Hide browse bar
Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the
line to jump to another position:
Table of Contents:
His style
Pindar was classed by the ancient rhetoricians as an exemplar of the
αὐστηρὰ ἁρμονία, as
belonging to the same class with Aischylos in tragedy, with
Thukydides in history, Antiphon in oratory.1 This classification is
based on grounds which do not all justify
themselves at once to the modern reader, although they have their
warrant in the formal system of rhetoric, with its close analysis of
figures of speech and figures of thought, its minute study of the
artistic effect of the sequence of sounds. But
“downright,” “unstudied,”
are hardly adjectives that we should apply to Pindar without much
modification.2
The famous characteristic of Horace -- “
Monte decurrens velut amnis imbres
quem super notas aluere ripas,
fervet immensusque ruit profundo
Pindarus ore.
”
-- emphasizes the opulence of Pindar, the wealth and movement
of his poetry. But in many respects Pindar does not in the least resemble a
mountain-torrent, and if we accept the views of those who
systematize his course of thought into the minutest channels, we
should sooner think of comparing the Pindaric poems with the
σεμνοὶ ὀχετοί of the Hipparis
(O. 5.12), than with the headlong
course of the Aufidus, which Horace evidently has in mind. Pindar's
peculiar accumulation of paratactic sentences, clause following
clause with reinforcing weight, may indeed be compared with the
ever-increasing volume of the mountain-stream as it is fed from
hillside and gorge, and there are many passages in which the current
runs strong and fast, and needs the large utterance of the profundum os, but the other figure of the
Dirkaian swan rising above the din of the torrent of poetry, his
wings filled with the strong inspiration of the Muse,3 yet serene and majestic in his flight, is not to be forgotten.
Quintilian (10, 1, 61) echoes
Horace, as usual: “Novem lyricorum longe Pindarus
princeps spiritus magnificentia, sententiis, figuris, beatissima
rerum verborumque copia.”
Let us now turn from the characteristics of Pindar, as given by
others, to the poet himself. We have not to do with the
naïve. Pindar is profoundly self-conscious, and his witness
concerning himself is true. He distinctly claims for himself
elevation, opulence, force, cunning workmanship, vigorous execution. In what seems to moderns almost unlovely
self-assertion, he vindicates his rank as a poet just as he would
vindicate his rank as an aristocrat. He is an eagle, his rivals are
ravens and daws (O. 2.96;
N. 3.82). Bellerophon shooting his
arrows from the lone bosom of the chill ether (O. 13.87) is a prefigurement of his
poetic exaltation, his power, his directness, and so he never
wearies of calling his songs arrows or darts (O. 1.112; 2,
91. 99; 9, 5. 12; 13, 93; P.
1.12. 44; 6, 37), which sometimes fall in a
hurtling shower; but sometimes a single arrow hits the mark,
sometimes a strong bolt is kept in reserve by the Muse, for Pindar,
as an aristocrat, is a man of reserves. Of the richness of his
workmanship none is better aware than he. The work of the poet is a
Daedalian work, and the sinuous folds are wrought with rare skill
(O. 1.105), the art of art is
selection and adornment, the production of a rich and compassed
surface (P. 9.83). The splendor of
the Goddesses of Triumphal Song irradiates him (P. 9.97), and he is a leader in the
skill of poesy, which to him is by eminence wisdom (σοφία),4 wisdom in the art of the theme, and in the art of the
treatment. Now how far does Pindar's account of himself correspond
to the actual impression? What is the immediate effect of the
detailed work of his poems, that detailed work by which he is at
first more comprehensible? The detail of Pindar's odes produces,
from the very outset of the study, an irresistible effect of
opulence and elevation. Opulence is wealth that makes itself felt,
that suggests, almost insultingly, a contrast, and that contrast is
indigence. It is one half of an aristocrat, elevation being the
other, so that in art as in thought, as in politics, as in religion,
Pindar is true to his birth and to his order. This opulence, this
abundance of resource, shows itself in strength and in splendor, for
πλοῦτος is μεγάνωρ, πλοῦτος is εὐρυσθενής. The word splendor and all
its synonyms seem to be made for Pindar. He drains dry the Greek
vocabulary of words for light and bright, shine and shimmer, glitter
and glister, ray and radiance, flame and flare and flash, gleam and
glow, burn and blaze. The first Olympian begins with wealth and
strength, with flaming fire of gold, and the shining star of the sun. The fame of Hieron is resplendent, and the
shoulder of Pelops gleams. No light like the light of the eye,
thought the Greek, and the ancestors of Theron were the eye of
Sicily, and Adrastos longs for the missing eye of his army. So the
midmonth moon in her golden chariot flashed full the eye of evening
into the face of Herakles. Wealth is not enough. It must be picked
out, set off. It is not the uniform stare of a metallic surface, it
must be adorned with the tracery that heightens the value of the
background. Pindar delights in elaboration. His epinikion itself, as we have seen,
combines the two moral elements of the games πόνος δαπάνα τε. His lyre has a various range of
notes, his quiver is full of arrows, and at times such is the shower
of notes, such the rain of arrows, such the sparkle and flash and
flame of the lights, such the sweet din and rumble and roar of the
music of earth and the music of heaven, that the poet himself,
overcome by the resources of his own art, confesses his defeat, and
by one strong impulse of his light feet, swims out of the deluge of
glory with which he has flooded the world of song.5 It requires strength
to carry this opulence of splendor, but Pindar's opulence is the
opulence of strength as well. He does not carve his bow with curious
figures so deeply cut that at the drawing of the string the weapon
snaps. His is not a sleepy but a vivid opulence, not a lazy but a
swift opulence. Everything lives in his poems, everything is
personified. Look at the magical way in which he lights up this
great lamp of the architecture of his Odeon in the first Pythian.
“O Golden Lyre, joint heirloom of Apollo and the Muses violet-tressed, thou for whom the step, the
dancer's step, listeneth.” “Obeyeth”
seems too faint. We see the foot poised, tremulously listening for
the notes of the phorminx, as if it had a hearing of its own. A few
verses further down, “snowy Aitna, nursing the livelong
year the biting snow,” not “her
snow,” as it has been rendered. It is not hers. It has
come down to her from Heaven. It is the child of Zeus, and only
rests on her cold bosom, the pillar of the sky. Yet again the couch
on which the fettered giant lies goads him and galls him, as if it
too had a spite against him, as well as the weight of continent and
island that pinches his hairy breast. And so it is everywhere; and
while this vividness in some instances is faint to us, because our
language uses the same personifications familiarly, we must remember
that to the Greek they were new, or, at all events, had not entirely
lost their saliency by frequent attrition.
Swiftness is a manifestation of strength, and Pindar is swift and a
lover of swiftness, to judge by his imagery. Swiftness we readily recognize in
plan, in narrative. In detail work it goes by another name,
concentration — the gathering of energy to a point, a
summing up of vitality in a word. It is the certainty with which
Pindar comes down on his object that gives so much animation, so
much strength, so much swiftness to his style. A word, an epithet,
and the picture is there, drawn with a stroke. In the second
Olympian he is telling of the blessedness of the souls that have
overcome. When he comes to the damned, he calls them simply
“those.” “The others bear anguish too
great for eye to look at.” Non
ragioniam di lor. In the same wonderful second
Olympian he says, “Liveth among the Olympians she that was
slain by the rumble of the thunder, longhaired Semele.”
Semele died not “amid,” but
“by” the roar. “Killed with
report.” The roar was enough to destroy that gentle life,
and the untranslatable τανυέθειρα
gives at once the crown of her womanhood, the crown of her beauty,
the crown of her suffering. Semele lives again as she appeared to
Zeus, when he visited her with immortal terrors.
The aristocrat must be rich, must be strong. A man may be both and
yet be vulgar, for there is a vulgar beauty, a vulgar genius. The
second characteristic of Pindar is elevation. This word is preferred
to sublimity, because sublimity is absolute, and is incompatible
with the handling of any but the highest themes. Elevation is relative. You may
treat a thing loftily without treating it sublimely. Pindar is not
always in the altitudes, though he loves “the lone bosom
of the cold ether,” and the fruits that grow on the
topmost branches of the tree of virtue, nearest the sun, and the
lofty paths along which the victors of Olympia walk. He is not
lacking in sportiveness, but whatever he treats, he treats with the
reserve of a gentleman, a term which is no anachronism when applied
to him. Hence his exquisite purity. “Secret are wise
Suasion's keys unto Love's sanctities” he sings himself,
and amid the palpitating beauties of Greek mythology he never
forgets the lesson that he puts in the mouth of the Centaur (P. 9.42). The opulence, strength,
swiftness, elevation, of Pindar's art reveal themselves in varying
proportions in the various odes. Noteworthy for its opulence is the
seventh Olympian, for Diagoras of Rhodes, the famous boxer, which
the Rhodians copied in letters of gold, and dedicated in the temple
of Athena at Lindos. What stately magnificence in the famous
forefront of the sixth Olympian, in which he sets up the golden
pillars of his porch of song. What vividness in his immortal
description of the power of music in the first Pythian. Gray's
imitation is well known: “
Perching on the sceptred hand
Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing:
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie,
The terror of his beak, and lightnings of his eye.
”
Matthew Arnold's is not unfamiliar: “
And the eagle at the beck
Of the appeasing, gracious harmony
Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feather'd neck,
Nestling nearer to Jove's feet,
While o'er his sovereign eye
The curtains of the blue films slowly meet.
”
But to begin to cite is never to stop.
Of the various elements that go to make up this total impression of
opulence and elevation, some will be considered hereafter. Something
will be said of the effect of the rhythms, something of the
opalescent variety of the dialect, of the high relief of the syntax,
of the cunning workmanship that manifests itself in the order of the
words. Let us now turn to a closer consideration of that which first
attracts attention in an author, the vocabulary. Much might be said
of the
vocabulary, with its noble compounds,6 whether taken
from the epic thesaurus, and so consecrated by the mint-mark of a
religious past, or created with fresh vitality by the poet himself.
In the paucity of the remains of the lyric poets, we cannot always
be certain that such and such a word is Pindar's own, but that he
was an audacious builder of new words7 is manifest from the fragments of his dithyrambs. Some of
the most magnificent are put in the openings of the odes, as
O. 2.1:
“ἀναξιφόρμιγγες ὕμνοι”
O. 3.4:
“νεοσίγαλον τρόπον.”
O. 8.3:
“ἀργικεραύνου.”
O. 13.1:
“τρισολυμπιονίκαν”
.
P. 1.1:
“ἰοπλοκάμων.”
.
P. 2, 1:
“μεγαλοπόλιες . . . βαθυπολέμου”
.
P. 8.2:
“μεγιστόπολι.”
P. 10, 3:
“ἀριστομάχου.”
P. 11, 3:
“ἀριστογόνῳ”
.
The epithets applied to the gods match the splendor of their
position. Zeus is
“αἰολοβρόντας”
(O. 9. 45)
,
“ὀρσίκτυπος”
(O. 10 [11], 89)
,
“ὀρσινεφής”
(N. 5.31)
,
“ἐγχεικέραυνος”
(O. 13.77)
,
“φοινικοστερόπας”
(O. 9.6)
. Poseidon is invoked as
“δέσποτα ποντόμεδον”
(O. 6.103)
, is called
“βαρύκτυπος Εὐτρίαινα”
(O. 1.73)
. Helios is
“φαυσίμβροτος Ὑπεριονίδας”
(O. 7.39)
, and Amphitrite is
“χρυσαλάκατος”
(O. 6.104)
, and Athena
“ἐγχειβρόμος κόρα”
(O. 7.43)
. And so the whole world of things, animate and inanimate, is
endued with life, or quickened to a higher vitality, by Pindar's
compounds. The cry is
“ἁδύγλωσσος”
(O. 13.100)
, the lyre
“ἁδυεπής”
(O. 10 [11], 103)
. Lions acquire something of a human ostentation
by
“βαρύκομποι”
(P. 5.57)
. The majestic chambers of Zeus are
“μεγαλοκευθεῖς”
(P. 2.33)
, and hide awful shapes of doom to punish the intruder.
“ὀπιθόμβροτον αὔχημα”
(P. 1.92)
resounds as if the words of themselves echoed down the
corridors of Time. There are no ῥήματα
γομφοπαγῆ, the rivets are hidden. We have festal
splendor here also, not fateful sublimity.
The effect of living splendor, produced by Pindar's compounds, is not
confined to the compounds. Even the most familiar words are roused
to new life by the revival of the pristine meaning. It is a canon
of Pindaric interpretation that the sharp, local sense of the
preposition is everywhere to be preferred, and every substantive may
be made to carry its full measure of concreteness. This is
distinctly not survival, but revival. We are not to suppose that
κρατήρ (O. 6.91) was felt by the Greek of Pindar's time as a
male agent, or ἀκόνα (O. 6.82) as a shrill-voiced woman.8 Whatever
personification lay in the word was dead to the Greek of that time.
Pindar revived the original meaning, and the γλυκὺς κρατήρ is a living creature. In fact it is
hardly possible to go wrong in pressing Pindar's vocabulary until
the blood
comes. It is true that in many of the long compounds the sensuous
delight in the sound is the main thing, and yet even there we find
φιλησίμολπε (O. 14.14) and ἐρασίμολπε (O.
14.16) used side by side, in such a way that we cannot refuse
to consider how the poet meant them, just as in the same poem (v. 5)
he combines the transient pleasure of τὰ
τερπνά with the abiding joy of τὰ γλυκέα.9
In the fine feeling of language few poets can vie
with Pindar; and though he is no pedantic synonym-monger, like a
true artist he delights in the play of his own work. There is danger
of over-subtilty in the study of antique style; but Pindar is a
jeweller, his material gold and ivory, and his chryselephantine work
challenges the scrutiny of the microscope, invites the study that
wearies not day or night in exploring the recesses in which the
artist has held his art sequestered — invites the study
and rewards it. Pindar himself has made φωνάεντα συνετοῖσιν (O.
2.93) a common saying; Pindar himself speaks of his art
as ἀκοὰ σοφοῖς (P. 9.84); his call across the centuries
is to the lovers of art as art. There is an aristocratic disdain in
his nature that yields only to kindred spirits or to faithful
service.
The formal leisurely comparison Pindar seldom employs, though he uses
it with special effect in the stately openings of two of his odes, O.
6 and O. 7. In O. 12 the comparison takes the place of the myth, and
others are found here and there. But instead of
“as” he prefers the implied comparison, which is
conveyed by parallel structure such as we find in the beginning of
O. 1, of O. 10 (11). In the metaphor, with its bold identification
of object and image, Pindar abounds as few poets abound. Every realm
of nature, every sphere of human life, is laid under contribution.
The sea is his with its tossing waves (O.
12.6) and its shifting currents (O. 2.37). The ruler is a helmsman, whether a prince
(P. 1.86; 4, 274), an order
(P. 10.72), Tyche (O. 12.3), or the mind of Zeus himself
(P. 5.122). To be liberal is to
let the sail belly to the wind (P.
1.91). His song is a flood that sweeps away the pebble
counters of a long arrear of debt (O. 10 [11], 11). Rebellious
insolence is scuttled as a ship is scuttled (P. 8.11); a favoring breeze prospers the course of song
(P. 4.3). An eagle, as he calls
himself, he loves to dwell in the air (O.
2.97; N. 3.80), to wing
his song (P. 8.34). An archer, like
his master Apollo, he delights to stretch his bow, to speed his dart
(O. 1.97; 2, 91. 99; 9, 5. 12;
13, 93; P. 1.12. 44; 6, 37). Of light
and flame, as has been said already, he is never
weary. Wealth is a bright and shining star (O. 2.58); fame shines forth (O.
1.23), fame looks from afar (O.
1.94); joy is a light that lights up life (O. 10 [11],
25); his songs in their passionate dance blaze over the dear city of
the Opuntians (O. 9.22); the feet of
the victor are not beautiful merely, they are radiant (O. 13.36). The games themselves
furnish welcome figures — the chariot-race, reserved for
grand occasions (O. 6.22; 9, 87;
P. 10.65), the hurling of the
dart, the wrestling-match (O. 8.25;
P. 2.61). Nor does he disdain the
homely range of fable and proverb and every-day life.10 The bee, it is true (P.
4.60), was a consecrated emblem before his time; the cow,
for a woman (P. 4.142), is as old as
Samson. The cock (O. 12.14) was to
the Greek the Persian bird, and more poetic than he is to us, even
as Chanticleer;11 but the fox figures in Pindar, not only as known
in higher speech (O. 11 [10], 20;
I. 3 [4], 65), but by the
fabulistic nickname κερδώ (P. 2.48). He is not shy of trade and
commerce, ledger (O. 11 [10], 2) and
contract (O. 12.7). Dante has, in his
Inferno, the figure of an old tailor threading his needle; Pindar is
not afraid of a metaphor from adjusting clothes (P. 3.83). Aischylos speaks of the net
of Ate; the figure is grand, but Aischylos sees poetry in the cork
as well (Choëph. 506), and
so does Pindar (P. 2.80). A glance at
the list of the figures used even in the Olympians and Pythians12 is sufficient to show that life is not sacrificed
to elevation.
A word as to mixed metaphor in Pindar. No charge more common than
this against him, as against Shakespeare; and a rhetorician of the
ordinary stamp will doubtless consider the offence as a crime of the
first magnitude. The number of metaphors properly
called mixed is not so large in Pindar as is supposed;13 nor, in any case, are we to count as
mixed metaphor a rapid shifting of metaphors. This is to be expected
in the swift movement of Pindar's genius. The disjointedness of
Emerson's style has been ingeniously defended on the ground that
each sentence is a chapter. And so Pindar's metaphors are slides
that come out in such quick succession that the figures seem to
blend because the untrained eye cannot follow the rapid movement of
the artist. A notorious passage occurs in the first Pythian (v. 86 foll.), in which Pindar touches
in quick succession various strings. “Let not fair chances
slip. Guide thy host with a just helm. Forge thy tongue on an
unlying anvil. If it so chance that ought of import light escapes
thee, it becomes of magnitude in that it comes from thee. Of many
things thou art steward. Many witnesses are there to deeds of both
kinds,” and so on, with a shift in every sentence. In such
passages the absence of conjunctions is sufficient to show that no
connection was aimed at, and it is the fault of the reader if he
chooses to complain of an incongruous blending of things that are
left apart.
The next point to be considered is the plan of the epinikion. Original genius or not,
Pindar was under the domination of the tradition of his department,
and the fragments of Simonides are enough to show that there was a
general method of handling the theme common to all the poets. The
epinikion is, as we have seen,
an occasional poem. The problem is to raise it out of this position,
as a mere temporary adornment of the victory, to a creation of
abiding worth. The general method must have been reached before
Pindar's time; it is his success in execution that has to be
considered here. The epinikion has
for its basis the fact and the individual; but it rises through the
real to the ideal, through the individual to the universal. The
light that shines about the victor's head brightens into the light
of eternity; the leaf of olive or of laurel becomes a
wreath of amaranth. Sheer realism had no place in high Greek art.
The statues of the victors in Olympia were not portrait statues.
When the victor had overcome three times, then, it is true, he might
set up a portrait statue, but three victories of themselves would
idealize. The transfiguration which we expect of heaven the Greek
sought in art. So the victor and the victory are not described at
length. True, the poet sometimes labored under the frightful
disadvantage of a commission that dictated an enumeration of all the
prizes gained by a certain family. How gracefully, how lightly, he
acquitted himself of the task may be seen in O. 7, in O. 13. But
apart from such special restrictions — under which
everything spiritual and artistic must groan, being burdened, in
this travailing world — the poet was free to conceive his
subject ideally. The special occasion secured interest and sympathy
in advance, gave him the broad earth from which to rise; and not the
proudest eagle that ever soared, if once on the earth, can rise
without running, though it be but for a little distance, along its
black surface: and the epinikion
started on the earth. Now change the figure after the Pindaric
fashion to the temple — Pindar himself has suggested the
comparison (O. 6.1) — some
fair Greek temple, repeating the proportions of the clear-cut
mountains of Greece just as the Gothic cathedral repeats the forests
of Germany; some temple standing on the large level of an acropolis,
standing against the sky. The façade of the work is to be
illuminated, but not so as to throw a garish light on every detail.
Only the salient points are to be brought out, only the
characteristic outline, so that as it comes out against the dark sky
you seem to have one constellation more. Nay, the new constellation
is strangely blended with the old groups of stars, and we cannot
tell which is mythic past, which illuminated present.
The sources of the myth have already been indicated. The selection is often
suggested by external relations. Now it is the victor's family that
furnishes the story, now the victor's home, now the scene of the
contest and the presiding god or hero. Sometimes the
selection is due to internal motives, and the myth is a model, a
parallel, or a prophecy — perhaps all three. This, then,
is the function of the myth in the epinikion, the idealization of the present, the
transfiguration of the real. This was an artistic necessity for the
Greek, and it was in some sort an historical necessity. It
reconciled epic and lyric. It gave a new value to epic themes by
using them as parallels for the present, while the drama took the
last step and made the past the present.
Pindar does not jumble his materials in admired disorder, nor does he
sort them after the approved scientific fashion, with subdivision
after subdivision, to the exhaustion of all the letters of the
alphabet, Roman, italic, Greek, and Hebrew. Analysis does not show
the way in which the poem was woven. The fruitful study of Pindar
lies through synthesis, not through analysis, and in the introductions
to the several odes an effort has been made to show how the meaning
of the whole reveals itself to him who simply follows the poet's
guidance. What is dignified by the name of an analysis is often
nothing more than a table of contents, a catalogue, the very form of
which disguises the lack of connection. Logical disposition will not
avail much. Pindar is poetical, not logical. But symmetry there must
be, for it is impossible for any one that studies Greek literary art
not to count on symmetry. The tendency to balance, to parallelism,
is universal. In Greek the tendency is a law. It is needless to
enlarge on this. The law of correspondence — measure
answering to measure — is fundamental, and has been
applied to every sphere of Greek art — pictorial, plastic,
literary — not without overstraining, yet not without
great profit. In music as in architecture it is unquestioned. Even
frivolous Offenbach has said: “Music is an
algebra.” Poetry, like music, is made up of equations.
In Pindar the symmetry of form is evident. The odes are composed
either of corresponding strophes or of corresponding triads
(strophe, antistrophe, and epode). But this is not enough. There
must be within each strophe, each epode, another
balance, another correspondence, another symmetry. Westphal first
distinctly postulated this correspondence, and opened the way for
the establishment of it; but the bold and brilliant originator
wearied of his own work, renounced his own principles. J. H.
Heinrich Schmidt began his metrical and rhythmical studies as a
worker on the lines laid down by Westphal, although he differs from
his forerunner at every turn; and Moriz Schmidt,14 well
known as a Pindaric scholar, far from being satisfied with the
results of his predecessors, has recently set up his schemes in
opposition to Westphal's and J. H. H. Schmidt's.
A sample of the divergencies may be given. In the epode of O. 6
Rossbach-Westphal saw three mesodic periods with an epodikon:
| I. 3.2.3 |
II. 442.44 |
III. 43.33.33.4 |
4. epod. |
J. H. H. Schmidt marks five, according to his MS. revision, thus:
| I. 323 |
II. 424 |
III. 44.43 ἐπ. |
IV. 33.33 |
V. 44 |
Moriz Schmidt (p. 71) pronounces both wrong, and constructs a
different scheme:
| A 6446=20. |
B 4444=16. |
A' 66 44=20 |
It will be observed that the number of bars in Rossbach-Westphal and
in J. H. H. Schmidt is the same. In Moriz Schmidt, owing to the
greater range he allows himself in the use of τονή and pause — the power of prolonging
and the power of resting — the number is slightly
increased. He has fifty-six against fifty-three. But the other
differences are graver. Still, whether we accept the short periods
or the long, the recognition of some principle of symmetry cannot be
withheld. These choral structures were made not only to balance each
other, but also to balance themselves.
So much for symmetry of form. Is there any corresponding symmetry of contents? We find it elsewhere in Greek
poetry. We find response of antistrophe to strophe in the drama,
not only in form, but to a certain degree in sense. Are we to
renounce this in Pindar? Does the development of the ode go its own
way regardless of the form? This has been practically the conclusion
of the editors of Pindar from Erasmus Schmid, with his formidable
rhetorical analysis of the odes, down to Mezger, with his
reinforcement of the Terpandrian νόμος. This Terpandrian νόμος, mentioned in Pollux 4, 66, and touched on by
Böckh,15
contains seven parts: ἐπαρχά, μεταρχά, κατατροπά, μετακατατροπά,
ὀμφαλός, σφραγίς, ἐπίλογος. ἐπαρχά Westphal
identified with the old-fashioned προοίμιον,
μεταρχά he changed into ἀρχά,
ἐπίλογος being the same as ἐξόδιον, and he applied the Terpandrian scheme in
this form to the odes of Pindar as well as to the choruses of
Aischylos.16 In the same year Moriz Schmidt published
his translation of the Olympian odes divided into the members of the
Terpandrian νόμος,17 and in Mezger's
commentary on Pindar (1880) much space has been given to the
advocacy of the scheme.18 Pindar,
says Mezger in substance, composed his poems for oral delivery, and
consequently wished to be understood at once. But even to his
contemporaries, in spite of all their advantages, the immediate
comprehension of his poems would have been impossible if they had
not had some outside help. Of these extraneous aids, three, melody,
musical accompaniment, and dance, are lost for us irrecoverably. But
there was a tradition, a fixed norm for such compositions, a
τεθμός from which the epinikion must not vary, a τεθμός not only for the contents, but
also for the form. To be sure, the old interpreters in their
blindness knew nothing of this; but Böckh and Dissen
observed certain laws of structure, certain
recurrences, certain symmetrical responses. Thiersch proved the
triple division προκώμιον, μέσον τοῦ
ᾁσματος, ἐπικώμιον: but it was reserved for
Westphal to set forth and establish the proposition that Aischylos,
in the composition of his choruses, and Pindar, in that of his
epinikia, followed the νόμος of Terpander with its sevenfold
division. This Mezger considers Westphal to have made evident for
all the forty-four odes except eight, at least so far as the three
principal parts are concerned; and these principal parts are
— beginning, middle, and end. But the establishment of
these principal parts does not carry us beyond Thiersch. What we
want is the normal number seven,19 as,
Westphal himself seems to feel that the lover of Pindar will rebel
against the thought that the great poet wrought according to a mere
mechanical formula; but the Pindaric scholars that have followed
Westphal seem to have no such scruples. The mystic and Delphic
ὀμφαλός exercises on them a
special fascination that reminds one of the days of the ὀμφαλόψυχοι,20
and there is an undeniable charm about the scheme. The three certain
parts are beginning, middle, and end, and for these we have the high
authority of Aristotle (Poet. c. 7). The seven normal parts remind
one of the seven parts of the comic parabasis, and as the seven parts of the parabasis are
seldom found in their completeness, so the Terpandrian
νόμος seldom has its full
number. The name ὀμφαλός is not
only mystic and Delphic, it has indirectly a Platonic warrant. Plato
demands of every λόγος that it
shall be a ζῷον, that it shall
lack neither head nor foot,21 and if neither head nor foot, why should it lack the central
navel? The ὀμφαλός, then, is the
organic centre of the poem, and contains a myth. True,
“there is no myth in the ὀμφαλός of P. 1 and 9, N. 1 and 10, I. 2 and
6,” but the rule is not rigid22 at any
rate, and we must be satisfied with an approximation. As a rule,
then, the ὀμφαλός contains a myth,
while the beginning (ἀρχά) and the
close (σφραγίς) contain the praises
of the victor and his house. Then there are transitions between the
ἀρχά and the ὀμφαλός, just as in oratory the
προκατάστασις prepares the way
for the διήγησις: there are
transitions between the ὀμφαλός
and the σφραγίς. But in this way
Terpandrian compositions might be made out of Demosthenes'
Philippics, and it is hard to see what has been gained except two or
three quaint names for familiar relations.
But Mezger has reinforced Westphal's theory by a discovery of his
own. While committing the odes of Pindar to memory he
noticed the frequent recurrence of the same word, or close
equivalent, in the corresponding parts of strophe and antistrophe,
epode and epode. These recurrent words are all significant, all mark
transitions, and were all intended as cues to aid the memory of the
chorus and to guide the thoughts of the hearers. It is a mnemonic
device, but more than a mnemonic device, for it lets us into the
poet's construction of his own poem, and settles forever the disputed meanings of the odes.23 If this were true, it
would hardly heighten our admiration of antique art, and although
the coincidences are interesting and the observation of them a proof
of loving study that deserves to be honored, the discovery of the
recurrent word is not the end of all controversy — there
are too many recurrent words.24
Of course, the acceptance of the Terpandrian νόμος and the doctrine of the recurrent word puts an
end to anything like proportion in the contents of a Pindaric ode.
Compare, for instance, Blass's analysis of a prooimion of Demosthenes, and Mezger's exhibit of the
composition of an ode of Pindar. You may not agree with Blass, but
there is an architectonic principle in the one, while it is utterly
incredible that we should have such proportions as:
O. I.: 7(π.)+16(ἀ.)+4(κ.)+69(ὀ.)+7(μ.)+11(ς.)+6(ε.) (p. 95.)
O. III.: 5(π.)+8(ἀ.)+2(κ.)+18(ὀ.)+4(μ.)+4(ς.)+4(ἐ.) (p. 175.)
O. XIII.: 23(π.)+6(ἐπ.)+17(ἀ.)+6(κ.)+40(ὀ.)+5(μ.)+16(ς.)+
2(ἐ.). (p. 459.)
P. I.: 28(π.)+14(ἀ.)+3(κ.)+(12+3+20) (ὀ.)+4(μ.)+14(ς.)+
2(ἐ.). (p. 83.)
Contrast this with Blass's analysis of the prooimion of De Corona (§ 1-8):
| I. § 1-2 |
II. § 3-4 |
III. § 5-6 |
IV. §
7-8 |
| 3.2 | 2.3 | 3.3 |
4.4 | 3.5 | 5.3 |
2.4 | 4 | 4 | 4.2 |
2.2.2.2 | 2.2.2.2 |
| = 16 |
= 24 |
= 24 |
= 8 | 8, = 16 |
True, it may be said that the inner organism of a Pindaric ode need
not correspond to the outer form, and that the five triads of the
third Pythian may be chopped up into seven Terpandrian
parts — chopped up, for the knife does not come down on
the rhythmical joints. But where shall we find anything like this in
Greek literature? The further we penetrate into Greek poetry, the
greater reason have we to acknowledge the reign of symmetry.
Violation of symmetry, of correspondence, may be referred in every
instance either to defective tradition or to designed disturbance.
As in Greek architecture, so in Greek poetry, departures from
symmetry are not only suffered, but enjoined, for the sake of a
higher symmetrical effect, for the maintenance of the feeling of
life. The straight line of mechanics becomes the curved line of art.
The entasis of the Doric column, the flexure of the Doric stylobate,
are familiar illustrations of the law of visual effect. The Greek
artist had regard to the position that his work was to occupy, to
the angle in which it would present itself to the eye of the
beholder. So in Greek poetry we must consider the law of higher
symmetry, the principle of artistic unity, the calculated effect on
the hearer — and we must remember that we have to do with
the hearer, not with the reader. Στιχομυθία is well, but when passionate utterance gives
two verses the time of one, we must not heedlessly apply the knife
because the passage looks out of balance. But these interferences
apart, we expect a symmetry in contents corresponding to symmetry in
form, and we cannot admit a logical division which shall ruthlessly
run across all the lines of the artistic structure. We must seek the
symmetry of thought, where the symmetry of the form is revealed, in
strophe, in triad. Each strophe has its office, each triad its
function. The only concessions that must be made to logical
distribution are those that must be made in the same department of
art. We must simply allow the strophe and the triad the same play
that we allow foot and series in the verse.25
Reduce the Terpandrian νόμος to a
more simple expression, see in it nothing more than a somewhat
bizarre statement of the general principles that manifest themselves
in an oration of Isokrates or a dialogue of Plato as well as in an
ode of Pindar, and it would be easier to become a Terpandrian,
certainly easier
than to accept Dissen's elaborate systematization. In his chapter
De dispositione partium, Dissen has
treated at length the arrangement of the elements of the epinikion — the preparatory
office of the prooimion and the
interweaving of the parts. “With the exception of the very
short pieces,” he says, “all Pindar's odes have
at least two parts besides the prooemium,” and Dissen has
interested himself in showing how the poet prepares his theme,
interposes a myth, and then returns to his theme, and how from the
simple arrangements aba and abab, the poet
advances to abaca, ababa,
abcba, abcbda, abacbc,
abcbab, abcadc, and the crowning
glory, abcdcda.
There is, of course, an element of truth in these recurrences. There
is a cyclical movement in many of the Pindaric odes. The myth is
usually belted by the praise of the victor and the victor's home,
but it is impossible to accept an elaborately systematic arrangement
of the subject within the symmetrical structure of the rhythm and
independent of it. Dyads and triads there are in Pindar, but they do
not disturb the rhythmical working of the odes; and Dissen often
elevates to the rank of an organic part what has been brought in
simply as a foil. According to him everything in Pindar must have a
deep significance, an independent value, a special allusion, whereas
much is put there for the sake of heightening the effect by
contrast.
Dissen has gone through all the odes and reduced them to schemes, for
which he claims great simplicity and beauty. Furtwängler26 has selected a few, and expended on them a great
wealth of fancy. It cannot be said of him that he is indifferent to
the claims of symmetry. To him the Pindaric odes are so many
temples, and he sees ground-plans and elevations, and rows of
columns, and groups of figures in the rhythmical structures of
Pindar. Most persons will consider Furtwängler's book a
waste of fancy and ingenuity, and yet it has not been written all in
vain. Temple and ode are both built on a plan, both obey the laws of
symmetry, and so one may serve to illustrate the other. But the
manifestations are different. The temple is to be devel oped from
the cell, the ode from the rhythm. Regard the ode as a great verse
and much of the difficulty in finding symmetry in the Pindaric poems
will disappear.
The verse, as a rhythmical structure, is made up of verse-feet; the
verse, as a logical unit, is made up of word-feet. The coincidence
and the discrepancy of verse-foot and word-foot constitute
respectively diaeresis and caesura, if,
indeed, one may be allowed to use this nomenclature, which certainly
has its convenience.
Now a verse in which verse-foot and word-foot should coincide
throughout as in the famous “sparsis |
hastis | longis | campus |
splendet et | horret” of Ennius would lack
unity, and a succession of them would be intolerably monotonous.
Hence the office of caesura to effect unity by dividing a word
between two feet and so to force a more energetic recitation.
Diaeresis serves to distribute the masses, caesura to unite them.
Of course where the masses are so large as in the Pindaric odes there
is not the same danger of monotony. Each triad might present a
complete whole. In fact each strophe, each antistrophe, each epode,
might be rounded off as a separate element without much offence. But
the Greek sense of unity demanded a less mechanical
distribution, and the parts of each ode often fit into each other as
the parts of an hexameter or a trimeter. The preparation, as Dissen
would call it, does not count, nor does the connection. The body of
the thought falls within the limits; that is enough. The study of
the Pindaric odes suggests the lines of color used in maps to
designate boundaries. The eye is not offended by the excurrence
there nor the mind by the excurrence here. Making this allowance
then, and suffering the sense to bind strophes and triads together
while the dominant themes of strophes and triads are distinct, we
shall find no insuperable difficulty in establishing simple and easy
proportions for most of the Pindaric poems. Problems there will
always be, and bold would be the man who should maintain that he had
said the last word on such a theme.
Of the forty-four Pindaric odes, seven only are composed in single
strophes.
Of these, O. 14 has two, P. 12 four, N. 2 five, P. 6 six, I. 7 seven,
N. 9 eleven, N. 4 twelve.
Most of them are in triads:
| One triad |
O. 4, 11 (10), 12; P 7 |
4 |
| Three triads |
O. 3, 5; N. 5, 6, 8, 11;
I. 2, 4, 5, 6 |
10 |
| Four triads |
O. 1, 8, 9; P. 2, 5, 10,
11; N. 1, 3; I. 1 |
10 |
| Five triads |
O. 2, 6, 7, 10 (11), 13;
P. 1, 3, 8, 9; N. 7, 10; I. 3 |
12 |
| Thirteen triads |
P. 4 |
1 |
| |
Total |
44 |
It is evident that the single-strophe poems will admit of greater
freedom of handling, and I shall take those up after discussing the
triadic poems.
One triad is evidently too short for any except slight occasional
poems.
In O. 4, an exceptional poem, the strophe has chiefly to do with God,
the antistrophe chiefly with man, the epode is an illustrative myth.
In O. 11 (10) the antithetical structure runs through strophe,
antistrophe, and epode, but each member revolves about a separate
element of the epinikion. O. 12 rocks even more than O.
11 (10). Each element is distinct. P. 7 has been
considered a fragment, but whether it is a fragment or not, each
member has its special office.
Two-triad poems do not occur.27 The only two-strophe
poem, O. 14, is suspicious, and cannot be cited to prove that two
triads would give ample room. If we are to have introduction, myth,
and conclusion, it would be hard to distribute them properly through
two triads. Three triads give a natural division, and so we find
that it is used nearly as often as five, though the number five
suggests a better proportion logically. Each triad has its dominant
theme. O. 5 occupies an exceptional position among the Pindaric
poems, but the distribution forms no exception. There is no
overlapping in it.
Four triads are used as often as three. There is no mechanical
uniformity, but, as we should expect, the introduction usually
dominates one triad, the myth two, the conclusion one, in most of
the odes. This is the type 1. 2. 1. Overlapping is the rule
(1.(2).1) or (1.2).1 or
1.(2.1). In Pindar's earliest piece, P. 10, there is no
overlapping, and the student of English versification is reminded of
the early timidity of blank verse.
Five triads might be expected to distribute themselves thus:
Introduction = 1, Myth = 3, Conclusion = 1, and this is
substantially the arrangement in most of them. P. 8, with 2. 1. 2,
forms an interesting exception, for which the notes must be
consulted, as well as for the arrangement in O. 13, and P. 1, which
have a quasi-epodic structure, two triads representing strophe, two
antistrophe, and one epode. P. 3 and P. 9 are thrown out of line by
the position of the myth.
In the Fourth Pythian we have no less than thirteen triads, and it
might seem at first as if the epic mass had crushed the lyric
proportion. But when we examine the structure more closely, we find
that the first three triads form the overture, if I may say so. It
is a prelude which gives the motif of the piece. These
three triads are followed by seven triads with the story of the
Argonauts in detail, while the conclusion is prepared and
consummated in the last three triads. It is true that
the mass of the story carries it on into the eleventh triad, but the
grand scale prepares us for a wider aberration.
Of the strophic poems, O. 14 has already been considered. In P. 12 we
recognize the familiar distribution 1. 2. 1. P. 6 is represented by
2. 2. 2.
In N. 2 there is a curious iteration of the name of the victor and
his family, (1.1) + (1.1). The twelve strophes of N. 4
divide into 3. 6. 3, the eleven of N. 9 into 2. 7. 2. I. 7 has not
yielded satisfactory results.
To those who must have sharp figures at any cost, these statements
will be disappointing; but the exact symmetry is cared for in the
rhythm, the metre. All that we could fairly expect here is a general
balance.
