#10 Percutio 2016 [10, Percutio ed.] 9781877441530

Table of contents :
Complete Gold Leaves
Transcriptions of Sixteen Ancient Greek Gold Lamellae
compiled with English translations by Edward Jenner
The Journeys of the Dead from Malekula and the
Small Islands and their relevance to Aeneid VI and
Greco-Roman Mythology by Edward Jenner
*
Reviews / Commentaire [w.d.]
No Relation by Thomas Pors Koed
Tender Girl by Lisa Samuels
Beyond the Ohlala Mountains by Alan Brunton
The Blinding Walk by K.M.Ross
In Love with these Times by Roger Shepherd In Continents by Richard Reeve
The Selected Poems of Peter Olds
Then It Was Now Again By Murray Edmond As the Verb Tenses by Lynley Edmeades
Index

Citation preview

Percutio Numéro spécial consacré à deux projets de recherche d’Edward Jenner, helléniste et poète. A special issue devoted to two projects by Classicist and poet Edward Jenner.

MMXVI

Numéros parus

2006 n° 0 : Trans-culturel. 2007 n° 1 : Moments critiques. 2008 n° 2 : Inspiration ou prétention. 2009 n° 3 : En concert. 2010 n° 4 : La nécessité. 2011 n° 5 : spécial ‘Fallen to a Field’. 2012 n° 6 : Ah ! l’Europe ! 2013 n° 7 : Where is the centre? 2014 n° 8 : Expérience 2015 n° 9 : No Theme / Sujet libre

Illustrations

Couverture : Masque Malakula (?) de Vanuatu par Scott Reeves ; argile, défense de cochon, toile d’araignée, pigment ; (L x l x H) 220 x 170 x 300 mm ; remerciements au Museum d’Otago. Thessalie, localisation inconnue, 350-320 av. J.C., 22 x 37 mm ; remerciements au John Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California. p. 4, 6, 18, 36 : photographie et dessins : Edward Jenner p. 48 : Le plan de Malakula se trouve dans John Layard, Stone Men of Malekula [sic] (1942). p. 74 : Masque Malakula de Vanuatu ; remerciements aux Scottish Museums. p. 4 : Localisation des Feuilles d’or /Locations of the Gold Leaves. P. 18: Feuilles d’or 1 / Shapes of the Gold Leaves 1. P. 20 : Feuilles d’or 2 / Shapes of the Gold Leaves 2 p. 36 : Feuilles d’or 3 / Shapes of the Leaves 3. Rome (British Museum). p. 48 : Layard, Stone Men of Malekula. Plan-esquisse. Pour plus d’explications et d’informations sur les feuilles d’or, nous invitons nos lecteurs à lire l’essai de Jenner dans The Gold Leaves (Being an Account and Translation from the Ancient Greek of the so-called ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets), Atuanui Press, (2014, NZ). Tous droits réservés Percutio

ISSN 1953-1427 Rédacteur en chef: William Direen Dépôt légal : août, 2016 Droits de reproduction : Percutio, les auteurs et ayants-droits 2015. Percutio N° 10 (2016) : ISBN : 978-1-877441-53-0 Vente au numéro : W. Direen, P.O. Box 53, Middlemarch, Nouvelle-Zélande Edité par Percutio Publications http://alpha.books.online.fr

Complete Gold Leaves Transcriptions of Sixteen Ancient Greek Gold Lamellae English translations by Edward Jenner

compiled with

Edward Jenner

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Complete Gold Leaves



Contents/Sommaire Complete Gold Leaves

Transcriptions of Sixteen Ancient Greek Gold Lamellae compiled with English translations by Edward Jenner .. .. .. .. .. ..

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The Journeys of the Dead from Malekula and the

Small Islands and their relevance to Aeneid VI and Greco-Roman Mythology by Edward Jenner .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

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* Reviews / Commentaire [w.d.].. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 61–95



No Relation by Thomas Pors Koed Tender Girl by Lisa Samuels Beyond the Ohlala Mountains by Alan Brunton The Blinding Walk by K.M.Ross In Love with these Times by Roger Shepherd In Continents by Richard Reeve The Selected Poems of Peter Olds Then It Was Now Again By Murray Edmond As the Verb Tenses by Lynley Edmeades

Index .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

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Shapes of the Gold Leaves 1 Thurii 1, Thurii 2 (a) Thurii 3, Rome

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Preface .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

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A-texts Thurii 1 .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 6 Thurii 2 (a) .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 8 Thurii 3 .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 10 Rome .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 12 B-texts Hipponion .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 16 Petelia .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 18 Pharsalos .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 20 Thessaly .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 22 Entella .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 24 Eleutherna .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 26 Mylopotamos .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 28 Rethymnon .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 30 Other texts Pelinna (a) .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 34 Pherai 1 .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 36 Pherai 2 .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .... .. 38 Amphipolis .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 40 Bibliography .. .. .. ... .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 43

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Preface This electronic document complements my earlier printed book The Gold Leaves (Being an Account and Translation from the Ancient Greek of the Socalled ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets) (Atuanui Press, 2014), which contained only two Greek texts (those of ‘Thurii 1’ and ‘Hipponion’). Three of the Greek texts differ from those cited as texts ‘of choice’ in that edition. Here, I have preferred the more reader-friendly presentations of the Greek for ‘Thurii 2a’, ‘Mylopotamos’ and ‘Rethymnon’, as found in R. G. Edmonds, The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion (2011). In the Greek texts, square brackets indicate scribal dittography (‘Thurii 1’), scribal omissions, or text missing on a fragmentary lamella (e.g. ‘Entella’); chevrons indicate scholarly restorations; braces, scribal errors. In my English translations, paired brackets indicate dittography (‘Thurii 1’), lacunae caused by unintelligible Greek, conjectural supplements (e.g. the third last and last lines of ‘Petelia’), and the ‘boundaries’ of a fragmentary line (e.g. the penultimate line of ‘Petelia’). A single bracket on a line indicates the left- or right-hand edge of a fragmentary lamella or the margin at the beginning of an otherwise unintelligible line (e.g. ‘Entella’ in both cases). Acknowledgements are due to William Direen for his care in assisting me with assembling and compiling the Greek texts to bring these messages engraved on diminutive shreds of gold leaf to ‘cyberspace’, after having lain buried for well over two millennia with the ashes or the skeletons of their owners. E.J. December 2015

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A-texts

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Thurii 1 Ἔρχομαι ἐκ κοθαρῶν κοθαρά, χθονίων βασίλεια, Εὐκλῆς Εὐβουλεύς τε καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι· καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὑμῶν γένος ὄλβιον εὔχομαι εἶμεν. ἀλλά με μοῖρ’ ἐδάμασσε {καὶ ἀθάνατοι θεοὶ ἄλλοι} καὶ ἀστεροβλῆτα κεραυνῶι. κύκλου δ’ ἐξέπταν βαρυπενθέος ἀργαλέοιο, ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἐπέβαν στεφάνου ποσὶ καρπαλίμοισι, δεσποίνας δ’ ὑπὸ κόλπον ἔδυν χθονίας βασιλείας. {ἱμερτοῦ δ’ ἀπέβαν στεμάνου ποσὶ καρπασίμοισι} “ὄλβιε καὶ μακαριστέ, θεὸς δ’ ἔσηι ἀντὶ βροτοῖο.” ἔριφος ἐς γάλ’ ἔπετον. Text: Zuntz (1971), p. 301

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Thurii 1 Pure, I come from the pure, Queen of the Dead, Eukles, Eubouleus, and other immortal gods: for I too claim to be of your blessed race. But I was vanquished by Fate [and other immortal gods] and Lightning-striker’s bolt. I flew out of the wheel of grief and suffering, I raced to win the crown I so desired, I sank beneath the breast of our mistress, the Queen of the Dead. [I raced to win the crown I so desired] ‘Blessed and fortunate man, god will you be, no longer mortal.’ I am the kid that rushed to milk.



Southern Italy, mid-4th c. B.C.

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Thurii 2 (a) Ἔρχομα ἐ καρῶν {σχονων} καθαρά, χονίων βασίλ{η}ει, Εὖκλε καὶ Εὐβουλεῦ {ι} καὶ θεοὶ δαίμοε ἄλλοι· καὶ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὑμῶν γένο εὔχομαι ὄλβιον εἶναι πονὰν δ’ ἀνταπέ{ι}τε{σε}ι’ ἔργων ἕνεκα οὔτι δικαων. εἴτε με Μορα ἐδάμασ’ {ατο} εἴτε ἀστεροπῆτα κραυνῶν. νῦν δ’ ἱκέτι ἥκω παὶ ἁγνὴ Φεσεφόνεαν, ὥϛ με{ι} πρόφω πέμψη ἕδραϛ ἐϛ εὐαγέ{ι}ων.

Text: Edmonds (2011), p18.

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Thurii 2 (a) Pure, I come from the pure, Queen of the Dead, Eukles and Eubouleus and other gods and deities: for I too claim to be of your blessed race, having paid the penalty for my unjust deeds whether Fate vanquished me or Lightning-striker. Now I come as suppliant before chaste Persephone that she kindly send me amongst the purified.





Southern Italy, mid-4th c. B.C.

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Thurii 3 Ἀλλ᾿ ὁπόταμ ψυχὴ προλίπηι φάος Ἀελίοιο, δεξιὸν †ΕΣΟΙΑΣΔΕΕΤ† ναι πεφυλαγμένον εὖ μάλα πάντα. χαῖρε παθὼν τὸ πάθημα τὸ δ’ οὔπω πρόσθε ἐπεπόνθεις· θεὸς ἐγένου ἐξ ἀνθρώπου· ἔριφος ἐς γάλα ἔπετες. χαῖρ χαῖρε· δεξιὰν ὁδοιπόρ λειμῶνάς τε ἱεροὺς καὶ ἄλσεα Φερσεφονείας Line 2: upper case letters within obeloi † are illegible Text: Zuntz (1971), p. 329

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Thurii 3 But when the soul forsakes the light of the sun, take the right [ ] each step with all due care. ‘Welcome! After an ordeal you have never been through before. A god you are and mortal no longer. You are the kid that rushed to milk. Welcome and rejoice! Take the path to the right for the sacred meadows and groves of Persephone.’

Southern Italy, mid-4th c. B.C.

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Rome Ἔρχεται ἐκ καθαρῶν καθαρά, χθονίων βασίλεια Εὔκλεεϛ Εὐβουλεῦ τε, Διὸϛ τέκοϛ, ἀλλὰ δέχεθε Μνημοσύνηϛ τόδε δῶρον ἀοίδιμον ἀνθρώποισιν. Καικιλία Σεκουνδεῖνα, νόμωι ἴθι δῖα γεγῶσα.

Text: Graf & Johnston (2007), p 18.

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Rome Pure, she comes from the pure, Queen of the Dead, Eukles and Eubouleus, child of Zeus. But accept this gift of Memory’s, this song forever sung. ‘Come then, Caecilia Secundina, goddess now by law.’



mid-3rd c. A.D.(?)

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Shapes of the Gold Leaves 2 Hipponion, Petelia Eleutherna (Crete) Pelinna (a)

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B-texts

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Hipponion Μναμοσύναϛ τόδε θρῖον · ἐπεὶ ἂν μέλληισι θανεῖσθαι εἰς Ἀΐδαο δόμους εὐήρεας · ἔστ᾿ ἐπὶ δεξιὰ κρήνα, πὰρ δ΄αὐτὰν ἑστακῦα λευκὰ κυπάρισσος· ἔνθα κατερχόμεναι ψυχαὶ νεκύων ψύχονται. ταύτας τᾶς κράνας μηδὲ σχεδὸν ἐνγύθεν ἔλθηις. πρόσθεν δ᾿εὑρήσεις τᾶς Μναμοσύνας ἀπὸ λίμνας ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον · φύλακες δ᾿ἐπύπερθεν ἔασι. οἳ δέ σε εἰρήσονται ἐν φρασὶ πευκαλίμαισι ὅτι δὴ ἐξερέεις Ἄϊδος σκότος ὀρφνήεντος. εἶπον · ὑὸς Γᾶς ἠμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος. δίψαι δ᾿ἠμ᾿ αὖος καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι · ἀλλὰ δότ΄ ὦ[κα ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον τῆς Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμ[νης· καὶ δὴ τοί ἐλεοῦσιν ὑποχθόνιοι βασιλῆες καὶ δή τοι δώσουσι πιεῖν τᾶς Μναμοσύνας ἀπ[ὸ λίμνας καὶ δὴ καὶ σὺ πιὼν ὁδὸν ἔρχεα ἅν τε καὶ ἄλλοι μύσται καὶ βάκχοι ἱερὰν στείχουσι κλεινοί.

Greek text is substantially that of Edmonds (2011), but reading θρῖον (‘leaf ’) in line 1 (West, 1975:230); line 2, εἰς (‘to’); line 10 (G&J); line 12 Zuntz 1976:133; line 13 Janko 1984:99.

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Hipponion This is the leaf of Memory: on the point of death . . . to Hades’ well-built halls; there is a spring on your right and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen where the souls of the dead descend to slake their thirst. You must not go near this spring or drink its water. Further on you will find cold water flowing from Memory’s lake; there are guardians standing over it. Shrewdly, in their wisdom, they will ask you why you scour Hades’ sombre shadows. Say: ‘I am a son of Earth and starry Heaven. I am parched with thirst and dying: quickly, give me the cool water flowing from Memory’s lake.’ And the rulers of the Underworld will pity you and they will give you water from Memory’s lake and then you will pass along the sacred way that other initiates and bacchants tread to their glory.





Southern Italy, c. 400 B.C.

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Petelia Εὑρήσ{σ}ειϛ Ἀίδαο δόμων ἐπ᾿ ἀριστερὰ κρήνην, πὰρ δ’ αὐτῆι λευκὴν ἑστηκυῖαν κυπάρισσον· ταύτηϛ τῆϛ κρήνηϛ μηδὲ σχεδὸν ἐμπελάσειαϛ. εὑρήσειϛ δ’ ἑτέραν, τῆϛ Μνημοσύνηϛ ἀπὸ λίμνηϛ ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον· φύλακεϛ δ’ ἐπίπροσθεν ἔασιν. εἰπεῖν· ῾Γῆϛ παῖϛ εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντοϛ, αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ γένοϛ οὐράνιον· τόδε δ’ ἴστε καὶ αὐτοί. δίψηι δ’ εἰμὶ αὔη καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι. ἀλλὰ δότ’ αἶψα ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον τῆϛ Μνημοσύνηϛ ἀπὸ λίμνηϛ.’ καὐτ[οί] σ[ο]ι δώσουσι πιεῖν θείηϛ ἀπ[ὸ κρή]νηϛ, καὶ τότ ἔπειτα [τέλη σὺ μεθ’] ἡρώεσσιν ἀνάξει[ϛ]. [Μνημοσύ]νης τόδε [†εριον†·ἐπεὶ ἂν μέλληισι] θανεῖσθ[αι ….] τόδε γραψ[ (in right margin) …… τογλωσειπα σκότοϛ ἀμφικαλύψαϛ. Text: Edmonds (2011), p. 22

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Petelia You will find a spring on your left in Hades’ halls and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen. Do not go near this spring or drink its water. You will find another, cold water flowing from Memory’s lake; its guardians stand before it. Say: ‘I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, but descended from Heaven; you yourselves know this. I am parched with thirst and dying: quickly, give me the cool water flowing from Memory’s lake.’ And they will give you water from the sacred spring and then you will join the heroes at their rites. This [is the …. of Memo]ry: [on the point of] death ] write this [ ] the darkness folding [you] within it.



Southern Italy, 4th c. B.C.

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Pharsalos Εὑρήσεις Ἀίδαο δόμοις ἐνδέξια κρήνην, πὰρ δ’ αὐτῆι λευκὴν ἑστηκυῖαν κυπάρισσον· ταύτης τῆς κρήνης μηδὲ σχεδόθεν πελάσηισθα· πρόσσω δ’ εὑρήσεις τὸ Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμνης ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προ⟨ρέον⟩· φύλακες δ’ ἐπύπερθεν ἔασιν· οἱ δὲ σ’ εἰρήσονται ὅ τι χρέος εἰσαφικάνεις· τοῖς δὲ σὺ εὖ μάλα πᾶσαν ἀληθείην καταλέξαι· εἰπεῖν· “Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστ⟨ερόεντος⟩· Ἀστέριος ὄνομα· δίψηι δ’ εἰμ’ αὖος· ἀλλὰ δότε μοι πιεῖν ἀπὸ τῆς κρήνης.”

Text: Zuntz (1971), p. 361

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Pharsalos You will find a spring on your right in Hades’ halls and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen. Do not go near this spring or drink its water. Further on you will find cold water flowing from Memory’s lake; its guardians stand over it. They will ask you the purpose of your visit. Tell them the whole truth without any hesitation; say: ‘I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven, Asterios by name. But I am parched with thirst; Let me drink from your spring.’

Thessaly, 350–320 B.C.

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Thessaly Δίψαι αὖοϛ ἐγὼ κ⟨αὶ⟩ ἀπόλλυμαι· ἀλλὰ πίε μου κράναϛ αἰειρόω. ἐπὶ δεξιὰ λευκὴ κυπάρισσοϛ. τίϛ δ’ ἐσί; πῶ δ’ ἐσί; Γᾶϛ υἱόϛ εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντοϛ· αὐτὰρ ἐμοὶ γένοϛ οὐράνιον.

Text: Edmonds (2011), p.29

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Thessaly I am parched with thirst and dying: let me drink from the ever-flowing spring. On the right is a luminous cypress tree. ‘Who are you? And where are you from?’ I am a son of Earth and starry Heaven but my descent is from Heaven.



Unknown Location, 350-320 B.C.

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Entella [ ἐπεὶ ἂν μέλ]ληισι θανεῖσθαι [ μ]εμνημέος ἥρως [ ]σκότος ἀμφικαλύψας [ ἐπὶ] δεξιὰ λίμνην, [πὰρ’ αὺτῆι λευκὴν ἑστη]κῦαν κυπάρισσον· [ἔνθα κατερχόμεναι ψυ]χαὶ νεκύων ψύχονται. [ταύτης τῆς κρήνης μη]δὲ σχεδὸν ἐπελάσθαι. [πρόσθεν δ’ εὑρήσεις τῆς] Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμνης [ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ προρέον·] φυλακοὶ δ’ ἐπύπεθεασιν. [τοὶ δέ σε εἰρήσονται ἐνὶ] φρασὶ πευκαλίμησιν, [ὅττι δὴ ἐξερέεις Ἄιδος σκότο]ς ὀρφονήεντος. [εἶπον· Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ] Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος. [δίψαι δ’ εἰμ’ αὖος καὶ ἀπόλλ]υμαι· ἀλλὰ δότε μμοι [ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ πιέναι τῆς] Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμνης.

col. i

αὐτὰρ ἐ[μοὶ γένος οὐράνιον· τόδε δ’ ἴστε καὶ αὐτοί.] καί τοι δὴ [ἐλεοῦσιν ὑποχθόνιοι βασιλῆες καὶ τότε τ[οι δώσουσι πιεῖν τῆς Μνημοσύνης ἀπὸ λίμνης καὶ τότε δ[ὴ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ούμβολα φ[ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - καὶ φε[ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - σεν[ col. ii

Text: Graf & Johnston (2007), p.16 with the exception of line 16 which is line 13 of our text of Hipponion.

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Entella col. i

on the po]int of death ] hero remembering ] the darkness folding ] a lake on your right and by it the cypress with its luminous sheen where the souls of the dead descend to slake their thirst. Do not go near this spring or drink its water. Further on you will find cold water flowing from Memory’s lake; there are guardians standing over it. Shrewdly, in their wisdom, they will ask you why you scour Hades’ sombre shadows. Say: ‘I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven. I am parched with thirst and dying; give me the cool water flowing from Memory’s lake. col. ii

But descended from Heaven; you yourselves know this.’ And the rulers of the Underworld will pity you and they will give you water from Memory’s lake and then [ passwords [ and [ [

Sicily, 3rd c. B.C. (?)

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Eleutherna Δίψαι αὖος ἐγὼ καὶ ἀπόλλυμαι· ἀλλὰ πιέμ μοι Κράνας αἰειρόω ἐπὶ δεξιά, τῆ κυφάρισσος. “Τίς δ’ ἔσσι; πῶ δ’ ἔσσι;” Γᾶς υἱός ἠμι καὶ ὠρανῶ ἀστερόεντος.

Text: Zuntz (1971), p. 362

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Eleutherna I am parched with thirst and dying: let me drink from the ever-flowing spring on the right, by the cypress tree. ‘Who are you? And where are you from?’ I am a son of Earth and starry Heaven.



Crete, 2nd-1st centuries B.C.)

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Mylopotamos Δίψα δ’ ἠμ’ αὖος καὶ ἀπόλυμαι· ἀλὰ πιέν μοι κράνας αἰειρόω ἐπὶ δεξιά, τῆ κυπάρισσος. τίς δ’ ἐσσί; πῶ δ’ ἐσσί; Γᾶς ἠμι θυάτηρ καὶ ’Ωρανῶ ἀστερόεντος.

Text: Edmonds (2011), p.27

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Mylopotamos I am parched with thirst and dying: let me drink from the ever-flowing spring on the right, by the cypress tree. ‘Who are you? And where are you from?’ I am a daughter of Earth and starry Heaven.



Crete, 2nd-1st centuries B.C.

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Rethymnon Δίψαι {τοι} ὖος παραπλλται· ἀλλὰ π{α}ιέν μοι κράνας αύρου ἐπ’ {α} ἀριτερὰ τᾶς κυφα{σ}ρίσσω. τίς δ’ εἶ ἢ πῶ δ’ εἶ; Γᾶς ἠμ{ο}ὶ μάτηρ {πωτιαετ} αὶ ὐρανῶ στε {τισδιψαιτοιατοιιυτοοπασρατανηο}

Text: Edmonds (2011), p. 34

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Rethymnon He is parched with thirst and wasting away: let me drink from the ever-flowing spring to the left of the cypress tree. ‘Who are you? And where are you from?’ Earth is my mother [ ] and of starry Heaven. [who with thirst . . . ]

Crete, 2nd-1st centuries B.C.

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Shapes of the Gold Leaves 3 Rome This leaf, now in the British Museum and said to have come from the necropolis at the Via Ostiense in Rome, has been dated to the mid-second or third centuries A.D. on the evidence of its cursive script. Since the lamella has ‘the appearance of having been rolled up in a cylinder similar to that which contained the Petelia tablet’ (F.H. Marshall quoted in Zuntz, 1971: 334 n. 3), it may have been used as an amulet or even expressly made as such for a Roman matron who has left her name as a sort of magic passport.

From Edward Jenner, The Gold Leaves

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Other texts

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Pelinna (a) Νῦν ἔθανες καὶ νῦν ἐγένου, τρισόλβιε, ἄματι τωῖδε. εἰπεῖν Φερσεφόναι σ’ ὅτι Βχιος αὐτὸς ἔλυσε. τα{ι}ῦρος εἰς γάλα ἔθορες, αἶψα εἰς γλα ἔθορες, κριὸς εἰς γάλα ἔπεσ. οἶνον ἔχεις εὐδίμονα τιμή κἀπιμένει σ’ ὑπὸ γῆν τέλεα ἅσσαπερ ὄλβιοι ἂλλοι.

Text: Graf & Johnston (2007), p.36

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Pelinna (a) Now you died and now you came into being, thrice blessed, on this very same day. Say to Persephone that the Bakkhios himself released you. A bull, you leapt into milk, you quickly leapt into milk, a ram, you rushed to milk. You have wine as your mark of good fortune. And the same prizes await you beneath the earth as the other blessed souls possess.

Thessaly, 325-300 B.C.

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Pherai 1 Σύμβολα· Ἀνρικεπαιδόθυρσον, ἀνδρικεπαιδόθυρσον· Βριμώ, Βριμώ. εἴσιθ ἱερὸν λειμῶνα· ἄποινος γὰρ ὁ μύστης. ΓΑΠΕΔΟΝ

Text: Graf & Johnston (2007), p. 38

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Pherai 1 ‘Passwords?’ Man-childthyrsus ‘Man-childthyrsus’ Brimo ‘Brimo’ ‘Come into the sacred meadow: redeemed is the initiate.’ GAPEDON

Thessaly, 350-300 B.C.

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Pherai 2 πέμπε με πρὸς μυστῶ θιάσους· ἔχω ὄργια [Βάκχου] Δήμητρος Χθονίας τε λη καὶ Μητρὸς Ὀρεί[ας].

Graf & Johnston (2007), p. 38

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Complete Gold Leaves

Pherai 2 Send me to the bands of initiates, for I know the mysteries of [ the rites of Demeter Chthonia and those of the Mountain Mother.



43

Thessaly, 320-280 B.C.

Edward Jenner

Amphipolis Εὐαγὴς ἱερὰ Διονύσου Βαχχίου εἰμί, Ἀρχεβού[λ]η Ἀντιδώρου.

Text: Graf & Johnston (2007), p. 40

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Complete Gold Leaves

Amphipolis Pure am I sacred to Dionysos Bakkhios, Arkheboulē [daughter] of Antidoros.

Macedonia, 320-280 B.C.

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Bibliography R.G. Edmonds III (ed.), The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further along the Path, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2011 F. Graf and S.I. Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets, Routledge: London and New York, 2007 R. Janko, ‘Forgetfulness in the Golden Tablets of Memory’, Classical Quarterly 34, pp.89-100, 1984 M.L. West, ‘Zum Neuen Goldblättchen aus Hipponion’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 18, pp.229-36, 1975 G. Zuntz, Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia, Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1971 G. Zuntz, ‘Die Goldlamelle von Hipponion’, Wiener Studien 10, pp.129-51, 1976

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The Journeys of the Dead from Malakula and the Small Islands and their relevance to Aeneid VI and Greco-Roman Mythology

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The Journeys of the Dead from Malakula

Introduction

Field research in Malakula (in the Vanuatu Archipelago) and the so-called ‘Small Islands’ that lie off its north-east coast was undertaken in the early decades of last century by the anthropologists John Layard and Bernard Deacon. The literature resulting from this research included a certain amount of description and discussion of Malakulan beliefs in the afterlife, as told to the anthropologists by their informants. In his 1936 book, The Cumaean Gates, the Classical scholar Jackson Knight noted a number of parallels between these Malakulan beliefs and the journeys in the Underworld in the Sumerian/ Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh and Virgil’s Aeneid Book VI. Gertrude Levy’s The Gate of Horn followed a decade later with a chapter on Malakulan mortuary monuments and beliefs which treated them as survivals of a European/Asian megalithic culture. This essay is an attempt to a) examine some of these socalled ‘parallels’ between the Malakulan myths of the journey of the dead and their Greco-Roman equivalents, and b) explain these correspondences with an alternative to the diffusionist theories of Layard and Levy which have no basis in hard scientific evidence. It must be emphasized that Layard and Deacon describe a pre-Christian culture that has been severely eroded by depopulation and the pressures of modernisation and development. Since the New Hebrides achieved independence, however, efforts have been made by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port Vila to reinvigorate interest in the indigenous cultural traditions and practices. Dr Kirk Huffman, formerly of the Cultural Centre, informs me that on the island of Vao, even among a number of those who have converted to Christianity, traditional beliefs remain intact. Please note that in my summaries of the Malakulan myths, I keep referring to a ‘dead man’ rather than a ‘dead person’. This is because the Maki cycle of rites, which permits those who have achieved rank to travel beyond the grave to a Cave of the Dead or the volcanic island of Ambrym, is performed by the male population only. The women have their rituals and a belief in the afterlife, of course, but Layard was given no information about them. 49

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The Journey of the Dead on Vao, Atchin, and Wala

Off the north-east coast of Malakula lies the small island of Vao. Here it is believed that the ghost of a dead man of high rank crossed over, soon after burial, to a black-sand beach on Malakula where he attempted to enter a cave in which his dead friends were gathered. His progress was barred by the Guardian Ghost known as Le-hev-hev, but fortunately a kindly spirit called Ta-ghar Lawo interceded on his behalf. The Guardian Ghost then released the dead man who presented it with the pig (also ghostly of course) sacrificed at his burial; the Guardian would have devoured him otherwise. The ghost does not linger at this ‘Cave of the Dead’, as it is called, but continues on down the coast until he reaches a promontory opposite the volcanic island of Ambrym. On this promontory at sunset he lights a fire and beckons with a piece of seaweed to the ghostly ferryman who will duly convey him to Ambrym. Climbing up to the volcanic crater at dusk, he joins the nocturnal dance of the ancestors, a spectral fiesta repeated night after night. The version of this ghostly perambulation told on Atchin, another small island south of Vao, also involves a journey down the coast of Malakula to a ferryman, but there are significant differences. Before the dead man reaches the cave, he climbs a mountain and eats the fruit of a magic tree. The cave is down on the shore where there is a stone he walks around ‘with a whistling sound’. He walks through the cave which, in this version, is void of any congregation of the dead, and confronts the Guardian Ghost, Le-sawsaw, 40 miles down the coast at the promontory opposite Ambrym. Here he presents the Guardian Ghost with the ritual pig, crosses over to a small island and lights a fire to attract the ferryman who conveys him to a ‘place of ghosts’ near Ambrym. Atchin’s dead of high rank were buried with a cane cut to the length of their bodies and placed alongside them in their graves. In the narrative of the journey told on Wala, another small island south of Vao, this cane becomes something of a magic wand whereby the dead man parts the waters that obstruct his progress down the coast of Malakula. The Wala version of the journey is the most elaborate of the three accounts. The ghost makes his way to the cave, but before entering it he gnaws on the bark of the magic tree outside it and walks twice around a stone, whistling softly, as in the Atchin account. Again the ghost passes through an empty cave without meeting either his kind or the Guardian Ghost. In fact, the Guardian 50

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Ghost in this version has apparently become a petromorph standing in the sea off the coast of the promontory. The spirit in this stone would devour our ghost unless he had a pig to give it. Having arrived at the promontory, the dead man lights a beacon and is taken across to Ambrym by (dead) members of his family or village on craft no more seaworthy than flotsam. On the volcano, the dead dance all night, but at the rising of the Morning Star, their heads fall off and their skeletons disintegrate only to be re-integrated the following evening when the phantom dance begins all over again.1

The Labyrinth and the Guardian Ghost at Seniang

A very different account of the afterlife is told in the district of Seniang, south-west Malakula. Here the ghost travels north, crossing a channel of the sea 30-40 feet wide with a single step. He then catches sight of a rock in the sea behind which is situated the Land of the Dead, conceived as being under the earth but at no great depth. In front of the rock sits the Guardian Ghost known as Temes Savsap; before her is a labyrinthine figure she has traced in the sand. At the approach of the ghost, she wipes out half the figure and tells the ghost that he must complete the design if he wants to progress any further. If he is unable to complete it, he is summarily devoured. Successful ghosts, however, make their way through a hole in the rock and leap off a tree into the sea to reach the Land of the Dead, which is situated on the coast opposite this rocky islet.2

Sibyls, Caves, Guardian Ghosts, Mazes, and Magic Wands

Like Greek mythology, much of this myth-making derives from ritual and religious belief. For instance, all-night dancing is a feature of all the rites of burial and initiation on Vao and the other islands. On Malakula, Atchin, and Wala, culture heroes are often said to have the ability to transform themselves into petromorphs. On Wala, a whistling sound was made at the graveside of a dead man on the eve of the fifth day after his death to drive away his ghost. And a cane accompanies the dead man in his grave on Atchin and Wala because on these islands the dead are buried in an extended rather than a squatting position.3 ________________________ 1

Accounts based on Layard, 1934: 118-26; Layard, 1942: 229-31. Deacon, 1934: 554-6. 3 Layard, 1934: 133-6. 2

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The combined features in these myths of cave, guardian ghost, maze, wand, sacrifice to chthonic powers, and ferryman of the dead almost inevitably recall, for those who have studied Greco-Roman literature, the Classical Underworld and the journeys of the heroes who survived it, in particular Aeneas’ descent into the Underworld in Virgil’s Aeneid VI. Both Layard and Knight note anthropological and mythological correspondences between the Guardian Ghost (usually considered to be female except on Vao) and the Sibyl of the Aeneid.4 It is true that Sibyls are associated with rocks and caves (see Pausanias 10.12), that both the Malakulan Guardians and Virgil’s Cumaean Sibyl test the right of entry of those intending to descend into the world of the dead, but the former are not mediums interpreting the will of a god and they do not inhabit an oracular cavern like that at Cumae. Moreover, they guard their domain with the ruthless efficiency of an arachnid so that it is not surprising to learn that they are sometimes identified with spiders and ‘crablike monsters’.5 From this point of view, their closest ‘relatives’ in ancient literature are the scorpion-men who guard the gate to the netherworld in the Gilgamesh epic, or the mother of both the Libyan Sibyl and the cave monster Scylla, i.e. Lamia who ate human flesh.6 It is important to realise, however, that the Guardian Ghost also embodies all ancestors who must be propitiated ‘so that the sacrificer may obtain entry into the life after death’.7 This is why the Guardians prevent the entry of those who have not achieved rank in the Maki rites. We might compare the Iliad 23.72ff. in which the ancestors, i.e. the dead en masse, perform this function when they bar entry to those like Patroclus who have not received the due burial rites. Because both labyrinths are situated near the entrances to their respective Underworlds, the design traced on the sand by Temes Savsap has been compared by Knight to the representation of the Cretan labyrinth on the doors of the temple of Apollo at Cumae, as described in Aeneid 6. 20-30.8 Aeneas and his men marvel at the artwork until abruptly restored by the Sybil to their pressing duty to sacrifice to Apollo and Trivia. Both labyrinths may be situated near entrances to the Underworld, but while the Malakulan maze is the test of a ghostly initiate’s right to enter the world of the dead, _________________________ 4

Layard, 1942: 220 n.1; cf. also 653; Knight, 1936: 17. Layard, ib.: 221. 6 Knight, 1936: 31-2; Stesichorus fr.220 PMG. 7 Layard, 1942: 225. 8 Knight, 1936: 17-18. 5

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the representation of Daedalus’ labyrinth on the doors of Apollo’s temple is only one of a suite of images that portray the events surrounding the construction of the maze beneath Minos’ palace, including the story of Pasiphae’s ‘monstrous passion’ and the ‘hybrid Minotaur’. The artwork at Cumae essentially commemorates the fact that Apollo’s temple was founded by Daedalus. It is by no stretch of the imagination a test of Aeneas’ readiness or suitability to enter the world of the dead – that comes later when he grapples with the Golden Bough, attempting to detach it from the tree on which it grows so mysteriously. Nor is the Cretan labyrinth such a central feature of this 10-line ekphrasis that it was intended to foreshadow the maze-like journey our Trojan hero is soon to undertake in the Underworld: Virgil’s world of the dead is not particularly labyrinthine anyway.9 The Golden Bough, that extraordinary symbol of life-in-death that enables Aeneas, a living man, to enter the realm of death, has a slightly more convincing correspondence with the wands in the Malakulan myths. In the Wala version, the cane is cut to the exact length of the dead man’s body and buried with him in his grave. It is ‘clearly the dead man’s “double”’.10 The cane is carried throughout the journey to enable the ghost to cross rivers on his way. The Golden Bough is Aeneas’ guarantee of protection in his perilous journey – the mere sight of it convinces Charon that he should admit Aeneas in his flimsy craft and transport him across the Styx (Aen. 6.405-10). It is quite possible that Virgil borrowed his striking symbol from the mystery religions, for a golden bough was discovered in a fourth century B.C. tomb in the area of Kolonos, Attica.11 Like the cane on Wala, it had been buried with its owner. Knight makes much of the fact that both objects allow their bearers to cross water;12 he believes that the three journeys to the land of the dead examined by him, the journeys of Gilgamesh, of Aeneas, and the Malakulan ghosts, all go back to very ancient ‘originals’ in which water was crossed, a theme deriving from ritual or the memory of a migration.13 Martin West has discussed the crossing of water by the dead and the ferryman of _______________________ 9

See Horsfall, 2013: 88; cf. Austin, 1977: 45. Crutwell, 1946: 84, maintains that the ‘labyrinthine pattern’ of the Cretan story recurs in Aeneas’ experience of the Underworld: Minos’ urn, Pasiphae, and Theseus all recur (in Aen. 6.432, 447, 618). 10 Layard, 1942: 229 n.3. 11 Archäologischer Anzeiger xxvii (1912), 238. 12 Knight, 1936: 24, 177. 13 Knight, ib.: 43-5.

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the dead as common motifs of the Indo-European tradition,14 but Knight is proposing something that will also encompass an ancient Babylonian epic and the Small Islanders’ myths, a highly contentious matter to be discussed in a later section. In the meantime, however, I must take issue with Knight’s argument that the Golden Bough is Aeneas’ ‘double’.15 The cane is intimately connected with its owner, being his ‘measuring stick’, as they call it on Wala, whereas the Bough is strictly speaking sacred to Proserpine and must be brought to her door as her due, a ritual tribute to the goddess of the dead (Aen. 6.138, 142). The Bough is not even Aeneas’ to carry; it is the Sibyl as priestess of Apollo and Trivia, the goddess of the ghosts, who reveals it to Charon from the folds of her clothing (Aen. 6.406).

The Land of the Dead

When we examine the Land of the Dead in the Malakulan myths, we come across a somewhat more intriguing set of correspondences with their GrecoRoman equivalents. The ‘Cave of the Dead’, according to Layard, belongs to an ‘older layer of culture’ associated with the cave-like dolmen in the Maki rites of rebirth.16 In the Vao myth, the dead enter the Cave, but their ultimate goal is the volcano on Ambrym. Two strands of belief seem to have become intertwined here: that the dead of all ranks in the Maki rites congregate in a cave; and a later, superimposed belief that those of high rank journey on to the volcano.17 The Wala and Atchin versions belong to this later strand; the cave in these accounts contains neither Guardian Ghost nor dead relatives but has been retained because it was once, presumably, the final goal. The ghosts of Small Islanders who have not taken Maki rank journey to caves on the rocky eastern coast of Malakula, where they are imprisoned by Le-hevhev.18 ‘Whistling stones’ mark the entrances to the Cave of the Dead in the Atchin and Wala accounts; at Seniang the position of both the land of the Dead and the Guardian Ghost is indicated by a rock. Rocks also mark the entrances ____________________________ 14

West, 2007: 389-91. Knight, ib.: 42. 16 Layard, 1934: 116, 133. 17 Layard, 1942: 231, 409-10 18 Layard, 1942: 237. 15

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to Underworlds in central and northern districts of Malakula with Guardian Ghosts controlling the passage.19 Is it too fanciful to compare these markstones with the famous ‘White Rock’ which the ghosts of the suitors pass on their way to Hades in the Odyssey (24.11),20 or even such comic distortions as the ‘Withering Stone’ of Aristophanes, Frogs 194? Aeneas descends into the Underworld through a cave which emits mephitic fumes in the volcanic region of Cumae (Aen. 6.237-41). Gilgamesh travels through a tunnel in almost total darkness to the edge of the world. There is water to be crossed in both journeys — the river Styx in one, the Waters of Death in the other. Odysseus crosses Okeanos, the swirling stream that runs around the rim of the world, to reach the Land of the Dead; the ghosts of the suitors follow Hermes’ golden rod across the same river to Hades (Odyssey 24.1-12). Menelaus, the privileged son-in-law of Zeus, on the other hand, is destined to enjoy a life of bliss in Elysium, which is a ‘plain at the ends of the earth’ beyond Okeanos with a warm climate and a refreshing breeze (Od. 4.563-8).21 Virgil’s Elysium is full of radiant light in which the souls of the blessed engage in their favourite pursuits: athletics, singing, and dancing (6.640-44), and no doubt this was the sort of paradise promised Orphic and Eleusinian initiates. Again, is it too fanciful to compare Elysium with the afterlife of Small Islanders who have undergone the full Maki rites of rebirth: a night-long spectral dance at the volcanic crater on the island of Ambrym? What are we to make of these analogies and correspondences, many of which are admittedly very tenuous, especially in the detail? Before I attempt to answer that question there are some other parallels between Malakulan and Greco-Roman mortuary myth which deserve at least a brief discussion even if it complicates the issue further. ________________________ 19

Deacon, 1934: 580, 585. The ghost of Patroclus attempts to cross a river (Iliad 23.73), but this is probably the Styx. It is definitely the Styx that Herakles crosses to wrestle with Cerberus at Iliad 8.369. 21 The Odyssean Elysium, reserved for the favoured few, is somewhat reminiscent of the Polynesian Pulotu, a realm not ‘down there’ like Virgil’s Elysium but ‘out there’, i.e. over the water. It is reserved for the souls of chiefs. 22 Layard, 1934: 123 n.1. 20

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A Magic Tree, the Path that Forks, and the Fire that is Life

Ghosts in the Atchin version of the journey of the dead eat the fruit of a ‘magic’ tree; in the Wala account, the dead gnaw on the bark of this tree. The small red fruit of the navi tree is apparently given to the babies of mothers whose ‘milk has failed’; presumably it has the life-restoring properties associated with the milk-yielding tree of the Egyptian Netherworld, the sycamore, the white fluid of which was ‘fed in later days to Greek infants’.23 We might also adduce the image of the kid ‘rushing to milk’ on the so-called ‘Orphic’ Gold Leaves from Thurii and Pelinna,24 which were engraved for deceased initiates of some mystery religion. We should bear in mind that it is as initiates of their respective mortuary rites – Malakulan, Egyptian, and Greek – that the dead receive this nourishment. The Big Nambas of the Malakulan mainland believe that the road to Bialou (the Land of the Dead) bifurcates, ‘presumably’, notes Deacon dryly, ‘where Lisevsep [the Guardian Ghost] is sitting’. The right-hand track is for the ghosts of ‘good men’, the left is for those who have led wicked lives.25 We are inevitably reminded of the path in the Aeneid which forks into a left-hand road to Tartarus and a right-hand road to Elysium (Aen. 6.540-43). Virgil’s depiction of the Underworld is suffused with features derived from OrphicPythagorean doctrine. On the Gold Leaves from Petelia and Thurii, thought to be either Orphic or Pythagorean, we find advice that the souls of initiates are to avoid the spring on the left and ‘take the path to the right / for the sacred meadows and groves of Persephone’.26 Mythology relating to the untimely dead in both Virgil and the island of Vao will also bear comparison. Just as the ghosts of those who died young or by their own hand gather in groups between the Styx and the parting of the ways, Elysium being beyond their grasp (Aen. 6.426ff.), so on Vao it is believed that the ghosts of young men who died without experiencing any or even most of the rites of rebirth are denied access to the volcano on Ambrym.27 ___________________________ 23

Levy, 1948: 120. A1 & D1 in Edmonds (ed.), 2011: 16 & 36; see also Jenner, 2014: 87. 25 Deacon, 1934: 585. 26 A4 & B1 in Edmonds (ed.), 2011: 20 & 22; Jenner, 2014: 46. For Orphic/Pythagorean doctrine in Aeneid 6, see e.g. Austin, 1977: 202. 27 Layard, 1934: 140. 24

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The fire of that volcano afforded the dead of high rank ‘the greatest possible bliss, since fire means power and life’.28 Bot-gharambi, the ‘source of fire’, as the volcano is called, is the ultimate goal of the Small Islanders’ aspirations, and the concept of the dead dancing in fire seems to have spread eventually to the caves where the dead without Maki rank dwell, walking in fire that resembles ‘a mass of sparks’.29 The Greeks too venerated fire as an ‘immortalizing’ agent, as did many ancient societies, so that apart from the legend of Empedocles hurling himself into Etna’s crater, there is nothing particularly striking about the parallelism of this element until we come to the ritual practised on the fifth day after the birth of a child on Vao: the midwife lights a stick of erythrina wood and holds it under the child ‘to make it strong’.30 This should strike a responsive chord in any Classicist who remembers a) Demeter’s attempt to immortalize Demophon, the new-born prince of Eleusis by holding him over a fire until interrupted by his mother; or b) Thetis’ equally unsuccessful attempt to immortalize her son Achilles by holding him over a fire until interrupted by her husband Peleus. The myths distantly reflect the Greek ritual of running around the hearth with a child on the fifth or seventh day after birth, which no doubt replaced an earlier ritual of passing the child over the fire, perhaps to purify it.31

Mystery Religions and the Collective Unconscious

A diffusionist theory would explain Melanesian culture as a kind of ‘isolated backwater left behind from the great stream of megalithic culture’ which passed from the ‘ancient centres of civilisation’, such as Egypt, and was carried along seagoing routes to the Malay Archipelago and ‘thence across the Pacific to Easter Island and to the American continent’.32 Such a grandiose theory (proposed early last century by Dr William Perry and Professor Elliot Smith) was beyond the scope of Layard’s 750-page tome Stone Men of Malekula: Vao, let alone the limited scope of this short study. The immediate __________________________

28

Layard, 1942: 232. Layard, ib.: 237. 30 Layard, ib.: 178. 31 Demeter and Demophon: Homeric Hymn to Demeter 231-74; Achilles and Thetis: Apollodorus, Bibliotheca iii. 13. 6. For the Greek ritual at the hearth, see Frazer’s edition of Apollodorus, Vol. ii (Frazer, 1921: 313). 32 Layard, 1942: 19. 29

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origins of this megalithic culture seem to lie in an area much closer at hand, namely the Malay Archipelago ‘and the neighbouring mainland of SouthEastern Asia’.33 If cultural diffusion seems literally too long a shot; if the stone platforms and the dolmens of Vao seem to have little in common with the ziggurats of Mesopotamia, can we explain the parallels between GrecoRoman and Malakulan mythology in terms other than diffusion? Layard considered the Maki rites to be ‘comparable with the mysteries of classical antiquity’.34 Like the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries, knowledge of the rites is not available to the uninitiated; secondly, the rites prepare initiands for a ghostly journey towards an afterlife in which they join their privileged peers and ancestors. There are important differences, however. The Maki rites on Vao are performed by alternate generations of males, and may extend over a period of several years. Basically, they are of two grades which correspond with the two stages in the journey of the dead: the Low or earlier form in which a large dolmen represents both womb and tomb, i.e. the Cave of the Dead and the place of rebirth; and the later High Maki in which a stone platform represents the volcano.35 In this case, the myths generate the ritual, whereas in traditional societies it is often the reverse. Eleusis too had its ‘Lesser’ and ‘Greater’ Mysteries, the former being a mere prelude to the latter which took place six months later. Participation was open to all – men, women, and non-citizens – who spoke Greek and had not committed murder. Initiands, men included, identified themselves with the goddess Demeter, and initiation was a matter of months, not years. But perhaps all too often we concentrate on the differences to the exclusion of the features which link the Maki-men with the Bacchic or Eleusinian initiates. Participants in both the Malakulan and the Greek rites would believe in a land of the dead open only to those who have received the due burial rites, or have been initiated, or have achieved some rank in the rites of rebirth; a river or an arm of the sea or some other barrier would prevent the unburied or the uninitiated from crossing to the other side. The traveller _________________________________ 33

Layard, ib.: 20. Layard, ib: xx-xxi. 35 Layard, ib.: 272, 410. The large dolmen on Atchin and Wala, where the Guardian Ghost is said to be the grandmother of ten legendary brothers, has been replaced by ten shrines, each with a small dolmen, Layard, ib.: 274. 34

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in this land might be furnished with a rod or wand to enable him or her to pass over such barriers. A milk-yielding tree or fruit would sustain the ghosts of the dead. Those who died too young to be initiated fully or partly into the rites would not reach the bliss of Elysium or the ‘Source of Fire’, and even those who have been fully initiated would have their right to progress tested by guardians, the mysterious beings of the ‘Orphic’ Gold Leaves or a Guardian Ghost. In other words, to account for the parallels in myths so widely separated in space and time, what I am proposing is a quasi-structuralist theory that a journey of the dead based on a vaguely similar set of beliefs will produce, independently and coincidentally, a similar set of situations and motifs. Jackson Knight believed he had discovered an archetypal pattern of initiation in the correspondences between Aeneid VI and the Malakulan myths: To reach the land of the dead a cave near the sea shore, guarded by a female guardian, is entered. Clearly, the sibyl corresponds with Temes Savsap. Near the entrance is a maze or labyrinth which delays the journey. Only those who are qualified may enter … The traveller has to be provided with a ‘bough’ or wand … to help him on his journey and above all to enable him to cross water. There is a ferryman of the dead … Some of the dead, at least, live in open country somehow below ground and out beyond the cave.36 Each corresponding feature or motif highlighted by Knight – cave, guardian, labyrinth, wand, ferryman, and land of the dead – when examined critically and individually seems to indicate merely a very nebulous parallel, especially the labyrinth which in Virgil does not appear to prefigure a maze-like journey in the Underworld or act as a test of Aeneas’ readiness to descend into that world.37 And yet place all these elements together in the continuity of the narrative in which they occur and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that something deeper than coincidence is informing the pattern. Is it a matter of the independent creation of images that are only coincidentally similar? Or was there something like a ‘single original’ for these Underworld ___________________ 36 37

Knight, 1936: 17-18. Cf. also the comments by Robert Brooks in Commager (ed.), 1966: 144 n.1.

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journeys or journeys of the dead in the Epic of Gilgamesh, Aeneid VI, and the Malakulan myths, as Knight seems to believe?38 Or was there no ‘single original’ but a composite and constantly modified set of symbolic motifs beginning as a series of images in the deepest layers of the psyche, i.e. the collective unconscious, before forming an archetypal pattern or structure? Let us explore this idea a little further. For Jung, archetypes are symbolic images that manifest themselves in dreams and fantasies or, in the case of myths of a religious nature, in response to the major crises of the human condition. They ‘reproduce themselves in any time or in any part of the world – even where transmission by direct descent or “cross fertilization” through migration must be ruled out’.39 Perhaps we can now explain why the mandala is such an enduring symbol in so many disparate cultures throughout the world, and why a foundation ceremony for a city in West Africa should resemble its ancient Roman equivalent, unless of course the resemblance is due to a ‘single cultural stream … rising in the Mediterranean area or even further east’, as Leo Frobenius believed.40 Like the myths of superhuman heroes who vanquish their enemies, myths of the Underworld or of journeys in that world vary considerably but exhibit certain ‘symbolic patterns that can be found in the rituals or myths of small tribal societies still existing, unchanged for centuries’.41 A harmony in contrariety then, or perhaps the emphasis should be on the contrariety within the harmony. Jung spells out a salutary warning against reducing archetypes to simple formulae since they have a ‘potential’ existence only as ‘imperishable elements of the unconscious’ which ‘change their shape continually’.42 They change their shape according to the social and religious contexts in which they emerge, as you might expect in cases of independent myth-making widely separated in space and time which have little in common but the barely coincidental thread of archetypal images from the collective unconscious. Some of the images reviewed in this paper—the path that forks to left and right and the fire that strengthens and purifies infants— ____________________________ 38

Knight, 1936: 42. Jung in Jung (ed.), 1978: 58. 40 See C. Kerényi in Jung & Kerényi, 1963: 18ff. 41 J. L. Henderson in Jung (ed.), 1978: 97. 42 Jung in Jung & Kerényi, 1963: 98. 39

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are, as parallels, surprisingly consistent in their respective details, while others only correspond due to their function within the narrative. Such is the case with the Guardian Ghost who, as I have already said, has one of the functions of Virgil’s Sibyl, namely to prevent those who are unworthy of the world of the dead from ever coming near it. According to Layard, Le-hevhev represents the ‘unconscious fears’ of the people of Vao, whereas Ta-ghar, the creator deity of light, comparable to the Polynesian Tangaroa, represents their ‘conscious striving’.43 In Jungian terms these two are ‘psychologically complementary’, as Layard observes, but we might go further with Jung and describe the Guardian Ghosts as personifications of the negative and destructive anima in the tradition of the Gorgons, the Harpies, the Furies, and the Sphinx. In the Eumenides of Aeschylus, the primeval powers of earth and darkness, the Furies, are eventually reconciled with the new order of light and humane justice represented by Apollo and Athene. I can’t help thinking that this ageold conflict and its resolution was likewise re-enacted in myth and ritual on the island of Vao when the good spirit Ta-ghar Lawo (an aspect of Ta-ghar) intercedes on behalf of the ghost of the dead man against the potentially brutal and primitive retribution of Le-hev-hev. The parallel is rough and inexact, like so many others discussed in this paper, but intriguing enough to evoke, at least for this writer, that area of the psyche that ‘retains and transmits the common psychological inheritance of mankind’.44

______________________ 43

44

Layard, 1942: 228. J.L. Henderson in Jung (ed.), 1978: 98.

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Edward Jenner

Bibliography

Austin, R.G. (1977) P. Vergili Maronis, Aeneidos Liber Sextus, Clarendon Press: Oxford Commager, S. (ed.) (1966) Virgil: A Collection of Critical Essays, PrenticeHall: Eaglewood Cliffs, New Jersey Crutwell, R.W. (1946) Virgil’s Mind at Work: An Analysis of the Symbolism of the Aeneid, Basil Blackwell: Oxford. Deacon, B. (1934) Malekula: A Vanishing People of the New Hebrides, Routledge & Sons: London Edmonds, R.G. III (ed.) (2011) The ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further along the Path, Cambridge University Press: New York Frazer, J.G. (1921) Apollodorus: The Library Vol. ii, Heinemann: London & G.P. Putnam’s Sons: New York Horsfall, N. (2013) Virgil, Aeneid 6 Vol. 2, de Gruyter: Berlin/Boston Jenner, E. (2014) The Gold Leaves (Being an Account and Translation from the Ancient Greek of the so-called ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets), Atuanui Press, Pokeno (NZ) Jung, C. (ed.) (1978) Man and his Symbols, Picador/MacMillan: London Jung, C. & Kerényi, C. (1963) Essays on a Science of Mythology: the Myths of the Divine Child and the Divine Maiden, Harper & Row: New York & Evanston Knight, W.F.J. (1936) Cumaean Gates: A Reference of the Sixth Aeneid to the Initiation Pattern, Basil Blackwell: Oxford Layard, J. (1934) ‘The Journey of the Dead from the Small Islands of North-Eastern Malekula’ in Essays Presented to C.G. Seligman (ed. E.E. EvansPritchard, R. Firth, B. Malinowski, I. Schapera), Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co.: London, pp. 114-42 Layard, J. (1942) Stone Men of Malekula: Vao, Chatto & Windus: London Levy, G.R. (1948) The Gate of Horn: A Study of the Religious Conceptions of the Stone Age and their Influence upon European Thought, Faber & Faber: London West, M.L. (2007) Indo-European Poetry and Myth, Oxford University Press: New York.

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Thomas Pors Koed. No Relation. Titus Books, Pokeno. 2016. It is appropriate that cross-cultural Percutio should carry a review to Koed’s writing. The stories are unlike anything published in English lately, unless as translations. In many stories a person within is speaking from—not beseeching or critiquing, but delineating habitation in, and of—a society, a hospital or a community. The cities and landscapes are strangely familiar, even though they are expressly situated in indefinable places. One may read in the same way as one watches a film with subtitles set in a country one is unlikely ever to visit—a country whose language one hears but cannot know. And yet it is familiar. The inhabitants are self-expressive, simple in the way they speak of matters which we, in open public, tend to avoid. They are not afraid of the feeling or thinking that speech excites. The book will take you into the realms of fictive suggestiveness, down the back streets of contemporary film, and into psychological spaces you may have once discovered, but if you did, you survived because you backed out before your sanity was compromised. Now you may re-enter with Koed as guide. Mysterious adventures are not always resolved, as when one is travelling in a foreign country and there are so many things one does not, cannot, understand. One becomes aware of the limitations of one’s own world, the one a reader leaves when he or she comes to a book. It is the world of a dependent patient, of the child, of a man so in love he is cast into desperate loneliness beside the sleeping form of his partner. M enters a house and appears to kill his double, while his horizontal flip W teases him and us. It is a world of overcoats and guns and knives, which retain their symbolic value even when unmistakably real (fired) or used to flip up latches. The world of this book is fictional, the people’s names are sometimes invented or have an Eastern European flavour. The literature mentioned, Invisible Skin by Imre Pudel, and The Cloud Kettle by Benjamin Ekel, belongs to an imaginary publishing network. It is a log of inventive devices for activating stories. One has the feeling, sometimes, of following a character, who is talking to himself, along cityscapes that are themselves moving, as if the character is only doing part of the work, and the landscape is doing the other part. So, too, personal choices are often made after some uncertain moment (e.g. something as simple as losing an object, and being unable to figure out how or why), and yet the events that unfold seem determined to deprive the character of self-determination. If the stories themselves are like Shimsen’s shirt, ‘of white Egyptian cotton hand-sewn by a Lebanese tailor in Prague’ (not to mention the description of Shimsen’s entire attire which is itself a quote from the work of the shady Pudel) they constitute a rare effort in

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New Zealand fiction to break out of extremely limiting frames imposed upon our writers by the very struggle to gain Nova Zelandian acceptability for their ‘profession’. Even Koed falls into that, ever so slightly, not with regards to New Zealand but with regards to his intellectual and literary heritage. He does not fail to mention Beckett, and, on another page, Finnegans Wake. Mention of the inimitable Samuel B. dilutes the potion a little. Koed plays with the textual traditions of the novel too, and the footnotes in Red Rider are a micro-masterpiece/success. This book should be in everyone’s bookcase. It is more cultural than Scottish dancing or the haka. It is a sensitive work by, and portrayal of, the seeking mind. As such, it takes us far, it takes us wide, it entertains and stimulates. Interestingly, we learn in an annotation that Rachel Alter’s The Road has No Shadow was based upon the author’s thesis that ‘a culture is an entity separate from, and parasitic upon, the people that acts as its hosts’. No Relation drives out the stereotypes of culture, and opens the French windows both of detection and of the aleatoric dérive.

Lisa Samuels. Tender Girl. Dusie, Kingston, Rhode Island. 2016 Samuel’s prose has a similar propensity to stimulate. Unlike Koed, the coordinates and nomenclature of the novel are in clear focus, but the distinctive ideophonic and alt-grammatical nature of her constructions takes us into an ever-expanding poetic claim. In making the transition to the novel from her justly lauded poetic forms, Samuels has included chapter or paragraph titles rather like a running script at the bottom of her pages, indicating the content of the less penetrable episodes. This will, at least, gainsay eschatological or exegetical surmise. Coming at the foot of the pages, they are like subtitles, or news footlines, the kind of scripts that today run continuously across the bottoms of screens in bars or homes or shops. Formally, then, it is a novel of its age. The tale of a daughter of Lautréamont’s hero and his shark was always going to be more the matter of prose than of poetry, and the novel is as much a descendant of Lautréamont’s cascading sentences as is its heroine. Lautréamont enjoys ridiculing man’s optimism, and the alacrity of Samuels’ prose contains something of this distance as it separates the observer-sufferess from acts and entrances of beings (not only male) who are, unlike her, born from the copulation of human parents. The colourful, inventive and seemingly ever-achievable lines are only partly a prosefication of her characteristic wording of the universe. They hold another surprise, that something concealed in/by her poetry is here exposed. And this reverses such distanciation. If the genre requires of her to say what she need not say at all

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in poetry, and never in critical writing, she also knows how to refer to another script, one that is above the prose, a superscript. If sometimes I felt that she ascribes to plot with only half her will, (Paragraph: ‘The bus ticket was open so she got on’), might this not indicate a dissatisfaction with the ‘downto-earth’, the ‘plummeting’ text and its capped cantos, its ‘rolling’ scripts of news-like (nouvelle-like) aids. There is superscript, to which the actual text, so rich in the author’s aural and rhythmic substance, departs, when we allow it. This is what makes Tender Girl a poetic novel, and not an auto-revelatory psychiatric apology. The novel resolves in a suspensive way consistent with a superscriptual reading: the girl writes, discovers music and silence; gradually her land-world changes from one of typology to one of childing, and ‘The decision is no longer hers only.’

Alan Brunton. Beyond the Ohlala Mountains, Poems 1968-2002. Edited by Michele Leggott and Martin Edmond. Titus Books, Pokeno. 2015

Grâce à l’Ariane Suzon, je tiens le fil du labyrinthe, et le Minotaure est cerné (Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, Mère coupable, II, 7)

A book designed, printed and bound carefully by hand, and yet I doubt it has reached the number of readers it deserves. A note accompanies my review copy: ‘Warmest welcome back to New Zealand. Hope to see you up in Auckland. We can rig up a bed ... and take a tour of the Hauraki Plains, the canals and swamps in the area.’ A year later, I still haven’t made it Auckland, and the editors of BtOM have moved on to other achievements than proving beyond doubt that they deserved their Prime Minister’s Awards for Achievement in Poetry (Michele) and in Fiction (Martin). How to begin ...? Thirty four years of poetry are intersected by full colour glossy reproductions of masks fabricated by the poet’s wife and life-long theatrical collaboratrice, Sally Rodwell. Alan Brunton was once kind enough to publish some of my lyrics, words not intended to stand alone but he felt it was timely to set them down in print in one of those beautiful raw-feeling Bumper Books he, Sally and unnamed collaborators crafted. I set some of Alan’s words to music for the stage play Comrade Savage, and Alan reciprocated by directing eight actors for my music-theatre

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piece Dial A Claw, bringing a touch of his humour to the rehearsals and to his very ‘New York’ mise en scène. I cannot read these poems, dense with typological mannerisms, without remembering him in his office at Erskine College, Wellington, with his manuscripts, their hand-drawn capitals, underlinings and crossings out, a line corrected here, half a page struck out there. When I follow the shapes and tides of a longer poem I recall their theatre shows, difficult, full of mockery and resistance and with their essential passages, the ones Alan was justly proud of. I cannot help remembering his and Sally’s child and my children performing to us adults in a spontaneous show organised in part by M. McN. at Island Bay. Seeing him walking along The Parade with a bag of shopping, I once gave him a lift back to his house where he introduced me to the designer of the sets for Comrade Joe; Stuart S. brought much of that set back to their house on the roof of his Morris 1000 in the dead of night. Yes, all that already, and more. And yet I hardly knew him. I remember him telling me he had a ‘dicky ticker’, as he lit another cigarette. as though ye kan smatter singularity ,Kandinsky in one unbeforethought re-vision of IMAGINATION ARIADNE Je ne touche pas que le coeur des choses je tiens le fil … Indeskribable fatality of the risible Was anything e’er like this before DADA pustulated a tangible hobbyhorse by the Klaw of chance?

[Freed 1] (p.50)

K. M. Ross. The Blinding Walk. Waywiser Press, Oxon and Baltimore. 2015. It is a story that begins in Sydney and crosses three continents. For me, it began in 2006 (Percutio #0) when the author submitted an extract from The Blinding Walk in progress. It was not the last Ross (K. M.) extract Percutio

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would publish. This hefty volume sees the work’s completion. He welds the episodes together skilfully, making a greater story of it, without completely driving away the Faulknerian brume of the extracts. If he and his characters have that kiwi knack of slipping into foreign cultures almost unnoticed, the author has the Scottish flair for plain speaking and never vaunting one’s prowess. Even at his most seemingly experimental, his work never seems insurmountable. While it lacks the linguistic compression of a Samuels or the diversionary tactics of a Koed, Ross has a similar interest in overcoming linguistic playfulness, to engage. Peppered throughout these 500 pages of ‘walk’ you’ll hear a variety of accents. We rove from early Strine (‘Thees eez a see-vilised country’) to French (Allay, allay’) to ‘failing with English’ and ‘‘[falling back] on signs’, to Russian, Italian and the inevitable Scottish. The last chapter, ‘One, Two, Three’ is like a setting off, and contains some of the best prose of the book. If this is a departure for K. M. Ross, I would like to see where it leads him: ‘sun reflected, giving a wordless message to whatever it was in our heads that was open and unregarded; the me, which you can’t expect to last very long in the lift of the wind and the corridors of school and the treading and treading down into mud-scuffed floors’. Too true.

Roger Shepherd. In Love With These Times. Harper Collins. 2016. A biography of a living person, himself. I usually don’t read them. In my teens I devoured The Price of My Soul, by Bernadette Devlin, victim on injustice, a strong woman on a political mission. A couple of years later, Charlie Chaplin’s autobiography stirred my interest— his upbringing, his parents, his theatrical heritage. A year passed, and an autobiography by Duke Ellington opened my eyes to the band leader’s difficulties in organising his musicians, and his own mission, what he saw as a necessity: that the generations of young black Americans surging with untutored musical brilliance gain acceptance to the music conservatories; that they study music, not only playing it, but writing it and teaching it. As I matured, I learned that all of these autobiographies had one thing in common: their authors might have been telling a story they were proud of; but they had left a lot out. Their autobiographies were not the whole truth. I approached this autobiography trying not to let that lesson blind me to the truth it certainly does contain. It is clear-headed and well-edited. It begins

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with infant photographs and ends with a photographic portrait of the writer’s wife and two daughters. In between, some of the most bizarre behaviour this country has seen is rendered homely, and sometimes funny, not at all cataclysmic, not at all shocking, not at all beyond comprehension. I did not take part in much of the Flying Nun euphoria of the 1980s. I watched it from a distance and always expected that the label and its exceptional music would ‘make it big’. I was surprised neither did. The labels biggest success was a man of exceptional creative force, who scorned success and scoffed at the human foibles in us all: Chris Knox’s (and Alec Bathgate’s) magnificent creations ‘made it’ in the alternative networks, but not in the mainstream. The label Expressway and other small labels of the 90s took to churning up the sounds, to challenging technical or stylistic norms, in short, to waging their own sonic revolution—witness the title of the cataclysmic compilation Killing Capitalism with Kindness. Why did they not align themselves with ‘Nun’? And why did I wend my way along alternative (but more traditionally musical) paths incompatible with the pop Flying Nun became noted for. Was it not because we felt the pop element was no longer relevant, and felt let down by the Nun’s front of natural innocence, innocuousness and political inefficacy? Perhaps the reason no ‘Nun’ band made it big enough to draw a wage from the industry is not contained in this book: lack of political commitment. In his own well-written way, Roger Shepherd notes that ‘In New Zealand, 1981 was a bleak year. Robert Muldoon was still in control and more out of control than ever.’ He does not say, ‘Our government had proved itself undeserving of the authority invested in it by the people.’ And yet his label grew out of Christchurch-based dissatisfaction with the divisive abuse of power we knew in the late 1970s. There is little in Roger Shepherd’s tales of his own admittedly fascinating life to suggest that his label was looking for a band prepared to do anything about it. In the 1980s the political situation got worse but the kindly label, overworked and threatened with insolvency, had no commitment to the emotion at the source of the Christchurch musical phe­ nomenon. Dunedin’s adherence to capital and seemliness appealed to the label rather too easily and New Zealand music fans had to settle for another kind of hope: that one or more of the bands would ‘make it’ by selling a horrifying number of records. They did not. It is no irony that Flying Nun has become a deserving, accepted and honoured part of the institution of rock. That institution is part of the economic super-structure against which the best bands in the late 70s, 80s and 90s, whether they knew it or not, rebelled, with all their adolescent and selfdestructive vigour. In this autobiography you will find warmth, honesty and limpidity, one man’s own appealing, if not seductive, version of, but not the only version of, ‘the truth’.

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In Continents by Richard Reeve. Auckland University Press. 2008. Is Reeve a descendant of an Auden who dragged a Tennyson out of the previous century, stripped him of his romantic evocations and dressed him as a Satyr? Or is he a scion of a Curnow who brought the 19th century into the twentieth with lyrical and architectonic poems of a richness one might call ‘ecological’? Reeves’ poetry has a modernist cadence, its subjects an epic stance, as he sweeps ghastly details and flummoxing arrays of historical fact out from under the carpet. He decries the untrustworthiness of historical man, and the misery governors have precipitated among the little people (peasants). He does not hesitate to lay corpses upon bloodied fields, nor to give blame where it is due. He does not restrain himself from making use of short English nouns and verbs relating to human genitalia. He gives ‘fuck’ to humanity while reserving ‘Cunt’ for all of Ireland, and all with an Anglo-Saxon panache worthy of an aficionado of the works of John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester. Reeve is perhaps the sole representative of a Nova Zelandian Augustan age, neoclassicist, satirical. Sometimes his cannons throw up plumes of moral outrage, but one feels he is more worn out, if not suffocated, by his epoch: ‘trapped in this cavity / force-fed depravity’. In spite of its title (its regrettable homophone), In Continents is genuinely impressive. It left me in a fug of dissatisfaction and despair at human wastefulness, slaughter, rapine and misuse of power from Tiberius to Edward and beyond. Certes, such historical sweeps (that word again) are intended to reflect upon the present age of the writer and reader, and I found myself wanting a clear indication as to what Reeve feels about things as they are. Even his Hymn to Ecology left me guessing—it struck me less as an offering of a solution than a hint of disillusionment with the ecological movement itself. The Notes are helpful, as Notes should be, though to say that Philip ‘initiated the Hundred Years war’ is surely a misrepresentation of fact hiding under a simplism. Factories ‘putter’, and thousands of French peasants are slaughtered in Edward’s chevauchées (a French word and therefore, surely, what it describes must have been ‘initiated’ by the French), but the little people do not get much of a look-in otherwise. He declaims, with tantamount skill, about the charnal pits filled up by a few maniacs, but, with due respect, his is a history of rulers and beggars and plagues. His versification gives little indication of ways to proceed, or of how to create those muchneeded jobs for the descendants of the peasants of his histories—the little people of today.

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Peter Olds. The Selected Poems of Peter Olds. Cold Hub Press. 2016 If I described Peter Old’s work as a bunch of keys, I’d be seeking a way to tell you about poems that reveal themselves to us, as much as to the poet himself, by an internal process inaccessible to psychologists. I have often wondered how he manages to construct the minor masterpieces that are his poems. He surely knows the ideal conditions, as intimately as he knows the process. He becomes a vehicle of the situation, without vaunting himself, particularly, as agent of the poetry. I can only guess at those conditions. A stimulus, a place that evokes, perspective of immediate and distant vicinities, a social context of words or poetry, a literary context (published writing, a library), a past and no prospects, no future ... and a private space (walking, sitting at a desk) to gather the impressions and let the phrases ferment, darkly praise or excoriate? But many of these could be conducive for any poet. With Olds nothing is hasty. One does not arrive at such apt epithets as those for which he may one day be lauded, by ladling the most obvious words. I hope it won’t sound pompous if I say that his is a poetry of steady reflection upon people and things, the material world about him and those funny, delightful and doomed souls that once made Dunedin a city of ‘psychiatric clinics, pubs and bookstores’ (Walking down Elder Street). Such souls people his dreams, and several cities go to make up his, Olds’, city. But just look at the titles: many of them are places: streets, towns, roads and institutions. Recognizable (‘iconic’) figures are usually dead: Neal Cassady, James K. Baxter, Frank Sargeson or ‘Janet’’ (her funeral service). Not forgetting a dead horse. In the environment around about these headpieces, eschewing fame himself, there he is, strolling in, roaming among a different kind of person, people like us. Beneath or within successful society he alights upon the thing he knows personally, the thing that makes every successful society tick: poverty. Poverty’s people are in his poems, and there are plenty of them, houseless citizens of his ‘Burg’. You might have seen and heard some of the characters he draws, but you will not have seen yourself among them until you read this book. The selection makes it clear. His people are so like us, like you and me. The years have taught Peter Olds how to reveal humanity by means of simple enough tools: his engaging voice, acumen, a gesture or a phrase isolated and noted, evocation of the scene, control of the pause, and humour. He has not offered readers the keys to Oldsburg, in such certain terms, in so clear a manner, until this selection appeared. Many of us may find that we were already within its walls.

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Murray Edmond. Then It Was Now Again, Selected Critical Writing. Atuanui Press. 2014. 324pp. Murray Edmond has chosen as title that of his essay on ‘New Zealand Poetries and Colonial Histories’, published in The UTS Review in May 2000. The essay begins with a description of a novel by one of New Zealand’s most famous writers, who at the beginning of her writing life, had hope of being a poet, and not a celebrated novelist. Edmond himself has published a considerable amount of poetry, he has edited two anthologies and a volume of his own critical writing, and he has taken part in exciting theatrical adventures. He is sympathetic to cross-generics. I am drawn to his essay, first published in Islands magazine (Summer, 1972) about Group Theatre, and its methods of communal composition of plays. The Living Theatre, Amamus and Theatre Action were all formed between 1970 and 1972. It must have been an exciting time to be a young actor-poet; one could rough it and try things out, extraordinary things, like communal composition. The next stop for me was ‘The ‘Original’ Downstage and the Theatre of its History’, first published in Australasian Drama Studies (April 2000). It evokes a New Zealand of 60s coffee bars in downtown Wellington, and the Brechtian daring of Phil Mann’s productions. Debate and discussion nourished theatre in Wellington as it did not in ‘the regions’, which suffered, Edmond says, from the well-intentioned reasons for establishing theatres there. Or, as Edmond puts it, ‘Mercury (1968), Court (1971), Centrepoint (1973), Corporate (1974) Four Seasons (1974), Fortune (1974), Gateway and Central (1975) were all children of [a] policy, which aimed to drape a monotone cultural blanket over the land.’ If Edmond seems to disagree with C. K. Stead for using such a vague term as ‘talent’, he also agrees with the spirit of a Stead critique, and hopes his book (with Joanna Paul) will bring more good reasons to take writers on their merits and not give them pride of place or funds simply because of their gender or ethnicity (the substance of the paragraph). This theme is taken up in the essay that gives the book its title. On pp. 270-271, in three short paragraphs he quotes novelist Frame, historian Miles Fairburn and historian Professor M. P. K. Sorrenson to illustrate different views of ‘post-colonial’ history. Frame (writing in 1970) adopts an existential commonality, divorced from both parallel ‘times’ described by her character Milly Galbraith. Fairburn (writing in 1998) reminds us of historians tendency to view New Zealand’s history as one of ‘cumulative improvement’. But Sorrenson (also writing in 1998) is taken to be suggesting that Frame’s and Fairburn’s views of histories exclude Maori. According to Sorrenson (as quoted by Edmond) Maori,

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all Maori, all non-Pakeha born in NZ (nPbiNZ), and presumably all women, ‘have a cyclical view of history, expressed by nga wa o mua, the old times which are in front of us’. Sorenson writes, ‘a New Zealand literature did not exist and now does’. Edmond cites many more analysts of New Zealand’s factual history, of New Zealand’s literary history, and of New Zealand’s historians, among them revisionists and optimists, of New Zealand’s political and poetical ‘past/s’. I was left feeling that if, as Professor Sorrenson put it, New Zealand literature did not exist before 1998, I doubt it ever will. It is a book that tries to avoid falling into the pitfall of making grand fallible statements, but that does not prevent Edmond from citing nearly all the grand members of the constabulary of New Zealand’s development towards (self-)conscious post-1998 identity. I enjoyed his writing on the theatre more. An introduction suggests that the theatre situation is a type of society in miniature, and certainly the pieces and events he has chosen to write about describe a certain process in action, which is perhaps one of democratising the participants. All in all, you’ll find something to chew on.

Lynley Edmeades. As the Verb Tenses. Otago University Press. 2016. A first book is an achievement for a writer and a delight for readers. Thanks to the infinity of the god Variable, each of us has a unique mind, and this poet has been unafraid to lay bare her perceptions. The short poem-sequence Instrumental depicts (syllabicises/sounds) five instruments (the piano twice). The words (or the voice, live) become the instruments solo, as if in a practice or time-passing situation. Solo voice-thought finds an ideal subject. Another in the series, Scales, in concrete manner, approximates the mantric method of apprentices and professionals alike. The book is full of apt correspondences between word and that perceived place we move in of lists and inherited coats. Lynley Edmeades does this with minimal fuss and occasionally with the clarity of aqua. The poem Meal could be placed next to some of Olds’ references to the dead in an anthology of New Zealand elegies. Perhaps poetry began with grief. It will never be finished with it.

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Ceremonial mask, (wood, overmodelled with clay.), pre-1890. Malakula, Vanuatu.

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Ont collaboré à Percutio 2015 : William Direen—rédacteur en chef ; vit à Dunedin, N-Z. Edward (Ted) Jenner­—­helléniste et poète ; né à Dunedin en 1946 ; diplômé de l’Université d’Otago, il a enseigné les lettres Classiques à l’Université de Malawi de 1998 à 2006. Vit à Auckland, N.Z. The Gold Leaves (2014), traduction et essai sur des feuilles d’or trouvées sur les sites funéraires en Grèce (téléchargement gratuit : http://alpha.books. online.fr/CompleteGoldLeaves). The Love Songs of Ibykos: 22 Fragments (1997), traduction de la poésie lyrique grecque. Writers in Residence and other Captive Fauna (2009) : poémes en prose et carnet de voyage.

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