After all, the artist imagines Homeric reception in terms of a reading public. Homer’s medium is imagined here as writerly, not performative, but such historical inaccuracies do not bother me. On other occasions of re-invocation, there are comparable poetic concerns. Here at I.02.484, for example, the Master Narrator shows his concern about the need for accuracy in re-creating a comprehensive catalogue of essentially all the cultural ancestors of the Greek-speaking world. In the case of each invocation, there is a heightened level of poetic self-awareness about the importance of what is about to be narrated. There will be another invocation of the singular Muse at I.02.761, to be followed by invocations of plural Muses at Ι.11.218, I.14.508, and I.16.112. ![]() For now, it suffices to observe that the re-invocation of the Muses here at I.02.484 pictures these goddesses in the plural, by contrast with the singular Muse who had been initially invoked at I.01.001. In this context, I signal for the first time the poetics of re-invocation, referring to further comments on I.02.761, Ι.11.218, I.14.508, I.16.112. Then I offer a specific comment on I.02.484, and I list there among the subject headings: “re-invocation of Muse(s).” Here is the wording of I.02.484: ἔσπετε νῦν μοι Μοῦσαι Ὀλύμπια δώματ’ ἔχουσαι ‘tell me now, you Muses who have your dwellings on Mount Olympus’. Such a poet claims access to both the form and the content of what he ‘hears’ the Muses tell him. This capacity translates into ‘glory, fame’ not only for Homeric poetry but also for the poet who performs the poetry. To hear what? To hear ‘the thing heard’, which is kleos. The Narrator of Homeric poetry is proud of his capacity to ‘hear’. The literal meaning of kleos as ‘the thing heard’ has an enormous prestige that translates into the idealized meaning of ‘glory, fame’ as applied to the composition and performance of Homeric poetry. The Narrator does not claim that he knows the tradition: instead, he says he just ‘hears’ it from the Muses, goddesses of poetic inspiration, and this act of ‘hearing’ is kleos, I.02.486, derived from the verb kluein ‘hear’. Such a counterbalance indicates the Narrator’s deference to the epic tradition of Homeric poetry. Here I list among the subject headings: “Muse(s) as goddess(es) of poetic inspiration.” Then I go on to say… The immediacy of the Master Narrator’s performance here is counterbalanced by an attitude of remoteness from the composition. Now I turn to my general comment on I.02.484–487. Image via Flickr, under a CC BY-SA 2.0 license. ![]() National Museum of History and Art, Luxembourg. Central medallion of the Vichten mosaic (about 240 CE). ![]() ![]() Before leaving my comments on I.01.001–012, I add this obvious comment on I.01.001: By saying ‘sing, goddess ’, the Master Narrator is saying that the song that he will perform is something that he hears from the Muse. Then, in the same set of comments, with reference to the idea of the Muse(s) as the goddess(es) of poetic inspiration, I cross-refer to a general comment on I.02.484–487 and to two special comments on I.02.484 and on I.02.761. In my comments on I.01.001–012, I list among the subject headings: “Muse as goddess of poetic inspiration.” Then I go on to say that the Master Narrator begins his narration by focusing on the anger of Achilles, and that he invokes a Muse, as a goddess of inspiration whom he addresses here simply as theā ‘goddess’, to sing this anger, I.01.001. I am not the first, and I will surely not be the last, to argue that Calliope is the originating Muse of the Iliad, but my reasoning, however tentative, has its own merits, I think. The illustrations that I have chosen for my post here are suggestive of the answer I am hoping for: possibly the singular Muse is Calliope, divine mother of Orpheus. What led to these particular revisions in the first place was a question I was asking myself: why does this singular Muse in Iliad 1 get re-invoked in Iliad 2 as a set of multiple Muses? I have no solution as of yet, but at least the revisions I have made in my comments point toward a hoped-for answer from the re-invoked Muse herself. Here I focus on a set of revisions centering on the Muse who is invoked by the Master Narrator in Iliad 1, at the very beginning of the epic. Working on A sampling of comments on the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, I have made revisions, concentrating on the need to fill some gaps in my analysis of Homeric poetry.
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