Agamemnon line 1

. . . until times within living memory the exponents of Aeschylus were necessarily and properly engrossed by the preliminary difficulties of language and grammar ~ A.W. Verrall

The opening line of the Agamemnon has the watchman begging the gods to free him -- from πόνος:

θεοὺς μὲν αἰτῶ τῶνδ᾽ ἀπαλλαγὴν πόνων  Ag. 1

I ask the gods for release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine,

He opens this tragedy spying light, fire relayed from the burning city of Troy to Agamemnon's Mycenae. His reads that light, which opens into a question of ultimate cause and import, as a signal. We see him no more - his prayer has been answered, the light has freed him from his πόνος.

The word signifies work, labor, but then broadens to aggregate all kinds of difficulty:

II. stress, trouble, distress, suffering, Il.19.227; “Τρώεσσι πόνον καὶ κήδε᾽ἔθηκεν” 21.525; “ἦ μὴν καὶ π. ἐστὶν . .” 2.291; ἐν τούτῳ τῷ π., of a storm, Hdt.7.190; ὁ Μηδικὸς [π.] the trouble from the Medes, Id.4.1; “παῦροι ἐν πόνῳπιστοί” Pi.N.10.78: freq. in Trag., “πόνος πόνῳ πόνον φέρει” S.Aj.866 (lyr.); “πόνον ἔχειν” Id.OC232 (lyr.), etc.: in pl., sufferings, A.Pr.66, 328, etc.; πόνους πονεῖν (cf. “πονέω” B.1.2); “διά τινα πόνους ἔχειν” Ar.Ec. 975 (lyr.); also of disease, “κατέβαινεν ἐς τὰ στήθη ὁ π.” Th.2.49; “πλευρᾶς πόνοι καὶθώρακος καὶ ἥπατος” Dsc.1.2; ἰσχίων π. καὶ πλευρᾶς ib. 73.

2. pain, esp. physical, “δύο π. ἅμα γενομένων, μὴ κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν τόπον, ὁ σφοδρότερος ἀμαυροῖ τὸν ἕτερον” Hp.Aph.2.46, etc.

A few lines further along, the watchman repeats his plea for release, using the same words, and makes a wish -- for good news:

νῦν δ᾽ εὐτυχὴς γένοιτ᾽ ἀπαλλαγὴ πόνων 

εὐαγγέλου φανέντος ὀρφναίου πυρός.  (Ag 20-21)

But tonight may there come a happy release from these ordeals [ponoi] of mine!

May the fire with its glad tidings (εὐαγγέλου) flash through the gloom!  (Smyth, Nagy et al)

The light that frees the watchman from his care will determine the courses of the city and its king, and the lives of his successors and heirs. The signal from Troy -- a compound of intelligible light and potent flame, carries a seething contagion through the lives of all who think it is "good news" -- a message of freedom from πόνος, of hope and a turn toward peace.

The opening is the experience of this news -- that is, its portentous power turns on what this light reveals, what lies in shadow -- thus upon reading and misreading, and on what it can and will set ablaze. Behind this telegraph contrived to give earliest notice of the supreme triumph of Agamemnon will lurk love, betrayal, vengeance, hubris, murder of children, political choices, war, spoils, destruction, interpretation of signs, prophecy, bad manners, and the beginnings of a superceding order.

If Aeschylus is anything, he's a firehose of Greek insight, myth, rigor, valor, and poetic power. His text is difficult, corrupt, and long was a mystery to most readers, well after Sophocles and Euripides had been knowledgeably edited, as noted (above) as recently as 1889 by A.W. Verrall. In short, he presents ponos -- difficult interpretive work both for what he did make, and for all the garbled, missing, interpolated things he didn't. He brings news -- it will be a while before we have any idea whether it's the kind of liberating news we're happy to hear.

Mothers, suns, and figural leaps in Paradiso 23

The stunning figure of the bird that opens Paradiso 23 speaks of ardent expectation - of light, which will enable this mother to see the aspetti disiati, the longed-for sight, of her nestlings, and then have visibility to go find food for them.

The overall thrust of the passage lies in the anticipation, through the long night "that hides things from us," of the enabling light. The bird will not be given food,;she will be given the sight of her newborns, and sufficient light to find food for them.

Many critics hear echoes of Paolo and Francesca -- of the disiato riso they were reading about; of the lovers now endlessly in flight, but coming at a call like a bird to her nest. John Freccero pointed out that for the damned lovers, there was no nest, no point of closure. Unlike the lovers, the bird of the simile will return to the nest, but only after having garnered food. She is giving life, as mothers do.

There's a more chilling echo here, perhaps less noted. Through the night, this mother cannot see the faces of her chicks, who are hungry. This blindness is temporary, unlike the hunger-blindness of Ugolino, when, after he and his starving sons hear the tower door nailed shut, he gropes in the dark, saying nothing to the children who beg him to eat them so he might live.

===============

Beatrice is the bird, ardent even before she sees the light that sets her face aflame. The sky lightens, and she tells him what is coming:

                            “Ecco le schiere
del trïunfo di Cristo e tutto 'l frutto
ricolto del girar di queste spere!”

There are schiere, bands or ranks of troops -- and the fruit harvested (ricolto) from the wheeling of these spheres. Here, we have no idea what Beatrice is actually seeing, but her figures bring together the instruments of triumph and of triumphal procession, and the image of a bountiful harvest.

The harvest builds upon the imagery of millstones, threshing floors, and bread woven throughout the canticle, prefiguring this moment. When the poet, at Beatrice's word, turns to see, we get more similes -- at first the bright sun making all the stars shine:

vid' i' sopra migliaia di lucerne
un sol che tutte quante l'accendea,come fa 'l nostro le viste superne;

Saw I, above the myriads of lamps,
  A Sun that one and all of them enkindled,
  E'en as our own doth the supernal sights,

We might recall that on Jupiter, this figure of the sun illuminating the stars appeared at the opening of Paradiso 20. But now it's not a simile, yet it is still a figural sun brightening the starry sphere. This Sun not a "real" sun; this shining substance (lucente sustanza) too powerful for the poet's eyes is emanating from Christ, and the harvested fruits are souls. Are they also, here in the starry sphere, stars?

The fact that this light, as powerful as it is, is not the actual vision of Christ is underscored by the simile that introduces it - the "Sun" is introduced figuratively as the moon -- as Trivia, linked with Diana, accompanied by shining nymphs:

Quale ne' plenilunïi sereni
 Trivïa ride tra le ninfe etterne
 che dipingon lo ciel per tutti i seni,

As when in nights serene of the full moon
  Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal
  Who paint the firmament through all its gulfs,

Beatrice describes what Dante is not able to look at as "a power (virtù) from which there is no shelter." This is the power, and wisdom, acting in human time,

ch'aprì le strade tra 'l cielo e la terra
 onde fu già sì lunga disïanza.”

that opened the roads between heaven and earth
for which of old there had been such long desire.

To connect roads that had been blocked, broken, cut off implies that at one time the way was intact. Before the Fall, heaven and earth were linked, and now, thanks to Christ, the road is restored. The introductory figure of Trivia now becomes legible in a new way: just as the goddess Hecate linked the three realms (Tri-via) of the pagan world (as Cynthia, Diana, and Persephone), so Christ acted in time to open the way for the children of men to return to their true home.

To bring together disjunct realms within sacred history is much what poets do with metaphor: they unite, though the exchange of attribute, disparate entities. The poetic function of figure, whether simile, metaphor, or other trope, yokes unlike things. If David the singer of Psalms was the archetypal poet-ruler, Christ is the new David, re-joining earth and heaven in his incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection.

===============

What's remarkable is that after speaking of this irresistible power that restored a path for men to go from earth to heaven, the poet undergoes a metamorphosis. He can't remember it, but he knows it took place because he is stronger. Without trauma, he looks at Beatrice, who is smiling.

He then goes on to say how, had he the inspirations of all the muse-suckled poets who ever sung, he could not begin to describe the beauty of Beatrice's smile, and, since this is the case, he is at an aporia with regard to "picturing Paradise."

 e così, figurando il paradiso, 
convien saltar lo sacrato poema, come chi trova suo cammin riciso.

And therefore, representing figuring Paradise,
  The sacred poem must perforce leap over,
  Even as a man who finds his way cut off;

In becoming able to see his guide fully, the poet has become stronger, but this very strength enables him to see his weakness -- the inadequacy of his ability to represent her smile. He has more than that to "figure" -- there is il paradiso. For that, the poem must "leap," like a man whose path is cut off. The poet does not have a way to do what he must do, what the savior did -- convey us, in figure, to il paradiso. Yet Beatrice tells him to turn from her and see:

Quivi è la rosa in che 'l verbo divino
carne si fece;

There is the Rose in which the Word Divine
Became incarnate;

The "battle of the feeble brows" begins again - and he begins to figurar il paradiso.

What form does this figuration of Paradise assume? When he turns from Beatrice, the poet resorts to simile: sunlight breaking through clouds, rendering vibrant a meadow; so far, it's a simile "like" his actual experience of Matilda in Eden. But then, he sees a Rose that is a living star, the mother of Christ, regina coeli. Is he now seeing Mary in her glorified flesh?

Certainly brilliant readers do see it this way. Instead of dwelling on it, however, the poet speaks of how this could occur: It's possible, he says, because Christ has "leapt" up far enough -- a distance so vast that the poet is no longer blinded by his light.

O benigna vertù che sì li 'mprenti,
 sù t'essaltasti per largirmi loco
 i li occhi lì che non t'eran possenti.

O power benignant that dost so imprint them!
  Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope
  There to mine eyes, that were not strong enough.  (23:85-87)

The sacrato poema proceeds because the Sun recedes. If in sacred history Christ advanced to restore the road, here he allows the sacred poem to jump the aporia by retreating. He performs a sacrifice of light that empowers vision rather than annihilating it.

This ought to alert us to read the next passage with particular care. The poem has made a leap. If we take it "at its word," then something other than the customary tropes could be at work. We'll see.

Revising the Man in the Moon: Paradiso 2

Our detailed look at Beatrice's language in Paradiso 2 the other day made clear that Dante wasn't kidding when at the opening of the canto he told folks following his wake in little boats to turn back for fear of getting smarriti. As in Inferno 1.3, smarrito means lost, but here, on the vast sea of being, hopelessly so.

The address to the reader makes reading this canticle, and recursively this canto in particular, a journey fraught with peril. To err here - to miss the tracks that lead the way -- could set one adrift without a guide.

If this caveat lector seems a bit hyperbolic, it's in keeping with a certain aura of irony in Paradiso 2. Barely has the pilgrim reached the moon before he's deep into moon spots, mirrors and, ultimately, a vision of an intelligent universe, all conveyed through the interplay of light, medium, and eye. To anyone expecting solemn anticipations of the Beatific Vision, the oddly mundane "science" of moon spots has to be slightly jarring.

Take that sense of being jarred a bit further. When one is expecting one thing but gets another, that defeat or surprise can occasion consternation. It can also be the source of comedy. Dante is amazed by the violation of earthly physics that allows him to co-occupy the same "place" as the moon. It doesn't seem that the moon penetrates his body, yet somehow his body and the moon's body are conjoined.

He goes on to ask Beatrice about the moon's spots, alluding in passing to the figure of the Man in the Moon, fabled (favoleggiare) in Italy to be Cain carrying a bundle of thorns (the thorns appear in the Commedia's other reference to Cain, in Inf. 20.126ff):

Ma ditemi: che son li segni bui

di questo corpo, che la giuso in terra 

fan di Cain favoleggiare altrui?  

But tell me, what are the dark signs on this body which make men on earth below tell the tale of Cain? (Par.49-51)

The question will provoke Beatrice's quite elaborate thought experiments in which both razor-sharp logic and the appeal to empirical experience are employed to present a very literal argument (about light and mediating substances) leading to what she confidently sees as a demolition of any hypothesis that "sees" variations in the heavens as rooted in mere degrees of material density.

But is there not also some playfulness here? First, the pilgrim asks not about spots, but about segni - signs - and says such signs make people tell fables of Cain. I.e., these fabulists are misreading signs and coming up with wild notions in which the second human born to Eve (in some traditions, Cain was not the son of Adam, but of Satan) forever carries a bundle of thorns, on the moon alone, unable ever to return to the community of men.

For men on earth, Cain is "the man in the moon," and this is a wildly inaccurate idea of the actual moon that springs from seeing signs (spots) and inventing a story that holds the place of a hypothesis -- it purports, however playfully, to explain what the signs mean. It is a humorous errant reading of these signs, possible in part due to the great distance between human eyes and the moon's spots.

The joke gets better: Dante has just told us that at this very moment, he was literally "in" the moon -- we have an actual (if literary) man in the moon alluding to the fabulous fictional man in the moon, and he's basically saying, "since we're here, can you help me see what these signs really are?"

We then get the tortuous proof of what they are not -- the display of logical reasoning is difficult, dense, and borders on a parody of scientific reasoning -- but the negative power of the insight leads to a change of mind which Beatrice (smiling throughout) foretells via this marvelous simile:

"Or come ai colpi delli caldi rai

della neve riman nudo il suggetto

e dal colore e dal freddo primai

cosi remiso te nell'intelletto

voglio informar di luce si vivace

che ti tremolera nel suo aspetto."

"Now, as smitten by the warm rays, the substance of the snow is left bare both of its former color and its cold, so I want to inform you, left thus bare in your mind, with a light so alive that you'll scintillate in its view." (Par. 2. 106-111)*

Beatrice gives us the metamorphosis of phase change as metanoia. The limpid waters of the mind will then be in- or re-formed by living light enabling a vision of the universe as divine intelligence self-explicating by gradations:

così l'intelligenza sua bontate

multiplicata per le stelle spiega,

girando sé sovra sua unitate.

so the Intelligence unfolds its bounty, multiplied through the stars, itself wheeling on its own unity.

An intelligence like a scintilla of joy in the pupil of an eye:

Per la natura lieta onde deriva,

la virtù mista per lo corpo luce

come letizia per pupilla viva.

By the joyous nature from which it springs, the mingled virtue shines through the body as joy through the living pupil. (Par. 2. 142-44)

Beatrice has erased Dante's misreading of the signs on the moon, which turns out to have been quite as aberrant as the fables of the people about Cain. She's replaced that materialist fable with a new vision that revises both what one can see, and how one sees.

Note that she does not use the word "angel" at any point. The word only appears in the phrase "pan delli angeli" in line 11. To "informar" our unfrozen minds, she employs words that speak of power (virtu) and joy, eyes and light -- simple human words. The argument is crucial to the project of the Paradiso. For what replaces the lunatic screed of Cain and dense and rare is the image and seal -- l'image e . . . suggello -- of the mente profonde. (131-32).

Instead of marks, spots, Cain, or signs that indicate material density, the heavens regard us with mind, peace, joy. There is a gleam in the pupil which, recursively, shines in Beatrice's eye, reflected in Dante's eye. 

Paradiso as poetic enterprise stands or falls depending upon whether we in our little boats come to experience this happy peace, this regard. Our reading, our standing, our falling. 

Antigone: First ode and some interpretive obscurity

The first choral ode of Sophocles' Antigone does a good deal of work. It presents the elders of Thebes who evoke the action that immediately preceded the play's opening. The people's fear of assault, the white-shielded army at the gates, the fate of Capaneus, all would remind an Athenian audience of Aeschylus's Seven Against Thebes:

Here is a snippet of Aeschylus's first chorus, anticipating ruin at the hands of a massive Argive army at the city's seven gates:

Ah, ah, you gods and goddesses, raise your war cry over our walls to drive away the onrushing evil!
The army of the white shield, ready for battle, rushes at full speed against the city.
Who then will rescue us, which of the gods or goddesses will help? (89-91)

Here's Sophocles' first chorus, looking back upon the same event:

Shaft of the sun, fairest light of all that have dawned on Thebes of the seven gates, you have shone forth at last, eye of golden day, advancing over Dirce's streams! [105] You have goaded with a sharper bit the warrior of the white shield, who came from Argos in full armor, driving him to headlong retreat.

Sophocles' chorus is steeped in golden light - the shining beam of Helios appears thrice in the first lines, each time using the root φα, as in φαίνω, the root of light, of brightness, of that which causes anything to come into appearance:

ἀκτὶς ἀελίου, τὸ κάλλιστον ἑπταπύλῳ φανὲν 
Θήβᾳ τῶν προτέρων φάος, 
ἐφάνθης ποτ᾽, ὦ χρυσέας 

followed by the eye of golden day,

ἁμέρας βλέφαρον, 

The movement from light to shining appearance to the eye is fully coherent and augurs clarity and illumination. Yet the next lines don't quite fulfill the expectation. First, there is some uncertainty about the action: it seems the sharp bit, or bridle, of Helios has turned away the Argives:

You have goaded with a sharper bit the warrior of the white shield

We could spend some time working out precisely how the bit of Helios (presumably driving his chariot) goaded the "warrior" from Argos. Normally bits curb one's own horses, rather than goading enemy armies. Translators are not of one accord on the actual syntax.

Wyckoff:

                           O golden day's 

eye, coming over Dirce's stream,

on the Man who had come from Argos with all his armor

running now in headlong fear as you shook his bridle free.

It's unclear what verb would serve to represent the "shaking free."

Grene offers:

You drove in headlong rout

the whiteshielded man from Argos,

complete in arms;

his bits rang sharper

under your urging.

Here the "bits" belong to the fleeing Argives.

Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald do away with bits and bridles altogether:

O marching light

Across the eddy and rush of Dirce’s stream,

Striking the white shields of the enemy

Thrown headlong backward from the blaze of morning!

Here the light itself is marching, like the Argive army, and strikes that army, causing not blindness, but a muscular act in which an army is thrown headlong backward.
This might seem an odd translator's decision, given that the Greek text clearly contains the word χα^λι_νός, which can mean bit or bridle, or, anything that curbs or restrains, or, a strap, thong, fang of a serpent. And it is ὀξυτέρῳ, i.e., sharp.

So a very simple noun for an everyday object somehow becomes problematic when coupled with a ray of the sun. We get no clear imitation of an action, rather, a set of alternatives that seem to include light, mythological horses, goading and curbing, army and bridle. The collective noun translated as army or enemy is φώς, that is, "man."

The trouble lies in discerning the causation. The ode begins with the clarity of golden sunlight, but the moment it speaks of an action leading to the rout of the man/Argives, the nature of that action proves difficult to grasp. Helios's beam somehow turned away the "man," but sheds very little light on how that feat has been managed.

Before we proceed to complain of Sophocles' word choice, syntax, or dismal handling of simple metaphor, we probably should read on. In so doing, the ode will present other interpretive difficulties. For now, a strong brilliance of light and the act of routing an army are somehow involved in an obscure causal relation. Even if that relation were clear, it would still be necessary to decide on the reliability of the elders who are singing the allegation.

Storied light in the Hippolytus

σὲ τὸν εὐπατρίδην Αἰγέως κέλομαι
παῖδ᾽ ἐπακοῦσαι:
1285Λητοῦς δὲ κόρη σ᾽ Ἄρτεμις αὐδῶ.
Θησεῦ, τί τάλας τοῖσδε συνήδῃ,
παῖδ᾽ οὐχ ὁσίως σὸν ἀποκτείνας
ψευδέσι μύθοις ἀλόχου πεισθεὶς
ἀφανῆ; φανερὰν δ᾽ ἔσχεθες ἄτην.

Artemis addresses her first words to Theseus, whom she calls the "well-fathered [εὐπατρίδην] son of Aegeus":

Artemis
Nobly-born son of Aegeus! Listen, I order you! [1285] It is I, Artemis, Leto's daughter, who address you. Why, unhappy man, do you take joy in these things? You have godlessly killed your son, persuaded of things unseen by the false words of your wife. But all too clearly seen is the ruin you have won for yourself! [1290] Why do you not hide yourself beneath the earth's depths in shame or change your life for that of a bird above and take yourself out of this pain? For among good men [1295] you possess no share in life.

It is not that Artemis rejects Theseus's claim to be the son of Poseidon, but here she chooses to underscore, with a kind of built-in irony, his human lineage. She is stating nothing out of the ordinary, but in calling him the child of Aegeus, she is reminding Theseus of his human origin at the very moment his all-too-humanness is coming to light.

Artemis potnia theron

The goddess's language is compressed, but not opaque: Theseus's error is to have been persuaded (πεισθεὶς), by his wife's lying tale, of something unseen, obliterated -- ἀφανῆ -- which in turn makes visible -- φανερὰν -- his ἄτην.

"By lying stories of your wife you were persuaded of the unseen; seen is your blinding."

The well-fathered Theseus here intersects with the common man, who is, according to the Nurse, always semi-blinded, and always borne along by stories.

Recall the Nurse's words coming at the end of her first speech in the play, at the opening of Scene 2:

μύθοις δ᾽ ἄλλως φερόμεσθα.  (197)

We are borne along foolishly by mere tales (μύθοις)

The lying stories of Phaedra are ψευδέσι μύθοις. A longer piece of the passage is worth citing:

ἀλλ᾽ ὅ τι τοῦ ζῆν φίλτερον ἄλλο
σκότος ἀμπίσχων κρύπτει νεφέλαις.
δυσέρωτες δὴ φαινόμεθ᾽ ὄντες
τοῦδ᾽ ὅ τι τοῦτο στίλβει κατὰ γῆν
195δι᾽ ἀπειροσύνην ἄλλου βιότου
κοὐκ ἀπόδειξιν τῶν ὑπὸ γαίας,
μύθοις δ᾽ ἄλλως φερόμεσθα.

Anything we might love more than life is hid in a surrounding cloud of darkness, and we are clearly unhappy lovers of whatever light there is that shines on earth [195] because we are ignorant of another life, since the life below is not revealed to us. We are borne along in vain by mere tales.

The Nurse's words lack lucidity -- and any paraphrase should be true to that -- here's one effort:

Any other thing more dear to us is held back, hidden in cloudy gloom. Yet our inexperience of that other life we do not see makes us unhappy lovers of the light we have. Neither knowing nor not knowing, we are borne by stories.

The Nurse's speech repeatedly interweaves forms of the word ἄλλος -- "other." Some opacity (making us unable to see other than what we see) makes us unhappy lovers of light.  We know there is something we do not see, because seeing some thing -- anything -- is also not-seeing some other. To see is to be blinded to an otherness the seen thing's opacity prevents us from seeing. If the damned light would only get out of the way, we'd see . . .

If the Nurse has grasped the plight of human seeing, then we are all caught in this common predicament, even well-born kings. Artemis echoes that in her condensed summation of Theseus's error. We might keep this in mind as we look at the "death" of Hippolytus, and at what death means in a world borne by stories. If it is the cessation of mortal functions, that's one thing. If it is the obliteration of a name in story, that's another.

{Update} The term used by Artemis to address Theseus, εὐπατρίδην, has a storied past of its own that goes to the origin of Athenian classes:

Eupatridae (literally "good fathered", i.e. "offspring of noble fathers" or "the well-born") refers to the ancient nobility of the Greek region of Attica.

Tradition ascribes to Theseus, whom it also regards as the author of the union (synoecism) of Attica round Athens as a political centre, the division of the Attic population into three classes, Eupatridae, Geomori and Demiurgi. 

Theseus is thus implicated in the very structure of Athenian society, in particular with the aristocracy. Clearly this has interesting implications for the political dimension of the Hippolytus.