Key word for this dialogue: memnēmai, which means 'I have total recall' in special contexts and 'I remember' in ordinary contexts. The special contexts involve memory by way of song. I will get to the specifics later.
Passage (A) Iliad IX 524-528:
We [= Phoenix speaking about himself] have heard in song the glories [klea] of heroes of old time, how they quarreled when they were roused to fury, but still they could be won over by gifts, and fair words could soothe them. I have in my mind [memnēmai] an old story - a very old one - and you are all friends, {note 1} so I will tell it. {note 2}
{note 1} The word philoi 'friends' means literally 'near-and-dear' ones. The idea of 'near-and-dear', which is a way to translate philos (that is the singular form; the plural is philoi) shows that this word has an important emotional component. As we will see later, the key to understanding the micro-narrative of Phoenix is to be found in the macro-Narrative of the Iliad. As we will also see, a central theme of the micro-narrative is the power of emotions, and a central character turns out to be someone who is not mentioned a single time in the micro-narrative: he is Achilles' best friend, the hero Patroklos.
{note 2} When we see in the Iliad a story-within-a-story, which is a micro-narrative within the macro-Narrative, then the narrator of that micro-narrative has to reassure his audiences that he has total recall, just like the Narrator of the Iliad. This is what happens when the old hero Phoenix begins to narrate to Achilles and other heroes the story of the earlier hero Meleager, in Iliad IX. Phoenix is telling this story about Meleager because he wants to persuade Achilles to accept the offer of Agamemnon. That is the purpose of this narrator. As we will see later, however, the purpose of the Narrator of the macro-Narrative (the Iliad) is different, going beyond the purpose of the narrator of the micro-narrative, who is Phoenix.
What kind of memory is conveyed by the word memnēmai, which means 'I have total recall'? In order to understand this kind of memory, let us consider again some words I quoted earlier:
From J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield is given a quotation by his teacher: "The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one." The teacher goes on to say: "Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them...if you want to. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry." - emphasis mine.
For the moment, I highlight the idea of "keeping records." When we read the word "history" here, it means generally a record of human memory
We have an interesting way of using the word "record" even in the era when CD-s have replaced the old vinyl "records." We still say "record store" when we buy CD-s. I suspect it is because of the idea of memory inherent in "record."
Let us pursue further the concept of "to record, to put on record." In the earliest phases of ancient Greek song culture, the process of recording things that must be remembered, of putting things on the record, was not ordinarily done by way of the technology of writing per se. (Writing did not become a widespread technology in ancient Greece till around 550, and even then it was confined to the uppermost strata of society; it started to become widespread only toward the end of the 5th century.) In the Archaic period of Greek history (around the 8th c. through the 6th c.: for a 5-minute historical sketch, see Introduction #2), the idea of recording was mostly a matter of memory and of techniques of memory, mnemonics. In this connection, we will study the mentality of total recall.
"Total recall" is a special mentality of remembering, of putting things on record, common in traditional societies. In terms of this mentality, to remember is to re-live an experience, including someone else's experience, including even the experiences of heroes in the remote past of the heroic age.
But remembering in this song culture requires a special medium, song (which includes poetry). Such song, such singing, is an oral tradition.
The Homeric Iliad derives from an oral tradition of singing: composition-in-performance. That is, composition is an aspect of performance and vice versa.
In this kind of oral tradition, there is no script, since the technology of writing is not required for composition-in-performance.
In Homeric poetry, the basic medium of remembering is heroic song or kleos.
The basic unit of Homeric kleos is the dactylic hexameter.
The basic rhythm of this unit is
- u u - u u - u u - u u - u u - -.
"-" = long syllable, "u" = short syllable.
{Nagy recitation of Iliad I 1-13.}
Over 15,000 of these hexameter lines make up the Iliad.
In ancient Greek song culture, the kleos of the Iliad is considered to be a medium of total recall. In Iliad II 484-486, for example, the Narrator calls on the Muses, goddesses of memory, to tell him the part of the Troy narrative known as the Catalogue of Ships. The Muses are expected to tell the Narrator exactly, and the Narrator will tell his audience exactly. This part of the Troy narrative catalogues all the important details - about which warriors came to Troy in how many ships, and so on; many modern readers get distracted and even bored when they read through the Catalogue, but it was of the greatest cultural interest and importance to the audiences of the Iliad in the Archaic period. So important was the Catalogue that the Narrator needed special powers of memory to get it right. Accordingly, the Narrator prays to the Muses (even though he has already prayed to them at the start of the Iliad), as if he were starting the narration all over again. I give you here a literal translation of Iliad II 484-486:
Passage (B) Iliad II 484-486:
And now, O Muses dwelling on Olympus, tell me - for you are goddesses and are in all places so that you see all things, while we [= the Narrator] know nothing except what is heard [kleos] - who were the chiefs and princes of the Danaans?
The Narrator is saying that he does not have to know anything in order to tell the narrative of the Catalogue: all he has to do is to 'hear the kleos'. Since the goddesses of memory were there when the heroic actions happened, and since they saw and heard everything, they know everything. The Narrator needs to know nothing, he needs to experience nothing. To repeat, all he has to do is to 'hear the kleos' from the goddesses of memory and then to tell those who hear him what he is hearing.
Now I give you an even more literal translation of the first two lines in Iliad II 484-486:
Tell me, Muses, you who live in your Olympian abodes,
since you are goddesses and you were there and you know everything,
but we [= the Narrator] only hear the kleos and we know nothing.
Despite our first impressions, this is not a modest statement on the part of the Narrator: just the opposite. He is boasting that his mind is directly connected to what the goddesses of memory actually saw and heard. They "tell" his mind what they saw and heard. What he narrates about heroes and even gods is exactly what the Muses saw. What he "quotes" from the spoken words of heroes and even of gods is exactly what the Muses heard. The Narrator's mind is supposed to see and hear what the Muses saw and heard. His mind has the power of total recall.
Let us consider a situation where we see a a story-within-a-story, that is, where a narrator narrates a micro-narrative within the macro-Narrative of the Iliad. In such a situation, the narrator of that micro-narrative has to reassure his audiences that he has total recall that matches the total recall of the Narrator of the macro-Narrative, which is the Iliad. This is what happens when the old hero Phoenix, in Iliad IX, begins to narrate to Achilles and other heroes the story of the earlier hero Meleager. Phoenix is telling this story about Meleager because he wants to persuade Achilles to accept the offer of Agamemnon. That is the purpose of this narrator. As we will see later, however, the purpose of the Narrator of the Iliad is different: it goes far beyond the purpose of Phoenix.
The story told by Phoenix to Achilles in Scroll IX of the Iliad is intended as a model for the story about Achilles, which is a story-in-progress. The kleos of predecessors is being set up as a model for the kleos of the main hero of the Iliad. Going back to Passage A, I now translate for you more literally the introductory words of Phoenix's narrative in Iliad IX 524-525:
This is the way [houtōs] that we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the glories [klea] of men who were heroes of old time - about a time when someone was roused to tempestuous fury...
Earlier, I gave a less literal translation: 'We [= Phoenix speaking about himself] have heard in song the glories [klea] of heroes of old time, how they quarreled when they were roused to fury.'
Continuing the text (lines 526-528)... 'but still they could be won over by gifts, and fair words could soothe them. I have in my mind an old story - a very old one - and you are all friends, so I will tell it.'
We need to note in particular the expression klea andrōn, which I have translated as 'glories [= klea = plural of kleos 'glory'] of men (of old time)'. This is how the heroic song of Homeric poetry refers to itself.
Now we come to another example of klea andrōn. In Iliad IX 189, Achilles himself is pictured as singing the klea andrōn in his tent. His only audience seems to be Patroklos. In effect, Achilles seems to be singing to himself.
What we see here is a clue about Achilles himself as a virtuoso performer of song. He is not only the subject of songs that are the klea andrōn. He is also the performer of such songs. And the same goes for Patroklos, the meaning of whose name is relevant, as we will see later. About Achilles as a virtuoso performer... I will come back to this point at the end of these notes.
Passage (C) Iliad IX 186-191:
When they reached the ships and tents of the Myrmidons, they found Achilles playing on a lyre, a beautiful one, of exquisite workmanship, and its cross-bar was of silver. It was part of the spoils that he had taken when he destroyed the city of Eetion, and he was now diverting himself with it and singing the glories [klea] of heroes. He was alone with Patroklos, {note 1} who sat facing him and said nothing, waiting till he [= Achilles] would cease singing. Odysseus and Ajax now came in - Odysseus leading the way - and stood before him. Achilles sprang from his seat with the lyre still in his hand, and Patroklos, when he saw the guests, rose also.
{note 1} This hero's full name is Patrokleēs, meaning 'he who has the kleos / klea of the ancestors'
In a lecture delivered by the late Albert B. Lord about this medium of heroic song, he singles out the Homeric expression klea andrōn.
"Albert Lord talks about heroic song."
Lord is comparing the ancient Homeric medium of heroic song with media of heroic song that have survived into the twentieth century. Among these survivals is the tradition of heroic song in the South Slavic areas of the Balkans, specifically in the former Yugoslavia. It was two Harvard professors, Milman Parry (died 1935) and Albert Lord (died 1991), who pioneered the systematic study of oral traditions of heroic song in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and parts of Serbia. Both these scholars were Classicists as well as ethnographers, and their knowledge of Homeric poetry turned out to be a valuable source of comparative insights in their study of the living oral traditions of the South Slavic peoples. For an engaging introduction to the pathfinding research of Parry and Lord, I recommend the well-known book of Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Harvard University Press 1960; 2nd ed. by Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, with new introduction).
A case in point is the singer Avdo Međedović. One of his compositions, recorded by Milman Parry of Harvard, was about 12,000 lines long.
What is a "line" here? Avdo's basic medium of remembering: heroic song.
The basic unit is the heroic decasyllable.
The basic rhythm of this unit is
- u - u - u - u - u.
"Avdo sings a song of heroes."
Back to the narrative told by Phoenix... As we saw in Passage A, the key word that introduces the narrative of Phoenix is memnēmai, which I translate as 'I have total recall, I totally recall' (in this special kind of context, the noun for the thing recalled takes the accusative case; in ordinary contexts, the noun for the thing recalled takes the genitive case, and in such cases we may translate 'I have memories of'). Phoenix uses this word in Iliad IX 527-528 as he starts to narrate a story from the distant heroic past:
'I totally recall [memnēmai] this event of the past - it is not a new thing - and how it happened. You are all near and dear [philoi], and I will tell it in your presence.'
Here is the wording used by Samuel Butler in his translation:
'I have an old story in my mind - a very old one - but you are all friends and I will tell it.'
I like the way Butler's rendition captures the idea of "total recall" here: Phoenix has an old story not on his mind but in his mind, as if it were implanted into his mind.
Phoenix is a hero in the epic of the Homeric Iliad, and this epic is a narrative about the distant heroic past - from the standpoint of, say, an Athenian audience of the Archaic period. Phoenix is here the narrator to an audience of other heroes. His narrative-within-a-narrative is about the even more distant heroic past.
But he is a different narrator from the Narrator of the Iliad: he does not have to invoke the goddesses of memory, the Muses. The Narrator of the Narrative that contains the narrative of Phoenix has already invoked the Muses.
Phoenix has total recall because he uses the medium of song and because his mind is connected to the power source of song; in fact, he has to use song, because he is inside the medium of song. (Remember: he is "speaking" in heroic hexameters, just like the Narrator who "quotes" him.) When Phoenix says memnēmai, he is in effect saying: "I have total recall by means of using the medium of song."
Similarly, as we have already seen in Dialogue 01a, kleos means not just glory but glory by means of using the medium of song. This medium is a special way of speaking in a special way, of special speech.
Notice how Phoenix says that his audience has to be 'near and dear' (my translation) or "friends" (Butler's translation): the Greek word is philoi. This qualification is all-important. As we will see in a minute, "total recall" can "work" only if the audience is emotionally connected to the narrator. The word philos (singular) / philoi (plural) means 'friend' as a noun and 'near and dear' as an adjective.
The idea of 'dear' conveyed by the word philos shows that this word has an important emotional component. As we will see later, the key to the micro-narrative of Phoenix is to be found in the macro-Narrative of the Iliad. As we will also see, the key theme is the power of emotions, and the key character turns out to be someone who is not mentioned a single time in the micro-narrative: that someone is Achilles' best friend, the hero Patroklos.
{I mention, in passing, Richard P. Martin's basic finding in The Language of Heroes (Cornell UP 1989): he shows that narratives within the master Narrative of the Iliad contain markers for and about the audiences of the master Narrative.}
A special way of speaking, a special speech, marks what is being performed, not just said. Earlier, just a few lines earlier, at Iliad IX 524-525, Phoenix says (as we saw already earlier):
'This is the way we [= I, Phoenix] learned it, the songs [klea = plural of kleos] about heroes of old time, about a time when someone was roused to tempestuous fury...'
The poetry and song of kleos is a performance.
So, things that we do in everyday ways, like remembering, can be done by way of song in other cultures.
A culture that uses song as a speech act can be described as a song culture.
The narrative that Phoenix "quotes" is another beautiful example of compression (see Dialogue 01a again). The climax of this compressed narrative will be the words of a woman who is crying. Her name is Cleopatra [= Kleopatra]. I now turn to the full story, as told by Phoenix...
Passage (D) Iliad IX 550-602:
So long as Meleager was in the field things went badly for the Kouretes, and for all their numbers they could not hold their ground under the city walls; but in the course of time anger [kholos] entered Meleager in his thinking [noos], as will happen sometimes even to a sensible man. He was incensed with his mother Althaea, and therefore stayed at home with his wife, whom he had courted as a youth, fair Kleopatra, {note 1} who was daughter of Marpessa daughter of Euenos, and of Idēs a man then living. It was he who took his bow and faced King Apollo himself for fair Marpessa's sake; her father and mother then named her Alcyone, {note 2} because her mother had lamented with the plaintive strains of the halcyon-bird when Phoebus Apollo had carried her off. Meleager, then, stayed at home with wife, nursing the anger which he felt by reason of his mother's curses. His mother, grieving for the death of her brother, prayed to the gods, and beat the earth with her hands, calling upon Hades and on terrifying Persephone as she went down on her knees, and her bosom was wet with tears as she prayed that they should kill her son - and an Erinys that roams in darkness and knows no mercy heard her, from below in Erebos. Then was heard the din of battle about the gates of Calydon, and the dull thump of the battering against their walls. Now the elders of the Aetolians sought out Meleager; they sent the chief of their priests, and begged him to come out and help them, promising him a great reward. They told him to choose fifty acres, the most fertile in the plain of Calydon, the one-half a vineyard and the other an open plough-land. The old warrior Oeneus implored him, standing at the threshold of his room and beating the doors in supplication. His sisters and his mother herself implored him over and over again, but he kept on refusing them all the more; those of his comrades who were nearest and dearest [philtatoi] to him also implored him, but they could not move him till the enemy was battering at the very doors of his chamber, and the Kouretes had scaled the walls and were setting fire to the city. Then at last his sorrowing wife detailed the horrors that befall those whose city is taken; she reminded him how the men are slain, and the city is given over to the flames, while the women and children are carried off into captivity; {note 3} when he heard all this, his heart was touched, and he put on his armor to go forth. Thus yielding to his heart he saved the city of the Aetolians; but they now gave him nothing of those rich rewards that they had offered earlier, and though he saved the city he took nothing by it. Do not then, my near and dear one [philos], think this way; do not let a daimōn steer you in this direction. When the ships are burning it will be a harder matter to save them.
{note 1} Note the name of the wife of Meleager: Kleopatra.
{note 2} Alcyone is the second name of the wife of Meleager. In ancient Greek lore, the alcyon / halcyon is a bird that sings songs of lament over the destruction of cities.
{note 3} The philosopher Aristotle (4th century) thinks that the emotions of "fear" (phobos) and "pity" (eleos) are essential for understanding Classical tragedy.
In this connection, it is important to consider the meaning of philoi and this word's denoting of emotions:
{For the moment, we will consider the concept of lamentation simply in terms of crying. The case in point: Cleopatra, a key figure in the Meleager narrative. Later, we will note the parallelism of "Cleopatra" with Patroklos. The hero's actions are swayed by a woman's tears.}
To repeat: special speech marks what is being performed, not just said.
Cleopatra not only cries: she is performing a lament.
***The performance of songs by women is an important topic in this course. The traditions of such performances pervade the Iliad. In fact, as we will see in dialogues to come, Homeric poetry needs to be rethought in the light of the women's song traditions that pervade it. Please take the time to read in the Sourcebook, already at this early stage of the course, all the fragments of Sappho and Alcman. Reading these fragments will take you less than half an hour altogether. We will discuss in the dialogues to come the relevance of the themes to be found in these fragments. The earlier you acquaint yourselves with the look and feel of these traditions, the better.***
The lament of Cleopatra highlights the emotion of grief. The Meleager narrative explores the combinations and permutations of emotions in a hero, especially love, grief (sadness), and anger.
In the case of love and sadness, I can show some analogies in contemporary popular media:
Both these film clips illustrate the idea that the musical recalling of a memory is the "same thing" as the reliving of an experience, with all its emotions. If you "recall" someone else's experience by way of song or music, then that experience and all its emotions become your own, even if they had not been originally yours.
***The song culture of "Classical" opera likewise explores such combinations and permutations of emotions. In this respect, opera derives from the song culture of ancient Greek epic and tragedy.***
An example, to which we will come back again later, is the aria Un bel d“ "One fine day" from Puccini's Madame Butterfly.
As we will see in dialogues to come, Achilles himself is a virtuoso in expressing emotions by way of song, that is, by way of klea andrōn. Especially the emotions of sorrow, anger, hatred, and love. And the same goes for
1) Patroklos in the macro-Narrative. The meaning of his name is relevant, as we will see later.
2) Kleopatra in the micro-narrative. The meaning of her name is likewise relevant.