Post
by mwh » Thu Jul 11, 2019 2:55 am
A few disconnected casual pensées on this passage, the first taking off from Sean’s Shakespeare with its reminder of the danger of hunting wild boars.
1. Wild boars (noch einmal).
‘Thou hadst been gone,’ quoth she, ‘sweet boy, ere this,
But that thou told’st me thou wouldst hunt the boar.
O! be advis’d; thou know’st not what it is
With javelin’s point a churlish swine to gore,
Whose tushes never sheath’d he whetteth still,
Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill.
Venus’ fears, of course, were justified. ω τον Αδωνιν, goes the old refrain of her lament—which gives the name to the closing cadence of the hexameter, the so-called adonic section (following the “bucolic” diaeresis).
(Incidentally, for any who don’t know, Homer accurately describes a boar’s tusk helmet, an artifact known only in Mycenean times, showing that the poems preserve memory of a much earlier era—and that boar's tusks were far from impossible to acquire.)
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2. Attic tragedy. A pity we don’t have Sophocles’ Nausicaa (aka Πλυντριαι, Washerwomen). Sophocles himself reportedly played Nausicaa and his ballplaying was outstanding. Not our standard image of Sophoclean tragedy.
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3. The simile (102-108). One of Homer’s more complex similes, which always have clearly marked entry and exit points: 102 οἵη Artemis (the vehicle, in I.A.Richards’ terms), 108 ὣς Nausicaa (the tenor, a single line). The formal point of comparison is how each of them stood out among her companions, but this is reached only at the end, after the picture of Artemis and her entourage has been painted in loving detail. Homer usually keeps tenor and vehicle quite separate and avoids any interaction between them (no interference or bleeding), but here they mirror one another, so that the image of Artemis & co. at play in the mountains (παίζουσι 106) is a reflection, distorted but unmistakable, of their counterparts at play on the beach (ἔπαιζον 100).
The simile nicely anticipates Odysseus’ own flattering comparison of Nausicaa to Artemis in the next scene. But we don’t get to that till next week.
The archer goddess and her nymphs disporting themselves in the mountains, carefree—a type-scene (beloved of painters), and we know what comes next: an outsider’s intrusion, his discovery, a swift change of atmosphere and dire consequences. (Seneca already mentioned Actaeon, and there are many others.) That’s the template, at the poet's disposal to play with. Cue the discovery of Odysseus. What will the reaction be?
The simile obliquely stresses another thing that Nausicaa has in common with Artemis: they are both virgins. The point is obvious but is withheld till the very end (109): Nausicaa is not called Nausicaa but παρθένος ἀδμής (an emphatic combination)—but for how long will she remain so? The marriage theme has been insistently sounded. Cue Odysseus’ entrance into her maiden life, naked.
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4. Gods, and what might have been.
But no! Nausicaa prepares to drive back home (110)! But Athena has other ideas (ἄλλ’ ἐνόησε 112), thereby saving the plot. Just as Athena instigated Nausicaa’s trip to the seaside (15ff.), so here she thwarts an ending that would have avoided the encounter with Odysseus altogether.
The poet insists on having Athena pull the strings throughout. Some sociologically-minded critics cut out the involvement of the gods (which is possible to do, interestingly, since all the poem’s actions are explicable in terms of independent human motivation: hence "double motivation"), but the poet keeps them at the forefront. Actions and events take place on two levels, the human and the divine, the mortal and the immortal (βροτος:αθανατος)—this being the contrast on which the pathos of the poem fundamentally depends, as does the entirety of ancient Greek culture.
Homer has two structures for thwarted potential outcomes. (1) “X was on the point of happening when Y happened” (as here, ἔμελλε 110), and (2) “Then X would have happened had not Y happened.” This second one, deploying εἰ μή, is reserved for momentous events, frustrated in the nick of time.
I would have gone on εἰ μή I’d written more than enough.
It's more that Fitzgerald's mistake got me wondering about κάπρος for its own sake.
Disclaimer: I don't want to end every week with a lengthy discussion about reception - the views above are my own reception or however you want to label them and we don't need to get into how each point is only my opinion]