Ok, let’s start a new thread if we want to continue the other debate…
Well yes, that’s what I meant, I was counting on you to see through the disguise. Lord has been effectively divinized. Now back to Stirling.
Ok, so, repetition. Let’s narrow this down to where repetition ought to cluster most naturally: sexy sexy catalogue poetry. Ubi sunt? Iphigenia in Aulis obviously, anywhere else?
No apology is necessary. I start threads just to see where they will go. Not concerned about them being high-jacked. The discussion of Hard Parryist’s and so forth is over my head. I picked up a free set of Elizabeth Vandiver’s lectures on the Iliad last week which I listen to while driving. I have been through her lectures on all the Classical Greek authors before, several times. She explains some of the issues covered in this thread. But you know, it is really field in which you need to have done some serious work. I don’t excited about theories of composition after nearly five decades of exposure to that in biblical studies … Pentateuch, Synoptic Problem … blah blah blah …
Homer’s works contain large blocks of repeated material which don’t qualify as verbal repetition at all. If I understand (vaguely) Parryism there are shorter formulas like name + epithet which are dictated by the meter. These would also be ignored in a discussion of verbal repetition since they are fixed forms. I just posted in koine an example of Chiasmus which doesn’t count as verbal repetition. So there are lots places where a word will be used twice which are not of interest.
Hi, Clay and Michael,
I agree with Michael that the repetition of δοκεῖν is far from bad writing. The play is all about the difference between τὸ δοκεῖν and τὸ εἶναι, and here we have some verbal shadowing of that theme.
Here’s how Neophytus Doukas’ paraphrase
http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101066089804;view=2up;seq=282;size=175
handles the four δοκεῖν’s:
TEXT:
ὃν δὴ σὺ πειρᾷς ἐκβαλεῖν, δοκῶν θρόνοις
παραστατήσειν τοῖς Κρεοντείοις πέλας.
PARAPHRASE:
ὃν σὺ νῦν σκευωρεῖς ἐκβαλεῖν τῆς ἀρχῆς, ἵνα πάρεδρος τῷ τοῦ Κρέοντος γένῃ θρόνῳ.
The ἵνα clause showing the putative content Teiresias’ δοκεῖν.
2.
ΤΕΧΤ:
Κλαίων δοκεῖς μοι καὶ σὺ χὠ συνθεὶς τάδε
ἁγηλατήσειν·
PARAPHRASE:
ἀλλ΄οὐ χαίροντες ἄμφω ἐκβαλεῖτέ με δήπου.
The future indicative being more definite than δοκεῖν plus the future infinitive.
3.
TEXT:
εἰ δὲ μὴ 'δόκεις γέρων
εἶναι…
PARAPHRASE:
εἰ μὴ γέρων ἦσθα…
This is what Michael would have expected. The very fact that Doukas leaves the δοκεῖν out causes you to notice it in the original, thus appreciating Sophocles more. I think the idea is that Teiresias is not truly a wise elder.
4.
TEXT:
Ἡμῖν μὲν εἰκάζουσι καὶ τὰ τοῦδ’ ἔπη
ὀργῇ λελέχθαι καὶ τὰ σ’, Οἰδίπου, δοκεῖ.
PARAPHRASE:
ἀμφότεροι ἡμῖν δοκεῖτε ὀργῇ μᾶλλον, ἢ σὺν λόγῳ εἰρηκέναι.
The only time Doukas reproduces a δοκεῖν. Perhaps it shows reticence on behalf of the chorus.
Doukas therefore is not as repetitive as Sophocles, but Doukas himself would never suggest that his art comes close to the original. The purpose of his paraphrase is not, of course, to improve Sophocles, but to provide target language helps to those of us who struggle with the original.
I don’t have a set of criteria for evaluating effective repetition, but I know it when I see it.
On the subject of Sophocles and magnificent writing, I was reading through the Ajax after making an unwise observation about σωφρονεῖν at 1264 (I said it was practically redundant, meaning in the grammatical context of that particular line, but I should have noted the strong thematization of σωφρονεῖν in this drama of madness—affinities with Eurip’s Bacchae here, his finest play), and here’s the standout passage, the perfectly untranslatable ending of Agamemenon’s thoroughly obnoxious put-down of Teucer, jeering at his bastard status. (Teucer is intent on burying Ajax, his half-brother.) It directly precedes the chorus’ distich 1264f.
καὶ σοὶ προσέρπον τοῦτ’ ἐγὼ τὸ φάρμακον
ὁρῶ τάχ’, εἰ μὴ νοῦν κατακτήσῃ τινά·
ὃς τἀνδρὸς οὐκέτ’ ὄντος, ἀλλ’ ἤδη σκιᾶς,
θαρσῶν ὑβρίζεις κἀξελευθεροστομεῖς.
οὐ σωφρονήσεις; οὐ μαθὼν ὃς εἶ φύσιν
ἄλλον τιν’ ἄξεις ἄνδρα δεῦρ’ ἐλεύθερον,
ὅστις πρὸς ἡμᾶς ἀντὶ σοῦ λέξει τὰ σά;
σοῦ γὰρ λέγοντος οὐκέτ’ ἂν μάθοιμ’ ἐγώ·
τὴν βάρβαρον γὰρ γλῶσσαν οὐκ ἐπαΐω.
Does anyone do abuse better than Sophocles? (Gotta love that κἀξελευθεροστομεῖς.) — So there’s another magnificent piece of writing. It goes way beyond the effects of repetition (to stay on topic!). Has to be read in the context of the whole play, of course. It’s the rhetoric that does it.