f,'the rnourning father of his deadliest enen1 y. The cere
mony of supplication that takes place at this moment in the Iliad creates
an emotional effect so powerful-and so troubling-that it will take
another epic, this tin1e, the Odyssey, to follow up on its resonances.
This insight into the interplay of the Iliad and Odyssey becon1es a
central achievement of Kevin Crotty' s Poetics of Supplication, which ex
plores how the emotion of eleos forces the n1ain hero of each of these
two epics to reengage his whole life experience. This emotion, which we
translate as and which the ancient Greeks publicly enacted in
"_r.!ty~'
ceremonies of supplication, is the driving force behind the poetics of he
roic redefinition in these epics. Moreover, this distinctly Greek idea of
\Pity ,becomes the rationale for epic's own continuing self-redefinition.
f'o(Crotty, supplication thus serves as a model for the poetics of the Iliad
and the Odyssey. The suppliant's message of grief rnust turn things
around: the winner's perspective must be reshaped by that of the loser.
The myth of the hero-and thereby the poetic form of epic itself-is
being s~~ped ,by the ceremony of supplication, since the§ that is
generated by this ce~em9ny will radically affect the hero's outlook on his
own-icfe.ntit·y: Thus this book amounts to a defense of pity, following a
l~A~~-~,totle himselfhad taken in rehabilitating eleos after Plato's attack.
IX
x Foreword
In doing so, it also amounts to a declaration of emancipation from the
confines of a special kind ofHomeric criticism that insists on thinking of
the hero as the creature of a specious reality called "Homeric warrior
society." As Crotty argues, a hero such as Achilles experiences a kind of
..
"---,,, . ···~ . '
pity that is unique not only to his Iliadic situation but also to the
passionate and uncon1promising self that keeps on asserting itself within
this situation. ;"~""
The key to the role ofr_rity)as a shaper of both plot and character in
Homeric narrative is Crotty's model of supplication as a ceremony. This
book makes a hermeneutic distinction between ritual and ceremony, in
that the second of the two is concerned specifically with individual
responses·to traditional situations. Thus the ceremony of supplication
serves to individualize the epic, even the myth of the hero. The poetics of
supplication become the poetics of individuality.
Preface
In The Poetics of Supplication, I explore the connections between a
particular ceremony and the poetics of the Iliad and the Odyssey. I
present the Homeric epics as tales of griefs, intended-like the sup
pliant's plea-to rouse memories of tnortal vulnerability and to excite
the emotion of pity. The title of this book carries two senses. On the
one hand, I argue that the ceren1qny of supplication, as presented in the
Iliad, has a complex intern;I;t:~c-t·~~<;,~ liketliaT&Of a poetn or a fictional
narrative. As a ceremony, supplication has both traditional and expres
sive aspects. It consists of a traditional fonn that bundles together
many of the constituent values of the warrior society, but also affords
the individual within that society a means of articulating his or her
particular distress. Supplication also has a n1oral ditnension, for it pro
vides the one supplicated with an occasion for insight into the contours
of mortal life-its vulnerability to circtnnstance, and the seriousness of
the claim another's suffering has to one's attention. As a ceretnonial
imitation of the child's utter dependence on the parent, supplication
becomes in the Iliad an expression of the inevitable rift between the
generations and the tragic absence of a benevolent and powerful father.
For all these reasons, supplication is poen1like, and the kind of thing
that may be said to have an i1nplicit "poetic."
The second sense in which I intend the title of this work is that
scenes of supplication are vital for understanding the poetics itnbuing
both the Iliad and the Odyssey. I believe that an adequate poetics of the
Hon1eric epics must be, at least in part, a "poetics of supplication."
"Remember your father," Priam says, when he begs Achilles to return
Hector's body. The n1e1nory that Pria1n seeks to evoke, I will contend,
is suggestive for-indeed, is a model for-the kind of men1ory that
Xl
xii Preface
guides the poet of the Hotneric epics, and, by extension, the kind of
memory the poet seeks to awaken in his listeners. The memory called
up by the poems is less a historical recollection or preservation of past
events than a recreating, in emotional terms, of what griefs are like.
Because supplication is in large part a ceremony crystallizing the
emotion of eleos, I begin with a dis<;J-~,siop of that emotion-which I
will here provisionally translate as ("pity}' I explain that the warrior
society in the Iliad cannot be adequafel-y-linderstood wholly within the
terms of the model of a "shame society." Eleos is a powerful, sponta
neous, and unpredictable emotion that the warrior society simul
taneously suppresses and invokes. By describing in some detail the
con1plex place of eleos within and, so to speak, underneath that society,
I seek to bring out the full implications of supplication as portrayed in
the Iliad.
In the second part of this book, I show that the Odyssey uses sup
plication to elaborate a poetics of Homeric epic, for example, by self
consciously placing supplication scenes in contexts that are inevitably
suggestive of poetics. The poetics I develop here differs from that often
associated w,ith the Hon1eric-epics, which seem to present themselves
as reliable accounts handed down by the Muses. I trace a poetics that is
resolutely and unavoidably mortal. Such "authority" as the Homeric
poems possess, I argue, is like that paradoxical kind of authority that
suppliants exert over those who have conquered them. That supplica
tion affords an expressive vehicle able to carry the person's tragic sense
of loss is the feature that perhaps n1ost likens it to poetry and best
enables it to provide a model for the epic poen1 and the relationship
between the poet and his listeners Like supplication, the poen1 repre
sents a kind of mastering of n1ortal experience, a transfor~ation of
private suffering into a public statetnent _capable of conveying to others
a vivid sense and deepened comprehension of grief.
In citing the Iliad and the Odyssey, I have used the Oxford Classical
Text editions. Translations fron1 the Greek are n1y own. This book
was largely written during 1990-91, when I was a Visiting Fellow at
the Classics Department at Yale University. I thank the Yale Classics
Department for its hospitality, and, in particular, for the opportunity
to read to the men1bers of the department an earlier version of part of
the section on the Iliad. The questions and conunents on that occasion
were a great help to me in formulating my thoughts. I also thank
Gregory N agy for his suggestions and encouragement, as well as for
the vivacity of his own writings, all of which have contributed to this