Visualizing the impossible: the wandering landscape in the Delos Hymn of Callimachus

Abstract

The Delos Hymn of Callimachus presents one of antiquity’s most astonishing descriptions of personified landscape. This article addresses two aspects of Callimachus’ almost surrealistic representation. First, I look in some detail at conventions and concepts from earlier poetry that Callimachus uses and abuses to create his peculiar picture of a moving, animated landscape. I focus in particular on personifications of geographical items and on metaphorical or metonymical expressions as they are found in archaic poetry. Secondly, I ask whether we can reconstruct the effect that overturning such conventions may have had on Callimachus’ ancient readers. This entails that I will look at theories concerning visualization (enargeia) and plausibility (pithanotès) from ancient literary and rhetorical treatises known to or originating in the learned environment of Callimachus, the Alexandrian Museum of the third century BC. To get a clear focus on the problems the Delos Hymn presents, I also survey some modern critical appraisals of the poem.

Keywords

• Callimachus
• Delos Hymn
• enargeia
• landscape space
• literary theory
• metaphor