Listening to the Spider: reading Hesiod’s Works and Days

 

CHAPTER 6. OVERCOMING ADVERSITY

vv. 504-63

 

The month of Lenaeon, bad days, ox-flayers all.[1]

(v. 504)                                 

(Lenaeon is approximately January.) This verse of course does not itself constitute a clause; rather, it gives the object of a verb which presuma­bly will be stated shortly. (Its terms are in the accusative case in the Greek.)  But if we put that formality in abeyance, the line functions like a chap­ter head­ing. Within epic proper, Ahuvia Kahane has discussed what he calls the “accusative theme word,” which, after initial use in first position, continues to function as heralding a theme when it is mentioned later in the poem. His prime example is the first word of the Iliad, mēnin (nomi­native mēnis), the “wrath” of Achilles which the Muse is asked to sing about. In fact, while it will not be used again, the first word of our verse is mēna (nominative meis or mēn), “month,” and one suspects direct allusion to Homer’s mēnin. In any case, it can be said that we have an “accusative theme phrase” for the full verse here, in short, a chapter title.[2]

 

Cosmic struggle.

            The chapter itself begins with a graphic passage:

 

                        Avoid this (thus-described month) and the frosts, the ones which over the land

                        turn out to be bitter from the blowing of Boreas,

                        he who through horse-breeding Thrace, the broad sea

                        blowing on, stirs it up; and earth and forest groan (or: huddle together?):

                        Many high-leafed oaks and thickset firs

                        in mountain glens he brings to much-nourishing earth,

                        falling on them, and then the whole numberless forest resounds;

                        and beasts shudder, and put their tails between their legs,

                        even those with skin covered by hair; still now, even (such as) these

                        he blows through cold, for all their being shaggy-breasted:

                        yes he goes through the hide of an ox, it does not restrain him,

                        and yes he blows through the long-haired (or: sparsely-haired?) goat; nor (are there) any flocks

                        (that) on account of their (so-called) abundant fleece, does not blow through

                        the force of the wind from Boreas.[3] ...

(vv. 505-18)

(I.e., nor are there any flocks [of sheep] that the force of the wind does not blow through merely on account of their fleece. Also, while Boreas is the personified north wind, in the last phrase the physical wind is conceived as distinct from him as personality: the wind which has the force is from Boreas.) Whether in spite of or because of a certain latent exaggeration, it has long been sug­gested that this portrayal constitutes fine poetry. The subtleties which help make it so include in the first place reference to epic’s nature imagery, thus again casting our poet’s own in high rel­ief: The first part probably alludes to an “especially forceful” (Janko) triple simile, whereby not so loud is “resounding” of surf against shore from the “blowing of Boreas;” not so loud is the roaring of a fire “in mountain glens” (our position); not so loud is wind in “high-leafed oaks,” as was the noise of a battle. Homer has three sets of “oaks” paired with either “pines” or “firs;” at least in our case, evidently the first stands for all deciduids; the second, for all conifers (so West, after Wila­mowitz and Mazon), so that the combination is a merism for all trees. To be sure, as West notes, our poet uses “thickset” (pacheias) instead of the standard conifer epithet “lofty” (hupsē­las), thus enhancing the sense of the wind’s power. The three-colon 509 matches a line where “high-leafed oaks” are chopped down. In one case a ram “goes through” a “flock.” The “force of the wind” (also verse-beginning) beats waves against a ship. Although “much-nourishing earth” is a “much” employed evocative expression, our use has the language of one human situation (West): For “brings to” earth (pilnai); cf. chariots in a race alternately “touched” (pilnato) it and were tossed above it. And Arie Hoekstra notes a parallel of the frosts “which (spread) over the land” at the beginning of the passage with pirates “who (go) to a (foreign) land” to plunder. As suggested in the Introduction above, the poet surely achieves profound effect on the audience by presenting all this as something actual rather than as a foil for traditional characters.[4]

            Then, structural points also assist the effect. Inessential enjambement (e.g., “earth/fal­ling”) and the necessary type (“sea/blowing”) alike contribute to the continuous character of the outburst. And in accor­d­ance with Vivante’s 1982 theory for epic proper, that narrative passages eschew epithets which would interrupt the flow, these are few (and mostly not decorative when present). The persistence of the wind is matched in its poetry; indeed, as Marsil­io notes, the Greek verbs for “blow” at 508 and at 514 and 516 are such that its intensity seems to increase as the passage develops. At the same time a solemn quality accrues to the meter in the Greek: Of the eight verses 507-14, six have at least two spondees, an unusual num­ber of heavy syllables.[5]

            As to interpretation, among the more sensitive commentators on the “winter” sec­tion as a whole, Ballabriga takes as his point of departure the “paradox” that this section is “at once central and marginal.” It is central in its location in the text and in that it is striking as poetry; marginal, in featuring inactivity rather than the work which is supposed to be the poem’s point. Similarly, Nel­son opines that the lack of tasks in Lenaeon “is the helplessness of winter.” Indeed, the opening infinitive-imperative “avoid” already connotes human inactivity, and there will be infinitives for actu­al tasks only at vv. 536-46, 554, and possibly 562.[6]

            However, something is active in at least this opening segment, namely, the heavens. I decline to bow to the idea that the poem is abnormal where it is not about tasks, and instead pro­pose that the point of the passage is the forces of the sky attacking “much-nourishing earth,” to connote a conflict of cosmic proportions. Although our poem often seems more related to the Iliad than to the Theogony, Benardete’s concept of it as a piece about earth as opposed to the latter about the sky is certainly latent here as elsewhere. In the cited segment earth is the locus of trees (representative of plant life or of nature general­ly?) and of at least domestic animals (perhaps as an oblique reference to civilization, since wild ani­mals will be cited explicitly later). To be sure, Earth as Gaea is important at least to the back­ground of the earlier poem’s conflicts: She eventually assists her grandson Zeus in his struggle for hegemony, and is complicit in his father Cronus’s castration of his own father Uranus (Sky) to initiate the battles for succession. As for Boreas, while he is formally the son of Dawn and Astrae­us, and as such turns out to be the great-grandson of Gaea through her couplings with Uranus and Pontus (Sea), respectively, by the end of the poem he seems understood as part of Zeus’s order. Perhaps his onslaught against Earth in our poem is related to some cosmic family intrigue which the earlier poet simply failed to include. Indeed, her one lapse in the earlier work in suppor­t­­ing Zeus was to bear the monster Typhoeus, who then challenged the latter; thus per­haps some lost tradition has him order Boreas to attack her after he has attained his hegemony. Certainly, the distinguishing of Boreas as personality from his wind in 518 through a double gen­i­tive con­struc­tion can be seen as accentuating his status as Olympian representative.[7]

 

The end of reproduction.

            But as to “earthy” symbolism, the segment hints at the subject of sex, which in fact will play an important role in the sequel. The saying in v. 512, literally that animals “put their tails under their genitals” (ouras d’ hupo meze’ ethento), is an analogue of Aphrodite’s statement that she “put a child under my belt” (paida d’ hupo zōnēi ethemēn) from sex with a mortal. This anti­cipates allusions to the Hymn to Aphrodite in the next segment noted by Janko. It reads:[8]

 

                        ... and (the wind’s force) sets the old man wheeling;

                        but it does not blow through the “soft-skinned maiden,”

                        she who stays inside the house with her dear (or: own) mother,

                        not yet knowing “the works of much-golden Aphrodite,”

                        and, bathing well her tender flesh and with oil richly

                        anointing it, lies down (or: is protected?) inside, in the inmost part (or: at night)

                        on a winter day.[9] ...

(518-24)

(The old man either is bowled over or is more bent than usual, as advocated by West and Ver­deni­us, respectively.) Here the poet shifts from rushing at us like the wind to a more contem­pla­tive mode which will continue in the sequel, to describe matters from the point of view of those effected by the onslaught or not. “Works of much-golden Aphrodite” are specifi­cally what the Muse is asked to expound to begin the hymn to her, and “soft-skinned maidens” are her pupils a few verses later. Thus at first sight the idea seems connoted that Boreas is unable to ravage the maiden. (One might even think the bathing and anointing keep her pure.) In principle, one could read this as opposing civilization to the wild nature which will be the allusion next.[10]

            However, one can suspect that that view unduly imports a modern idea of the benefits of qualities like virginity. In contrast, Ballabriga sees the maiden’s inactivity as of a piece with the idler featured as a negative example in vv. 493-503. (The possibility of “is protected” rather than “lies down” in 523 would undermine this interpretation, but not by much.) Similarly, Marsilio notes verbal parallels with Expectation left in the jar at 96-8 and with the first woman of the Theo­gony who is “inside” doing nothing, so that our maiden is another of Hesiod’s lazy women.[11]

            As to that, I agree that the maiden is negative, but propose that she is, rather, a principle of barrenness, evoked as if a defining characteristic of the “winter day” (i.e., of the season). One can add to Marsilio's parallel with Expectation what we learned only some two dozen lines back (v. 498): the latter is “empty.” Nor is our principle entirely inactive: She bathes and anoints herself. This suggests a certain autonomy, since in epic females normally bathe and anoint males; indeed, the closest verbal parallel is to the toilette of another exception, (the headstrong) Nausi­caa and her maids bathing themselves just before their encounter with Odysseus. In any case, neither Bore­as nor any other male principle can penetrate our maiden. Although “with her moth­er” perhaps recalls the long time of the silver race child “with his mother,” and more certainly, the wedding gift to Telemachus to be kept “with his dear/own mother” until he married (so Hays), one should resist the idea that our principle is innocent (e.g., Hamilton). Although she is youn­g­­er than the old man of 518, her citation complements the end of procreation his age implies.[12]

            To be sure, it is not only domestic animal and human reproduction which is threatened. The winter day just cited is

 

                        ... when “boneless” retracts his foot (not: gnaws it)

                        into his fireless house and wretched habitat:

                        the sun does not show him pasture to head for,

                        but over “the villages and cities of blue men”

                        circles, and (only) later (or: tardily) on all the Hellenes shines.

                        And right then horned and hornless forest creatures(?),

                        piteously gnashing (their teeth) (or: their teeth chattering?), into the glen-set thickets

                        flee; and all have this concern on their minds

                        who, seeking shelter, have their snug dens

                        or (seek it) in a rocky hollow; right then they are like the three-footed mortal,

                        he whose back is broken forward and his head looks to the ground

                        -- resembling him they scurry about, avoiding the white snow.[13]

(vv. 524-35)

First one must try to understand the thematic references. “Boneless” is a kenning for, I believe, the snail (not the octopus). “Villages ... men” (alluding to the Odyssey’s “villages and cities of foreign men”) is usually taken to refer realistically to Africans to the south, but Ballabriga may be right that it recalls a mythical realm which contrasts with the Greek winter, perhaps at the edge of the earth where the sun was conceived of as reversing its westerly course at night. In any case, the three-foot­ed one is again the old man, the third appendage being his walking stick.[14]

            But as the description of responses to Boreas here continues, so does the sexual sub­text: At least a modern can see double entendre in “horned and hornless” and “three-footed,” and even if that is judged anachronistic, sexual symbolism has been proposed for “boneless” at least since 1978: Calvert Watkins, granted, construing the reference traditionally as an octopus gnaw­­ing its foot, connects this theme to such Indo-European derivatives as the Irish hero Finn chewing his thumb. Under the construal of a snail withdrawing into its shell one can think of los­ing an erection, as says Bader. Moreover, “fireless” means lack of what Prometheus brought to humanity in a hol­low plant stalk (vv. 51-2 and in theTheogony), which Freud recognizes as a phallic symbol, and which I believe is an abstraction of the mythological “trickster” archetype’s typical phallicism. Per­haps also the modern canard that black people are unusually sexual by nature lurks in the back­ground, as usurping this function from the south. And “all have this con­cern” presents a pointed contrast to another statement early in Aphrodite’s hymn, that all beings have her sphere of activity as their concern: The animals cannot be think­ing of such things as they flee from the monster Boreas. To use Joyce’s term, it is a “penisolate” situation.[15]

            Thus, West’s characterization of vv. 507-35 as a “succession of highly poetic pictures linked by some awkward transitions” gets the first point essentially right but could not be more wrong on the second: A powerful idea runs like a thread throughout, that cosmic forces render the earth incapable of reproducing life.[16]

 

To the rescue.

            But the organized protagonist whose development was evoked in the last section of the poem cannot let this situation stand, and must fight back. First:

 

                        Indeed, then put on protection for your body, so I urge you.

(v. 536)

In fact, “put on protection for your body” recalls the sayings that warriors “put (armor) around their bodies,” although detailed metrical considerations show that it almost certainly alludes directly to another, that Menelaus “wore (a metal waistband) to protect his body.” In short, the poet “urges” us to battle, if against Boreas rather than the Trojans.[17]

            Of course, this protection will have to be specified:

 

                        Besides a fringed tunic, (put on) a soft cloak too

                        -- and into warp (which is) little, much woof draw (i.e., for the cloak) --

                        wear that (cloak) around you, so that your hairs stay still

                        and do not bristle, to stand straight up on your body;

                        around your feet shoes from a strongly slaughtered ox

                        (which are) fitted tie, covered inside with felt;

                        whenever the seasonable chill comes, of firstborn (or possibly: newborn) kids

                        stitch skins together with an ox sinew, so that on your back

                        you put around protection from the rain; and over your head

                        keep a crafted felt (cap), so that it doesn’t soak your ears.[18]

(vv. 537-46)

We are most immediately struck by the claim that, while the skins of the very same animals (sheep, goat, ox) do not protect their natural owners from the cold (515-18), when it is necessary to go out into it humans do have the technique to work them into garments that will serve. This seems to be a matter of using nature for human purposes, as says, e.g., Bona Quaglia. Beyond that, one notices the detail of the description, reminiscent of that in describing the plow(s) at 427-40. This feature moves Marsilio to relate our farmer to the craftsman, to which the poet’s own occupation is analogous.[19]

            But in the context of the guiding figure, epic parallels suggest that, while one used ani­mals for production rather than epic’s war in the “plowing” chapter of the poem, here one uses them for a different war: against Boreas. The combination of chlaina and chitōn (cloak and tunic) with “little” and “much” in the catchy line which follows reminds us of a situation in the Odyssey: (The disguised) Odysseus says he gave (the real) Odysseus a diplax (a doubled over chlaina) and “fringed tunic,” in the context that he was friendly with “many” and that “few” of the Achaeans were like him. As to the shoes, although someone “tied lovely sandals under his/her shining feet” in a standard verse given seven times in Homer, our language amphi de possi pedila is closer to Poseidon putting “shackles around (his horses’) hooves” (amphi de possi pedas). The chin strap to Paris’s helmet was made from “a strongly slaughtered ox.” “Firstborn kids (or lambs)” are fre­quently sacrificed. Hector’s spear struck Lycrophon “in the head” above “his ear,” if “around the ears” may also suggest the noise from one battle around Nestor’s. In all this, although “fringed,” “firstborn” and “strongly” seem to have no pragmatic consequence, as components of standard expressions they do not necessarily carry their literal denotation as the meaning, and the ritual context of their normal use undoubtedly adds nuance to the particular struggle waged here. E.g., the “strongly” killed strap is itself so strong that it takes Athena to break it to prevent Paris from being strangled as Menelaus pulls on the helmet. The nuances are hardly a matter of our poet mechanically using “formulae” as Krafft implies, much less employ­ing the phrases as “parody,” as Edward Rand has it, but speak to seri­ous comparison of epic’s concerns to those of the poem.[20]

            Thus fortified we are ready to go out, but not before a lyrical interlude even more strongly undercuts the notion that the issue is tasks:

 

                        For yes cold the dawn becomes at the waning of Boreas,

                        while at dawn, over the earth from starry heaven,

                        a wheat-bearing mist spreads over the works of the blessed:

                        it is drawn from rivers, (from) the ever-flowing,

                        and having risen high over the earth in a blast of wind,

                        sometimes yes it rains toward evening; sometimes, it blows

                        from thracian Boreas “scattering” the thick clouds.

(vv. 547-53)

“Scattering” is really a verb meaning “agitated movement together perhaps with shouting” (Kirk).[21]

            In fact this is still about the cosmos. With his eye for nuance, Ballabriga observes that the spheres of air, water, and earth are all evoked. (In remarking that Hesiod shows the ultimate source of “Zeus’s rain,” West thinks in naturalistic terms, but these do not preclude a sense that entities like air and water have fundamental aspects, as the Milesian “philosophers” would later say overtly.) True, Ballabriga supposes that the first two entities collaborate to pro­duce the mist which fertilizes the third, a change from the earlier celestial attack on earth (think­ing that Boreas “falls upon” rather than “falls off” at 547). That is a common way of looking at the passage, and the mist has even been called “Zeus’s semen.” But this mist actually does its (causing the land to be) wheat-bearing when Zeus’s agent Boreas lets up momentarily: The sky forces would really like to keep it blowing in the atmosphere. Although they provide the raw material, Earth is fertilized in spite of them (much as a pediatrician with a stethoscope can hear a wailing infant’s heartbeat when it stops to take a breath). To be sure, a point of stability amid the intermittence is provided by rivers, the “ever-flow­ing” source. As usual, epic proper provides much of the imagery, especi­ally (at least a precursor of) the Odyssey passage where the Cimmerian land is hidden in “mist” so that darkness “spreads” both when the sun goes to “starry heaven” and when it heads back “over the earth” (all in our pos­i­­tions). All this happens to the “blessed,” in epic an epithet of gods, but applied to a human in one case which also mentions “wheat” (a simile’s owner of fields), and here evidently to those who have done their work well as specified previously.[22]

            In terms of the allegory of the well-organized person developed in vv. 448-503, as I see it Earth is a feminine principle which is to be saved from the monster. (Northrop Frye notes that in literature winter is typically associated with the hero’s adversary.) Our protagonist has already done most of what is needed to let her save herself (plowing in the last section), but there is always something (clearing fallen branches and the like). Now that you are dressed:[23]

 

                        Ahead of him (i.e., Boreas), finish (whatever) task (you have) and go home,

                        lest at some point from the sky a dark cloud envelop you,

                        make your skin dripping wet, and soak through your clothes;

                        rather, escape (all this); for hardest is this month,

                        the wintry one: hard for livestock, and hard for humans.[24]

(554-8)

This segment, continuing the dark tone of the previous few verses (551-3), essentially concludes the chapter: The phrase “rather, escape” (alla hupaleuasthai) recalls “avoid this (winter month)” (touton aleuasthai) at 505, and the concluding anaphora makes the point that animals and humans are in the same situation in the face of such forces: As Ballabriga indicates, Boreas threatens to destroy the very difference between them provided by “justice” which was detailed in the introductory part of the poem (274-85). To be sure, this remains in implicit ana­­logy to battles between heroes: Among other parallels, “dark cloud envelop” recalls death in battle.[25]

 

Better days ahead.

            A coda ends the “winter” discussion on an optimistic note:

 

                        Then the half for oxen, though the greater part for a man, there should be

                        of rations; for the long “well-disposed ones” are helpers.

                        Heeding these (directions) until the year is finished,

                        make yourself(?) equal nights and days, until again that which is

                        Earth, mother of all, bears her fruit in proliferation.[26]

(vv. 559-63)

The poet goes out of his way to supply the definite articles in 559, thus suggesting a general maxim. “Well-disposed one” is a kenning for “night” (indeed, Heraclitus’s only word for it), where­as “helper” is said of epic’s Athena in contexts requiring rescue. The idea seems to be that there is less daylight in which to work, thus less energy expended at least by the oxen. This is followed by an apparent allusion to Odysseus saying that Circe told him and his men to eat and drink “until again that which is” their spirits returned, followed by them doing so until “com­ple­tion of a year.” The final line has four spondees in the Greek, for a weighty conclusion.[27]

            In short, along with the fact that the virtual protagonist sketched in the previous chapter has now waited out the storm successfully, Earth, which was once besieged (vv. 505-8), has recover­ed, so that nourishment and (implicitly) sexuality are once again possible. The protagonist has implicitly behaved like a hero sav­ing a lady, to be sure not the maiden of 519-24, but Earth her­self, from the villain Boreas. This is possible because the sense of organization he acquired in the earlier movement has allowed him to meet the problem by “wearing warm clothes,” i.e., by girding himself for the battle.  (to Chap. 7)

 

 

NOTES: