Download PDF | (Brill’s Companions to the Byzantine World 4) Wolfram Horandner_ Andreas Rhoby_ Nikos Zagklas - A Companion to Byzantine Poetry-Brill (2019).
590 Pages
Acknowledgements
The idea for a volume on the poetry of the entire Byzantine millennium dates as early as 2013. At that time, Wolfram had already been retired, Andreas was working on a corpus of Byzantine inscriptional epigrams, and Nikos was finishing a dissertation on the poetry of Theodore Prodromos. The Division of Byzantine Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, with its vibrant scholarly environment, was the place where the three of us used to meet every day. During our discussions on the Byzantines and their poetic tradition, we repeatedly observed that no study existed, which explored the Byzantine poetry written between the 4th and the 15th centuries as a whole. Thus, when we heard that Brill launched the Companion Series to the Byzantine World, we contacted Prof. Dr. Wolfram Brandes, the series’ editor, and asked if a volume on poetry would be suitable. His reply was positive and he encouraged us to pursue this book project. We would like to thank him for accepting our proposal and for all his encouragement throughout the years. We would also like to thank our contacts at Brill: firstly, Julian Deahl, who, until the time of his retirement, guided us through the early stages of the book; and secondly, Marcella Mulder and Elisa Perotti for their constant help and professional support over the last years. Moreover, we would like to express our gratitude to a number of individuals and institutes: Dr Michael Mulryan for the careful copyediting of the entire book; Grigori Simeonov for having undertaken this painstaking task of compiling the index; the Centre for Slavo-Byzantine Studies “Prof. Ivan Dujéev” for the permission to use the image of f. 3” of Codex D. gr. 282 for the book cover; and Prof. Peter Schreiner for putting us in contact with the Centre and facilitating the acquisition of the image.
However, the publication of this volume would not have been possible without the contributing authors. We thank all of them for their hard work and patience throughout the years. Finally, we are indebted to the anonymous reader for all the suggestions, which undoubtedly improved the volume.
Notes on Contributors
Eirini Afentoulidou is Research Associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Institute for Medieval Research, Division of Byzantine Research). She specializes in Byzantine language and literature, and Byzantine liturgical texts. She is preparing a critical edition of the Dioptra.
Gianfranco Agosti is Associate Professor of Classical and Late Antique Philology at the Sapienza University of Rome. He published two editions of Nonnos of Panopolis’ poems—Paraphrasis, Canto 5 (2003); Dionysiaca, Canti 25-39 (2013)—and he has written extensively on late antique and early Byzantine literature, art, epigraphy, and religion. He is currently preparing a book on late antique education and a monograph on late antique Greek metrical inscriptions.
Roderick Beaton is Emeritus Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King’s College London. He specializes in Greek literature, history and culture from the 12th century to the present day. His books include The Medieval Greek Romance (1996), George Seferis: Waiting for the Angel (2003), Byron’s Greece: Romantic Rebellion, Greek Revolution (2013) and Greece: Biography of a Modern Nations (2019).
Floris Bernard is Assistant Professor of Ancient Greek and Byzantine Literature at Ghent University. His book Writing and Reading Byzantine Secular Poetry, 1025-1081 discusses the relationship between poetry and society in uth-century Byzantium. He also coordinates a database of Byzantine book epigrams (www.dbbe .ugent.be).
Carolina Cupane is University Lecturer at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Vienna, as well as Senior Research Fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Institute for Medieval Studies, Division of Byzantine Research). Her research focuses on Byzantine vernacular literature, Byzantine narrative, comparative literature, cultural studies, cultural mobility and the migration of narrative motifs between East and West. She is the author of numerous publications on these topics and has also edited (together with Bettina Krénung) the Brill Companion to Fictional Storytelling in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean and Beyond (2016). She also edited and translated a selection of Late Byzantine vernacular romances (Romanzi cavallereschi bizantini, 1995) into Italian.
Kristoffel Demoen is Professor of Ancient and Medieval Greek Literature at Ghent University. His research interests are related to the transmission, transformation and adaptation of the ancient literary and cultural tradition, especially in Late Antiquity and the Byzantine period. He is currently working on the edition and commentary of the 10th-century Paradeisos.
Ivan Drpié
is Associate Professor of Byzantine Art History at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include the interplay between the visual and the verbal, medieval aesthetics and theories of the image, the agency of art objects, the history of subjectivity, and the cultural interactions between Byzantium and the Slavic world. Drpic is the author of Epigram, Art, and Devotion in Later Byzantium (2016), and is currently working on a book exploring the nexus of materiality, subjectivity, and the power of things in Byzantine culture.
Jiirgen Fuchsbauer is a Slavist working at the University of Innsbruck. He specializes in the history and older literature of the South and East Slavonic languages, as well as on text editions.
Antonia Giannouli
is Associate Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus. Her research interests focus on religious poetry, especially hymnography and commentaries on hymns, exegetical didaskaliai, rhetoric, and critical editions of Byzantine texts. Her publications include Die beiden byzantinischen Kommentare zum Grofsen Kanon des Andreas von Kreta. Eine quellenkritische und literarhistorische Studie (2007), and the edited volume From Manuscripts to Books—Vom Codex zur Edition (ed. with E. Schiffer, 2011).
Martin Hinterberger is Professor of Byzantine Literature at the University of Cyprus. He specializes in the language of Byzantine literature, emotion in Byzantine literature,and Byzantine (auto)biographical writing. His recent publications include Phthonos. Mifgunst, Neid und Eifersucht in der byzantinischen Literatur (2013) and the edited volume The Language of Byzantine Learned Language (2014).
Wolfram Horandner
is Emeritus Professor of Byzantine Literature at the Institute for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Vienna. Moreover, he is Senior Research Fellow at the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Institute for Medieval Studies, Division of Byzantine Research). His research activity covers various aspects of Byzantine literature, mainly poetry and rhetoric. His most important publications include Theodoros Prodromos, Historische Gedichte (1974), Der Prosarhythmus in der rhetorischen Literatur der Byzantiner (1981), and Forme et Fonction. Remarques sur la poésie dans la société byzantine (2017).
Elizabeth Jeffreys is Emeritus Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. She has published widely on topics in Byzantine literature; recent publications include Four Byzantine Novels (2012) and “A Constantinopolitan poet views Frankish Antioch’, Crusades 14 (2015).
Michael Jeffreys
studied classics at Cambridge (UK) and then completed a PhD on the border of Byzantine Studies and Modern Greek at the University of London, while teaching in a London school. After postdoctoral work in the US and Greece, he was appointed Lecturer in Modern Greek at the University of Sydney, Australia, where he took part in the extraordinary flowering of Greek education there in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and was elected Sir Nicholas Laurantus Professor of Modern Greek at Sydney. After taking early retirement at the end of millennium he returned to the UK and has been doing research at Oxford, largely in Byzantine Studies.
Marc D. Lauxtermann is Bywater and Sotheby Professor of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature, and Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford University. He has written extensively on Byzantine poetry and metre, and is the co-editor of a recent book on the letters of Psellos. Further research interests include translations of oriental tales in Byzantium, the earliest grammars and dictionariesofvernacularGreek,andthedevelopmentoftheGreeklanguageinthe 18th century.
Ingela Nilsson is Professor of Greek and Byzantine Studies at Uppsala University and Director of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (2019-21). She has published widely on questions of literature, narrative and imitation in Byzantium, with a special focus on the 12th century. Her most recent publications include the edited volumes Storytelling in Byzantium: Narratological Approaches to Byzantine Texts and Images (ed. with Ch. Messis and M. Mullett) and Reading the Late Byzantine Romance: A Handbook (ed. with A. Goldwyn), both published in 2018.
Emilie van Opstall is Assistant Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She specializes in Late Antique and Byzantine poetry, among others John Geometres’ hexameters and elegiacs: Jean Géometre. Poémes en hexameétres et en distiques élégiaques (2008). Her recent publications include the interdisciplinary volume Sacred Thresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity (2018).
Andreas Rhoby works at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Medieval Research, where he is deputy head of the Division of Byzantine Research. In addition, he is a Privatdozent at the University of Vienna and chair of the commission Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae, and one of the coordinators of the commission Inscriptiones Graecae Aevi Byzantinae of the Association Internationale des Etudes Byzantines. He has published extensively on Byzantine inscriptional epigrams (4 vols.: 2009-2018) and on other topics of Byzantine cultural history.
Kurt Smolak
is Emeritus Professor of Classical Philology, Late and Medieval Latin at the University of Vienna. His research is concerned with Late and Medieval Latin poetry, with a special focus on Prudentius, Biblical Epics, Carmina Burana, Medieval Comedy and the Ovidian tradition up to the present time. He also works on Early Byzantine poets (e.g. Gregory of Nazianzus, Synesius, and Nonnos) and Neolatin authors (especially Erasmus). He is the main editor of the periodical Wiener Studien. He is ordinary member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, for which he was coordinating the Commission for editing the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum from 2001 to 2012. He is also a corresponding member of the Academia Pontaniana in Naples.
Foteini Spingou is a Research Associate in Comparative Byzantine Studies at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh. She is a cultural historian with a particular interest in the intersection between art and literature. She currently finalizes the first full edition of the anonymous poetry in the Anthologia Marciana.
Maria Tomadaki is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Literary Studies of Ghent University. She specializes in Byzantine poetry, textual criticism and the reception of ancient poets in Byzantium. In her PhD thesis, defended at the University of Thessaloniki (2014), she prepared a critical edition of 236 iambic poems by John Geometres.
Ioannis Vassis is Professor of Medieval Greek Literature at Aristotle, University of Thessaloniki. He specializes in Byzantine poetry, and his recent publications include Leon Magistros Choirosphaktes, Chiliostichos Theologia (2002); Initia Carminum Byzantinorum (2005); and, together with Ioannis Polemis, A Greek Exile in 12-Century Malta. The Poem of the Ms. Matritensis BN 4577. A New Critical Edition with Translation and Notes (in Greek) (2016).
Nikos Zagklas is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Literature at the Department of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies of the University of Vienna. His research interests are concemed with Byzantine literary culture, with a particular interest in poetry and didactic literature. He is currently working on a new edition of a group of poems by Theodore Prodromos.
Byzantine Poetry: an Introduction
These six verses preface a long encomiastic poem by Manuel Philes addressed to the emperor Andronikos 11 Palaeologos in the late 13th or early 14th centuries. Their authorship cannot be attributed to Manuel Philes with certainty because of some blunt metric errors,? and some questions that the manuscript tradition raises.? It is very likely to be a book epigram composed by a less talented poet—most likely a scribe—who prompts the reader to memorize Philes’ poem, which is metrically modelled on that of Pisides. In fact, the rhythm of Philes’ dodecasyllables is closer to that by Pisides than any other Byzantine poet.* This is hardly surprising, when we consider that Philes was well read in the poetry of Pisides. Despite the lack of a close analysis between Philes’ Properties of Animals and Pisides’ Hexaemeron, it is beyond any doubt that the former owes a great deal to the latter.
Although probably not the work of Philes himself, this book epigram draws an uninterrupted line from the time of George Pisides up to that of Manuel Philes, from the seventh to early 14th century.® It goes without saying that these two authors are significant landmarks in the development of poetry in Byzantium: the former contributed a great deal to the formation of many of the main features of Byzantine poetry; the latter was the most prolific author of the late Byzantine period.®
Pisides’ work triggered the transition from the classical iambic trimeter to Byzantine dodecasyllable, which remained the main metre of Byzantine poetry until the time of Manuel Philes and beyond. Moreover, Pisides is deemed the most celebrated court poet of the early Byzantine period,’ while Manuel Philes is the court poet par excellence of the Palaeologan period, working on commission for noble individuals and producing poems across a wide range of genres. But this unbroken tradition is also accompanied by a number of variations and deviations, when we compare the two authors and their works.
Take, for example, their social status: whereas George Pisides acquired various offices at the patriarchal administration, most probably Philes never was appointed to a high-ranking office.® As a matter of fact, Philes’ corpus strongly indicates that he was much more dependent on commissions than his 7th-century fellow poet. Unlike Pisides’ works, his poetry teems with petitions and requests for favors. The different social standing the two poets enjoyed is mirrored in the distinguished poetics, and even different functions, of their works.?
While both George Pisides and Manuel Philes are inextricable agents of the Byzantine poetic tradition, we are not always so sure for some other authors, especially those that were active before the time of George Pisides. But the question at stake is whether we can impose clear-cut chronological borderlines on Byzantine poetry, and whether we can establish any fundamental prerequisites, in order to consider a poet as agent of this tradition.
The 15th century signifies the end of Byzantine poetry and literature more broadly, but we cannot say with certainty that the 7th century constitutes its starting point. Is George Pisides to be credited for the beginning of Byzantine poetry? Or should we better see his corpus as a kind of caesura for the history of Byzantine poetic tradition? In other words, is it more accurate to say that his corpus demonstrates a transition from late antique poetry to Byzantine poetry, or rather a transition from the early to the middle phase of Byzantine poetic tradition? This is a particular difficult question since the Greek poetry written within the 4th and 6th centuries can fit both late antique and Byzantine culture.
Furthermore, if we take a quick glance at modern conceptions about the beginning of the literary culture of Byzantium, there seems to be no consensus between scholars. The upper boundaries of Byzantine literature for Alexander Kazhdan are to be placed after George Pisides’ times;!° Herbert Hunger, on the other hand, noted that the period between the 4th and 6th centuries can be called both late antique and early Byzantine." Also, Hunger placed a special emphasis on the production of classicizing literature as a criterion for the continuity of literature from Antiquity to the Byzantine period. Panagiotis Agapitos in turn placed the beginning of Byzantine literature at the start of the 4th century because of the “structural break’, to use his words, in the Greek and Latin literary cultures, which is reflected in the works of Eusebios of Caesarea and Lactantius.!”
However, poetry is a field of literary culture with its own peculiarities. The existence of metre does not allow us to make any slips in including a poet in the Byzantine tradition. We cannot fail to notice, for instance, that poems written in the Byzantine dodecasyllable from the time of George Pisides until that of Manuel Philes and beyond, share the same characteristics and is one of the main reasons that these authors are part of the Byzantine poetic tradition.
That said, there are some poets, even before Pisides, that should be considered part of the Byzantine tradition. Gregory Nazianzus’ poems are no less Byzantine than those written in the Middle and Late Byzantine periods. Even though his iambic poetry stands between the classical iambic trimeter and Byzantine dodecasyllable—since it includes resolutions!’— the themes and the content of his poetry are Christian and Byzantine sensu stricto. Nazianzus’ work eis ta éuuetpa (“on his own verses”), where he speaks about the dual meaning of metron (‘moral moderation’ as well as ‘metre’, namely poetry), is a kind of programmatic statement about the use of verse throughout the entire Byzantine period.!* What was Homer for Classical and Hellenistic poetry is Gregory for middle and late Byzantine poetry.
His corpus constitutes the cornerstone of the Byzantine “poetic construction” as we know it, and for this reason, we cannot consider him less Byzantine than later poets, such as George Pisides, Theodore Stoudites or John Mauropous. This means that the chronological span of Byzantine poetry ranges between the time of Gregory of Nazianzus and the 15th century. When it comes to its beginning we should be flexible, and view the centuries between the 4th and early 7th centuries as a transitional period during which poetry can bear both labels: it can be both late antique and Byzantine.
When we look at geographical boundaries and the medium of language it becomes even more clear that it is impossible to place poetry within a frame with clear-cut edges. Poetry was not only written in Constantinople and the periphery of the empire, but also outside its official boundaries. The most wellknown examples are the poets who were active in Sicily and southern Italy from the 12th century onwards. In the same vein, the lion’s share are written in Greek, but Latin played an important role during Late Antiquity and the Early Byzantine period; both Priscian and Corippus were active in Constantinople, where they wrote poems in Latin on various occasions.
Taking all this into consideration, it can be argued that the chronological timespan, the geographical borderlines, and the issue of language may be important elements that help us to formulate a watertight definition of Byzantine poetry, but at times these very same elements pose questions and make its borderlines less distinct. In case one of them is absent during the genesis of a poem, it does not necessarily mean that this particular work is less Byzantine than other ones.
The picture becomes even more blurred if we try to touch upon conceptual connotations bound with Byzantine poetry. We encounter challenges when we try to come up with a description of its aesthetic and poetics, while we run the risk to diminish its value if we try to understand and evaluate its aesthetics according to our modern conceptions. Form is essentially what defined a text as a poem for the Byzantines,!® for there was no difference between poetry and verse. Regardless of the metre in which a text was written in Byzantium, it was considered part of its poetic tradition.
This does not mean that Byzantines did not distinguish between bad and good poetry, between poems of low and high quality. The correct use of a metre was the main criterion for them to impose on a work such labels, but it was not the only one. Even in the literature of a premodern society like the Byzantine one, the concepts of poetic prose and prosaic poetry were not completely unknown.!” However, contrary to our expectations, the Byzantines did not use different conceptual terms for texts in prose or verse;!®
the word logoi very often stands for texts written both in verse and prose.!9 Again this does not mean that they could not distinguish between the two forms, but for them poetry was not a superior form of literature placed in some ivory tower far above prose. This is clearly a romantic view that Byzantines did not share.?° Even though they did not place the composition of poetry above the writing of prose, it should be stressed that they did associate the use of verse with particular aesthetics and features that are not to be found in prose texts. Floris Bernard has, for example, discussed four merits that are exclusively related to the composition of poetry: the iambike idea, poikilia, metron, and charis.21
In sum, Byzantine poetry is a broad field of rhetorical composition that includes all works that conform to the rules of a metre.?* Irrespective of their length or their generic qualities, they are considered poetry. There are various genres or text types in verse, including monodies, epitaphs, encomia, epithalamia, panegyrics, ethopoiiai, ekphraseis, satires and invectives, hymns, prayers, didactic poems, oracles, book epigrams, riddles, letters, and many others.?3
Even long narrative works can be considered poems for the Byzantines. As non-metrical novels and chronicles are entitled to be called prose works, their metrical counterparts cannot be devoid of the title of poetry. A work in Byzantium and other cultures can be more than one thing and fall into various conceptual fields. It can partake in one or more genres and be composed either in prose or verse. As simple as it may seem to be: when written in verse, it is a poem; when not, it is a prose work. Form in Byzantium played the most decisive role for the consideration of a text as poem;?* hence, poetry in Byzantium can be considered the “other self” of prose.
1 The Research History of Byzantine Poetry: Transformations and New Approaches
In his “Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur” Karl Krumbacher opens the chapter that deals with Byzantine poetry with the words of Gottfried Bernhardy from his history of Greek literature, published about three decades earlier:25 Poesie im wahren Sinne des Wortes kannten die Byzantiner nicht, und sie hat unter ihnen niemals bestanden. Poetry in the true sense of the word was unknown to the Byzantines, and never existed among them.
Although Krumbacher notes that these remarks are extremely harsh, he goes on further below to say that such a judgement is justified. According to Krumbacher, the poetry with a secular focus does not display any innovative features during the Byzantine period. Krumbacher argued that the Byzantines created something “new” and “original” only in the field of religious poetry and vernacular poetry.
Approximately 50 years after Krumbacher’s “Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur’, Franz Délger published his short study “Die Byzantinische Dichtung in der Reinsprache’.?6 As clearly indicated in the title, the focus is placed on the study of the poetry written in a highbrow register (“Reinsprache’). In the opening paragraph, Délger claims that if one seeks to offer a fair appraisal of the value of Byzantine literature, then a comparison with our modern views or with works from Antiquity must be avoided.”
In view of such a programmatic statement at the very beginning of his book, one would accept a fair assessment (or at least a balanced one), but, unfortunately, Délger’s approach does not fulfil our expectations, and we soon come across judgements such as the following one:28
Dichtung ist nicht mehr Ausdruck drangender Leidenschaft oder erschiitternder Schicksalstragik, sondern wird zum Ornament einer kirchlich und politisch approbierten Schriftstellerei, die gar nicht mehr den Ehrgeiz hat, originell zu sein. Es itiberrascht uns nicht, wenn wir auf Gestalten wie Theodoros Prodromos (12. Jh.) stofSen, welche die Dichtung zum Gefaf ihrer Adulation und Bettelei erniedrigten.
Poetry is no longer an expression of pressing passion or shattering “Schicksalstragik” [= tragedy of fate], but becomes the ornament of an ecclesiastically and politically approved writing, which no longer has the ambition to be original. It is not surprising that we come across figures like Theodore Prodromos (12th cent.), who debased poetry [by using it] as a medium for their obsequious flattery and begging.
Although Délger published his study five decades after Krumbacher’s “Literaturgeschichte’, his attitude toward Byzantine poetry does not differ significantly. It is obvious that both scholars did not take into account the context of these texts, and their work did not do justice to Byzantine poetry. They fail to understand that the genesis and use of poetry in Byzantium cannot be compared with our standards, and needs to be viewed with the Byzantine “reality” and the needs of this premodern society. In Byzantium, poetry was not necessarily related to emotional expression and other lofty literary subjects.
Pejorative judgements were not the only problems with the earlier studies of Byzantine poetry. Both Krumbacher and Dolger were looking for a tripartite division of Byzantine poetry into epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry that was already known for classical works,?9 while Herbert Hunger applied this tripartite arrangement to the section that discusses Byzantine poetry in his “Profane Literatur der Byzantiner’.3° But this kind of classification is of no use, simply because epos, lyric poetry and drama did not exist as self-contained generic fields in Byzantium.*! It is clear that the methodology of all these early studies was at an initial stage, since they studied Byzantine poetry in conjunction with the classical or modern conceptions. This was first pointed out, in an explicit manner, by Marc Lauxtermann in his book that examined Byzantine poetry from George Pisides to John Geometres:5”
Since we know so little about Byzantine poetry, and since we continuously make the mistake of comparing the little we know to both classical and modern literature, it is time to broaden our horizon and become acquainted with the texts themselves.
This programmatic statement and his book constitute a “caesura” in the study of Byzantine poetry. He was the first who studied various genres of poetry in detail, while some of them had never been considered as separate types of texts before (perhaps the best example is the book epigram). Marc Lauxtermann has thus played a major role in the transformation of the research history of Byzantine poetry, but it should be stressed that another important scholar here is Wolfram Hérandner.
Hérandner contributed a lot to the shift in modern research in this new direction with his numerous publications on various issues surrounding Byzantine poetry, ranging from court and epigrammatic works to their oral circulation and manuscript transmission.?3 Moreover, in 2017 he published his short monograph “Forme et fonction. Remarques sur la poésie dans la société byzantine” that deals with Byzantine poetry over the entire Byzantine period. Both Lauxtermann’s and Hérandner’s studies were incredibly influential, and were the catalyst for a number of new studies in recent years, such as: Floris Bernard’s book on u1th-century secular poetry,*4 Ivan Drpic’s study on epigrammatic poetry in later Byzantium,?> and several collected volumes on poetry that discuss a wide array of themes and challenges.?®
A similar research shift occurred in the study of Byzantine metrics. Since modern scholarship on various Byzantine metres is vast, I will only refer to the research history of the dodecasyllable here. Whereas at the end of the igth century the Austrian classicist Isidor Hilberg classified Byzantine poets as “Klassiker’” (classics), “Epigonen” (epigones), and “Stiimper’” (bunglers),?” Paul Maas refuted this absurd classification a few years later. Even though prosody continues to play an important role in Byzantine poetry, he demonstrated that quantitative verses had in practice been replaced by accentual verses. By building upon Maas’ fundamental article “Der byzantinische Zwélfsilber’, many modern scholars have further enhanced our understanding of various aspects of the Byzantine dodecasyllable over the last three decades.°9
Needless to say, we have come a long way in our understanding of Byzantine poetry since the time of Krumbacher, Hilberg and Délger. Hérandner, Lauxtermann, and Bernard have put Byzantine poetry in a better perspective. Fortunately, negative judgements and unnecessary adherence to the ‘classics’ are no longer a part of recent work, allowing us to assess Byzantine poetry within its context of use and according to Byzantine perceptions, and even start appreciating its merits.
2 The Present Volume: an Overview
It is against this background of recent developments in the study of Byzantine poetry that the present book intends to embark on its journey of exploration. However, it should be stressed from the outset that a single volume cannot fully explore all aspects associated with poetic production over 1000 years; the material is vast and it would have been impossible to discuss in detail every single author and poem over this long timespan. The material has been arranged thematically into five main parts: 1) Preliminaries: Contexts, Language, Metrics and Style 2) Periods, Authors, Social and Cultural Milieus 3) Poetry in Byzantium and Beyond 4) Transmission and Circulation and 5) Particular Uses of Verse in Byzantium. Each of them aims to examine poetry from various angles, and demonstrate that poetry in Byzantium is a complex multi-layered construction.
The section “Preliminaries” aims to map some of the main aspects of Byzantine poetry. It starts with a discussion of its “context(s) of use’, moving to some formal features of texts written in verse. As already noted, poetry in Byzantium is not written in a vacuum isolated from its social setting. There is always a context that surrounds a poem during its genesis, shaping its poetics and tropes. But “context” cannot stand without “text’, or, as Marc Lauxtermann points out in his chapter, “no text without context, no context without text”.
Thus, these two concepts are inseparable in the study of Byzantine poetry and literature more generally. Lauxtermann demonstrates this by offering some case studies of poems that were used in the imperial court; the so-called rhetorical theatra; and for the expression of devotion in a religious setting. Moreover, he looks at the con-text by investigating the relations of certain poems with other texts during their written transmission in poetry books, small sylloges, anthologies, and miscellanies.
The next two chapters focus on the form of Byzantine poetry; the former deals with the language, the latter with the metre. Martin Hinterberger seeks to shed some light on the links between metre and language. Its symbiosis facilitates the creation of new words or the use of poetic forms. Poems are not exclusively written in highbrow or the vernacular; there are a large number of poems that combine features from different registers.
On the other hand, Michael Jeffreys’ article is a case study on hexameter and the political verse. Although the Byzantine poets made use of a wide range of metres: the dodecasyllable, hexameter, pentameters, elegiac couplets, anacreontics, political verse and so forth, Jeffreys focuses on the gradual decline of hexameter (it never disappeared though) and the emergence of the fifteen-syllable verse.
In addition to issues of context, language, and metre, rhetoric and style are two other important aspects linked to the composition of verse. It is well known that the handbooks by Hermogenes, Menander, and especially Aphthonios, were widely used by the Byzantines, having an impact on textual production, be it in prose or verse, from the early period to the Late Byzantine era. Next to encomia, funerary speeches, epithalamia (wedding speeches) or speeches to honour the emperor (basilikoi logoi) in prose, we find verse works too (especially in the uth and 12th centuries).
Elizabeth Jeffreys notes that poetry constitutes a part of rhetorical composition in various genres and subgenres. She also notices the strong connection between verse and trope, by saying that the former occasionally facilitated even more the extended use of figures of speech, such as alliteration, asyndeton or assonance.
The section “Periods, Authors, Social and Cultural Milieus” looks at Byzantine poetry from a synchronic and diachronic point of view. It examines important authors or distinctive periods of Byzantine poetic production. It aims to discuss the motivations for writing texts in verse, and outline the development of poetic trends throughout the Byzantine millennium. Gianfraco Agosti looks at the roots of Byzantine poetry (or its early period) by discussing the poetry written between the 4th and 7th centuries and the fate of some popular genres in the later periods. It is particularly interesting that the ‘modern style’ (i.e. of Nonnos of Panopolis and his followers) is to be encountered in Byzantine poetry. Moreover, Agosti demonstrates that the Byzantines perceived late antique poetry as different from the Classical and Hellenistic traditions.
The next three studies look at three major poets that were active between the 7th and 1oth centuries: George Pisides, Theodore Stoudites, and John Geometres. Although these four centuries saw the production of important works by other poets, these three authors are the indisputable protagonists. Ioannis Vassis surveys the work of George Pisides.
Regardless of whether Pisides is the starting point of Byzantine poetry, it is certain that his corpus contains many innovative features; he reshaped many characteristics of poetry associated with religious subjects and epic encomium; he contributed a great deal to the shift from the iambic trimeter to Byzantine dodecasyllable; and he transformed the literary epigram of the previous centuries into a Gebrauchstext. Thus, he anticipated—to an extensive degree—many trends found in Byzantine poetry for centuries to come.
The next individual who plays an important role in the production of poetry is Theodore Stoudite. Theodore has often been described as an author who reactivated classical traditions at the end of the so-called “Dark Ages”. Kristoffel Demoen argues that this classification is not very accurate, since the poetic oeuvre of Theodore hardly contains any direct references to Antiquity (or ancient themes and genres).
Most of his poems were written for a monastic milieu without any high literary aspiration, since they were meant to be used as inscriptions. A particularly interesting part of Stoudite’s poetry is his figure poems; they demonstrate that poetry played a significant role towards the promotion of an agenda during the iconoclastic controversy.
Moving to the next century, we find a military officer who composed a great deal of poetry. John Geometres is by far the most important figure around the year 1000. His oeuvre extends to over 300 works written for various occasions. They were associated with both religious and secular themes: poems on contemporary society, poems for objects, satirical and invective poems, personal poems, prayers, and hymns etc.
Emilie van Opstall and Maria Tomadaki seek to bring Geometres’ versatility into the foreground. Of course, the gth and 10th centuries abound with other poets (e.g. Ignatios the Deacon, Constantine the Rhodian, and Leo Choirosphaktes) and developments, but the study of the corpora of Stoudites and Geometres nicely demonstrates a slight shift in the use of poetry.
Whereas in the early 9th century Stoudites mainly composed inscriptional poetry for a monastic milieu, Geometres corpus mirrors the use of poetry for a wider range of occasions. He is the first poet of the Middle Byzantine period with such a rich and versatile corpus, anticipating the trends of the uth and 12th centuries, when poetic prolificacy and versatility became the norm due to the appearance of many professional authors.
Floris Bernard looks at poetic production after the time of John Geometres, and argues that the period between 1025 and 1081 shares some common characteristics (e.g. a high degree of self-assertiveness, wit, and variety) that sets it apart from other periods. The three main poets are Christopher Mitylenaios, John Mauropous and Michael Psellos, who are surrounded by some lesser known and anonymous poets. Psellos composed mainly didactic poetry, while the first two produced texts for various occasions and contexts; from invectives and satires, to epigrams and poetry for liturgical purposes. These learned men were more conscious of their poetic achievements than earlier authors. For example, John Mauropous put together a collection of his own works in order to shape his self-representation.
The next chapter examines a period to
o, namely that of the “long 12th century” that ranges between the years 1081 and 1204. The number of poets is much higher, including Theophylaktos of Ochrid, Nicholas Kallikles, Theodore Prodromos, Manganeios Prodromos, John Tzetzes, Constantine Manasses, Michael Glykas, and Michael Choniates, along with numerous other poets. Unlike during the 1th-century, most 12th-century poets depended much more upon favors and commissions, thus this period signifies a shift in the relationship between patronage and poetry.
However, the degree of patronage differs over this long timespan. Nikos Zagklas argues that it gradually rises during the reign of Alexios Komnenos, reaching its pinnacle under John and Manuel Komnenoi, and then dropping in the last decades of the 12th century.
Court poetry includes not only poems for a number of ceremonies, but also texts that are meant to have a didactic use. Although the 12th century is the most prolific period of Byzantine poetry, Andreas Rhoby shows that poetry continues to flourish during the Empire of Nicaea and throughout the Palaeologan period. As in the 12th century, patronage is the main driving force behind the composition of poetry, but there are some exceptions. Manuel Philes is the main poet of the period due to the extensive number of verses he penned, but there are a number of other poets who are producing works, including Theodore Metochites, Nikephoros Blemmydes, Manuel Holobolos, Maximos Planudes, John Chortasmenos etc.
The next section “Poetry in Byzantium and Beyond” aims to demonstrate that the boundaries of Byzantine poetry are not clear-cut by looking at three different phenomena: poetry that was written in the centre of the empire, but in Latin; Greek poetry that was written in Constantinople, but then translated into another language; and finally, Greek poetry written outside the official borders of the empire.
Constantinople in Late Antiquity or during the Early Byzantine period saw the production of poetry in Latin. The two main authors are Priscian and Corippus. As Kurt Smolak notes, the former wrote grammar treatises and poetry, while the latter exclusively poetry. The poetry of both authors was written for the Court, since they fall within the group of panegyrics. As with the poetry of George Pisides and later Byzantine poets, they put their works at the service of imperial propaganda.
Eirini Afentoulidou and Jiirgen Fuchsbauer take us to the Middle Byzantine period and particularly to the year 1095, when Philippos Monotropos finished the composition of his Dioptra, a poem of about 7000 verses.
It consists of the Klauthmoi, a poetic poem addressed to one’s own soul, and four books in the form of a dialogue between the soul (psyche) and body (sarx), which are personified as a mistress and maid. The soul asks her servant questions on various theological and philosophical topics.
The 80 surviving Greek manuscripts speak for its popularity within the boundaries of Byzantium. However, the Dioptra was translated in the 14th century into middle Bulgarian Church Slavonic, and enjoyed even more popularity, since there are approximately 200 surviving manuscripts.
In the 12th century, Byzantine poetry flourished not only in Constantinople, but also in the periphery (e.g. Michael Choniates in Athens) and even outside the official borders of the empire. Carolina Cupane focuses on the poets that were hosted in the court of Norman Sicily, above all, an anonymous poet of a very long work that exceeds 4000 verses, and Eugenius of Palermo toward the end of the 12th century.
The works of these poets resemble the Constantinopolitan style, but at the same time owe a great deal to Latin, and even Arabic, literary cultures. Poetry continued to blossom in southern Italy in the 13th century thanks to the so-called Salentine school, which included poets such as Nicholas of Otranto, John Grasso, and Theodotos of Gallipoli, and whose poetry is very close to the Byzantine tradition.
The fourth section focuses on the different aspects of circulation and transmission of poetry, be that manuscripts or other kind of media. Foteini Spingou scrutinizes anthologies and collections of the Byzantine period; the former include works of more than one poet, while the latter the works of a single author.
She argues that we should distinguish between “Classizing” and “Byzantine” collections and anthologies. She also investigates the sociocultural reasons for putting together such collections and anthologies, and what that tells us about the author and the way he viewed his work, since some of them contribute a great deal to the shape of their authorial image (of course, the case of John Mauropous is the most significant).
Floris Bernard and Kristoffel Demoen focus on book epigrams and their close association with books, and thus circulation. Following Gérard Genette, they describe book epigrams as metric paratexts (the term “book epigram’” was coined by Marc Lauxtermann). This kind of poem tells us a great deal about the production of a book, the way literature (both ancient and Byzantine) was read, and so on.
However, manuscripts are not the only medium for the circulation of written poetry. Ivan Drpi¢ and Andreas Rhoby discuss epigrams that were inscribed on fresco decorations, portable objects (metalwork, ivories, steatites etc.), icons, seals etc. There is a strong interaction between the text, the object, and the beholder. The visual power of epigrams facilitates the communication of aesthetics and the response of the beholder.
The last section is labelled “Particular Uses of Verse in Byzantium”. It intends to discuss in some detail two particular functions associated with verse (the teaching one and the liturgical one) and the use of verse for the composition of two genres that are typically in prose (chronicles and novels). Wolfram Hérandner concentrates on poetry written for teaching purposes.
He offers an extensive survey of poems that had a potential didactic function, and demonstrates that these poems are associated with a wide range of themes, including astrology, astronomy, grammar, jurisprudence, mathematics, medicine, rhetoric, theology, zoology, and many more. Hérandner also touches upon the question of the aesthetic value of didactic poetry.
Poetry was also written for liturgical reasons; Antonia Giannouli surveys the tradition of hymn-writing in Byzantium. Aside from religious poetry, we find hymns (first the Aontakion and later the kanons) sung within an ecclesiastic or monastic setting. Their production is rich from the time of Romanos Melodos up to Theodore Stoudites. Interestingly enough, around the gth century, hymn forms found their way into other more secular contexts: they were used in educational settings, and even gave form to satirical attacks.
The last two chapters of the volume look at the use of verse for long narratives. Ingela Nilsson examines two chronicles: the Synopsis Chronike by Constantine Manasses (mid-12th century) and the Chronicle of Ephraim of Ainos (early 14th century). Although both poems are written in verse (in the fifteen-syllable and the twelve-syllable), the style of Manasses’ is much more “poetic”. The paper discusses the selection of verse as a medium to write history, as well as the various implications of this. In addition to chronicles, another genre that started to assume a verse form is novels.
The 12th century not only saw the resurgence of narratives of love and adventure, but also the victory of verse over prose in this genre; three out of the four surviving Komnenian novels are composed in verse. As Roderick Beaton points out, the practice of using verse for the composition of novels (or romances) continues into the Palaeologan period, as well as into the post Byzantine period.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق