BMCR 2008.12.37, Ilaria Marchesi, The Art of Pliny's Letters

Ilaria Marchesi, The Art of Pliny's Letters: A Poetics of Allusion in
the Private Correspondence.  Cambridge/New York:  Cambridge University
Press, 2008.  Pp. xii, 278.  ISBN 9780521882279.  $99.00.

Reviewed by Sandra Citroni Marchetti, Universita\ di Firenze
([email protected])
Word count:  2561 words
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Marchesi's book applies to a text in prose the interpretative
instruments of intertextual analysis commonly used for poetic texts.
The fundamental question that Marchesi aims to answer is: what is it
that makes the collection of Pliny's private letters a work of
literature? Her methodological intentions are clearly explained in the
Preface and the Introduction (and they are constantly recalled during
the analyses of the single letters that make up the substance of the
book). Marchesi makes reference to the new approach to studies on
Pliny, which has shifted the focus of interest from the historical and
social background of the letters to specific problematic aspects of the
author's individual situation.[[1]] However, Marchesi intends to
distinguish her approach from these recent studies: she moves the
attention from the extra-textual reality represented by the author to
the text in itself, considered as a self-sufficient, and consciously
self-reflecting literary artefact. The survival to which Pliny's
letters aspire is not the personal survival of their author, but their
own survival as texts: that is to say, their capacity to enter into the
canon of imitable works. The still-fluid nature of the epistolary genre
allowed Pliny to negotiate their insertion into the canon. The
instrument that he chooses is allusion. According to Marchesi,
allusions function in two different ways in Pliny's collection: they
set up a dialogue between the letters and other works that possess the
authority of models, and at the same time, they create internal
resonances within the collection, thus contributing to structuring it.
For this operation, which makes use of poetic material, and is, in
itself, poetic, Pliny had a model in the poetic collections of the
Augustan age (which included also collections of texts in an epistolary
form: Horace's Epistulae and Ovid's Epistulae ex Ponto). For this
extremely subtle operation, according to Marchesi, Pliny had to trust
in the active participation and the hermeneutic ability of his public,
which shared with him the same "mental encyclopaedia". Bringing to the
surface and recognizing connections where Pliny's early readers saw
them is the task that Marchesi aims to carry out. And we must admit
that in its turn, it is an extremely subtle, delicate task.

Marchesi's working method is based on a close reading of single letters
or of clusters of letters that are closely connected. The organisation
of the book is determined by the selection of three main fields
(poetry, rhetoric, historiography) in relationship to which Pliny's
dialogue with the models of the past combines with his desire to
intervene in the present, in order to redefine the canon in which his
own works and those of his contemporaries will be included. The first
two chapters (pp. 12-52 and pp. 53-96) regard Pliny's dialogue with
poetic precedents, while the following two chapters (pp. 97-143 and pp.
144-206) deal with his dialogue with Tacitus, respectively concerning
rhetoric and historiography. The fifth chapter is dedicated to the
relationship with the dominant epistolographic model, Cicero (pp.
207-240).

By avoiding a single addressee and a chronological order, Pliny invites
his readers to carry out a fragmentary reading of the letters; however,
according to Marchesi, he gives cohesion to the collection by means of
strategies of a narrative and intertextual character. The latter kind
of strategy, to which Marchesi dedicates particular attention, applies
to very small portions of the text, and requires a detailed
examination. One particularly significant example of the allusive
technique of composition that Marchesi recognizes in Pliny, with which
she opens her discussion, is found in two letters placed almost at the
beginning of the collection. In ep. 1.2 and 1.3, Marchesi identifies an
allusion to Aen. 6.129-30 hoc opus, hic labor est. Pauci quos aequus
amavit/Iuppiter (pp. 27-33). This is a divided allusion, which in this
specific case is composed of an actual quotation in the first letter,
followed by a more subtle reference in the second one. In ep. 1.2,
Virgil's line is quoted with reference to Pliny's attempt, which he
presents as necessarily imperfect, to imitate the great orators: nam
vim tantorum virorum, "pauci quos aequus..." adsequi possunt. In ep.
1.3, Pliny exhorts his addressee to devote himself to studies, in terms
that echo the first part of Virgil's line: Hoc sit negotium tuum hoc
otium; hic labor haec quies. By likening his own literary
accomplishments, and those of his friends, to Aeneas' descent to Hades,
Pliny forces Virgil's verse to assume a meta-literary dimension. But
besides connecting 1.2 and 1.3 in a micro-cycle, according to Marchesi,
the Virgilian allusion creates a connection between the first and the
last book of the collection (pp. 36-39). Through the image of an ascent
to fame as to a bright, higher world, the language of ep. 9.14 seems to
refer to the same verse by Virgil, and 9.13 already contained a
quotation from line 6.105 of the Aeneid. The Virgilian reminiscence
placed in the last book of the collection (where it likewise has a
meta-literary value) invites the reader not only to connect the last
book with the first one, but also to re-interpret the tone of the
incipit in a more confident sense. Likewise, a double allusion can be
found to Catullus (pp. 39-50). In ep. 1.12 (referring to the heroic
suicide of Corellius) Pliny uses the same language (destinasse,
obstinate, induruisse) that Catullus uses in c. 8 to formulate his
renunciation of love. And 1.13 contains another allusion to c. 8,
completing the previous one, though this can only be noticed after
appreciating the first one: at the verbal level, the reference can be
noted in the parallel perdidit -- perdidisse.

The second chapter deals particularly with the relationship between
Pliny and Catullus. Pliny not only writes verses in the style of
Catullus, but he also defines the poetics of his epistles through a
critical re-reading of Catullus. The neoteric poet is at the same time
a model of style and a polemical target in view of the potentially
antisocial ethical choice that he represents. For Pliny, neoteric
poetry can become a part of the literary canon only if its antisocial
character is neutralised. By reinterpreting neotericism purely as a
question of style, and refusing its political and polemical
significance, Pliny was continuing a kind of reading that had already
been adopted by the Augustan poets. The conditioned acceptance of the
Catullian model is the principle that controls Pliny's use of a broad
network of allusions to Catullus. In counting on the active
collaboration of his readers, Pliny thus added his contribution to the
contemporary cultural debate, and took part in the redefinition of the
canon.

According to Marchesi, Pliny's participation in the debate about
rhetoric is to be found not only in those passages of his letters which
specifically deal with the subject, but also in his dialogue with
Tacitus, conducted by means of a series of allusions. Employing a
procedure that Marchesi defines as "allusion in praesentia" Pliny uses,
in his letters to Tacitus, passages that were written by Tacitus
himself, taking them either from published works or from letters that
he received from Tacitus. Pliny does not share the negative vision of
contemporary rhetoric that Tacitus makes Maternus express in the
Dialogus (a vision which Pliny identifies as that of Tacitus himself).
By means of allusion, he ironically overturns the pessimistic position
of Tacitus, indicating that the dynamics of the literary exchange have,
in general, taken a turn for the better.

Pliny's dialogue with Tacitus also deals with history. Pliny's
meditation on history is essentially expressed in three letters to
Tacitus. Pliny does not write history, but his letters contain a
historical potential, and are already, partly, historical works. Pliny
is interested in historiography as a canonical form of writing, that is
to say, its literary aspect and its relationship with rhetoric. He
aspires to the role of an author and an actor of history. One
particularly significant document is ep. 6.20 (pp. 173-189), which
contains his personal testimony regarding the eruption of Vesuvius, and
is an experiment of para-historical narrative presented in a pathetic
register, in which the writer is also the protagonist. The literary and
poetic sources that Pliny uses (Livy, Virgil, Lucan, Ovid) also serve
to create an ironic distance from his own way of writing history. The
overall attitude with which Pliny regards historiography brings us back
to his opinions about rhetoric. Pliny claims a task for the orator that
is in competition with that of the historian: the orator can discuss,
above all in elogia and in portraits, historical themes in his own
manner, from a stylistic and ethical point of view. An example is
offered by the eulogy of a pathetic and "familiar" character for
Virginius Rufus in ep. 2.1 (pp. 190-198). Also in this case, Pliny's
reference point is Tacitus, in particular his Agricola.

For Pliny, Cicero is a model that he seeks to emulate on different
levels (rhetoric, political commitment, etc.). In his relationship with
Cicero, it clearly emerges that Pliny carries out a cultural
renegotiation, interpreting the past with reference to his involvement
in the present debate. While in other fields Pliny admits that he
cannot surpass the Ciceronian model, in epistolography he can go even
further, doing what Cicero has not been able to do: he could publish
his own letters as a product of the author's selection, ordering and
revision, as an editorial project. As Marchesi rightly observes,
Pliny's letters survive thanks to the non-Ciceronian care with which he
edited them.

In the final chapter (pp. 240-251), the author presents a brief summary
of the subjects discussed, laying particular emphasis on the reading
public's capacity to understand the subtle strategies that Pliny
adopted in order to enter into the epistolographic canon (a canon which
he himself was setting up, starting from a series of practices that had
not yet been stably defined). The readers' "encyclopaedia", their
education of the memory, and their ability to go beyond the barriers
between prose and verse could enable them to appreciate Pliny's
literary project. One final example is given (pp. 249-250) of the care
with which Pliny constructed his text, modelling it on the collections
of poetry of the Augustan age: the connection between the first and
last letters of the corpus, expressed by the contrasting similarity
between the names of the addressees (Clarus / Fuscus).

An appendix lists the main passages by Pliny for which thematic or
other references to Cicero have been indicated; each time the reference
is not to the scholar who pointed out the connection, but to the one
who has dealt with the subject in greatest detail. In the notes,
Marchesi includes a discussion of the comparisons. The volume has been
edited with great care, and includes appropriate indexes.

As I have said, the task that Marchesi tackles, that of illustrating
the network of allusions by which the letters rise beyond their
original condition of variety and causality, to become a work of art
capable of entering into the literary canon, is extremely subtle and
delicate. The figure of the sceptical reader, evoked by Marchesi in the
short chapter of Acknowledgements at the beginning of the book,
occasionally comes sympathetically to mind. For example: it does not
seem to be very convincing that there is a significant affinity between
the death of Corellius in ep. 1.12 and the "metaphorical death" of the
lyrical "I" of Catullus in c. 8, and the connection between Cat. 8, 10
nec quae fugit sectare and Hor. sat. 1.4.115 f. vitatu quidque petitu /
sit melius (p. 50 s.) seems even less convincing. Given the doubtful
nature of many connections, we may be surprised when Marchesi, in turn,
casts doubts, quite rightly, on connections proposed by other scholars.
And yet Marchesi is right in her insistence, exemplified by her work,
to subtract allusions from the field of chance, and to recognize them
as parts of an overall network constructed by the author, to be
re-constructed by means of a careful reading.

In single cases, Marchesi probably goes too far, and sees too much in
the texts she examines. But what she proposes is undoubtedly a
fascinating journey through the minds of the early readers of Pliny.
His addressees and his early readers possesses a culture and a memory
different from ours. They were also, as Marchesi recalls, producers of
literature, as well as beneficiaries. And for them, furthermore, the
boundaries between prose and poetry were less rigid than they are for
us. The attempt to reconstruct their relationship with those texts of
prose and poetry which have come down to us and for them were already
canonical, and to reconstruct the connections that might be activated
by reading a new text that aspired to a position in the canon, is an
operation that, given the sense and value that it has in itself, goes
beyond the cogency of the single comparison. The comparisons proposed
by Marchesi often lead us to wonder about the resonance that even
common expressions might have, and the connections that they might
activate in relation to texts that were extremely familiar in the minds
of readers. In some cases, the connection proposed, while not appearing
to be wholly convincing in itself, throws new light on other passages
involved in Marchesi's reading. For example, the idea that the
historical paradigms used both by Ovid in trist. 1.3 and by Plin. in
ep. 6.20 include Livy's description of the capture of Alba Longa (pp.
85-188) may appear to be doubtful: but the reference that Marchesi
makes to two other passages in which Ovid and Pliny refer to Livy (the
inclusion of the name Mett(i)us in trist. 1.3.75-6, and the indication
of the author as occupied in legere and excerpere Livius in ep. 6.16)
does not allow us to reject the hypothesis, and on the contrary, makes
it attractive.

>From Marchesi's reading of the texts, we are continually led back to
the external context: to the cultural and historical conditions in
which works were created, and also to the psychology of their authors
(for this aspect, the reconstruction of Pliny's attitude towards
Tacitus is particularly interesting). In this sense, the close
adherence to the texts has a disciplinary value, avoiding the risk that
these aspects external to the text may predominate. But, in turn, the
close reading of the texts performed by Marchesi does not claim to
reach any exclusive, dogmatic truth. The author does not impose her
reconstructions, but offers them as possibilities. Her work is
open-ended: at the end of the book (that is to say, when the close
reading of a selection of Pliny's letters is concluded), readers are
invited to take up Pliny's book again, and to read it again from the
beginning. The last words, both of the Preface and of the Introduction
were "his own": in the sense that in view of the variety of interests
to which it responds, Pliny's text may appear to be "his own" to every
reader, and that, as a carefully edited book, it is "his own" work for
the author. In investigating the most minute structures of the work,
and at the same time inviting readers to search in other directions,
Marchesi follows the double approach that she detects in the author.
For its originality, intelligence and serious approach, this book may
rightly take its place among the most significant works dealing with
the present renewed interest in Pliny.


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Notes:


1.   Besides the two collections of essays from the Manchester and Como
conferences (R. Gibson-R. Morello, eds., Re-Imagining Pliny the
Younger, Baltimore 2003 = Arethusa 36. 2 and L. Castagna-E. Lefe\vre,
eds., Plinius der Juengere und seine Zeit, Munich-Leipzig 2003),
Marchesi acknowledges her debt to M. Ludolph, Epistolographie und
Selbstdarstellung. Untersuchungen zu den "Paradenbriefen" Plinius des
Juengeren, Tuebingen 1997; S. Hoffer, The Anxieties of Pliny the
Younger, Atlanta 1999; J. Henderson, Pliny's Statue: The Letters,
Self-Portraiture, and Classical Arts, Exeter 2002.