callimachean metapoetics

I'm making myself some new stickers for my laptop, and this year, I'm going with a bee theme,^[1] which has me scouring my notes for all the bee-related quotes I can find. I am currently trying to decide whether I want to include both Sappho fr. 146 (μήτε μοι μέλι μήτε μέλισσα, "neither honey nor honeybee for me") and a bit from the H.D. poem inspired by that fragment, which is called "Fragment 113", because the same text had a different number in the edition to which she referred (classicists absolutely cannot be trusted with numbers).

But this had me doing a deep dive into various half-remembered, bee-themed bits of poetry, including Vergil's Aeneid^[2] and Callimachus' Hymn to Apollo. The latter I had honestly forgotten (I was instead looking for a different bee reference in Callimachus), but it does end on a lovely metapoetic metaphor:^[3]

ὁ Φθόνος Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπ' οὔατα λάθριος εἶπεν·
’οὐκ ἄγαμαι τὸν ἀοιδὸν ὃς οὐδ' ὅσα πόντος ἀείδει.’
τὸν Φθόνον ὡπόλλων ποδί τ' ἤλασεν ὧδέ τ' ἔειπεν·
’Ἀσσυρίου ποταμοῖο μέγας ῥόος, ἀλλὰ τὰ πολλά
λύματα γῆς καὶ πολλὸν ἐφ' ὕδατι συρφετὸν ἕλκει.
Δηοῖ δ' οὐκ ἀπὸ παντὸς ὕδωρ φορέουσι μέλισσαι,
ἀλλ' ἥτις καθαρή τε καὶ ἀχράαντος ἀνέρπει
πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὀλίγη λιβὰς ἄκρον ἄωτον.’
χαῖρε, ἄναξ· ὁ δὲ Μῶμος, ἵν' ὁ Φθόνος, ἔνθα νέοιτο.

Envy told Apollo, secretly into his ear: “I do not marvel at the poet who does not sing as much as the sea.” Apollo kicked Envy away and spoke thus: “The great current of the Assyrian river, but it drags along the sullage of the land and much refuse upon its water. The bees do not carry water from all sources to Demeter, but whatever little stream wells up, pure and undefiled, from the holy fountain, the choicest waters." Hail, lord: let Disgrace go there, where Envy lives!

— Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo 105–13

I've been fussing over that translation for longer than I care to admit, because there are so many lovely little details that I feel like I've been failing to capture in the English.^[4] Like λύματα means, specifically, wash-water and I knew there was a word I wanted to use for that, but it took me a bit of judicious Googling to remember that the term I was looking for was "greywater" and then a moment to realize that I didn't want to bounce "water" and "greywater" off eachother in the space of a clause, and then another to find a synonym that I liked the look of. Then I hit συρφετὸν in the very next sentence, which refers to things that are swept along, and can be used to refer not only to garbage but to mobs, and then I had to take a break to feel feelings about that.

But none of those lovely little details get to the heart of the metaphor, in which large bodies of water stand for epic and smaller ones for shorter poetic forms.^[5] In a literary culture so thoroughly overwhelmed by the legacy of Homer and his epics, to defend the dignity of all other poetry to the point of casting aspersions on epic (the dirty river to epigram's pure stream) is a big swing, but you have to admit that Callimachus does it with some style. (And, of course, bees.)