De Novis Libris Iudicia

mnemosyne 67 (2014) 131-172

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De novis libris iudicia

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Grossardt, P. Stesichoros zwischen kultischer Praxis, mythischer Tradition und eigenem Kunstanspruch. Zur Behandlung des Helenamythos im Werk des Dichters aus Himera (mit einem Anhang zum Motivkomplex von Blendung und Heilung in der internationalen Erzähltradition) (Leipziger Studien zur klassischen Philologie 9). Tübingen, Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2012. ix, 180 pp. Pr. €58.00. ISBN 9783823367673.

The opening pages of the book tell the story of how it came about that the author turned to Stesichorus. Reading Lev Tolstoy’s War and Peace for a second time, Grossardt was deeply impressed by an episode: two noblemen doubt a story told to them by a peasant woman. She claims to have witnessed how a holy icon of Maria began to shed tears. After having expressed his doubts, one of the incredulous listeners turns blind. In the following, however, he dreams of Maria, prays to her, and his eyesight is restored. Grossardt saw a parallel to a famous Stesichorus-anecdote. After having written a poem in which he blamed Helena, Stesichorus was punished with blindness for having slandered a goddess. His sight returned when he wrote a palinode (two palinodes by one account). In this new text Helen never went to Troy at all, and the gods lodged her in Egypt. Euripides in his Helen follows the version of Stesichorus’ Palinode. Euripides’ Menelaus, returning from Troy with the phantom Helen, is astonished to find the real Helen in Egypt from which finally both manage to escape. Grossardt wanted to find out more about the relationship between stories told in so different a context (pp. VIII & XIII), and in fact he did. He investi- gated material from Greek literature as well as from other literatures. His book is divided in two parts: A longer first one is dedicated to a close reading of Stesichorus’ texts, his Helena, the Iliupersis, Nostoi, and Palinode (pp. 7-85). A shorter second part (called Anhang) treats the motive of blinding and its ensu- ing cure in several other literary texts, including legends recounting Maria’s life

(themselves belonging to an orthodox, eastern tradition), an episode of the life of Thormodr, a central character in the Icelandic epic Saga of the Sworn broth- ers, and medieval Irish as well as English legends of saints (pp. 89-140). A huge bibliography (pp. 141-66) and useful indices (pp. 167-80) conclude the work. The question Grossardt tries to answer is whether the Stesichorean inno- vative variation reflects a local, epichoric tradition, which in turn somehow opposes the panhellenic, Homeric version of Helena’s story (cf., e.g., p. 3 or again p. 29). The broader context of his argument is the discussion of the various ways lyric poets took possession of an epic past, how they responded to it. The important subject was largely treated in Gregory Nagy’s influential monograph Pindar’s Homer (published in 1990). Several times Grossardt refers to Nagy as well as to a more recent article by Alexander Beecroft on Stesicho- rus’s Palinode and the Revenge of the Epichoric (published in TAPhA 136 (2006), 47-69). The field of comparative literary studies is not unknown to Grossardt as his earlier monograph on Achilles, Coriolan und ihre Weggefährten shows (published in 2009). Given the fact that Stesichorus quite obviously took material from various mythological traditions, as appears from his Iphigeneia, who is the daughter of Helen in one of Stesichorus’ works (PMGF 191) and of Clytaemnestra in another (PMGF 215), Grossardt rightly declares a non liquet (e.g. pp. 11, 14). Ending his learned discussion of the Helen-fragments, Grosshardt eventually regards the concept of an opposition between a local and a panhellenic tradition in the form proposed by Nagy and others as simplistic and unconvincing; to him it is an untenable hypothesis (pp. 32f., repeated p. 79). To Grossardt, it seems likely that Stesichorus amalgamated in a somewhat eclectic fashion local story-tell- ing with widely known mythological material. Paradoxically, though, Grossardt somehow returns to the already disputed opposition in his introductory remarks on the Palinode (p. 43). After having discussed the various versions of Stesichorus’ blinding given by Greek authors (pp. 48-57), Grossardt provides ample material on the blinding-motive drawn from literary sources other than Greek (pp. 57-77). This in a double sense central chapter, in the course of which also an Indo-European heritage is evalu- ated, provides interesting reading, and the amount of secondary literature discussed by Grossardt is truly impressive. In Grossardt’s view, Stesichorus proves his own poetry to be independent of epic poetry by including new elements, whether or not they stem from local mythical narrative (p. 75). Finally, Gros- sardt speculates whether Stesichorus’ Helen and Palinode reflect a roughly con- temporary ritual context or even belong to it. In his concluding remarks Grossardt re-evaluates his own monograph. He returns, e.g., to the already mentioned fact that Iphigeneia is known to Ste-

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