BMCR 2008.10.28, Roberto Pretagostini, Ricerche sulla poesia alessandrina II

Roberto Pretagostini, Ricerche sulla poesia alessandrina II. Forme
allusive e contenuti nuovi. Quaderni dei seminari romani di cultura
greca, 11.  Roma:  Edizioni Quasar, 2007.  Pp. xii, 236.  ISBN
978-88-7140-352-5.  EUR 31.00 (pb).

Reviewed by Jan  Kwapisz, Warsaw University ([email protected])
Word count:  3058 words
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The book under review is the swan song of a scholar who at the moment
of his premature death in December 2006 ultimately confirmed his
prominence in the field of Alexandrian poetry ("il volume gli era
appena stato presentato in bozze", as E. Dettori and L. Sbardella state
in the "Premessa dei curatori", ix). Though all studies collected in
this volume were previously published elsewhere, it is by no means
disappointing, and not only for the strictly pragmatic reason that
Italian "Atti" and festschrifts are sometimes not easily accessible
outside Italy. The book delivers in fact more than the title promises.
"Ricerche I", published by Roberto Pretagostini (hereafter P.) in
1984,[[1]] was simply a collection of articles loosely grouped under
the label "Alexandrian poetry", most of them being devoted to
Theocritus, one to Callimachus' Prologue to the Telchines, and the last
one--but not the least influential--to the poet Sotades of Maroneia
(who is usually considered a more marginal author). "Ricerche II" is
substantially different. The constellation of twenty discussions
varying in weight and form, some more essayistic, others minute
analyses of particular problems, offers, as a whole, a consistent
panoramic overview of Alexandrian poetry, in its breadth comparable
with such books as A. Cameron's Callimachus and His Critics,[[2]] and
M. Fantuzzi and R. Hunter's Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic
Poetry [[3]] (in some respects its closest cognate). The bibliography
is brought up to date, and in some cases the articles were slightly
reshaped to fit the new context.

Theocritus is again P.'s chief objet d'inte/re^t (six contributions
concern him exclusively), but this time Callimachus ought not to feel
disregarded (four contributions plus two more treating Callimachus and
Theocritus jointly), and there are two significant studies on Sotades.
Apollonius is less well represented, but is also present in two
articles, and minor contributions are dedicated to the poets of the
Anthology (one to the new Posidippus). The closing article is a
scholarly portrait of Gregorio Serrao, whose follower P. proves to be
not only here but throughout the whole volume. The earliest of the
contributions dates from as far back as 1984, but the others come from
between 1990 and 2003. It would be pointless to recapitulate every
argument, since students of the subject are already familiar with them
(see the publisher's table of contents
(http://www.edizioniquasar.it/sku.php?id_libro=1650) ). I will instead
try to identify P.'s main preoccupations, and to point out some merits
and limitations of his approach. I will reserve a few specific minor
criticisms and comments for the final part of the review.

The subtitle of the book, borrowed from a discussion in "Ricerche I"
("Teocrito e Saffo: forme allusive e contenuti nuovi"), turns out to be
particularly telling. That a scholar of Alexandrian poetry should be
expert also in old epic and archaic poetic compositions is not
surprising; it happens very rarely, however, that one is equally fond
of entering both fields and in either of them capable of satisfying
with equal skill the standards of the highly sophisticated scholarship
of today. P. manifests this ability more than once, and those are the
most suggestive parts of his book. This is the case with the chapter
"La ripresa teocritea della poesia erotica arcaica e tardoarcaica
(Idilli XXIX e XXX)" (101-11). In his effort to distinguish traditional
and innovative elements in two Aeolic poems of Theocritus, P. shows
himself to be a competent reader of archaic sympotic poetry, able to
detect and precisely identify distinctive qualities of the traditional
notion of love. This dense and meticulous study may well serve as
prolegomena to a deepened examination of the evolution of the poetic
conception of eros from Archaic to Hellenistic times. Yet at the same
time limitations of P.'s approach are perhaps nowhere clearer than
here. His analyses of the available evidence are successful in
themselves, but he is sometimes overoptimistic in drawing positive
conclusions on that basis. In this specific case, one may find
debatable his claim that while Idyll 29 is more firmly rooted in the
tradition of erotic poetry, Alexandrian and specifically Theocritean
taste is predominant in Idyll 30. How can we be so sure that Archaic
models for the latter poem have not been lost for us? This is not just
a speculative doubt: as a matter of fact, a strong case can be made
now, after the publication and discussion of the new Sappho, that
Theocritus' deer simile at 30.18 has been modeled on the image that is
now found in Sappho (P. Koeln inv. 21351+21376, 13-14), and it has
recently been suggested that the dependence of Theocritus' poem on the
new Sappho is its dominant feature.[[4]] But that possibility remained
unknown to P.

The beginning of the book gains most from the fact that P. has as
profound a knowledge of earlier Greek literature as of Hellenistic;
three opening studies, taken together as a whole, make a convincing
case for the thesis that a substantial element of Callimachus'
reorientation toward the inherited poetics was his manifest inclination
toward Hesiod, seen in comparison with his silent reserve toward Homer.
The thorough discussion of the debt of Callimachus' dream scene to the
Hesiodic Dichterweihe (13-25) is not to be overlooked, but the greatest
achievement of P. in this part of his book is a wonderfully
wide-ranging and at the same time dense essay in which he evaluates the
attitudes of Callimachus, Theocritus, and Apollonius toward Homer and
his epigones through the lens of the Aristotelian Poetics (1-12). This
is not only an appropriate opening for this volume, but may also serve
as a commendable brief introduction to the study of Alexandrian poetry.

The preoccupations of P. are not limited to the problems of
intertextuality, and cover other areas that are frequently visited by
modern scholarship. The unceasingly attractive debate on orality vs.
literacy, that in the field of Alexandrian poetry was  revived in 1995
by Cameron's "Callimachus and His Critics", is referred to in the
chapter "Tracce di poesia orale nei carmi di Teocrito" (61-76). In
contrast with the promising title, the content is disappointing.
Although P. shares interests with the most provocative scholars of
today, his approach proves in fact often conservative, and while the
results of this me/salliance are often positive, I sometimes get the
impression that when P. chooses an apparently more secure path, it
leads him astray. The discussion of the oral element in Theocritus is,
as always, impressive in the thoroughness with which the author
examines every composition embedded in the text of the Idylls that
could have an oral performance as a model. But as far as the final
result is concerned, the discussion suffers from controversial
assumptions. First, the distinction between the "cultura ufficiale,
raffinata e scritta" of Callimachus and other Alexandrian poets and
"cultura popolare, tradizionale ed orale, quella del resto della
popolazione", made by P. at the beginning (61), is oversimplified and
unlikely to depict correctly the reality of the time of the first
Ptolemies. As a matter of fact, in a marginal note in another article
(78 n. 7) P. rightly reflects upon the fact that "non si puo\ escludere
la possibilita\ di una prima esecuzione orale. . . almeno degli idilli
che presentano una struttura drammatica, i mimi urbani e agresti". One
might perhaps add to this at least quasi-hymnic compositions such as
Idylls 22 and 26. Therefore perhaps the best thing a scholar looking
for traces of oral poetry can do with the Idylls is to concentrate her
or his efforts on the Idylls themselves. And would not that be actually
the most reasonable choice? Among the attestations of oral performances
in the Idylls P. discusses the pastoral agon in Idyll 8, "un carme
sicuramente non autentico" (65). But since the poem is merely an
imitation of the Theocritean fiction, how can it be used as an
eye-witness of the everyday reality of early Hellenistic times? And is
in fact the situation much different with the authentic poems of
Theocritus? In order to find out to what extent the Idylls--especially
the bucolic poems-- reflect anything other than the world of
Theocritus' poetic imagination, it would first seem necessary to pose
questions not much different from those already known from the refined
debate on the historicity of Homeric society. E.g. P. says of the song
of Adonis embedded in the text of Idyll 15 that "e\ un canto di sicura
composizione orale, in quanto e\ improvvisato; lo dimostra
inequivocabilmente il fatto che una sua ampia sezione e\ dedicata alla
descrizione della scena che sta di fronte agli occhi della
donna-cantore e di tutti i visitatori-uditori" (74). But is such
evidence of much value? P. is too easily seduced by the realism of the
fictional image; why should we believe that Theocritus represents the
actual poetic practice of improvisation rather than assume that--in his
own act of written composition--he spins an intricate web of illusion
and reality, in which a fictional, though verisimilar ecphrasis is
artfully embedded in an equally fictional, though verisimilar oral
composition?

Another aspect of Alexandrian literature of chief importance to P. is
the patronage at the Ptolemaic court. In the discussion of the ending
of Idyll 14 as an irregular encomiastic poem he aptly observes that
unlike typical encomia Theocritus' poem is a gratuitous act; this is
underscored by the poet in the words of Thyonichus at l. 64
<greek>ai)tei=n de\ dei= ou)k e)pi\ panti/</greek> (87). But is "you'll
give even unasked, won't you" not intended to be ironic? The motif of
the birth of Apollo in Callimachus' Hymn to Delos and of Ptolemy II in
Idyll 17, the mutual relationship of both poems, and their relationship
to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo are discussed in another chapter (113-24)
in the same meticulous manner in which the Aeolic Idylls and the dream
scene in the Aetia were treated. Additionally the discussion provides a
conclusive argument for the priority of Theocritus' poem to
Callimachus' by establishing the relative rather than absolute
chronology of the poems (124). But the most valuable studies in this
category are two chapters on Sotades (135-47), a poet who has the
reputation of a one-hit wonder (fr. 1 Powell). P. devoted to this
famously infamous expert in obscenity more attention than anyone else
in recent years, and it is a great loss that the edition of the
Sotadean fragments that he was preparing will never see the light of
day.[[5]]

There are other significant issues in P.'s sphere of interest that I
will pass over in order to keep this review to a reasonable length,
such as the quasi-philological activity of the Alexandrian poets
("L'autore ellenistico fra poesia e filologia. Problemi di esegesi, di
metrica e di  attendibilita\ del racconto", 125-34). What remains to be
said in order to do full justice to P.'s merits is that the essence of
his book and of his scholarship is found in the shorter, minute
discussions of more specific issues in Alexandrian poetry. The chapter
"La rivalita\ tra Comata e Lacone: una paideia disconosciuta" (77-81)
may serve as an example; P. suggests here sexual undertones in
Theocritus' representation of the pastoral conflict between two
protagonists of Idyll 5--such a particular observation helps to
appraise more fully the poem as a whole. Some non-Italian reader may
perhaps feel at first a bit perplexed by how P. builds his discourse in
such (and other) cases. The thesis is very rarely expounded explicitly
at the beginning of a discussion, and P. leads his reader to it through
a chain of arguments till the final paragraph, or even the closing
sentence. But the reader's patience is usually repaid by P.'s brilliant
conclusions, such as the observation on the relative chronology of
Callimachus' Hymn to Delos and Theocritus' Idyll 17 that I have
mentioned above, or the conclusion of the discussion of the Sotadean
fragments (147), where P. makes (too cautiously) a sound suggestion
that the reason for which the anonymous Cynic verses were falsely
ascribed to Sotades could be, apart from their meter, the fact that
their anti-monarchic orientation (apparent from fr. 9.1 Powell), an
element of the Cynic doctrine, fits well the undertones of Sotades'
invective against Ptolemy (fr. 1 Powell). The most charming conclusion
is, nonetheless, that of the discussion of Possidippus' Ep. 55
Austin-Bastianini, in which P. elucidates the phrase <greek>pro\s
e(w/|an kerki/da Sapfw/|ous e)c o)a/rwn o)a/rous</greek> (l. 1-2) by
means of the passage from Giacomo Leopardi's poem: "ne/ teco le
compagne ai di\ festivi / ragionavan d'amore" (197). Yet P.'s tendency
not to reveal too quickly where he is heading  has at times negative
consequences for the clarity of his discourse, as at the beginning of
the just mentioned discussion of the Posidippean epigram, where
alongside of the Greek text of the poem he prints Austin-Bastianini's
translation (191) which he is about to criticize on the pages that
follow (192, 194-5). Obviously, the translation should not obscure the
Greek text but--as elsewhere in the volume--provide a hint for the
reader on how the author understands it.

These reflections upon the form of P.'s discourse lead me to consider
his final preoccupation: that with Italian classical scholarship. That
is most clearly evident from the closing chapter (203-10), a
remembrance of Gregorio Serrao, P.'s mentor and himself a disciple of
Gennaro Perrotta. Through this piece, P. with an amazing
self-consciousness defines his own position in the chain of generations
that form the history of Hellenistic scholarship on Italian soil. But
apart from that chapter, P. privileges Italian scholarship throughout
the whole volume, reserving a prominent place for Serrao and Bruno
Gentili. Although he makes lavish use of the rich non-Italian
literature, in many particular cases he more willingly cites Italian
authors, as when in a note on the crucial term <greek>lepto/ths</greek>
(29 n. 11) he picks out from the vast literature only Serrao's and his
own studies. P.'s book may therefore prove useful for readers outside
Italy as a bibliographical guide to Italian scholarship on Alexandrian
poetry.

Finally, here  are the minor remarks I alluded to earlier. 27: In the
beginning of Call. fr. 1.17 Pfeiffer the usually accepted
<greek>e)/llete</greek> is printed, but P. says in n. 2: "sarei piu\
propenso ad accogliere nel testo la lezione <greek>e)/llate</greek>".
His arguments would appear far more convincing if he printed
<greek>e)/llate</greek> in the main text. 28-9: Sotades fr. 2 Powell
could prove an interesting addition to the list of passages that attest
"il tuonare attribuito metaforicamente, con un'evidente valenza
sarcastica, a soggetti diversi da Zeus". 41-60: It is surprising that
Idyll 11 is not even mentioned in the chapter "Incursioni bucoliche
nella poesia non bucolica di Teocrito". From the fact that the poem is
missing from the list of the non-bucolic Idylls on p. 44 one can infer
that it is classified by P. as bucolic, but I am not convinced that
this is wholly correct. On the contrary, several passages said in this
chapter to have a bucolic flavor do not seem to me to do so. E.g. Idyll
15.73 <greek>w)qeu=nq' w(/sper u(/es</greek> can even now be heard in
the streets of Warsaw, in definitely non-bucolic contexts. 71:
Immediately after the song for Amaryllis in Idyll 3 is (rightly)
classified as "una sorta di paraklausithyron" there is a discussion of
the song of Polyphemus from Idyll 11. It would be useful to note that
this is also a sort of paraklausithyron. On the contrary, the song that
Dioscorides speaks of in the last part of the epigram discussed by P.
on p. 167-8 (A. P. 5.52.5-6) is not a paraklausithyron, not even "un
paraklausithyron anomalo", as P. puts it; it is an epithalamium (indeed
anomalous). 128-9: P. declares disagreement with Solmsen, who rejects
Hes. Th. 478-80 as interpolated, and "alla luce delle recente
acquisizioni degli studi oralistici sull'epica arcaica" claims 478-80
and 481-4 to be "due varianti rapsodiche ... recepite entrambe dal
testo esiodeo". In fact P.'s diagnosis does not conflict with Solmsen's
proposal; only it is safer to assume, with Solmsen, that the conflation
of two rhapsodic variants was post-Hesiodic, so as to save the genuine
Hesiodic text from inconsistency. 136-7: P. here invokes his own
ingenious and widely accepted suggestion, formulated in "Ricerche I",
that Sotades fr. 16 Powell is an incipit of the invective which ended
with fr. 1. But another reading of fr. 16, apparently contradictory to
that of P., was in the interim proposed by H. White and accepted by G.
Giangrande and Y. Durbec.[[6]] It is a pity that P. did not take the
opportunity to defend his proposal from that joint assault.

P.'s Italian is elegant and very readable, the Greek is usually
translated (though my impression is that more of it is translated at
the beginning than at the end of the volume), and--as in the case of
various "Companions"--the book is attractively heterogeneous; hence it
should appear accessible to many readers. It has occurred to me that
P.'s solid, honest scholarship can be used e.g. in teaching Greek
literature as a convenient source of specific illustrations for K.
Gutzwiller's recent Guide to Hellenistic Literature.[[7]]

The editors who took care of P.'s orphaned child are to be warmly
thanked. Misprints in the Greek are very rare, although it is
abundantly quoted;[[8]] there are however some sloppy references.[[9]]
The articles that were conceived as independent entities are well
adjusted to each other, but a few unnecessary repetitions still
remain.[[10]] There are two indices in comparison with the four of
"Ricerche I". Of them the "Indice analitico" seems to me not much more
useful than the table of contents, which it largely repeats (and there
is no justification for the fact that passages referred to are not
given in full: e.g. "Muse in Esiodo e Callimaco: 13 ss."). The "Indice
dei luoghi discussi" is more useful, yet either it has numerous
omissions or its compositional principle remains elusive to me; e.g.
from the chain of eight references on p. 138 only one is indexed (that
to Pind. P. 2), the rest are not. That the volume is rather modestly
bound in soft covers is understandable as a demand of the series of
which it forms a part (and of which P. himself was one of editors). But
it would be nice to see some day this valuable book reedited jointly
with the discussions contained in "Richerche I", in an elegant
hardcover volume, and perhaps with a more catchy title.[[11]]


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Notes:


1.   R. Pretagostini, Ricerche sulla poesia alessandrina. Teocrito,
Callimaco, Sotade, Roma 1984.

2.   A. Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics, Princeton 1995.

3.   M. Fantuzzi, R. Hunter, Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic
Poetry, Cambridge 2004. Ed. pr.: Muse e modelli: la poesia ellenistica
da Alessandro Magno ad Augusto, Roma-Bari 2002.

4.   See J. Me/ndez Dosuna, Mnemosyne 61 (2008), 192-7.

5.   I plan to undertake this work.

6.   H. White, Orpheus 21 (2000), 187-8, G. Giangrande, Habis 35
(2004), 105-8, Y. Durbec, REG 118 (2005), 602-3.

7.   K. Gutzwiller, A Guide to Hellenistic Literature, Oxford 2007.

8.   I have noticed <greek>pnoa/</greek> that should read
<greek>pno/a|</greek> in the main text on p. 109 (it is correct in n.
31 on the same page); 195 n. 26: read <greek>a)]q.u/.r.omes</greek> in
place of <greek>a)[q.u/romes</greek>.

9.   E.g. on p. 138 Pind. P. 2.95 should be 94-5, and Aesch. Ag. 1264
should be 1624.

10.   N. 24 on p. 174 is in large part identical with n. 36 on p. 159,
and n. 5 on p. 182 with n. 17 on p. 172.

11.   I owe thanks to Chris Callanan for improving my English.