Chapter 9 - Cosmic Choruses

Summary

In this chapter, Renaud Gagné pursues a chronologically wide-ranging study of how the motion of the heavenly bodies was thought about through the idea of choral dance. This chapter compares various unrelated, self-reflexive usages of the astral chorus metaphor in three genres of poetry and briefly considers how each illuminates the others. Instead of a teleological narrative, a dialogue of commonalities and contrasts is sought in the juxtaposition of comparable case studies. The striking image of the astral chorus was, among many other things, a powerful catalyst for thinking mimesis in action. A vision of the cosmic order is used in all three texts to reflect on the boundaries of poetic representation. The first text is a short epigram from Marcus Argentarius (AP 9.270 = G.-P. XXVI). The second passage is the ecphrasis of Dionysus’s shield in the Dionysica of Nonnus of Panopolis (25.380-572). The third text is another shield ecphrasis, that one from the first stasimon of Euripides’ Electra (432-486). The readings illustrate how a key figure of cosmic harmony was revisited to ponder the limits of poetic representation. Projecting itself on the cosmos, the idea of the choral dance could also reflect the cosmos back on song itself.