Bonifazi, Anna. 2012. Homer's Versicolored Fabric: The Evocative Power of Ancient Greek Epic Word-making. Hellenic Studies Series 50. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_Bonifazi.Homers_Versicolored_Fabric.2012.
Conclusion. Homer’s Versicolored Fabric
| Αὖτις (+ ἐξαῦτις, αὖθις) | αὐτίκα (+αὐτίκ’, αὐτιχ’) | αὐτοῦ (+αὐτεῖ) | αὖθι (+αὖθ’) | αὐτόθι | αὔτως | |
| Iliad | 91 | 93 | 32 | 42 | 19 | 36 |
| Odyssey | 52 | 98 | 54 | 18 | 16 | 21 |
| Homeric Hymns | 10 | 19 | 6 | 1 | — | 2 |
| Hesiodic poetry | 22 | 5 | 2 | 2 | — | 3 |
| Iambic poetry | 1 | 4 | — | — | — | — |
| Elegiac poetry | 10 | 6 | 3 | — | — | 5 |
| Lyric poetry | 10 | 19 | 2(αὐτεῖ) | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 196 | 244 | 99 | 64 | 36 | 68 |
Table 4. Occurrences of αὖτις, αὐτίκα, αὐτοῦ, αὖθι, αὐτόθι, and αὔτως.
As I conclude this series of studies of powerfully evocative words and phrases, I return to my initial synoptic image: the versicolored fabric. In Latin literature versicolor is used of the rainbow, of arms, of the pigeon’s feathers, of the viper’s skin, and of the chameleon’s changes. [1] In Livy, versicolor means “purple.” As we know, the ancient Greek term πορφύρεος designates not so much a specific color but a special quality of that color—the unstable perception it provokes, of a hue between red and other colors, or between a brighter and a darker hue. [2] πορφύρεος might very well be said to evoke iridescence. Throughout the Homeric poems various objects are said to be πορφύρεος: the clouds, the sea, the rainbow, the river Scamander, even death, and, most of all, several types of fabric (rugs, shrouds, cloaks, mantles, tunics). Iridescence can also be conveyed by the adjective μαρμάρεος, which does not even hint at a particular color, but which simply denotes something that gleams. In Homeric poetry, objects that are μαρμάρεος are: Zeus’ aegis, the rims of shields, and the sea. Nagy points out that πορφύρεος, which denotes a kind of purple that is “perceived as red in some combinations and blue in others,” is “a dominant feature of the Panathenaic Peplos of Athena”; in particular, the purple of the blood shed by the Giants in the battle with the gods and woven into the Peplos is {293|294} associated with the blood shed by the Trojans and the Achaeans as it is narrated in the Iliad. [3]
In my Introduction, I noted that various readers, while looking at the same text, can see different phenomena; it depends on how the text is used. Before further expanding upon the correspondence between vertere (“turning”) and the use of texts, I would like to elaborate upon the presence of fabric in the title of this monograph. There is, of course, the well-established link between texts and texta (along with texturae and textilia). What is interwoven in Homeric language pertains not only to the re-composition of features that have been variously transmitted over generations, but also to the network of interlaced references within each narration as it is performed. At the linguistic level, the Homeric texts we read today reflect both the diachronic richness of multifarious morphological and lexical marks and the synchronic power of recurrent phrases and their variants. Further, what makes robes, rugs, and peploi especially iridescent in the Homeric poems is related to the narrative meaning of the various multicolor drawings, images, patterns and gleaming effects. [4] Nagy draws a specific connection between what the texts hint about those fabrics and the Panathenaic Peplos of Athena; I limit my remarks to a more basic relationship—namely, that between the versicolored aspects I have tried to show over the course of this monograph the different perspectives through which the narrative of Homer might be viewed and processed.
Turning an object may change the overall perception of its color. Analogously, using a text may change the perception of its meaning or its function. In my Introduction, I spotlighted language use as the basic matter of the linguistic field of pragmatics. Pragmatics is a perspective, not a theory. Accordingly, everything that I have suggested in this monograph aims to propose readings based on a pragmatic approach to the Homeric epic. The Iliad and the Odyssey have been “turned” and re-oriented so that one might see and evaluate colors that were latent before. This does not mean that other colors or nuances or reflections are unimportant or, even worse, to be disregarded; it simply means that they are not the only possible senses. By considering the use of words, we may learn more about their meaning and function. Prior scholarly works of a clearly pragmatic character have illustrated aspects of ancient Greek, either because they dealt with classical topics of pragmatics (such as deixis, the relationship between intonation and information units, or politeness strategies) or because they placed an especial emphasis upon the extralinguistic context of their use (such as self-references to on-stage performances or allusions to a {294|295} particular audience). [5] My study has explored the more general pragmatic inputs observable behind the occurrence and recurrence of some words or clusters of words: what is the act that underlies a particular utterance—that is, what does the utterance do; and what are the presentational and the interactional intentions of the speaker in such acts? Because the Iliad and the Odyssey are literary works, my analyses became more direct: literary pieces are, indeed, often versicolored, and their iridescence is often deliberately enhanced by their authors. In the case of the producers of our Homeric texts, I assert that the prospect of a performance per se motivates the display of techniques designed to offer simultaneous and multifarious communicative inputs. These techniques include ad hoc extralinguistic features (such as particular music and gestures, especially facial), paralinguistic features (such as different timbres and tones of voice), and linguistic features. The iridescences generated by the latter are my concluding topic.
Taken as a whole, the meanings and functions that I have suggested show some overarching versicolored linguistic aspects of early Greek epic. With respect to my first three chapters, one signal aspect is the playful pronominalization of Odysseus as αὐτός and κεῖνος. I argued that this feature rests upon the anaphoric processing, the discourse relevance, and the cognitive, social, and emotional implications of the two third-person pronouns; moreover, all these features are detectable in authors subsequent to Homer and the Odyssey (see chapters 1 and 3). The different significances of the utterances that include the two pronouns complement and contribute to the sophisticated polyphony of the main narration. The fabric certainly shows different lights and different colors. There is a fundamental pragmatic ambiguity about who the real source is of the thoughts expressed: is it the character involved, or is it the primary speaking ‘I’ working through the words of that character? Or is it one character adopting the point of view of another (or of a group)? Sometimes, the play seems evident, sometimes it seems latent. These ambiguities ultimately converge upon the literary evaluation of the characters’ personalities and of their role in the poem (for example, Penelope’s and Eurycleia’s lexical choices exceed the borders of their “linear”—that is, plot-driven—figure).
A character that seems to particularly embody these problematics and ambiguities is Eumaeus. Chapter 2 focuses on Odyssey 14 because the long verbal exchange between Eumaeus and Odysseus—in what has often been considered a tedious episode—offers numerous divergences (as I called them), which have {295|296} either puzzled scholars or been underestimated. My starting premise is to go beyond the exclusively plot-driven tension between the unawareness of characters and the omniscient knowledge of performer and recipients—beyond, that is, dramatic irony. The application of H. H. Clark’s framework of communicative “layering” permits us to better explain the multiple senses—ironic and non-ironic—of several linguistic messages, not only those exchanged between the two characters, but also those inserted by the primary speaking ‘I’ in the narration. The results that follow point to a pragmatic flexibility of lexicon: the same terms may and may not be intended to mean something religious, according to the different communicative contexts—more or less local—in which those terms are uttered. If we take the layer of a posthumous celebration of Odysseus’ return as a ritual experience—linked to Odysseus’ hero cult—we may assert that Homeric poetry too has what Bierl calls a “rituelle Subtext.” [6] Ritual events can be regarded as an iridescent aspect of the epic telling, of myth itself. [7] Indeed, it might be the other way around: the epic performance is an iridescent aspect of ritual and religious practices. [8]
Finally, I see an analogy between the versicolored surface of Homeric poetry, in all its masterful linguistic organization, and its multi-layered textual references to mythical characters and to myths. [9] What is on the surface—that is, names and deeds singled out—regularly carries narrative and symbolic links to further entities and further facts. Often such links go deep, and once we grasp them the text gleams much more. As much as the content-rich layers of myth enrich comprehension of actions, so the pragmatic layers of particular utterances enrich interpretation of words.
In my final two chapters, I investigated a major multifaceted feature of Homeric poetry: the existence and the usefulness of the presentational level of discourse beside the representational one. What is presentational pertains, metatextually, to the organization of discourse; it does not add anything to the propositional content, but it signals how to process the coming unit(s). Τhe Homeric text can be all read as discourse that is structured by sequences of individual discourse acts; particles and other lexical items become, at that point, essential, like road signs on a street. The iridescence of this part of the {296|297} investigation is twofold. First, it arises from the blurred dividing line between presentational and interactional markers; what works as narrative signpost may also work as emotional signpost. The speaker’s attitudes toward what is said are a notable part of the discourse relevance of subjects, and this holds not only when the speakers are internal characters, but also when the speaker is the primary speaking ‘I’. Second, while particles like αὖ, αὖτε, and αὐτάρ are simply discourse markers, the functions of the adverbs considered in chapter 5 oscillate between the representational and the presentational level (emblematic, in this respect, is αὖτις).
Finally, from the textual analyses some pragmatic and cognitive properties emerge, which are shared by third-person pronouns and by discourse markers; thus, the findings from both parts of this monograph coalesce. First, the multifunctionality of linguistic features that are particularly sensitive to cohesion range from local to global scopes; anaphoric references and particles share meanings related to contiguous parts of discourse, as well as meanings related to much larger narrative segments (even to an entire composition, as with Odysseus κεῖνος throughout the Odyssey, or the several instances of δηὖτε that start songs). Second, narrative markers almost always go together with visual clues.
Fabric is there. According to the different positions of the fabric and of the viewer, different components may be activated and different outcomes may be seen. All the components are potentially there. Detecting them depends on the conditions and on the occasions of reception, and on the “empty spaces” (Iser’s Leerstellen) Homeric discourse generates. Homeric poetry is a fabric that still leaves space for more uses and more findings. Perhaps this is because that fabric has never been and never will be monochromatic. {297|}
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. Pliny Natural History 21.19 (41); Vergil Aeneid 10.181; Cicero De finibus 3.5 (18); Pliny Natural History 25.6 (18); 28.29 (113) respectively.
[ back ] 2. “In early poetry πορφύρεος is not definitely chromatic, but describes the appearance which purple-dyed material and certain other objects have in common. This may be sheen or iridescence, the apparent mixture of light and dark on a changing surface” (Irwin 1974:18). See also Levaniouk 1999:128n76. In a short text about the meaning of “purple” for the ancient Greeks, Harris observes: “I saw right off that both the flake and the sea were iridescent, it was that quality of inner shinning-ness [sic] which has made the Mediterranean waters so famous to century after century. And the Murex had somehow chanced upon the same iridescence, so it was the relative scale of iridescence which was behind these word-usages.” (http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/Classics/purple.html). For general observations on the perception of colors by the ancient Greeks, see, in particular, Irwin 1974:3–30.
[ back ] 3. Nagy 2009–: ch. 10 II§387–407; II§394 for the quotations (italics in the text).
[ back ] 4. “… the narrations woven into the diplax of Helen and into the diplax of Andromache are both linked with the overall narration of the Homeric Iliad” (Nagy 2009–: ch. 10 II§384).
[ back ] 5. See, for instance, Felson (2004) for deixis; Bakker 1997b for information units; Lloyd 2004 for politeness; Gentili 1984 for lyric performative settings; De Jong and Rijksbaron 2005 for different pragmatic aspects of dramatic language; H. Dik 1995 and 2007 for the pragmatics of word order in Herodotus and in tragic dialogues.
[ back ] 6. I am referring to Bierl 2001 and his analysis of “serious” ritual reflections in the choral texts of Aristophanes’ plays.
[ back ] 7. “When ritual becomes part of narrative, narrative integrates an alternative mode of reflection, thus enhancing its own polyglossia” (Grethlein 2007:45).
[ back ] 8. “In generale, il mito non si spiega all’infuori della religione” (Brelich 1958:31). “… le ‘mythe’ en Grèce archaïque et classique est ‘rite’” (Calame 1997:133).
[ back ] 9. This point became clearer to me as I read Levaniouk’s manuscript On the Eve of a Festival (now Levaniouk 2011) The author stresses the interlacing of actual and evoked acts by characters, as well as their depth; both contribute to the meaningfulness of the telling.