Studies in Early Mediterranean Poetics and Cosmology
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The Ruins of Paradise: Studies in Early Mediterranean Poetics and Cosmology by Matthew M. Newman A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Classical Studies) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Professor Richard Janko, Chair Professor Sara L. Ahbel-Rappe Professor Gary M. Beckman Associate Professor Benjamin W. Fortson Professor Ruth S. Scodel Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe. O minstrel galleons of Carib fire, Bequeath us to no earthly shore until Is answered in the vortex of our grave The seal’s wide spindrift gaze toward paradise. (from Hart Crane’s Voyages, II) For Mom and Dad ii Acknowledgments I fear that what follows this preface will appear quite like one of the disorderly monsters it investigates. But should you find anything in this work compelling on account of its being lucid, know that I am not responsible. Not long ago, you see, I was brought up on charges of obscurantisme, although the only “terroristic” aspects of it were self- directed—“Vous avez mal compris; vous êtes idiot.”1 But I’ve been rehabilitated, or perhaps, like Aphrodite in Iliad 5 (if you buy my reading), habilitated for the first time, to the joys of clearer prose. My committee is responsible for this, especially my chair Richard Janko and he who first intervened, Benjamin Fortson. I thank them. If something in here should appear refined, again this is likely owing to the good taste of my committee. And if something should appear peculiarly sensitive, empathic even, then it was the humanity of my committee that enabled, or at least amplified, this, too. Richard Janko has not only increased my philological rigor many times over; he has also inspired me to want to do it for myself. And by means of his learning, he has led me to those joys and treasures that reside in the µυχοί and at the edges of the ancient world. Ruth Scodel, both by example and in dialogue, has made me a more sensitive reader of Homer and Hesiod; even if we diverge widely from one another in our understanding of parts of these texts, she has helped me to enrich even my misreadings. 1 Searle (1983) relates Foucault’s assessment of Derrida as follows: “Michel Foucault once characterized iii In addition to conducting me toward more legible prose, Benjamin Fortson, who suffered through reading this project in its extreme infancy (emphasis on its being infans), has always offered sage advice on vexed linguistic issues, including when it is better to confess ignorance than to construct Rube Goldberg machines. Gary Beckman, my cognate member, has been generous with his time and patient with my dilettantism: he has offered astute corrections to my estimation of ancient Anatolia and its languages. Finally, Sara Ahbel-Rappe has met me bravely and graciously at the shadowy interface of poetry and philosophy, where she not only helped me refine the language with which I talked about ontology and epistemology, but also encouraged me to push my readings further and to be unafraid of the ineffable. The Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan must also bear some responsibility for this, since they have funded me without stint and encouraged me, even in my pursuit of phantasmata. Michelle Biggs, our Graduate Coordinator, has been unflagging in keeping my colleagues and me intact and on course. Even now she performs the invaluable job of sending our dossiers out to prospective employers. I am deeply indebted to her. H.D. Cameron, too, must be blamed and thanked for what appears, since he read—with patience and good humor—the entire Iliad and Odyssey with me. This was an ἔξοχος χαρά. I thank my peers in the department, current and former, who have been willing to hear me talk through my ideas, even when I was doing so obscurantly. My cohort—Clara Bosak-Schroeder, Harriet Fertik, and Ellen Lee (nee Cole), as well as Ellen’s partner, Evan Robert Lee—have supported me, challenged me, and commiserated with me iv throughout this process. My good friends, Michael Leese (now at the University of New Hampshire), Amy Pistone, and particularly Matthew Cohn (now at the University of Toronto), have never shied away from reading or listening to even the most malformed of my thoughts. I aspire to both their scholarship and their humanity. v Preface Otherwise, I will bear some responsibility for what I hope this dissertation can offer its readers: a new insight into the relationship between poetry (broadly defined), mythic narrative, and mortal anxiety about the cosmos and the language with which we describe it. This is an anxiety I have felt deeply since I was very young and realized for the first time that I ultimately focalized all the narratives of my world, that the God I prayed to looked suspiciously like Jambi the Genie from Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and that positive assertions of knowledge unsettled that knowledge. This is an anxiety that I nurtured in Rome, in the classrooms of 19 via A. Algardi on the Gianicolo, in the park surrounding the Villa Doria Pamphili, where every day I ran as fast as I could in search of respite from consumptive yearning, and in the Camposanto Teutonico, where a stray sarcophagus uttered the mutually consoling words of an ancient Roman couple in banal elegiac couplets. This is an anxiety I applied stubbornly as a method of reading in a seminar on Propertius at the University of Michigan. This is an anxiety I detected in the proem to Parmenides’ hexametric poem ‘On Nature’ and the Goddess’ description of men’s dikraneia. This is an anxiety I saw ultimately as fueling the oldest extant Greek poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, and the even older myths from the Near East about gods, heroes, monsters, and the universes in which they meet one another. Poetry and myth, it seems, are products of a psychopathology of mortal self-awareness. vi To conclude this section I thank my friends and family outside the field both for offering sanity (or at least a different kind of insanity) and for earnestly wanting to understand what it is I work on; I thank dear Cherry, who cares not one wink what I think about Homer or Hesiod but loves me tirelessly; and I thank my Mom and Dad, to whom this whole thing is dedicated, because they have loved me and supported without condition, even at times inconvenient for them. I will forever fall short of adequately expressing my gratitude to all of them. Not one to buck trends, I remind my readers that any infelicities herein—and they are here—are my responsibility. vii Contents Dedication ii Acknowledgements iii Preface vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1. In His Image (and Language): theomorphization in anthropogonies 1.1. Introduction: The birth of Death 4 1.2. The structures of Hesiod’s myth of races 7 1.3. Gold is best 10 1.4. Not at all like gold 12 1.5. Line 166 14 1.6. The afterlife of heroes 19 1.7. Better than bronze 22 1.8. Speechlessness and unmetricality 27 1.9. Unwitting κοσµόµαχοι 30 1.10. Ἄµουσον γένος 32 1.11. Adam ὁ χρύσεος 36 1.12. Geo- and anthropocentricity 37 1.13. Tending the earth that needs no tending 39 1.14. Features of paradise and the specter of the flood 41 1.15. Living like gods, thinking like gods 44 1.16. The fruits of life and death 47 Chapter 2. Divine trauma, identity theft, and the poetics of ἀκοσµία 2.1. Introduction: From assimilation to obliteration 55 2.2. Serpents as architects of identity theft 58 2.3. Anzu and Illuyanka become Storm-gods: An introduction to the etymological attack 61 2.4. Ishmael’s crime: The power of names in Genesis 65 2.5. From etymology to image and formula: Hesiodic Typhon 68 2.6. Weapons as vehicles of transference in ps.-Apollodorus 74 2.7. More simulacra and metepithesis: Nonnus 80 2.8. Synthesis: Re-writing the cosmos from Anzu to Nonnus 82 2.9. A telling slip: Zeus’ neura in Nonnus 87 2.10. A brief look forward: the tragic consequences of wordplay 89 2.11. An Erinyomachy in Aeschylus? 90 2.12. Precocious mortals: Sophocles’ Trachiniae 102 viii 2.13. Preliminary conclusions 110 Chapter 3. The dangers of (being) Aphrodite 3.1. Introduction and synthesis 113 3.2. Aphrodites: Apostasis and syntasis 115 3.3. Powerful garments, ME’s, and τιµαί: Some correspondences 118 3.4. Transgression: The rescue of Aeneas 124 3.5. Image and echo: A verbal defense 126 3.6. Violating the inviolable: Wounding the goddess 131 3.7. Blood that is not blood: Healing the goddess 135 3.8. Divine wounds as musical oppression 137 3.9. Consolations: Reorienting the goddess 138 3.10. Consolations: Paradeigmata of suffering 142 3.11. Dione’s threats and Diomedes as guarantor of Zeus’ reign 154 Chapter 4. Immortal desire and mortal grief 4.1. Introduction: Aphrodite and eros 160 4.2. Maternal grief 162 4.3. Divine suicide? 169 4.4. …ὃ καὶ θανάτου ῥίγιον ἀργαλέου 181 Conclusion 187 Bibliography 192 ix Introduction As Genesis 3 comes to a close, God drives Adam and Eve from Eden, but not before addressing a nameless and faceless heavenly audience (3:22): “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever.”2 In contrast with what God tells Adam and Eve, verse 22 shows that God expels the couple to solve a theological crisis, not to punish them.