Centos

“The Homeric centos may be said to stand to the Iliad and Odyssey as parole does to langue” (MD Usher, Homeric Stitchings, 2008: 10).

 

Enjoying a peak in the fourth century AD (in a history of relatively lukewarm reception of the form), a cento is a poem “made up entirely of verses lifted verbatim, or with only slight modification” from another (Usher, 2) and could thus be termed a mediatory form of writing. The creativity is thus not in the poetic imagination itself, but rather in the aesthetic judgment of selection, curation and combination of existing verses, and the application of strict rules (laid out by Ausonius, b.310–d.395).

One of the best known exponents was Aelia Eudocia Augusta, known simply as Eudocia, to whom the Homerocentones (c. 421 AD) – deriving solely from Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey – is attributed. Stitching together lines from Homer’s texts, Eudocia constructs “a single, continuous poem on a biblical theme that recounts the creation of the world, the temptation and fall of man, and the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ” (Usher, 3).

As a process of collage, this may appear a relatively straightforward task, and centos have suffered from criticism that they are an amateur form of mechanistic art, or a type of folk art or art brut. However, recent (post-Digital Turn) scholarship is increasingly suggesting that Eudocia’s task, at a level of deep structure, was complex and creative, and very strongly focused on reader experience.

Usher writes:

“To comprehend themes in the Homeric Centos, we must go below the poetic surface of the Centos and venture into the areas of context, referentiality, and meaning. At this semantic level of the poem the Homeric verses used by Eudocia must constantly be related to the biblical or biblically-derived theme material […]. In the Centos there is an additional twist in that the signs of one system have been appropriated to express the signifieds of another […]. While Eudocia’s generation of Cento verse may have been facilitated by thematic structures built into and shared between the Homeric and biblical narratives, her choice and handling of this material was also a reader’s response, that is, an aesthetic judgment.” (82-83).

Chomsky writes of “the inability of surface structure to indicate semantically significant grammatical relations (i.e. to serve as deep structure)” (Semantic Structures, 1966: 17). We could perhaps infer, then, that stitching things together at the level of surface alone compromises meaning. Eudocia’s process seems to involve curation at both deep and surface level of both source texts and new text, and I would argue that generativity requires precisely this deep and surface engagement. Far from being a mechanical, skill-free process, it requires constant attention to meaning.

In stitching together units of poetry, Eudocia is employing two types of intertextuality: material (surface), and structural (deep). Usher writes:

“Material intertextuality corresponds to the quotation, the repetition of signs. Structural intertextuality consists in the repetition of narrative rules. Both types are fully operative in the Homeric Centos, which use the repetition of signs (Homeric verses) to reproduce biblical narrative according to narrative rules that both codes share. Although the signs of the Homeric and biblical codes are often at variance, the two texts can be assimilated in the reader’s response because on the narrative plane their signifieds, or themes, share structural, that is, morphological elements” (87).

CS Peirce (1839-1914), American pragmatist and semiotician, described three essential elements of thought as a signifying process: an object, a sign and an interpretant. Under this model, Usher suggests that the object is the biblical, the sign is the Homeric verse, and the interpretant is the poet, or, writes Usher:

“to put it more abstractly, a ‘second thought,’ which interprets a first thought initiated by the sign. This abstract notion of the interpretant is preferable to simply equating it with the poet since, as Peirce is careful to point out, ‘throughout this process, introspection is not resorted to. Nothing is assumed respecting the subjective elements of consciousness which cannot be securely inferred from the objective elements’ (Peirce 1867: 26). For our analysis of Cento intertextuality as a generative system, the interpretant is the most important element of the semiotic triad. How it mediates between sign and object is of primary concern.” (96)

Usher concludes: “Eudocia is essentially a comparatist – a careful reader with an excellent memory which delights in the workings of plot and character. Her Centos are an act of Homeric and biblical interpretation in which surface and symbol possess equal validity. Her art ‘is at once Surface and Symbol’, the product, we might say, of an ‘anagogical’ reading of Homer, in the sense defined by Dante (Convivio 2.1), whose validation of both surface and symbolic meanings stands in a tradition of poetic theory stretching back at least as far as the philosopher Proclus, Eudocia’s younger contemporary.” (145). (See the bottom of this page for more about Dante’s understanding of the anagogical sense in relation to the literal, the allegorical and the moral).

Finally, it might also be worth considering whether the cento can perhaps be more readily assimilated into Jenkins’ political notion of participation than might first appear: in their essay in Plett’s Intertexuality (1991), ‘The Cento: A form of Intertextuality from Montage to Parody’, Verweyen and Witting point out more than other literary forms, the cento “can serve two opposite purposes: on the one hand, the constitution/formation and confirmation/endorsement of norms” (using canonical texts/authors); but “on the other hand their violation”, through the deconstruction and selective reassembly of the text (1991: 173). Depending on the level of semantic engagement, the cento can stand for Adorno’s resistance and the rupturing of automatism just as much as any ‘originally-creative’ art form (in the now-outdated definition of creation as creating something from nothing) might achieve.

And could we even begin to consider it as a mode of accessing eternity? In Jeweled Style: Poetry and Poetics in Late Antiquity (1989), critic Michael Roberts writes of the process of cento-making that: “fragments of earlier poets, invested with brilliance and colour by their original context, are manipulated and juxtaposed in striking new combinations, often exploiting the contrast with the previous text in sense, situation, or setting” (1989: 56).

 

Dante’s four modes of meaning, as outlined in the Convivio are:

The litterale – that which does not go beyond the surface of the letter (“quello che non si stende più oltre la lettera de le parole fittizie”)

The allegorico – the sense hidden beneath the cloak of the literal (“quello che si nasconde sotto ’l manto”)

The morale – the sense that teachers should assiduously seek in the Scriptures, both for their own profit and for their pupils (“quello che li lettori deono intentamente andare appostando per le scritture, ad utilitade di loro e loro discenti”)

The anagogico – what lies beyond the senses (“sovrasenso”); has to be accessed first through the literal. (1968: 31):

“questo è quando spiritualmente si spone una scrittura, la quale ancora [sia vera] eziandio nel senso litterale, per le cose significate significa de le superne cose de l’etternal gloria: sì come vedere si può in quallo canto del Profeta che dice che, ne l’uscita del popolo d’Israel d’Egitto, Giudea è fatta santa e libera. Che avvegna essere vero secondo la lettera sia manifesto, non meno è vero quello che spiritualmente s’intende, cioè che ne l’uscita de l’anima dal peccato, essa si fatta santa e libera in sua potestate. E in dimostrar questo, sempre lo litterale dee andare innanzi, sì come quello ne la cui sentenza li altri sono inchuisi, e sanza lo quale sarebbe impossibile ed inrazionale intendere a li altri, e massimamente a lo allegorico. È impossibile, però che in ciascuna cosa che ha dentro e di fuori è impossibile venire al dentro, se prima non si viene al di fuori: onde, con ciò che sia cosa che ne le scritture [la litterale sentenza] sia sempre lo di fuori, impossibile è venire a l’altre, massimamente a l’allegorica, sanza prima venire a la litterale” (Convivio, 2.1) (1968: 31-32).

[translation: “this occurs when a scripture is expounded in a spiritual sense which, although it is true also in the literal sense, signifies by means of the things signified a part of the supernal things of eternal glory, as may be seen in the song of the Prophet which says that when the people of Israel went out of Egypt, Judea was made whole and free. For although it is manifestly true according to the letter, that which is spiritually intended is no less true, namely, that when the soul departs from sin it is made whole and free in its power. In this kind of explication, the literal should always come first, as being the sense in whose meaning the others are enclosed, and without which it would be impossible and illogical to attend to the other senses, and especially the allegorical. It would be impossible because in everything that has an inside and an outside it is impossible to arrive at the inside without first arriving at the outside; consequently, since in what is written down the literal meaning is always the outside, it is impossible to arrive at the other senses, especially the allegorical, without first arriving at the literal.” (Translation by Richard Lansing, http://dante.ilt.columbia.edu/books/convivi/convivio02.html#01)