Illinois Wesleyan University From the SelectedWorks of Nancy Sultan 1991 Women in ‘Akritic’ Song: The eH ro’s ‘Other’ Voice Nancy Sultan, Illinois Wesleyan University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/nancy_sultan/9/ Women in "Akritic" Song: The Hero's "Other" Voice Nancy Sultan Abstract Women have long been considered marginal in rural Greek society. In the mythic realm of Greek heroic song, however, women are empowered over the life-cycle of the wandering male hero. Through their connections with the natural world, their management of all rites of passage, and their timely verbal expressions of panos in ritual laments, women control the hero's seasonality and have the power to bring his life full circle. The hero spends his youth as a wandering ksenitemenos whose life is external and sterile, occupied with the exclusively male· panos of trials of manhood. Once the hero returns home, he is near death and begins the task of reintegrating into the world of women; it is through their voices that his heroic glory is made immortal. This paper will discuss women's voices in modern Greek folk song as the hero's "other" voice:'-'-the cyclical, immortal one, the one that is a{}6va'toc;. I am following in the footsteps of two decades of scholars who have focused on the woman's role and relationships in both ancient and modern Greek society and within traditional narratives (Alexiou 1974; du Boulay 1974; Caraveli-Chaves 1980; Keuls 1985; Danforth 1982; Dubisch 1986; Skinner 1987; Hart 1990; Cowan 1990). In studies of ancient Greek heroic poetry, it has long been es­ tablished that the male hero gains immortal fame through seasonally recurring performance of his life and deeds by singers. I Before Mar­ garet Alexiou's book on modern Greek laments appeared in 1974, these singers were visualized primarily as a group of male professionals like Homer, Demodokos, and Phemios, Qr as the hero as a singer himself (Odysseus, Achilles, and in modern songs, Digenis). Alexiou introduced the scholarly community to the woman as one of these singers. Here I wish to emphasize the extent to which the hero's immortal fame is dependent upon his female "other" voice. I will explore in several traditional songs the tension between the male hero's Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 9, 1991. 153 154 Nancy Sultan linearity and the cyclical nature of women's song. My main objective is to highlight the idea that the completion of the hero's life-cycle is dependent upon his permanent reintegration into the woman's world in general, and woman's song in particular. The material will come primarily from N.G. Politis' collection of the so-called "Akritika asmata" (1909), and other, later sources.2 The traditional songs can and will be discussed in the same breath as other songs and song-types in the Greek tradition, even those that we call "epic" and "romance."3 I am allowing myself to move freely between the ancient and the modern oral traditions because themes and images can be discussed across historical time on many different levels from a variety of cross-cultural perspectives. My purpose is not to focus on issues of origin or to prove any sort of linear descent from ancient to modern. I wish to examine the songs for their own sake, applying synchronic as well as diachronic perspectives. Female sexuality: controlling timely death Many anthropologists, having lived with and observed people in Greek villages, have concluded that women's sexuality is manipulated and controlled by rules of society and religion: by acts of seclusion, by being covered up with heavy, shapeless clothes, by being guarded by men, and by being kept away from certain public events, people, and even livestock (especially during the menstrual cycle).4 Herzfeld states that, among the Glendiot people, women are typecast as passive, indecisive, unable to control their sexuality (1985: 66). Juliet du Boulay reaffirms that in rural villages "a man is the vital validating factor of a woman's life" (1974: 121). Comparable views about women's sexuality are seen in modern Greek literature and traditional song. In her interesting analysis of the relationship between the hero and his "Girl" in the Grottaferrata Digenes Akrites, Catia Galatariotou observes that the "female is so closely defined in terms of her relationship to [the] male, that she literally ceases to exist without such a relationship" (1987: 55). She also says that in this version of the epic "women are weak and in absolute need of male protection from physical and moral danger" (1987: 52). Scholars of Homer and ancient Greek tragedy have found the female to be in a similar subordinant position.5 Of course the political and social history of Greece from the earliest periods has verified the subordinate position of women for us-women have been great forces in the man's world, but their power has had to come from within, in private, not from public life. In my own study of the "Akritic" songs, I have found that although women do occupy a subordinate position The Hero's "Other" Voice 155 in the social and political arena of the "Akritic" song tradition, nev­ ertheless from the point of view of myth, women are culturally superior in that the hero's heroic immortality ultimately depends on his re­ turning whence he came-the women's territory of hearth and house. Most importantly, it depends on his establishing a primary place in women's cyclical songs of mourning and praise. In other words, the completion of the hero's life-cycle (his telos) is dependent upon his permanent reintegration into the domain of women. Women can use their sexuality to control and consciously affect men. One method-a negative one-is through adultery, considered the "main way of damaging a husband" (Campbell 1964: 152). We shall see how the dying male's fear of losing his wife to another man­ ifests itself in song narrative. Another method is the use of magic against male potency.6 A third method is seen in traditional song: it is the use to which women can put the special status they possess by way of their sex, even with all its restrictions imposed by culture and religion, to control the seasonality of the male hero. They do this through their control of the home and the rituals surrounding death, through the task of weaving, and through their pictured connection with symbols such as birds and the cypress tree. We see what Herzfeld has called the "polluting power of sexual contact with women" (1985: 54) in "Akritic" songs such as Twpa 'La nouAul and many others where the hero avoids female sexuality at all costs.7 Here I must say that from the point of view of myth, there is . a divergence from what Herzfeld observed, namely, that women are not in control of their sexuality. On the contrary, woman's sexuality is used to bring the hero full circle, and it is hers to control. In fact, it is the male hero who most often displays loss of control, as we shall see. In Twpa "tanouAla the woman, speaking with the voice of birds, makes sexual advances on the sleeping hero, but he spurns her because he is going to fight: Twpa "ta nOUAtO l;(,lpa 1:a XEAtBovta, "twp' Ot ntpBtKEC;, ouxvoAaAouv Kat A£VE. -Suny' a<ptVL1'} pOU· �unva KaA£ p' acptV1:1'}, �unv' aYKOAtaOE Koppi KunaptOotvLO, Kt' aonpovE AatPO, �u�aKta oa AEtpOVla, oav 1:0 KpUO VEpO nopxn' ano "ta XlOVta.» -A c; pE, AUYEPtl, Aiyov unvo va napw, yta"t' acptVL1'}C; pOU OL1'} �apBta p' XE' anOlJ1E, yta va OKOl:W{}W yta OKAa�o va pE nopouv· Ma Bwa' 0 eEOC; K' 1'} TIavayto 1'} TIap{}tva, K' E�Eono{}woa 1:0 BtptOKi ona{}i pOU, 156 Nancy Sultan XiAtoUC; EK01.pa, XiAtouC; aKAa�o(jc; Enllpa K' Evac; }lO<pUYE K' EKEivoC; Aa�W}lEvoC;». (Laographia 6 [19 18]: 637; Patrai) Now the birds, now the swallows, now the partridges sing and speak continuously, "Rise, my beloved lord, rise and embrace this cypress-like body, This white throat, these breasts like little lemons Like the cool water that comes from snow. " "Leave me, my lithe one, leave me to sleep a little while; For my lord has me on the night watch, to kill or to be taken prisoner. But God and the Virgin Lady gave to me and I unsheathed it, my sword of Damascus steel; I cut down thousands, I took a thousand slaves and one escaped me and he was wounded." Sex with a woman before a battle is dangerous for the hero because it makes him vulnerable and because it foreshadows his death. As Campbell has noted, among the Sarakatsani people "seX/sin/death are set in opposition to virginity/continence/life" (1964: 280). The way for the hero to avoid death is to avoid home and family, the woman's domain. To compound the danger, the woman speaks with the voice of birds, and not just any birds, but swallows and partridges, birds that are mediators between the living and the dead.8 This song may be described simultaneously as a lament and as an epithalamium. In other words, only a woman is able to turn the bed of love-making into the 8avanKov KpE�an. 9 The hero avoids sexual contact with the wife because, at the proper time, that union will bring his death. And yet, immortal fame will at once be initiated through the rituals performed .