Papers in English/German by Ábel Tamás
Intertextuality in Pliny's Epistles, 2023
While the satiric representation of city life and particularly Horace’s Satires have been already... more While the satiric representation of city life and particularly Horace’s Satires have been already acknowledged as relevant contexts for Pliny’s Ep. 1.9, its Horatian ‘numerological parallel’, Sat. 1.9, has been left out of consideration so far. This chapter aims at filling in that gap and reading Pliny’s letter 1.9 against the background of Horace’s Sat. 1.9. As it shows, Pliny’s urban interactions go hand in hand with the generic interactions performed by his epistle: while the city forces Pliny to interact with various anonymous interlocutors (ille, ille, and ille) and thus disturbs his otium and undermines his personal autonomy, the Horatian intertext makes the epistle interact with the genre of satire which restricts its literary or generic autonomy. Due to the sinistri sermones (‘unkind insinuations’, and also ‘ominous satire’?, 1.9.5) so typical for the urbs, Pliny’s position gets dangerously close to the roles of both ‘Horace’ and the ‘Bore’ in Sat. 1.9, and his epistle starts to change into a kind of satiric representation of his life in Rome, where everybody is everybody’s ‘bore’. Pliny’s letter 1.9 is thus not only a laudatio of countryside otium, but also an intertextual tour de force that shows us the satirizing effects of urban interactions.
Classical Journal, 2023
In the first seven lines of his opening proem, where we notoriously find a Hymn to Venus, Lucreti... more In the first seven lines of his opening proem, where we notoriously find a Hymn to Venus, Lucretius compensates the Muses with an invocative Muse-telestich spelling MuSAS/MuSIS, which is signposted by caeli … labentia signa and thus connected to the Aratean tradition of both heavenly and written “signs”. Moreover, Lucretius’ telestich establishes a firm tradition including (so far) Catullus, Vergil, Horace, Ovid, and Lucan, who mark some of their most emphatic—predominantly, but not exclusively, proemial—passages with variants of the Lucretian Muse-telestich and adjust them to their respective poetic programs. The Muse-telestich thus became a textual device by which Latin poets watermarked their highest poetic aspirations in exceedingly creative ways.
Classical Philology, 2024
In this article, I argue that Vergil’s vatic announcement MAius oPUs moVEo in the symbolic middle... more In this article, I argue that Vergil’s vatic announcement MAius oPUs moVEo in the symbolic middle of his epic (Aen. 7.45, the closure of the invocation to Erato) should be read as containing the poet’s signature “Ma(ro)-Pu(blius)-Ve(rgilius)”. This authorial signature, as I suggest, may evoke not only the famous “Ma-Ve-Pu” acrostic in the Georgics, but further Vergilian acrostics and signatures as well.
Hermes, 2023
This paper highlights a SERENE acrostic in Lucan’s encomium of Cato (BC 9.600–605) and interprets... more This paper highlights a SERENE acrostic in Lucan’s encomium of Cato (BC 9.600–605) and interprets it against the background of Seneca’s De Constantia Sapientis 6.8–7.1 where the author, addressing Serenus (Serene), presents Cato the Younger as the perfect embodiment of virtus. The acrostic makes Lucan able to join Seneca’s argumentation in a metaleptic way.
Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, 2024
This short note proposes to read Ovid’s phrase ore legar populi at Met. 15.878 in a post-exilic c... more This short note proposes to read Ovid’s phrase ore legar populi at Met. 15.878 in a post-exilic context, and recognize its play with the verbs relegare (“to banish”) and relegere (“to reread”). Ovid’s claim for poetic immortality might thus be watermarked by the banishment of the author and the eternal rereading of his work.
Mnemosyne, 2022
This paper reveals a SuAVIS acrostic at Catullus 14.19–23 by which Catullus, at the end of poem 1... more This paper reveals a SuAVIS acrostic at Catullus 14.19–23 by which Catullus, at the end of poem 14, might provide a variation on his initial address to Calvus (iucundissime Calve, 14.2), suggesting that his invective did not change the initially announced “sweetness” of the addressee. The acrostic – which seems to be involved in a sophisticated web of allusions – may reinforce what every reader of poem 14 feels: this invective is rather a friendly joke.
Catullus’ poem 51, paradoxically, would be incomplete without its famous lacuna: the gap in 51.8 ... more Catullus’ poem 51, paradoxically, would be incomplete without its famous lacuna: the gap in 51.8 functions as an acoustic channel through which the sonorous presence of Sappho and her lyric poetry is evoked. This paper shows how this ‘epiphanic’ textual lack enables the readers to experience the past in its sublimity, or to feel themselves connected to a chain of voices and silences. Catullus’ lacuna, accordingly, is interpreted as an empty monument of the ‘absent presence’ of the Sapphic voice which is being simultaneously silenced and reanimated by the endlessly iterable events of reading. In that regard, Catullus’ ‘translation’ is a realization of Walter Benjamin’s imperative included in ‘The Translator’s Task’, awakening the ‘echo’ of the Sapphic original. At the same time, the lacuna – labelled here as Catullus’ ‘Black Square’ – is envisioned as an inherent part of the poetic play between Calvus and Catullus in poems 50 and 51, to be supplemented by Calvus’ textual or bodily presence. In this sense, the 30 or so conjectural supplements of 51.8 in the textual history of the poem – among others, the famous vocis in ore – do nothing more than take on the role of Calvus, and write a palimpsest of absences and presences.
"Io's Writing: Human and Animal in the Prison-House of Fiction", in: Life After Literature. Perspectives on Biopoetics in Literature and Theory, ed. by Kulcsár-Szabó, Z., Lénárt, T., Simon, A., Vegso, R., Springer, 2020, 203-213 In this paper, I examine the Ovidian narrative of Io (Met. 1, 568–746) from two specific aspects.... more In this paper, I examine the Ovidian narrative of Io (Met. 1, 568–746) from two specific aspects. On the one hand, I read Io’s story together with Julio Cortázar’s Axolotl, to argue that the figure of Argus can be interpreted as a guard who surveils the border between humans and animals. His task is to guarantee that the transition between observers and observed remains impossible. Although in the framework of the fictional universe, Argus’ mission is, obviously, unaccomplished, on a metafictional level, he still succeeds in putting the narrative in the prison-house of fiction. On the other hand, I examine Io’s act of writing, which serves as a medium of transition between observers and observed. Io’s writing, or more precisely, signature, is interpreted here as an intermediate phase between Greek and Latin, human and animal, articulate and inarticulate, literal and geometric, fixed and fluid. I then argue that Inachus’ act of reading—which, as A. Feldherr claims, “translates” Io’s written text into spoken Latin—correlates with his being both a human being and a river, reading and obliterating Io’s name at the same time.
In this paper, I address the possible relation of the “Aegeus scene” in Catullus 64 to the ancien... more In this paper, I address the possible relation of the “Aegeus scene” in Catullus 64 to the ancient discourse of writing and memory. In Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates associates writing with forgetfulness, embeds it in a father-son allegory, and compares it to a type of silent painting. These elements, as I argue, return in the Athenian scene of Catullus’ miniature epic, suggesting that Theseus’ “forgetting” is not independent of Aegeus’ “writing” and “painting” activity.
This chapter, through the analysis of several Horatian “reading scenes”, outlines the political s... more This chapter, through the analysis of several Horatian “reading scenes”, outlines the political significance of reading Horace in the Hungarian culture. In early modern Hungary, “Horatianism,” being an amalgam of highly different cultural discourses, was a useful device for the Hungarian gentry both to shape and hide its inarticulate political position. After the defeat of the revolution of 1848–1849, reading Horace as a cultural practice changed into a symbol of “passive resistance,” while Horatian poetry as well as its early modern Hungarian
interpretations began to lose their “original innocence.” In the 1930s, a group of intellectuals around the distinguished classical scholar Carl Kerényi tried to use Horace’s traditional role in Hungarian culture in order to make him a symbol of an “inner emigration” toward a symbolic
“island” where different intellectual attitudes could meet. As my interpretations show, Horace’s self‐contradictory, polysemic, ironical poetic world—as we today perceive it—enabled him to be a “Hungarian” poet too.
This article argues for a ‘reciprocal intertextuality’ between Catullus 64 and Lucretius anticipa... more This article argues for a ‘reciprocal intertextuality’ between Catullus 64 and Lucretius anticipating the poetic interplays of Augustan poets with the De Rerum Natura. Catullus’ wedding guests (proto-readers), Ariadne (proto-Narcissus), and Aegeus (proto-Dido) are interpreted here as errantes in the Lucretian sense: through their erroneous gazes presented in Poem 64, they all exemplify how not to gaze at the structure of the universe. In the Lucretio-Catullan intertextual space — generated, as it seems, by the Catullan text — a reciprocal way of reading emerges: while, on the one hand, ‘Catullus’ uses ‘Lucretius’ to show that the aesthetic experience he offers is dependent upon an erroneous, unLucretian gaze/reading which deprives us of the external spectator position, ‘Lucretius’, on the other hand, uses ‘Catullan’ characters as deterrent examples in order to teach us how not to submerge in ‘Catullus’ poetics of illusion’.
Ábel Tamás liest in seinem praxeologisch grundierten Beitrag „Tagesordnung. Dispositio der Alltag... more Ábel Tamás liest in seinem praxeologisch grundierten Beitrag „Tagesordnung. Dispositio der Alltagspraktiken bei Plinius dem Jüngeren“ die dispositio, das rhetorische Prinzip der Ordnung schlechthin, nicht nur als eine Praxis der Textordnung, sondern zugleich auch als eine der Lebensordnung. Im Rückgriff auf das vom New Historicism geprägte Konzept des self-fashioning und die Foucault’schen Technologien/Praktiken des Selbst beschreibt Tamás das plinianische Briefeschreiben als eine kulturelle Praxis, durch die das Selbst wie auch die gesamte „Materie“ des Lebens in einer bestimmten Weise repräsentiert und geordnet wird. In seiner Lektüre von epist. 3,1, die als lemmatisierter Kommentar strukturiert ist und damit zugleich eine Metareflexion auf eine zentrale philologische Ordnungspraktik darstellt, zeichnet Tamás nach, wie in dieser „Hymne an die Ordnung“ (Tamás) rhetorische Kategorien, wie z.B. die aemulatio oder besonders die dispositio zu einem Lebensprinzip transformiert werden. Wie rhetorisch-literarische Prinzipien in den Bereich des Lebens eindringen, veranschaulicht Tamás abschließend auch in seiner Betrachtung von epist. 9,36. In dieser Beschreibung der Tagesordnung des Plinius treten nicht allein die raum-zeitlichen Implikationen der dispositio hervor, es zeigt sich auch, wie Plinius sich selbst als ein rhetorisches Kunstwerk (be)schreibt.
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This paper examines the famous polyptoton (Thetidis . . . Thetis . . . Thetidi) in Catullus' poem... more This paper examines the famous polyptoton (Thetidis . . . Thetis . . . Thetidi) in Catullus' poem 64.19-21 and interprets it as a morphological realization of Thetis' metamorphosis, which-along with the whole negative side of the myth-is suppressed in the Catullan narrative. This "morphological metamorphosis" is, according to this paper, part of Catullus' play with narrative and (inter)textual illusions in his miniature epic.
Die Geschichte des falschen Agrippa bei Tacitus (Ann. 2,39-40) 1
In this paper, I establish a connection between the manifold character of Fama as reported by Vir... more In this paper, I establish a connection between the manifold character of Fama as reported by Virgil in Aen. 4. 173ff. and her 'manifold speech' (multiplex sermo) in the framework of a narratological reading. According to my interpretation, the short fama of the Virgilian , as a spectacular example of 'polyphonic narrative', radicalises and thus domesticates the dangers intrinsic in the epic discourse itself.
In letzter Zeit war die Selbstreflexion der Klassischen Philologie im Allgemeinen, aber besonders... more In letzter Zeit war die Selbstreflexion der Klassischen Philologie im Allgemeinen, aber besonders im Hinblick auf die Rolle des Kommentars überaus produktiv. 1 In diesem Essay möchte ich mich dieser Forschungsrichtung anschließen. Erstens versuche ich die wichtigsten Fragestellungen und Probleme dieses Themas darzustellen, mit Schwerpunkt auf der viel genannten Autorität des Kommentars bzw. der Frage, auf welche Weise das Lesen vom Kommentar konditioniert wird. Zweitens möchte ich, um eine Antwort auf diese Frage zu finden, das Verhältnis zwischen Kommentar und Intertextualität mithilfe eines bekannten Beispiels untersuchen, um endlich drittens eine im Bereich der Klassischen Philologie noch nicht befriedigend erforschte Technik darzustellen, mit der der Kommentar auf eine bestimmte Weise versucht, den Leser gegenüber den Gefahren des Lesens in Schutz zu nehmen. Noch eine wichtige Einschränkung: Im Folgenden betrachte ich ausschließlich Kommentare zur lateinischen Literatur.
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Papers in English/German by Ábel Tamás
interpretations began to lose their “original innocence.” In the 1930s, a group of intellectuals around the distinguished classical scholar Carl Kerényi tried to use Horace’s traditional role in Hungarian culture in order to make him a symbol of an “inner emigration” toward a symbolic
“island” where different intellectual attitudes could meet. As my interpretations show, Horace’s self‐contradictory, polysemic, ironical poetic world—as we today perceive it—enabled him to be a “Hungarian” poet too.
Online available at http://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/450143
interpretations began to lose their “original innocence.” In the 1930s, a group of intellectuals around the distinguished classical scholar Carl Kerényi tried to use Horace’s traditional role in Hungarian culture in order to make him a symbol of an “inner emigration” toward a symbolic
“island” where different intellectual attitudes could meet. As my interpretations show, Horace’s self‐contradictory, polysemic, ironical poetic world—as we today perceive it—enabled him to be a “Hungarian” poet too.
Online available at http://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/450143
A kötet szerzői betűrendben: Acél Zsolt, Bényei Tamás, Csehy Zoltán, Czerovszki Mariann, Darab Ágnes, Déri Balázs, Dobos Barna, Ferenczi Attila, Gloviczki Zoltán, Hajdu Péter, Korompay Eszter, Pártay Kata, Polgár Anikó, Rung Ádám, Szikora Patricia, Tamás Ábel.
Szerkesztette: Krupp József, a szerkesztésben közreműködött: Kárpáti Bernadett.
A kézikönyv az Általános Irodalomtudományi Kutatócsoport gondozásában készült.
A szócikkek szerzői: Balajthy Ágnes, Balogh Gergő, Bán Dávid, Berkovits Balázs, Bodrogi Ferenc Máté, Dánél Mónika, Fodor Péter, Földes Györgyi, Halász Hajnalka, Kálai Sándor, Keresztes Balázs, Konkoly Dániel, Kozák Dániel, Kricsfalusi Beatrix, Kulcsár Szabó Ernő, L. Varga Péter, Laczházi Gyula, Lénárt Tamás, Lőrincz Csongor, Mezei Gábor, Molnár Gábor Tamás, Nemes Z. Márió, Németh Zoltán, Oláh Szabolcs, Palkó Gábor, Pártay Kata, Pataki Viktor, Rapcsák Balázs, Sándor Katalin, Simon Attila, Smid Róbert, Sutyák Tibor, Tamás Ábel, Teller Katalin, Timár Andrea, Vaderna Gábor, Varga Tünde, Vásári Melinda, Vincze Ferenc