Performance and genre: Reading pindar's κῶμοι

© Cambridge University Press 2012. Through the example of the Pindaric komosor ‘victory revel’, this chapter asks how classical choral song builds a frame for itself and why it chooses the constructions it does. The argument falls into four main sections. After defining what I mean by ‘mimesis’, ‘context’ and ‘occasion’, I will survey the place of komos as a genre term in the language of epinician, and its varied associations in everyday life. This last question is important if we are to understand the range of komastic customs and performances to which a song can refer. I will next discuss some problems of time, and the relation of the komos to the ‘epinician moment’ (hic et nunc) enacted and commemorated by the song. The following section examines Pindar’s allusions to komastic performance at the symposion and in cultic contexts. The fourth will discuss his allusions to the komos as a tradition of performance, and an aition for the victory ode. The conclusions will draw these strands together in a more general discussion of the links between occasional language and genre.DEFINING TERMS Mimesis From Alcman to Pindar, Greek choral song shows a heightened awareness of itself as enactment. I refer to this self-enacting tendency as mimesis. Through it, choral utterance emphasises its status as a performance: ‘marked’ speech (or ‘song’). The referential gestures of epinician song have much in common with the ‘contextualisation cues’ of ordinary conversation. This explains why they are almost always found near the beginning or the end of a song, those ‘programmatic’ places where the epinician speaker situates his words in the occasion, or ‘returns’ from the mythical past to the ongoing celebration. These ‘openings’ and ‘returns’ are especially rich in cues, many of them no more than allusions to a context or mode of performance. But song, as it marks itself as a performance – heightened and situated utterance different from ordinary speech – can intensify the contextualisation cues of everyday discourse, turning framing into description or even action.