Читать книгу A Companion to Greek Lyric - Группа авторов - Страница 15

From Homer onward poets missed no opportunity to foreground their privileged relation with the Muse(s), but they were aware that choruses had also a privileged relation with the gods, since their participation in ritual celebrations was indispensable.⁴⁹

We may first turn to Plato’s eloquent descriptions in the Laws. In 653e–654b the Athenian states that the gods appointed Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysus as the mortals’ fellow-celebrants and fellow-choreuts:

ΑΤΗΕΝΙΑΝ. Very good. Now these forms of education, which consist in right discipline in pleasures and pains, grow slack and weakened to a great extent in the course of men’s lives; so the gods, in pity for the human race thus born to misery, have ordained the feasts of thanksgiving as periods of respite from their troubles; and they have granted them as companions in their feasts the Muses and Apollo the master of music, and Dionysus, that they may at least set right again their modes of discipline by associating in their feasts (συνεορταστὰς) with gods. […] Now, whereas all other creatures are devoid of any perception of the various kinds of order and disorder in movement (which we term rhythm and harmony), to men the very gods, who were given, as we said, to be our fellows in the dance (τοὺς θεοὺς συγχορευτὰς), have granted the pleasurable perception of rhythm and harmony, whereby they cause us to move and lead our choruses (χορηγεῖν ἡμῶν), linking us one with another by means of songs and dances; and to the choruses they have given their name from the “cheer” implanted therein.⁵⁰

It is worth noting that in the Laws the envisaged context of human and divine interaction is the festival. The designation of Apollo, the Muses, and Dionysus as fellow-choreuts (συγχορευταί), chorus-leaders (χορηγοί), and fellow-celebrants (συνεορτασταί) suggests that they are imagined as being present on these festive occasions, guiding the minds, the voices, the steps, and the actions of mortals. A little later in the Laws the Athenian will describe the performance of the three choruses before the whole city: the chorus of children led by the Muses, the chorus of those under 30 who will invoke and pray to Apollo Paean, and the chorus of those between 30 and 60 (664cd). It is worth noting that the interaction of human choruses with the gods, as envisaged by the Athenian in this instance, is unmediated by poets.⁵¹

One would be tempted to attribute the absence of poets to Plato’s hostility toward them, but the truth of the matter is that literary representations, prior to Plato, depict Apollo and Dionysus as leaders of human choruses and fellow-celebrants, and Plato may have had these in mind. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo, for instance, concludes with precisely this image. First Apollo gives his Cretan priests a set of cultic instructions (490–501): to make an altar upon the beach, light fire upon it, and make an offering of white meal; next, to stand around the altar, which they must name Delphinius, and pray to the god as Apollo Delphinius; then the Cretan priests should dine beside their ship and pour an offering to the Olympian gods; once they have eaten, they should follow the god singing the hymn Ie Paean, until they reach the place where they shall be responsible for Apollo’s rich temple.

The Cretans followed the god’s instruction and when the time came Apollo arrived to lead the chorus to his sanctuary. Not surprisingly, under the musical guidance of Apollo, the chorus sing a paean (513–523):

Then they took their meal by the swift, black ship, and poured an offering to the blessed gods who dwell on Olympus. And when they had put away craving for drink and food, they started out with the lord Apollo, the son of Zeus, to lead them, holding a lyre in his hands, and playing sweetly as he stepped high and featly. So the Cretans followed him to Pytho, marching in time as they chanted the Ie Paean after the manner of the Cretan paean-singers and of those in whose hearts the heavenly Muse has put sweet-voiced song. With tireless feet they approached the ridge and straightway came to Parnassus and the lovely place where they were to dwell honoured by many men. There Apollo brought them and showed them his most holy sanctuary and rich temple.

(trans. Evelyn-White 1932)

This is the prototypical rite in honor of Apollo in which the god gives his future priests unmediated cultic and choral instructions. In Platonic terms he is a fellow-celebrant and a chorēgos.⁵²

Dionysus and the Muses are also represented as fellow-celebrants and fellow-choreuts in pre-Platonic literary sources. Euripides’ Bacchae is the most extensive, but certainly not the only account of Dionysus’ depiction as a fellow-celebrant and chorēgos of female choruses.⁵³ Similarly the Muses are also imagined as fellow-dancers. In the Second Stasimon of Euripides’ Heracles the chorus cast themselves as eternal choreuts who, despite their old age, still sing and dance and hope never to cease singing of the Muses who have made them dance (αἵ μ’ ἐχόρευσαν, 686). I have argued elsewhere that in this instance the expression χορεύω τινά should be interpreted in the light of the representation of the gods as fellow-choreuts in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the Laws.⁵⁴ In other words the expression Μούσας αἵ μ’ ἐχόρευσαν can be translated as “the Muses who taught me to sing and dance.” This interpretation gains further support by the chorus’ immediately following parallelism of their song-dance in the here and now of the dramatic reality with the Deliades’ recurrent song-dance on Delos.⁵⁵ This parallelism or “choral projection,” as Albert Henrichs labeled the tendency of tragic choruses, further enhances the Chorus’ claim to the divine origin and quality of their virtuosity.

These epic and dramatic representations of choral interaction of mortals and immortals conjure up an illud tempus when the world was taking shape, institutions were being established, and boundaries were being drawn: Apollo instructed his Cretan priests how to worship him in song-dance and cult; Dionysus was dancing with his maenads on Parnassus and elsewhere as his cult was spreading across the whole earth. The Theban elders reminisce how they were taught to sing and dance by the Muses at a remote time long before Heracles’ apotheosis. The difference between these representations and Plato’s version in the Laws is that there the Athenian projects the choral interaction of the Muses, Apollo, and Dionysus with young and old choreuts to a future set in (fictional) Magnesia. This envisaged interaction in an imaginary city was not totally novel, however, but was rooted in religious belief and inspired by cultic practice. Festivals such as the Theoxenia where mortals were hosting the gods and choruses were singing and dancing in their honor evoked and reenacted the times when mortals enjoyed the company of the gods. Some of Pindar’s theoxenic songs have survived: the Third Olympian that conjures up the celebration of Theron’s Olympic victory at the Theoxenia of Dioscuri in Acragas, the Sixth Paean for the Delphic Theoxenia, and Dithyramb 75, evoking the xenismos of Dionysus in his small sanctuary in the Academy. In what follows we shall look briefly at the paean and the dithyramb.

Pindar’s Sixth Paean was composed for performance in the Delphic Theoxenia. The song-dance begins with the Chorus’ prayer to golden Pytho to welcome them along with the Charites and Aphrodite in this most holy time:

Πρὸς Ὀλυμπίου Διός σε, χρυ[σέ]α

κλυτόμαντι Πυθοῖ,

λίσσομαι Χαρίτεσ-

σίν τε καὶ σὺν Ἀφροδίται,

ἐν ζαθέωι με δέξαι χρόνωι

ἀοίδιμον Πιερίδων προφάταν.

(Pae. 6.1–6)

In the name of Olympian Zeus, I beseech you, golden Pytho famous for seers welcome me along with the Graces and Aphrodite in this holy time, the songful prophet of the Pierians.

(trans. Race modified)

In the light of the theoxenic occasion, I suggest that the arrival of the Charites and Aphrodite retains here its literal meaning as well.⁵⁶ In other words the male chorus imagine that they arrive at a holy time, when divine guests, in this instance the Charites and Aphrodite, are also invited and expected. The simultaneous arrival and reception conjures up the image of choral interaction of Pindar’s male chorus with the Charites and Aphrodite. After a reference to the recurrent performances of Delphian priestesses and a lacuna of about 30 lines, the choreuts sing a brief praise of the Muses’ omniscience and ask them to hear their song (58). In the missing lines (19–49) the chorus sang of a divine strife, if we are to judge from l.50, “whence the immortals’ strife began…” The gods who were said to have quarreled were probably thought to be present in the Theoxenia, as were also the Muses, despite the absence of any indication other than the chorus’ request κλῦτε νῦν. Be that as it may, the nature of the festival leaves no doubt that the paeanic chorus performed for a mixed audience, human and divine, who gathered together at Delphi.

A dithyramb that Pindar composed for the Athenians begins with an invitation to the Olympians and come and join the chorus who are dancing for Dionysus (Dithyramb 4, fr. 75.1–19):

Come to the chorus, Olympians, and send over it glorious grace, you gods who are coming to the city’s crowded, incense-rich navel in holy Athens and to the glorious, richly adorned agora. Receive wreaths of plaited violets and the songs plucked in springtime, and look upon me with favor as I proceed from Zeus with splendor of songs secondly to that ivy-knowing god, whom we mortals call Bromios and Eriboas as we sing of the offspring of the highest of fathers and of Cadmeian women. Like a seer, I do not fail to notice the clear signs, when, as the chamber of the purple-robed Horai is opened, the nectar-bearing flowers bring in the sweet-smelling spring. Then, then, upon the immortal earth are cast the lovely tresses of violets, and roses are fitted to hair and voices of songs echo to the accompaniment of pipes and choruses come to Semele of the circling headband.

(trans. Race)

There is broad consensus that Pindar composed this song-dance for the Dionysia, but various reconstructions have been offered concerning the timing of this performance within the festival and its locale in Athens.⁵⁷ The invitation of the gods to come and join the chorus suggests that Pindar may have had Dionysus’ xenismos in mind, which took place in the god’s small sanctuary in the Academy.⁵⁸ Most scholars think of the great Dionysiac procession as the performance context, and specifically the altar of the twelve gods in the old Agora, whose location before the Persian wars, however, has now been suggested to be east of the Acropolis.⁵⁹ It is possible that Pindar telescoped two different events and venues, i.e., the arrival and the xenismos of Dionysus in the Academy and the great procession that opened the festival in the Agora. Whether the chorus performed this song-dance at the sanctuary of Dionysus in the Academy, or in the old Agora, or even in the theater, Pindar conjured up a beautiful image where the Olympians were invited to join the mortal choreuts in song and dance in the most relaxing occasion, the spring festival in honor of Dionysus. As the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Pindar’s dithyramb offers yet another precious representation of mortals and immortals as united in choral dance and feasting as συγχορευταὶ and συνεορτασταί.