01.10 pm
Prof. Feeney
At Princeton I could talk with prof. Feeney (the other two were not on campus, apparently).
He didn't look too surprised of my desire to talk with him, though without any appointment. Anglo-saxon open attitude towards scholarly dialog?
With a somewhat british accent (Jessica was right, complaining that 70% of the positions in Classics in the U. S. are occupied by european scholars) he gave me a couple of interensting tips:
- Topic of movement/staticity
Verg. Ecl. (Ecl. 10, Gallus; and also in other eglogues the lovers tend to go to reach each other)
- Topic of spinning around the city
In Cat., and then also in Hor. Serm. - Therefore, it is little "elegiac": it's rather iambic, or suitable to the "sermones". But Ov. looks back to it, re-uses it.
- Topic of travel vs. staying home in Prop.
Hatred vs. travel above all in book I of Prop.; in book III he actually travels towards Athens. In that book, he "travels" away also metaliterarily, looking for new gendres. He migrates from elegy to something else, whatever it is.
I suggest that the choice of Athens could not be a casual one, but also a metaliterary one. He says that Athens is not connected to his poetry: the models of the elegists are rather alexandrinian, and eastern-mediterranean: Callimachus, Philitas of Cos, etc. So, he says, one would rather expect Alexandria, and one should also ask himself why he chooses Athens.
It's anyway a self-quotation, because in book I he had said that he would not travel towards the "doctas Athenas".
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