these are only compilations, anthologies, commentaries, or imitations of
the ancient authors whose original utterances^9 they then go on to repro-
duce in writing. They can then function as a virtual utterance of their
texts, of which they would be only the transcription.
The figure of Callimachus is the model of the new relationship with the
books maintained by the members of the Museum.^10 He organizes
the library for their use, draws up catalogues so that books can be
found, outlining all sorts of possible approaches. Who are the readers?
The scientists of the Museum who are going to write using the library, and
no one else. ‘‘Thus, the poets, the antiquarians, the scholiasts, and para-
doxographers find the raw materials ready to be reused in new literary
constructions.’’
11
The texts produced are thus montages of quotations
of other books. Callimachus himself, for example, writes a collection of
Customs of the Barbarians. ‘‘It is a matter of building treatises by taking
materials from other books, and the form of the catalogue—geographical
or thematic—lends itself to this discontinuous writing, closer to a ‘data
base’ than a structured book.’’
12
We must emphasize once again that the
book is not an autonomous construction but is presented in the form of a
‘‘collection.’’
In addition, Callimachus createspoetic works of two types.He composes
‘‘true’’ poems to order on the occasion of real events, for example,
following the tradition of hymnic poetry, such as theHymn to Apollo
for the festival of the Carnalia at Cyrene (his fatherland), circa 246B.C.
during the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes. Or else he writes purely bookish
mythological poems, such as theHecale. In this case, the poetic language
of Callimachus is artificial, made of a mixture of various dialects,
stuffed with mythological details and allusions to vanished realia: these
works consequently call for commentaries, lexicons, and scholia.^13 The
edition of his poems will be thus similar to that of Homer or Hesiod.
Callimachus in this way creates a trompe l’oeil effect, having introduced
an artificial distance between his work and his readers based on the model
of archaism. This esthetic of polymathy and of scholarship has been
much commented on, and we will add only that it is in this way that
Callimachus gives form and legitimacy to his books of poetry. They have
the same status as the books that collected the ancient oral poems, recently
fixed in writing, whose linguistic and semantic obscurity is due to their
- In structuralist linguisticse ́nonciationis an utterance, the process of speaking,
distinguished (by Benveniste) from thee ́nonce ́, that which is said.E ́nonciationinvolves the
speaker adopting a first person stance (‘‘I’’), addressing a second person (‘‘you,’’ stated or
implied), about a third. [ Trans.note]. - Jacob 1992.
- Jacob 1992, 105 106.
- Jacob 1992, 106.
- Jacob 1992, 107.
146 Books and Texts