05 - Callimachus's Vibrant Materiality: Reading Non-Human Agency in Hymn to Artemis

In this paper, I read Callimachus's Hymn to Artemis through Bennett's vibrant materialism because it highlights the blurred boundaries between human and non-human agents which helps us to better understand ecology within the text. According to Bennett's theory, non-human things have a vibrancy that causes the object to affect, thus creating a subjectivity for the non-human thing. While Purves has used vibrant materialism to read Ajax in Homer's Iliad, this framework has yet to be applied to Callimachus's Hymns. Scholarship on the Hymn to Artemis has focused on unity, particularly Artemis's development from child to goddess to queen (Bing and Uhrmeister) and thematic readings, such as sibling rivalry (Plantinga). Other recent scholarship has focused on intertextual readings, such as with Virgil's Aeneid (McCarter) and with Homeric Hymn to Pan (Faulkner). Vibrant materialism not only helps us to understand how objects act within Hymn to Artemis, but also informs our interaction with the text as an object.

In Hymn to Artemis, child-Artemis requests from Zeus a bow and arrows, among other things, so that she may roam the mountains; Zeus assents, but he also grants her dominion over cities (1-45). Artemis then goes to the Cyclopes, who are working the forges (46-86). The vibrancy of things is especially highlighted in this scene, in which Artemis's nymph companions are terrified by two things: the Cyclopes and the sounds of forging (51-56). Although the nymphs are the subject of the verb ἔδδεισαν (were terrified, 51), it is the inhuman objects that are causing the effect, and in doing so, the objects gain subjectivity. Their ability to act on human figures blurs the line between subject and object. The Cyclopes, animate beings, are described as monsters (πέλωρα, 51) and are thus neither fully human nor fully animal. Additionally, they are likened to the peaks of mountains (πρηόσιν Ὀσσαίοισιν ἐοικότα, 52), while their single eye is likened to a four-layered hide shield (σάκει ἴσα τετραβοείῳ, 53). Both objects - mountains and shield - have resonances that produce fear. Furthermore, the forges themselves are given an animate quality with the sound (δοῦπον, 54), breathing (φυσάων, 56) and groan (στόνον, 56). Taking the full scene together, interplay of the Cyclopes and the forges, although grammatically the object, are the agents.

This scene provides the strongest reading for vibrant materialism, but we can extend this framework to the rest of the hymn, noting the agency of Artemis's equipment, particularly her arrows, not only in hunting, but also in administering justice (110-135). Artemis tests her bow, first shooting into trees, then a beast, finally, into cities (120-123). Although Artemis is the grammatical subject, the description of ill-effects are a result of unjust cities being hit with her arrows (124-128), thus the agency is distributed through the object. Reading the bow through vibrant materialism strengthens its agency and it is through the bow's distributive agency that Artemis is able to fulfill her role as goddess.

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Presenters

Marissa Gurtler, University of Wisconsin

  SCS-25