BMCR 2009.07.41: Rabel on Rinon, Homer and the Dual Model of the Tragic

Yoav Rinon, Homer and the Dual Model of the Tragic.  Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 2008.  Pp. 220.  ISBN 9780472116638.
$65.00.

Reviewed by Robert J. Rabel, University of Kentucky ([email protected])
Word count:  2424 words
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Table of Contents (http://lccn.loc.gov/2008015030)

In this ambitious book, Yoav Rinon defines and discusses what he takes
to be the essence of "the tragic" itself, as opposed to its appearance
within the genre-specific texts of Greek tragedy. Modern discussions of
the tragic have been for the most part confined to discussions of the
plays themselves. Plato and Aristotle thought otherwise: both regarded
Homer as a tragic poet of the first rank. Rinon's book thus follows
from an ancient tradition of Homeric analysis, inasmuch as the tragic
is distilled from Plato and Aristotle, mostly from Aristotle, and then
made concrete by application to the Homeric poems. The argument is made
with clarity and great insight, though I have reservations regarding
the way Rinon sees humans as victims without much influence in the
making of the tragedies that befall them.

Rinon takes from Aristotle four components he sees as essential
characteristics of the tragic: suffering (pathos), recognition
(anagnorisis), luck (tuche^), and the two possible directions in which
a tragic reversal may move. Suffering is a "destructive or painful
act." Recognition for Aristotle involves reaching an understanding over
time of one's true status and relationship to others. Rinon widens the
scope of tragic recognition to include what he calls "metaphysical
recognition," defined as "a deep cognizance of one's total subjection
to the gods, fate, or time, powers either indifferent or, more
commonly, hostile to individual success and happiness" (p. 10).
Thirdly, the Aristotelian concepts of good and bad luck are essential
features of the tragic, for no proper explanation, outside of luck, can
be given for why a life will turn out well or ill. Luck is the
determining factor. Finally, the duality posited in the title also
echoes Aristotle's thinking, for the tragic reversal takes place
between the poles of good or bad luck, moving across time in either
direction. The Iliad reflects the inexplicable and implacable movement
over time from good to bad luck, while the Odyssey moves in the
opposite direction, one equally incapable of being comprehensible to
the tragic personage, from bad to good. Missed kairos, the critical
time for the accomplishment or non-accomplishment of one's purposes, is
the factor that plays the decisive role in determining the course of a
tragic life. Rinon's view of the lot of mortals, when viewed through
the lens of a tragic outlook, is stark and grim: people are for the
most part unhappy, this unhappiness stemming directly from the fact of
their humanness (p. 5). Working with the above concepts, Rinon defines
the tragic as "a worldview reflecting the precarious position of the
human being in a world determined by two factors, time and the divine,
over which he or she has almost no influence" (p. 2). An important and
surprising feature of Rinon's analysis of the Iliad in Chapter 1 is
that in much the same way both Achilles and Agamemnon emerge equally as
tragic figures. They are viewed as having "similar traits that lead to
similar tragic outcomes" (p. 21), and they develop much the same tragic
outlook over the course of the poem.

Chapter 1 ("A Tragic Pattern in the Iliad: Missed Kairos,
Misunderstandings, and Missing the Dead") analyzes the tragic
experience and development of a tragic outlook on the macroscopic level
in the cases of Achilles and Agamemnon and, incidentally, finds the
tragic sketched on the microscopic level in stories told by and about
Phoenix and Meleager in Book 9. Rinon views the Iliad as a story of
"ill synchronization" reflected in various cases of a missed kairos.
First of all, at the beginning of the poem, when Agamemnon is asked to
give back Chryseis to her father in return for abundant compensation,
he misses the "right time" (kairos) to obtain satisfaction for his
loss. Rather, he reacts in anger and dismisses Chryses from the camp.
Because of the resultant plague, he is soon required to pay reparations
to the god Apollo (p. 19). It is such refusal to give in to what is
necessary that sets one on the road to tragedy, while acknowledgment of
past error brings "freedom from the vicious circle of the tragic
pattern" (p. 14). Agamemnon soon blunders a second time by taking
Briseis, Achilles' prize, whereupon Achilles, like the king, responds
in anger "at the anticipated loss of a desired object" (p. 22).
However, in Book 9, Agamemnon takes responsibility for this mistake; he
offers to return Achilles' prize, gives up his claim to possession of
Briseis, and offers additional compensation (p. 23 f.). At this point,
according to Rinon, the tragic pattern terminates in Agamemnon's case,
for "when the human agent gives up both the desired object and any
claims for compensation, and when he is willing, in addition, to
compensate for his earlier error, the tragic pattern reaches its
termination" (p. 24). However, the tragic pattern in Agamemnon's case
is only fully consummated when in Book 19 the king makes his great
speech about the ruinous effects of ate^. According to Rinon, when
Agamemnon invokes Zeus, Moira, and Erinus as the cause of his ate^, he
is expressing "a metaphysical recognition" of the helpless and
unfortunate human condition, "delineating the deep and most terrible
roots of human conduct" (p. 36). In the case of Achilles, the pattern
is realized in similar terms and is consummated in a similar
recognition of the tragic human lot. In Book 9, Achilles turns down
Agamemnon's offer to return Briseis and receive additional gifts. As a
result, he, like Agamemnon in Book 1, misses the appropriate moment
(kairos) for receiving compensation and must, again like Agamemnon,
suffer additional loss, in this instance the death of Patroclus.
Finally, in Achilles' case the tragic pattern is consummated in the
tale of the two jars, which Achilles relates to Priam in Book 24 of the
poem. According to Achilles, Zeus dispenses good and evil to wretched
mortals on principles that mortals simply cannot comprehend
(24.525-533). For both Agamemnon and Achilles, the tragic pattern
"traces a missed kairos" and "charts the arduous path of one who has
missed the right moment as he makes his way toward the painful
psychological recognition of the irretrievable nature of his loss" (p.
43).

Rinon's analysis of the tragic pattern in the Iliad is likely to
encounter resistance from some readers, since he pays little regard to
the dramatic contexts in which Agamemnon's and Achilles' "metaphysical
recognitions" take place. Agamemnon is concerned throughout the poem to
evade blame for mistakes he makes, a characteristic mode of action we
see as early as the testing of the army at the beginning of Book 2.
Thus, it seems to me that the king in Book 19 is concerned to hoist
responsibility for his mistakes on to higher powers. Though E.R. Dodds
saw Agamemnon's speech on ate^ as a thoughtful meditation by Homeric
man on the theme of moral responsibility,[[1]] I am inclined to agree
with Oliver Taplin that Agamemnon's speech is a case of "obvious
special pleading," carried out by a man who, despite his every
advantage, behaves badly throughout the poem. In Taplin's words,
Agamemnon is simply "a nasty piece of work".[[2]] Nor can the dramatic
context of Achilles' remarks to Priam be ignored. His speech belongs to
the rhetorical genre of consolation; he is attempting to offer what
comfort he can provide to the old king, who lost his favorite son and
brought disaster upon his city by indulging Paris' irresponsible theft
of Helen, the event that caused the war in the first place.

R. does a good job in delineating parallels in how Achilles and
Agamemnon both miss the right time for receiving compensation, but I
disagree with the idea that the two are helpless victims of higher
powers. In R.'s reading of the poem, human beings are puppets of the
gods and of fate, and the knowledge gained through suffering is but a
(metaphysical) recognition of this fundamental human vulnerability. It
seems to me that Homer, on the contrary, is concerned to emphasize the
element of personal responsibility that Rinon sees as missing from his
conception of the tragic, where simple luck, not calculation determines
the outcome of a life. In this regard, attention should be paid to
Thetis' remark to Achilles in Book 18. Following the death of
Patroclus, she tells her son (rightly, I think): "these things have
been brought to pass for you by Zeus, as you earlier prayed, that the
sons of the Achaeans should be huddled at the sterns of their ships in
need of you" (18.74-77). Even Achilles himself recognizes the truth of
this judgment (18.79). The lyrics of an old song by Bertolt Brecht
nicely seem to fit the case of the tragedies caused and experienced by
Agamemnon and Achilles: "We all make the bed we must lie in/ and tuck
ourselves into it too./ And if somebody kicks, that will be me, dear,/
and if someone gets kicked that will be you." In the course of the
Iliad, Achilles and Agamemnon do much kicking, and they get kicked in
return, but both make the bed in which they must lie.

Chapter 2 ("Painful Remembrance of Things Past: Passive Suffering,
Agonizing Recognition, and Doleful Memories in the Odyssey")
investigates the place of suffering and recognition in the
establishment of the Odyssey as an epic with strong tragic overtones.
Suffering and recognition, Rinon argues, are not in themselves
sufficient to qualify a story as tragic. Otherwise, Telemachus would
emerge as a tragic figure, since he suffers much in the course of the
poem and comes to recognition (in the Aristotelian sense) of his
father. Therefore, the idea of missed kairos cannot be applied to him
(p. 46). On the other hand, missed kairos occurs frequently in the case
of the tragic figure Odysseus, for example, when he falls asleep after
leaving the island of Aeolus and on Thrinacia (pp. 48-50). In this
chapter, Rinon provides good and reasonable analyses of a number of
Odysseus' adventures, such as his meeting with the Sirens and the
episode with the dog Argus. As one would expect, he puts emphasis on
the idea of Odysseus as a suffering victim of higher powers (p. 64).

Chapter 3 ("The Pivotal Scene and the Tragic: Heteroglossia,
Focalization, and Colonialism in Odyssey 9") looks in detail at the
Cyclops episode. Here  Rinon employs Bakhtin's idea of heteroglossia
("double-voiced discourse") in order to describe the Cyclops episode as
the pivot around which a transition is accomplished from the old heroic
ethic of the Iliad to a new postwar ethic, represented by the eventual
return of Odysseus to Ithaca. Rinon provides persuasive and compelling
arguments to the effect that Odysseus' adventures on the way
home--especially the Cyclops episode--force him to rethink and
re-evaluate his position in the world (p. 70). While the old heroic
values are rejected, the new values are yet to be explicitly formulated
(p. 91), yet in their inchoate form they involve a deeper understanding
of human feelings and motives (p. 94) and reflect a broader postwar
perspective. Once again, however, I question the emphasis on the idea
of helplessness in the face of external powers. Such subjugation to
fate or other powers leaves little room for a recognition of Odysseus'
versatility and cunning intelligence (me^tis) as the determining
factors in his reacquisition of home and family. Rinon must deny to
Odysseus this aspect of active agency in the face of external threats
in order to qualify the Odyssey as tragic in his sense of the word. But
Odysseus must be recognized as more than a passive victim of fate or
the gods, unless one wishes to argue that Homer sees Odyssean me^tis as
itself a gift of fate or the gods, for which the hero can claim no
responsibility. In that case, Homer would be seeing Odysseus'
employment of me^tis as itself a fated occurrence. Such an argument
would perhaps be analogous to the response the Stoics made to the
so-called "lazy argument" (argos logos, no pun intended!) that the
Skeptics later employed against the Stoics[[3]].

Chapters 4 ("Hector in Flight: The Absurd and the Tragic in the Iliad")
returns to the Iliad. Rinon argues that the postwar ethic fully
developed in the  Odyssey  is adumbrated in the poem's description of
the unheroic death of Hector in Book 22. Homer accomplishes "an
evisceration of heroic signification in general" (p. 109) by
overloading detail and deleting mention of important aspects of
Hector's flight from Achilles. Albert Camus' idea of the "absurd,"
comprising suffering and psychological recognition "of the horrifying
aspects of the human condition" (p. 107), provides the methodological
underpinnings of this discussion.

Chapters 5 and 6 ("Mise en abyme and the Tragic: Metaphysical
Recognition in the Three Songs of Demodocus" and "Tragic Hephaestus:
The Humanized God in the Iliad and the Odyssey") make use of the
concept of  mise en abyme ("a certain part of a literary work of art
that represents the work of art as a whole" [p. 115]). These chapters
argue that the songs of Demodocus in the Odyssey and the
characterization of  Hephaestus in both poems as a god endowed with
human characteristics offer ways by which scenes within the Iliad and
the Odyssey reflect upon what Rinon has defined as their tragic nature.
A brief summary chapter at the conclusion of the book ("The Iliad, the
Odyssey, and the Dual Model of the Tragic") recapitulates the argument
in brief compass.

The book has been well edited and produced by the University of
Michigan Press. I detected two typos: "seemly" should be "seemingly" on
p. 22, and "dew" should be "due" on p. 30.

While offering detailed analyses of the tragic element in the Homeric
poems, the author (quite deliberately) bypasses the question of the
extent to which his model of the tragic can be applied to the surviving
works of the Greek tragedians. I am left wondering whether the Greek
tragedians (and Homer as well) had such an orderly and concise
understanding of what constitutes the tragic. Does Rinon's conception
of the tragic fit the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides any
better than, say, Sir Philip Sidney's ideas about the tragic illuminate
and explain the element of the tragic in Shakespeare's plays? (Sidney,
like Rinon, also based his theories on Aristotle.) Regardless, my
personal reservations should in no way be taken to detract from my
admiration for a book from which I have learned much. All students and
teachers of Homer and of Greek tragedy will profit much from a careful
reading and consideration of Rinon's work.


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Notes:


1.   See E.R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1951), 1-27.

2.   See Oliver Taplin, "Agamemnon's Role in the Iliad," in
Characterization and Individuality in Greek Literature, ed. C. Pelling
(Oxford Clarendon Press, 1990), 65 and 75.

3.   Carneades and the Skeptics employed the "lazy argument" to argue
that it would be useless to do anything if, as the Stoics thought, all
things were fated. It would be useless, for example, to call in a
doctor in the event of illness, if one were already fated to recover or
not. Chrysippus and Stoics countered with the claim that calling in the
doctor would itself be a fated act. It is at least historically
interesting that this may be how the Stoics interpreted reference to
fated and divinely caused events in Homer, whom they regarded as having
anticipated much of their philosophy.