His own memory starts flowing and ultimately merges with his own performance of further songs. By doing so he endorses the unwilting kleos of the epic performance. Odysseus weeps as he listens to Demodocus’ songs ( Odyssey viii 83–89 and 521–534). The flow of tears can be the materialization of the flow of memory. She gives the following account of Niobe-as-stone:Īs much as the source of Niobe’s tears is inexhaustible, eternally unwilting is the transmission of indelible events, however sad they may be. Such verily seems the figure, when thou gazest at it from afar but when thou drawest near, lo, ‘tis but a sheer rock, a cliff of Sipylus.” The association is famously alluded to also in Sophocles’ Antigone, where Antigone compares herself to Niobe.
Quintus Smyrnaeus (I 293–306) provides the description of a natural phenomenon in Sipylus that is, a stream falling from the heights of a rugged cliff, which visually suggests the shape of a woman shedding tears: “A great marvel is she to passers by, because she is like a sorrowful woman, who mourns some cruel grief, and weeps without stint. One of them is “to moisten, to wet,” which fits a traditional belief associated with the cliff of Sipylus. Lines 614–617 recite: νῦν δέ που ἐν πέτρῃσιν ἐν οὔρεσιν οἰοπόλοισιν / ἐν Σιπύλῳ, (…) / ἔνθα λίθος περ ἐοῦσα θεῶν ἐκ κήδεα πέσσει, which literally means: “And now somewhere in the lonely mountains / in Sipylos (…) / there, even if she is stone thanks to the gods, she makes her sorrows mellow.” The reader may note, once again, the omnitemporal present πέσσει, whose basic meaning, “making mellow,” can be applied to various objects, thus resulting in different smoothing effects. The same type of resonance underlies the elliptical sense of the lines concluding the embedded tale of Niobe ( Iliad XXIV 601–620). Just as water drips from rocks timelessly-note the present χέει “pours,” whose time span is unspecified -so Patroclus’ tears are shed and simultaneously projected to his afterlife.
Onians (1974:201) reminds us that the verb κατείβειν in Homer is exclusively used to describe tears and water therefore, he argues, what happens to weeping Odysseus as he is found by Calypso on the seashore should be translated not as “his life ebbed” but as “his αἰών was flowing down”: The liquids which flow from individuals at special moments in their lives are associated with a person’s vitality-displayed and dispersed at the same time. αἰών is located in the head, that is, the source of thoughts and feelings. Before functioning as a generic substitute for “lifetime,” αἰών indicated the principle of life, and a physical one. αἰών is physically perceptible in the liquids (tears and sweat) produced by the human body in particular circumstances, but it originates from the cerebro-spinal fluid (or marrow) which is particularly concentrated in one’s head. Onians suggests that αἰών is “the stuff of life and strength,” whose loss brings about dryness and therefore death. I should like to expand this idea by suggesting a link between the source of liquids and Onians’ argument about the earlier meaning of the word αἰών. An “esthetics of fluidity” in classical poetry Rather, it rests on the acknowledgment of the powerfulness of a medium that is effective only when it is “fluid,” that is to say, when art comes alive through performance, which is a great source of enjoyment (τέρψις). The deep link between weeping and performing poetry or music does not rest so much on the emotional component of its causes and effects. Just as weeping while narrating or while viewing narrative paintings is argued by Nagy to be coextensive with the live medium of a performance in motion, so Dowland’s engrossment with tears can be argued to ultimately eulogize the flow of music. John Dowland (1563–1626), recognized as the greatest English composer of lute music and lute songs, used the motto “Semper Dowland semper dolens” as his signature. The present contribution draws a connection between water or tears as a metonymy for the performance of poetry, on the one hand, and tears as the metonymy for the performance of music in the works of Dowland, on the other hand. Nagy’s argument points out passages from Homer, Hesiod, Callimachus and Virgil, whose language either encodes or clearly alludes to such images. Nagy (2009) identifies one of the esthetic values associated with the reflections of Homeric poetry in later authoritative voices of Greek and Latin literature as the “esthetics of fluidity.” The flow of narration/poetry is often depicted as the flow of tears or drops of water, whose source produces impermanent and changeable forms of art.
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