Discourse and Performance Involvement, Visualization and Presence in Homeric Poetry PDF

Discourse and Performance: Involvement, Visualization and "Presence" in Homeric Poetry
Author(s): Egbert J. Bakker

Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 12, No. 1 (Apr., 1993), pp. 1-29
Published by: University of California Press
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EGBERT J. BAKKER
Discourse and Performance: Involvement,

Visualization and "Presence" in Homeric
Poetry
All real and integral understanding is actively responsive, and constitutes nothing
other than the initial preparatory stage of a response (in whatever form itmay be
actualized). And the speaker is oriented precisely toward such an actively respon
sive understanding.
-M. M. Bakhtin, The Problem of Speech Genres
W ITHINTHECHANGING CLIMATE of folklore studies, anthropology, the so

cial sciences, and linguistics, the study of "oral poetry" is gradually increasing in
depth, scope, and variety. To the line of research initiated byMilman Parry and
Albert Lord that has been known for decades as "oral-formulaic theory," a
number of new approaches have been added, not necessarily supplantingParry's
original insights, but adding new dimensions to them and placing them in novel
perspectives. In particular, current thought tends to focus on what itmeans for
verbal art to be "traditional,"which in a sense entails a return to Parry's earliest
ideas on traditional poetry and a relative shift in the thinking about the function
of formulas: frommetrical utility to traditional "situatedness" and from structure
The research reported in this article, a rewritten and expanded version of a paper presented at the
APA convention for 1991 in Chicago, was made possible by a Fellowship of the Royal Netherlands
Academy of Sciences and Arts. The article itself was written during a stay at the Netherlands Institute
forAdvanced Studies (NIAS) in 1991-92. Iwish to thank both institutions for their support.Also, I
wish to thank Mark Edwards and Suzanne Fleischman, as well as the two anonymous referees of this
journal, for theiruseful criticisms and suggestions. The subject of the article iscovered inmore detail,
and among other things, in amonograph (The Poetics of Speech) currently in preparation.
? 1993BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

2 CLASSICAL
ANTIQUITY Volume 12/No. 1/April 1993
tomeaning in a particular context.1 Closely related is the concern of linguistically

oriented anthropologists with "performance"as the natural locuswhere tradition
finds its expression. In performance-based thinking, "tradition" is not somuch a
use of language that is inherently "traditional," as a performer's intention to
recreate ameaningful past within the context shared between him and an audi
ence. Tradition, in this view, is dynamic, "emerging," rather than static (even
though insiders to the traditionmight experience it as stable), and constantly
renegotiated between a performer and his audience in each new performance.2
The dynamic view of tradition is not a new conception of something old,
leaving tradition as an isolated poetic phenomenon; rather, it firmlyplaces tradi
tional poetry, or better, the performance-event that it constitutes, within the
wider, equally changing, perspectives of spoken discourse and communication.
Oral poetry, having been studied for some decades as a kind of poetry that is
different from ours, can now be perceived as a special kind of speech, and the
performance, the periodically repeated reinstantiation of the tradition, as a spe
cial kind of communicative context.3 It is true thatwithin this special context,
normal meaning may be modified, stylized, or even suspended (partly due to the
tradition's being the formative factor in the communication of the performance),
but that does not mean that the study of "ordinary" language in actual discourse
contexts (often designated with such terms as "discourse analysis" or "so
ciolinguistics") is not a valuable vantage point for the study of oral traditions. In
fact, insight into the "norm" with respect to which a given kind of performance
communication ismarked may well be indispensable for a better understanding
of that kind of "special speech."
In particular, the strategies deployed by speakers to create what has been
called involvement in the sociolinguistic literature4are of potentially great interest
for a better understanding of the dynamics of "performance." "Involvement," the
creation of "rapport" between the interlocutors in a conversation and the ultimate
aim of any meaningful discourse, is an understanding in which the interlocutor is
not the passive receiver of the linguistic, conversational "message" but actively
contributes to it, by participating, not only in the context in which a discourse is
1. Of particular importance here is JohnMiles Foley's (1991: 6-8, 23-25) concept of "tradi
tional referentiality," the situatedness of expressions within a particular traditional context and their
being the instantiations of larger thematicwholes far exceeding any particular textual locus inwhich
theymight have a "denotative"meaning. (Foley speaks of a pars pro toto,metonymic relationship in
this connection, epithets, for example, being characterized as "metonymic pathways to the conjuring
of personalities," 1991: 23.) See also Foley (1992: 281-82). An earlier version of this idea is the
connection between "formula" and "theme" as pointed out by Gregory Nagy (1990b: 23).
2. Cf. Bauman (1992: 127-28), who speaks of "traditionalization" as the object of an "agent
centered line of analysis" (p. 142) of performance.
3. Cf. Gregory Nagy's (1990a: 30-36) discussion of the anthropological notion of "special" or
"marked" speech, the special poetic speech that a community sets apart from everyday use and
reserves for special performance occasions.
4. See especially Tannen (1985; 1989: 9-35). Essential in this respect are, furthermore, Chafe
(1982) and Gumperz (1982).
Discourse and Performance inHomeric Poetry
BAKKER: 3
uttered, but also inwhat it represents, or invokes. In thisway, "understanding" in

speech becomes a participatory attitude that is truly dialogic in the Bakhtinian
sense,5 rather than the intellectual "decoding" of messages that logicians and
structuralist linguistshave made of it.6As a background, then, for a dynamic view
of tradition, a dynamic view of speech is in order, inwhich "context" is not so
much a static concept (applying to thatwhich is needed in order to interpret a
given expression), as a dynamic process that is constitutive of the speech process
itself.Context iswhat is created in speech, by speakers and listeners alike, both in
ordinary situations and in poetic performances.7
In the case of Homer, the study of "discourse" is especially important in that
it allows us to approach "performance" in a way that is intuitivelymore appeal
ing from a philological point of view than some of the other approaches to
Homeric performance. Rather than deducing the Homeric performance from
the evidence supplied by other (and not necessarily comparable or equivalent)
oral traditions, or drawing inferences from the depictions of epic performances
in the poems, we can depart from actually observable properties of Homeric
discourse as manifested in the Homeric text itself. In this article Iwill argue that
some of these features, being characteristic linguisticmarkers in the public tradi
tional speech as presented in the performance, are at the same time indicative of
the (private) consciousness and imagination by which this public speech is
driven. The pair "public-private"would seem to be an opposition or even a
paradox at first sight, but is in fact the essence of spoken language, whether
presented casually or in performance: the properties of spoken discourse that
show most clearly how speech is produced in the mind of the speaker are at the
same time the most crucial in what the speech effects, as an event, in the mind of
the listener.
In section I I will argue that Homeric discourse is, both semantically and
5. Bakhtin's remarks (especially in his essay "The Problem of Speech Genres" [Bakhtin 1986:
60-102]) on "understanding" as dialogic, participatory, and "contributive," as well as his criticism of
the usual account of speech in terms of the transmission and "decoding" of messages (see next note),
inwhich the "sending" of themessage is distinct from its "reception," are fundamental inmy view for
a true understanding of speech in general andHomeric speech in particular.
6. The common conception of language inWestern culture is characterized by Reddy (1979) as
the "conduitmetaphor," language being conceived of as a conduit or "container"meant to convey the
"content" of messages. The conduitmetaphor is discussed inLakoff and Johnson (1980: 10-13) as a
"metaphorwe live by." InBakker (1993b), I suggest that the containermetaphor, and in general the
distinction between "form"and "content," results from an unconscious extrapolation of the scenario of
written communication (which typically consists in the transmissionof "information" that is new to a
reader) to language ingeneral. In the study of speech and itsdynamics, however, this conception needs
to be used with circumspection, and in the case of Homer it isdownright inadequate.
7. The sociolinguist Gumperz (1982, 1992) speaks of "contextualization" as a strategy to "relate
what is said at any one time and in any one place to knowledge acquired throughpast experience, in
order to retrieve the presuppositions theymust rely on tomaintain conversational involvement and
assess what is intended" (1992: 230); see also Bauman (1992: 128): "the active process of contex
tualization inwhich individuals statewhat they do in networks of interrelationshipand association in
the act of expressive production."
4 CLASSICAL
metrically, a stylization of the cognitive production of ordinary speech and that the
features on which this observation is based are at the same time crucial in the
reception of Homeric discourse by listeners in a performance. Section II goes one
step further and extends cognitive production in themind of the speaker to imagi
nation and visualization, the turningof mental images into speech. The presenta
tion of Homeric discourse as the description of things seen turns the "contex
tualization strategies" of ordinary speech into the ultimate aim of the traditional
speech of the performance: the creation of what will be called presence in the
context shared between the performer and his audience. In section III, finally,we
briefly turn to the psychological terms inwhich this poetics of joint visualization
was experienced by the poet and his audience, which will involve themediating
role of theMuses. The argument throughout will involve the discussion of a
number of "discoursemarkers" that are particularly salient features of the per
former's speech, notably the particles 6? and &ac (and to a lesser extent 6r and
REv).The discussion of these particles, however, will not be presented for itsown
sake, as a contribution to "grammar," but for what their use in the Homeric text
can tell us about the specific nature of Homeric discourse in performance.
As a starting point for the discussion of Homeric discourse as spoken narra

tive presented in performance, consider the following passage, one of themany
killings in the Iliad, the scene where Patroklos kills the Trojan Thestor, son of
Enops:8
401 6 6? ?toLoa, "Hvo3og vi6v,

E6ELtEov 6Op10iROg-- 6 TLEVE?E?OT(P iVL 6i(pq)
lOTO &ax?i- Fx yaQ jr wiy (p@?vag,
Q x 6' a&ca XEL@6)v
Tvia tX90rol(av-- 6' EyxEt Vl? JaMgaaota
405 yvaOtov 6ELTEQ@6v,6ia 6' auToi, nEtLe?v 66vTcov,
?.XE 60e oVUQog XWv VJ?Q avTuyog, (LgOTE TLSqpbg
antnLQOfPXlxaOfRtE?vog
zETQTn iLXOI
iso@v
?x 6IOxTOLO
06Qa?e xaL fivoM XaAXxi)
vcpW
cogEXx'?x 6qipQoLo
xEXrv6coa6ov@i cpa?ctvi,
410 xaS 6' &a' Di ioo' o
6v' eovT 6E iLV tji?
OK v t6og.
(Iliad 16, 401-10)
401 And Patroklos in his next onrush
at Thestor, Enops' son, who huddled in his chariot,
shrunk back, he had lost all his nerve, and from his hands the
reins
slipped-Patroklos coming close up to him stabbed with a spear
thrust
8. The translations following each example in this paper are Lattimore's.

BAKKER:
Discourse and Performance inHomeric Poetry 5
405 at the right side of the jaw and drove it through the teeth, then
hooked and dragged him with the spear over the rail, as a
fisherman
who sits out on the jut of a rockwith line and glittering
bronze hook drags a fish,who is thus doomed, out of thewater.
So he hauled him, mouth open to the bright spear, out of the
chariot,
410 and shoved him over on his face, and as he fell the life left him.
Allen's Oxford Text, which I have followed, punctuates the whole passage as
one sentence, and from the point of view of narrative content this seems to be
sound policy: only with naEovWra 6e fIV XuiOvio6g in 410 is the sense of closure
reached, the completion of a killing, that justifies a full stop. The concepts of
"sentence" and "closure," however, usually come with the notions of balanced
syntax and conscious stylistic design, pertaining to linguisticexpressions that are
supposed tomake sense in their author's absence, that is, on the printed page. If
we look at the passage in this light, we have to conclude that it is a failure, in fact
a genuine anacoluthon, a disruption of what could (should) have been a
sentential structure: the poet abandons the construction in 402 and returns to it
in 404 after a parenthesis inwhich he describes poor Thestor's condition. The
result of this upsetting of the structure of the sentence seems at first sight to be
that the verb vive (404) is separated from its object OeooQoa by three lines and
that a "logically superfluous" subject (the pronoun 6 in 404) has been inserted to
repair the syntactic damage.
But such an analysis in terms of anacoluthon and departure from a sentential
norm would be literate bias. The passage inquestion, and indeed thewhole work
of which it is part, was not meant to make sense in its author's absence, but in his
presence. This text was not designed to make sense on paper, even though itwas
written down.9 Rather, we have to look at it as the textual fixation of speech,
that is, as a process evolving in time, and when we "process" it accordingly,
9. The exact relationship between "performance" and "text" is a problem raised but not ad
dressed as such by this article. For a tentative answer, positing an "interdependence" of text and
performance, see Bakker (1993b). In general, when dealing with the Homeric text in its original
context, it seems to be productive to assume that the text itself, its "writing,"and its "reading"must
have been utterly different from what we conceive of as these phenomena, being much more "per
formative" thanwe might find it easy to imagine. This method thus involves a necessary attempt at
defamiliarizing our culturally and professionally determined preconceptions regarding texts, lan
guage, andmeaning, on the pain of anachronism. The Homerist strugglingwith these problems can
expect some help from medieval studies, where evidence is somewhat less scanty than for early
Greece. Fundamental for "early writing," for example, is Clanchy (1979); the "narratological"
consequences of the composition of a text that ismeant to be heard are addressed inBauml (1980:
249-53) and Schaefer (1991); the need to approachmedieval texts in termsof the semiotics of speech
is reified inPaul Zumthor's (1987: 21) notion of "vocality," pertaining to the inevitable voice-quality
of the reception and transmission of medieval "literature" (elaborated inSchaefer 1992); and finally
there is the discourse-based approach of Fleischman (1989, 1990a, 1990b, 1991) to the speech in/
behind medieval texts.
6 CLASSICAL
positing the presence of a speaker, whose behavior we witness, the anacoluthon

disappears: the passage was produced in the way inwhich speech is produced,
andmeant to be received in theway inwhich speech is received: by hearing. To
become sensitive to the processlike quality of the passage, however, we have to
realizemore fullywhat itmeans for language to be spoken.
In the short analysis of the production of speech that I present here, I owe
much to the work of the linguist Wallace Chafe.10 Working on the basis of actually
observed empirical data (taped spoken narrative and conversation), Chafe has
advanced the hypothesis that speaking is a cognitive process that amounts to the
activation of small amounts of information in the speaker's consciousness and the
subsequent transformation of this information into speech. In spoken language,
"speaking" and "thinking" aremuch more closely connected than inwritten lan
guage, and the transformationof "thought" into "speech" isa necessarily dynamic
process, which leaves traces in the discourse produced that can be empirically
observed. The primary trace of the cognitive processes underlying speech iswhat
Chafe calls the "fragmented" quality of speech, as opposed to the "integrated"
quality of formalwritten texts.
Spoken language, Chafe observes, comes in a series of intonationally coher
ent "spurts" of verbalization that are preceded and followed by a shorter or
longer pause (from almost imperceptible to several seconds). Chafe calls these
short chunks of discourse "intonation units," a term that primarily applies to the
physical characteristics of the discourse produced. As far as the cognitive
"source" of speech is concerned, however, they can be called "idea units," in
that each unit expresses one "idea" from the speaker's consciousness.1 But apart
from being a "source" of speech, the speaker's consciousness is also a constraint
on the flow of speech: it can focus only on one idea at a time, and this "mental
buffer" has to be emptied before a new "idea" can be focused upon and subse
quently verbalized.
Intonation units are defined primarily in terms of intonation (i.e., small
disruptions in the flow of speech) and cognition; they are not predetermined by
any kind of structure: in syntactic terms, intonation units can be anything, from
complete clauses consisting of a noun (or nouns) and a verb, to all kinds of
nonclausal elements (separate noun phrases, verb phrases or prepositional
phrases, etc.). When a unit is clausal, it is often linked to the preceding discourse
by connective particles, of which and is by far the most common in spoken
English. According to Chafe and others, and in spoken discourse signals contin
uation,12 the transition to a new fact in the speaker's consciousness. To this
10. See Chafe (1980, 1987, 1988, 1990). A monograph, Discourse, Consciousness and Time, is
currently in press.
11. "Idea unit" is the earlier term used by Chafe (e.g., 1980: 13); various other terms are in use
by other linguistswho are interested in speech and its properties, such as "tone unit," "information
unit," etc., but Chafe's terminology suffices here.
12. See, e.g., Chafe (1988: 10-11), as well as Schiffrin (1987: 150).
BAKKER: 7
characterization we may add that and signals at the same time an invitation to the
hearer tomake the same transition.And thus exemplifies two important differ
ences between speech andwriting: (i) speech isproduced in a different way, and
(ii) since speech can only be perceived and "processed"while under production,
it is important that the listener keep track of this process. In other words, the
production of speech and the involvement aimed at in interactive speech are two
sides of one and the same coin.
Now consider the following speech fragment, from the data resulting from
what has become known as the "Pear film research," an extended empirically
based project carried out at the University of California, Berkeley, in which
subjects of various nationalities and cultural backgrounds were shown a short
narrative film, especially made for the purpose (the Pear Film),13andwere asked
to recall what they had seen, in other words, to produce a narrative driven by
theirmemory:14
(a) [.5]And then he whistles at the boy at the bicycle,

(b) and ... the boy on the bicycle s [.45] stops,
(c) [.75] um- [.8] he was walking it at that time,
(d) . . .he didn't [.55] he didn't ride it.
(e) [.7] A-nd the-n um- [.2] he whistles out at him,
(f) . . . and takes the hat . . back,
(g) [.25] to him,

(h) [.2] and in exchange,
(i) . . . the boy gives him three pears.
This sequence of nine intonation units is the expression of what Chafe calls a
"center of interest," a unit of information that is larger than one single focus of
consciousness but that still has cognitive relevance in that it corresponds to the
speaker's "peripheral consciousness," or the information that pertains to what
Chafe calls "orientation," the awareness of the cognizing individual of his or her
"surroundings." In this paper I conceive of a "center of interest" as the visualiza

tion of a scene and the transformation of this visualization into language.15 Dur
ing this process, the speaker in the above fragment temporarily leaves themain
line of the narrative, which is presented from the point of view of the protago
nist, and engages in a "side track" (units c-d), consisting of a visual detail
pertaining to the counterpart of the protagonist in the scene recounted. The side
track results on paper in syntactic dysfluency, but in terms of the dynamics of
13. For the history of the project and the "script"of the Pear Film, see the introduction to The
Pear Stories, edited by Chafe (see Chafe 1980), pp. xi-xviii.
14. From Chafe (1980: 34). Note that hesitations of the speaker are indicated in square brack
ets, with the duration of the dysfluency indicated in tens of seconds. Dashes indicate the lengthening
of a vowel (a-nd) or of a liquid (um-). Falling intonation (signaling closure) is indicated by a
period after a unit (as in d and i), and intonation signaling "more to come" by a comma.
15. Chafe himself (1980: 27) suggests that the notion "center of interest" is related to the notion
"image," but he does not pursue this idea further.
8 CLASSICAL
speech the incoherence ismuch less serious: the idea of the boy hit upon in (a)
and (b) activates a visual detail in the speaker'smind (the boy walking, not riding
the bicycle) that has to be verbalized firstbefore the narrative can proceed.
Two features of the fragment that are connected with the "digression" still
deserve our attention. First, the return to the main track in unit (e) ismarked as
such by the repetition of themost salient element of the unit before the "digres
sion" ("whistles"). This is a case of ring composition as a "figure of speech" in
themost literal sense, a typical speech strategy to effect structure in the ongoing
flow of speech bymarking the point atwhich a side track is concluded.16Second,
whereas all the clausal units in the fragment are introduced by the "continuity
marker" this does not apply to the clauses of which the digression consists.
and,
This means, I suggest, that the units in which the side track is expressed are not
marked as "continuative"; that is, they are not meant to be independent new
steps in the progression of ideas.
When we return to Homer after this digression, itwould seem that the relevance
for the study of Homer of "speech" and its production ismarginal, even totally
absent, on first sight, even to those classicists who subscribe to the oral poetry
program. How can such formal, highly premeditated and rehearsed poetry possi
bly be spontaneous speech? Generations of philologically trained readers of
Homer have learned to view Homeric diction as determined, not by the cognitive
constraints of speech processing, but bymetrical constraints, as a true "creation
of hexametric verse," inWitte's words. How can such an artificial diction, used
by accomplished bards and resulting from a centuries-old tradition, have any
thing to do with such trivialmatters as the dysfluencies of ordinary speech?
Far fromminimizing the difference between Homeric metrical discourse and
ordinary speech, I contend that the specific nature of Homeric diction is not so
much amatter of simply being removed from the realm of ordinary speech with
its dysfluencies and hesitations, as, paradoxically, an age-old strategy precisely
to prevent those hesitations and dysfluencies. By putting metrical constraints on
the flow of discourse, Homeric diction is able to obviate the cognitive constraints
that are inherent in speech production, since the exigencies of meter result in a
rhythmically streamlined segmentation of the flow of speech that is best accom
modated to the cognitive, speech-productive processes of the singers, as well as
the speech-receptive processes of their audiences.'7 Homeric diction, then, is
strictly speaking not a Kunstsprache in the sense of a man-made, "unnatural"
16. The fact that ring composition is a characteristic feature of what in classical philology is
called "archaic style" testifies to the fact that earlyGreek literature is closer to speech, as a formaliza
tion and stylization of itsmost characteristic patterns, than is "classical" style. For ring composition
inHomer, see Edwards' (1991: 44-48) recent discussion; more thought on ring-compositional phe
nomena (though not as a stylistic device) will be presented below.
17. The common notion of epic diction as a grammar superimposed on the grammar of ordi
nary speech is confirmed by the formulation I am using here: epic diction turnswhat results from
constraints into a new constraint.
BAKKER: 9
vehicle for poetic expression;18what Kunst there is, is a regularizationof what is

most natural in speech, and essential for its comprehension. Homeric discourse,
I am suggesting, displays the processlike quality of speech, a quality that involves
both what may be called the stylization of intonation units and a use of particles
that is typical of spoken discourse.
Let us now return to the passage II. 16, 401-10, cited above.What I am suggest
ing is that the passage is not a "sentence" at all, but a sequence of "intonation
units."19Below I present the passage under this new aspect:20
(a) IT6 EOocroca,I And then he <took>Thestor,

(b) IB"Hvotog vov I| the son of Enops,
(c) |II6e EQov6dQrn0eiSgI charging for the second time,
(d) "P6 TEVEiotqFo EVI6bC(pQ( he in his well-polished chariot,
(e) 11 oTo d&XtkE | he sat crouching:
(f) Tr?XyaQ JrkXiyrI qpvag, | for he was knocked out of his wits,
(g) (B ex 6' aQa XEtlQ)v I and from his hands,
(h) Illvica tOiXr0noav- I the reins had slipped,
(i) IT6 6' EYX?E V'jE jtnQaoSTag| and he hit him from nearby,
(j) IIyvaTOROv 6LtTeQov, | on his right jaw,
(k) IP 6ba 6' carTOiJEIQEV 666vcov, II and he pierced right through the teeth,
6e
(1) 11EXE bovoSg kXv | and he dragged him by the spear,
(m) IP6VtiQavtvyog, | over the chariot rail,
beO6 E just as aman,
(n) IB I qpr9g l
tlg
(o) ||I Jxr@Qn ?E |
tQOfXktT xa0ilteEvog sitting on a jutting rock,
(p) [BiEQOvIX%0V|| a
<drags> struggling fish,
x
(q) I|| JO6VTOo10 06iQaE out of the sea onto the land,
(r) ITkivO xaL fIVOtLXaXX'* |I with linen and shining bronze;
(s) I| (;) EXx' x 6qipQoLoI so he dragged him out of the chariot,
(t) (T%ExYvota | gaping,
(u) IB6orQi cpaqelv, I| with his shining spear,
(v) IIxa6 6' 6a' ?Ei oC6TO'coEE- and he let him fall on hismouth,
(w) wTEuo6v(a [ItvX(itE6vut6g. I| and as he fell his spirit left him.
6E
This characterization as "intonation units" has to be modified immediately, how

ever, for the simple reason that "intonation" is not exactly what is most promi
18. This idea is evidently too deep-rooted inHomeric philology from the nineteenth century up
to the present (including Parry, whose notion "formulaic" amounted to a specification of the com
mon notion "artificial") formy present remarks to be uncontroversial. Statements congenial to my
position include a note byWyatt (1988) and Nagy's (1990a: 30-34) remarks on the "marking" of
everyday, ordinary language intomarked, special speech.
19. For "intonation units" inHomeric discourse, see also Bakker (1990).
20. Notice that in this presentation, 11before or after a unit stands for "beginning or end of
rhythmical cycle" (i.e., "verse": see below), Ifor "rhythmicalphrase within the cycle," T for "tro
chaic caesura," P for "penthemimeral caesura," Tr for "trithemimeral caesura," and B for "bucolic
diaeresis." It is of interest to note that in the introduction of a victim in midverse, after |6boun(Joev 6e
JzeodvlP, the passage is unique (Janko 1992: 368).
10 CLASSICAL
nent in our text, or even relevant for its structure. But then I am speaking not
about naturally occurring intonation units in ordinary speech, but about the
stylization of these units in special poetic speech, and this stylization turns the
physical reality of voice and speech production from intonation into rhythm.The
boundaries of each unit coincide, as I have indicated, with what in traditional
hexameter metrics is conceived of as the end of the verse and the places of
obligatory or preferred word-end.21The units are thus in regular and predictive
ways "parts"of the verse, metrical cola with a recognizable and coherent rhyth
mical contour creating a sense of expectancy and anticipation in that they are
part of a rhythmical cycle that regulates the flow of discourse. And it is precisely
this constrained regularity that keeps the poet going without hesitation in the
production of special speech and the audience involved in its perception.22
But let us turn to the semantic aspects of the units. Just as in the case of
"ordinary" intonation units, each unit represents an "idea," a detail focused on
in the poet's consciousness and subsequently verbalized. Each detail organically
belongs to a scene that is visualized by the poet, and the passage as a whole is the
expression of what Chafe calls a "center of interest" (see above). The "anaco
luthon" in lines 402-4, or now we should say in units (d-h), iswholly compara
ble to the "side track" pursued by Chafe's "Pear story narrator" in the fragment
above: during his "mental scanning" of the scene, the narrator necessarily has to
focus on the protagonist's victim as a basis from which he can proceed with the
killing proper. This intermediate phase in the transformation of the scene into
language results in anacoluthic phenomena, but we should not be misled by what
these appear to be in print: what we witness is a dynamic process, not a flawed
attempt at syntactic, sentential perfection.
Some of the units acquire a much higher degree of syntactic (and hence
semantic) independence than in a sentential construction. Thus vife in unit (i) is
not "the verb" of the sentence, postponed by the poet and with OETooQct in (a)
as its syntactic object; rather, this name functions as object in an independent
21. For elementary exposition here, see Beekes (1972) as well as Bakker (1988: 165-68).
22. It has to be stated here in passing that the consequence of the perspective of cognitive
speech production is that the concept of "hexameter" has to be handled with some circumspection.
The notion of "hexameter," I submit, has no direct cognitive relevance: the hexameter line taken as a
whole as a unit of speech is simply too long. In fact, our conception of the hexameter line as a
"thing," a unit perceived in our texts, is another case of literate bias. In oral discourse, the natural
habitat of Greek epic verse, the hexameter isnot somuch a unit, an end product of linguisticactivity,
as a complicated vehicle for that activity, a background rhythm regulating the flow of discourse. This
complicated issue, however, deserves an article, or more than one, in its own right: it involves,
among other things, a reappraisal of the important accounts of Frankel (1926) and Porter (1951),
better known as the "four-colon theory" and its revision; of Kirk (1966; 1985: 17-24); as well as of
Edwards' (1966; 1991: 42-44) ideas on what he calls "emphasis by word-position." The subject
involves, furthermore, the complicated and controversial issues related to the origin of the hexame
ter, among which Nagy's (1976; 1990b: 18-35) ideas on the relation between "meter" and "formula"
in a diachronic perspective.
BAKKER: 11
clausal unit with an unexpressed, unnecessary, verb,23 and vuie is the verbal
element in an independent clause without an overt, lexically expressed, object (6
6' eyxEi vte rtaQcaoT6g 'he struck <him> from nearby'). But the syntactically
loose status of these units does not mean that they are unconnected. Each unit
makes sense only with respect to the previous discourse, or, inother words, each
unit isuttered within the context already established by the foregoing units, in its
turnproviding a context forwhat follows.
The relation of a unit to this context can take a number of forms, depending
on its syntactic and semantic independence, which may vary, as in ordinary
speech. Sometimes a unit does not constitute an independent "idea": it is quite
closely connected with what precedes and may be said to complete it. This
happens in the case of units (e), (h), and (m). In fact a unit may be so closely
connected with the previous one that doubts may arise as to whether a new unit
starts or not.24A second possibility beside this "complementation" is addition: a
unitmay be loosely attached to the preceding one and add additional detail (e.g.,
units j and r).25 This additional detail can take clausal form and function as an
explanation, as in the case of unit (f), introduced by y6a. But themost important
relation a unit may have with the preceding discourse is continuation, a typical
speech phenomenon that I have already touched upon in the discussion of the
example from Chafe's data. Instead of completing the idea of the previous unit
or adding some new detail to it, a unit may also contribute an entirely new idea
to the context and thus effect the continuation of the flow of discourse, the
transition to a new "fact." And this brings us to the use of 6e, as well to that of
[ikv,which occurs once in the passage (unit d, the beginning of the sidetrack).
Just as and in spoken English, the particle &6 inHomeric discourse occurs by
default whenever a unit is clausal and is the expression of a new item on which
the speaker focuses. Of course, this new item is not independent in the sense that
it is an isolated piece of information: being the verbalization of an organic part of
23. In the statement of killing facts in battle narrative it is the mentioning of the victor and his
victim that is all-important in the epic performance (see below), the verb (specifying a relation
between the two that is clear anyway) being of secondary importance semantically and therefore
metrically. On themetrical status of verbs of killing inbattle narrative, seeVisser (1987: 74ff., 145ff.;
1988). For another verbless killing entry, see ll. 16, 463, EvO' lotLnadtQxoxkogayaxctXeLov
OQaitrloJ ov; I/. 15, 430 is entirely similar to the present example (the verb seemingly "postponed");
notice also the "absence" of iExe in unit (q).
24. This is a problem that is not confined to Homer: even in Chafe's data, intonation units are
occasionally so integratedwithin the ongoing discourse flow, both intonationally and semantically,
that they are not easy to isolate as separate units. But notice that the tight "merger" of two ideas,
both in Homer and in ordinary speech, is not a real problem: the phenomenon merely puts the
considerable separation of other units (both "ideational" and intonational) intomore relief.
25. Notice that the notion of "addition" corresponds, as far as the relation between discourse
and the "verse boundary" is concerned, with Parry's (1929) notion of "unperiodic enjambement."
For intonation units and enjambement, see Bakker (1990), a discussion that, however, does not
exhaust the possibilities of the subject.
12 CLASSICAL
a coherent scene, it is part of a tight chain of ideas. But as a link in the chain it is
not dependent on some other link. From the point of view of speech production,
then, 6e signals the transition to a new "fact" and marks as such a new step in the
continuation of the narrative.26Such a new stepmay be simply the expression of
the "next event," the next thing that happened in the scene or on which the
narrator focuses, as is the case in (k), (1), (v), and (w). But itmay also be, more
specifically, a "switch" to another participant in a given scene, or, still more
specifically, the "restoration" of the perspective of a protagonist in a scene. In
such cases, 6e combines with the unstressed demonstrative pronoun 6 (6 6&), as
is the case in unit (i).
After the side track the narrator resumes the thread of his story, a discourse
moment that is overtly marked for continuation (6 6e).27The beginning of the
digression, however, ismarked in a different way, with 6 iEev.28 The use of
ev ...6. in later, classical Greek often takes the form of the juxtaposition of
two entities, themarking of a pair of "contrastive topics."29Such a static opposi
tion, however, is inadequate to characterize the function of Iev ... 6e inHo
meric discourse. In this dynamic speech flow, I would call Tv not so much a
marker of the first member of an antithetical pair30 as a marker of an assertion
that ismade in order to provide theground for the further continuation of the
speaker's discourse. MEv is thus themarker of the obverse side of continuation,
of the discourse segment that ismeant tomake continuation possible at all. In
our example this means that txevmarks not so much an opposition between
Thestor and Patroklos as the beginning of the digression, a discourse segment
that is not continuation itself (and hence not marked as such, just as the side
track of Chafe's Pear story narrator) but which has to be uttered before the
discourse can continue.31 In other, equally characteristicallyHomeric cases, the
unit marked by !Agvis not a digression, but an assertion that rounds off a "center
of interest" just verbalized by the poet; such a closing assertion does not result in
26. See also Bakker (1990: 5-6), as well as Bakker (1993a), where the very considerable
differences between the use of 6b inHomer and that inAttic Greek are discussed.
27. Notice that the same applies to the firstunit, (a), where the poet returns to Patroklos, after
having dealt with his previous victim. Focusing on the detail of a killing (i.e., on the victim, not on
the killer) is in itself enough reason for the idea of the killer to be temporarily removed from the
narrator's focal consciousness, so that it has to be "restored," with 6 6b. But note that in the case of
unit (a) also a clause with a different subject intervenes (6oiaxrloiv 68 Jieodrv), so that the restoration
is at the same time of a syntactic nature.
28. Cf. also I/. 15, 447; 16, 789.
29. E.g., Aaoeiov xaciHnaevoadxbog yiyvoVTalcai be 6o6, jtQeo83VTEQo g ev 'AQtaCEQ~v;,
VEdoxeQog 6E Kuiog (Xen. An. I, 1, 1), to mention a well-known case. For a discussion of the
different use of (e[t . . .)&6 inHomeric and Attic Greek in the light of modern discourse analysis,
see Bakker (1993a).
30. But it is not difficult to find instances in Homer of tv ... 6e that are similar to the Attic
juxtapositions (e.g., II. 11, 472). These instances, however, are but a special case of the general,
original use discussed here.
31. Notice that, within the digressive discourse, segment continuationmarked by 6b ispossible:
ex 6' aQa XELQCO, unit (g).
BAKKER: 13
anacoluthic phenomena, but the principle is the same: ptv marks a unit that has
to be uttered before the discourse can proceed. Consider cases like32
oAv cao' ,lT
(a) I'oS;
6'
(b) 16 &Q' 'I;nnao(6Yqv
XaOQoo'ouitaote6oUQi||
(Iliad 11, 426)
These he left lying, and [he] stabbed with the spear the son of
Hippasos, Charops
where [t?vand 6e seem to be "misplaced" at first sight: one would expect the
constituent T-roi ([tev),Odysseus's previous victims, to contrastwith 'IntjaoiSrvl
X&dQoJ',his new victim. But there is no contrast between what linguistswould
call "topics": what happens in the flow of discourse is a transition from one
killing ("center of interest," in cognitive terms) to another. This transition is not
merely a focusing on a new detail; it requires preparation, a closing statement
marked by tev, after which the narrator can make a new start with 6 be. As
elsewhere inHomer, 6 6e does not "answer" AIVsomuch as restore the original
perspective of the protagonist.
Mev in its originalHomeric use, then, is amarker of assertions, a "confirma
tive" or "affirmative"particle in the termsof the traditionaldiscussions of Greek
particles. As such it has to be regarded as aweakened version (both semantically
and phonetically) of the particle 'Vlv.33But speakers do not express their convic
tions in a vacuum: any assertion is, by definition, not merely a commitment to
some "truth," or the expression of "emphasis," but also, and more so, an at
tempt towin an addressee's consent on some point (or, alternatively, a symptom
of such an agreement). Conversational assertions, in other words, aremade to
create or reinforce involvement. In the case of t^ev in Homeric narrative this
involvement consists in the creation of a basis on which both speaker and hearer
agree, so that successful continuation ispossible.34The use of [ev, I suggest, thus
testifies to the fact that Homeric discourse is a matter of (stylized) dialogic
negotiation rather thanmonologic exposition.
But this implicit dialogism does not apply to (u?V alone. AE, being a semanti
cally bleached form of 6il, is no less hearer-oriented, and its continuation
marking function discussed above isonly half thematter. The particle 6&!,belong
ing to a class of linguistic markers that is sometimes called "evidentials," is
typically used in conversation when a speaker wants to convey that he or she
32. Cf. also II. 4, 491; 5, 148; 8, 125-26; 8, 302; 20, 321-22; etc.
33. Cf. Denniston (1954: 328, 359).
34. Notice that TEvinHomer has much affinitywith Tot and ITOl(Ruijgh 1981), particles of
which the hearer orientation is grounded in their etymology. The attempt at establishing a common
basis may take the form of a conversational concession: a speaker concedes something in order to
make a point that is important for him or her. Compare the use of it is true (that) inEnglish, which
will in practice always be used to establish a common ground for the point that the speaker really
wants tomake. Notice that the same applies to ev, tot, and TIro, towhich the handbooks frequently
assign a "concessive" force.
14 CLASSICAL
thinks that what he or she says is obvious, not only to himself or herself, but to
the addressee as well, or better: visible (6fibov), present already in themental or
physical context shared between speaker and addressee.35The use of 6i1 thus
does not so much establish a common basis for conducting discourse (as in the
case of kevor [Rlv)as presuppose one. A clear example of br as a symptom of
involvement between interlocutors, both perceptually and emotionally, a being
together in a situation, is Ajax's address to Teucer when both see that
Lycophron, Ajax's OeQarov, has been killed by Hector (Iliad 15, 437): TevxQe
:etrov, 6biv6Civ&a7nextao mostg etalQog ("See, dear Teukros, our true compan
ion is killed"). But this rapport between speaker and addressee on the basis of a
shared physical context is not limited to characterswithin the epic performance;
it applies to the performance itself aswell: the basis shared between the poet and
his audience is the situation (context) created in the performance thus far. At
particularly significant moments in the narrative (often marked by T6oe), the
poet can proceed as if he and his audience are jointlywitnessing a given scene
that is understandable to both and hence is a source of involvement. He tends to
use 6i' in such cases, "anchoring" his new assertion in the context which the
previous discourse has created, as in the scene where Athene has just put ances
tral strength inDiomedes, with clear and obvious results:
Tvet6bnsg 6' EavoTig iLv JioftXoloalv ?t/xO6r

xacL
zrQv jet Ovo) [tFaic;s TQceooLl adLXEo0aL
OS, TOT?E IV gQig T6ooov EXkev Itvo;g.
(Iliad 5, 134-36)
Tydeus's son closed once again with the champions, taking his place
there;
raging as he had been before to fightwith the Trojans,
now the strong rage tripled took hold of him.
Ifwe now assume that 6e is aweakened version of this "socializing"61j, not

only phonetically but also semantically, with a use that is to a much greater
extent automatic and "routinized," it is not difficult to accept that &e is also, in its
very capacity of continuation marker, "socializing": continuation inmeaningful
(i.e., successful) discourse makes sense only when there is a common ground,
since the very act of conducting a discourse is themaintenance and development
of such a shared ground. It is understandable, therefore, that the act of continua
tion, and itsmarking in discourse, presupposes a shared context. Ae, then, isnot
merely a "continuative transitionmarker" that plays a role in the (monologic)
transformation of the flow of thought into the flow of speech; it signals at the
same time the speaker's confidence in the success of this cognitive undertaking: a
35. So already Brugmann-Thumb (1913: 630), ignoring, however, the role of the addressee:
"b6wies auf das dem Sprechenden gegenwartigVorliegende und ihmklar vor Augen Liegende hin,"
wrongly dismissed by Denniston (1954: 203).
BAKKER:
speaker who cannot presuppose that the listener is "with him" in the discourse
had better stop instead of continue.36
II
The repeated remarks on visualization in the preceding pages are in concord

with general characterizations of epic narrative as opposed to other modes of
storytelling. Epic narrative inmany cultures is very different fromwhat is com
monly considered to be the essence of the narrative text-type: the "reference" to
past events and the presentation of information thatmoves narrative time for
ward and that thus can be called "sequential."37Rather, epic narrative is typi
cally presented as, in narratological terms, the description of thingsseen, with the
narrator (performer) posing as eyewitness. For example, in the passage describ
ingPatroklos's killing of Thestor, which is typical forHomer, the continuative 6e
clauses (let alone the other ones) do not so much express an event that can be
"sequenced" between two other events (possible exceptions are units 1and v) as
details of what the poet sees.38
Instead of being a property of epic as a literary "genre," however, this
descriptive quality of epic is directly related to its being an oral genre, or better,
a matter of speech in performance in which the narrator/performer is not so
much concerned with the transmission of narrative information as with the reen
actment of events from the past, with the recreation in the present of a past on
which (importantly) both the poet and his audience agree.39A typical reflex of
this "presence," summoned to the present by the power of the word in the epic
36. Connective 6e is sometimes (e.g., Risch 1969) considered to be connected with the suffix
-6E in the "proximal" demonstrative 66e. It seems to me more plausible, however, that both elements
are derived, by an independent diachronic development, from 6i, -6e stressing the environment
oriented nature of bi6 as an evidential ("this one here"), and 6e the interactive aspects of themeaning
of 86.
37. Modern text-linguistic accounts of narrative tend to view the structure of stories in terms of
a distinction between "foregrounded" portions of narrative text (which provide narrative information
that can be sequentially ordered) and "backgrounded" portions (providing information thatmerely
comments on the sequential events on the time line, or provides background to it). Crucial publica
tions in this respect are Labov (1972),Hopper (1979), Dry (1983),Reinhart (1984), and the extensive
discussions on tense usage in narrative of Fleischman (1990a). An application of "foreground
background" to Greek (Herodotean) syntax and discourse is Bakker (1991). The "foreground
background" distinction as conceived of in these publications does not apply toHomer; or rather, in
Homer everything is, in a neo-Auerbachian sense, foreground, due to the visual quality of Homeric
discourse. See further below.
38. This applies not only to the subevents of which killings consist, but also, interestingly, on a
higher level of cognitive production, to the killing events themselveswith respect to each other. See
the discussion of Latacz (1977: 68-81, esp. 78) on the status of these events as selections of the poet
out of a large field of ongoing (simultaneous) mass fighting, rather than as temporally sequenced
events.
39. See Bauman (1992) on "traditionalization" as the dynamic process of instantiation of tradi
tion in performance.
16 CLASSICAL
performance, is, inmany epic traditions, the use of present tense,40a linguistic
device that is in linewith the dramatic quality of the epic performance.41Now the
Homeric narrator does not use the present tense. But Homer does contain
another feature that can be seen as a linguistic reflex of the creation of presence
and of a reality shared between the poet and the audience in the context of the
performance. This is the particle aQa.
Considerations of space do not allow me to give a fair review of the various
proposals made in the literature on Greek particles to account for the enigmatic
particle &ac; the account offered here has at least the advantage that it recon
ciles some of the seemingly incompatible features attributed to a&cain the litera
ture.42 A speaker using &aa, I submit as a starting point, makes an assertion that
isprompted by evidence before him, a statement that isuttered in a situation and
therefore warranted by that situation. The vision prompting the &Qa statement,
however, isnot amatter of plain perception (if such a thing exists at all in human
cognition), but of understanding, of seeing as amental process. This understand
ing ismore than understanding in the intellectual sense, a detached conclusion
drawn from facts; it is an active response to the situation, a creative act of
construal. A speaker using &aa is an interpreterof the situation inwhich he or
she finds himself or herself; he or she not only witnesses something, but is also
participating in it.The particle ada, I suggest, is themarker of this involvement.
A good example of this we find in Book 20 of the Iliad: Achilles is on the
point of killing Aeneas but Poseidon rescues him; he puts a mist over Achilles'
eyes and puts Aeneas's spear before his feet and removes Aeneas from the
scene. When Achilles regains vision, he reacts as follows to the new situation:
( jiojtoL 1 [iya Oaviua o66' o6qpaktoLoiv OQCi)ctaL
EyXog TEvT'r6 xieltra L 3 XOovO6, o6l' TL p6'Co
Xraoocw,Tx ?(cp?rYxa
xactaxtxdeva~l (evacvwv.
ca xal Atvecag qSpiog &OavdotoLt OeoTotv
1ev. dal@iaLV iqpqIvatLpaCcocws; XETaWJOaL.
(Iliad 20, 344-48)
40. Cf. also the fragment from one of the Pear story narrators cited above.
41. On present tense in (Old French) epic, with many genre-typological observations based on
it, see Fleischman (1990a: 64-93, 263-74; 1991).Much of what Fleischman says about Romance epic
in terms of visualization and reenactment runs parallel with my discussion of Homer.
42. In addition to the treatment of &ac inDenniston (1954: 32-43) and in the standard gram
mars of Greek, specialmention has to be made of Grimm (1962),who rightly, and quite successfully,
describes the function of &da within the general context of Homeric speech and performance inways
that are often not unlike mine. Grimm's account of a&a as a particle stressing that what is said is
"known" to the hearer (on the basis of general knowledge or on the basis of previous discourse) is
almost diametrically opposed to that of Denniston, who, following an older proposal of Hartung,
characterizes &Qa as "expressing a lively feeling of interest" and thus as stressing thatwhat is said is
"new" and surprising. Both accounts will be reconciled below, although I findGrimm's description
more congenial tomy view.
BAKKER: 17
Can this be? Here is a strange thing I see with my own eyes.
Here is a spear lying on the ground, but I can no longer
see the man, whom I was charging in fury to kill him.
Aineias was then one beloved of the immortal
gods. I thoughtwhat he said was ineffectual boasting.
The spear lying before him is physical evidence43 to which Achilles actively
responds with the interpretative iaca statement, thereby expressing his involve
ment, his being-in-the-situation, not only physically but also, more importantly,
mentally: he now understands that his previous suppositions (uttered invv. 195
98) were incorrect and that Aeneas is after all a favorite of the gods.44 Achilles'
statement, itwill be noted, has past tense marking, a frequently occurring fact
that has not escaped the attention of the researchers of &aa and its concomitant
idioms. But rather than a mere idiom calling for an appropriate translation,45 the
past tense is a highly significant index of what Achilles actually does: rather than
"referring to the past" in the usual grammatical sense of "asserting that an action
occurred before themoment of utterance," Achilles conveys that the past has
become real for him, or more precisely, it has become present in his conscious
ness, due to his interpretation of visual evidence before him.
Achilles' stance
as a speaker in the fragment discussed is not that of a
a a
narrator. But in sense he is narrator, in that he does what narrators, at least
epic narrators, do: recreate the past by naming it in the present. In fact, the
cognitive process of seeing-interpreting-verbalizing by which he makes his state
ment is not different from that of a narrator. Epic narrators in performance, too,
are interpreters, not of visual evidence in their physical here and now, but of
visual evidence provided by theirmemory.46Narrative speech driven bymemory
is speech prompted by visual evidence; in fact, thisvisualization is nothing other
than a specific variant of Chafe's account of speech production in terms of the
activation of ideas ("information") in the speaker's consciousness. And the trans
formation of this visual evidence into language requires a strong involvement on
the part of the speaker: just as "understanding" in actual speech situations is
43. Notice also the proximal demonstrative T66Ein vv. 344, 346.
44. Edwards (1991: 329) points out that q(piogd&av6aoLoL OtOIOl is an "unusual compliment."
45. See, for example, Willcock (1984) ad loc.: " 'So it is now after all clear that he is,' by a
common idiom."The past tense in @tQa statements isvery common, both in and afterHomer. (One is
reminded of Hesiod's famous ovix&Qa tuouvov TiV'EQi6)wvy?voS,WD 11.) See the listof examples
inDenniston (1954: 36-37).
46. Evidence need not be physical to be evident, and to draw a sharp dividing line between
"pure"percepts andmental percepts ismisguided from the point of view of human cognition, for the
simple reason that "pure" perception does not exist: only the naive realist will maintain that we
perceive things "as they are," without the intervention of the cognitive "filter"of our minds. But as
Chafe (1990) notes, and as is argued here, themind isnot merely a filter; it actually creates the reality
surrounding it, by construing models of the "realworld." Classic statements on this point, focusing
on mental representation in the visual arts, are Arnheim (1969) and in particularGombrich (1959).
18 CLASSICAL
more a responsive,
of participatory attitude than a detached stance of a
"knower" with regard to a "known," so remembrance and visualization in story
telling are more than a mere retrieval of narrative "facts" and a reference to past
events-telling a story is a being-in-the-situation, a participation as an eyewit
ness in the scenes one visualizes. The characteristic linguistic reflex in Homeric
discourse is ala.
Consider the following fragment, in which Odysseus recounts a scene of
which he (as well as his audience) has been, literally, an eyewitness: the sign
appearing to the Greeks ten years before in Aulis:
6
iev0' iepqdvrq aya oallaC- 6gdxrcv ji vTcra 6bacpoLVOg
oatQ6caX?0o, T6V 9' catrTog 'OXUlrtoC
ogcE (p6co6?,
pcoIoi1 rjatCaLg JTQOg a jrXCtTavoTov 6OQOoEV.
(Iliad 2, 308-10)
There appeared a great sign; a snake, his back blood-mottled,
a thing of horror, cast into the light by the very Olympian,
wound its way from under the altar and made toward the plane tree.
Odysseus speaks from memory, which involves a renewal of the intense experi
ence, by the creation of a vivid mental image. The particle &aa, I submit, marks
Odysseus's speech as the description of what he sees and of his involvement
therewith. But
as a narrator, Odysseus is not talking to himself, of course: his
narrative at recreating a shared experience
is directed from the past as a shared
reality in the here and now of the present. What Odysseus says is not information
that is "new" to his audience; as a narrator, he revives, due to his skills as a
speaker, a past on which he and his audience agree. Odysseus's stance, in short,
resembles that of the epic singer himself.47
The of the epic performance,
purpose the turning of a performer's mental
(private) images into public speech, is that what becomes real for the narrator,
due to his involvement with the scenes of his imaginative memory, activates
visual images in the minds of the audience as well.48 The "presencing" of the
past, therefore, is not limited to the poet's private consciousness, but due to the
47. On "heroes as performers," see Martin (1989). In the present case we might say that
Odysseus repeats Calchas's interpretation of the ofatc at the moment of its appearance. In a way his
speech is the reenactment of the seer's interpretation as a public statement (performance): both
Odysseus and Calchas are concerned with exhorting the Greek army at a moment of despondency.
On o/iaQta and their interpretation (including this one), see Nagy (1990b: 202-22).
48. Whoever says this in the twentieth century is not the first one: ancient literary criticism,
rhetorical theory, as well as the scholiasts, all abound with remarks on and discussions of Eva6yEia,
ei6boXootia, evidentia, etc., as means to activate images in the minds of the listeners in order to
produce ex XltIg;, the ultimate aim of any poetry (= performance). Among the best-known pas
sages, and of particular interest for the present discussion, are the remarks in De Subl. (c. 15) on
avlTaoiat, Quintilian's discussion of the matter (10 6, 2, 29 ff.), and above all Plato's Ion (535b-e).
Unfortunately, such discussions have traditionally been dealt with by scholarship concerned with the
history of ancient rhetorical theory and literary criticism, while their direct relevance for ancient
poetry itself has generally been neglected.
BAKKER: 19
dynamics of the epic performance is no less an experience of the audience; and

the involvement of the performer with his images is nothing other than the
natural counterpart of the audience's involvementwith their images, the natural
consequence of their being "drawn" into the reality deployed by the performer.
Epic narrative, in other words, is an intensification of the effect and purpose of
ordinary oral narrative: it is concerned with reenactment; it recreates the past and
makes it real in the here and now of the performance shared by the performer
and his audience. In this process, the performer is a genuine interpreter,not
merely in the cognitive ("private") sense discussed above, but in the literal sense
of a mediator between the past and the present, a go-between effecting the
realization of the past in the present.49
When I say that the particle aQc is a characteristic linguistic reflex, not only
of the cognitive side of interpretation, but also of the "performative" side (the
discourse produced being amatter of authoritative speech), I have to add imme
diately that this applies primarily to the use of the particle in general in the
speech of the Homeric narrator, and that not all instances of the particle are
equally salient. In fact,many instances out of the profusion inwhich the particle
occurs seem to be used mainly for prosodic and/ormetrical reasons: the particle
may function to prevent hiatus or lengthen a preceding syllable; or itmay be a
metrical "extension"
of be (6' acQa, 6' &Q'), in the same way in which an epithet is
an extension of a name or noun.50 However, instead of pointing to a function of
aQax in Homeric discourse as a meaningless filler, the metrical and prosodic
function of the particle, paradoxically, testifies to its enormous general impor
tance. Just as epithets can be used as "filler words" precisely because their
general meaning extends far beyond any particular textual locus in which they
are used (they specify who or what a hero is and thereby contribute to his
identity and reality: in short, kleos),51 so &agocan be "exploited"metrically (i.e.,
added, or omitted, for the sake of versification) precisely because it is so impor
tant in the speech of the Homeric narrator, as an element testifying to the
evidentiality claim that is inherent in the performance poetics of Greek epic and
to the presentation of epic narrative as the description of things seen.52
The metrical use of &ca, then, ismade possible by the fact that, in a sense,
every statement inHomeric discourse (indeed the epic performance as a whole)
is an aoTa statement, just as Odysseus is JnOkULtiTLgand trok6TXa irrespective of
49. On interpretation and "in-betweenness," see Ong (1988). The "in-betweenness" of what I
call "performative interpretation" ismost forcefully evoked in the simile of themagnet and the rings
inPlato's Ion, where the concept EQ@jlVCe6V is actually used (535a).
50. See on this point Visser (1987: 91-92). For a discussion of the distinction between "nu
cleus" and "peripheral extension" as a wider phenomenon in Homeric formulaic semantics, see
Bakker and Fabbricotti (1991).
51. Cf. Foley's (1991, 1992) notion of "traditional referentiality." (See also note 1 above.)
52. Notice that in comparison with Homeric narrative the frequency of aPa in later historio
graphical narrative is negligible, whereby the difference between Herodotus (48 in narration; 20 in
speeches) and Thucydides (never in narrative as far as I can see) isworth mentioning.
20 CLASSICAL
what happens to him or what he does. However, there are a number of contexts
inwhich the use of &Qa is particularly characteristic and thereforemost predict
able. One of these is the use of the particle in relative clauses introducing
biographical and/or anecdotic detail about slain (minor) heroes in battle narra
tive. InBeye's (1964)well-known "ABC-scheme," towhich most killing descrip
tions and catalogue entries conform, thiswould be the "B-part," separating the
general statement of the killing from its detailed description.53Consider:
fi6caov 6' ' &Q' t(eqpve Meyqg, 'AvrTyvoQog v6v,
of Oa v60og xtvE V , nvxa 6' ETQEqpE 6ta Oecavd
iOaCpiXOLOL TE?XOOL,XaQLCOL~OiV3tnoE?iW.
(Iliad 5, 69-71)
Meges in turn killed Pedaios, the son of Antenor,
who, bastard though he was, was nursed by lovely Theano
with close care, as for her own children, to please her husband.
In themodern view of narrative as consisting of "foreground" and "background"
(see note 37 above) the "digressive" relative clause introducedby 6g pa would be
"background," inproviding biographical information that adds to the audience's
"background knowledge" of the epic world and its inhabitants. But this is an
inadequate characterization of the relative clause. Rather than being "informa
tion about" the epic world, biographical detail is at the center of the performer's
strategies to bring thisworld back to the present. Naming a hero and providing
detail about him is not merely a matter of "reference" and "predication": such
logic-based semantic concepts from the logical subculture within our literate
culture are inadequate to account for the dynamics of Homeric speech. "Refer
ence" to heroes in the poetics of Homeric speech and performance, rather, is
activation of the tradition, not only as an idea in themind of the poet, but also,
crucially, as a reality resulting from speech.
A hero mentioned with any frequency has kleos, and whoever has kleos is
immortal and potentially present in the performance: he may not always be in
the poet's, or the audience's, consciousness, but his kleos (his being the object of
previous speech = performance) provides an evidential basis for his being turned
into speech again: he can be revived by the poet at will within the new perfor
mance, due to his language skills (that is, mastery of activating the tradition in
the context of the performance).54 The particle aigo in the fragment above and in
similar cases, I suggest, signals that what is said in the relative clause is based on
evidence resulting from kleos. It is, therefore, a characteristic element in the
speech of a poet or performer whose stance is that of a mediator between the
past and the present, someone who not merely bases his speech on kleos, but, by
the very act of speaking, actively augments it.
53. Notice that in the passage describing Patroklos's killingThestor discussed above the "digres
sion" comes in the place of Beye's B-part.
54. See Bakker (1993b) for an account of kleos in terms of the dynamics of speech.
BAKKER:
Beside marking speech that is prompted by themental images of the per

former's imagination, or by the recurrenceof concepts and ideas (viz. kleos), &Qa
can also be used tomark speech that isprompted by the discourse itself; in other
words, the poet's performance may itself create a reality thatwarrants the utter
ance of statements based on evidence. This involves the frequent use of aga with
a number of different demonstrative (deictic) elements. For example, &Qa is
frequently used not only to introducewhat Beye calls the "B-part"of the "cata
logic" killing entries in battle narrative, but also the "C-part," the return after
the biographical "digression" to the killing proper:
oiTi 6bepdaX'eyyiS iWv,xal axovTLao6ovugi qptwalv,

xal P3dev "Atqcplov, XSedyov viov, 6o Q' evi HtaLo
vCCaenOkVxTft(ov 7oXkvukiog' &kkad E Rtola
jy' itLxovUQYo0vTa pie& HIcQia[6Lv Te xcd vUSg.
TOYVc (oorfiLpa [3dXevTekactdvtog ACag.
xa&T
(Iliad 5, 611-15)
And [Aias] stood close in and made a cast with the shining javelin,
and struckAmphios, Selagos's son, who rich in possessions
and rich in corn land had lived in Paisos, but his own destiny
brought him companion in arms to Priam and the children of Priam.
Him Telamonian Aias struck beneath the war belt.
Modern linguists would call tzv ga an "anaphoric" expression that "refers back"
to what was said "above" (i.e., earlier in the text) and that conveys as such "old,"
"known," or "given" information.But the opposition between "old" and "new"
as a characterization of information processing in discourse derives from our
(literate) association of informationwith knowledge: we conceive of "informa
tion" as something that is typically "new" ("unknown") at first and then turns
into "old," referring to "known" and "identifiable" referents. Such a character
ization, however, is alien to Homeric discourse. Referents inHomer do not have
to be identified;
rather, as traditional entities they become active,55 first in the
performer's mind, but after their verbalization in the minds of the audience in
the performance as well. And the relevant opposition in this reenactment in
Homer is not "new vs. old," but absent vs. present: speech creates (not only
privately, in the poet's mind, but also publicly, in the performance) presence out
of absence, a reality to which one can point, in the literal sense of "deixis."
This is what happens, I suggest, in the fragment above: the poet's mention
ingAmphios (and the verbalization of biographical detail about him) has created
an evidential basis warranting the use of aQa in his statement. What seems to be
in our texts a transition from one chunk of discourse to another (or from the B- to
the C-part of Beye's catalogic entry, if one wants, or even a case of ring composi
tion) is in reality a statement uttered in the reality created by the discourse itself.
55. See Chafe (1987: 26-28) on the notion of "active concepts" and on the dynamic process of
becoming active.
22 CLASSICAL
Thus the various uses of aQa forcefully testify to the dynamic nature of "context"
in the speech of the performance and to the "emergent" nature of tradition:
besides being uttered within a context, speech at the same timeprovides context
for other speech, both within the same discourse and across discourses (i.e.,
various reenactments of the tradition), so that speaking amounts to performing
the complex act of "contextualization," which in the case of the epic perfor
mance takes the form of "traditionalization."56
Entirely comparable to the use of T6v 'a just discussed is the frequent use of
6Qa in statements rounding off similes. Similes play a crucial role in the imagina
tive deployment of reality in theHomeric performance, and provide an appropri
ate situation for the use of &Qa.57 Even more frequent and characteristic is the
very frequent use of aQ@ain statements rounding off stretches of what we con
ceive of in grammatical terms as "direct speech:"
wg dL' ~qpq
&9aQoa (pivTloag
(0c aa EL3TEoxev
atg
[IEV
? aQ' Wg EtL3Oba
q @a, xai, etc.
Direct discourse in epic performance (whether or not "rhapsodic") is acting and

impersonation,58and as such, as far as reality creation is concerned, even more
forceful and direct than naming and similes: a performer uttering words that one
of the characters spoke cannot do so but by playing the part of that character,
thereby setting up aminiperformance within the encompassing frameworkof the

general performance. This temporary performance is realitypar excellence, evi
dence fully warranting the deictic nature of the poet's "thus he spoke."
But the most remarkable cases of the performance itself warranting state
ments prompted by evidence are the apostrophes, especially those to Patroklos
in Book 16, the most emotional of which is given below:
Txig pev iXEtEL'ET6OQOve 00o &adraavTog "AQfi,

oe?Q6akXca iaXowv, TQgi 6' evvea cpOqxag
Ejirncvsv.
&X' OT? 6b] TO TETaQTOVEjactEovTo ba(Lovl ioo;,
ivO'aQa tot IHatoxXe qcpavrOL6ToLo
tEct^Ui.
7iVT?TOya&QTot odiT3ogEvi xQaTe0n Vo[iVTn
6ELvo6g 6 [iEV TOY L6ovTaxaTa x6ovov ovx ev6ooev,
yaQ JTofi xexaeuxZietvoSg
ylQI avTEpo36^kq
(Iliad 16, 784-90)
56. Cf. Bauman (1992: 127-28) and note 2 above.

57. See, e.g., II. 11, 309; 12, 307; 16, 644; 22, 410.
58. Again, fundamental ancient evidence is available (Plat. Resp. 393b-c), but this point is
entirely self-evident anyway from the point of view of performance poetics.
BAKKER: 23
Three times he charged in with the force of the running war god,
screaming a terrible cry, and three times he cut down nine men;
but as for the fourth time he swept in, like something greater
than human, there, Patroklos, the end of your lifewas shown forth,
since Phoibos came against you in the strong encounter
dangerously, nor did Patroklos see him as he moved through
the battle, and shrouded in a deep mist came in against him.
The apostrophes to Patroklos have traditionally (from antiquity onwards) been

explained as a symptom of the poet's sympathy for this hero.59While obviously
not incorrect, this account, I suggest, is toomild and harmless to do full justice to
the :exjXkqtgintended, and no doubt caused, by the poet's addressing one of the
characters directly at themost dramaticmoment in the story. This is the point
where the dividing line between private imagination and public experience is at
itsweakest: Patroklos literally is there, and the poet's addressing him creates, as
well as presupposes, a maximum of presence in the epic performance. The
apostrophe marks the point where the reenactment that is the essence of epic
storytelling reaches its climax and where the participatory involvement of the
poet, and thereby of the audience, is greatest. Patroklos's death, and the scenes
leading up to it, are, as a variation on a linguist's happy term, a genuine "break
through in the performance."60 "Aca, as a speech feature that is unconsciously
used, is no more than a reflex of all this, but it is difficult to find a context in
which the particle ismore appropriately used.
III
I have discussed the Homeric performance on the basis of an interpretation

of a number of discoursemarkers, notably &Qa, that in being used unconsciously
by the poet are "signs" for themodern interpreter pointing to the speech and
performance-quality of Homeric discourse. But the notion of "presence" is not
just a modern researcher's construct; it is a consciously held part of the Homeric
conception of poetry and its effects. Consider Odysseus's compliment toDemo

dokos inAlcinous's palace:
59. Another explanation, firmly belonging to the twentieth century, is the formulaic one, in
which the alleged absence of a nominative formula of the desired length is the ground for the use of a
vocative (see, e.g., Matthews 1980). This allegedly "oral" explanation seems to me to be oral
formulaic theory at itsmost unconvincing, in actually killing, by means of the notional apparatus of
orality, what appears to be the very essence of orality, viz. the creation of reality (a reality one can
speak to) in performance. General discussion of the apostrophe problem inEdwards (1987: 37-38)
and Richardson (1990: 170-74), who cite further literature.A performance-based explanation differ
ent frommine is offered byMartin (1989: 235-36), who suggests thatPatroklos's apostrophes reflect
the poet's intense involvement (to the point of identification)with Achilles.
60. Hymes (1975), who uses "breakthrough into performance." "Breakthrough"moments in
spoken narrative tend to be marked by present tensemarking, asWolfson (1982: 40) notes.
24 CLASSICAL
AYt6o6ox', e;oxa 6#| oe PQOTo)v aiv(toOt' aatdvxtv.

fJ oe ye Moro' eb6i6at, AtLog adi;, f oe y' 'AJi6kkwv.
XkLv yEQ xax& x6oAtov 'AXatLv oitov ca?ELig,
6oo' EQav T'eza06v Texai 6oo' Et6yroav 'AXaLoi,
cog TE JzTO f auwTog
iacgeOv i] adMou axooaSg.
(Od. 8, 487-91)
Demodokos, above all mortals beside I prize you.

Surely theMuse, Zeus's daughter, or else Apollo has taught you,
for all too right following the tale you sing theAchaians'
venture, all they did and had done to them, all the sufferings
of these Achaians, as if you had been there yourself or heard it
from one who was.
Demodokos has created not just presence, but presence that is guaranteed cor
rect, as Odysseus can confirm, who is in a real sense doubly present in the
context of Demodokos's performance, both as listener and as part of the reality
reenacted. Odysseus explicitly denounces the performer's eyewitness role (or the
'
pretense that he heard the story from someone who actuallywas on the scene,
&kkov C xoioag) as a fiction, but in so doing underscores the authority claim that
is inherent in the Greek epic tradition, for the role of eyewitness is deferred to
Apollo or theMuse(s) themselves. Poets may be ministers of kleos and "masters
of presence," due to their ability to transform private images into powerful
public speech, but in the poetics and psychology of theGreek epic tradition these
images ultimately derive from the presence of theMuse(s), as eyewitnesses, in
the reality to be reenacted.What I have described as consciousness and visualiza
tion being the source of the poet's mediating role in the performance is in archaic
psychology, inDodds' terms,61a psychic intervention, the result of another me
diation, that of theMuse between the heroic events of the epic world and the
poet. This psychic scenario is nowhere better expressed than in the famous
words preceding the Catalogue of Ships:
'"EJoETE viWv hOL,Movoat 'Ok6iptLa 6bpcta' EXovoaiL

dlReg yaL O9eai ?aeT? jcaQEOETE , OTEaTEjdvxTca,
fi?5g&60iXXko oLov axovoUev oi6& TI
1 >LEV
o' xtveg iyEYt6veg Aavac6v xai xoiQavoIt ioav.
(Iliad 2, 484-87)
Tell me now, you Muses, who have your homes on Olympos.
For you, who are goddesses, are there, and you know all things,
and we have heard only the rumor of it and know nothing.
Who then of those were the chief men and the lords of the Danaans?
61. Dodds (1951: chap. 1).

BAKKER: 25
Poetry, the power to bring the past into the present, is amatter of evOovotaoi6og,
and therefore of divine grace.62And the past, though "presentable" through this
grace, isdistant: itmay be evident to the poet's mind, due to the inspirationof the
Muses, but it can never be physically evident as ordinary thingswithin the visual
and intellectual scope of the poet and his audience (note the ie;Lg).The presence
realized in the epic performance is a presence pointing to thepast, a presence that
is due to the joint interpretative activity of theminds of the performer and his
audience in the performance.
The particle aQa, with its evidential as well as cognitive semantic aspects, is a
characteristic reflex of this in its marking the evidence that is due to kleos and to
the poet's interpretation of theMuses. It is no coincidence, I think, that the
particle is used tomark a statement that is uttered within the reality created by the
Muse-guided speech following the request just cited, the end of theCatalogue of
Ships (Iliad 2, 760):63 Oo1 &@Q''iYEj6veg xai xoQiavoLt ioav 'AXaL6bv ("These
then were the leaders and the princes among the Danaans"). "AQa may be a
feature of speech, signaling the interpretative involvement of a speaker in a situa
tion, but considering the divine provenance of this evidence in the poet's percep
tion, we could say that &aa is a feature of special speech as well.
Center forHellenic Studies
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Discourse and Performance: Involvement, Visualization and "Presence" in Homeric Poetry

Author(s): Egbert J. Bakker

Discourse and Performance: Involvement,

W ITHINTHECHANGING CLIMATE of folklore studies, anthropology, the so

? 1993BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

tomeaning in a particular context.1 Closely related is the concern of linguistically

uttered, but also inwhat it represents, or invokes. In thisway, "understanding" in

As a starting point for the discussion of Homeric discourse as spoken narra

401 6 6? ?toLoa, "Hvo3og vi6v,

8. The translations following each example in this paper are Lattimore's.

positing the presence of a speaker, whose behavior we witness, the anacoluthon

(a) [.5]And then he whistles at the boy at the bicycle,

(f) . . . and takes the hat . . back,

(g) [.25] to him,

"surroundings." In this paper I conceive of a "center of interest" as the visualiza

vehicle for poetic expression;18what Kunst there is, is a regularizationof what is

(a) IT6 EOocroca,I And then he <took>Thestor,

This characterization as "intonation units" has to be modified immediately, how

typically used in conversation when a speaker wants to convey that he or she

Tvet6bnsg 6' EavoTig iLv JioftXoloalv ?t/xO6r

Ifwe now assume that 6e is aweakened version of this "socializing"61j, not

The repeated remarks on visualization in the preceding pages are in concord

dynamics of the epic performance is no less an experience of the audience; and

speech of a poet or performer whose stance is that of a mediator between the

Beside marking speech that is prompted by themental images of the per

oiTi 6bepdaX'eyyiS iWv,xal axovTLao6ovugi qptwalv,

q @a, xai, etc.

Direct discourse in epic performance (whether or not "rhapsodic") is acting and

thereby setting up aminiperformance within the encompassing frameworkof the

Txig pev iXEtEL'ET6OQOve 00o &adraavTog "AQfi,

56. Cf. Bauman (1992: 127-28) and note 2 above.

The apostrophes to Patroklos have traditionally (from antiquity onwards) been

I have discussed the Homeric performance on the basis of an interpretation

conception of poetry and its effects. Consider Odysseus's compliment toDemo

AYt6o6ox', e;oxa 6#| oe PQOTo)v aiv(toOt' aatdvxtv.

Demodokos, above all mortals beside I prize you.

'"EJoETE viWv hOL,Movoat 'Ok6iptLa 6bpcta' EXovoaiL

61. Dodds (1951: chap. 1).

Center forHellenic Studies

Semantics inHomeric Diction: The Case of Dative Expressions for 'Spear'."

Pellegrini, 79-98. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

University of California Press.

. 1991. The Iliad:A Commentary. Vol 5, Books 17-20. Cambridge: Cam

Latacz, Joachim. 1977. Kampfparanese, Kampfdarstellung und Kampfwirk

quences of Reading and Writing, ed. D. R. Olson, N. Torrance, and A.

Hildyard, 124-47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Visser, Edzard. 1987. Homerische Versifikationstechnik: Versuch einer Rekon

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