Does Odysseus also have a ‘signature line’, like Penelope’s circumflected motif? Consider the following line. Odysseus and his men have successfully attacked the Cyclops, but are now stuck in his cave; the monster is blocking the entrance, in case Οὖτις (‘No-one’) and his men try to escape with the outgoing sheep. Odysseus’ indignance at such a provision in Polyphemus appears to be marked (Odyssey 9.419):
οὕτω γάρ πού μ’ ἤλπετ’ ἐνὶ φρεσὶ νήπιον εἶναι.
For I suppose he expected me, in his mind’s vessel, to be such a simpleton.
Note the accentual pattern. The first word, οὕτω ‘in this way’, contains a whole Greek contonation, rising on the marked syllable and falling emphatically on the unmarked second syllable. In the new theory, these unmarked heavy syllables with falling pitch are called ‘barytones’. The three straight acutes which follow fall on syllables which are metrically long, so though they are characterised by sharply rising pitch, the whole contonation, up and down, is thought to be completed within the syllable. If the voice cannot come down in pitch within a word, as on a light final syllable, the rise is in fact suppressed and the acute sign turns into a grave (` ). See ἐνὶ φρεσὶ later in the line. The fact that γάρ πού are accented acute rather than grave suggests that though they are characterised by rising pitch (‘oxytone’), the duration of the syllable allows enough time for the voice to come down so as to begin rising again in pitch on the next one. We don’t know how this sounded, of course. It is possible that the consecutive acutes reflect a stepwise rise in pitch, each successive syllable starting from a slightly higher base note than the prior one. Such an ascending, intensifying effect would certainly suit Odysseus’ indignance here, at being assumed to be such a fool by the Cyclops.
Later on in the episode, Odysseus and his men have made their escape on ship, and Odysseus decides he must fatefully announce his true name to his foe (9.502-4). Note the initial sequence of accents:
Κύκλωψ, αἴ κέν τίς σε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων
ὀφθαλμοῦ εἴρηται ἀϝεικελίην ἀλαωτύν,
φάσθαι Ὀδυσσῆϝα πτολιπόρθιον ἐξαλαῶσαι …
“Cyclops! If there’s any death-bound human being
Should ask after the ugly blinding of your eye—
Tell them it was Odysseus the City-Sacker who blinded you …”
Again we see the sequence of five, long, pitched syllables in a row, four of them tonally prominent: (rising long acute), barytone, oxytone, oxytone, oxytone, all of them long. The words are different, but the accentuation of the voice, culminating in three straight acutes, is completely the same as in the first example. This sequence of Odysseus’ sticks out among Homer’s verses for its five emphasised long syllables right through the mid-line cadence, expressing four full contonations in less than three dactylic feet. A merely visual inspection of the following lines should convince you that in poetry, accents do not usually occur on consecutive syllables.
At 19.486, Odysseus is desperate that Eurycleia remain silent when she recognises him by his scar. Once more there are five straight tonally dynamic long syllables, four of them prominent. In audience of this memorable scene, we also immediately recognise the man by his identical tonal flourish:
σίγα, μή τίς τ’ ἄλλος ἐνὶ μεγάροισι πύθηται.
Silence! Lest anyone else in the big rooms hear.
Again we read (rising long acute), barytone, oxytone, oxytone, oxytone. We imagine a fierce stage whisper. Σίγᾱ (Sīgā, ‘Silence’)!
Note that the tonal sequence is identical in all three of these very different and famous Odyssean outbursts. In contrast with Penelope’s controlled circumflexes, these are Odysseus’ ejaculations. It goes without saying that these sequences are each highly distinctive in comparison to the tonal dynamics of most Homeric lines. The only difference between them is that some of the respective oxytones are on long vowels and some on closed syllables with short vowels. They are each an emphatic, long-syllabled outburst all the way to a feminine mid-line cadence, four complete Greek contonations in a row without a break for an unaccented syllable from the beginning of a line. But the syllables themselves, and the words, are completely different. Formulaic analysis therefore has no access to this identity. Yet it hardly seems a merely ancillary or surface feature in the composition. Rather, these words and enclitics have been sequenced and arranged for their tonal and rhythmic effect, not only because of their metrical form. We are looking again, as with Penelope, at a kind of dynamic tonal motif associated with a character. Is there this level of composition and musical theatre in Homer? Are Penelope and Odysseus drawn by Homer with distinct tonal personalities, which reveal themselves under situation and stress? We’re not in Kansas any more.
Let us take stock of the import of this finding, of tonal motifs redolent of signature lines in opera. They all bespeak a composer whose storytelling and word-craft are shaped by melody and intend the use of melody. Homeric Studies must be transformed in light of this discovery. If one ignores the melody of a Mozart sonata, most of what is left is metrical formulas. The analogy is strong and not at all farfetched: modern Homeric Studies have brazenly ignored the accent marks in the score of Homer’s poetry. The delusion of Milman Parry’s approach is that a theory of composition for an overtly and designedly melodic narrative could be based around verbal formulas with no regard for their intrinsic tonal contours. The accent marks were there in the text when Parry wrote, and as we have see seen in the case of Penelope and Odysseus’ signature lines, one does not need to know how they worked in speech or performance to recognise the distinctive identifying patterns. The inference of oral composition and transmission from Parry’s theory of Homer, and therefore orality—oral culture and tradition—have supplied its delusional appeal. There are in fact no formulas in Homer, any more than there are in Mozart.
Or to put it another way, a theory of composition for Mozart based on formulaic building blocks (metrical or chordal in his case) would no doubt lead to real insight into the ‘deep structure’ of his music. But it would be bound to fail in missing entirely his melodic invention, and would likely be judged a reductive travesty. So also oral theory in relation to Homer’s music. Rather, repeated figures in each composer’s work, Homer’s and Mozart’s, should be understood to be doing their musical work: creating texture and context in the singular way that music does this, by repetition, echoing and evocation. The fabric created by the interwoven, repeated rhythmic phrases can even be seen as the precursor, the seedbed, for melody, which emerges as a crowning effect upon the rhythmic words. But the signature prosodic motifs witnessed here for Penelope and Odysseus are manifestly not tied to any verbal formulas, and cannot be accounted for on any theory of composition out of oral formulas—cannot seriously be understood except as a conscious product of musical portraiture, from an artist who is in command of his phrases and their placement, arranging words so that their prosody registers in performer and listener as significant intonation.
It is hard to think of any genre or species of music—if one is not engaged with a piece at some level, or is unfamiliar with its language or idioms—which does not sound formulaic or repetitive. What I am calling the deep structure of music always consists of repeated figures and patterns, without which music would make no sense. Consider a song that never repeated a thing; it could be a symbol of insanity, if it could even be imagined. It would, after all, be an infinite process, like a decimal expansion of π but without its meaning. But the repetition of rhythms or chords or melodies in music helps to create internal context and can become a template for verbal, lyrical meaning. So many popular songs, for example, are based on the twelve-bar blues progression, from Chuck Berry to Led Zeppelin to Dire Straits. Fans do not typically register this twelve bar formula and chord progression as repetition; they rather experience the songs as distinct individuals, known by their lyrics, their rhythm, their riffs and their solos. Yet all the same, people who are not caught up in the spell of these bands do in fact hear only annoying repetition. ‘It all sounds the same.’
There is no question but that modern students of Homer are handicapped in their ability to assess the music of Homer’s poetry. They are like old, slightly deaf people trying to assess the popular beat music of younger people. This problem has nothing to do with literate folks trying to assess the product of an imagined oral mentality. From the perspective of a fan, it has everything to do with the distortion which arises from a listener being unused to the idiomatic ways an unfamiliar genre of music uses repetitions of material to create context and allow its texture to become a vehicle for expression. If one means to assess or evaluate—or enjoy—a piece of music, one must at some level fall under its spell, to submit or succumb in a way that would ordinarily discredit an analytic scholar. But the scholar must learn the musical experience of the enthusiast. Otherwise the musical work’s necessary, in-built repetitions are bound to confuse and infuriate and inspire any number of arm’s length diagnoses. For fans, rap is poetry and art music. For me, rap music is endless, almost inscrutable, pounding repetition, punctuated by vulgarity. For my parents’ generation, such was my own beloved rock and blues.
The scholar’s handicap has also to do, of course, with the fact that he has been accustomed to ignoring the accent marks in Greek verse and prose. If he takes the trouble to learn to scan Homer out loud, he is likely to chant the syllables in a monotone. The depletion of the sensory artefact in this way no doubt heightens the sense of formulaic repetition, which is indeed common to the underlying structure of all music. If one ignores the tonal melody or the meaning of the words—the former is what the Homeric scholar does as a matter of course—then it is no miracle that repeated formulas are all that remains. If he stresses where he sees an accent mark, he is likely to foul his rendering of the hexameter. He could be forgiven for throwing up his hands. His biggest handicap is therefore his lack of the law of tonal prominence, which calls attention to the length of the syllable following the acute sign, bearing the down-glide in pitch. Applying the law turns the hexameter rhythmic and melodic rather than metrical and monotonous.
The hexameter itself is like the twelve bars of the blues and its walking bass line. The tonal phrases that Homeric scholars variously call formulas are, instead, like the familiar blues licks and riffs that recur endlessly in different songs. Note that for the fan, caught up in the spell, suffused with drums and bass and walking chords, these grooved utterances never register as clichés, but feel as inevitable as the rain or an aching heart. The soul longs for these familiar movements. We need at least to imagine this condition of the blues fan as we drink in the phrases of Homer. There is no separation between inside and outside, for the listener, when the pitch slides down in the rhythm of the expected phrase.
The contonational motifs—signature lines—we have just discovered in Homer, however, are like those moments in a guitar or vocal solo of lyricism or prowess that stick out in the memory, and rise out from and above the blues material to distinguish a number. The Homeric tonal motifs bring this musical power to bear on narrative in the manner of signature lines in opera. The repeated tonal motifs that we call noun-and-epithet phrases evoke tangible presences in the space of the rhapsodic performer, whereas Penelope’s three straight circumflexes and Odysseus’ oxytonal ejaculations turn the performer into a medium, the protagonists’ intimate identity singing forth through him. As we shall soon see, in Homer’s hands Odysseus’ signature motif becomes ripe for play, exploring and exploiting this identity.
Consider an earlier scene from Eumaeus’ hut. Odysseus is pretending to be a Cretan someone who has been on an ambush with Odysseus at Troy, as an elaborate way to snag himself a blanket for the night. In the course of his story about a frostbit bivouac, Odysseus has himself play Odysseus, and says the following (14.493):
σίγα νῦν, μή τίς σε’ Ἀχαιῶν ἄλλος ἀκούσηι.
“Hush now, in case some other Achaean hears you,”
Lo and behold, we hear the opening sequence of five straight long, tonally dynamic syllables, to the same feminine mid-line cadence, this time with a circumflected νῦν in place of one of the oxytones. What is marvellous here is that this is Odysseus trying to sound like Odysseus; may we not surmise that this character Odysseus was coming to be known for the emphatic long-syllabled, ascending oxytonal introduction to his hexameters—and his stage whisper? In the previous line, Odysseus playing the Cretan even advises that Odysseus speaks the line in a ‘little voice’, φθεγξάμενος δ’ ὀλίγηι ὀπί με, cueing the performer’s stage whisper for the outburst. We have been set up, long in advance, by Odysseus himself in his lying tale, for the scene of the recognition by the scar in Book 19, when nurse Eurycleia memorably drops his leg in the wash basin. Odysseus’ tonal outburst gives himself away, to us, as surely as his scar reveals him to Eurycleia.