BETWEEN ECSTASY AND TRUTH This page intentionally left blank Between Ecstasy and Truth Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus STEPHEN HALLIWELL 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxfordox26dp OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwidein Oxford NewYork Auckland CapeTown DaresSalaam HongKong Karachi KualaLumpur Madrid Melbourne MexicoCity Nairobi NewDelhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto Withofficesin Argentina Austria Brazil Chile CzechRepublic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore SouthKorea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam OxfordisaregisteredtrademarkofOxfordUniversityPress intheUKandincertainothercountries PublishedintheUnitedStates byOxfordUniversityPressInc.,NewYork #StephenHalliwell2011 Themoralrightsoftheauthorhavebeenasserted DatabaserightOxfordUniversityPress(maker) Firstpublished2011 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced, storedinaretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans, withoutthepriorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress, orasexpresslypermittedbylaw,orundertermsagreedwiththeappropriate reprographicsrightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproduction outsidethescopeoftheaboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment, OxfordUniversityPress,attheaddressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisbookinanyotherbindingorcover andyoumustimposethesameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable TypesetbySPIPublisherServices,Pondicherry,India PrintedinGreatBritain onacid-freepaperby MPGBooksGroup,BodminandKing’sLynn ISBN 978–0–19–957056–0 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Preface Whatispoetryfor?Whatdifferencecanitmaketothelivesofthose who hear or read it? Are its effects confined principally to the dura- tionoftheexperienceitself,formingspecialmomentsofresistanceto the flow of quotidian life, moments in which hearers or readers are movedtointensestatesofabsorptionandenthralment?WasAuden, whose views on poetry were demonstrably coloured in part by his familiaritywithancientGreekideas,righttosay(butinapoem)that ‘poetry makes nothing happen’ but is only ‘A way of happening’ (though one which ‘survives’ for perpetual re-enactment)?1 Or can poetry’s impact go further than that? Can it leave a lasting mark on people’s beliefs, attitudes, and emotional dispositions, helping to change their lives rather than simply afford them a temporary means of psychological escape? And if poetry can command a more far-reaching influence of this kind, is that necessarily and always a positive thing (a sort of beneficial enlightenment) or might it some- times be harmful, perhaps inducing false, sentimental, or unrealistic convictions which make the demands of life as a whole harder not easier to come to terms with? Can poetry tell or show us the truth? Then again, should we want it to—or was Nietzsche right that ‘the reason we have art is so as not to be destroyed by truth’ (‘wir haben dieKunst,damitwirnichtanderWahrheitzuGrundegehn’)?2 Such questions (extendable to literature and art in general) were firstposed,intheWesterntradition,byancientGreeks.Theyarestill, even now, of cultural interest and importance, and they continue to elicitdividedresponsesfromcritics,theorists,andindividualreaders. By studying how Greeks formulated and attempted to answer these questionswecanhopetoreachabetter,richerunderstandingofthe problemsofpoeticstheybroach.Thisbookisnotamonographwhich systematically investigates a tightly circumscribed domain. It is a thematically linked set of essays which offer fresh, incisive readings ofaseriesofmajortextsintheevolutionofGreekpoetics.Mymain 1 ‘InMemoryofW.B.Yeats’,partII:Auden(1991:248). 2 Nietzsche (1988: xiii 500), notebook entry of 1888; the first four words in Nietzsche’sGermanaregivenemphasis. vi Preface aim is to explore how the texts in question conceive of poetic value, thevalue(s) of poetry as located and realizedin theexperience of its audiences. (Most Greeks, if they had heard of it, would not have believed in ‘the affective fallacy’, any more than we should.) My project does not amount—and not only because of its selective- ness—to a history of Greek poetics or ‘literary criticism’; in certain respects, it may emphasize why constructing such a history is so difficult. What emerges from my readings is not a narrative of clear-cut positions following one another in progressive sequence, but more like a series of circling though gradually shifting debates about fundamental issues—issues, furthermore, which can be traced both inside and outside poetry: hence the inclusion of some poetic textsthemselvesintheenquiry. AttheheartofmyenterpriseisarecurrentdialecticofGreekideas between, on the one hand, a concern with poetry as a powerfully transformativeagencywhichcarrieshearersorreadersoutsidethem- selves(therootmeaningof‘ecstasy’)and‘drawsouttheirsouls’(the rootmeaningofanotherpertinentGreekterm,psuchagôgia),and,on theotherhand,atendencytojudgepoetryasamediumoftruths‘to liveby’,ameans ofexpressing thoughtsandfeelings which canhelp shapeitsaudiences’viewsoftheworld.Therearemanyvariationsin ancient treatments of this contrast of values, a contrast whose im- plicationsmakearadicaldifference,moreover,tosuppositionsabout what it means (or whether it is even possible) to interpret and evaluate poetry. The resulting dialectic runs through the core of Greekpoetics.Italsoformsavital partofthelonger-termtrajectory oftheoriesofpoetryandliterature. Inpursuingmyownpriorities,Ihavemadeapointofcitingawide range of modern scholarship in several languages, including much material which has appeared in just the last few years. Even when I disagree with those whose work I cite, I think it appropriate to acknowledge the existence of a strong culture of international scho- larship in this area and to give readers information with which to consider alternatives to my own sometimes heterodox arguments. Those arguments are presented at times with deliberately vigorous advocacy. Productive academic debate calls for reasoning that is passionateaswellascarefullyweighed. Earlier drafts of several chapters were presented as invited papers at various institutions. This fact is no incidental detail: without the chargeofenergygeneratedbyreceivingandfulfillingtheseinvitations Preface vii the book might never have been written. The Gerald Else Lecture in the Humanities at the University of Michigan (October 2007) prompted the first version of parts of Chapter 2; further work on thischapterwasundertakenforaninternationalconference,‘Pathos: the Poetics of the Emotions’, in Rio de Janeiro (October 2008), and for papers at McMaster University (November 2009, during my tenure as H. L. Hooker Distinguished Visiting Professor) and to the Classical Association of Scotland (Glasgow, June 2010). Chapter 3 was first written for the European College of Liberal Arts in Berlin (December2005);laterversionswerepresentedattheCentreforthe Ancient Mediterranean, Columbia University (April 2007), to the Classics Department of Toronto University (November 2009), and attheconference ‘Comic Interactions’ atUniversityCollege London (July 2009). An early sketch of some of the ideas in Chapter 4 was given at the Princeton Classical Philosophy Colloquium (December 2002) in reply to a paper by John Ferrari; an Italian version later becamethe7thCarchiaMemorialLectureinRome(March2007),the secondhalfofthechapterformedtheS.V.KeelingMemorialLecture at University College London (March 2009), and other drafts were presentedasresearchseminarsatColumbiaandDurhamuniversities (both April 2007) and as a lecture to the triennial conference of the Gesellschaft für antike Philosophie in Würzburg (September 2010). PartofChapter5waswrittenasacontributiontoaconferenceonthe PoeticsattheUniversitécatholiquedeLouvain(November2002).An ItalianversionofChapter7wasreadataconferenceonthesublimeat theIstitutoSvizzeroinRome(September2006).Fortheirinterestin myworkandfortheirgeneroushospitalityIamsincerelyindebtedto my hosts on all those occasions: Paolo D’Angelo, Pierre Destrée, Michael Erler, Helene Foley, William Harris, Elisabetta Matelli, Daniel McLean, Thomas Norgaard, Fernando Santoro, Ruth Scodel, Bob Sharples (to whose memory I pay tribute), Victoria Wohl, and NancyWorman. Amongthosewhohavecommentedondrafts,orotherwisereacted tomyideas,IwouldliketosingleoutMylesBurnyeat(foraseriesof exchanges about Plato), Richard Rutherford (for using his subtle understanding of Homeric poetry to help me improve Chapter 2), Ralph Rosen (for several probing discussions of Frogs), Glenn Most andRobertDoran(forseparatelyhelpingmetosharpenmythoughts on Longinus), and Malcolm Heath (for the stimulus of his disagree- ment about so many things). I am grateful, finally, to the Arts and viii Preface Humanities Research Council for a Research Leave Award in 2008 whichenabledmetobreakthebackoftheproject. I dedicate this book with sadness to the memory of Sir Kenneth Dover,who died in March 2010 when I was at an advanced stage of revisingmytypescript.Inadditiontohavingbenefited,likesomany other Hellenists, from his exemplary scholarship, I am fortunate to have been able to count him as the most important of my teachers and, in later years, a dear friend. I was greatly influenced by his commitment to both intellectual and imaginative openness in inter- pretingthephenomenaofGreekculture:Ionlywishthepresentwork wereaworthierwayofrecordingmyappreciationofwhatIowehim. SH StAndrews Contents NotetotheReader xi 1 SettingtheScene:QuestionsofPoetic ValueinGreekCulture 1 2 IsthereaPoeticsinHomer? 36 Contexts,Effects,andDesiresinHomericImagesofSong 36 TheMuses’DivinePerspective:TransmutingSuffering intoBeauty 55 Odysseus’TearsandtheParadoxicalNeedforSong 77 3 Aristophanes’FrogsandtheFailureofCriticism 93 AComicLessoninTragicPoetics? 93 Euripides,‘CloseReading’,andtheAudienceofFrogs 106 Analysis,Evaluation,andIncommensurability 115 DionysusasLover-cum-Critic:EmbodyingtheProblem ofPoetics 132 4 ToBanishorNottoBanish?Plato’sUnanswered QuestionaboutPoetry 155 InterrogatingPoetry’sMeaning:theApologyandIon 155 ThePhilosophical(Ex-)LoverofPoetry 179 5 AristotleandtheExperienceofTragicEmotion 208 EmotionalUnderstandinginthePoetics 208 TheAestheticandMoralPsychologyofCatharsis 236 Appendix:IstheCatharsisClauseinthePoetics anInterpolation? 260 6 PoetryintheLightofProse:Gorgias,Isocrates, Philodemus 266 GorgiasandtheSeductivePowerofLogos 266 IsocratesandtheNarrowedVisionofaPragmatist 285 PhilodemusandtheEnigmasofPoeticValue 304