Scribo, I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Do you mean that the poet is trying to reconciliate two different, contradictory versions of the story, one of which is a local Laconian one? And what do you mean with performance variant?
I think scholars used to judge passages interpolations much too easily. I prefer M. L. West’s idea of one oral poet reworking his own text. But in the case of the Odyssey, and especially the Telemachiad, I’m not sure if there really wasn’t quite a lot of reworking by someone else. For me, one big difficulty is Pisistratus’ name: how else could he have the same name as the Athenian tyrant, unless we assume an absurdly late date for the whole of the Odyssey? Also, I have a recollection that Pisistratus isn’t mentioned in a Hesiodic catalogue of Nestor’s sons.
I don’t necessarily mean he was trying to reconcile two variations, as much as maybe that was the version he went with in performance, maybe it was the only one he knew, god knows.
I can’t remember whether or Peisistratos was mentioned in the catalogue off the top of my head, it IS interesting since he claimed Neleid ancestry and I’ve always thought of tampering or Attic patronage or something myself for that reason. On the other hand it’s quite a commonish high class name…so…Interestingly see s20 of Plutarch’s Theseus for him apparently tampering with the catalogue.
I’m still not sure I understand what you mean by “performance”, how performance would affect our written text and how that explains this incongruity. Do you perhaps mean something like this: that we have a dictated text, and while dictating the Odyssey, the poet dictated these passages in question the way he had usually recited them in performance, without properly adapting them to the larger whole?
As for Hesiod, the passage in question is fr 35 in Merkelbach-West, in the Gynaikwn Katalogos. It doesn’t have Peisistratos, but the problem is that it seems to be very fragmentary and largely supplemented from somewhere else (the Odyssey I guess?). So unless there’s some other fragment out there, I don’t think this amounts to much proof. I remember seeing it taken as evidence somewhere about Peisistratos not originally being among Nestor’s sons, though - but since I don’t remember where, saying this doesn’t lead anywhere…
Hi, sorry, performance can essentially affect the text in several ways. It could be original, it could be via dictation, it could be a later accretion in this instance.
As for Peisikins that is interesting, I haven’t spent as much work memorising the GK fragments yet so I hadn’t caught that. VERY interesting, I’m tempted towards the same conclusions…but I fee something, as usual, pulling at my collar telling me not to be too hasty.
I haven’t formed any clear conclusions myself, I’m just expressing to what direction the evidence seems to be pointing in my opinion. I guess it’s reasonable to refrain from hasty conclusions… I haven’t found any clear conclusion in scholars like S. West either, and I guess it’s for a reason…
I don’t like the word performance very much in this sort of context, because it’s too ambiguous as to how the words ended up on paper. As far I understand anything, I think the oralist school are much too optimistic about what our transmitted text can tell about performance.
For me, one big difficulty is Pisistratus’ name: how else could he have the same name as the Athenian tyrant, unless we assume an absurdly late date for the whole of the Odyssey? Also, I have a recollection that Pisistratus isn’t mentioned in a Hesiodic catalogue of Nestor’s sons.
My guess, unsupported by the slightest shred of evidence: the author of the Odyssey made up the character and the name (like so many names in the Odyssey, Eumaeus, Alcinous, Arete, Nausicaa, Euycleia, Mentor, the various suitors and, who knows? maybe even Telemachus; the poet of the Odyssey was very inventive in this sphere); and the parents of the Athenian Pisistratus gave him the name of Nestor’s son–by that time the most famous and beloved of Nestor’s sons in the wake of the Odyssey’s wild success throughout the Greek-speaking world–to advertise their purported Neleid connections.
Qimmik, that’s a possible explanation. I mean on first hearing it sounds a bit strained to have the Athenian tyrant named after a character in the Odyssey, but stranger things have happened. I wonder what onomastics have to say about that. In general the Odyssey fits best in the 7th century or before, on linguistic and other grounds, or so I have understood. I don’t know enough Greek to have an opinion as to whether there are “linguistically newer layers”, like some say, especially for book 24.
According to Stephen Mitchell’s preface to his Odyssey translation (p. xl), there’s a “Making of the Odyssey” in the making by Martin West. He will certainly know, or think thank he knows, an answer to all of these questions! I’m getting impatient already.
The Making of the Odyssey: A Disquisition and a Commentary will only cost 250 – take your pick, euros, dollars or pounds – for a 73 page book. I won’t be able to resist buying it, of course, but fortunately I do something else for a living.
I actually feel more strongly than in the case of the Iliad that the Odyssey was the product of a single individual with access somehow to writing, and I agree with West that the author of the Odyssey couldn’t possibly have been the same person who wrote the Iliad. But we’ll never know for sure.
The Making of the Odyssey is actually going to published. But estimated publication date is only October 2014. You can’t do this to me! There’s no way I can wait that long.
The poet of the Odyssey was a seriously flawed genius. . . . a slapdash artist, often copying verses from the Iliad or from himself without close attention to their suitability. . . . he creates a narrative marked by constant inconsistency of detail. . . . his deployment of the epic language is often inept and sometimes simply unintelligible.
This is going to be somewhat controversial, I think.
I read that and knew instantaneously that I’m going to enjoy that book a lot!
I’ve been reading the Odyssey very closely for quite some time and I think I mostly agree with those statements; I’ve mentioned several such inconsistensies in these discussions before. I’m very curious about what West has to say about them.
Take geography for instance - I think the problems of geography (such as the exact location of Ithaca, the Sparta/Mykenae problem, or the journey from Pylos to Sparta on a horse wagon over Mt Taygetos) are evidence that the author of the Odyssey was more concerned with telling a good story than exactitude about details.
Yes it is going to be awesome. I love West’s scholarship even where I disagree heavily. I had an interesting debate with him incidentally about such…infelicities. For me, I basically think such things are normative for oral performances. Those mistakes. Rather than seams or what have you. I mean it would take a hyper skilled listener to even notice.
It occurs to me actually that with regards to “tectonic expansion” and what have you I’ve actually seen a preview of this approach to the Odyssey, from a related talk back in 2011. I think it was to do with book 8 or something. I don’t necessarily buy it, but either way it can offer fascinating insights into how poets organise their narrative. It’s putative, but then this stuff needs to be.
I like that we’re moving towards some more controversial books. Honestly, more of this. Less gender studies fluff please!
Ok that totally needs to be my signature.
α ed: Given the price I predict the usual will happen. Some rich college libraries will have it. Otherwise people will fight over who gets to access what in the faculty and the Bod and there will be a damn line in order to get to it, after it inevitably comes to the library much much much later than its release date. I’m going to have to go and visit Cambridge’s library since a) they’ll have it on release since they’re not backwards and b) for some reason they seem to dislike West so no one will read it.
Pretty lousy review I think, and not only because I disagree… But it brought to my mind this great Monty Python sketch.
I’d be happy to have another debate about those “infelicities” sometime… Although I do confess I’d need some more studying of oral poetry to have a really definite opinion on the question.
Pretty much think that’s how Austrailians are. One of my favourite lecturers is Australian and now and then he reverts to type, hilarious. Wow I just realise I’ve only ever met like 3 Australians. Ha.
Sure we can discuss those, I take a very…let’s say wet fish not too involved approach. I don’t think we can determine what are mistakes and what not in foreign (it is foreign!) narratives and my experience with other forms of oral poetry sort of make me think such things are really, really, common. More importantly, having read R. Scodel’s book on audience/poet interaction I think it more important to consider the audience’s role here. I mean how many of them would really notice? Only those with a lot of experience etc.
I want to re-read the Odyssey dedicatedly again. But I’ve only recently finished one re-read and I’m still investigating prose styles even though prose sucks and the more distant stuff is from Homer the less awesome it is. I could be having Odysseus hanging faithless maidens and instead I’m reading Aris-loli’msoboringbutChristianandMusliminfluenceinthemiddleagesmakesmeimportant-totle and his ethics.
I think the problems of geography (such as the exact location of Ithaca, the Sparta/Mykenae problem, or the journey from Pylos to Sparta on a horse wagon over Mt Taygetos) are evidence that the author of the Odyssey was more concerned with telling a good story than exactitude about details.
Or else, living in Asia Minor, s/he just didn’t have a very good grasp of the geography of mainland Greece.
See I’ve thought of that too, but how likely is it? I mean if anything the Odyssey seems to have a Euboian bent rather than a Mikrasiatic one. Also, poets by their nature were highly mobile so I don’t doubt that p.Od would have travelled a lot. There were more than enough competitions and aristocratic households in the mainland to make it worth while. I think it dangerous to infer that the poet didn’t know. I’d rather see it as a stylistic quirk or something. Especially since early Greek geography seemed to be a) who speaks what where and b) where are cult sites, as opposed to our more…well geographic tendencies.
It’s indeed difficult if not impossible to always say what is a mistake and what not in a poem whose origin is in an oral tradition. But committing a 12000 or 15000 thousand verse poem to writing in 7th or 8th century BC must have been a difficult enterprise, just technically speaking. I simply don’t understand how that could have happened without the writing process having an effect on the result. With the crude writing equipment they had, I find it really difficult to accept that these massive poems could be a sort of live transcript of actual live performance. So for that reason I’m sceptical of applying the idea of audience/poet interraction on these epics; of course they were performed, and of course the way the poet performed them and the different audiences he performed them to affected how the poem evolved in the poet’s mind during the his career. But I more and more firmly believe that when the poet was dictating or (maybe more likely) writing his poem, he didn’t have an audience.
So when I apply the Occam’s razor principle to this question, just looking at the poems and how great they are, despite some little inconsistensies - what is more likely? An off-hand dictation of a couple of days or weeks, or a slow process that took probably several years? (I’m leaving Nagy’s hypothesis out, since it seems even more absurd to me). And once we accept that the writing process is not self-evident but must have left some trace, we can start look for these traces. That’s what West has set out to do. I don’t think we have to swallow his theories whole, as many of his claimed transpositions are very hypothetical; actually I think once we get past the idea that we have “tape record transcripts” of Homer, I don’t see that West’s ideas and Oralist’s ideas actually rule each other out. Actually, I would say that many of the so called “infelicities” in Homer might have been accepted in the text precisely for the reason that they would have been accepted in a performance as well - in many cases it must be very difficult to draw the line between an “infelicity” caused by “oral poetry” and one caused by the act of committing to writing; maybe West is too eager to assign everything to the latter.
Re: geography. Of course not knowing the Peloponnese and Ithaca is evidence that the poet was not from these parts; but still, they weren’t on the other side of the world, he could well made the effort to get those facts right; only he chose not to. I think that says something.
Scribo, you mentioned the hanging of faithless maiden servants. I think that’s the single most repulsive episode in Homer by far from our own moral perspective. Much worse than the killing of the nicer suitors, or the human sacrifices on Patroclus’ pyre (which P. Il. clearly saw as an excess), or anything else. Perhaps it’s because such “honour killings” still exist, and for us (whether truthfully or not) they are a sort of embodiment of everything that is bad those other cultures (the “Other” from our perspective) that (apparently) condone it.
That’s why I chose that example. Straight up, stark, brutal. The Greeks are the other and the sooner realise that and adopt a more…anthropological mindset to it the better. Its odd, Qimmik in another thread mentioned the breakthrough in Homeric studies in the ‘30s. It’s not at all a coincidence that this was a great time for Classicists getting their hands dirty elsewhere. Milman Parry’s doctoral advisor? Antoine Meillet, a scarily good Sanskritist and Indo-Europeanist. Parry and Lord themselves obviously immersed themselves in South Slavic material. The best work on Greek culture in general comes from this comparative bent, look at West and Burkert et al. I like examples like this, I like smacking the more…literary aesthetic fluffiness with some hard realism now and then. Nothing like reminding your fellow students that Sokrates a) helped educate a tyrant and b) would have had his feet covered in faeces etc to stop them prevaricated. As you’ve said before I believe, the point isn’t to condone or censure but to simply…acknowledge and recognise. There’s no fundamental difference between Odysseus hanging his maids and Akhilleus’ lament on the phorminx.
I agree with your other post too, once something is textualised then it is open to the same level of variation as everything else (though occasionally Homeric papyri seem to reflect contact with a living tradition, no?) and this why Nagy’s evolutionary model fundamentally fails. Textual criticism at times is like a much needed enema for Classicists I swear lol.
Basically I’m not saying that we can’t detect problems and so on. I think we can, just that I’m very much on the wary side. Despite being a fan of West - which does kind of see oxymoronic doesn’t it?
I could be having Odysseus hanging faithless maidens and instead I’m reading Aris-loli’msoboringbutChristianandMusliminfluenceinthemiddleagesmakesmeimportant-totle and his ethics.