Newsgroup: it.cultura.classica
Titolo: Jean-Pierre Vernant  (4-1-1914 / 9-1-2007), in memoriam

      Apprendo oggi della morte di Jean-Pierre Vernant: è un altro grande
ellenista francese che ci lascia, nel giro di pochi mesi, dopo l'amico e
sodale Pierre Vidal-Naquet ...
C'è stato chi, proprio a Pisa, tra i miei insegnanti più diretti, in un
libro polemico e sfortunato che non merita di essere qui menzionato, più di
un quarto di secolo fa definì i due studiosi d'oltralpe all'incirca come
"mosche cocchiere" della filologia: erano gli anni immediatamente successivi
al loro seminale "Mito e tragedia nell'antica Grecia" (dall'eloquente
sottotitolo:  "La tragedia come fenomeno sociale estetico e psicologico");
a distanza di un trentennio credo si possa ora più equanimamente constatare,
se ancora ce ne fosse bisogno, e al di là delle convenzioni laudatorie del
genere necrologio, che -fatta la tara degli eccessi di taluni entusiasmi,
maxime statunitensi, negli anni '80 e, in parte, '90- le loro intuizioni di
ricerca, irradiate dal parigino Centre Louis-Gernet de recherches comparées
sur les sociétés anciennes,  hanno fecondato in modo originale e illuminante
gli studi classici della seconda metà del XX secolo, un _monumentum_ più
durevole della nostra effimera esistenza terrena. R.I.P.
Riporto di seguito il necrologio di Philippe-Jean Catinchi apparso oggi su
Le Monde:
"Jean-Pierre Vernant est mort mardi 9 janvier, à son domicile, à Sèvres
(Hauts-de-Seine). Celui dont les travaux ont bouleversé le regard sur
l'homme et le monde de la Grèce antique, du CNRS (1948) à l'Ecole pratique
des hautes études (1958), puis au Collège de France (1975), venait d'avoir
93 ans.
Né à Provins (Seine-et-Marne) le 4 janvier 1914, Jean-Pierre Vernant reste
orphelin à 8ans, après la mort de sa mère, puisqu'il n'a pas connu son
père - ce qui lui fit dire qu'il ne savait pas trop ce qu'est le complexe
d'Odipe. Une boutade, puisque, même recomposée, la figure paternelle fut
décisive. Engagé volontaire dans l'infanterie aux premières heures de la
Grande Guerre, Jean est mort au front en 1915. Cet agrégé de philosophie,
qui avait dû renoncer à la carrière universitaire pour reprendre
l'entreprise de presse que son père avait fondée à Provins à la fin du XIXe
siècle, sut défendre avec Le Briard les options éthiques d'une lignée
d'intellectuels engagés dans le siècle, anticléricaux, voire antireligieux,
et dreyfusards de la première heure. Un héritage que ses deux fils, Jacques
et Jean-Pierre, reçus tous deux majors de l'agrégation de philosophie - un
exploit inédit ! - n'eurent de cesse d'assumer. Quand l'aîné, Jacques,
dénonce à l'été 1939 la signature du pacte germano-soviétique, Jean-Pierre,
le cadet, rappelle que "le vrai courage, c'est, au-dedans de soi, de ne pas
céder, ne pas plier, ne pas renoncer. Etre le grain de sable que les plus
lourds engins, écrasant tout sur leur passage, ne réussissent pas à briser".
Partager cette profession de foi suffit à vous faire adopter comme frère
d'armes, puisque la résistance ne peut qu'être un combat, pour soi et les
autres.
"SE FAIRE GREC AU-DEDANS DE SOI"
D'entrée, la vie de Jean-Pierre Vernant semble placée sous le signe de la
fraternité. Son frère d'abord et les cousins et cousines font de l'enfance à
Provins un univers de joyeuse bande s'égaillant dans le jardin familial; les
études à Paris, au lycée Carnot, puis l'hypokhâgne à Louis-le-Grand n'y
changent rien, sinon que le cercle des"frères" s'élargit aux militants
antifascistes qui font avec lui dès février 1934 le coup de poing au
Quartier latin contre les tenants de l'Action française, comme aux
activistes et sympathisants communistes, dont il partage le violent rejet du
nationalisme.
Si son frère reste sur les marges, "Jipé" s'engage - il n'acceptera
toutefois jamais aucune responsabilité au sein du parti, même s'il conserve
sa carte jusqu'en 1970, exerçant de l'intérieur la critique du dogmatisme
qui ruine la généreuse philosophie de l'idéal communiste, au point qu'il
se"réfugie" dès 1948 sur les terres de la Grèce ancienne. Pour mieux
conserver cet espace de liberté et cette marge de manouvre intellectuelle
refusés au sein du PCF aux penseurs du contemporain. Un retrait moins
paradoxal qu'il n'y paraît, puisque c'est en essayant "de se faire grec
au-dedans de soi", dans ses façons de penser et ses formes de sensibilité,
qu'il a retenu les leçons dont il s'est fait l'infatigable passeur :
l'exigence d'une totale liberté d'esprit, dont le crible critique ne
reconnaît ni dogme ni interdit, le credo en une participation de l'individu
à une communauté d'égaux qui fait autant l'homme que le citoyen, la
fascination pour la beauté du monde, qu'il convient de recevoir avec cette
gratitude qui arme les champions.
Pour ces joutes, amorcées dès la vingtième année, il faut une hygiène
d'athlète. Le jeune homme, qui fut, adolescent, sociétaire du Racing,
foulant la cendrée des stades et avalant les longueurs de piscine, quand il
n'affrontait pas l'océan à Saint-Jean-de-Luz, part à la découverte des
reliefs, à pied et en bande. Toujours ce compagnonnage qui définit une
famille d'esprit, la seule qui vaille. Culottes courtes et sac à dos, il
parcourt les Alpes - ce grand randonneur devait du reste, sitôt après
l'agrégation, en 1937, être affecté lors de son service militaire au
6erégiment des chasseurs alpins-, d'autres horizons plus lointains aussi, de
la Corse à la Grèce, qu'il découvre à l'été 1935, en pleine dictature de
Metaxas. Dans la volonté de rencontrer les Hellènes, le contexte politique
lui importe davantage que la confrontation physique au berceau de la culture
occidentale; pas de révérant retour aux sources donc, même s'il finit par
gravir l'Acropole. De fait, c'est en anthropologue qu'il arpente ces terres
pour lui nouvelles, au nom d'une universelle fraternité humaine dont il
mesure alors la force, et dont le souvenir l'éblouit encore.
Fraternité reste le maître mot avec l'épreuve de la guerre. Démobilisés à
Narbonne à l'été 1940, les frères Vernant, en marge d'un activisme qui
commence par la distribution de tracts qu'ils impriment eux-mêmes,
retrouvent leur vocation première : l'enseignement. L'aîné est affecté à
Clermont, le plus jeune à Toulouse. C'est là que Jean-Pierre rencontre
réellement Ignace Meyerson, inventeur de la psychologie historique, dont il
a suivi les cours en Sorbonne avant guerre et qu'une amie de sa femme Lida
lui a adressé à Narbonne. Il devient dès lors son disciple. Comme lui, il
entre dans l'Armée secrète et, au sein du mouvement Libération Sud,
travaille à la libération du territoire.
Plus tard, les mêmes soutiens l'entraînent à d'autres équipées -
intellectuelles celles-là : grâce à Jean Bottéro et Elena Cassin, Jacques
Gernet, Luc Brisson et Jean Yoyotte, la Mésopotamie, la Chine, Rome et
l'Egypte rencontrent la Grèce. Au nom de l'amitié et d'une préoccupation
commune : le comparatisme.
AVANCÉES "SUR LA FRONTIÈRE"
Dès le début des années 1960, le groupe d'amis se réunit une ou deux fois
par mois, dans une salle du Musée Guimet. On y débat de grands problèmes :
le pouvoir, la guerre, Dieu, et chacun présente succinctement la physionomie
de la question dans son espace d'études. Séances de travaux pratiques d'un
comparatisme dont ils inventent les règles. Deux ou trois ans de cette
pratique et chacun se convainc qu'il serait bon d'institutionnaliser
l'aventure. Le Centre, que Vidal-Naquet devait placer sous la figure
tutélaire de Louis Gernet, père de l'anthropologie historique, naît en 1964.
Premières enquêtes : Terre et occupation du sol, divination et rationalité,
la mort et les morts. Le monde officiel des hellénistes est distant, voire
haineux devant ces avancées "sur la frontière", mais rien ne peut enrayer le
mouvement, d'autant que d'autres, ailleurs (Jean Bollack à Lille, Pierre
Lévêque à Besançon), travaillent dans le même sens.
Et l'élève de Meyerson peut mesurer, malgré l'hostilité des sorbonnards, la
fécondité et la divulgation à l'étranger des pistes amorcées par la bande.
Le courant a bientôt son adresse éditoriale. Grâce à l'engagement de
François Maspero, qui publie en 1965 Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs, dans la
collection de Vidal-Naquet "Textes à l'appui". Certes, c'est le philologue
Georges Dumézil qui commande d'abord à Vernant un court essai pour la
collection des PUF "Mythes et religions" : ce sera Les Origines de la pensée
grecque (1962) - "Un livre 'contre' puisque cette machine de guerre était
autant dirigée contre le PC que contre les tenants du 'miracle grec'". Mais
c'est la disparition de Gernet, la même année, qui sert de déclic. Le
recueil des articles du maître attendu par Les Belles Lettres n'intéresse
plus l'éditeur et serait resté dans les cartons sans la générosité et
l'intelligence de Maspero. Désormais, les élèves de Vernant savent où
prendre leur envol : Nicole Loraux, Alain et Annie Schnapp, François Hartog,
François Lissarrague, Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Pauline Schmitt-Pantel,
Hélène Monsacré.
En marge de cette aventure collective, Vernant, dont la renommée
internationale s'impose bien avant la distinction suprême - la médaille d'or
du CNRS en 1984 -, fut aussi un défenseur acharné du grec. Toujours mobilisé
par la défense des langues anciennes, dont il s'alarmait de la mort
programmée par les options scolaires, le philosophe y voit plus qu'un enjeu
d'érudition, le problème de la dette envers les origines. "Notre monde n'est
compréhensible que si on cherche comment ça a été fabriqué." Relayée par les
mondes romain et arabe, la civilisation grecque participe d'un creuset
méditerranéen, matrice humaine, où Vernant tente de "comprendre ce qui
aujourd'hui est précieux". Ce qui mérite d'être passé au fil des
générations. Comme le témoin d'un relais entre égaux. C'est cette mission
que Jean-Pierre Vernant s'est choisie, et qu'il a impeccablement remplie,
avec l'ardeur d'un esprit libre en résistance."
Un saluto,
Nico

 sodale Pierre Vidal-Naquet ...
un altro dei miei maestri che scompare...
ipazia

 sodale Pierre Vidal-Naquet ...
Vi ripropongo il bel ricordo di Vernant apparso oggi su Repubblica (pag. 47)
ad opera di Maurizio Bettini, prof. senese che non ha certo bisogno di
presentazione, tra l'altro fondatore di quel "Centro interdipartimentale di
Studi antropologici sulla Cultura antica" che tanto deve alla lezione di
Vernant e dei suoi sodali nel parigino Centro di ricerche comparate sulle
società antiche che, non casualmente, porta il nome di Louis Gernet.
[Peccato solo per quella svista sull'età di Vernant, che aveva da pochissimi
giorni compiuto 93 anni].
[inizio citazione]
"La giacca del professor Vernant"
Salì sulla pedana dove stava la cattedra, tirò a sé la sedia, ma non si
sedette. Il pubblico senese - numerosissimo: come si poteva mancare a una
conferenza del grande Jean-Pierre Vernant? - lo guardava con ammirazione, ma
anche con un po' di sconcerto. Perché restava in piedi? Indugiò ancora
qualche secondo, poi scosse la testa e finalmente si sedette. Vernant
parlava mal volentieri da seduto. Forse fu per questo che, prima di iniziare
la sua conferenza, volle almeno togliersi la giacca; ma non avendo dove
appoggiarla, la lasciò scivolare tranquillamente a terra, davanti a tutti.
Poi cominciò a parlare, a braccio, come sempre faceva. A mia conoscenza,
Vernant è stato l'unico ellenista che, quando parlava, pareva veramente
ispirato da una musa, come l'ae­do omerico. Salvo che poteva lasciar
scivolare la giacca per terra con una semplicità inaudita. Beniamino
Placido, che assisteva alla conferenza, il giorno dopo scrisse che quel
gesto gli aveva ricordato un film con Jean Gabin.
Vernant se n'è andato all'età di novantadue anni, ma avremmo voluto averlo
con noi ancora a lungo. Nel mondo degli studi classici Jipé, come lo
chiamavano i suoi amici, costituiva una presenza fondamentale, il vuoto che
lascia non potrà essere colmato da nessuno. L'oratore dalla meravigliosa
semplicità, l'aedo omerico che sapeva raccontare il mito greco anche ai suoi
nipoti e bisnipoti (come ha fatto in due libri pubblicati in Italia da
Einaudi), il saggista elegante, dallo stile trasparente come il cristallo,
al mondo greco in realtà non c'era arrivato lungo la via della letteratura.
La sua "agrégation" l'aveva infatti ottenuta in filosofia, nel lontano 1937,
e i suoi primi studi furono dedicati a Diderot. Nel 1940 c'era stato poi
l'incontro con Ignace Meyerson, che lo aveva coinvolto nel suo appassionante
progetto di psicologia storica, e nel 1948 quello, altrettanto fondamentale,
con Louis Gernet, grande studioso di diritto greco e fondatore
dell'antropologia storica. Ma qualsiasi autobiografia intellettuale di
Vernant, anche la più sintetica, non può ignorare l' altra grande
componente, o per meglio dire passione, della sua vita: la politica.
Iscritto al PCF dal 1932 al 1970, il giovane Vernant aveva svolto un ruolo
rilevante nella resistenza antinazista a Toulouse, e la politica ha
continuato ad appassionarlo lungo l'intera esistenza.
Ci si accorge così che lo studioso il quale, a partire dagli anni sessanta,
ha in qualche modo rivoluzionato il mondo degli studi classici, e di quelli
greci in particolare, era in realtà un filosofo che aveva attraversato le
scienze sociali, e un "resistente" innamorato della politica. Alla Grecia
Vernant ci era arrivato per una scelta più che matura, ecco perché,
probabilmente, è stato capace di cambiarne l'immagine. Il fatto è che Jipé
ha trascorso la sua vita ad "attraversare le frontiere", come suona il
titolo del suo ultimo libro. Ha insegnato a farlo anche a molti di noi e, ci
auguriamo, anche a tanti giovani che debbono ancora affacciarsi
all'orizzonte degli studi classici.
Guardo la pila dei suoi libri, ammucchiati sulla scrivania. Li ho messi lì
per aiutare la memoria, certo, ma anche per un ultimo omaggio a un uomo che
abbiamo molto amato. Non è stato forse lui ad insegnarci che, per i Greci,
l'impalpabile psyché -l'anima del defunto che continua ad aleggiare
nell'Ade - corrisponde a ciò che essi chiamavano kolossòs, la rigida stele
di pietra che garantisce il passaggio fra i due mondi, quello di sopra e
quello di sotto? Di lui ci resta un kolossòs di libri, uno più bello
dell'altro. Mito e pensiero presso i Greci, Le origini del pensiero greco...
Da studenti li leggevamo quasi di nascosto, nelle Università di allora
Vernant era considerato abbastanza eretico, e soprattutto poco attendibile.
Non è un grecista! si sussurrava, e a volte questo veniva perfino gridato ad
alta voce. Un po' come Noam Chomski che non sapeva, dicevano alcuni, se non
l'inglese, e per questo non poteva essere un buon linguista. Ma noi i libri
di Vernant li leggevamo lo stesso. A volte penso che i giovani abbiano un
dio (naturalmente greco) che li aiuta a scegliere i libri giusti, e che
questo dio non possa che essere Eros, pungente dio della passione e
dell'amore: quello a cui Vernant ha dedicato uno dei suoi saggi più belli.
Guardo ancora il kolossòs dei suoi libri. La morte negli occhi, Mito e
tragedia... Altri li ha scritti assieme a compagni di strada come Marcel
Detienne e Pierre Vidal-Naquet, ad allievi diventati nel tempo amici e
collaboratori, come Françoise Frontisi. A questo punto, quando i libri
ricominciano a farsi persone, ad assumere volti e voci, qualsiasi
classicista non può fare a meno di pensare ad un luogo, quello in cui molti
si sono recati, nel corso del tempo, come per un pellegrinaggio o un rito di
passaggio.
Erano poche stanze in Rue Monsieur Le Prince, a Parigi, dove Vernant aveva
fondato il 'Centre des recherches comparées sur le societés anciennes". Un
istituto diventato rapidamente celebre, un punto di riferimento. A chi si
meravigliava della sproporzione fra la semplicità dei locali, e la fama
raggiunta dal "Centre", veniva risposto che, al piano di sopra, abitava
niente meno che il grande Greimas. Dopo di che non restava che allargare le
braccia, rassegnati. La vera grandezza si raggiunge nei luoghi semplici,
oltre che nei gesti semplici: come una giacca scivolata a terra.
[fine citazione]
Un saluto,
Nico

 sodale Pierre Vidal-Naquet ...
questo il ricordo dell'antropologo Marino Niola
http://ilmattino.caltanet.it/mattino/view.php?data=20070111&ediz=NAZIONALE&npag=19&file=SESE.xml&type=STANDARD
 

 sodale Pierre Vidal-Naquet ...
Mi dispiace. Lo "conoscevo" solo attraverso i racconti del prof. Di
Donato, ma doveva essere, oltre a un grande studioso, un uomo con una
personalità notevole.
Saluti
Zisa

http://ilmattino.caltanet.it/mattino/view.php?data=20070111&ediz=NAZIONALE&npag=19&file=SESE.xml&type=STANDARD
anche l'antropologo Marino Niola lo ha ricordato su "Il Mattino" di oggi 

 Post hoc? :P
ah, no,  ergo no!

 d'oltralpe all'incirca come "mosche cocchiere" della filologia: erano
Mi pare di ricordare, ma forse mi sbaglio, battutacce feroci di Vincenzo 
Di Benedetto su Vernant. Se non ricordo male, la sua polemica sottile si 
scagliava contro la vuotezza e la genericità dei suoi studi, o almeno di 
alcuni suoi studi. Avete memoria anche voi di qualcosa di simile o 
semplicemente stanotte ho dormito male? :-P
Ah, vergognosamente in ritardo, auguro a tutti voi un 2007 come lo 
vorreste (e non come lo meritate, tranquilli :-)))
-- 
Albert Herring
ICQ # 407069040
http://eleutherapokrisis.blog.tiscali.it
... io pensavo che stavo dicendo un'altra cosa...
un mio alunno

 semplicemente stanotte ho dormito male? :-P
L'altrettanto compianta Nicole Loraux, sodale del Nostro al Centre Gernet
("la migliore allieva" di Pierre Vidal-Naquet), ha scritto un bellissimo
saggio sull'oblio nella memoria di Atene, da poco disponibile anche in
traduzione
(
http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1&c=MTI0G0JJJDFUN
): che
simile ars oblivionalis si possa applicare anche alla "_polis_ divisée"
della filologia (_me mnesikakein_, no?)! -tanto più che, dai conflittuali
anni '70/'80, tanta acqua è passata sotto i ponti, e le "mistificazioni"
ormai, semmai, è diventato luogo comune addebitarle proprio al marxismo
_tout court_ (ma, ancora una volta, più di un filologo classico, Canfora
docet, non sarebbe d'accordo...) :-)
Quanto al merito... beh, sono certo che p.e. la rimeditazione pluridecennale
di Vidal-Naquet sul cacciatore nero (da poco nuovamente disponibile in
italiano, sulla nuova ediz. francese del 2005:
http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1&c=ANUJNAP7J2ZQP
) è
stata stimolata proprio anche dalle rigorose e vigorose critiche incassate
(cfr. V.Di Benedetto "Il 'Filottete' e l'efebia secondo Pierre
Vidal-Naquet", Belfagor 33, 1978, pagg. 191-207; articolo -poi raccolto in
libro- che anche Momigliano, uno dei "maestri" di Vidal-Naquet, trovò pieno
di valide obiezioni...); quanto a Vernant, poi, non si dimentichi che, in
quegli anni, nella Francia stessa gli insegnamenti di un filosofo prestato
alla grecità erano visti, alla Sorbona, con qualche sospetto... (cfr. il
ricordo di David Bouvier, prof. di greco a Losanna, raccolto su Le Temps
dell'11/1/2007:  "En 1977, j'étais étudiant en grec à la Sorbonne. Cela me
paraît incroyable, mais à l'époque il était mal vu par les mandarins
sorbonnards de traverser la rue Saint-Jacques pour aller écouter des cours
au Collège de France. Nous étions d'ailleurs peu à franchir le fossé
idéologique qui séparait les deux institutions").
Btw. al marxismo di Vernant (tema d'attualità, appunto, 30/40 anni fa, ora
molto meno...:  della rottura col partito comunista successiva alla
Primavera di Praga ha scritto ampiamente Vernant stesso nel suo
autobiografico Entre mythe et politique, Seuil, 1996:
http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1&c=GQB9P93XLYAXC
) ha
dedicato poche righe, ma, al solito, molto acute, Claude Calame, in uno dei
più bei necrologi apparsi in questi giorni (apparso sempre su Le Temps,
16/01/07: "L'approche de ce que l'on considérait alors comme «la pensée
grecque» a été marquée non seulement par la psychologie historique, mais
surtout par le marxisme qui a été le terreau du développement des sciences
humaines dans les années soixante; puis par le structuralisme lui-même, issu
d'une anthropologie comparative particulièrement compréhensive. Une telle
convergence permet de comprendre, en dépit de l'éloignement temporel et
culturel, les spécificités grecques de concepts sociaux tel le travail
technique ou de fonctions mentales telle l'intelligence artisane; mais elle
permet aussi de situer le développement d'une pensée critique vis-à-vis de
la tradition des pères ou la mise en scène des conflits tragiques animant
l'humaine condition dans le contexte des débats rhétoriques induits par
l'institution de la démocratie, si restreinte fût-elle. Sont ainsi évités
tour à tour les dérives du relativisme sophistique du postmodernisme et le
nouveau positivisme auquel invitent les sciences cognitives"); colgo
l'occasione, infine, per segnalare un altro _obituary_ , apparso
sull'Indipendent ad opera dello storico Oswin Murray
(
http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2144035.ece
 ; cfr.
in part. sul carattere "rivoluzionario" della lezione vernantiana: "Once
again, as during the war, he had created an alternative structure of
subversion alongside the official academic cursus: when the events of 1968
arrived, it was members of the centre who took over control of classical
studies in the universities, and the Centre Louis Gernet is now the most
important institution in the world for the study of Greek civilisation").
Un saluto,
Nico

 anche l'antropologo Marino Niola lo ha ricordato su "Il Mattino" di oggi
Sì, sono apparsi molti necrologi (p.e. sul Manifesto dell'11/01 ad opera di
Pacioni e Stella; sul Corriere della Sera dell'11/01 ad opera di Eva
Cantarella, che l'ha ricordato anche su Le Monde, in un'intervista: "'il
nous a enseigné à regarder "la lune avec les yeux des Grecs". Il a ouvert la
route à l'anthropologie du monde antique. A mes yeux, son oeuvre a été
révolutionnaire"), ma quello di Bettini -oltretutto di non facile
reperibilità sul web- mi sembrava particolarmente riuscito.
Ora aggiungerei anche il ricordo di Carlo Ossola, apparso sul Sole 24 ore di
domenica scorsa ("L'Odissea nella «banlieue»").
Dispiace solo che nell'occhiello dell'articolo, sicuramente redazionale, a
Vernant venga attribuita la "cattedra di cultura greca al Collège de
France": come Ossola certamente sa -visto che, oltretutto, da qualche anno è
prof. proprio lì, titolare della cattedra di "Littératures modernes de
l'Europe néolatine"-, Vernant era ormai da molti anni professore onorario al
Collège de France, dopo aver ricoperto, dal 1975 al 1984, la cattedra di
studio comparato delle religioni antiche - "Étude comparée des religions
antiques". La differenza -quanto mai significativa- non abbisogna di
ulteriori sottolineature).
[inizio citazione]
Nel suo ultimo libro La traversée des frontières (Senza frontiere: memoria,
mito e politica, Milano, Cortina, 2005), Jean-Pierre Vernant (scomparso
martedì 9, nella sua casa di Sevres, all'età di 93 anni), parlando della
"morte eroica" presso i Greci osserva: «Qualcuno era sin qui in vita e ora
non c'è più: ecco l'assurdo, l'impensabile, la morte. Ed è questo
impensabile che bisogna sconfiggere. Ecco dunque una soluzione alla
condizione umana: trovare nella morte il mezzo di superare questa condizione
umana, vincere la morte attraverso la morte stessa, dando a essa un senso
che non ha, di cui è assolutamente priva». Vengono in mente quelle parole
mentre apprendo che la sua vita si è spenta. Ho davanti a me il ricordo
della sua ultima conferenza pubblica: già gravemente infermo, in
carrozzella, ma saldo nella voce e nella memoria, aveva voluto a tutti i
costi-contro il parere dei medici-venire il 23 ottobre scorso nella banlieue
di Aubervilliers a tenere una conferenza per il Collège de France e per i
giovani del Liceo Le Corbusier su l'Odissea, questo poema memoria comune di
un'umanità che cerca ritorno ed è alla deriva; questa fedeltà alla terra e
ai propri cari, se anche il prezzo per ritrovarli è la rinuncia all'eternità
offerta da Calipso; questo ritorno da mendico sfigurato, questo vecchio che
potrebbe non più essere riconosciuto dai suoi. E Vernant guardava quella
platea di giovani che avevano evaso la festa di fine Ramadan per venire ad
ascoltarlo e sembrava interrogarsi, come Ulisse: «Riconosceranno-attraverso
di me-quella fedeltà che ha sorretto intere civiltà?». Percorse, una a una,
le astuzie di Outis, il Nessuno che aveva irriso alla prigionia di Polifemo,
per riportarlo a essere l'Ulisse di Itaca, che il cane e la nutrice Ericlea
sanno riconoscere, che una radice-che immerge il talamo nella terra di
sempre-restituisce alla sposa. Ma è questa, allora, la lezione di Ulisse?
L'identità immobile della piccola patria?
No, perché egli è ormai tutti i popoli che ha visitato, i racconti che ha
fatto di sé e dei tanti eroi già morti, è tutta l'ospitalità che ha
ricevuto. Già nel suo libro La morte negli occhi, 1985, Vernant aveva
infatti riconosciuto che «se ogni gruppo umano, ogni società, ogni cultura
si pensasse e si vivesse come la civiltà di cui si deve mantenere l'identità
e assicurare la permanenza contro le irruzioni dall'esterno e le pressioni
interne, nondimeno ciascuna sarebbe confrontata al problema dell'alterità,
nella varietà delle sue forme: dalla morte, l'Altro assoluto, fino a quelle
alterazioni che continuamente si producono nel corpo sociale attraverso il
flusso delle generazioni, e che fanno posto ai necessari contatti, agli
scambi con "lo straniero", del quale nessuna città può fare a meno. I Greci
hanno, nella loro religione, espresso questo problema in tutte le sue
dimensioni [...]: l'identità non può né concepirsi né definirsi se non in
rapporto all'Altro, alla molteplicità degli altri. Se l'identico resta
chiuso su se stesso, non c'è pensiero possibile. E occorre aggiungere:
neppure civiltà possibile». Fu questa la sua battaglia. '
Nato a Provins il 4 gennaio 1914, studiò la filosofia e la civiltà greca.
Nella Seconda guerra mondiale entrò nella Resistenza nella formazione
Libération-Sud, e sarà poi il "colonnello Berthier" nell'Alta Garonna.
Aderì e poi prese le distanze dal Partito comunista, sostenendo sempre una
«cultura della pace» engagée e liberatrice. Eletto al Cnrs nel 1948, e poi
Directeur d'Etudes all' Ehess, sarà professore al Collège de France dal
1975. Si è affermato, sulla scia di Louis Gernet, come studioso del pensiero
e dell'antropologia della Grecia antica, con i saggi fondamentali Le origini
del pensiero greco, 1962 e Miti e pensiero presso i Greci, 1965, ai quali
seguirono Miti e società nella Grecia antica, 1974 e Religione greca,
religioni antiche, 1974. Molti i volumi in collaborazione con Pierre
Vidal-Naquet (tra cui Edipo e i suoi miti), con Marcel Détienne (tra cui Le
astuzie dell'intelligenza. La métis dei Greci), e Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux
(tra cui Dans l'oeil du miroir).
Questo modo di lavorare, aperto, generoso, in operoso ascolto e rispetto
dell'altro veniva, in certo modo, dagli anni stessi della Resistenza, ove
essere «compagnons» era più che spartire un destino e un ideale. Ricordando
Ignace Meyerson, perseguitato dal regime di Vichy, in un capitolo
luminoso-Deve esserci una storia della volontà - del suo ultimo libro Senza
frontiere, Vernant concluderà: «In questo ritorno a sé che deve approdare a
un'inchiesta più generale, un primo riconoscimento s'impone. Il livello di
tensione psicologica e d'energia interiore non è in noi costante. Ci sono
oscillazioni nel coraggio, nell'impegno nell'azione, con delle eclissi, e
delle riprese, e nuovi slanci. Ora nel recupero e nella crescita delle forze
personali di un individuo, l'apporto altrui-il ruolo che hanno in
particolare gli esseri che hanno il dono di trasmettere il loro proprio
interno dinamismo -è decisivo. In che cosa il "dono", ciò che noi riceviamo
da un altro o gli doniamo, può costituire una dimensione capitale di una
genetica della volontà?». A questa domanda ha risposto con la vita,
liberando in sé e intorno a sé forze rigeneratrici, e consegnandoci-come i
veri Maestri-la lezione più generosa e indefettibile: la responsabilità.


 gli studi classici della seconda metà del XX secolo
Non vorrei esser apparso troppo rude nei confronti degli antichisti d'oltre
oceano...
Per fare parziale ammenda vi propongo, sempre in estremo omaggio a Vernant,
una presentazione della persona e dell'opera del grande antichista francese
proposta -con grande acume ed equilibrio- proprio dalla statunitense Froma
I. Zeitlin (nell'introduzione alla raccolta di cui è stata curatrice,
Mortals and Immortals: Selected Essays of Jean-Pierre Vernant, Princeton
University Press 1991, pagg.3-24), da cui emerge con particolare chiarezza
la tradizione culturale specificatamente francese in cui Vernant è inserito,
così come le peculiari doti umane di quell'uomo davvero grande -sia detto
fuori da ogni retorica- che ci ha appena lasciati.
[inizio citazione]
"As it appears in Vernant's previous work [...] the landscape of Greece is a
territory of a special kind. It ranges across mountains, rivers, and
cultivated fields down to marshlands and the sea. It features places of
sacrifice and divination and sites of cult, and it takes in communities of
all sizes, from the precincts of Sparta and the acropolis at Athens to those
numberless out-of-the-way places mentioned, among many others, by the
indefatigable tourist Pausanias and that figure of erudition, Plutarch. The
territory also extends to zones of the mythic imagination: the emerging
features of the physical world in Hesiod's Theogony, the ends of the earth
visited by Perseus in his quest of the Gorgon, and the regions of Olympos,
Hades, and Tartaros, above and below the solid foundations of mundane life.
The spaces over which Vernant travels are well marked. They have boundaries
and limits, levels and planes, and paths that bifurcate, leading now in one
direction, now in another, and often, against all expectation, converging or
shifting elevation into other domains or fields. Along the way some paths
may veer off to take a different course without ever obscuring entirely the
familiar landmarks that link them, in part, to more ancient or parallel
routes. And then there are indications of potential highways, still only
dimly glimpsed, roads-as we know from our later vantage-that have not yet
been taken, to stopping points not yet imagined, not in this era, not in
this place. Above all, routes that at first seemed to be trivial or to
wander off in random confusion turn out to have a broad and sure
destination. The intricate journey is bound to end in perceptions of
structure, coherence, and order, and for all the detours, all the subtle
gradations, the result is a map of criss-crossing lines that make up a
network of intelligible signs for those who know how to read them.
It is, finally, this map that commands our attention, this translation into
and out of the region of the mind that configures the territory of an
ancient culture in both space and time, through a wide-angled prospect over
new frontiers and a gift for discerning unsuspected layers and levels of
meaning in familiar ground. It thus reshapes the topography we are used to
thinking of as Greece and, in so doing, gives us a guide that passes beyond
the diagram and chart to bring a society vividly to life-dynamic, inventive,
dialectically articulated, haunted by questions of its own mortality, and
addicted to building structures, both of institutions and of the mind
itself.
I use "mind" as a two-sided affair first, it is the agile and resourceful
mind of the interpreter that ranges over disparate data, finding the
questions to ask and the techniques to use in order to construct a set of
cultural models and codes. This mind gathers up details-the word, the
anecdote, the myth, the telltale gesture or action, the image; it looks for
clusters of symbolic associations, semantic fields, narrative patterns, and
significant themes, and situates them in the frame of an organized
conceptual whole. All these elements are then sorted into relations of
identity and difference, correspondence and contrast, so that what initially
seemed paradoxical, ambiguous, or out of place can be shown to belong to a
complex system (or systems) with a logic that is peculiarly its own.
The quest of this mind is to enter into the mind of the other-into the
"architecture of the mind," as Vernant puts it-to discover those mental and
psychological categories "beyond texts and documents," those "forms of
thought and sensibility, modes of organization of will and acts," those
techniques of knowledge and systems of beliefs and values that we, as heirs
of this culture, often assume to be automatically and transparently our own.
Thus, the big concepts we take for granted-time, space, memory, the body,
death, sexuality, the idea of work, even the notion of the individual-are
relative categories. They are defined and shaped as particular creations and
expressions of a particular mind in a particular setting, not universal
givens, fixed and immutable in some timeless state.
This other mind, this Greek mind, has a context; that context is historical,
and this means, first, taking account of the great turning points that usher
in changes and new formations, such as the invention of philosophy or the
inauguration of legal institutions or the birth of the image as an imitation
of appearance. All these events may be taken as evidence of shifts in
mentality with psychological and cognitive implications that extend far
beyond the facts and details of their specific achievements. But, second and
even more to the point, this abstraction we are calling "mind" belongs, of
course, to human subjects, and human subjects are in turn rooted in the
society they have fabricated and continue to maintain in the course of their
history. For Vemant, mind can at no time be separated from its society;
every mental fact is also and always a social fact (and the inverse), and
its presence is discernible in the multiple and multidimensional workings of
that society. "Whether it is a question of religious facts: myths, rituals,
and figural representations-or of philosophy, science, art, social
institutions, technical or economic facts, we always consider them as works
created by men, as an expression of an organized mental activity." The quest
for mind as revealed through these works is therefore a first and necessary
stage along the route of the ultimate quest, which is "to investigate what
man was himself, this ancient Greek man who cannot be detached from the
social and cultural context of which he is both its creator and product."
(1)
(1) Introduction to Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs: Etudes de psychologie
historique, (Paris, 1965), 9.
Mind and society, mind in society, and society in historical context: these
indissociable pairings account for the stereoscopic gaze that surveys a
territory it always envisions simultaneously from two or more points of
view. Thus, a polytheistic organization of divinities is understood both "as
a divine society with its own hierarchy, in which each god enjoys his or her
own particular attributes and privileges, bearing a more or less close, more
or less direct relation to the structure of human society: and secondly as a
classificatory system, a symbolic language with its own intellectual ends."
(2) Or, to take another, more limited example, divination (as discussed in
this volume) is treated as a mode of thought, an intellectual operation, and
as an affair of social actors, whose oracular expertise competes with other
forms of knowledge and other practitioners (bards, physicians), who also
participate in decision making within the body politic.
In the case of the dramatic genre of tragedy, the aim is to take account of
its three different historical aspects, none of which can be reduced to the
other, but which ' 'hinge together and combine to constitute a unique human
achievement." Tragedy is a social and public phenomenon, sponsored by the
polis in fifth-century Athens; it is a new type of aesthetic production with
its own formal shape and internal concerns. It also reflects a new
psychological state of mind, concerned with developing notions of the agent,
the will, individual responsibility, and choices in action, that represents
a turning point in the history of the self.'
Different angles of approach to a single problem are not mutually exclusive.
Each can shed light on one facet of the question, and in so doing, better
elucidate the relations between them. This principle is especially true in
the case of a long-standing mythic tradition when faced with the facts of
evolving social realities. The institution of marriage is an excellent case
in point. It can be studied historically as the changing customs of a social
institution and also as a subject for mythological analysis, without any
divorce between the two on grounds of incompatibility. Quite the contrary;
it was Marcel Detienne's work on the relevant corpus of myths that
stimulated Vernant's interest in the historical project. In Vernant's view,
"these are two aspects of a single piece of research," whose double aim "is
to distinguish more clearly the reciprocal effects of society and myth and
to define both the similarities and . . . divergencies between these two
levels which illuminate one another and which now reinforce, now check and
counterbalance, one another." (4)
(2) Introduction to Myth and Society in Ancient Greece, trans. Janet Lloyd
(Atlantic Highlands. N.J., I980), ix (originally published as Mythe et
societé en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1974).
(3) Preface to Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, with Pierre Vidal-Naquet,
trans. Janet Lloyd (Atlantic Highlands. N.J., 1981), ix (originally
published as Mythe et tragédie en Grece ancienne (Paris, 1973).
(4) Ibid.
Vernant's approach has a name, several names in fact: historical
anthropology is one. It too has a history and a context reaching back to the
anthropological and sociological tradition founded in France in the early
years of this century by Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, among others, and
incorporating the later shifts in historical method and outlook exemplified
by the work of the Annales school of historiography.
In his own writings, Vernant credits two figures as his mentors: Louis
Gernet, the Hellenist, historian (especially of juridical institutions), and
pioneer in the application of anthropological methods to the study of
ancient Greece, and the other, Ignace Meyerson, who developed the field
known as historical psychology, which takes the range of psychological and
cognitive functions to be historically determined and operative in every
type of cultural and social activity. To these can be added the work and
theories of two scholars in Indo-European studies. The first is Georges
Dumézil, who revitalized the comparatist study of myth through his use of
linguistic and sociological techniques. His aim was to identify an
ideological continuum underlying the structures of these mythic traditions
and to determine how these permanent patterns are to be understood in the
historical frame of actual social organizations. (5) The second is Emile
Benveniste, who turned to comparative linguistic phenomena and focused on
the study of semantic fields in order to pinpoint the cultural meanings of
significant concepts, values, and institutions. Finally, we should single
out the structuralist anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss, who treats myth
as a logical system of classification consisting of sets of binary
oppositions that, like a language, may be combined in different ways, and
undergo certain rule-governed transformations that can be identified and
deciphered only in the light of all the versions of a given myth and only
according to the cultural categories of a given society. In this emphasis on
the formal structures and codes underlying the surface of the mythic
narrative, myth assumes a function and meaning as a provisional
problem-solving device; it is a kind of "logical tool" that each time aims
to find some middle term to mediate "between contradictions that, in life,
are actually insoluble," the most persistent of these being the variance
between nature and culture.(6)
(5)  See "The Reason of Myth," in Myth and Society, 225-26.
(6) For a useful summary, see ibid., 226 33. For a trenchant critique, cp.
Renate Schlesier, "Lévi-Strauss' Mythology of the Myth," Telos 77(1988);
143-57.
The foregoing is, of course, only the most cursory sketch of the shaping
influences on Vemant's own intellectual development, and it could also have
included the names and accomplishments of still other scholars who have made
their distinctive contributions to the study of ancient Greece. It is not my
intention, however, to trace in any detail the theoretical principles and
individual achievements of these other pioneers in their respective fields,
nor to specify their and others' relevance to Vernant's own work and
outlook. On these interrelated topics Vemant himself has, on more than one
occasion, written with clarity and spirit, and no more so than in two pieces
included in this volume. The first is a paper he presented on history and
psychology in 1965 before an audience of historians, and the second is his
inaugural lecture for the Chair in Comparative Studies of Ancient Religions
at the Collège de France (which he held from 1975 until his retirement in
1984). I want, rather, to take my cue from Vernant's insistence on cultural
context, this time not with respect to the society under scrutiny, but as
seen from the other side, that of the observer. And as the representative of
another, if related, culture, who is in a position to observe the observer,
I want to raise another issue, based on Vernant's frequent assertions that
Greek culture cannot serve as a mirror in which we unreflectively view
ourselves and our own habits of thought and through which we translate back
into another time and place those cognitive assumptions we have absorbed and
ourselves transformed in the course of our own history.
To attempt to reach into the mind of that other whom Vernant calls "ancient
Greek man" requires therefore a special mental effort on our part, a
conscious process of disengagement that drives a wedge between what we are
and think and what we have inherited. And yet, in the objective stance we
cultivate, are we not also and always subjects? Even in the name of
historical anthropology, can one ever cross that mental boundary over
distant reaches of space and time without considering how the self and the
other are bound into some kind of symbiotic relation, some perceivable
affinity? Is there, in fact, a mirror that Vernant holds up to the study of
ancient Greece in which he himself is inevitably reflected, revealed as a
bearer, just like the other, of his own cultural baggage? And to what extent
can he gaze in that mirror, and, as in the case of the uncanny mirror hung
on the wall of a temple in Arcadia, see not his own image therein but that
of those others, the gods whose statues are placed in that shrine? At one
level, Vernant himself provides the answer that states his position and
justifies his own optimism:
_The works ancient Greece created are different enough from that of our
mental universe to give us a sense of disorientation from ourselves, to give
us, along with the feeling of a historical distance, the consciousness of a
change in the person. At the same time, they are not as foreign to us as
others are. They are transmitted to us without a loss of continuity. They
are still living in our cultural tradition to which we continue to remain
attached. Remote enough from us to study him as an object and as any other
object to which our modern psychological categories do not entirely apply,
Greek man is nevertheless close enough for us to be able, without too many
obstacles, to enter into communication with him._
Vernant wrote these words more than twenty-five years ago in the
introduction to Mythe et pensée chez les Grecs (p. 10), his first collection
of eye-opening essays (since issued with additions and corrections in ten
editions and translated into numerous languages), and, although current
critical opinion would tend to reassess the idea of continuity as a series
of historical reinventions of the past, I think it likely that he would not
substantially modify this general view. That his confidence was not
misplaced, however, is borne out by the broad range of work he then
produced, often in collaboration with others, in the growth and success of
the center he helped found for comparative research on ancient societies,
and in the increasing diffusion of the concepts and principles identified
with his name in a number of different intellectual spheres. But it is
precisely the success of his enterprise, even if challenged at times or
modified by the work of others, that leads me to question again the relation
between Vernant in his French-speaking culture and that other with whom he
feels able to establish an easy communication. To put it somewhat
differently, what does Vernant mean when he speaks of the continuities
within "our" tradition, and how might these be defined in the present
context? Here, playing the "other" to Vernant's "self," I propose that
perhaps there is indeed a special affinity, not just between the Greek
tradition and some larger category called Western tradition, but some
distinctive "meeting of minds" when French culture encounters the Hellenic
world in this anthropological perspective by which the emphasis falls on the
entwined concern with mind and society that is expressed in the very notion
of "les sciences humaines."
There is no exact English equivalent for this term that joins together what
we usually separate into two domains. In the current climate in French
intellectual life, which has witnessed a remarkable period of ferment in an
atmosphere of both heated debates and cordial collaborations, "les sciences
humaines" have come to fulfill their two underlying premises in an intense
preoccupation with theory, method, and principle, on the one hand, and in a
continuing engagement with the social dimensions of history, on the other.
Despite the obvious differences in their work, all the various figures I
mentioned earlier could be analyzed from this dual perspective (with the
addition of others such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, both also
former professors at the Collège de France). What I see as the common thread
that binds them is the responsiveness in their work to the ideological bent
of their formalist rule-governed culture and its demand for cognitive
coherence. The emphasis on reason, logic, and exacting analysis speaks to a
certain passion for order, system, and intelligibility that is not limited
to philosophical contexts but philosophically extends to the study of
society itself. Vernant's vision of an "organized mental activity" is
matched by the corresponding shared conviction that society is indeed
intelligible. With the proper conceptual framework and sufficiently rigorous
techniques of analysis, society can be made to reveal its underlying
structures and forms as well as its salient points of stress and strain.
Social processes, if not always reasonable, in the Cartesian sense of the
word, can at least be deciphered and understood when viewed through the
optic of an organizing focus. The persistent search for those underlying
principles that would make sense of the diversity and contradictions of
human life accounts for the widespread tendency to emphasize the social
aspects of human psychology, and corresponds to the challenge of
interpreting the particular and the peculiar within a constructed frame of
established social norms. Depth psychology, along with Freud, is a
latecomer, as we know, to the French scene. If it is embraced more warmly as
a result of the cerebral transformations worked on it by a figure like
Jacques Lacan, it is in part because to be accepted, the politics of the
family romance seemed to require a symbolic and social level of analysis
that would transcend a stay-at-home Oedipus and the tyrannical role he has
exercised in the literal scenario of psychic formations. Oedipus in France
is also the Oedipus of Lévi-Strauss, an exemplar of the human dilemma of
"born from one, born from two," or the "anti-Oedipe" of capitalist society
as promoted by Deleuze and Guattari, where for Vernant, of course, the
original Oedipus is "sans complexe," a figure of the theater who reflects
his society in the ritual role of the scapegoat (pharmakos) and the
political institution of ostracism.
But the name of Oedipus leads me to shift to the other side of the argument,
namely, the contention that there is some vital bond between classical
French attitudes and concerns and the heritage of classical culture, which
seems to have penetrated deeply and silently into the mental practices of
French society and is, in part, replicated there in its modes of discourse.
All the general trends and habits enumerated above can be found, I think, in
the cultural tradition of the other that serves as the fundamental and
enduring model: the emphasis on mind from the _noos_ ot the Odyssey to
Anaxagoras's deified _Nous_ to Platonic and Aristotelian notions of
intellection, the demand for reason and intelligibility, the gift for theory
and formal categories of thought, the preoccupation with the analysis of
society and social norms, endlessly debated, and the curiosity about human
nature and what is often sentimentally called "the human condition."
Even rhetorical habits, inculcated over centuries of French educational
practices, show affinities with the binary thought characteristic of Greek
language and expression with the familiar oscillation between "on the one
hand" and "on the other." There is the insistence on a triadic form of
argument with a beginning, a middle, and an end, or the division of a
problem into three component parts, and the high value placed on the
achievement of an aesthetic style of form and balance. This fondness for
balance also reveals itself in the desire to station oneself in a position
neither too remote nor too close to the object in question. Both an
intellectual and an aesthetic stance, the concept of a "bonne distance,"
reflected in the thought of Pascal and evident too in structuralist ideas
about mediation between opposites through a middle term, owes not a little
to Aristotle's notion of the mean, and fits more generally with Greek
concerns about geometrically defined limits and boundaries.
These generalizations are far too broad and there are, of course, many other
trends and pressures in the French intellectual and humanist tradition.
Nevertheless, for Vernant in particular, trained originally in philosophy
before he turned to anthropology and the study of religion and society,
there is a remarkable consonance between his style, thought, and strategies
of analysis and those of the very culture he is exploring. Especially
revealing in this respect is a remark Vernant made criticizing the usual
historical approach to Greek myth that treats it as an aggregate of random
particulars rather than "as a whole system with its own vocabulary and
general framework, its own rules and inherent constraints.'' Refusing to
accept the idea of "a scattered and heterogeneous pantheon, a mythology of
bits and pieces," he asks: "If this was the polytheism of the Greeks, how
could these men, whose exacting rigor in the realms of intellectual
consistency is extolled, have lived their religious life in a kind of
chaos?" (7) Vernant's attraction to myth and the structured logic he has
found in its modes of expression, which constitutes perhaps his most
enduring achievement, exemplifies the passion of that philosophical mind to
turn the most tangled, the most recalcitrant bundle of stuff into the warp
and weft of an elegant fabric with intricate but regular folds.
If I have pointed to some of the mirroring, even mimetic, effects that
account for the intimate relationship between the observer and the observed
(which is not entirely immune to a certain critique that the modes of
inquiry are enmeshed in the very system they aim to explicate), (8) the
issue is one less of theoretical purity than of the practical results of
Vernant's work, which has helped shape and direct a field that bears the
distinctive impression of his virtuoso mind and that, in its details, has
proved so accurate in contexts he never even addressed. It is finally this
encompassing power that, beyond all the determinants of his cultural milieu,
beyond his rare combination of the qualities of an exceptional scholar,
decisively places him in a pantheon of preeminence shared by the very few.
George Steiner's admiration for another remarkable scholar of our era
applies precisely also, in my opinion, to Vernant:
(7)  "Greek Religion, Ancient Religions." below, chap. 16.
(8)  See Robert Pogue Harrison, "The Ambiguities of Philology," Diacritics
16 (1986): 14-20.
_No less than the master translator or actor or performer of music, the
truly great scholar becomes as one with his material, however abstruse,
however recondite. He melts the strength of his own personality and
technical virtuosity into the historical epoch, the literary or philosophic
text, the sociological fabric that he is analyzing and presenting to us. In
turn, that fabric, that set of primary sources, will take on something of
its interpreter's voice and style. It will become his without ceasing to be
itself. . . , Yet in each case the alchemy reinstates the strength of the
material._
Steiner is speaking of Gershom Scholem, the towering figure who through his
study of Kabbalistic works transformed our understanding of Hebrew thought
and left a lasting heritage in other fields of endeavor. In support of his
judgment on the special character of Scholem's "life-giving scholarship,"
Steiner points to those others in whom the fusion of the self and the
material has achieved a kind of memorable transcendence. "There is now an
ancient China" he says, "that is Joseph Needham's, a Hellenistic
civilization that speaks in the accents of the late Arnaldo Momigliano, a
mapping of grammars which will for a long time to come carry the imprint of
Roman Jakobson." (9) To these attributions I would add that there is a
distinctive territory of archaic and classical Greece, which is the one I
earlier attempted to describe, and it most assuredly belongs to Jean-Pierre
Vernant.
(9) The entire quote is excerpted from George Steiner's piece, "The Friend
of a Friend," a review of Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom
Scholem: 1932-1940, trans. Gary Smith and André Lefevere, New Yorker
(January 23, 1990): 133-36.
[NB: ometto le pagg. 11-22 dell'introduzione]
It remains only to offer some more personal thoughts on Vernant and his work
and the roles he has played in others' lives.
In speculating earlier on the special affinities between Vernant and the
approaches he takes to his objects of study, I deferred one last point for
discussion until I had completed the summary of essays included in this
volume. I did so because I could then rely on the brief synopses to
highlight what is perhaps the feature most characteristic of Vernant's
intellectual position but which I suggest is also ultimately revealing of
the man himself.
At the heart of his enterprise is the belief in the idea of relatedness as
the way to understand any given phenomenon, large or small, whether an
institution, a figure, a concept, or even an entire ideology. This emphasis
is a natural corollary of the insistence on system and structure, on a
network of interlocking parts, each indispensable to the other. It goes well
too with the conviction that cultural facts can and must be interpreted on a
number of different planes since, by his own definition, they participate in
more than one sphere of interest-political, social, religious, cognitive,
aesthetic, and so forth. Whether that relationship is one of sameness or
difference, of similitude or opposition, no one feature or fact is permitted
to exist in isolation, extracted from its context and left to stand all
alone. It is always a question of relative position through which some
constitutive element can be defined and situated in its proper place. This
principle extends from a single immediate context to the larger cultural
sphere and operates all the way up to the level of culture itself as it is
compared with other cultures that share relevant points of contact in
respect to some given theme, such as an ideology of death, sacrificial
rites, religious beliefs, or the concept of the individual.
But beyond this habit of comparison and contrast and the inclusiveness of
data and method, Vernant's integrative approach to his object of study has
another, more human dimension; it is matched and enhanced by his interest in
how a society integrates the outsider, the stranger, into its civic and
religious structures, able to accommodate even the presence of a barbarian
goddess like Taurian Artemis, transposed to Greece and finally Hellenized.
To bring an other into the group is what he admires; this is best expressed
perhaps in one of his very few editorializing remarks:
_In making the goddess of the margins into a power of integration and
assimilation, as when they take Dionysos, who incarnates the figure of the
Other in the Greek pantheon, and install him at the center of the social
system, right out front in the theater, the Greeks pass on an important
lesson. They invite us, not to become polytheists, to believe in Artemis and
Dionysos, but to construe the idea of civilization as giving each his or her
place. They invite us to an attitude of mind that not only has moral and
political value, but that is properly intellectual and is called
tolerance.(12)_
The spatial metaphor of map and territory, boundaries and divisions,
juxtaposition and distance, as I have used it, is a convenient way to
describe Vernant's entire undertaking and indeed is a frequent idiom in his
work that it was also my intention to imply. But if we shift the angle of
vision, we might reread this entire complex ensemble as a sign of a certain
sociability implicit in the work that, beyond theoretical principles, turns
out to depend for its scope on a host of relations with many others. It is
true, of course, that to compare one's own sphere with another's obviously
requires the contacts of collective ventures, some of which are represented
in this assortment of essays. It is also true that the demand for multiple
levels of analysis and for the integration of many disparate facts into a
single frame means that the work can best be done in collaboration with
others, who all contribute their special funds of knowledge and whose own
inquiries can corroborate and also expand the prior fields of reference.
These are the practical factors, and the availability of many hands and many
minds has made it possible to produce a large and substantial body of work
that covers many areas and addresses many different concerns. But beyond
their utilitarian value, these factors attest to Vernant's own situation
within a group, his emplacement always in relation to others with whom he
shares a cooperative enterprise. Speaking of comparatist study, he comments
that "each project, each team working together on it, thus takes on a slight
tinge of joint adventure in which open-mindedness, intellectual empathy, and
friendship, quite apart from competence, have always had and will always
have their place." (13) No small part of the success of what has been called
"l'école de Paris" and its group of Vernantiens (14) has been due to the
formal establishment of the Centre de Recherches Comparées sur les Sociéés
(12) "The Figure and Functions of Artemis in Myth and Cult.,' below, chap.
11.
(13) "Greek Religion, Ancient Religions," below, chap. 16.
(14) Liberation (April 13, 1989).
Anciennes in Paris (now called Centre Louis Gernet) (15) and to those who
jointly participated in seminars or shared the fruits of their research.
Vernant may have been the guiding star here until his retirement, but he was
also one element in a web of reciprocal relations, both intellectual and
social, involving other colleagues in France and elsewhere, those in his own
field as well as those in other disciplines. (16) I am thinking here
particularly of Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a cofounder of the Centre, as well as
Marcel Detienne, Nicole Loraux. Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, François
Lissarrague, Alain Schnapp, Claude Mosse, François Hartog., and others too
numerous to mention. The Centre at 10 rue Monsieur le Prince extended (and
still extends) its hospitality to all comers, welcoming outsiders of every
sort and attuned to a babel of many accents and tongues. In those days it
was always Vernant who, by the magnetic force of his personality and that
innate sociability-that deep concern for and interest in the other-brought
people together, myself included, into a sheltering society of diverse
relations. And it was Vemant whose home, like his mind, was always a
crossroads, a hospitable meeting place, for those whose persons and ideas he
so generously entertained.
There are, of course, other valid points of contact between the man and the
work, his ideas and his ideals. But one in particular is appropriate for the
end, and that is the link between Vernant's emphasis on the civic order as
the central focus of mind in action and Vernant himself in the role of the
citizen, not only as a "speaker of words" but also as a "doer of deeds" in
the heroic manner. In France, if Vernant has won renown for his intellectual
feats and oratorical skills, he has also won kleos in the annals of the
Resistance as the famous "Colonel Berthier" who at Toulouse ran a military
network of the FFI in the region of the Midi-Pyrénées, and whose daring
exploits earned him the cherished title of "Compagnon de la Libération."
In civilian life, however, even as he ascended the ranks of academe, he has
always been affectionately known as Jipé to all and sundry. A man of courage
and simplicity, generous in spirit, wise of counsel, a born raconteur, and
possessed of a deep kindness and sympathy for others. The work on this
volume was truly a labor of love for me and a very small tribute to that
honest and radiant human being who is Jean-Pierre Vernant.
(15)This group is under the auspices of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes.
(16) See for example the lists of contributors in Poikilia: Etudes offertes
à Jean-Pierre Vernant (Paris, 1987), and in Texts and Contexts: American
Classical Studies in Honor of J-P. Vernant, guest editors Ann Bergren and
Froma I. Zeitlin, Arethusa 15 (1982).
[fine citazione]
Mi scuso per la lunghezza della citazione, ma conto che questo ritratto a
tutto tondo possa risultare utile a quanti siano interessati a questa
luminosa figura di studioso: per approfondimenti ulteriori non posso che
rimandare ai molteplici interventi del mio prof. pisano Riccardo Di Donato
tra cui in part. segnalerei, oltre al volume Per una antropologia storica
del Mondo antico, La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1990, la raccolta Passé et
présent. Contributions à une psychologie historique réunies par R. Di
Donato, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1995 (con ulteriori indicaz.
bibliografiche), l'agile "Invito alla lettura dell'opera di J.-P. Vernant",
introduz. alla trad. it. -presso Editori Riuniti, 1993- di "Le origini del
pensiero greco", e, recentemente, la voce "Vernant" nel Dictionnaire des
Sciences Humaines, Paris, PUF, 2006.
Un saluto,
Nico