Embodiments of Literature

Correlate the sources mentioned in the guide to those listed in the margin using the mouse.

Highlight sources in the text

Barbara Graziosi

How to quote this page

Literature is often presented as something ethereal and intangible. It concerns the life of the mind, unconstrained by the material realities of the body. It does not depend on the senses, particularly: we can appreciate Homer by listening, reading, or touching Braille. These different sensory approaches affect our experience, of course, but we are still recognisably confronted with the same text. Logos, language, and literature pertain to the mind rather than the body (and this explains, in part, why literature is placed above material culture in traditional hierarchies). There are, however, ways of thinking about literature as an embodied experience. Gorgias suggests one (Encomium of Helen 7-9):

εἰ δὲ βίαι ἡρπάσθη καὶ ἀνόμως ἐβιάσθη καὶ ἀδίκως ὑβρίσθη, δῆλον ὅτι ὁ ἁρπάσας ἢ ὑβρίσας ἠδίκησεν, ἡ δὲ ἁρπασθεῖσα ἢ ὑβρισθεῖσα ἐδυστύχησεν. [...] (8) εἰ δὲ λόγος ὁ πείσας καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἀπατήσας, οὐδὲ πρὸς τοῦτο χαλεπὸν ἀπολογήσασθαι καὶ τὴν αἰτίαν ἀπολύσασθαι ὧδε. λόγος δυνάστης μέγας ἐστίν, ὃς σμικροτάτωι σώματι καὶ ἀφανεστάτωι θειότατα ἔργα ἀποτελεῖ· δύναται γὰρ καὶ φόβον παῦσαι καὶ λύπην ἀφελεῖν καὶ χαρὰν ἐνεργάσασθαι καὶ ἔλεον ἐπαυξῆσαι. ταῦτα δὲ ὡς οὕτως ἔχει δείξω· (9) δεῖ δὲ καὶ δόξηι δεῖξαι τοῖς ἀκούουσι· τὴν ποίησιν ἅπασαν καὶ νομίζω καὶ ὀνομάζω λόγον ἔχοντα μέτρον· ἧς τοὺς ἀκούοντας εἰσῆλθε καὶ φρίκη περίφοβος καὶ ἔλεος πολύδακρυς καὶ πόθος φιλοπενθής, ἐπ' ἀλλοτρίων τε πραγμάτων καὶ σωμάτων εὐτυχίαις καὶ δυσπραγίαις ἴδιόν τι πάθημα διὰ τῶν λόγων ἔπαθεν ἡ ψυχή.

If she was seized by force, unlawfully constrained, and unjustly abused, it is clear that the man who seized or abused did wrong, and that the woman who was seized or abused suffered misfortune. […] (8) But if speech persuaded and deceived her soul, it is also not difficult to offer a defence for that and to dismiss the accusation in the following way. Speech is a powerful lord, which by the smallest and most invisible body achieves the most divine works; for it can stop fear, remove pain, produce joy, and increase pity. And I shall prove that this is the case; (9) and I must prove it to my listeners by reference to opinion as well. I consider and define all poetry as speech with metre. A fearful shudder, tearful pity, and grievous longing come upon those who hear it, and on account of words the soul suffers its own affliction at the successes and misfortunes of others’ affairs and bodies.

The corporeal nature of this passage is difficult to capture, in part because of the modern divide between mind and body: φρίκη περίφοβος, for example, becomes ‘a fearful fright’ in MacDowell’s standard translation, when the Greek describes a shudder. More strikingly, not once does MacDowell translate Gorgias’ σῶμα as ‘body’, even though it is the key term in our passage. The small and invisible body of logos has very real power, he insists. The proof is its effect on the body of those who listen. Gorgias uses the most physical metaphor – rape – to illustrate what words can do. And yet even he must admit that the σῶμα of words cannot be apprehended directly – it cannot be touched or seen, even if its effects are felt in the body.

This contribution explores the material reception of literature, by considering portraits and places associated with ancient literary figures. I return at the end to Gorgias’ challenging proposition: that we feel literature in our body.

Portraits

The creation of the author is an aspect of the reception of his or her work. Just as the Lives of the ancient poets are largely based on their works, so are their portraits. So, for example, Demodocus is interpreted as an autobiographical character, and Homer is depicted as a blind bard. Or again, Sappho describes how painful it is when a girl leaves her circle, and an important (if neglected) vase depicts this moment of separation:

File:Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.png

Red-figure krater, Tithonus painter, ca 480 BCE: the figure on the left is named ‘Sappho’, the figure on the right is labelled ‘the girl’. Kunstsammlungen der Ruhr-Universität, Bochum.

Sappho and ‘the girl’ (ἡ παῖς: a designation that could apply to several of her girls) are depicted walking in opposite directions, but looking back at each other. As an object, the krater is as unsettling as Sappho’s poems of separation. Many vases play on the theme of the amorous chase: because they are round, whoever chases will in turn be chased, in an exhilarating spiral, in which the viewer can take part by turning the vase round and round. This vase is more awkward to view and handle: the body goes one way, the gaze, the longing, (and, we are reminded, the poetry) quite another.

There is some fun to be had when looking at material depictions of authors, and reading them as receptions of their work. The development of portrait types, for example, is influenced by literary canons, and simultaneously contributes to creating them. Juxtaposition with (and typological similarity to) other categories of portrait situates ancient authors within specific cultural and intellectual milieux: it transforms literary traditions into visual experiences and reifies them in the form of material objects. Portraits allow patrons to ‘possess’ specific literary traditions, genres or poems, and simultaneously generate an intellectual process by which the viewer is asked to ‘read’ the author’s work through the interpretation of specific details of physiognomy, expression, gesture, and placement in relation to other figures. Reading the image and reading the text become connected enterprises (Zanker).

Several ancient sources comment on the relationship between portrait and oeuvre. Theocritus, for example, writes an epigram about a statue of Anacreon placed in the poet’s native island of Teos:

Θᾶσαι τὸν ἀνδριάντα τοῦτον, ὦ ξένε,      σπουδᾷ, καὶ λέγ’, ἐπὴν ἐς οἶκον ἔνθῃς· “Ἀνακρέοντος εἰκόν’ εἶδον ἐν Τέωι,      τῶν πρόσθ’ εἴ τι περισσὸν ᾠδοποιῶν.” προσθεὶς δὲ χὤτι τοῖς νέοισιν ἅδετο,      ἐρεῖς ἀτρεκέως ὅλον τὸν ἄνδρα.

Look well upon this statue, stranger, and say, when you get home, “I saw the likeness of Anacreon in Teos, one of the greatest among the poets of old.” Add to this that he loved young men, and you will have accurately described the whole man.

Here the whole legacy of Anacreon is reduced to a statue (whether real or made up in poetry) and a sentence: ‘he enjoyed young boys’. There is apparently no need to read Anacreon’s work: the stranger is simply invited to visit Anacreon’s place of birth, look at the statue, and remember Theocritus’ own pithy statement. Readers will thus know ‘the whole man’ by a very quick and simple process. Unsurprisingly, there has been some debate about the word ὅλον. Some readers take it at face value (Rossi), others point out that the mini biography provided by Theocritus cannot be taken to represent all of Anacreon’s oeuvre, just as he fails to provide a satisfying ekphrasis of the statue (Bing). This seems true – and I add that Theocritus himself, as a poet, cannot possibly want to be reduced to a portrait and a sentence. His in-your-face Doric θᾶσαι at the beginning of this epigram (which is written in honour of an Ionian poet, after all, and purportedly placed on an Ionian island!) inscribes Theocritus’ own place of birth, as well as his voice and genre, in the composition, suggesting a more broad-ranging literary and personal engagement than his summary biography. Unlike the statue, literature is never confined to one place. As Pindar taught us (Nemean 5.1-3 Pind. N. 5.1-3), it can travel on every ship and skiff.

Ovid has equally thought-provoking things to say about portraits and places (Sorrows 1.7.1-14):

Siquis habes nostris similes in imagine uultus,      deme meis hederas, Bacchica serta, comis. ista decent laetos felicia signa poetas:      temporibus non est apta corona meis. hoc tibi dissimula, senti tamen, optime, dici,      in digito qui me fersque refersque tuo, effigiemque meam fuluo complexus in auro      cara relegati, quae potes, ora uides. quae quotiens spectas, subeat tibi dicere forsan      "quam procul a nobis Naso sodalis abest!" grata tua est pietas, sed carmina maior imago      sunt mea, quae mando qualiacumque legas, carmina mutatas hominum dicentia formas,      infelix domini quod fuga rupit opus.

Whoever has a portrait of my face, remove the ivy, garland of Bacchus, from my hair. Such signs of fortune suit happy poets: a wreath is not fitting for my temples. Conceal – but know – that I say this to you, best friend, who carry me here and there on your finger, and who, clasping my image on the yellow gold, see the dear face, all that you can, of an exile. Whenever you look at it, perhaps you will be prompted to say, “How far away is our friend Ovid!” Your love is a comfort, but my verses are a better portrait, and I urge you to read them such as they are, verses that tell of human transformations, the work broken off by the unhappy flight of its author.

Commentators move swiftly past the first lines – which they find embarassing, both to Ovid’s fan and to Ovid himself, who imagines this person. They move straight beyond the longing for physical contact to line 11, and discuss what Ovid has to say about the Metamorphoses: the poem speaks of altered forms, and Ovid himself is an altered man. I suggest we should pay a bit more attention to the bust crowned with ivy, and the signet ring – not just as objects, but as objects that inspire physical responses to poetry. Removing the ivy means not just recognising Ovid’s unhappiness, but also his new work, the Tristia, and ensuring that the author continues to remain an accurate imago of his oeuvre. As for the signet ring, new work on amulets (Faraone) seems relevant here. There is a well attested ritual whereby people who want to communicate with a god wear a signet ring with the deity’s image on it. Magical texts recommend wearing the image turned inwards, on the side of the palm, and sleeping with one ear next to it, in the hope that the god might send a message in a dream. This ritual of private communication may be relevant here. The addressee who loves Ovid needs to understand and yet dissimulate what the poet tells him (line 5, which is textually uncertain). There is the conceit of personal contact, even though Ovid does not even know who he may be addressing: siquis. This person should not seek the poet just through portraits, however, but rather by finding new meaning in the Met. This meaning is personal – not just for the poet, and his changed oeuvre and life – but personal to the reader, who needs to guard his interpretation as closely as he keeps his signet ring.

Admiration for literature repeatedly finds expression in the desire to encounter the author face-to-face. Pliny comments (NH 35.9) pariunt desideria non traditos uultus, sicut in Homero euenit. Petrarch laments the fact that, because he lacks a proper translation of the Iliad, he can only catch glimpses of Homer’s face (Familiar Letters 24.12.2 Petr. Fam. 24.12.2). In a different letter, he writes of embracing a copy of the Iliad, as if he were actually touching his beloved friend Homer (Familiar Letters 18.2.6 Petr. Fam. 18.2.6). Elsewhere still, he admits that being close to an author has nothing to do with material objects. It is a personal connection, as if with a living person ‘made of flesh’, a connection that provides Petrarch with a suitable interlocutor and distances him from the uulgus (Familiar Letters 8.3.6 Petr. Fam. 8.3.6).

Because the process of imagining the face and the body of the author involves a private and personal act of reading, real portraits can come into conflict with the imagined face. Libanius (Letters 143.3 Lib. Ep. 143.3), for example, is desperate to obtain a portrait of Aristides, but when he actually receives one he refuses to accept that it is a true likeness (Petsalis-Diomidis). Surely, he argues, Aristides could not have looked so healthy, or have such luscious hair! Eventually, on receiving a second portrait that agrees with the first, Libanius accepts that the images must reflect how Aristides actually looked. But he is still puzzled by the hair, and demands to know how it could have been so abundant. He also wants a full portrait (Letters 143.5 Lib. Ep. 143.5).

There are many other examples of desire for ancient authors (Güthenke) and of disappointment with their portraits. John Cosin (1594–1672), Prince Bishop of Durham, ordered that his library on Palace Green be decorated with portraits of ancient philosophers and fathers of the Church, and insisted that that they be based on genuine ancient artefacts. When he actually saw them, however, he was appalled: ‘They look like Saracens!’ he declared in one of his furious letters to the artist.

It seems, then, that portraits become sites of competitive reception, where different visions of ancient authors come to clash. The cognitive process by which the act of reading results in a private image of the author is destabilised by the objectivity of actual portraits.

Places

Because bodies are located in space and time, embodied responses to literature clash with the intangible ubiquitousness of words. The krater depicting Sappho makes the point: bodies go their separate ways, but longing and poetry still connect them. Theocritus objects to ancient literary tourism: the Hellenistic desire to celebrate the poets in the places where they were born, through cultic statues and monuments (Clay), is exposed as inadequate: he tells us to look at an Ionian poet, on an Ionian island, by addressing us in his own native Doric, θᾶσαι, and thus making us think of Sicily instead. Ovid speaks of the physical intimacy established by wearing a signet ring, and then suggests that the act of reading the Metamorphoses is equally close and personal. Petrarch embraces a Greek manuscript of Homer’s Iliad, but then blames Homer for ‘having forgotten his Latin’ – i.e. for not having inspired adequate Latin translations. The problem is not just linguistic, for Petrarch: he resents Homer’s cultural and geographical distance, in an attitude of suspicion and superiority towards Byzantine culture (Dionisotti). Bishop Cosin thinks that the ancient philosophers are like him, and is dismayed to find out that they look like Saracens.

The problem of place and possession resonates through the history of classical culture, of course. We are all familiar with the distaste and disorientation of northern Europeans, when confronted with modern southerners living in ancient landscapes. When Freud visits the acropolis, physical closeness to the ancient world inspires a reflection on cultural distance, not least from his own father (Leonard). The Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (Nobel laureate 1962) tries to capture his physical closeness to Aeschylus in an invective against an unnamed poet of the north:

A un poeta nemico Sulla sabbia di Gela colore della paglia mi stendevo fanciullo in riva al mare antico di Grecia con molti sogni nei pugni stretti nel petto. Là Eschilo esule misurò versi e passi sconsolati, in quel golfo arso l’aquila lo vide e fu l’ultimo giorno. Uomo del Nord, che mi vuoi minimo o morto per tua pace, spera: la madre di mio padre avrà cent’anni a nuova primavera. Spera: che io domani non giochi col tuo cranio giallo per le piogge.

To a Hostile Poet On the straw-coloured sands of Gela as a child I would lie by the ancient Grecian sea, many dreams in my breast and my clenched fists. Exiled Aeschylus there scanned over his verses and lines forlorn in the burning gulf where the eagle spied him that final day. Man of the North who wish me nothing, or dead, hope for your own peace: next spring my father’s mother will be a hundred years old. Hope that tomorrow I shall not be playing with your rain-yellowed skull.

Quasimodo alludes to ancient traditions about Aeschylus’ death, according to which a flying eagle saw the bald head of the poet, mistook it for a rock, and dropped a tortoise he was holding in his talons, in order to crack open its shell and eat it (the account may derive from an omen described in some lost play of Aeschylus). Quasimodo leaves out the colourful detail of the tortoise falling from the sky, because it does not fit the starkness of his poem. What he offers instead is the image of a forlorn figure in a vast landscape – a figure that is simultaneously Aeschylus and Quasimodo. It is only halfway through the epigram that the ancient and the modern poet part company. Unlike Aeschylus, Quasimodo is still alive, and does not plan to die any time soon: his grandmother has excellent genes, after all. It is his rival from the north who will go first, as rain falls on his yellowed skull. Quasimodo is still at play on the golden sands of Gela at the end of his poem. The suggestion is that the Sicilian Greek lives like Aeschylus – feels the ancient sand and sea through his own living body – whereas his northern rival can at best die like the ancient poet, with something nasty (rain or tortoise) falling on his head. Here too, competitive literary receptions are negotiated through embodied experience.

What portraits and places bring to the fore are intensely personal responses to ancient literature. Scholars insist, quite rightly, that authorial representations depend on two factors: an interpretation of the author’s oeuvre, and the conventions of biography, portraiture, and other relevant genres. To these two, I would add a third element that determines how ancient authors are represented: the lived, embodied experience of their readers and admirers.

---

Bibliography

• MacDowell , D. M. (ed.) 1982. Gorgias. Encomium of Helen. Bristol.
• Zanker, P. 1995. The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity. Berkeley and Los Angeles.
• Rossi, L. 2001. The Epigrams Ascribed to Theocritus: A Method of Approach. Leuven.
• Bing, P. 1988. ‘Theocritus’ Epigrams on the Statues of Ancient Poets.’ Antike und Abendland 34.2. 117-123.
• Petsalis-Diomidis, A. 2006. ‘Sacred Writing, Sacred Reading: The Function of Aelius Aristides’ Self-Presentation as Author in the Sacred Tales.’ In J. Mossman and B. McGing eds. The Limits of Ancient Biography. Swansea. 193-211.
• Güthenke, C. Forthcoming. ‘”Lives” as Parameter. The Privileging of Ancient Lives as a Category of Research around 1900.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink eds. Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography. Cambridge.
• Clay, D. 2004. Archilochos Heros: The Cult of Poets in the Greek Polis. Cambridge, MA.
• Dionisotti, C. 1967. Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana. Turin.
• Leonard, M. forthcoming. ‘Freud and the Biography of Antiquity.’ In R. Fletcher and J. Hanink eds. Creative Lives. New Approaches to Ancient Intellectual Biography. Cambridge.