Korinna and the Choral Lyric

     In our era both the composition and the consumption of poetry are often conceived as solitary activities. Since the Romantics the cultivation of individual sensibility of both writer and reader has seemed the primary aesthetic goal, yet in fact this assumption has been dominant only in recent literary history, apart from the fact that it is less than wholly accurate in any era. The greatest share of human cultural production has aimed at expressing shared values, community sentiment, received ideas, and satisfying commonplaces. In thematic terms, liturgies, folk song and story, as well as patriotic and sentimental texts and the productions of mass culture such as popular television, all are primarily aimed at reinforcing attitudes – moods and tones as well as specific beliefs – already accepted by the audience. From the Golddiggers of 1933 to the latest Bollywood extravaganza, in Broadway, Las Vegas shows, and on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera we continue to relish the spectacle of groups of attractive young dancers who speak with one voice.
     The care expended on such events in antiquity is dramatically attested by an account preserved by Athenaeus of the Spartan Hyakinthia.

 

But the middle day of the three days there is a variety-filled [poikilē] spectacle [theā] and a great and notable gathering of all [panēguris]. Boys wearing girtup khitons play the lyre, sweeping all the strings with the plectrum as they sing the god in the anapaestic rhythm and at a high pitch. Others pass through the viewing area [theatron] on finely ornamented horses. Massed choruses [khoroi] of young men now enter and sing some of the epichoric songs, while dancers mixed in with them perform the ancient dance movements to the pipe [aulos] and the singing. Next maidens enter, some riding in richly adorned wicker carts, while others make their competitive procession in chariots yoked with mules. And the entire city is astir, rejoicing at the spectacle [theōria]. On this day they sacrifice an abundance of animal victims, and the citizens feast all their acquaintances and their own slaves. And no one is left out of the sacrifice [thusia], and what happens is that the city is emptied for the spectacle [thea]. [1]

     Clearly, choral song was central to the celebrations of the divine hero in an observance so joyful and universal that both helots and foreigners were welcome to join citizens to participate.
     Something of the character of their verses may be inferred from the few scattered remains of the Boeotian poet Korinna. She specifically declares that her role is to sing, not of her own inmost thoughts, but of “the brave deeds of heroes and heroines.” (664) She pays homage to Terpsichore (“delight in dancing”) as her particular muse, emphasizing not only the movement that should accompany her words, but also their collective character. She defines her audience as “Tanagra’s white-robed daughters,” but also more broadly declares that choral lyric provides the occasion for the entire city to rejoice. (655) Her story of the contest between the mountains Helikon and Kithaeron reflects the public poetic competitions so familiar to the ancient Greeks. (654)
     Such social observances allowed the community to celebrate specifically what it held in common: in particular the myths that made sense of the cosmos. The dancing of the choric troupes expressed in their patterned loveliness a greater beauty and a more sublime order and reassured every individual that all was not merely well, all was marvelous and wonderful. In a story significant if not factual, Korinna is said to have rebuked Pindar for insufficient use of myths, to her “the proper business of poetry.” [3]
     Choral lyrics, indeed, are the source of tragic drama, both chronologically according to Aristotle and thematically. Meaning is so concentrated in the mythic discourse of the choral passages that they can often be read as a short version of the play, though many modern readers find the interactions of individual characters, in particular the stichomythia, more dramatic. In Sophocles’ Oedipus the chorus regards itself as the physical sign and even the very guarantor of cosmic order, asking, if injustice is allowed to flourish, “why then would we dance together?” [2] Conversely, the beautiful dancing reflects that all is well and reassures the community that it is not threatened.
     In this way choral lyrics like Korinna’s define and reinforce the group’s collective assumptions in a way characteristic of religious liturgies, folk stories, television situation comedies, and other popular and mass art forms. The modern reader is likely to privilege the more apparently individualistic emotions of monody from Arkhilokhos or Sappho, but in antiquity her fellow countrymen felt sufficient regard for Korinna’s choral works that they built a statue of her in her hometown and included a painting of her in the gymnasium. [4] Indeed our own culture’s most significant images may likewise be enshrined in the most popular of arts as Warhol, Lichtenstein, and others observed. When one makes Romantic assumptions foregrounding innovation, one turns away from the bulk of human cultural production.
     I knew an excellent critic, one if the best, who insisted that the point of literature was to challenge preconceptions, to indicate cracks, ambiguities, ambivalence, and contradiction in received ideas, and he was not wrong, but his view, I believe, was incomplete. The opposite function, the reinforcement of what one’s consumers already believe is an equal, indeed complementary, role of art. Neither enjoys supremacy.


1. Gregory Nagy,”Transformations of Choral Lyric Traditions in the Context of Athenian State Theater,” Arion 3 (1994/5) 41–55. Also available at http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:Nagy.Transformations_of_Choral_Lyric_Traditions.1995.

2. Oedipus Tyrannos, 896 “εἰ γὰρ αἱ τοιαίδε πράξεις τίμιαι, τί δεῖ με χορεύειν;”

3. From Plutarch’s Moralia, Κατὰ τί ἔνδοξοι Αθηναῖοι (On the Glory of the Athenians or De Gloria Atheniensium) “ In what were the Athenians famous?, ", 347-8. Plutarch goes on to tell how Pindar earned a further criticism by then composing lines with too many mythic references, a complaint that has been alleged against him by more recent critics as well. Plato notes as well that poetry’s foundation in myth which is to say in falsity is a sign of poetry’s removal from reality.

4. Description of Greece 9.22.3