Theocritus' Idyll 11

Abstract

Perhaps the strangest feature of Theocritus’ Idyll 11 is the fact that the Hellenistic poet selects a mythological creature notorious for its barbarism and inhumanity, in order to validate his thesis that poetry is the only medicine for love, the most distinctively ennobling and human of all emotions. The aim of this article is to demonstrate that Theocritus has chosen Polyphemus as an exemplum for his premise because he had been consistently associated in mythology with being blinded. His intention is to show through an elaborate network of interconnected verbal repetitions, as well as literary allusions, which essentially create a subtext to his work, that love, at least as it is experienced by the main character of the Idyll, is a form of self-inflicted blindness, but that, nevertheless, it entails a kind of personal glory. Although Galateia does not respond to Polyphemus’ erotic call, his repeated singing incorporates her —irrespective of her will — into his life; in her absence she is always present, in his erotic failure the Cyclops artistically succeeds. This contiguity of opposites constitutes the core of Theocritus’ proposed medicine: he wants to remain perpetually in love and through his art to make this feeling a part of his everyday life. This is the only way he can control it. In true Hellenistic fashion his principal aim is not erotic gratification, but poetic success. And love exacerbated, but ultimately controlled through song, love condemned to remain unfulfilled, is his chief helper in this task. It is the “blindness” that leads to his glory.