Introduction

I§1 The Homer of Homer’s Text and Language is a metonym for the text and the language of the Iliad and the Odyssey. [1] The empirical basis for all that we know about Homer is this text, this language. What I offer here is a book about this Homer. It is a set of essays rewritten and reintegrated with one central aim in mind: to show how the text and language of Homer derive from a system, an oral poetic system. That is my deduction.

I§2 My overall method, however, which has been shaped by over three decades of research on Homer, is more inductive than deductive. Inductive thinking about the facts of Homeric text and language has become for me a story in itself, and this book is my attempt to tell such a story.

I§3 In Homeric studies, there is an ongoing debate centering on different ways to establish the text of Homer, different ways to appreciate the poetry created in the language of Homer. This book takes a stand in the midst of that debate. The stakes are high, not only because Homer remains such an indispensable figure in the canons of world literature but also because so much about Homeric poetry is still unknown or uncertain.

I§4 In an age of information technology, the debate has only intensified, and the stakes have been raised ever higher. Two of the essays rewritten in this book appeared originally in an electronic journal, The Bryn Mawr Classical Review. [2] The second of these two essays, which was a review of a recent edition of the Homeric Iliad, [3] provoked a reply that was published in the same electronic journal. [4] The electronic trail leads further. The writer of that reply went on to incorporate a rewritten version into a printed book, [5] but then, in {xi|xii} response to my review of that book, which I published in a printed journal, [6] that same writer chose the same electronic journal for a new reply, combining it with his reply to another review of the same book, which had also been published in the same electronic journal. [7] From the start, the technological aspects of this debate caught the attention of popular media: for example, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung took note of the publicity sparked by the electronic publication of my original review. [8]

I§5 Electronic publishing has not only intensified the ongoing debate over Homer. [9] It has also accelerated the rush to engage in the debate. [10] All that rush needs to be counterbalanced by a slow and careful rereading of arguments central to the debate. Homer’s Text and Language addresses such a need by returning to the debate in the form of a printed book, to be complemented by an electronic version of the same book. The printed version offers an opportunity to engage in the kind of slow and careful rereading I have in mind. I should add here my opinion that electronic publishing in the Classics need not be used merely to promote the intensification of debate for the sake of debate: I advocate alternative uses, focusing on enhanced ways of reading and reflecting on ancient texts. [11]

Ι§6 An opportunity to reflect is also an opportunity to reposition the ongoing debate. In practicing the profession of literary historian and critic, I must be both straightforward and open to dialogue. In maintaining a critical outlook, I will need to be direct in some of my criticisms. In developing my central argument, that Homeric poetry derives from a system, an oral poetic system, I find it necessary to highlight my disagreements with some contemporary Classicists. On some points, they too disagree with me—or with each other; on many other points, there is general agreement. If I became preoccupied, however, with tracking all the agreements and disagreements, the aim of my book would be lost. Homer’s Text and Language tells its own story in the form of a unified positive argumentation. {xii|xiii}

Ι§7 In the course of my argumentation, I hope to address a wide variety of questions of interest to students of literature in general, not only to Classicists in particular. What do our text of Homer and its variants really stand for? What were the norms of composition, performance, and editing that shaped the poetry as we now have it? How does tradition operate on the interactive levels of synchrony and diachrony? [12]

Ι§8 For my argument to be effective, I need to engage with specialized studies grounded in the realities of Homeric text and language—and with the technical terminology that goes with those studies. The terminology of text criticism is introduced gradually as the reading of Part I proceeds. Then, halfway into the book, Part II begins to introduce a further set of terms having to do with linguistic reconstructions, or “etymologies.” To read through the whole book in sequence, then, is to acquire at least two different kinds of complex technical language currently being used in Homeric research. What sustains the reading, however, is not the gradual acquisition of these complex technical languages but the central argument itself, which remains simple in its essence: that the text and language of Homeric poetry derive from oral traditional poetry.

I§9 The central argument is driven by three special interests: the systematic nature of oral poetry; the interplay of tradition and innovation in this kind of poetry; and the realities of actual performance. The first interest goes to the heart of my ongoing research on the history of Homeric reception. By combining the insights of Milman Parry and Albert Lord with the general methods of structural linguistics, I aim to show that the system underlying the making of Homeric verse enables us to appreciate the Homeric editorial practices of the ancient world. My second interest, concerning the interplay of innovation and tradition, runs closely parallel to the first: once we recognize the ways in which creative performers analogize and extend analogies within a tradition, we can break free from rigidly confining ideas of a single “Homeric genius” as the ultimate source of a once-and-for-all fixation of the Homeric text. Thirdly, my interest in the dynamics of performance motivates my re-examinations of the “origins” of the hexameter, as well as my analysis of the precious information contained in the Homeric scholia, that is, in the marginal notes we find preserved in ancient papyri and, more pervasively, in medieval manuscripts. In these scholia, traces of generations of past performances can be detected still. {xiii|xiv}

I§10 Chapter One plunges the reader into the intricacies of the Homeric scholia—and what they can tell us about the ancient transmission of Homer. A key to understanding this transmission is the research of one particular ancient expert in the text and language of Homer, Aristarchus of Samothrace, director of the Library of Alexandria in the middle of the second century CE. The first five chapters accentuate the work of this man. Already in the first chapter, I start building an argument about the variant readings attributed by later sources to Aristarchus: most of these readings, as I strive to show, derive from his practice of comparing and collating Homeric scrolls available to him. Aristarchus relied as much on such outside information as he did, famously, on explaining Homer “out of Homer” (Homēron ex Homērou saphēnizein ‘clarify Homer out of Homer’)—that is, on applying his intuitions about the underlying system that animates the poetry. [13] If my argument holds, I will be justified in saying that the work of Aristarchus has preserved for us traces of authentic variations in the performance of ancient Homeric poetry.

I§11 Chapter Two offers a clarification of the term “multiform” and its applications in the study of traditional oral poetics. It makes a connection between Lord’s notion of multiformity and the variations we find in the Homeric text as we know it. Some of these variations are insignificant, while others are of great significance. One sure sign of significant variation in Homeric poetry is the occasional highlighting of a given variant by the poetry itself: for example, a variant can be rhetorically “focalized” in contrast with other variants.

I§12 Chapter Three is more technical in content, examining in detail Martin West’s edition of the Homeric Iliad. The results of this examination are essential for the overall argument initiated in Chapters One and Two: that the variations in wording as we find them in Homeric texts stem ultimately from variations in formulaic composition stemming from many centuries of ongoing Homeric performances.

I§13 Chapter Four continues an ongoing debate with West by articulating some essential differences between his view of the Homeric text and mine. I argue that this text reflects a poetic system, and that editors of Homer need to work out a system of their own in their ongoing efforts to understand that system. For West, on the other hand, the Homeric text reflects no system, and he feels no obligation to articulate his own approach to this {xiv|xv} text—except to affirm and reaffirm, over and over again, his reliance on his own personal judgment of what is right and wrong. [14] Against the backdrop of this debate, Chapter Four spells out what is ultimately at stake: are the Homeric poems to be read once and for all as a uniform text determined by one editor who knows best—or are they to be read and re-read in light of the multiform oral traditions that had shaped their history and prehistory? I contend that the emergent uniformity of the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey cannot be appreciated if we fail to understand the submerged multiformity of oral traditions that gave life to these poems. I resist the idea that Homeric poetry will somehow be safer in the hands of editors who seek to flatten out that multiformity. What saved this poetry in the distant past was the system of its oral traditions, in all its multiformity. To keep it safe, future editors need to maintain an active engagement with the history and prehistory of that system. It matters less, then, for me to worry about overextended claims, assumptions, and negative rhetoric about problems inherent in the study of Homeric poetry. [15] It matters more to find common ground. [16] And, ultimately, it matters even more to find answers to some basic questions. What did the Aristarchean critic Didymus know—or not know—about the editorial work of Aristarchus? How did Aristarchus himself use the earlier work of Aristophanes of Byzantium? What role did the “city” texts of Homer play in the evaluations of ancient editors?

I§14 Chapter Five confronts, in detail, thirty-three examples of readings claimed to be “authentic” in the Homeric text—as opposed to alleged “conjectures” made by Aristarchus and others. Here I put to the test a point I am making throughout Part I of this book about Homeric poetry as a system: if this poetry is in fact a system, and if the variants reported by Aristarchus can be shown to be part of such a system, then these Aristarchean variants cannot be dismissed as mere “conjectures”—as opposed to non-Aristarchean variants that are alleged to be “authentic.” If my demonstration is successful, then the Aristarchean as well as the non-Aristarchean variants can be considered authentic—that is, authentically generated by the system of oral traditional poetry. All such variants can be considered to be part of the overall system. And the evidence to be used to demonstrate such common authenticity can be found in the text of Homer as we have it. An Aristarchean variant as attested in a given Homeric verse can be validated by way of matching {xv|xvi} it with identical non-Aristarchean variants attested in other Homeric verses. On the basis of the vast number of variants that survived in Homeric textual history, we have enough evidence to conclude that the attestations of variation in the text are traces of variation in the traditional system underlying that text. Aristarchean variants are no exception: they are native to this traditional system, and they cannot be dismissed as alien guesswork.

I§15 Chapter Six inaugurates Part II of the book, shifting from questions about text to questions about language. As in Part I, the questions center on the derivation of Homeric poetry from oral traditions. As we shift from text to language, the idea that Homeric poetry is a traditional system can be seen in a new light. We can start thinking about the individuality of specific performances, not only about the evolution of a monumental composition toward a final fixed textual form. We can also start thinking about how individual performers may have contributed to such an evolution. Any synchronic view of individuality in performance, however, needs to be counterbalanced with a diachronic view, which brings us back to the realities of oral traditional poetry as a system that keeps on changing over time. That system, further, needs to be viewed linguistically as an interaction of individual parole and collective langue. [17] The first case in point is the etymology of the name of Achilles, which is the main concern of Chapter Six. In studying the deeply pervasive interaction between the meaning of this etymology and the meaning of the overall plot of the Homeric Iliad, we can see the precision and cohesion of Homeric poetry as a system. A recognition of such precision and cohesion exemplifies the links between Parts I and II, and it gives the book its unity.

I§16 Chapter Seven matches Chapter Six in focusing on the etymology of a name. This time it is the name of the god Apollo. The meaning of this name reveals Apollo as god of the sacred speech act and, by extension, of all speech acts. This quintessential Greek god embodies the sacred function of speech itself. As god of language, Apollo has absolute control of language. He is the god of linguistics. Within the framework of Homeric poetry as a system, the linguistic power of the god comes to life. Apollo, through his Muses, becomes the force that animates the medium of Homeric poetry.

I§17 Chapter Eight focuses on the formal medium of Apollo, as also of Achilles and Homeric characters in general—even of Homer himself as a speaker of heroic verse. That medium of heroic verse is the dactylic hexameter, the etymology of which is relevant to the driving idea of Homeric poetry as a system. In using the word “etymology,” what I am really saying is that the problem of the “origins” of the hexameter is fundamentally a linguistic {xvi|xvii} problem. In linguistics, studying the etymology of any given word needs to be a holistic undertaking: it requires attention to all levels of speech, from phonology to morphology to syntax to semantics. A holistic approach is needed also for studying the “etymology” of the hexameter. This chapter offers a review and reconfiguration of my cumulative work on the forms and preforms of the hexameter, summarizing the results of my research since the publication of my original book on meter and comparative metrics in 1974. [18] In this chapter, as in other chapters, I append corrections of factual as well as typographical errors in my previous publications.

I§18 Ellipsis—as concept and as practice—is reserved for the final essay of this book, Chapter Nine. Ellipsis is also relevant to all eight of the previous essays—and in fact it is relevant to all my research as it has evolved over the last thirty years. Ellipsis has to do with something quite fundamental about ancient Greek civilization: every instantiation of this civilization, be it an utterance, a poem, or an image, is highlighted as well as shaded over by ellipsis—by what is elided in the time or space of performance. Ellipsis highlights the cosmos of meanings that generations of audiences experienced by way of participating in cultural acts, such as hearing Homer. Ellipsis, then, is a powerful metaphor for that whole cosmos, just as it works as a metonym within its own context (highlighting by hiding). While the examples I give in Chapter Nine are meant to focus on specific Homeric stylistic conventions, they also embody a much broader aesthetic, and ultimately, a confirmation that the Homeric text was shaped by a deep structure of meanings, constantly available for reactivation at all linguistic levels: phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics. The ultimate ellipsis is the one that produces the illusion of an “original” poet, who is in reality the shimmering, constantly re-energized (we might say holographic) image of every performer of the poetry itself. [19]

I§19 Readers who are already familiar with my work will, I hope, see most clearly in this final essay the rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of Homeric themes to which I have attended in my older publications. Each of those themes has been given a new twist, however, in the new environment of this book. To readers who are new to my work, the ninth essay is meant to give an overview of the depth and vitality of the ancient Greek poetic treasure that is Homer.

I§20 As for the nine essays taken all together, each of them elaborates on that same depth and vitality, viewing Homer as an endless stream of variegated moments {xvii|xviii} in the actual reception of Homer. My essays, then, are rethinkings and refinements, as well as supplements to the debates they started. As such, they are meant to be the opposite of a scholarly reprint, for their purpose is not to memorialize older positions but to try to keep pace with the eternal newness of Homeric studies.