BMCR 2009.06.36: Skafte Jensen on Heiden, Homer's Cosmic Fabrication: Choice and Design in the Iliad. American Philological Association, American Classical Studies 52

Bruce Heiden, Homer's Cosmic Fabrication: Choice and Design in the
Iliad. American Philological Association, American Classical Studies
52.  New York/Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2008.  Pp. xvi, 254.
ISBN 9780195341072.  $74.00.

Reviewed by Minna Skafte Jensen, University of Southern Denmark
([email protected])
Word count:  2617 words
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In this study Heiden offers a sophisticated and competent analysis of
the Iliad. Building on observations he published in previous articles,
he develops his ideas step by step until he reaches a comprehensive
description of the narrative structure of the poem. Not all readers
will follow him all way through (the present reader for instance not),
but most will have to admit that his procedure is systematic and as
such intellectually challenging.

In critical dialogue with Oliver Taplin and Keith Stanley, Heiden first
returns to his argument from 1996[[1]] for an Iliad in three
'movements' (here called 'cycles') -- books 1-8, 9-15, and 16-24. Since
the beginning and end of the poem, books 1 and 24, are characterized by
Achilles and Zeus respectively making important decisions, he looks for
similar beginnings and ends in the course of the poem and finds them in
book 8 (Zeus making a decision), 9 (Achilles), 15 (Zeus), and 16
(Achilles). This leads to a reading of the poem as a story in which the
plot, as Heiden states with a reference to Thomas Pavel, is developed
by characters making choices followed by actions; but often characters
do not achieve their intended goal, and, whereas some scenes are of
high consequence for further action, others are not. In the
'overarching event trajectory', the junctions of low-consequence and
high-consequence scenes occur exactly at the pauses between books, and
Heiden considers the division into books just as reliable as the one
into lines.

The three cycles are of unequal length, counted in books. However, the
last book in each cycle refers to the corresponding first book (book 8
to 1, 15 to 9, and 24 to 16), and with the exception of the middle
cycle the next to last book refers to the second (book 7 to 2 and book
23 to 17) and the third to last to the third (book 6 to 3 and book 22
to 18). This 'synairesis' may consist of parallels between events as
well as between themes, and, from the first occurrence to the next,
transformations take place. Furthermore, books that occupy parallel
positions in the three cycles (books 1, 9, and 16, 2, 10, and 17, etc.)
are linked by the same kind of synairesis. In this way the later books
are connected to former ones by an ever increasing system of references
backwards. Book 24 refers back to book 16 because they are last and
first in cycle III, but it also refers back to the last books of the
two preceding cycles (book 15 and 8), and of course to book 1, since 24
and 1 are last and first books of the whole poem.

Each book is normally characterized by an 'event trajectory' consisting
in a problem, leading to a decision and an action, followed by an
aftermath (abbreviated P/D-A-A). (Since the problem and the decision to
deal with it are frequently narrated together the two elements are
treated as one.) To show this all 24 books are briefly summarized,
after which the organizing system is demonstrated with regard to
selected examples: in cycle I the relationship between books 3 and 6, 2
and 7, and 1 and 8, and across the cycles between books 1 and 9, as
well as between books 8 and 15. In addition, 'thematic trajectories'
are identified, and the analysis moves back and forth between 'aerial
surveys' and interpretations. Towards the end, book 24 and the shield
of Achilles in book 18 receive closer attention.

Three reasons for taking the division into books as an integral part of
the poem are offered: unity of action in the single books, a consistent
principle of how the intermissions between them are made, and the
orientation provided by the long narrative being divided into smaller
segments. Both this and the demonstration of the tripartite structure
of the poem is clearer and more consistently argued than in any
previous study and as close to being proved as such things can be.

Heiden's monograph is intelligent and well-argued, which is not to say
that it raises no objections. As is often the case with such very
principled analyses the argument is not quite as unambiguous as the
author's presentation implies. First, in order to make the action of
all 24 books follow one and the same P/D-A-A trajectory Heiden has to
accept so many variations of this pattern that it is sometimes hard to
recognize. For instance, in book 5 it occurs five times, with Athena as
the agent of the event trajectory in the three first 'moves', Apollo in
the fourth, and Athena again in the fifth; besides, Athena's third
move (vv. 95-454) is so complicated that it must be schematized in a
figure.

Next, Heiden's assertion that junctions of low-consequence and
high-consequence scenes do not occur elsewhere in the poem is
contradicted at least by 24.673-81, in which a low-consequence scene
(Priam and Achilles going to bed) meets with a high-consequence one
(Hermes not falling asleep, but speculating on how to help the old man
away from the Greek camp). That the passage is also characterized by
some of the other features that typically mark an intermission between
books only adds to the problem. However, to a less principled reader,
such as the reviewer, Heiden's description of how the intermissions
work is not invalidated if there are points at which a reader or
listener is lead to believe that an intermission is approaching, only
to realize that it did not occur after all.

The third reason, that the system of 'marked segments' (= books) offers
helpful orientation for the reader, is evidently true.

To schematize a complex story demands constant decisions of detail. For
instance, when is a character an agent and when only an auxiliary? I
feel uneasy about some of Heiden's choices. For instance, in figure 2.2
(p. 40) the event trajectory of book 1.8-348 is shown with first
Chryses, next Agamemnon as agents. Here Achilles is made an auxiliary
of Agamemnon's since he is the one to call the assembly in vv. 53 ff.
(An 'auxiliary' occurs when " the agents who make a Move from a Problem
to an Action make deliberate use of incidentally available characters",
p. 25.) But not only does Agamemnon not make deliberate use of
Achilles, but Agamemnon is conspicuously passive in the situation. To
readers who allow themselves to transgress the borders of the poem when
looking for traditional patterns, it is obvious that in early Greece a
commander who faced the problem that his soldiers were dying from
plague would be expected to call a seer and find out which god was
offended and why. This is what the king does at the beginning of
Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, and in this he acts as a responsible leader
would do. That Agamemnon does nothing in the beginning of the Iliad
must to a contemporary audience have been a shocking omission,
revealing that he was well aware that he might himself be the offender.
In this way, an important element is added to the portrait the poem
gives of Agamemnon.

Actually, the character who uses Achilles as an auxiliary in this
situation is the goddess Hera, which leads to the next critical
question: why does she not occur in the figure? Together with Athena,
she is the main defender of the Greeks, and as such she is presented
with the problem that the men are dying and therefore makes the
decision that leads to the action that the assembly is convened. In
other connections, Heiden is eager to point to the gods as agents and
in fact, when later on this passage is discussed in more detail (pp.
109-10) Hera is given due attention.

Heiden, who is critical of his predecessors' lack of consistency, draws
careful attention to his own more methodical approach. He speaks of his
study as an 'experimental simulation' in which he follows a 'heuristic
model', and also more generally prefers terms borrowed from the
sciences or newly coined. For instance, he describes his "method of
speculation" as follows: "I would frame hypotheses about specific
functions of intermissions, and then seek passages in the Iliad that
might fulfill those functions, if intermissions occurred there" (p. 4).
Presuming that they should cue attention to important themes, he
expects intermissions to have three characteristics: they must be
functional with respect to a broad spectrum of imaginable audience
members, be easily recognizable to them, and considered important by
them. Such functions are actually served by the consequential junctures
in the epic's plot as mentioned above.

In this way, the analysis approaches the poem from outside, as it were,
with a thoughtful reader as its point of departure and the activity of
reading described as a cooperation between reader and text. But in the
course of interpretation Heiden grows more and more confident about
having understood the poet's purpose, culminating in the passage about
the shield of Achilles (pp. 212-17). Here he underlines how Hephaestus'
work consists in a series of choices, and continues: "The narrator
likewise describes the making as he chooses to describe it; and the
poet composed the scene as he chose to compose it" (p. 213). Here,
again, I feel uneasy. This is either a banality -- what else could the
poet have done? -- or a rhetorical overstatement of how Hephaestus'
procedure is described. The verbs used are simple: the prefix en is
combined with etithei (four times), poiese (three times), eteuxe once,
and poikille once. In short: of the nine occurrences of a verb only
one, poikille suggests anything elaborate, and none of them dwells upon
the god's deliberate choice.

Like Taplin and Stanley, Heiden sets out searching for performance
segments, but soon the focus shifts towards a reading public, and
Heiden points out how the demonstrated structure works as a useful tool
for readers when 'navigating the poem'. Throughout the rest of his book
the question of performance is kept in the background, only to come
forcefully back toward the end of the book when Heiden states that the
Iliad is the gift of the Muses for which mortals express their thanks
when performing the poem, for instance at the Panathenaea. The problem
is only touched upon when at a few points Heiden states that the
question of reading or listening is unimportant.

The result is a somewhat flickering picture. Not only is the question
whether the poem was composed orally or in writing still a current
issue, and as such worthy of a more explicit stance, but the status of
the text is important for understanding Heiden's purpose. Are we
supposed to read his demonstration of the structure as an abstract and
ahistoric investigation or as an argument for how the poet once upon a
time chose to make it? The former alternative is explicitly stated, for
instance, on p. 4 where Heiden underlines that his investigation does
not aim at answering "the historical question of whether the Iliad was
actually performed with planned intermissions anywhere". But in quite a
few places the latter argument pops up, as when it is said of the
arrangement in books that "its adoption represents a legitimate
collaboration with the presumed author of the Iliad" (p. 17; for a
similar statement about the three cycles see p. 83).

The main problem is the basic assumption that this way of reading the
poem is the only acceptable one. For instance, when an analysis of the
various characters' moves in the overarching event trajectory shows how
Zeus' decisions lead to most of the other moves, Heiden concludes that
Zeus is the main agent of the poem and regrets that few other readers
have noticed this fact. But Pavel is not the only god in the literary
universe, and other points of departure lead to other results,
potentially just as methodical and consistent. For instance, if
Heiden's method leads to Zeus being the protagonist, an alternative
analysis might instead point to Achilles, whose project, the
vindication of his honour, constitutes the major thread of action, and
who is the character that undergoes the most important transformations
during the course of events. Both interpretations, it could be argued,
are confirmed by the prologue of the poem.

Heiden has given his chapter on book 24 the title "Homeric sublimity"
(pp. 187-210), and opens it with a reference to Longinus. Even though
the ancient critic does not actually refer to this Homeric book, most
readers would immediately agree that it would do well as an example of
sublimity. However, that this characteristic should consist mainly in
the density of subtle cues to antecedents in the preceding books is
less immediately evident. For one thing, some of the analogies may seem
far-fetched, such as the assertion that when Priam receives divine help
to crossing the battlefield it recalls other examples of Zeus helping
the Trojan army cross the battlefield in books 8 and 15, the two
preceding books that like 24 end a cycle. The mere fact that no
fighting takes place during Priam's journey makes the situation too
different to be felt as an analogy; this is of course my personal,
subjective, reaction, just as Heiden's opposite feeling is subjective.
Furthermore, to continue along the subjective strain, his analysis with
its detailed search for antecedents is astonishingly dry, considering
the qualities of book 24.

The interest in analogies is, of course, closely related to the old
question of how iterations work in Homeric poetry. If Heiden had chosen
to restrict himself to the attentive reader's observations, the status
of his results would have been clear-cut, for other readers to take or
leave. But as soon as his cooperation with the text leads to assertions
about the poet's purpose, we are up to our ears in problems about how
to decide whether an iteration is marked or unmarked, and whether to
restrict the analysis to the Iliad or include other archaic poetry as
well. An example of the latter choice is to be found in another
relatively recent interpretation, John Miles Foley's.[[2]] Just like
Heiden Foley looks for trajectories (called 'patterns'), but in order
to reveal a traditional narrative structure as a tool for better
understanding the Iliad. His point of departure, that the poem is close
enough to oral tradition to exhibit the 'traditional, metonymic
referentiality' characteristic of oral poetry, opens up a reading that
to me, at least, is much more suggestive of Homeric sublimity than
Heiden's.

The index is not as helpful as it could have been. Often the
information given is circumstantial, where simpler references might
have served their purpose better (see, for instance, 'reading').
Especially for the many unfamiliar technical terms, clear references to
where definitions are given would have been useful. A special problem
is the rationale behind the choice of the few scholars to appear in the
index. It is easily understood why Pavel, Taplin, and Stanley are
included, since Heiden acknowledges the inspiration he has had from
them. But for most of the others the reference is to one single page,
often a note, and often one in which Heiden states why he disagrees
with the person mentioned. Thus the index is no guide to Heiden's main
predecessors; for instance, Walter Marg, whose interpretation of
Achilles' shield is an important forerunner for the final chapter and
mentioned as such in a note, does not appear in the index.

Pedantry apart, Heiden has written an intelligent and well-argued book.
To what degree his cosmic fabrication also reveals the poem's, or even
the poet's, fabrication is a difficult question that I prefer to leave
open. But to have published a thought-provoking and new interpretation
of the Iliad is in itself no mean achievement.

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Notes:


1.   Heiden, Bruce 1996: "The Three Movements of the Iliad." (GRBS 37,
5-22.)

2.   Foley, John Miles 1991: Immanent Art: From Structure to Meaning in
Traditional Oral Epic. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press. Pp. 135-89.