I. Transition from
Lysistrata—make love not war
A. apragmon
, p1. apragmones (adj.); apragmosune
(abstract noun)
1.
Lit. 'one who does not conduct business': a person who
refrains from taking part in public affairs. It can be either a positive or a
negative characteristic, depending on the attitude of the speaker
('philosophical contemplation' or 'political irresponsibility'). For the
opposite characteristic, see sv. polupragmon .
B. otium/negotium
C. vita
triplex
II. Pastoral
A. Word
“pastoral “and the way its used
here: “not terrifying or warlike
but pastoral” 61 epic vs. pastoral;
B. Goats
and sheep are harmless and picturesque; petting farm
C. Outside
the city p 19
D. Back
to the land movement and pastoral—the sixties and hippies—tied in with make
love not war
E. natural
cycles—seasonal structure
F. love
of landscape
1.
Description of nature—pretty and eroticized—the cave p. 21
2.
Children
are given their herding jobs—described in detail 23 and love
animals more than most because they knew of their origins
3.
Description of Spring—reverdie—gambolling of lambs,
etc—children follow example of birds—they sing, of lambs—they dance, of
bees—they gather flowers
G. the
low and the high
1.
Eumaios, the swineherd and the master
2.
Internal nobility—high class, hidden by circumstance
H. the
rustic community
1.
Fruit season festival—the vintage
a)
winepresses,
details of vines and cultivation 43
b)
“Everyone
gave a helping hand” D and C help
[country community idyll]
I. the
arts, singing contest—panpipes
4.
The whole crowd comes to party in the field and then fall
asleep. 63 Next day they sacrifice leader of herd
to Pan. Pastoral offering to
pastoral god. Old folks talk about
olden days and their skills [A and Y].
5.
Lamon tells story of the Pan pipe. Pan half-goat, half man, syrinx hides
in reeds; he couldn’t find her, cut the reeds, put them together into a
pipe. [removes tragic element of
metamorphosis from story]
6.
Philetas playing panflute – description 66
J. piety
and guardianship: the nymphs and pan—pantheism; nature worship
1.
pan, dionysus, the nymphs—gods of pastoral
III.
The pastoral of
youth
B. Nostalgia,
Aristophanes’ myth, herders=preagricultural
C. Innocence and
Experience—Blake’s Songs—cf. Multimedia blake
IV. Innocence and
Eros
A. Babies
p.21 Children;
1.
romanticism;
wordsworth
2.
contrast
to Medea and chorus 5 1064-1089 (p. 717-18)
a) The childless, who never discover/whether children
turn out as a good thing/or as something to cause pain are spared/many troubles
in lacking this knowledge
b) Those who have in their homes the sweet presence of
children…are all wasted away by their worries 1074
c) Even if they turn out good, death will away with
your children’s bodies…this most terrible grief of all 1088 NB
B. Virgin
adolescents; fruehlingserwachen
1.
The book from Barron’s bookstore—privately printed 1957—Daphnis’
age--15
2.
Pastoral sexuality=courtship, foreplay, wonder and
ignorance
a)
Nature
and love
(1)
Eden, song of songs
(2)
everything at its best….you would have thought the very
streams were singing as they gently flowed along, that the winds were making
music as they breathed among the pines, that the apples were dropping on to the
ground because they were in love, and that the sun was making everybody undress
because he loved to see beauty”
34-5 [reverdie,
pathetic fallacy, humor, buildup to humor and pathos—older perspective,
voyeuristic pleasure—the painting]
b)
locus
amoenus and Eros
(1)
Philetas. Fully
experienced. Describes garden he’s
created—flowers and fruits, and birds.
(2)
Tells of finding little mischievous boy in garden and
chasing him and being unable to catch him, and the boy “charmed away my anger.” Boy is older than time
and the universe. He gave Amaryllis to Philetas when he was
young; “now its D and C I’m looking after” 47
(3)
They ask what love is.
He instructs: Love is a god—delights in youth [Agathon] and pursues
beauty [Socrates] and gives wings to the soul…greater than Zeus…flowers are all
love’s handework. These trees are his creations [Eryximachus]…the only remedies are kissing and embracing
and lying down together with naked bodies” 48 By process of elimination they decide to try Philetas’
remedies.
(4)
Is this the vulgar or the higher aphrodite—how would
socrates-diotima regard it
c)
Chloe’s
experience of his body—washing p. 26
(1)
Love made something flare up
(a) she wolf was carrying off animals to feed her cubs… Daphnis chases goat pursuing one with
broken horn and with it falls in.
(b) They go to nymph sanctuary and he washes in spring—Chloe
finds his body beautiful; washes his back and finds flesh soft and yielding,
also finds her own flesh soft too.
She wants to see him washing again. 26
(c) Chloe finds him beautiful when he pipes to the
goats, thought beauty caused by the music; persuades him to have another
wash.
(d) Never heard the world ‘love. ’ I don’t know what’s
wrong—Daphnis’ beauty hurts her—“if only I were his pipe, so that he’d breathe
into me. She tried to find a
name for love
d)
Opposite
to experience and age
(1)
Dorcon who knows the word and the feeling, but the unknown
quality—lack of knowledge; power of experience 28, 30 (the beard)
(2)
Older women go after D. [like Dorcas after Chloe] “which excited him and annoyed Chloe.”Men go after her; they both
want to go back to usual surroundings, away from “discordant shouts” [too
innocent for adult pleasures]
(3)
Gnathon’s lust
and Lampis jealousy
e)
Reader’s
pleasure can be either innocent or experienced
(1)
Anticipatory or Voyeurisic
(2)
recollection of what’s forever lost
C. Transition
at end of Book 2
1.
after
drinking wine which heated their blood
2.
Oaths of eternal fidelity—central reference point for past
and future p. 68
V. Experience—Book 3
and 4
A. Winter:
everything froze solid; Daphnis’ deviousness
B. Violence
and blood—the pirates, the Methymneans—struggle as coming of age
C. Erotic
initiation-- between the kiss and the consummation
1.
Bildungsroman; coming of age; love and sex at the center of
the process losing innocence—potential—and gaining knowledge--actualization and
self realization
2.
Spring—learning about sex
a)
They
go out—Pan by the pine, the nymphs in the cave, under the oak together;
collecting flowers, first fruits of pan pipe, birds start singing “as if they
were gradually remembering the tune after their long silence
b)
Sheep
bleating, and nursing, rams and he goats chasing the girls 77 It was a sight caluclated to turn even an old man’s thoughts
to love. D and C set on fire after
long winter
c)
D
asks C to lie down naked and do what rams and and he goats do [natural: birds
and bees] “apparantly what they do is something very sweet which takes away the
bitterness of love”
d)
He
didn’t know what to do, even tried from behind, he’s baffled and cries “to
think that any sheep knew more about love than he did” 78 humor based on his ignorance and our
knowledge
e)
Lycaenion,
an older woman, whose name means “wolf” desires Daphnis. She lies to her husband about visiting
a friend and then lures Daphnis into the woods to “rescue her goose” She lies to Daphnis saying
that she had heard about his frustration from the Nymphs and offers to TEACH
him what he needs to know. “He behaved exactly as if he had been about to
receive some great revelation from a god” 80
f)
Description
of her “deftly guided him into thepassage that he had been trying so long to
find…Nature herself taught Daphnis all that remained to be done.”
g)
She
tells him about the pain and blood of losing virginity and advises Daphnis to
take Chloe far into the woods
h)
Daphnis’s
hesitation—blood and pain and consequence for the woman—man’s gain is woman’s
loss—further deferral
D. End
of Book 3: They find tree with perfect apple at the top—the perfectly ripe
one. “Perhaps this beautiful apple
was being kept in reserve for some shepherd who is in love.” She discourages him from climbing so
high, but does so and gives it to her with elegant triumphant speech. 93
1.
QUESTION—What is the apple?
E. Book
4: Discovering Identity
1.
Social position, connection to past and future, out of
timeless pastoral
2.
They go back to the country. Their wedding “a
pastoral affair.” 120
Everybody invited even Lampis, who was forgiven…as long as they lived
they spent most of their time in pastoral pursuits and suckled their children
by goats and sheep and they grew old together
3.
QUESTION: Why does this foreshadowing of their whole future
life for the first time interrupt the rigid chronology of the narrative?
4.
How does the sexual consummation make for the ending ?
5.
Escorted to bridal chamber. “For Daphnis did some of the things that Lycaenion had
taught him; and then for the first time Chloe realized that what had taken
place on the edge of the wood had been nothing but childish play.” 121
VI.
Artificiality
or conventionality about naturalness—back to pastoral
A.
Versailles; traditionality of the term
B. Mixture
of wild and cultivated flowers and trees
1.
“Though it had happened naturally this too gave the
impression of having been done on purpose” 95-6
C. see
Ecphrasis in Prologue—detachment and
1.
Painting told a love story—most beautiful thing I have ever
seen
2.
Excellent technique with romantic subject
a)
Women
having babies
b)
Exposing
babies!
c)
Sheep
and goats suckling them
d)
Shepherds
picking them up…
3.
Decorative or pictorial; picturesque—symmetry: quilt or
stained glass
4.
Disney—sentimentality, sensuality, child-adult, almost
cartoon
D. Style:
conscious balance and deliberate simplicity
1.
Goats and sheep—the pine and the cave
2.
They were tired and slept well because of fatigue; awoke
the next day and both were delighted when seeing one another and miserable
apart. “All they knew was this:
that a kiss had proved fatal to Daphnis, and a wash to Chloe. 34
E. Stories
within stories—echo and mirror
1.
D. tells story while listen to wood-pigeon—cowherd girl and
boy having singing contest
2.
Celebration of Chloe’s return; the panpipe
a)
Dryas
does dance mimicing the harvest; D+C dance based on Lamon’s story—art show;
performances—description of dance retells the story with Daphnis playing Pan
and Chloe playing Syrinx, story of creation of the musical instrument that
creates the story; kisses “Chloe as warmly as if she had run away in earnest
and he had found her again” 67
F. Longus
longs to write verbal equivalent—“source of pleasure for the human
race—something to heal the sick and comfort the afflicted, to refresh the
memory of those who have been in love and educate those who have not. For no one has ever escaped Love
altogether…But as for me I hope that the god will allow me to write of other
people’s experiences, while retaining my own sanity”
G. Imitation
and art in relation to life—especially this part of life.