Interaction in Poetic Imagery: With Special Reference to Early Greek Poetry

278 Pages·1974·7.03 MB·English

by  Michael Silk

INTERACTION IN POETIC IMAGERY
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO
EARLY GREEK POETRY

INTERACTION
IN POETIC IMAGERY
with special reference to
early Greek poetry
M.S.SILK
Lecturer in Classics, King's College
London
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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© Cambridge University Press 1974
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no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1974
This digitally printed first paperback version 2006
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 73—90813
ISBN-13 978-0-521-20417-0 hardback
ISBN-10 0-521-20417-8 hardback
ISBN-13 978-0-521-02460-0 paperback
ISBN-10 0-521-02460-9 paperback
CONTENTS
Prolegomenon vii
Acknowledgements xiii Abbreviations and Note xiv
PART I INTRODUCTION
i Interaction page 3
2 Dead metaphor and normal usage
27
3 Aesthetics 57
PART II THE CATEGORIES
4 Scope and procedure 79
5 Neutral-based interaction 85
Pivot and glide 87
Convergence 103
The explanatory function 114
The specifying function 127
Support 134
6 Intrusion 138
7 Interaction outside the grammar 150
Preparation 152
Anticipation of a theme 155
Link 157
Retrospective imagery 167
8 Aural interaction 173
Alliteration and assonance: preliminaries *73
Alliterative link 175
Alliteration as enforcement for interaction 184
Aural preparation and isolation 187
Aural suggestion 191
9 Combinations 194
Preparation 194
Pivot and convergence 200
Link 204
CONTENTS
APPENDICES
i 'Work on interaction to date' 209
11 Catachresis 210
in The characteristic quality of various authors' usage
(' normal' or ' abnormal'): ancient testimony 211
iv Some notes on alliteration in Greek 224
v Confusion in ancient sty lis tics between metaphor and
'dead metaphor' 228
vi Apologetic cbcrrrep 230
VII Privative and limiting epithets as a criterion for the
presence of live metaphor 231
VIII On the history of intentionalism 233
ix V- V relations 235
x Summary of poets' apparent characteristics 238
xi dcoTOS and flowers 239
XII TOTOS ydp in Arch.i 12 240
XIII Conditional metaphor 242
xiv 2N = 1V 243
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Texts and Abbreviations 245
INDEXES
1 Greek words 251
11 Passages discussed 255
in General 259
PROLEGOMENON
This book is not an attempt to apply to classical literature the habits of
modern literary criticism, but as it might be supposed to be just that, I may
as well forestall the supposition at the outset. Despite intermittent efforts in
recent times, it is still comparatively rare for practising classicists to attempt
such * applications' and, if anything, especially rare for Hellenists. But the
present work represents something much less fashionable altogether: an
attempt by a practising classicist to extend the * theory' of an aspect of litera-
ture in general in the practical context of the literature of antiquity. But in
case the claim should seem unduly immodest, it can be said at once that the
'aspect of literature' in question is, in itself, a small aspect, although not a
trivial one. And by way of glossing the claim, let it be said also that the
'habits of modern literary criticism' and the theoretical apparatus (if any)
that accompanies them are not simply separable from their 'traditional'
counterparts. There is rather, as anyone familiar with the ancestry of
modern criticism will know, a developing tradition, complex and many-
sided, but continuous, which, in its development, sometimes modifies,
sometimes innovates entirely and sometimes reconstitutes, in effect, earlier
modes. The present study is not a matter of taking over (as from the outside)
a tradition at a given point in its development, whether a more ' traditional'
point or a more 'modern' one; but, as I hope, a matter of taking that de-
velopment a little further, irrespective of which of the above-mentioned
possibilities - modification, innovation or reconstitution - are incidentally
involved. And this is to be attempted with regard to poetic imagery and,
specifically, an aspect of imagery that I shall be calling 'interaction'.
So much has been written about poetic imagery, in connection with
particular literatures and in general, that some account of interaction was
almost bound to have been taken. And in practice, some, at least, of the
various forms and features of interaction have not been entirely unnoticed.
Witness, for example, the commentators on Aeschylus, Agamemnon 966ft,
an image in which the king, returning home and by his return bringing
security to the royal household, is compared to a vine:*
* Vine, as O^OCKOS (970) retrospectively suggests. The Greek text quoted follows Fraenkel
, 969); the English paraphrase ('sun' for 'dogstar' etc.) is my own.
vii
PROLEGOMENON
pigris y&p ouoris cpuAAccs TKET' IS 56pious
OKIOCV UTrepTeivaaa creipiou KUVOS *
Kai aou IJOAOVTOS 6co|iorriTiv sariocv
OOCATTOS |i£V e*v \si\i6bvi or||jiaiveis IJIOAOV.
If the root lives, the leaves reach home, stretching
Their shade upwards against the sun. And you,
Home with the family, betoken warmth
Coming in winter.
On IK£T' es SOJJIOUS ('reach home') Fraenkel says: 'Vahlen. . .puts the
passage into its proper setting; he points out that. . .the image which serves
as a comparison and the thing compared are not always. . .kept strictly
apart, that, on the contrary, the image frequently assimilates elements of the
thing compared.. .' — and he goes on to cite other eminent Hellenists
including Verrall, Hermann Frankel and Wilamowitz.
In English studies, Mrs Nowottny supplies an instance: *a further advant-
age of metaphor to the poet (simile shares this) is its power to play in with
the faded metaphors of ordinary language and to draw special effects from
the interplay'.* She exemplifies this power with
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
' where the metaphor of the sessions of. . . thought plays in with the faded
metaphor in summon up9 and 'the familiarity of the phrase summon up acts
as a guarantee of the propriety of the metaphor of the sessions of thought;
the old metaphor ratifies the new metaphor, supports it... The reanimation
of dead metaphor may become a means of contriving effects of great subtlety
and power.. .'
And on a Shakespearian passage again, Wolfgang Clemen, apropos the
* associative rise of the image':
You are too shallow, Hastings, much too shallow,
To sound the bottom of the after-times.
'Shallow, meaning here superficial in character, assumes a concrete signifi-
cance in Shakespeare's mind and thus leads to the (unuttered) image of the
ocean.. ,'f
These three discussions are representative of ordinary adequacy: they
haven't been chosen as containing any gross errors. But for my purposes they
all evidence a simple but basic inadequacy. Compare a fourth discussion, this
* Nowottny 70. f Clemen 74f.
viii
PROLEGOMENON
time from an ancient theorist. For one can in fact point to examples of
Greco-Roman 'criticism' (so-called) which show the critic as having
occasion to discuss an interaction, but-and here the same inadequacy
presents itself conveniently conspicuously - lacking the conceptual apparatus
needed to make his discussion articulate. The critic may have a perception
about it, may have an inkling of something which prompted him to discuss
the interaction in the first place, but can't interpret his perception with any
particularity. Quintilian 5.11.24:
admonendum est rarius esse in oratione illud genus, quod EIKOVOC Graeci
vocant. . .quam id, quo probabilius fit quod intendimus: ut si animum
dicas excolendum, similitudine utaris terrae, quae neglecta spinas ac dumos,
culta fructus creat. . .
it is to be noted that the kind of comparison that the Greeks call EIKCOV is
less common in oratory than the kind that helps us enforce a point. If, for
instance, your point is that the mind should be cultivated, you might use a
comparison drawn from the soil: in a state of neglect, the soil produces
thorns and brambles, whereas under cultivation it yields fruit...
It isn't entirely clear that this is an interaction. That would depend on the
precise form that the recommended comparison took: with excolendum
animum ('the mind should be cultivated') as an actual part of the image, we
would appear to have another example of Mrs Nowottny's broadly charac-
terized 'playing in with the faded metaphors of ordinary language'. But in
any case, 'broadly characterized' brings us back to the main point. Quin-
tilian, like Mrs Nowottny, deals in broad terms, too broad. The most he can
give us to indicate the nature of his prescription is the vague phrase ' the
kind that helps us enforce a point', a phrase that doesn't, in itself, imply
interaction at all. His problem is that he doesn't know what interaction is -
and the same goes for our modern critics. None of them, by way of en-
lightening themselves or their readers, can appeal to 'interaction', for the
simple reason that the name is lacking and the concept lying behind the
name. None of them can do what I did, blandly, just now - relate their
varied instances as instances of one thing. The boundaries aren't drawn.
Fraenkel's slightly opaque expression, 'the image assimilates elements of the
thing compared', is in fact a reference to one particular category of inter-
action; Mrs Nowottny's 'plays in with the faded metaphors of ordinary
language' is a phrase, a rather unfortunate phrase, that would cover many
instances of several different categories, but not all the instances of those
categories and probably very few of the instances of any other category; and
ix
PROLEGOMENON
Clemen's 'associative rise of the image' is a formula both too narrow and too
wide for interaction, a formula that would exclude many of its categories and
include many instances that are not to be thought of as instances of inter-
action at all.
This brings us to a related consequence of conceptual inadequacy. The critic
isn't able to differentiate, when occasion arises, between instances of inter-
action and instances of some other thing, some different aspect of imagery.
Or worse, he can't see when the occasion might arise, can only press on
regardless. So Clemen, thinking in terms of his 'associative rise of the
image', is unable to allow for, let alone do anything with, the difference
between the interactive imagery of' You are too shallow, Hastings...' and
the imagery of the non-interactive passage that he cites immediately before it:
And shall our quick blood, spirited with wine,
Seem frosty? O, for honour of our land,
Let us not hang like roping icicles
Upon our houses' thatch...
Clemen's gloss is, 'frosty was here the occasion for the associative image of
the icicles', and he then passes on to 'You are too shallow. . .' without
further comment. His reflections, though not devoid of interest, could
hardly be said to evince true discrimination or to encourage it in his readers.
My conclusion is that discussions of this kind - and that means any discus-
sion of imagery — will stand to profit from a comprehension of interaction
and the conceptual framework that the word will imply.
A little while ago, I made mention - blandly, once again - of categories of
interaction, and before that I noted that Quintilian, representatively, isn't
able to define the nature or effect of the interaction he cites. My suggestion
now is that the comprehension of imagery could profit from not only the
concept of interaction, but also - for the purpose of defining natures and
effects — a framework of categories within it. Look at our instances. ' En-
forcing a point' is apparently a function of Quintilian's interactive (?) soil-
image, but it isn't clear whether it's a function of its interactive aspect or of
some other aspect; nor is it clear whether the interactive aspect is to be
credited with any other function. Clemen's 'shallow.. .leads to the...
image of the ocean' might be essentially a statement about the poet's mind,
rather than (or as well as) about the effect of his words, but taking it as a
statement about the effect, there's certainly room for doubt as to whether
'leads to' covers the whole effect. If nothing else, it might be said that
'shallow' serves to add a concrete detail to the image of the ocean represented
by 'sound the bottom' and probably to make it more decisively 'of the