Paradiso 26 and undemonstrative enigmaticity

Our group meets every other week, but our progress in Paradiso has slowed. The cantos of the theological virtues might seem simpler than some of the earlier, more complexly plotted and allusive work we have already encountered, but no. They are devilishly closely written -- the poet has not lost any steam, or poetic "chops."

A poet who can write a tercet like this is clearly all there:

"Le fronde onde s'infronda tutto l'orto
de l'ortolano etterno, am' io cotanto
quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.”

Longfellow tries, but is sensible enough to not attempt the intricate echoes:

"The leaves, wherewith embowered is all the garden
Of the Eternal Gardener, do I love
As much as he has granted them of good." (Par. 26:64-66)

It's tempting to see these cantos as somewhat didactic, or pedantically subservient to biblical texts that form the doctrinal elements of the pilgrim's encounters with Peter, James and John. But each canto offers much more than catechetic tedium. The poem, as we've argued here before, never simply states its burden. It acts out its import.

A clear example is how all is going well in Paradiso 25, until St. John appears. There's a haunting, uncanny moment of cessation of all Paradise -- likened to a ship whose oarsmen suspend their work. The pilgrim turns to Beatrice only to see he has been blinded by John's revelatory brighness. The canto ends with the pilrim's disorientation and fear. The mettle of his soul's hope is being tested.

Before looking at a couple of passages from Paradiso 26 in detail, it might help to spend a few words tracing a pattern that recurs when reading certain non-obvious parts of this poem.

It seems to me that much of the Commedia - certainly the Paradiso - is written "slant," as Dickenson might say. Certain cantos conjoin elements that, prima facie, have no business going together.

To get to the "fruit" (or frui) within the somewhat dry integumentum of these passages, it never seems to hurt to ask childish questions. This is not a task that the poem marks by drawing attention to itself. Unlike the famous appelli ai lettori (addresses to the reader) that direct us to read beneath the versi strani (Inf. 9.63), a canto like Paradiso 26 at first might not seem enigmatic. It takes a while just to notice its several parts don't quite hang together in ways that, from reading the poem, we have come to expect.

In 26, for example, how is it that some derivative platitudes about the Good and love are interspersed with extraordinary similes (a couple of which we'll look at below)? Of all people, what is Adam doing here? Why does Dante encounter him precisely here, after the pilgrim has "passed" his oral exams and experiences renewed, stronger sight? For that matter, what's with all the numbers and quantitative language in this canto? What does caritate - the greatest of the virtues - have to do with Adam, the fall, the length of time he spent on earth, his language and reflections on it, and the duration of his innocence before being sent into exile? Why are there echoes of Cacciaguida in Adam's conversation, and why does our general father open with one of the poem's strangest hapaxes -- parhelion (107-108) -- a double singularity if you will?

Dante was surely doing something other than showing off, or spinning wheels, or filling space before the big finale. When we come across a canto that seems to lose its thread, or veers to an unexpected close, or combines thematic materials from disparate and seemingly unrelated topoi, it's a good idea to ask why. As the imagination works on the question of how these seemingly unrelated elements connect, the result can be a sudden falling into place, acceding to a perspective from which all these disparate elements suddenly swim into signifying focus, often with an unexpected comic "pop."

The "empirical" pattern of such a reading might go something like:

1. naive first reading
2. childish questions
3. noting unusual linguistic features
4. attending to concurrent motifs through the canto

Now if all this is going well, but the text still seems a bit aimless or dispersed, that's pretty much how we felt after spending two entire sessions on 26, without even discussing the last several tercets in any detail. Of course along the way one consults the commentators, who often proffer excellent clarifications and suggestions. But most important is to stick with it:

5. careful re-reading

At some point -- usually thanks to the more unusual (often seemingly gratuitous) passages, images, or motifs -- something we'd not fully taken into account, something not properly weighed, or now seen from a different angle, moves into view. Often it's a connection between a highly leaned theme on one hand, and a very basic human, vernacular reality, common to all. The connection can be epiphanic, uncoiling with the impact of comedic surprise.

To attempt to pin down whether we're dealing with a specific genre, or mode, would take us far afield. Let's give it a simple name for now: Wisdom literature. Writing that draws upon all manner of indirection in order to challenge the reader, to drive us to our own hard-won "eureka moments" would be the sign and pleasure of this mode. It might not sing in epic tones, or seduce with lyric music, but it is always working on something that, when finally reached, yields a potent reward.

We'll look next at some moments in Paradiso 26.

The voyage of Mimesis - some notes

It was our thought last week to stay with Erich Auerbach for one more session. Last time we talked about "Odysseus' Scar," the first chapter of Mimesis. Next time we plan to discuss Chapter 8, "Farinata and Cavalcante."

I intend to put a few notes here this week about Auerbach. He is a ferociously difficult reader to read. He will devote a page to describing the effects produced by a particular word - as he does in Farinata and Cavalcante, for example, with the word "allor," which basically in Italian means "then": 

The second change of scene is managed through the words "Allor surse," in line 52. It seems simpler and less remarkable than the first. What, after all, is more normal than to introduce a sudden new occurrence with the words, "Then it befel . . .? But if we ask ourselves where in pre-Dantean medieval vernacular literature we might find a comparable linguistic maneuver, interrupting the action in course by a dramatically incisive "then," we should, I think, have a long search before us. I for one know of none. Allora at the beginning of a sentence is naturally quite frequent in Italian literature before Dante. It occurs for instance in the stories of the Novellino but with much less force of meaning. Such sharp breaks are in keeping with neither the style nor the time-sense of pre-Dantean narrative, not even with those of the French epics, where ez vos or atant ez vos occurs in a similar though much weaker sense (for example, Roland 413). That even extremely dramatic turnings of the tide of action were handled with stiff circumstantiality may be observed for example in Villehardouin when he relates the intervention of the Doge of Venice at the storming of Constantinople. When his men hesitate to land, the aged and blind Doge orders them upon pain of death to set him ashore first, with the flag of Saint Mark. This the chronicler introduces with the words: or porrez oir estrange proece. Which is just as though Dante, instead of allora, had said, "And then something quite extraordinary happened." The Old French ez vos may serve to point the way as we try to find the correct Latin term for this abruptly intervening "then." For it is not tum or tunc; in many cases it is rather sed or iam. But the real equivalent, which gives the full force, is ecce, or still better et ecce. This is found less frequently in the elevated style than in Plautus, in Cicero's letters, in Apuleius, etc., and especially in the Vulgate. When Abraham takes the knife to sacrifice his son Isaac, we read: et ecce Angelus Domini de caelo clamavit, dicens: Abraham, Abraham. I think this linguistic maneuver, which effects so sharp an interruption, is too harsh to stem from the elevated style of classical Latin; but it corresponds perfectly with the elevated style of the Bible. And furthermore, Dante uses the Biblical et ecce verbatim on another occasion where a state of affairs is interrupted by a sudden, though not quite so dramatic, occurrence (Purg. XXI, 7: ed ecco, si come ne scrive Luca . . . ci apparve . . . after Luke xxiv, I3: et ecce duo ex illis . . .). I am not prepared to state as a certainty that Dante introduced the linguistic maneuver of this abruptly interrupting "then" into the elevated style and that it was a Biblical echo with him. But this much would seem to be certain: at the time Dante wrote, the dramatically arresting "then" was by no means as obvious and generally available as it is today; and he used it more radically than any other medieval writer before him.

But we must also consider the meaning and the sound of the word surse, which Dante uses in at least one other passage with telling effect to describe a sudden emergence (Purg. VI, 72-73: e l'ombra tutta in se romita / surse ver lui . . .). The allor surse of line 52, then, has hardly less weight than the words of Farinata which bring in the first interruption; this allor is one of those paratactic forms which establish a dynamic relationship between the members they connect. The conversation with Farinata is interrupted--once he has heard part of it, Cavalcante cannot wait for it to end, he simply loses his self-control. And the part he plays--his peering expression, his whining words, and his precipitate despair when he sinks back-forms a sharp contrast with Farinata's weighty calm when he resumes speaking after the third shift (11. 73 ff.).

Auerbach's ear, moulded by years of listening to the phrasing and rhythms of poets in several languages, is a Stradivarius, and he is its maestro. In Dante's use of what most would take for a simple, everyday word, he detects tonalities that deepen our appreciation of the dramatic power of this scene.

What makes talking about Auerbach difficult -- aside from the fact that few readers today have half a smidgen of his linguistic competence and cultural awareness -- is that these focused specific passages serve as multi-leveled specimens in an ongoing contemplative conversation that Auerbach is having with 2500 years of literary language, conceived, at times, as one giant developing thing. Not only is all of his reading brought to bear upon single passages, but multiple skeins of arguments branch out from them, often emerging as he moves from the particular -- the allor above -- to statements of a far more general nature.

He says this, for example, shortly after the above passage:

. . . if we start from his predecessors, Dante's language is a well-nigh incomprehensible miracle. There were great poets among them. But, compared with theirs, his style is so immeasurably richer in directness, vigor, and subtlety, he knows and uses such an immeasurably greater stock of forms, he expresses the most varied phenomena and subjects with such immeasurably superior assurance and firmness, that we come to the conclusion that this man used his language to discover the world anew.

This power, assurance and mastery of various forms then becomes a factor in why Dante's poetry can violate the classical canon of the separation of styles -- a feature which caused Goethe to speak of his "repulsive and often disgusting greatness" -- without departing from the gravitas of a unique sublimity. Take a descriptive statement of this kind:

Themes which cannot possibly be considered sublime in the antique sense turn out to be just that by virtue of his way of molding and ordering them.

It moves -- leaps -- to a far more general claim that seems to include aesthetic judgment, critical distinction, and the hyperbolic evocation of a poetic power that knows no bounds, and owes no fealty to any generic rule, ordering principle, or stylistic norm:

For nowhere could one find so clear an instance of the antagonism of the two traditions -- that of antiquity, with the principle of the separation of styles, and that of the Christian era, with its mingling of styles -- as in Dante's powerful temperament, which is conscious of both because its aspiration toward the tradition of antiquity does not imply for it the possibility of abandoning the other; nowhere does mingling of styles come so close to violation of all style.  (Italics mine).

In a very basic sense, Mimesis is a voyage that takes us from the basic syntax and diction of texts to moments that seem to be contemplating not one passage or poem, but a vast recollection of poems. 

With so much arising from particular close readings, it's more than ordinarily challenging to identify the key articulations of an overarching narrative. We certainly need to be asking: What story is Mimesis telling? Before leaping to facile conceptual formulations, though, careful readers might wish to pause and work through the details.

Coda: Zeugma in Heroides 7

Near the very beginning of her letter to Aeneas, Dido twice uses a familiar trope, commonly known as zeugma. She will use it more times in the course of her letter.

Zeugma: A trope in which one verb governs several words, or clauses, each in a different sense. Example: “He stiffened his drink and his spine.” (A more elaborate description can be found here, and more examples here.)

Certus es ire tamen miseramque relinquere Didon

atque idem venti vela fidemque ferent.

certus es, Aenea, cum foedere solvere naves

quaeque ubi sint nescis, Itala regna sequi.

You are then resolved to depart, and abandon unhappy Dido;
the same winds will bear away your promises and sails.
You are resolved, Aeneas, to weigh your anchor and your vows,
and go in quest of Italy, a land to which you are wholly a stranger.

The repetition of this trope early on is noteworthy -- it is not the case with other of Ovid's letter writers that they exhibit this level of rhetorical facility right off the bat. In addition to two zeugmas, she also uses anaphora -- the repetition of the same opening words, certus es... certus es. Her speech abounds in rhetorical tropes. Let us not forget that Dido asks for only one thing in this letter: that Aeneas read her carmen. She's a born writer!

A tourist arrives in Ithaka

Since we're thinking about Homer's epics in connection with Heroides I, it was good to find a brief note in sententiae antiquae (Bons mots from ancient Greek and Roman authors) that brings us back to the Odyssey.

We are reminded that Odysseus arrives in his native land in Book 13 -- the center of the poem. It will take him all 12 remaining books to fully arrive, as himself, to the peace at the center of his home.

Upon waking, he has no idea where he is, or that he is, in fact, on Ithaka. sententiae notes the reversal that comes with his first encounter:

mournfully longing for his native land, [220] he paced by the shore of the loud-sounding sea, uttering many a moan. And Athena drew near him in the form of a young man, a herdsman of sheep, one most delicate, as are the sons of princes.

He is in a mist, a spell from Athena. Everything, including the goddess, seems strange, but isn't.

In a double fold about her shoulders she wore a well-wrought cloak, [225] and beneath her shining feet she had sandals, and in her hands a spear. Then Odysseus was glad at sight of her, and came to meet her, and he spoke, and addressed her with winged words: “Friend, since thou art the first to whom I have come in this land, hail to thee, and mayst thou meet me with no evil mind. [230] Nay, save this treasure, and save me; for to thee do I pray, as to a god, and am come to thy dear knees. And tell me this also truly, that I may know full well. What land, what people is this? What men dwell here? Is it some clear-seen island, or a shore [235] of the deep-soiled mainland that lies resting on the sea?”

Athena playfully plays the tourism official, speaking to the king of Ithaka as if he were a hopeless dimwit from some dark land:

Then the goddess, flashing-eyed Athena, answered him: “A fool art thou, stranger, or art come from far, if indeed thou askest of this land. Surely it is no wise so nameless, but full many know it, [240] both all those who dwell toward the dawn and the sun, and all those that are behind toward the murky darkness. It is a rugged isle, not fit for driving horses, yet it is not utterly poor, though it be but narrow. Therein grows corn beyond measure, and the wine-grape as well, [245] and the rain never fails it, nor the rich dew. It is a good land for pasturing goats and kine; there are trees of every sort, and in it also pools for watering that fail not the year through. Therefore, stranger, the name of Ithaka has reached even to the land of Troy which, they say, is far from this land of Achaea.”

Did you ever notice how local newspapers that publish on the Internet rarely indicate what state they are located in? They're the "Ithaca Times," or the "Star Herald," no need to say New York, or Maine, because of course everyone who reads that paper knows where they are. Storytellers are always at the omphalos, the center of "the" world.

It's wonderful how Homer brings Odysseus home the moment he finishes telling the tale of his voyages to "mighty Alcinous." He'd brought his Phaeacian listeners around the world to places strange, far off, and marvelous. Now, waking from the deep sleep in which he was borne home, he is that listener, utterly ignorant, unable to recognize his homeland.

The journey to full recognition - by his nurse, his dog, his son, his swineherd, his enemies, his father, and finally his wife - becomes the second half of his odyssey. It builds to a perfect pitch during the inquest (or close reading) he is subjected to by Penelope in Book 23:

. . . she went down from the upper chamber, and much her heart pondered whether she should stand aloof and question her dear husband, or whether she should go up to him, and clasp and kiss his head and hands. But when she had come in and had passed over the stone threshold, she sat down opposite Odysseus in the light of the fire [90] beside the further wall; but he was sitting by a tall pillar, looking down, and waiting to see whether his noble wife would say aught to him, when her eyes beheld him. Howbeit she sat long in silence, and amazement came upon her soul; and now with her eyes she would look full upon his face, and now again [95] she would fail to know him, for that he had upon him mean raiment.. . .

Telemachos: “My mother, cruel mother, that hast an unyielding heart, why dost thou thus hold aloof from my father . . .?"

Penelope: “. . . if in very truth he is Odysseus, and has come home, we two shall surely know one another . . ."

 . . . and the much-enduring, goodly Odysseus smiled . . .

We might want to re-read this as we think about Penelope's letter to the man whose identity she will take her time to recognize.

"To read well, that is to say, to read slowly . . ."

Laudator Emporis Acti has two delightful posts on slow reading. One involves the famous classics scholar Eduard Fraenkel:

He lectured effectively on Catullus, Virgil, and Horace; but he exerted special influence through his famous seminars on Aeschylus's Agamemnon, in which he went through the play in almost as much time as it took Agamemnon to capture Troy.

The other cites E. A. Poe, and this from Nietzsche:

It is not for nothing that I have been a philologist, perhaps I am a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading....For philology is that venerable art which demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to become slow—it is a goldsmith's art and connoisseurship of the word which has nothing but delicate, cautious work to do and achieves nothing if it does not achieve it lento. But for precisely this reason it is more necessary than ever today, by precisely this means does it entice and enchant us the most, in the midst of an age of 'work', that is to say, of hurry, of indecent and perspiring haste, which wants to 'get everything done' at once, including every old or new book:—this art does not so easily get anything done, it teaches to read well, that is to say, to read slowly, deeply, looking cautiously before and aft, with reservations, with doors left open, with delicate eyes and fingers.

We are not alone! 

The reader

From the beginning of the Antigone, Creon is fearful of a return of violence which turns into heightened suspicion of deviations from absolute adherence to his authority. His first address is orchestrated: He singles out a group of loyal followers because he suspects that some in the city are not in sympathy with his reign, or with his edict that the enemy dead, including Polyneices, lie unburied.

First he accuses the guards of collusion, then he suspects a secret cabal has bribed them. He must let go of those fantasies when he learns it was a young girl, acting alone, who disobeyed his order. When Haemon reminds him that other voices in the city did not harmonize with his, Creon is quick to find motivation for his son's error. Since even he can't credibly think Haemon has been bribed, his fertile imagination fabricates other reasons: Cherchez la femme, etc.:

Do not, my son, banish your good sense
through pleasure in a woman, since you know
that the embrace grows cold                                        {650}
when an evil woman shares your bed and home.
What greater wound can there be than a false friend? (philos kakos)
No. Spit on her, throw her out like an enemy,
this girl, to marry someone in Death's house.
I caught her openly in disobedience
alone out of all this city and I shall not make
myself a liar in the city's sight. No, I will kill her.

When Haemon spits (πτύσας), it won't be at Antigone.

the boy glared at him with savage eyes, spat in his face . . . {1231-32} 

τὸν δ᾽ ἀγρίοις ὄσσοισι παπτήνας ὁ παῖς, πτύσας προσώπῳ 

The last speaker to address Creon's judgment is Teiresias. If Antigone had a simple emotional conviction that it was wrong to leave her brother unburied, and Haemon could offer rational political and social reasons that any ruler would be wise to listen to, Teiresias doesn't begin with feeling or reason. He starts with signs (σημεῖα):

Τειρεσίας

γνώσει, τέχνης σημεῖα τῆς ἐμῆς κλύων. 
εἰς γὰρ παλαιὸν θᾶκον ὀρνιθοσκόπον 
1000ἵζων, ἵν᾽ ἦν μοι παντὸς οἰωνοῦ λιμήν, 
ἀγνῶτ᾽ ἀκούω φθόγγον ὀρνίθων, κακῷ 
κλάζοντας οἴστρῳ καὶ βεβαρβαρωμένῳ. 
καὶ σπῶντας ἐν χηλαῖσιν ἀλλήλους φοναῖς 
ἔγνων: πτερῶν γὰρ ῥοῖβδος οὐκ ἄσημος ἦν. 

Teiresias
You will understand, when you hear the signs (σημεῖα) revealed by my art. As I took my place on my old seat of augury where all birds regularly gather for me, I heard an unintelligible voice among them: they were screaming in dire frenzy that made their language foreign to me. I realized that they were ripping each other with their talons, murderously—the rush of their wings did not lack meaning (οὐκ ἄσημος). [1005]

From long experience, the prophet knows what these birds ought to sound like. But instead of what he expects, he hears an "unintelligible voice" (ἀγνῶτ᾽ ἀκούω φθόγγον). He is brought to interpret this voice because it is, at first cry, unintelligible. The sting (οἴστρῳ) of their screams (κλάζοντας) turned them into barbarous babble: βεβαρβαρωμένῳ. The onomatopoeia carries both the "babble" and the sense that the birds have begun speaking in an incomprehensible, or foreign, tongue. The tearing of talons, the strange speech, and the whir of wings (the rush of their wings did not lack meaning (ἄσημος)) all become signs that the prophet begins to read:

He interprets, or translates these foreign signs. They are foreign by virtue of being other than clear, beautiful signs. They are shrill:

nor does any bird sound out clear signs (εὐσήμους) in its shrill cries, for they have tasted the fatness (λίπος) of a slain man's blood.

οὐδ᾽ ὄρνις εὐσήμους ἀπορροιβδεῖ βοάς ἀνδροφθόρου βεβρῶτες αἵματος λίπος. 

Reading begins with the unintelligible, the screech one would rather not have to listen to. Efforts to read closely at times fail to follow Tiresias's method. How often do we "read" by attending to what makes sense, and mute, or ignore, the parts of a text that don't immediately conform, or "fit"?

Teiresias' speech is his treatise on reading. He reinforces the point that he is blind, that he is led by a child who helps him "see" the signs before he can interpret them. The treachery of sight lies in how often it is misled by appearances, where truth, often, is not found:

And it is your heart that is the source of the sickness now afflicting the city

καὶ ταῦτα τῆς σῆς ἐκ φρενὸς νοσεῖ πόλις. 

It might be worthwhile at this point to briefly ponder Teiresias's lesson as we look at the relation of dialogue to ode in the play. One way to read Antigone is to remain within the logic of the dialogues, to consider the themes of justice and power solely as they are elucidated by the speeches and stichomythia. But then, the poetry of the odes gets relegated to a kind of filler, or window dressing, between the dialogues. 

Each of the odes is packed with images that relate to the themes, yet not always in some clearly logical, or intelligible way. (The hideous blindings of the last, very dark ode, for example -- if they don't fit a certain view we have of the play's overall theme, what are they there for? Merely a few unintelligible yawps?)

Let's consider the speech of Teiresias in relation to two moments where we've encountered birds before. In the first ode (the parodos), which evoked the fear and pathos of a city threatened on all sides by murderous generals, the chorus sings of an eagle: 

He set out against our land because of the strife-filled claims of Polyneices, and like a screaming eagle he flew over into our land, covered by his snow-white wing, with a mass of weapons and crested helmets. (110-116)

ὃς ἐφ᾽ ἡμετέρᾳ γᾷ Πολυνείκους 
ἀρθεὶς νεικέων ἐξ ἀμφιλόγων 
ὀξέα κλάζων 
ἀετὸς εἰς γᾶν ὣς ὑπερέπτα, 
λευκῆς χιόνος πτέρυγι στεγανός, 
115πολλῶν μεθ᾽ ὅπλων 
ξύν θ᾽ ἱπποκόμοις κορύθεσσιν.

The "he" here is, in fact, not any particular person, but the entire army personified as a "man." The man came against Thebes because of the strife (νεικέων)-filled claims of Polyneices (the name means "much strife"), and abruptly we hear the piercing cries (ὀξέα κλάζων) of a shrieking eagle poised to swoop down and devour the city.

The piercing (ὀξὺν) shriek of a bird is also heard when the guards discover Antigone by the body of Polyneices:

she wailed aloud with the sharp cry of a grieving bird, as when inside her empty [425] nest she sees the bed stripped of its nestlings

ἡ παῖς ὁρᾶται, κἀνακωκύει πικρᾶς ὄρνιθος ὀξὺν φθόγγον

In the logic of Creon's world, the tears of a sister weeping for her brother could never possess the power, the terminal violence, of Polyneices' white eagle. It would make no sense for the light dust spread by a girl to cause greater ruin than the united wrath of the Seven. Or for her grief to pull apart a dynasty. Yet it does. Creon's heart (φρενὸς) is sick. That which we do not readily understand could be a sign whose very absence of sense deserves a look. An enigma. It was a woman with eagle's wings and the power of a lion that brought Oedipus to himself.

What appears to say nothing, to be utterly "Greek to us," might in truth speak volumes about nothing but ourselves.

Eros, sophrosyne, myth and the Hippolytus

This group has completed its collective reading of the Hippolytus, so I'll post a few afterthoughts rather than continue with close readings of specific passages. As we turn to the Antigone of Sophocles, it might be worth a moment to look at the "raw material" of myth seized on by the Greek playwrights for their works.

For one thing, the material is hardly raw. The figures of Oedipus, Antigone, Hippolytus, Orestes, Philoctetes, Heracles, Dionysus, the Olympians and so many more are the legacy of a tradition formed, refined and elaborated over hundreds of years. Their stories involve families, cities, fabulous creatures, gods and nature, and situate themselves within a larger tapestry that could exfoliate into variations and permutations upon the tales already woven. Unlike, say, Old Testament stories that provoked infinite layers of commentary and interpretive creativity, but usually not literary variants or emulations, the Greek myths fueled and informed fresh literary and artistic works by generations of men at diverse historical moments.

Each moment found its form: for Pindar and Bacchylides, it was primarily the ode; for Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, it was tragic drama; for Homer and Virgil, it was the epic; for Ovid, the old myths offered a shared language of figures, literary modes and structures -- a lens for thinking about culture, storytelling, history and literature with sophisticated panache.

Any particular myth came already bound within a much larger given body of tales -- elaborate genealogies of gods, cities, nature and men. Some were complex skeins tracing sacred blessings and curses down through generations of a family.

As we leave (close readers never say "finish") the Hippolytus and begin the Antigone it's noteworthy how the core myths are generative. They pose dense porcupine problems, labyrinthine knots. Unlike the detective tales of Law and Order or Sherlock Holmes, they resist resolving into neat sums through logical agility or dogged scientific lab work. The audience leaves with no sense of mastery, no comfort of closure; instead, if anything, it's experienced a kind of intimate acquaintance with intolerable tensions.

Aphrodite

The same antagonisms operative at the opening of Hippolytus are there at the close. Even as the characters turn in agonized perplexity asking why certain destinies have come to them, the audience is spared any such questioning. We get the god's eye view of the matter at the very beginning with Aphrodite's prologue. There's no suspense about what will happen, no mystery as to why it's happening. All the "hooks" and plot devices constitutive of much modern storytelling are tossed aside. What motivates us to stay with such a story? Why go to the theater?

Let's suggest that one way of looking at the Hippolytus is as a struggle between eros and sophrosyne -- an oversimplification for the sake of argument. We might at first think about this rather abstractly, and rather limitedly, as the eternal agon of passion and reason, the power of desire versus the ability of the self to know and govern its realm -- all of which it most certainly is. What the play does, in virtually every line, every turn of plot, every speech and response, is offer deeper, richer, more comprehensive and more granular perspectives upon that inherent conflict. Drawn along by the action, we gather the implications of the mythos, and grapple with its complications.

Perhaps we acquire a more complex sense of the nature of love and the astonishing range of its effects. The shaft that leaps from eros' bow to Phaedra's heart to Theseus's pain and rage to the entangled death of the future hero-king is intensified and enriched through the prism of each character's acts and interactions.

Artemis

Perhaps we gather a deeper sense of the strategies of self-possession available to us -- from the curious rapture of Hippolytus to the devious authority of Phaedra to the "laid back" approach of the Nurse.  Are these viable solutions or illusory accommodations? Nothing is quite what we would decree as the ideal for our prim and proper world. Turn to the virginal opponent of eros and you find an arrow coming the other way. No simple, clear, coherent solution to the war of eros and sophrosyne stands readily at hand.

The play doesn't ignore the realm of the polis. At the moment he covers his son's face, Theseus says:

ὦ κλείν᾽ Ἀθῆναι Παλλάδος θ᾽ ὁρίσματα,
1460οἵου στερήσεσθ᾽ ἀνδρός.

Glorious Athens, Pallas' realm,
what a man you have been bereft of!

The line grows in power if we remember that this was the father who had seen his son first as a bookish self-indulgent child, then as a fiendishly deceitful rapist, but never as a man -- a man worthy of the admiration of Theseus, the greatest Athenian hero. The scene gains more yet if we happen to catch, only here, the shadow of Athena in the bottomless awareness of the loss to Athens in the untimely, undeserved, incommensurable death of this man.

==========

Shortly before dying, Hippolytus calls on Zeus:

Ζεῦ Ζεῦ, τάδ᾽ ὁρᾷς;
ὅδ᾽ ὁ σεμνὸς ἐγὼ καὶ θεοσέπτωρ,
1365ὅδ᾽ ὁ σωφροσύνῃ πάντας ὑπερσχών,
προῦπτον ἐς Ἅιδην στείχω, κατ᾽ ἄκρας
ὀλέσας βίοτον, μόχθους δ᾽ ἄλλως
τῆς εὐσεβίας
εἰς ἀνθρώπους ἐπόνησα.

Zeus, Zeus, do you mark this? Here am I, the holy and god-revering one, the man who surpassed all men in σωφροσύνῃ [self-control, temperance], seeing plainly ahead my course to Hades. My life is utterly destroyed; useless have been my hard labors of piety towards men.

He calls upon Zeus, but he might as well address us, the audience, we are on the level of the gods even as we see ourselves in the dying hero. The death he now foresees is the death Aphrodite foretold to us at the beginning. Theater as theoria. The strangeness of a day in which the lives of three great ones (μεγάλων) are lost and a nascent civilization careens off course under the serene sky and eye of Zeus doesn't get less enigmatic, but rather more, on closer scrutiny. Deeper insight into the struggle of eros and sophrosyne provides no practical nostrum with which we could build an optimistic program (e.g., the "power of positive thinking") for a better tomorrow.

This mode of myth is unlike what's meant when we say "myth" today --  a story that we think some deluded folks believe, but which others, namely we sage ones, know to be untrue. We have the closure and managerial composure to rest assured we know better.

When a noted historian recently was asked what he thought was the "most damaging myth in America today," his response was, "the idea of American exceptionalism."

Unlike the tale of, say, Thebes, exceptionalism yields little upon reflection; it's an idle phantasm at the farthest remove from myth. Myths don't pretend to solve our problems -- they are our problems, knots torn from the world's heart, made incandescently palpable to a certain ungrasping contemplation.