Callimachus: The Nerd of Alexandria

 After the completion of the Oedipus at Colonus, the group chose to take an 'interregnum' before starting the Hippolytus of Euripides. In this period the group is studying Callimachus' Epigrams. This involves a changes in meter and in dialect. For more than a thousand lines, the meter has been iambic trimeter admixed with the complex yet partly predictable meters of the Chorus. The meter of epigrams, however, is elegiac couplet, a topic which this blog has addressed in previous posts. For those who might not be familiar with the elegiac couplet in Greek literature, it might be best compared to a limerick - a poem of predictable pattern but not constrained to the frivolity of the latter. A couplet, as one might guess from the name, has two lines. The first is a dactylic hexameter similar to that of epic poetry. The second is a pair of two and a half feet, of which the second must be two dactyls and the beginning of a foot. That consistency drives home the identity of the couplet as a unit. The end of the unit must reinforce the nature of the poetry. In longer works, such as epic poetry, extending to hundreds or thousands of lines, there may be exceptions; but if there were such in a poem of six lines, the irregularity could be construed as poor composition. 

The matter of length raises a different matter: the form is called a couplet because it is short. The minimum length of a couplet is two lines. There is no specific maximum length, but the form implies brevity, especially in the Callimachean school of aesthetics, where a big book is a bad book. This limitation of space drives a further phenomenon, that of the hapax legomenon. There is less room for description in a shorter form of poetry, nor does Callimachus deem it desirable, so references must be brief and potent. A word or phrase in such poetry invokes an entire scene of Homer or Hesiod. Critically, this invocation only works if the audience has what one would call today media literacy. The circumstances in the epigram may be different in way subtle or gross from the passage so invoked, but this method only works if the original source is known. There was no annotated Aeschylus in the era of Callimachus!

The other change is that of dialect. For those who start Greek from Attic, which is most learners, they may know the rule about etas and alphas after vowel and rho, but they may not realize that Attic's rule is a sign of incomplete linguistic change which the Ionic dialect fulfilled (whether or not Zeus was involved). It is a minor difference which does not affect meter. The next difference does affect meter. The adjective for singular you in Attic is 'sos'. In Ionic it is 'teos'. Even without extensive linguistic training, it is easy to note that the first is one syllable, while the second is two. In a meter as constricted as elegiac couplet, this difference has an oversize impact. The first may be short or long and therefore combined with a suitable element as the poet desires, but the second must be a pyrrhic if the second syllable is short and an iamb if the second syllable is long. In The Ionic option, that means one syllable of flexibility down!

Awa Pit

Lately, I've been digging in the linguistic mines of Awa Pit, a South American language which has a feature with the fear-inducing name of conjunct-disjunct. The core concept is actually quite simple. If you are familiar with any non-English European language, you have come across conjugations - in French je chante, tu chantes, il chante, in Spanish canto, cantas, canta, in German ich singe, du singst, er singt. Even English conjugates, just barely, I sing, you sing, he sings. The good news? In Awa Pit, there is one conjugation marker per I/you/he sit.

This marker is best explained by analogy. If this worthy poster wrote a note saying "Gone fishing." and placed it on your fridge, you would interpret the sentence as "I have gone fishing." If this poster, however, sent you a text "Gone fishing?", you would interpret the question as "Have you gone fishing?" In other words, the English punctuation provides enough context without the pronouns "I" and "you" to interpret the sentences. Awa Pit, as a language of the South American jungle, is seldom written down, and therefore uses suffixes at the end of verbs to indicate this distinction.

Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus: The Anti-Iliad

 Recently our Greek group finished reading Oedipus at Colonus, the last, posthumously produced, play of the tragedian Sophocles of Colonus (this is the famous Sophocles, but the specification is relevant here). The 'trilogy' of Theban plays known today is not a true trilogy, but rather three individual plays from three trilogies from a tragedian who has a deep attachment to the Theban Cycle. Not only are these plays separate, but it is impossible to tell for certain where they fit into the cycles of their respective trilogies. 

One may, nonetheless, form opinions about such matters. It seems likely that the Oedipus at Colonus is the last of its trilogy. The correspondence of the agedness of the protagonist and the playwright, who fittingly did not live to see the premier performance, is one piece of evidence. The Oedipus at Colonus is also heavy on the talking, even for a Greek tragedy. The choice of protagonist and setting, in the Grove of the Kindly Ones forces the other characters to come to Oedipus rather than mingling freely. Each of Oedipus' male relatives come to him as petitioners as if he were already apotheosized. Oedipus fills the prophetic role usually reserved for Tiresias in Theban material. Oedipus undergoes apotheosis at the end, thereby removing himself from any following plays - this apotheosis prompted one of our group to describe the Oedipus at Colonus as the anti-Iliad, since Achilles' arc in that work involves his realization that, no matter how mighty he is, no matter his lineage, he is nonetheless mortal. Oedipus, in contrast, becomes more and more aloof from mortal concerns as the Oedipus at Colonus continues, culminating in his ascent in status to a hero cult, the level accorded to those below the falling angel and above the rising ape. The details surrounding this apotheosis are not always clear in their symbolism, but this is to be expected of a ritual which ends a play that frequently enjoins reverent silence. 

One could argue that the many speeches of Theban partisans in the Oedipus at Colonus are a way of setting up the conflicts and this is therefore the first of its trilogy. In that case, the shadow of the Colonus would hang over the participants in the coming war. This is less likely than the above for two reasons. The first is that Sophocles had already written the angry aftermath of conflict in Antigone, the earliest of his extant Theban plays. The more mature approach of Oedipus Tyrannus, the chronologically middle play, suggests that Sophocles, as playwright, was writing the plays according to his aging and increase in understanding rather than the internal chronological order of the Theban Cycle. The last trilogy, therefore, would focus on the last days of Oedipus just as Sophocles is declining, although perhaps not as much as his sons and heirs might wish. The second reason is that Sophocles is a Colonus lad himself, possessing a great interest in the cycle around the hero. The other two surviving plays are set at Thebes, but the shrine is at Colonus. The playwright's last work should end where he began.