The Greeks had words for it.
Jun. 18th, 2010 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbI'm presently reading James Davidson's massive work on homosexuality in ancient Greece, The Greeks and Greek Love. I'm not very far in, but Davidson has a lively style and an impressive skill at conveying his (impressively extensive) knowledge.
Two paragraphs struck me today, though, when he was speaking of charis - grace, the lubricating element in human relationships and human and divine interactions. Charm, favour.
[p44]"Even when it seems to reside in someone, charis never loses its sense of circulation. If it appears in a song, it is because the Muses or the Graces have momentarily graced the composer with their presence. Charis therefore is never, properly, something you can vaunt. It is not yours to be proud of. It is always reflected glory, even though the fons et origo of all this munificence may not be readily definable. The metaphysical powers who sprinkle it or pour it or fill people with it are invoked primarily to dispossess the one they sprinkle with it of agency... and of ultimate ownership, to remind one, especially the one graced with charm, that it is but a gift, a loan without interest. This is how charis can be so closely associated with humility or 'a sense of shame' (aidos), and how grace for ancient Greeks is so potent a word of piety.
"The Girl from Ipanema also helps us to see why charm can be seen as a prerogative especially of youth. Charis is fleeting not only because you cannot quite pinpoint exactly what it is, or who has it, but because what it is tends to magically appear and then to be gone again, as evanescent in fact as it is to comprehension. The key conceit of this song is that the girl's loveliness, her beauty, is passing her, as she passes, as if, like a hummingbird, charm has temporarily nested on her, graced her with its presence. But of course it is precisely in its passingness that her charm lies... [p45] Like Hogarth's spiralling line of grace it is forever receding, as hard for her to take permanent hold of as it is for the world she walks through, or for the poet who puts pen to paper and still - because it's 'more than a poem' - misses it, or for the listener as she passes through the song."
[all italics original]
Davidson continues, of course, but that seems to be the heart of his discussion of charis to me. It's one of the words - like philos and eros and himeros, which Davidson also discusses - that comes up quite a bit in Greek texts in translation: grace or favour or charm, words which in English mean different things but which in Greek are all charis.
So my head has been cracked open a little wider, and more context for an entirely different worldview poured in. Many historians hedge things around, and so do many archaeologists: few go all the way down to the level of philology and illuminate a concept from its underside as well as from straight in front.
But aside from ancient context, it's an interesting discussion of such an ephemeral and ambiguous thing as grace in its own right.
Two paragraphs struck me today, though, when he was speaking of charis - grace, the lubricating element in human relationships and human and divine interactions. Charm, favour.
[p44]"Even when it seems to reside in someone, charis never loses its sense of circulation. If it appears in a song, it is because the Muses or the Graces have momentarily graced the composer with their presence. Charis therefore is never, properly, something you can vaunt. It is not yours to be proud of. It is always reflected glory, even though the fons et origo of all this munificence may not be readily definable. The metaphysical powers who sprinkle it or pour it or fill people with it are invoked primarily to dispossess the one they sprinkle with it of agency... and of ultimate ownership, to remind one, especially the one graced with charm, that it is but a gift, a loan without interest. This is how charis can be so closely associated with humility or 'a sense of shame' (aidos), and how grace for ancient Greeks is so potent a word of piety.
"The Girl from Ipanema also helps us to see why charm can be seen as a prerogative especially of youth. Charis is fleeting not only because you cannot quite pinpoint exactly what it is, or who has it, but because what it is tends to magically appear and then to be gone again, as evanescent in fact as it is to comprehension. The key conceit of this song is that the girl's loveliness, her beauty, is passing her, as she passes, as if, like a hummingbird, charm has temporarily nested on her, graced her with its presence. But of course it is precisely in its passingness that her charm lies... [p45] Like Hogarth's spiralling line of grace it is forever receding, as hard for her to take permanent hold of as it is for the world she walks through, or for the poet who puts pen to paper and still - because it's 'more than a poem' - misses it, or for the listener as she passes through the song."
[all italics original]
Davidson continues, of course, but that seems to be the heart of his discussion of charis to me. It's one of the words - like philos and eros and himeros, which Davidson also discusses - that comes up quite a bit in Greek texts in translation: grace or favour or charm, words which in English mean different things but which in Greek are all charis.
So my head has been cracked open a little wider, and more context for an entirely different worldview poured in. Many historians hedge things around, and so do many archaeologists: few go all the way down to the level of philology and illuminate a concept from its underside as well as from straight in front.
But aside from ancient context, it's an interesting discussion of such an ephemeral and ambiguous thing as grace in its own right.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 07:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 08:10 pm (UTC)I already knew that, but Davidson talks about it in terms of the development of Christianity modifying the sense of charis to something more teleological? Eschatological? Where, anyway, it becomes in some forms an exchange - faith for grace - rather than a free gift.
From my own reading, I think Davidson is slightly hostile (well, no matter, many classicists are and so am I) to early Christianity, and that he might be simplifying the early Christian development of the concept of charis, which is, well, complicated and contradictory, since Augustine seems to think that grace is both free gift and something that can be sort of 'earned.'
(As in any organic development, things get complicated really soon. Particularly when using Greek to talk about Aramaic and Hebrew and possibly entirely new concepts.)
no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 08:34 pm (UTC)Davidson says of charis and gods: "[p38] Charis bounces around in multople exchanges over time of gifts, gifts of sacrifice, statues, plays, dances, hymns etc. It looks both ways, both in return for and in anticipation of divine favours, thus establishing a meaningful and consequential relationship with gods in the present, which is simply a metaphysical version of the whole interplay of relationships of kindness and faith you establish with other people. The Christian architecture of time which leaves the present as a humble zone between two grand precipices, an original Fall from Charis and and Final Settling of [p39] Accounts, finds no room for a meaningful ongoing relationship of faith in God in the here-and-now.... It is precisely because ancient charis is never finally to be accounted for, that it is done for no specific return, and because no one know what will happen in the future, that it can be described as 'the engine of morality', i.e., the foundation of free ethical responsibility."
His Christian theology's a little dodgy, but I think the point he's making about the difference between Greek and later (probably at this point post-Augustinian) Christian charis is that the Greek version carries a far more immediate sense, more of 'I'll do you a favour (charis), and we'll see if you do (or keep doing) me a favour' - except favour is also both charm (i.e. charisma) and grace as well.
Since charis comes into human intimate relations as well, it's a fair fascinating discussion.
no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 08:45 pm (UTC)*recommends the fascinating book, because it is thought-making*
no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 08:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-18 08:18 pm (UTC)