Romm, 'Figures grecques de l'intermediaire', Bryn Mawr Classical Review v4n01
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-v4n01-romm-figures

4.1.4, Claude Calame (ed.), Figures grecques de l'intermediaire. 
Lausanne: Etudes de Lettres 1992.  Pp. 146.  18 francs.  
  Review by James Romm

  This volume, part of a monograph series produced at the
Universite de Lausanne, contains five essays on a wide variety of
topics, and a translation into French of Theocritus' first Idyll. 
All the contributions are chiefly concerned, according to the
editor's preface, with "[les] domaines ou precisement les
categories modernes de l'identite et de l'alterite se recoupent,
perdant ainsi de leur pertinence."  The theme is thus rather
diffuse, the more so since the different essays in the collection
not only deal with widely varying authors and genres but also show
different understandings of "l'intermediaire."  Furthermore, the
editor himself seems to abandon any attempt at unity by including
at the center of the volume a translation of Theocritus 1 by
Maurice Chappaz and Eric Genevay; the translation forms a lively
follow-up to an essay which concerns that poem, but is in other
respects an anomaly.

  Of greater concern than the unity of the volume, however, is the
paradoxical nature of its stated undertaking.  By showing that
there are, in fact, intermediate figures that don't fit standard
structuralist polarities, this volume ends up suggesting that those
polarities were artificially imposed to begin with--thus
undermining its own category of "l'intermediaire."  The paradox is
evident in the following sentence from Calame's introduction: Si la
pensee polaire souvent ec l'oeuvre en Grece a pu faire croire que
les oppositions mises ch jour par l'analyse structurale
traditionelle beneficiaient d'un fondement culturel, il est temps
de constater que les Grecs au moins se gardaient bien de penser le
monde selon les canons de la logique binaire. (p. 2) This is as
much as to say, the Greeks saw the world in terms of polar
opposites, except when they didn't.  One is left wondering why the
contributors of this volume took structural analysis so much for
granted, if their own readings so often undermine that analysis.

  Several of the essays in the volume suffer from this disturbing
form of petitio principii.  For example, Pierre Voelke's essay
"Ambivalence, mediation, integration:  ch propos de l'espace dans
le drame satyrique," begins as follows: Les etudes grecques, en
particulier celles s'inspirant d'une demarche anthropologique et
structurale, ont fait et font encore un usage important des
categories de l'autre et du meme, ceci d'ailleurs sans que leur
statut ne soit toujours clairement defini et, notamment, sans que
l'on sache si comme telles elles correspondent ch des categories de
la pensee grecques.  Si la reponse ch cette question n'entre pas
ici dans notre propos, precisons cependant que nous continuerons
dans les pages qui viennent ch utiliser ce couple conceptuel, dans
le mesure ou nous lui reconnaissons en tout cas une valeur
heuristique et descriptive.  Dans le meme temps pourtant, notre
intention...est de mettre en evidence, ec partir d'un exemple
precis, la difficulte de rendre compte de representations
culturelles complexes ch travers une telle dichotomie, des lors
qu'elle est utilisee sans precaution et sans mise en question de la
logique binaire qui la sous-tend....Ainsi l'exemple du drame
satyrique dont nous traiterons sous l'un de ses aspects devrait
montrer la necessite d'introduire au moins un troisieme terme et de
preferer une logique ternaire.  Cela etant dit, une evidence
demeure:  l'intermediaire ne peut se concevoir qu'a partir de poles
prealablement definis et des lors notre analyse se situe ec n'en
pas douter dans le prolongement d'une approche structurale (pp.
33-4). The author here shows an admirable awareness of the problems
inherent in the "self vs. other" approach; but his solution is only
to prop it up by adding the third term "intermediary."  This
curious procedure reminds one of the epicycles and deferents used
by ancient cosmographers to rectify the geocentric theory of the
universe.  Voelke recognizes the weaknesses in his critical
foundation, but his solution is to apply buttresses rather than to
modify the foundation. 

  Voelke's essay is also troubling in that it shows how structural
terms and concepts can become overextended and self-referential,
thereby losing their ability to illuminate the texts they deal
with.  Structural thinking, by its very nature, implies a spatial
arrangement of ideas; thus it works best in cases like those of
geography and ethnography, literatures which are governed by the
arrangement of physical space.  When one begins to talk of
"dramatic space" or "poetic space," the coordinates becomes
murkier, and when one reaches "representational space" one hardly
knows where one is.  In this essay the French term "espace" is used
so pervasively that we read of an "espace de Polypheme," an "espace
satyrique," an "espace dionysiaque," an "espace de peuturages" (a
different place than simple `pastures'?), and the question is
asked:  "Espace decentre: espace de l'alterite?"  Such overinflated
use of a single term cannot help but devalue the critical lexicon
from which it is derived.  The author's ideas about satyr play
certainly have merit, but they lose their force when expressed in
such hazy terms:  "L'examen des rapports entre espace dramatique et
espace de representation met ec jour une ambivalence...definie
comme integration d'un espace de mediation au sein d'un espace de
l'identite" (p. 33). 

  By contrast, the strongest essay of the collection, Anne Julia
Voillat Sauer's "Entre exotisme et heroisme:  Les Celtes de
Posidonios," provides a good illustration of both the problems
inherent in structural analysis and the way in which that analysis
may ultimately become stronger when they are faced.  The author
examines an ethnographic text which has generally been understood
as an instance of alterity or opposition, Posidonius' description
of the Celts.  It becomes clear from her analysis, however, that
the terms "self" and "other" cannot be applied easily here: 
Posidonius' Celts are indeed "anti-Greek" in some ways but not in
all, and in fact they often bear a striking resemblance to the
thoroughly Greek heroes of Homer's Iliad.  The author goes on to
show that a temporal scheme, whereby the Celts represent for
Posidonius an early stage in an evolutionary process that governs
all mankind, Greeks as well as barbarians, proves far more
illuminating than that of bipolar opposition.  There is no attempt
at interposing a third term or intermediary, since in fact the
paired opposites which would create that category no longer exist. 
This seems to me one of the most valuable services that can be
brought to the critical approach derived from structural
anthropology:  After several decades of ascendancy, especially in
France, it has by now grown vigorous and widespread enough to
require pruning.  

  However, the temperance of Voillat Sauer's essay is often in
short supply among the other contributions to this volume. 
Christine Yerly's essay on "Figures du tyran archaogque," for
example, attempts to show a deep bipolarity in early Greek images
of the tyrant:  Ranging over a wide array of evidence, Yerly
demonstrates that this figure could be depicted either as a monster
whose behavior placed him outside society or as a thoroughly
civilized sage.  An unfortunate weakness in her argument, however,
is that the two poles which are here opposed are also separated by
chronology:  As Yerly herself acknowledges, the traditions which
place tyrants like Pittacos and Periander among the Seven Wise Men
date from a later period than the archaic texts which portray them
as monsters.  Rather than reverting, like Voillat Sauer, to an
evolutionary scheme, Yerly tries to bridge the temporal gap by
assuming a body of early texts that have become lost:  "A defaut de
temoignages ecrits, il devait exister une tradition orale,
favorable ec certains tyrans et aux changements...qu'ils
apportaient" (p. 20).  Yerly's obvious fudge here seems to reveal
an overreliance on the structural approach she takes as her model: 
She is loath to abandon an instance of the bipolarity on which that
approach so often depends.

  The other two essays in Figures grecques de l'intermediaires are
themselves intermediate, sharing neither the best nor the worst of
the features discussed above.  The contribution by the volume's
editor Claude Calame, as its title indicate--"Espaces liminaux et
voix discursives dans l'Idylle 1 de Theocrite"-- again relies
heavily on a spatial scheme of organization that does not always
clearly apply to the poem under consideration; though at times it
seems that "espace" in this essay may translate to "setting," which
would render it far more natural and intelligible than in Voelke's
piece.  The final essay in the collection, by Danielle van Mal-
Maeder, concerns "Les detournements homeriques dans l'Histoire
Vraie de Lucien," and hence ends the volume on the merry note which
the True Histories never fails to impart.  The author's point here,
concerning Lucian's duplicitous use of Homer as both a model and a
target of parody, seems to me a valid one, but overstated:  One
would like to see more evidence for points such as Lucian's use of
epic-style formulae in prose, and the quoted examples that are
supplied are often given in translation when the original Greek is
at issue. 

  There are many strengths to Figures grecques de l'intermediaire,
not least of which is the originality of its insights.  But its
authors seem overcommitted to the structural concepts they take as
their starting point, and this leads them into dangerous errors of
judgement.

James Romm 
Bard College