Televising Pindar

98 NEW IDEAS IN TFACHING / NOUVELLES IDEEs PEnAGOGIQUES causes some delay in back references. The binding of the text is ....oefully inadequate to permit the book to do battle with students for three years before being discarded . Volumes III and IV have many original passages from Roman authors, poetry having been dealt with already, although inadequately, in Volume II. We are anxious to teach the last two volumes and trust that the students by the end of Volume IV will have great facility in reading original ....orks. ThistZetown C.! . , Rexdale. Ont . TELEVISING PINDAR COLIN and MARGARE.'I' VISSER The way in ....hich television can contribute to the study of classical literature needs to be assessed, particularly with the start , in Ontario at least , of an exclusively educational network, and the acquisition by an increasing number of schools and Wliversities of video-tape replay equipnent . Greek and Latin literature is so foreign and so remot e from us in time that ....e need every means available to bring it closer to us both int ellectually and emotionally. Thro~ television a modern reo.der of ancient Greek literature might come closer to sensing with immediacy the ideas and emotions an ancient Greek listener would effortlessly have knQ"l<.Tl and felt . In order to explor e some of the potentia.lities of the medium we have recently completed a half-hour programme on Pindar's Seventh Olympian . We hoped to convey some of the complex meanings of the poem by translating it i nto visual t enns . A fairly simple and obvious instance of this kind of clarification is the visual presentation of certain objects in the poem Which ....ould be common to the Greeks, but practically w1known to our viewers . The ~ which is an object of great importance in the opening stanza of the poem might serve as an example. It is so often r ender ed in translation or cOllUllented upon as a "beaker", "cup", or even "goblet" - in fact it is Wllike any o f these - that it would seem that the modern reader, wlike his ancient Greek cowterpart, usually has no idea of what a ~ looks like . The viewer, and this is one of the strengths of t elevision , can now see a ~ for himself. So, by r eading and discussing the Ode and presenting t he viewer with those visual elements which are an essential part of the Ode we hoped to bring our audience a little closer to i ts meaning . We decided to conclude the programne with the reading of the complete Ode in Greek . We made no attempt at achieving "pitC h accent" ; ....e tried merely to give a nuent, expressive and rhythmical reading . Pindar's extremely sophistiCated and complicated rhythm-patterns make him unconmonly difficult to read aloud well, as he must be r ead for any real enjoyment of his work; ...·e f elt that a chance simply to hear the Ode well read would in itself make the programme NEW IDEAS IN TFACKING I NOWELLES IDEES PEoAGOOIQUES 99 worth ,,·hile . We had to keep the potential audi ence of the TV programme in mind; it seemed \.U'Ilikely that many viewers would be able to follow the Greek without prOOlpting , and so we superimposed on the Greek a voice reading in English certain key lines which would allow the listener , even if he had little or no Greek, to find hi mself in the poem, or at l east t o get the gist of it. At certain -points the -poem was heightened by music written in ancient Greek modes . This, too, makes accessible t o the modern viewer a part of the Greek experience which might be foreign to him . The English and the music were never allowed to overwhelm the Greek . A woman ' s voice spoke the English, a male voice the Greek, which helps the hearer t o separate the sounds if he wants to. Anyone interested in following the Greek could easily, we discovered, ignore the superimposed sounds . A television programme cannot simply be a t elevised lecture; this ignorelJ the visual potentialities of television, while it robs the lecture o f the physical presence of the lecturer . Just as in drama. all thought must be translated into action, so, in television, everything has to be conceived of in visual t erms . The ideas we chose to present, the points of interpretation of the poem which we decided to include, were all selected because they could be dealt with visually . The amount of material whieb can be dealt wi th effectively in half an hour must necessarily be small. It was adaptability to the televisi on medium which, almost always, determined what subject matter was included. The subject of the prograJllllle brought with it its own inherent visual possibilities . The reading of the Ode was accOOlpanied by a IIlOntage which tri ed to present a visual equiValent of the poem. It was not a matter of creating a mood, but of using art objects - statues, coins, and particularly vase painting, generally contemporary with the poem - as illustrations of it . The lines at the end of the poem, for instance, which detail Diagoras's victories at boxing , were matched by vase paintings of the archaic period showing in sequence the st ages of a boxing match frem the binding of the caestus to the final blOW' . The cameras could travel over these images, focussing on a detail, fading or cutting frem one image to the next and, at times, superimposing them, in order to reproduce as much o f the feeling of the poem as we could. The IIlOntage was not exclusively ofaxt objects, for this, we found, could be tedious . We used modern photographs of natural objectlJ and scenery. For example, the description of Rhodes rising from the sea was accompanied by a rapid sequence of opening sea anemones, and other underwater photographs, alternating with images of the panel in the Ludovisi throne which is said to show Hera rising from the sea., and which we chose to ulJe as an image of the birth of the island, Rhodes . It was, of course, impossible to match image against word t hroughout the poem: the images in Pind.ar are so profuse and swiftly- changing . We chose , rather, to concentrate on a few image·clusters which we felt were structurally the most important, and which had been diSCUSSed before on the programme. For example, Pindar touches very briefly on the Birth of Athena. To r epresent visually the whole cOO!plicat ed scene in the space of time Pindar gives it would be confusing and distracting, we thought, on the screen . Instead, we chose to concentrate on images of the boat· journey to Rhodes, and then upon the building of t he altax to Athena. The idea was to give to the sequence of images i ts own int egrity: the visual element, ideally, should have a life of its own, perceptible even apart fran the words of the poem . Only in this manner can a work in one medium (television) provide anything like a worthy ccmnent ary on a work in another medium (in this case, poetry). 10 0 lID! IDEAS IN TE4.CFaNG / NOlNELLES IDEEs PEnAGOOIQUES The visual sequences shown during the reading of the poem were also the core of the discussion which made up the first part of the programme. The poem had in some way to be introduced to the viewer . We thought inadequate a direct presentation by a lecturer . A discussion I'UlOng three students (more would have been confusing) allowed for a play of personalities and also for that modification of opinion which is more dramati c than a straight presentation of fact. For financial reasons we could not, except for a short sequence in th:montage , use filln, and so the discussion would have t o be video-taped and editing would have to be kept to a minimum. Free discussion is time- consllllling and SOOletimes fiui tless. \O,le also wanted t o gear the discussion to the visual sequences which would be used in the montage . We had, therefore, to control the discussion, but we could not script it wi thout killing all spontaneity . We finally hit on the idea of using the c=edia dell' art e teChnique of assigning various points to be made to various part icipants in t he discussion, establishing the order in which the points wcre t o be made, and allowing the participants to express themselves, sCflletimes in memorized phrases , but mostly in an improvised manner which could, 8J'ld did, allow for interaction and modification . The discussion ....as confined to a ver y few points, and again they were points that could be 'made visually. Once they had been made, or during the exposition , they wer e illustrated by a visual montage which ,,;as repeated during the final part of the programme when, during the reading of the Greek, the r elevant point in the poem was r eached . The viewer was thus familiarized wit h all of the visual sequences before he saw them juxtaposed at the end of the I programme . In the discussion, to take a simple example, the point was made that Ii the poet Pindar was as important as the victor Diagoras, since it is the poet who observes, r ecords, and therefore immortalizes the victory of t he at hlete. The poet and the athlete, as it were, look at one another, as equals . The point was then translat ed int o visual terms : a coin of a bearded figure (habitually associated in the programne with Pindar) was shown, and then a coi n of a laurelcrowned at hlete (associated ....ith Diagoras) . The two coins, the heads "looking at one another", were then juxtaposed. This sequence recurs in the final montage during the rel evant part of the poem, carrying with it the weight of meaning it has acquired in the discussion . The prograJlVlle was made as a teaching device . It is meant to be shown to a class, 8J'ld then used as a basis for discussion . There is plenty of room for objections, and for further elaboration of ideas presented in a very rudimentary form . The suggestions and cOllllllents made in the programme are t herefore meant to provoke curiosity and to cause a desire for further i nvestigation 8J'ld proof. The ccmpleted progr8IIll:le is now at the disposal of the university of Toronto where it will be used by the Depart ment of Classics . It is also available to other inst itutions at a rental fee (wit hin the Province of Ontario) of $50.00 per week, exclusiVe of mailing charges . It may be bought for $125 .00, exclusive of the price of a tape and mailing charges . Tape formats are: 2" Ampex , Quadruplex, Hi or Low Band; 1" Sony, LV.C . , Ampex ; 1/2" Sony . New College . University of Toronto. ...