PRESENT, FUTURE AND PAST IN THE HOMERIC HYMN TO APOLLO

Abstract

Within Classics, there is growing interest in the nature of reperformance, particularly in relation to archaic and classical Greek poetry and drama. Developing out of the now well-established ‘performative turn’ in studies of early Greek song, and gaining impetus from a series of publications focussing on the contextual specificity of archaic lyric and drama, those interested in reperformance ask what it means for a song or a play, composed for a specific occasion, to be reperformed in another time and (potentially) another place. While interest in reperformance is certainly not new, the debate is now increasingly taking place in dialogue with parallel studies of reperformance in other disciplines. Research in performance studies has articulated a paradox at the heart of reperformance: since a performance is imagined as a singular event that exists only in that moment, and in a specific context, reperformance is an attempt to repeat the unique. Theorists and practitioners have in turn explored this paradox in relation to the restagings and re-enactments of one-time events and performances, such as battle re-enactments, the reconstruction of ballet choreographies before the days of film and live performance art. These examples reveal the complex temporalities involved in reperforming notionally one-time events, as an attempt to capture the ephemeral and collapse the present and the past (as well as the there and the not-there) in the ‘syncopated time’ of the reperformance.