Mythical thought and ambiguity in the speech of the aoidos, the singer

Abstract

Mythical thought, as a way of organizing and codifying the world, has found its mode of expression in the voice of the singer, the poet. Mythical thought and poetic speech are more or less the same thing in a way; at any rate they are complementary and interdependent. The poet, through his speech, establishes a relationship of power as regards other men, and at the same time a relationship of “non-power” as regards the gods. The goal here is to evaluate this ambiguous position of the poet, his posture of potency-impotency. To do so, we shall use the object of the poet’s own érgon, i.e., his poetic speech, as reference point.