Aitia (Nov 2013)
“Storm Landscape”: from the reality effect to the moralized mimesis. The examples of Apollonius Rhodius and Quintus of Smyrna.
Abstract
The ancient lanscape as represented in the hellenistic epic and later is a privileged field of investigation to examine the role and evolution of the ancient concept of mimesis. An epic landscape in particular, that of the sea storm, will hold our attention: the transition at the Symplegades in Apollonius Rhodius (Argonautica II, 549-610) and the final storm which closes the Posthomerica of Quintus Smyrnaeus offer one of the most significant comparative studies. Indeed, the landscape of the Symplegades, landscape of extremes, is a place where all elements are reversed, and the poet portrays a scene of chaos, near the unrepresentable. Yet to reread the passage, we can see that it is anything but chaotic: very constructed through regular narrative rhythm organized in three phases that mimic the movements of the waves, it creates a real “reassuring” carried by a prosody and style that rewrites Homer. Mimesis, reality effect, and rewriting Homer are related in this stormy landscape of Apollonius.However, Quintus offers a landscape of storm which uses a different mimetic working: the final storm that closes the Posthomerica who want to rewrite the Iliad and the Odyssey, depends much more on the Hellenistic intertext that on Homer’s one. The storm is thought as a divine punishment, a nemesis to punish the hubris of the conquerors: the description assumes an axiological vocabulary that soon makes this epic landscape opened to philosophical thoughts. Mimesis is no longer synonymous with reality effect but mimesis is now close to an ethical dimension as it moves away from rewriting Homer.How to understand now that the power to evoke the reality effect performed by mimesis (in the sense of imitatio) and constituting the epic landscape, is no longer expressed by a “landscape in motion” presenting in a pathetic way the violence and the death, but expressed by a pathos that is not visible except through the use of axiological vocabulary and philosophical thoughts? This communication intends to show how the concept of mimesis evolves from a sense of imitation with a reality effect to a more ethical and moralized understanding in late antiquity. The landscape is therefore one of the most privileged field of research so as to focus on the mimesis evolution during the Hellenistic period and later.
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