temporal distance. Callimachus publishes written texts that are like the
transcription of virtual oral works, uttered in another world in which they
were transparent.
This is what we will call a ‘‘fictive utterance,’’ one that gives form to an
utterance whose written reality pretends to be a transcription of it. This
fictitious utterance also justifies the use of a metalanguage that knows
only inspiration, the Muses, the Castalian spring, and Helicon.
During the classical era, written texts are presented often in the form of
the fixation of ritualized or socially codified oral performances, that is,
poems, or dialogues, or speech. This is a fiction that fools nobody and that
does not seek to—its reader can be addressed as such—but which allows
form to be given to a text which otherwise would not have had any. Even
when it is not presented in the form of a transcription of an oral perfor-
mance, the written text is supposed to be the transcription of another
form of writing having its own proper status: for example, epigrams,
letters, or inscriptions of any type associated with objects, or legal texts
and public inscriptions, sacred or not.
The library of Alexandria changed nothing except for developing the
fictive utterance. The book continues to be a support without ever per-
forming writing. To read these books is to recover the trace of a fictive
event or a preceding text to which the book can only allude.
The epigrams of the Palatine Anthology are an example. The
book gathers short inscriptions. This gathering in—as the word anthology
signifies—is necessary because they cannot be published individually. They
are therefore gathered according to varying principles, for example by
subject: some talk about animals, some describe works of art, or are erotic
epigrams. Originallyperhaps consisting of ‘‘true’’ poems—shortinscriptions
on walls, objects, or monuments in public spaces—the anthology continues
to enlarge itself with virtual epigrams. Written on the model of the ‘‘true’’
epigram, they imitate its form, its subject and tone, like a series of duplicates
ofthe original. Take, for example, ‘‘Myron’s Cow.’’ The famousGreek artist
sculpted a heifer so realistic that it seemed alive.
14
Nearly forty epigrams of
the Palatine Anthology are devoted to it.
15
All take the form of an epigram
engraved on the sculpture of the animal, which praises its perfect resem-
blance to a live heifer. Some are ‘‘realistic,’’ such as this one, which is a
simple signature proclaiming the skill of the artist (9.733):
Myron, O stranger, sculpted this cow (ôaí âïFí ôÜíäå), at which
this calf wags its tail as if it were alive, thinking it’s his mother.A number of others in the series voluntarily declare themselves to be
imitations, while keeping the formal schema of an inscription celebrating
- PlinyHN34.57.
15.AP9.713 742, 793 8.
The Corrupted Boy and the Crowned Poet 147