Modes of Viewing in Hellenistic Poetry and Art: And Art

4. Reader or Viewer Integration

4 Reader or Viewer Integration Hellenistic artists and poets, as we have seen, drew viewers and readers into an image through invitations to supplement contexts and fill in narratives. Sometimes they went farther. Thanks in particular to von Hesberg, we are comparatively familiar with the artists’ technique of physically integrating viewers into their compositions.1 But again the lesson of painting and sculpture can be applied to facets of the period’s poetry, where we shall find readers analogously turned into active participants in dialogues, descriptions, scenes, and narratives. Aglance at examples in visual art will illustrate and help us de- fine the phenomenon, and will thus put us in a better position to appreciate its workings in poetry. A superb case in point is the Boy with a Goose (Ill. 23), of disputed date but generally accepted as being from the third or second century.2 Some certainty can be attained in reconstructing its viewing context, an issue of great importance in this connection, for we must know as precisely as possible how the original viewers stood as they viewed the objet d’art in question in order to establish their spatial relationship to it. This we can infer from Herodas’ fourth Mimiamb. We have already seen how Cynno comments excitedly on a dedicatory statue in the temple, “By the Fates, how the little boy is squashing the goose! If it weren’t stone in front of our feet, you’d say the statue will speak” (Mim. 4.30–33). Given “in front of our feet,” pro; tw'n podw'n, in line 32, we can agree with I. C. Cunningham that “the statue is therefore on the ground in front of them,”3 though we should more correctly locate it on a low base, since there is no precedent for groups being exhibited “on the ground” itself. 103 Cunningham, moreover, identifies the statue which Cynno is looking at with precisely the group we are examining,4 which would secure a firm third-century dating for it and help us invaluably in ascertaining what contemporary viewers saw in it. The identification is highly convincing. In any case, the passage demonstrates Hellenistic viewers’ responses to such statuary in general. Given that the dedicatory statue of the baby boy was originally exhibited on a low base, we can establish the viewer’s relationship to him with real accuracy. The baby is reaching up with his right arm and hand, a gesture drawing attention to his imploring gaze, which is directed straight up to the viewer’s and clearly signifies, “Pick me up!” The baby’s mouth is open, and this is in fact the demand he will be addressing to the viewer. As we have 104 Reader or Viewer Integration 23. Boy with a Goose. Vatican, Rome. Author noticed in passing before,5 he compensates for the weight of his head, which is transferred to his left side because of the upward extension of his right arm, by leaning to his left and squashing his pet goose.6 Through meeting the baby’s gaze, the viewer is physically if not personally incorporated into the composition, and in a very real sense completes it. Once drawn into the baby’s universe , the viewer can also respond to the group in terms of its lifelike quality and the tactile sensation created by the crushing of the bird. These are the main things to catch Cynno’s eye.7 Significantly , Phile is excited by a similar effect when she expresses her terror of the bull in Apelles’ painting of a sacrificial scene: the bull is glaring sideways, and Phile interprets this glare as a threat to her personally (69–71). Here it is a flat, painted surface which encroaches on the viewer’s personal space, so the effect was by no means confined to three-dimensional art. Viewer-incorporation was intended by another statue, the bronze Boxer of the Terme Museum in Rome (see Ill. 8). A thirdcentury dating of the statue has been proposed, though more recently it has been challenged by Nikolaus Himmelmann, who favors a first-century original.8 Whatever the Boxer’s original location was,9 his seated position, with his marvelous shoulders slumping forward as he recovers after an evidently hard-won victory , makes full sense only if the statue was originally displayed on a low base at ground level, for...