3§13. It is a well-known fact, learned from ethnographic research on laments, that such sad songs centering on the death of loved ones can modulate into love {79|80} songs. [10] And not only can laments modulate into love songs. The converse also happens: love songs can modulate into laments, especially in the case of love songs that center not only on lovers who are lost or dead but also on the loss or death of love itself. Just as laments express sorrow and love together in the course of mourning the death of a loved one, so also love songs can readily express the same two emotions of sorrow and love together. And why should a traditional love song be sad? It is because most traditional love songs are preoccupied with the theme of unrequited love. And, in most song cultures, love songs about unrequited love are felt to be deeply erotic.

3§14. I show here an example. It is a Hungarian love song, from the region of Transylvania, and the name of the love song is Szerelem, which means ‘love’. This song was used by the director of the film The English Patient (1996), both at the beginning of the film and also in the course of the action in the film, as for example in an intensely erotic love scene where the Hungarian character in the story of the film plays on an old “phonograph” machine a vinyl record of this love song. I give here the words of the first two stanzas only:

When you listen to this song, you hear an example of stylized crying. That is to say, the singer is not really crying, since the crying is stylized.

3§15. In most traditional song cultures, including Greek song culture, laments and love songs are performed primarily by women, and many of the formal gestures of lament are specific to women. The performance of songs by women is a most important matter in ancient Greek song culture. And it is a most important matter to consider right now, as we study the Homeric Iliad, since the traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad. And I argue that {80|81} Homeric poetry needs to be rethought in the light of the women’s song traditions that pervade it.

3§16. A moment ago, I mentioned formal gestures of lament that are specific to women. Now I point to an example of such a gesture in the singing of ancient Greek laments: women conventionally let down their hair while lamenting. This spontaneous but traditional gesture is an expression of loss of control and order in one’s personal life. There are also other spontaneous but traditional ways of expressing loss of control and order, such as tearing your hair, scratching your cheeks, ripping your fine clothing.

3§17. In the case of letting down the hair, this ritual gesture is normally preceded by the equally spontaneous but traditional ritual gesture of ripping off the veil that holds the hair together and keeps it composed.

3§18. Here I repeat, from the Introduction to the book, my working definition of ritual and myth. Ritual is doing things and saying things in a way that is considered sacred. Myth is saying things in a way that is also considered sacred. So, ritual frames myth.

3§19. Once the veil is torn off, the hair gets let down and becomes completely undone. A spectacular example is the scene in Iliad XXII when the wife of Hector, Andromache, rips off her veil, which is the most elaborate headdress to be found in Homeric poetry, before she starts to sing a lament over the death of her husband. By ripping off this veil, Andromache is letting down her beautiful curly hair, violently undoing it. In effect, what the Homeric narration presents here to the mind’s eye is the complete undoing of a woman’s composure. Andromache will perform her lament, crying and singing, with her hair completely undone:

3§20. In the verses that follow, the beautiful song of lament sung by Andromache is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXII 477-514). In order to appreciate this lament in context, we need to understand the scene of dishevelment that leads up to it, which I have studied at length in an article. Here is an abridged version of what I say about it there: [13]

3§21. The lament that is sung by Andromache when she sees the corpse of Hector dragged behind the speeding chariot of Achilles is arguably the most artistic and elaborate of all the laments quoted in the Iliad (XXII 477-514). It is also the most lengthy of all Homeric laments. Later on, toward the end of the Iliad, Andromache sings a lament at the funeral of Hector in Troy, and this lament too is quoted in full by the master Narrator (XXIV 725-745). And, earlier on, when Andromache speaks to her husband for the last time in a tearful farewell scene, {83|84} her words correspond formally to the words of a lament that could have been sung, with adjustments, at the funeral of Hector, and these words too are quoted in full by the master Narrator (VI 407-439).

3§22. I need to say one more thing right now about the first of the three laments performed by Andromache: in this first lament, Andromache is singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. In this case, her lament is an act of premonition.

3§23. I offer here a typological parallel to Andromache’s first lament as an act of premonition. [15] It comes from the Korean film Ch’unhyang (2000), which is based on a traditional Korean p’ansori narrative about a righteous young woman named Ch’unhyang, who is of low social status but high moral principles.

3§24. I concentrate here on a scene from this narrative, in which the young woman breaks out in lament when she absorbs the sad news of a terrible fate that awaits her. In this scene, the secret husband of Ch’unhyang announces that he will abandon her, though only for a while, he claims. The reaction of Ch’unhyang is instantaneous grief. Her sorrow is mixed with feelings of love for her husband, and with feelings of fear and anger that she will lose him forever. She bursts into a lament, accompanied by ritual gestures, such as the violent tearing of her clothes, which is a ritual premonition of the violence she will endure because of her low social rank, now that her high-ranking secret husband is leaving her. This violent tearing of clothes dramatizes her sexual vulnerability in the uncertain future that now awaits her. In the plot of the Ch’unhyang narrative, that vulnerability will turn out to be a grim reality for this abandoned woman, whose low social status makes her become the tragic victim of predatory men of high social status. Her lament is a premonition that anticipates this reality, as she keeps on crying and singing. And the master Narrator quotes the lament of Ch’unhyang as she cries and sings. This way, by quoting the lament of Ch’unhyang, the Narrator performs his own stylized crying and singing, which is more artistic than the lament of Ch’unhyang. When Ch’unhyang is lamenting, her crying and singing are more natural, not as musical as the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator, and her lament echoes in a kind of delayed reaction the singing of her {84|85} lament as performed by the master Narrator. In the middle of her lament, the macro-Narrative of the film shows flashbacks to happy moments in the past when Ch’unhyang is seen making love to her secret husband. These erotic flashbacks have the effect of intensifying the sorrow of Ch’unhyang as she thinks back to those happy moments in the past that preceded her excruciating pain and suffering in the present. And, conversely, her sorrow intensifies the eroticism of these flashbacks.

3§25. The macro-Narrative of the film Ch’unhyang actually shows the master Narrator in action. The camera shows him performing before a large audience representing a broad cross-section of ages and social status. The master Narrator is telling about the excruciating pain and suffering inflicted on Ch’unhyang by her high ranking tormentor, a magistrate who seeks to alienate her affections from her absent husband. The earlier lament of premonition sung by Ch’unhyang, accompanied by acts of ritual self-degradation like the ripping of her fine clothing, now becomes a lament of actuality, where she cries and sings over the excruciating pain that is being inflicted on her. And the lament that she sings while she is being tortured is quoted by the master Narrator himself, whose stylized crying and singing is foregrounded against the background of the natural crying and singing of Ch’unhyang as she endures the pain inflicted on her. Her crying and singing are echoing the stylized crying and singing of the master Narrator who is quoting her sad song:

3§26. With this comparison in place, I will now analyze the first of the three laments of Andromache in the Iliad. I quote only a part of this lament, where we see Andromache singing and crying over the death of her husband Hector even before he dies. As I said before, her lament is an act of premonition:

3§27. As we see in these words of Andromache’s lament, the word akhos, ‘grief, sorrow’, at verse 413 is used to express the performance, the singing, of lament.

3§28. In the course of lamenting her sorrows, Andromache makes special mention of the death of her father, whose name is Eëtion – as we know from another context that we will be considering in less than a minute from now. From what Andromache says, it is clear that her father would rank highest in her ascending scale of affection – if he were alive. But her father is dead, and so too are her seven brothers and her mother. For Andromache, all she has left is her husband Hector, who is now the entirety of her ascending scale of affections. Hector has become for Andromache her father, brothers, and mother as well as her husband. In effect, Andromache is telling Hector: you’re my everything.

3§29. The death of Eëtion, Andromache’s father, who would have ranked highest in Andromache’s ascending scale of affection, deepens the irony in a passage we saw earlier. Here I repeat the relevant verses of that passage:

3§30. We see Achilles here singing the klea andrōn, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 189) – while accompanying himself on a lyre. And the lyre {87|88} that he is playing had once belonged to Eëtion, the father of Andromache. As we have just seen from the words of Andromache, Achilles had killed her father Eëtion. And, evidently, Achilles took away as his prize the lyre of Eëtion, and now he is playing on that lyre as he sings the klea andrōn, the ‘glories of men’. You could say that Achilles is strumming the pain of Andromache. I am reminded of the words of the song original sung by Roberta Flack, Killing me softly (1973): “Strumming my pain with his fingers, singing my life with his words, …”

3§31. You have to ask yourself: what was Achilles singing about when he sang the klea andrōn, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’ (Iliad IX 189)? The master Narrator of the macro-Narrative does not say. There is no quoting or even paraphrasing of the subject of the song sung by Achilles here. But there is a hint about that subject, and that hint is embedded in another vitally important nearby mention of klea andrōn in the Iliad. We have already seen it. It happens in Text B of Hour 2, where Phoenix is telling the story of the hero Meleagros and his wife Kleopatra, and the old man refers to his micro-narrative as tōn prosthen … klea andrōn | hērōōn, ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). And what is the subject of that micro-narrative? From the standpoint of Phoenix as the narrator, the subject is the love that a hero owes to his comrades. From the standpoint of the master Narrator of the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad, however, the subject is nothing less than the meaning of Kleopatra herself, of her name, which signals the ‘glories of the ancestors’, the ‘glories of heroes of the past’.

3§32. The meaning of Kleopatra, as well as the meaning of the song about Kleopatra as told by Phoenix, is relevant to the very idea of lamentation. Inside the song about Kleopatra, that is, inside the klea andrōn as performed by Phoenix, Kleopatra is actually shown performing a lament, singing it to her husband Meleagros, and her song of lament is actually paraphrased in this song of and about Kleopatra (Iliad IX 590-594). In this song, that is, in the klea andrōn as performed by Phoenix (IX 524), we see that Kleopatra has a second name besides Kleopatra, and that second name is a clear signal of lamentation. That second name is Alcyone, and the meaning of that name is transparent. In ancient Greek traditions, as I noted in Hour 2, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that is linked with singing songs of lament, and the Iliad makes this link explicit in re- {88|89} ferring to the name Alcyone, given to the lamenting Kleopatra by her lamenting mother and father:

3§33. Can we say, then, that the klea andrōn sung by Achilles himself is the song of Kleopatra? Yes and no. It is the song of Kleopatra, but it is not only her song. It is also the song of Patroklos. As we have seen in Hour 2, the meaning of the name of Kleopatra is also the meaning of the name of Patroklos, ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’, and this meaning recapitulates the epic choice of Achilles, who ultimately opts for kleos over life itself. The name of Kleopatra contains the same elements as does the name of Patroklos, only in reverse: ‘the one who has the glory [kleos] of the ancestors [pateres]’. {89|90}