On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 19:51:49 +0200, "Håvard Nørjordet"
Post by HÃ¥vard NørjordetPost by Robert StonehouseOn Sat, 3 Jul 2004 23:39:17 +0200, "Håvard Nørjordet"
Post by Håvard NørjordetI was reading Mark Musa's translation of Petrarch's Canzionere. In a
commentary on the first poem, Musa writes that Eros was not only the god
of
Post by Robert StonehousePost by Håvard Nørjordetlove but also a power that forms the world by inner union of separate
elements. His reference is Hesiod, more precisely the Theogony. Now, the
Theogony menions Eros in lines 120-22. They read as follows in
Lattimore's
Post by Robert StonehousePost by Håvard Nørjordettranslation: "and Eros, who is love, handsomest among all the immortals,
/
Post by Robert StonehousePost by Håvard Nørjordetwho breaks the limbs' strength, who in all gods, in all human beings /
overpowers the intelligence in the breast, and all their shrewd
planning."
Post by Robert StonehousePost by Håvard NørjordetI may be stupid, but I cannot understand this forming the world by inner
union of separate elements business based on these lines; overpowering
the
Post by Robert StonehousePost by Håvard Nørjordetintelligence in the breast and shrewd planning is a bit short of forming
the
Post by Robert StonehousePost by Håvard Nørjordetworld by uniting separate elements, I felt. Could anyone clarify?
Quite right! There is nothing in the words themselves that suggests
this conclusion.
The thing that makes people think there is more in it than meets the
eye is the position that Eros occupies in the genealogy of the gods.
He comes in very early, at creation time: 'the position of Eros here
in the very first generation of created powers strongly suggests a
quasi-demiurgic function' (West's note ad loc. with other examples).
Exactly what his function would be, so far as I can see we do not
know. In modern terms, sex is obviously important to evolution, though
biologists seem to dispute exactly why it is important and what good
it does.
Good to see that I'm not the only one finding this a bit strange! If there
is nothing in Hesiod's words to suggest something like this - where might
one go to find such an understanding of Eros? Is Musa's understanding of him
motivated by some other classical author other than Hesiod, you think, or is
this confusion just due to over-interpreting those few lines in Hesiod? By
the way; how do the lines I quoted above (120-22) look in other
translations? (I should probably have gotten an annotated edition of Hesiod,
I now realize...)
Evelyn-White's Loeb has:
"and Eros (Love), fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the
limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and of all
men within them."
Doing it literally (or as near as I can) it would be:
"and Eros, who most beautiful among the immortal gods, /
slackener of limbs, of all gods and of all men /
subdues in their chests the mind and careful thought. /"
It is not just a question of over-interpreting these words. I
mentioned that West gave other examples, and some of them are
striking. Aristotle Metaphysics 984b 23 (book 1 chapter 4):
"One might suspect that Hesiod was the first to look for such a thing
- or someone else who put love or desire among existing things as a
principle, as Parmenides, too, does; for he, in constructing the
genesis of the universe, says:-
Love first of all the Gods she planned.
And Hesiod says:-
First of all things was chaos made, and then
Broad-breasted earth, ...
And love, 'mid all the gods pre-eminent,
which implies that among existing things there must be from the first
a cause which will move things and bring them together."
(Ross's translation.)
vv
(The word 'pre-eminent' represents a difference in the Greek between
our texts of Hesiod and Aristotle's quotation. Ross in his commentary
suggests Aristotle is quoting from memory and has been led astray by a
couple of very similar lines elsewhere. In the days of papyrus rolls,
verifying a quotation was hard labour.)
That is substantially West's own argument from the position of Eros so
early in the genealogy. For parallels to this positioning he refers to
Orpheus fragment 28, Euripides Hypsipyle fragment 57.23, Aristophanes
Birds 700, Pherecydes B3, A11, Parmenides (above), Empedocles B17.20
ff., Aeschylus fragment 4N=125M, Euripides fragment 898, Plato
Symposium 195 BC, Sappho 198, Acusil. B1, B3 (who he? Ah, see Plato
below.) and the position of Pothos (Desire) 'in the Phoenician
cosmology reported by Damasc. princ. 125 from Eudemus of Rhodes'.
I don't own all that lot; here is what I can produce.
Aristophanes Birds 693-703
"In the begining was Chaos and Night and black Erebus and wide
Tartarus, but neither earth nor air nor heaven existed. In the endless
folds of Erebus, black-winged Night laid an unfertilised egg, from
which in the circling seasons was born Eros the desired, shining with
golden wings on his back, like the whirling of the winds. He, in
intercourse with winged Chaos, in the dark in wide Tartarus, made the
first nestlings of our race (the Birds are speaking and they comically
glorify their own origins) and brought it to the light before all
others. Before then, there was no race of immortals, before Eros
combined everything, but as they mixed one with another heaven and
ocean came into being, and earth and the imperishable race of all the
blessed gods."
(My translation, with the aid of Van Daele's French.)
Empedocles (in Brad Inwood's translation of a section of Plutarch, The
Face on the Moon, 926d-927a):
"Earth had no share in warmth nor water any share in breath; none of
the heavy things was up nor any of the light things down; but the
principles of the universe were unblended, unloving and solitary, not
desiring combination or communion with one another; fleeing and not
admitting of blending or communion with one another,turning away and
executing their separate and self-willed movements, they were in the
condition which Plato attributed to everything from which God is
absent, i.e. in the condition of bodies when deserted by mind and
soul. They were in that condition until by providence desire came into
nature because of the presence of love and Aphrodite and Eros, as
Empedocles, Parmenides and Hesiod say ..."
In Plato, Symposium 178B-C, Phaedrus claims Eros is oldest of the
gods, referring to Hesiod, Acusilaus of Argos (c.475 BC) and
Parmenides. Later Agathon (Symp. 195B) has his own different ideas, as
a tragic poet well might.
Sappho fragment 198 consists of three prose quotations, the first two
from scholiasts:
"Sapphio gives the genealogy of (Eros) from Earth and Heaven."
"Alcaeus (said that Eros) was the child of Iris and Zephyrus, Sappho,
of Aphrodite and Heaven."
Pausanias 9.27.3:
"Sappho of Lesbos sang many inconsistent things about Eros."
Now, later Greeks certainly had the idea that Eros was an essential
part of the creation, even if they did not agree at all points. They
thought this idea was in Hesiod. Were they ante-dating later
philosophic speculation?
The place where Hesiod puts Eros in the genealogy is not easy to
explain, except by assuming he had this idea. So it seems likely they
were right. He did not explain it fully, perhaps because his purpose
was not to explain the creation in general, but specifically how the
gods came into being.
But a modern commentator should not simply refer us to Hesiod for the
idea. Hesiod's words on their own do not provide what we need. He
should point that out and explain how the gap is filled, even if only
by referring to a commentary that does so.
--
Robert Stonehouse
To mail me, replace invalid with uk. Inconvenience regretted.