The spectacle of hamartia

"Hamartia cannot be sharply defined or have an exact meaning assigned to it." WP

The audience knows before he opens his mouth that the first words Theseus speaks to Hippolytus will redound with unforgiving irony upon his own judgment:

Theseus
O foolish mankind, so often missing the mark (ἁμαρτάνοντες), why do you teach crafts (τέχνας) numberless and contrive and invent all things when there is one thing you do not understand and have not hunted after, [920] how to teach the senseless to be sensible! (φρονεῖν διδάσκειν οἷσιν οὐκ ἔνεστι νοῦς;)

Hippolytus
A formidable expert (σοφιστὴν) this, who is able to force (ἀναγκάσαι) insensate fools to show sense. But since these fine-spun disputations of yours, father, are unseasonable, I fear that your misfortunes have caused your tongue to run amok (ὑπερβάλλῃ).

Theseus
[925] Ah, but there ought to be for mortals some reliable test (τεκμήριον σαφές) for friends, some way to know their minds (διάγνωσιν φρενῶν), which of them is a true friend and which is not, and each man ought to have two voices (δισσάς τε φωνὰς), the one a voice of justice, the other whatever he chanced to have, [930] so that the voice that thinks unjust thoughts would be convicted of falsehood by the just voice. And in this way we should never be deceived.

Hippolytus
But has one of my kin been slandering (διαβαλὼν) me in your ear and are my fortunes diseased though I have done nothing amiss? I am astonished. (ἐκπλήσσουσί) [935] Your words, cast adrift  from all sense, (λόγοι παραλλάσσοντες ἔξεδροι φρενῶν) astonish me.

Theseus has read Phaedra's letter and already pronounced judgment upon his son before Hippolytus joins him at the scene in his bedroom. But it takes a while for this to be made clear to Hippolytus. It's noteworthy how much this first exchange between father and son concerns itself with language, with the use and abuse of words, of λόγοι.

In this world, to speak Greek is both an intentional act and an athletic one. You throw words, and they either hit or miss their mark. The first thing Theseus says to Hippolytus is a general comment that the general run of mankind is always missing the mark: hamartia: 

O foolish mankind, so often missing the mark (ἁμαρτάνοντες)

Hippolytus responds that Theseus's words go wide of the mark, they are ὑπερβάλλῃ, thrown too far, hyperbolic. Theseus retorts with a generic wish that inventive mankind would discover a tool, basically a bullshit detector. Men would from that point on have two voices, one that is audibly just, a second that is whatever chance provides. Theseus is proposing that someone invent a means of making hamartia visible, or at least audible. Never in his life could he put such a device to better use than now, as he is about to turn every spontaneous expression of surprise, every protest of innocence, every sign of felt care offered by his son into the charade of a hypocrite, an actor, a charlatan.

Hippolytus offers the hypothesis that some friend of his has slandered him. His word is diaballein, a rich word, yet another ballistic variant. The speaker is intentionally throwing lies. It's not entirely surprising that the Greek word took a diabolical turn, becoming the root of "devil," the father of lies. It's only by some such misrepresentation that Theseus's words could be so far from home, says Hippolytus:

Your words, cast adrift  from all sense, λόγοι παραλλάσσοντες ἔξεδροι φρενῶν

Words that are παραλλάσσοντες deviate from one another. One image used in defining this word is to visualize two tunnels being dug toward each other, but missing, failing to hit the mark. To be parallel, in this case, is to never meet. Words that are doomed to never meet the mark are ἔξεδροι, away from home.

Hippolytus, who has yet to learn he has been sentenced to exile, finds his father's words to be strange, extravagant, far from home. When their encounter ends, he'll ask, "will you throw me out" (ἐκβαλεῖς): 

ἄκριτον ἐκβαλεῖς με γῆς;

Will you banish me without a trial?

The encounter between father and son takes the form of argument and counterargument, fueled with all the rhetorical arts of the very best lawyers. If we ask why Euripides chooses to frame this act of judgment as a trial, it helps to see how the play addresses both the private and public realms of oikos -- the familial home and the Royal House -- at once.

Implicit in this superposition of House and home is a syllogism: If a father can so misjudge his own son, despite every opportunity to interrogate the accused, what sort of bullshit detectors will help the state? If humans are subject to radical uncertainty in judging their nearest kin, with what level of confidence can we rely on the state to "get to the bottom of things" and administer justice? If the most momentous acts of judgment hang upon what is sense-less -- what cannot be sensed with the clarity of Theseus's reliable test, his τεκμήριον σαφές, or any concrete, empirical, sensory datum of proof, then we might want to revisit our understanding of how Euripides understood "tragedy." 

In the Hippolytus at least, the spectacle of hamartia is not about some character who happens to be "tragically flawed." The "of" turns out to be genitive: tragedy is not a representation of -- i.e. a story about -- this or that flaw or error. Rather the spectacle is error's own child --that imitation of an action we call life:

μετὰ δ᾽ ἵσταταιἀνδράσιν αἰὼν

1110

πολυπλάνητος αἰεί.

men's life is a shifting thing, ever unstable.

shifting, wandering forever.

Visualizing texts: The Agamemnon

Folks from U-Missouri-Kansas City are developing interesting modes of visualizing the linguistic components of Greek tragedies, as well as analyzing the social networks of the characters. Here's the Agamemnon -- mouse lightly over the characters and see data appear. 

A portion of the textual properties of the character, Agamemnon:

Speaks 5.66% of dialogue
Average Sentence Length: 10.29 

Characteristic Vocabulary:

• bai/nw to walk, step

• no/sos sickness, disease, malady

• pou/s a foot

• fqo/nos ill-will, envy, jealousy

• me/nw to stay at home, stay where one is, not stir

• se/bw to worship, honour

• *)/argos shining, bright, glistening not working the ground, living without labour

• a(bru/nw to make delicate, treat delicately

Phaedra's robes

Phaedra and Nurse, Pompei

Interwoven motifs in the Hippolytus suggest great care on Euripides' part. Take, for example, this exchange between the "nurse" (nurturer, caregiver) and Phaedra (316-17):

Τροφός ἁγνὰς μέν, ὦ παῖ, χεῖρας αἵματος φορεῖς;
Φαίδρα χεῖρες μὲν ἁγναί, φρὴν δ᾽ ἔχει μίασμά τι.

Nurse Pure and clean, (hagnos), child, are your hands from bearing blood?
Phaedra My hands are pure, my heart bears the stain (miasma).

Every noun here is fraught with gathering layers of significance at play in the text. Hands -- the act of touching, being touched, the external border between two interiors, the touch of pollution -- will return throughout, with great power in the closing scene. There, Theseus, finally knowing, says to Hippolytus:

Θησεύς ἦ τὴν ἐμὴν ἄναγνον ἐκλιπὼν χέρα; 

Theseus
And will you leave me with my hands unclean?

The play of hand and heart, internal and invisible vs. external, visible (the word martyr, μάρτυς, i.e., "witness," runs throughout the text), word and act, intent and execution, is everywhere, as is the motif of purity, being clean, free, of pollution (miasma, stain.)

It pays to not exclude choral songs from this interplay. Take the first lines of the first Choral Ode:

Χορός"Ὠκεανοῦ τις ὕδωρ στάζουσα πέτρα λέγεται,  

βαπτὰν κάλπισι πα-

γὰν ῥυτὰν προιεῖσα κρημνῶν:125τόθι μοί τις ἦν φίλα 

πορφύρεα φάρεα 

ποταμίᾳ δρόσῳ 

τέγγουσα, θερμᾶς δ᾽ ἐπὶ νῶτα πέτρας 

εὐαλίου κατέβαλλ᾽: ὅθεν μοι130πρώτα φάτις ἦλθε δεσποίνας,  

Chorus There is a cliff dripping water whose source, men say, is the river Oceanus:1 it pours forth from its overhanging edge a flowing stream in which pitchers are dipped. It was there that I found a friend soaking her purple clothes in the river-water and laying them out on the warm rock's broad back in the sun. From there it was that I first had news of my queen.

With astonishing economy, the song evokes the totality of Ocean encircling the Earth, from which drips a river's water, from which pitchers draw to clean the queen's purple clothes, which then are laid out on the rocks, exposed to the sun.

The robes of the queen are the border between her hidden self and the external world. Here, the first "news" we have of Phaedra comes as her purple garments are being purified, cleansed of stain. The commonplace image seems nothing more until we encounter the darkly intense ways in which heart, hand, stain, purity, touch, pollution and respect (semnos), are interwoven in the web of the play.

Perhaps not by chance, the word φάρεα (pharea) -- "clothes"-- most basically signifies a web, a woven thing. And Phaedra's name derives from φαιδρός (phaidros) -- "bright".

The "Death" of Tragedy?

A friend brought to my attention a book that might be said to address questions at the heart of this blog, i.e., the complex legacy of descending from two extremely different traditions, the ancient Greeks and the Jews of the Old Testament: The Death of Tragedy by George Steiner.

From the top review on Amazon:

Steiner argues that Tragedy is an Artform unique to the Western world. In his opening pages he makes the claim that for the Judaic sensibility there is no tragedy as it is "vehement in its conviction that the order of the universe and of man's estate is accessible to reason." pp.4 For Steiner tragedy arises out of a contrary view"necessity is blind and man's encounter with it shall rob him of his eyes, whether in Thebes or in Gaza." pp.5 For Steiner this is a Greek assertion.Steiner makes a learned survey of Western Literature showing the points at where tragic genius has flourished, and the many more where it has been attempted and failed. Close to the end of the work he makes this observation "..tragedy is that form of art which requires the intolerable burden of God's presence. It is now dead because His shadow no longer falls upon us as it fell on Agamemnon or Macbeth or Athalie. " Steiner then goes on to talk briefly about the possibility of renewal of tragedy under different circumstances. This work is a stellar piece of literary criticism- whether one takes issue with Steiner and believes Job on the one hand , and Willy Loman in another way , are tragic characters after all.

Without having read the book, it's impossible to be sure, but from our readings of the Greco-Roman classics, and from the Old Testament, I have a feeling that I'd be in major and lively disagreement with Steiner's basic premises.

Another snippet (p. 5):

"Liquid Texture:" Epic Evanescence in P.L. Book 6

A long-ish post -- I hope it begins to tap into larger themes that have preoccupied this blog from the start.

As noted a while back, Book 6 thrusts us into territory that we've only glimpsed before in Paradise Lost. The epic/mock epic battle of the immortal angels poses a challenge Milton must have thought about for a good long time: how to present a battle scene that can draw upon the potent epic voice of Homer and Virgil, and include the many standard features of war poetry that accompany that voice -- the brave talk and repartee, the dual of two great fighters, the glory achieved in death, the clash of weapons and the strategies of generals in battle -- how to present this in Heaven?

The other day we looked at this depiction of Satan in the midst of the strife:

long time in eeven scale [ 245 ]
The Battel hung; till Satan, who that day
Prodigious power had shewn, and met in Armes
No equal, raunging through the dire attack
Of fighting Seraphim confus'd, at length
Saw where the Sword of Michael smote, and fell'd [ 250 ]
Squadrons at once, with huge two-handed sway
Brandisht aloft the horrid edge came down
Wide wasting; such destruction to withstand
He hasted, and oppos'd the rockie Orb
Of tenfold Adamant, his ample Shield [ 255 ]
A vast circumference:

In this "raunging" we see the physical dominance of the Homeric warrior in motion; we can almost feel the weariness of fighters, who, after a long day under the hot sun battling their enemies, sense that things can go either way, and then see their leader stand forth to do even greater deeds.

Milton is telling it here just as an ancient epic poet would, full of thrust and parry, the arduous heat of battle and the suspensful uncertainty of outcome. Yet we know, because Milton has made it clear from the beginning, that the rules here are different. These armies are self-organizing, require no leaders, and consist of vast ethereal beings who cannot be killed. Here are Satan and Michael:

two broad Suns thir Shields [ 305 ]
Blaz'd opposite, while expectation stood
In horror; from each hand with speed retir'd
Where erst was thickest fight, th' Angelic throng,
And left large field, unsafe within the wind
Of such commotion, such as to set forth
Great things by small, If Natures concord broke,
Among the Constellations warr were sprung,
Two Planets rushing from aspect maligne
Of fiercest opposition in mid Skie,
Should combat, and thir jarring Sphears confound.

Instead of seeming stymied by these complications, Milton makes a virtue of poetic necessity. After preparing the scene above, he vividly describes how Michael "shar'd" Satan with his sword:

deep entring shar'd
All his right side; then Satan first knew pain,
And writh' d him to and fro convolv'd; so sore
The griding sword with discontinuous wound
Passd through him, . . .

We experience the direct horror of epic warfare . . . but only for the length of this clause; rather than ending in death, it marks the end of pathos with a comma, before moving on, as Milton's verse relentlessly does, with "but":

. . . but th' Ethereal substance clos'd [ 330 ]
Not long divisible, and from the gash
A stream of Nectarous humor issuing flow'd
Sanguin, such as Celestial Spirits may bleed,
And all his Armour staind ere while so bright.

Before the reader or Satan can revel in the anguish of his war wound, it's closed -- indeed, we sense as we read forward that the immediately preceding verb:

passd through him

is now capable of an entirely different reading. Instead of penetrating guts, the sword is merely splicing air. Our attention is steered from Satan's innards to the matter of a stain on his Armour. Odd indeed, and more oddness is to come.

Next come the angel medics, rushing out to bear their leader off the field -- one thinks of several fallen Homeric heroes -- e.g. the rescue of Hektor, (Iliad xiv.428) -- carried off by comrades after valiant service. But Milton's peculiar alchemy won't leave it there. The battle, the wound, the pain, the bleeding (and immediate return to wholeness) the bearing off are very fine, but look at the utterly unexpected lines the scene closes with:

Yet soon he heal'd; for Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man [ 345 ]
In Entrailes, Heart or Head, Liver or Reines;
Cannot but by annihilating die;
Nor in thir liquid texture mortal wound
Receive, no more then can the fluid Aire:
All Heart they live, all Head, all Eye, all Eare, [ 350 ]
All Intellect, all Sense, and as they please,
They Limb themselves, and colour, shape or size
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare.

Instead culminating in an admiring send-off for the fallen hero, the poetry morphs into this mind-blowing disquisition upon the properties of "Spirits," involving an utterly different form of corporeality than the part/whole relations we humans are more or less stuck with. The fusion of "limb" and "limn" teeters on the grotesque, while "all Head, all Eye, all Eare" defies imagining.

Reading the War in Heaven as told by Raphael, then, is unlike other war spectacles. Somehow Milton is capable of sounding the diapasons of glory and heroism, and of instantly transforming their predictable pathos and eternizing glory into something far more imaginatively rich and strange. Readers caught up in the surreality of "all Head, all Eye, all Eare," forget Satan before he manages to get comfortable in his chariot.

Book 6 plays a remarkable poetic game. Milton is having us have it several ways in multiple registers. He delivers the heightened sonorities of classic heroics, yet as we listen they're already dissolving into something whose scope and daring novelty, for want of a better word, cause the lethal scenes we've just been enthralled by to strangely go from the mind.

It's not quite an oscillation: the battle is played for all it's worth, but even as we enter into its stirring spectacle, it's being deflated, obliterated if not annihilated.

Here is the same effect achieved in a single word:

. . . deeds of eternal fame [ 240 ]
Were don, but infinite:

Book 6 is not simply, then, a battle of good and bad angels. Or, perhaps it is, only they are the angels of classical tragedy and Biblical comedy, a war that's riven Western poetry from the moment these traditions were first brought into enigmatic synthesis.