Philolog

Last evening I attended an exceptional lecture by Jack Mitchell of our Department of Classics here at Stanford entitled ‘Bacchylides, Hopkins, and the Compound Epithet: Can Archaic Greek Verbal Culture be Translated?’ The lecture dealt with a key matter of concern encountered in the philological process of moving from a Greek poem, such as Bacchylides 17, to an English version for a wider audience. In his talk, Mitchell took issue with the translatability of archaic Greek verbal culture and specifically with the problem of reduction. This problem of translation, to be sure, is a common concern that I share as an archaeologist dealing with the material world rather than poetics per se. Therefore, I should underline the point at the outset of this short commentary that Mitchell is very aware of the simultaneous amplification that results in the process of transforming a Greek text into a language of the contemporary world. In translation something of Bacchylides is made legible and circulates for audiences in our time. Mitchell concludes that ‘we lose insofar as we gain.’ However, be that as it may, his interest lies with the complexities and multiplicities, which, to borrow from the subtext of Hans Gumbrecht’s latest book, are related to ‘what meaning cannot convey.’ To this end he focuses on one polysemous and therefore unruly aspect of archaic lyric—the compound epithet.

A compound epithet is a particularly elaborate adjective which combines two or, at times, more words to create particularly potent, or not, poetic ensemble. So the Greek term ‘chalkothorax’ might be translated as ‘bronze-breastplated.’ However, the multiplicities of such compound epithets have defied adequate translation. For Mitchell, one potential response to this dilemma lies in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

In his translation of the compound epithets Hopkins, both a keen poet and savvy philologist, applied a design aesthetic for poetics called ‘inscape.’ Inscape has to do with the manifestation of the multiple—the evocation of more than simply meaning. Through such poetic devices the audience is invited to participate. But this should not imply consistency across the audience as a whole rather each and every audience member may have their own angle. This is a form of multiplicity without the imposition of rigid specificity. This complexity, I believe, is what Mitchell wishes to translate for the audience of today.

While novel on a number of levels, one aspect of Mitchell’s work stuck with me and it dealt with the issue of good philological practice. It wasn’t necessarily where he sought such practice that is of importance, rather it was ‘when’ he found it that I found of interest. Much of academia looks to our contemporary for the most cutting-edge scholarship on a particular topic. But instead of 2004 or 2005, Mitchell finds some of the best practice regarding the translatability of the compound epithet in the smack-dab, or likewise in the slab-bang, middle of the later half of the19th century with the work of Hopkins.

Herein lies an extremely important lesson for contemporary scholars dealing in the Greek past: ‘all authors are our contemporaries’ (Serres with Latour 1995, 44). While Mitchell, apathetic to temporal distance, applies this credo to Hopkins, this also applies to Bacchylides. So long as we continue to mix such rich texts irrespective of their vast temporal distance we will continue to learn something new for our time and the future. Manifesting this multiplicity for non-specialists is our responsibility, whether poet, philologist, or archaeologist. For Mitchell, this is a measure of good practice in translation.

Reference
Serres, M., with Latour, B., 1995: Conversations on science, culture, and time. (tr. R. Lapidus.) Ann Arbor.

Posted by Christopher Witmore at 9:11 PM | Permalink

Since in the inaugural posts, my colleague has set the tone with both the question of whether there were blog equivalents in the ancient world and some ambitious suggestions concerning connectivity in criticism, I thought I would add some related and no less ambitious thoughts on blogging and philosophy.

First off, as has been mentioned, blogs regularly record ephemera in a periodic fashion; that is, they are a web-based log or collection--continuous but episodic--of daily events. These daily records and reflections are typically presented in reverse chronological order, and the less recent logs are archived and stamped with static links so the collector or web-logger can organize and establish connections between daily episodes. The web-logger looks to collect, organize, and comment upon particular daily events for an audience according to particular principles--an underlying coherence of things--with which that audience sympathizes. If you believe, let's say, in the fundamental pleasures of food and reading, you might frequent this community of readers. Neoconservatives of the American right might frequent blogs organized around principles of free markets and hawkish foreign policy, while underlying principles of anti-globalization and de-escalation might attract readers of a more progressive character (and there are far too many of both to link to here). Then there are web-loggers who collect and comment upon issues for people who look way beyond four-year election cycles to underlying principles of ecology and long-term sustainability. Simply put, web-loggers of all sorts provide collections, connections between, and commentaries on the events of our daily lives according to the ways in which they (and their readers) see the world as being constituted; they provide a system and logic for apprehending the world.

This art of logging and logicizing, minus permalinks and feed readers, although no less performative or sensational, was to be found in the ancient world. In the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, profoundly experimental figures like Thales, Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras, and Empedocles investigated the world--both the things, phenomena, and sorts of people in it--in an effort to uncover underlying and organizing principles which guide the cosmos and daily life. The varying accounts of these principles were systematic and comprehensive, argumentative, and highly critical both of other accounts and of those who do not seek to give an account. And lest you think even this criticism belonged merely to a world of academic squabbles among impotent scholars of pure inquiry, these comprehensive, critical accounts were a kind of competitive, public performance which often attracted audiences and more importantly aimed at establishing a practical way of living. A way of looking at the world and oneself in the world might have a beneficial effect on the daily lives of those brave enough to adopt it. Finding and adopting the right principles of connection and organization might make you a better person. On the other hand, failing to examine and find the right logic of life might damage your soul.

The trick in the ancient world was not merely to find the right account (which is difficult enough), but then to shape even the smallest habits according to it. Heraclitus writes, "Men always prove to be uncomprehending of the logos (or account of principles) which is as I described it, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this logos, men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when asleep." To comprehend the account is to live according to the account and to work at not forgetting it in your waking hours; in short, to take hold of the account is to take hold of your life. This is where our story departs, in part, from the modern art of logging and logicizing, for blogging does not provide the means for self-evaluation; in fact, for anyone who has religiously followed a blog (especially one which is updated frequently), blogging often offers a distraction from small habits, another way of forgetting. This love of the log--this philology--has turned away from self-examination and scrutinization.

But not to fret, for my ambitious plan may be more a modest proposal given advancements in the world of web-logging. Have you heard of cyborglogs or glogs: these blogs record both a daily episode and a recorder who while recording participates in that episode. The glogger in most cases becomes unaware of his glogging, hence the classification of ''cyborg'' which means merely an unconscious and effortless communion between technology and user. Our daily life teems with examples of this communion even of the glogging type: ambulatory physiological data recorders continuously document for cardiologists both the voltage of an ailing heart via an ECG and the simultaneous activity of a patient via video. Running enthusiasts now record speed, heart rate, position and elevation via GPS and physiological monitors which they then upload for a training history and evaluation. Prosthetic assistive technologies for the visually impaired glog to provide spatial coordinates and facial recognition capacities. Researchers at Stanford's Thinking Aloud and Looking aHEAD at Museum Learning project glog in order to study how people learn in museums: visitors comment on exhibits while head cameras record what they are seeing and saying. People everywhere are already logging information about their daily activities and themselves engaged in those activities within particular parameters. They are making connections between habits and thoughts, habits and health.

My proposal: the Ambulatory Logography Device (ALD). The ALD is a wearable recorder that generates a personal diary for the purpose of directing attention back to the daily habits of your waking hours; the user interface consists of multiple recording tracks for both instantaneous commentary and subsequent reviews of both the day and commentaries producing another sort of omni-commentary. Other research is currently exploring the processes of continuous archiving and retrieval of personal experiences, and some like that of Gordon Bell of the MyLifeBits Project go as far as to archive an entire life from photos, phone calls, emails, IM transcripts... The ALD, however, focuses not only on retrieving the episodes of your daily life, but scrutinizing them and looking for your glaring inconsistencies and subtle coherence, the illusions you entertain, the self-images you try to project, and the self-images you truly project.

Have you ever felt uneasy at the sound of your own voice coming from the answering machine? Have you ever squirmed upon seeing yourself in a home movie? Imagine watching and hearing yourself in every conversation you had today. Imagine watching yourself rolling out of bed. Imagine watching yourself not accomplishing something you tell yourself you need to do, and hearing your reasons (which perhaps seemed rational at the time) for not doing it. How fragmentary or coherent is your vision of your world and yourself? How arbitrary your choices? How brave? How vigilant? How successful? There is your life, ready for you to log, to glog, ready to be made into a story, an account of all things. Wearing the ALD, you are aware of how you perform your day; moreover, the device operates within a feedback loop which makes you assess your performance of daily life before you have even recorded it. Knowing you are performing makes you a better performer. This philology may be more difficult to swallow, for it is an incredibly disconcerting effort which will potentially trigger feelings of intense dissatisfaction; but it is a love of or rather a desire for a life, our life, to mean something coherent, to consist of deliberate choices and decisions. This philology is the desire for our lives to be well-crafted works of art.

Posted by James Collins at 9:44 AM | Permalink