Midday Dream and poetical initiation in Greek Literature

Abstract

Based on an overview of some well-known scenes of encounter between the Muses and future poets, the paper intends to add some notes to the typology of Greek narratives concerning poetical initiation. In these stories about transmission of divine knowledge we can find some temporal and spatial patterns which could be contaminated. Stories about archaic authors are dominated by a pastoral, plein air scene with an awake person facing gods directly. In the prose narratives of Classical period the freedom of nature is replaced by an enclosed, artificial space of civilisation, the encounter is placed in the virtual reality of a dream. The documentative value of divine initiation can be guaranteed by the condensation of the spatial and temporal frames: the intercourse takes place at a well-defined point of a particular space (the very special source of the Helicon) and time (focusing on the hour of noon). Apart from the original act of initiation, a new type of secondary inspiration seems to be realised by the correction of the work, proposed by a character of the poem becoming an immanent critic of art. Sometimes the deal of transfer is not knowledge itself, but how to articulate knowledge. These narratives of initiation are generated not only by the audience’s interest in biographical details: the relation of poetry and reality, the sovereignty of literature and the technical problems of mediation of ideas and distribution of works can also be at their center.