Welcome to the podcast An Ancient Language for a Modern Soul. Poemi Conviviali by Giovanni Pascoli. Today we will talk about a poem called “The Poet of the Helots”. The poet of the Helots is Hesiod, who was one of the greatest poets of Greek antiquity during the archaic period, together with Homer. The Helots were slaves, or serfs, in ancient Sparta, and in this episode you will discover why Pascoli calls Hesiod “the poet of slaves”. I'm here today with Dr. Helen Van Noorden, who teaches Classics at Cambridge University. She has published on ancient Greek and Latin responses to Hesiodic poetry, on ancient forms of revelation and world-end discourse, and on Jewish-Greek poetry. So she will take us on a journey to explore Hesiod and his works, which Pascoli inscribes, as he often does with classical sources in his Poemi Conviviali, in “The poet of the Helots”. You will hear this poem in the translation published by James Ackhurst and me in 2022 for Italica Press. The poem is read by George Sharpley. The music is written and played at the Celtic harp by Mark Harmer.

ELENA

Welcome, Helen, and thank you very much for being our guest today.

HELEN

Thank you, Elena. I'm delighted to have had the chance to read this poem of Pascoli and to be here to discuss it.

ELENA

Thank you. So Hesiod is the central character of the poem of “The Poet of the Helots”. As I mentioned in the introduction, the Helots were a subjugated population in Sparta tasked with working the land, while free men were trained to be soldiers. Scholars actually debate whether Helots were serfs or actual slaves. But what matters most in this poem is that Pascoli describes Hesiod as the poet who sings not only of proud and mighty warriors, like Homer does in the Iliad, but of humble people and of work. The poem is divided in two parts. The first part is called “Day” and the second one is called “Night”. And Pascoli weaves many direct allusions to Hesiod's major works into it. The two works by Hesiod are Works and Days and Theogony. This poem is an imaginative tale in which Hesiod, returning victorious from a poetry competition, travels home with a humble slave. And although his winning competition, sorry, his winning composition had been a poem of war, by the end of his journey with the slave, he renounces the false world of epics and devotes himself to composing poetry about humble work. We know that the inspiration for this poem came to Pascoli from the autobiographical note that Hesiod inserts in Works and Days, where Hesiod recounts his victory at the poetry competition. Ancient writers, and I say that because we actually don't know exactly who wrote this text, developed this note into a narrative called the Contest of Hesiod and Homer, in which we read that Hesiod won because of the value of his general subject matter to the polis, the community. Hesiod's work on agriculture and peace was pronounced of more value than Homer's tales of war and slaughter. But before we listen to the first part, I'd like to ask Helen to give us some context about Hesiod.

HELEN

Like Homer, Hesiod stands at the end of a long tradition of oral-derived poetry and has two major poems circulating under his name, and each of those kickstarted longer traditions and new genres. But there are many differences between Homer and Hesiod. One is of scope and another is poetic mode. Whereas Homer's Iliad and Odyssey focus on specific heroes in narratives covering about six weeks, Hesiod's poetry is broad-brush and more descriptive than narrative. His Theogony sketches the primordial structures and powers of the universe, and his Works and Days outlines the condition of humankind today, focusing on the need for justice and work. Lots of other catalogue and advice poetry along those lines was then attributed to Hesiod, but it's Works and Days that is viewed as essential Hesiod, whenever that poet is compared with Homer. For example, the contest tradition that you mentioned, Elena. These two major poet figures of ancient Greece are characterised as poets of war and peace respectively, because Homer is linked with his Iliad, while Hesiod is identified with Works and Days, a poem that, among other things, outlines what a peaceful community looks like and how to get on with your neighbour. And Pascoli's title is taken from a saying attributed by Plutarch to the Spartan king Cleomenes, that Homer was the poet of the Spartans and Hesiod of Helots, since they directed them to fighting and farming, respectively. And if you look closely at the Works and Days, though it is a real mix, it begins with two mythical narratives about how humans became what they are today and various allegories of might. And right before, it comes onto the direct instructions on how to run a farm in a highly selective picture of what to do in different seasons of the year. At the end, the poet catalogues some lucky and unlucky days of the month. And one important point that distinguishes Hesiod from Homer is the strong sense of autobiography in these poems that have led to many debates about how far they represent a real person. In the Works and Days, he speaks as a representative of the need for honest labour, reprimanding his brother Perses for hanging around the courthouses and referring to their father as a poor man coming to settle in miserable Ascra in Boeotia. Certain sections are addressed rather bitterly to kings who accept bribes. There is a sense that local magistrates have failed the poet, who speaks as a just man in an unjust world.

ELENA

That's so very interesting, especially the notion of unlucky days. Well, certainly this is a lucky day that we're having this very good conversation. Thank you very much. Let us listen to, then, part one of the poem called “Day”.

ELENA

So, in this part of the poem, it seems that the figure of the wise slave is chosen by Pascoli to express certain views about society that appear to be strikingly different from the values and norms we find in Homeric poems, where war is seen as a noble activity that brings glory, and here the slave talks about work, it talks about cooperation among people and peace. And, Helen, in this part of the poem we see many direct citations from Hesiod's Works and Days. How much of what the slave says comes from this work?

HELEN

Yes, almost everything the slave says quotes or echoes famous lines from the Works and Days, apart from the direct instruction to work and comment on idleness as evil. Pascoli uses the slave to illustrate literally some morals from the first, more mythical part of the poem. For example, the slave digs to find water, since everything is hidden. And Hesiod's poem explains that gods keep hidden from humans the means of life, and Zeus sent humans misery and the need to work in revenge for being tricked by Prometheus. Again, the slave shares bread with Hesiod, saying the half is bigger than the whole. And this was a lesson that Hesiod was trying to convey to his greedy brother Perses, who was disputing his share of the inheritance. The slave is made to apply back to Hesiod’s memorable lines that were taken up from Hesiod in antiquity, but as in Pascoli here, not always as straight quotes, rather the way they're cited offers interpretations of sometimes ambiguous lines, or even combines lines from Works and Days and Theogony, for example, whether the poet sings falsehood or truth. But echoes of the Works and Days actually pervade the whole poem, and not just what the slave says. Even the opening address to “son of God” applies to Hesiod, a form of address that Hesiod applied to his brother Perses in the poem. And it seems to me that Pascoli's poem offers a sense of how you could apply Hesiod today to your own life and in antiquity too. Hesiodic voices like this get split off from their context and reapplied or larger structural ideas are taken over to new contexts. And a major example of this is this motif of the Works and Days. The road to evil is short, which Pascoli's slave utters in the poem. Plutarch is an example of an author who does what Pascoli does here, which is to take the whole idea of travelling along a road and Hesiod being a guide to another person to a sort of literal level, or even a structural level. Plutarch is one of many who discusses the choice of two roads in which the path to virtue is steep and full of effort, as that's one of the famous lines of Hesiod's poem. And Pascoli here adds a note of irony because the slave and Hesiod get lost. And I wonder, actually this might even be a knowledgeable joke about the didactic poetry stemming from Hesiod, which doesn't offer complete directions in any branch of technical know-how, is actually really selective. The poet of Ascra and Virgil's Latin version after him, don't actually tell you how to farm, rather they tell you poetically what it feels like to farm.

ELENA

That's very interesting. I like the fact that they get lost. Yes, it might be a touch of irony on the part of Pascoli. So let’s go to the next part, which is “Night”. And this part begins once again with an autobiographical note by Hesiod, this time from his other work, Theogony. So Hesiod recounts one night when he was young and was shepherding his lambs on Mount Helicon. And on that night the Muses came to him and sang to him about the origins of the universe and of the gods. This tale is the basis of Hesiod's work, Theogony. But before we listen to the second part, Helen, could you please tell us a bit about Theogony and how it's woven into the poem?

HELEN

Of course! The Theogony is an epic poem of just over a thousand hexameter lines structured as a genealogical catalogue that narrates the creation of the world and lists the relations between the powers that govern different elements. And there's a prologue of over 100 lines which starts by describing the Muses’ activity of singing. Because they are needed for the song to get going. And Hesiod says: “one day they taught Hesiod a glorious song while he was shepherding his lambs under holy Helicon. And with the gift of a staff and the breath of their voice, they transformed him from shepherd to poet”. And by the way, this is the first instance of a poet in the Western tradition naming himself in his poem. Hesiod recalls their proclaiming “to me”, so he switches here into the first person that they as Muses know all things, but they choose when they wish to sing falsehoods like the truth. And it's left unclear quite how far Hesiod as a mortal poet is capable of telling the difference. And because the Muses instruct Hesiod to sing of themselves first and last, Hesiod recommences his song with an account of their birth from Zeus and Memory, and the status that the Muses confer on kings to settle quarrels. The story of creation proper then begins with Chaos and then Earth, who gave birth to Sky and then mated with him; Eros and Night, who gave birth to Day, Death, the Fates and many other forces. So the poem tracks each part of the family tree in turn over four generations. And it's a huge catalogue of names, but it also contains some amazing descriptions of the Underworld and the battles between Olympians and the older generation of gods. And ultimately Zeus wins out as a ruler. And the poem Theogony has been described as a kind of hymn to Zeus. And that tiny scene of Hesiod's initiation as a poet, which occupies 14 lines in the prologue, was one of the most cited parts in antiquity. Starting with the Works and Days’ back reference to which you referred us in your introduction, Elena, Hesiod says that he won the poetry competition because he was favoured by the Muses. Looking back to that scene in the Theogony and in the “Night” part of Pascoli's poem, the poet cross references the famous autobiographical lines from Works and Days about Hesiod's father settling in Ascra back into a section which is more reminiscent of the Theogony.

ELENA

Thank you very much. I really love this, this part of the poem. So without further ado, let's listen to it it: “Night”.

ELENA

This is a wondrous tale of universe and gods coming into being. And we know that Pascoli was fascinated by cosmology and how the universe came to be, and also how this universe will eventually end. As you can read in another poem by his called “Il Ciocco”, in English, “The Log”, which has many parallels with “Night” in “The Poet of the Helots”, and which describes a cosmic conflagration in our galaxy. Well, one element that these two compositions have in common is the end, because both in “The Log” and “Night”, at the end of this amazing description of the birth of the universe, the reader is suddenly brought back quite abruptly to the here and now, to the daily life of us working people. And in “The Log”, it's the uncle of the narrator who simply says, well, tomorrow it's going to rain. So after all this cosmic speculation is like, okay, let's get down to earth and let's think about what we need to do tomorrow in the fields. And in “Night”, the slave says, the song of the nightingale is not a cry, but the bird is singing as it works. And the poet then sort of recaps his journey as a poet. First the Muses told him about the birth of the universe. Then he became a poet of war, an epic poet. But then he says, from now on, I will sing about work, and no longer about falsehoods, but about what is true, and I won't care if I would be called the poet of slaves. So, Helen, am I right to see here that Pascoli sort of encapsulates an evolution of poetic genre, of poetry, so to speak?

HELEN

Yes. What's really interesting is the way that Pascoli sees Hesiod whole. The more overtly Works and Days-style half of the poem is placed first and the theogonic poetry second. So the long descriptions of earthquake activity recall major set pieces of the Theogony. But there are many cross-references to the other Hesiodic poem in each half of Pascoli's piece. And it reminds me of how Virgil builds his Aeneid out of two Homeric poems, putting the odyssean half before the iliadic half, but with lots of elements of both in each. But then Pascoli confirms with his ending that he's not only constructing the Theogony as coming earlier, but has the slave correcting Hesiod's first impressions, for example, about the meaning of those birds songs. So the slave is a source of more mature truth that Hesiod ultimately follows, and he seems to be following Hesiod's lead here. The Works and Days does occasionally present itself as a conscious second thought, revising certain ideas from the Theogony. In particular, there's an early correction about the genealogy of strife, and some people think that the Works and Days is referring ironically back to the world of heroic epic, especially when it recalls the poetic contest, for example, in that part of the poem, Hesiod inverts Homeric epithets for Troy and Greece. So when in Pascoli's poem, Hesiod, guided by the slave, ends the poem by rejecting the subject of the Theogony in its own words about truth and falsehood, this chimes in with how writers in antiquity linked Hesiod to the start of philosophy and rethinking.

ELENA

There are so many elements here of Hesiodic reception in this poem, and to my knowledge, the full tapestry of references has not really been explored by scholars of Pascoli. Scholars acknowledge, in fact that Pascoli hides the vast majority of his sources, but he was definitely knowledgeable about ancient literature, as he was a professor of Classics as well, besides being a poet. But in the end, Pascoli is so imaginative in recombining elements of Hesiod's poetry that his poem is a recreation, I would say almost a transcreation of Hesiod that goes beyond Hesiod.

HELEN

Absolutely. What we see is a panoply of different elements in Hesiod's poems made into frames for each other. Foreground seems to be turned into background and vice-versa. In the first part, the scene-setting mention of the Pleiades, for example, was a famous line from Hesiod. Or the passing reference to a naked worker picks up a memorable instruction from the Works and Days about how to work in the heat in the centre. The sense of earth and sky fighting rather than mating picks up aspects of the Theogony's descriptions of it. And near the end, the discussion between Hesiod and slave about how to understand the birds cries seems to me to pick up the ambiguity of a fable in the works and days about a suffering nightingale. So it is a truly rich tapestry.

ELENA

It definitely is. I just want to add towards the end that in this podcast we're not really following the “convivial poems” in the order which they appear in the book, but the order is important because “The poet of the Helots” comes after “The Last Voyage”, which we haven't done yet in this podcast, but is the last poem devoted to a Homeric hero, Ulysses, and in the journey through the classical world that Pascoli creates with his Poemi Conviviali, the poet of the Helots represents the transition from the epic world into a new world, a world where people can find purpose in their work and no longer by following tales of glory. The character of Hesiod then emerges as the counter to Ulysses and epic heroes in the first six seven poems of the collection: Ulysses, Achilles, and Memnon, which you will know if you have been following this series. And while Ulysses attempts to leave behind the tiresome daily life of Ithaca and voyage back to the epic adventures of his heroic and bellicose youth, Hesiod undertakes the opposite trajectory in his choice of thematic content for his poetry. But ultimately, both characters arrived at the realisation of the illusory nature of that epic world. Hesiod embodies the subject, reconciled to the adult realities of the world and the importance of peace and cooperation as the foundations of society. And this message, I think, could not be more important today in our war torn world. So thank you very much, Ellen, for this conversation and thank you all for listening.

HELEN

Thank you so much. I've learned a lot.