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And laugh in a huddle as soon as I turn my head.
On land I clearly have something to show for myself. (trans. R. Wells). |
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Theocritus as narrator then returns and gets in a humorous dig at his addressee's profession (8081): |
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So Polyphemus shepherded his love by singing
And found more relief than if he had paid out gold. |
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Latin scholars like to contrast the humour of Theocritus' Cyclops with the darker tones of Corydon in Eclogue 2, who fails in his attempt at solace (5 studio . . . inani), and ends on a more despairing note (6973): |
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a, Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit!
semiputata tibi frondosa vitis in ulmo est:
quin tu aliquid saltem potius, quorum indiget usus,
viminibus mollique paras detexere iunco?
invenies alium, si te hic fastidit, Alexin. |
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A Corydon, Corydon, what madness has seized you! You have left the vine unpruned on the leafy elm. Why don't you get down to weaving something useful from withies and reed? You will find another Alexis if this one rejects you. |
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This opposition between light-hearted Hellenistic piquancy and Latin emotion is as suspect as any that we use to structure literary history, and I want for the moment to concentrate more on the similarities between Theocritus and Vergil. Both their lovers are singers, and as such surrogates for the poets: this is reinforced by the weaving metaphors both employ. In both poems, the status of poetry is thereby called into question: poetry is something sung by a comic monster or a lovesick shepherd. If Polyphemus is successful in shepherding his love, the imperfects  (18) and  (80) show that he nevertheless returned again and again to the shore: as with veniebat and iactabat in Vergil (5), they technically make our lover's discourse free direct speech,43 a sample merely of what was said. In both Theocritus and Vergil, we are conscious that the singers are figures of 'unreality', and the reader possesses an obvious sense of superiority not merely at their naivety but also at the fact that they have no existence outside art. Art is unreal, and also useless, studium inane in contrast to things quorum indiget usus. The protestations of Nützlichkeit made by Theocritus emphasise this point even more than Vergil's denial. |
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All of this emphasis on the gap between poetry and reality is regularly summed up as 'distancing': it teaches us to look here not for love but for |
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43 I owe the insight that the use of imperfects in speech introductions implies free direct speech to Andrew Laird. |
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