Alchemy

Homeric Essay for 2026-02-02.

When composer Carl Stamitz (1745-1801) was running out of money, faith, and time, his wife died. Then, around a year later, he himself passed away. He was a talented, well-raised musician whose father, Johann Stamitz, had founded the Mannheim school of composition, which bridged the baroque and classical periods. When Carl died, among the possessions and papers he left behind were a plethora of tracts on alchemy.

Why did Carl try to produce Gold? And more importantly for us: is there any connection between the idea of alchemy and the poet’s performance? Carl did not have enough money to survive, and despite his touring as a virtuoso in earlier years and his precocious talent, he was unable to find an economic reason for his success.

These limitations do not exist for the Homeric singer. The subject of this essay is a hypothesis of the Homeric singer that must survive in a world where all the world becomes the economy of God (or house of laws of God, from οἶκος, νόμος, and θέος). Here, we offer that the Homeric singer is in no need of money, but is in great need of sustenance in a different way: the redemption of human rationality in the likeness of God, or the ability to recite something that is more powerful than not just the rectification of physical here and now testimonia, but the responsibility in name only of the soul to reach toward higher things. This monumental task is rapidly approaching every single one of us.

The guardrail between insomnia and passion is maintained by the stricture of oblivion that a good artist has before they need to resort to τέχνη (their skills) out of personal longing. Without this guardrail, they become only their skill, and the physical self falters. However, those who love art, and must practice it, cannot be denied this calling. We can see in those who love that an infinite passion for tracing the designs of God are irrevocable. Once this passion is found, it will continue until it takes its poet, as in the Aesopic fable of the Donkey and the Grasshoppers. The Donkey asks: How can I sing as well as you? What do you live on to create your beautiful singing? And in response, they name their ambrosia: the Dew. On a diet of dew alone (as in accordance with Ancient Natural History), the Donkey dies shortly thereafter.

Oblivion on an infinite scale is coming to those who are rational for the sake of self-sacrifice, in that they don’t believe that they can accomplish anything with their lives. They are committed to the special type of ossification that is the result of living without a calling, and heard in Nestor’s exhortation at the final line before the ships in Book 15:

Νέστωρ αὖτε μάλιστα Γεγήνιος, οὖρος Ἀχαιῶν,

λίσσεθ᾽ ὑπὲρ τοκέων γουνούμενος ἄνδρα ἕκαστον·

“ὦ φίλοι, ἀνέρες ἔστε, καὶ αὶδῶ θέσθ᾽ ἐνὶ θυμῷ

ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων, ἐπὶ δὲ μνέσασθε ἕκαστος

παίδων ἠδ᾽ ἀλόχων καὶ κτήσιος ἠδὲ τοκήων,

ἠμὲν ὅτεῳ ζώουσι καὶ ᾧ κατατεθνήκασι·

τῶν ὕπερ ἐνθάδ᾽ ἐγὼ γουνάζομαι οὐ παρεόντων

ἑστάμεναι κρατερῶς, μηδὲ τρωπᾶσθε φόβονδε.”

Iliad, 15.559-666

Gerenian Nestor then shouted most of all, warden of the Achaeans,

And implored, each man by those who had created him:

“Oh Friends, be men, and put Shame in your Spirit

Of other men, and let you all, each of you, remember

Your children, wives, and parents and what he has:

And indeed whether they are living or whether they have died.

I implore you on behalf of those who are not here right now

To stand and fight strongly, and not to turn to Rout.”

Their ossification is the counting up of stores and the recollection of those that have passed on, or may yet pass on; maybe they remember their parents or wives or children or possessions as having been ‘alive’ in their time before the war, but because it has now been so long, this may no longer be the case. They are then, in this powerful evocation by Nestor, asked to feel shame for this attachment, and grasp onto something that, by the very mention of these perishables, is more profound and elongated in a way by which the κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα, those who are stretching out evils shamefully, can absolve the human conscious of; they are asked to make a decision for themselves, and commit to a fare of commission in our imagined customs house of God which brooks no untimely hexameter or revisitation of memory, but plays with the great turn and actualization of why sublimity and the missing of the mark is never not καιρὸς for the harvester of myth, or the sensitive person who must need to feel beauty and love.

Stamitz’s alchemical desire is not one that is stymied by the precipitation of gold, but rather one that then turns the soul of the singer toward something that is more important, which is the question of when these gold likenesses cluster and forbid the personal and physical self from excuses and unholy devotion, or what the singer is supposed to do: and this poetic question, this ultimate act of doing, is the level of intention and precision that we must seek in each recitation of a line of hexameter in the works of Homer, who more than anyone else attempts to transcend the recollective asbestos of what we must fail to accomplish in one generation, which is the prospect of going on beyond ourselves. This humility and the terminal nature of the slow evolution of poetry in a speech like Nestor’s goes beyond the individual and tradition robbing the dreamer, and allows the dreamer to seek a fulfilling catharsis that supersedes an enumeration of their small self and to turn to the great encomia of heaven which is poetry that makes one happy through echoing some vitalized aspect of infinity. In that sense, Nestor is correct in listing children, wives, and parents. If one sees the near term effects of accretive τέχνη on society, the collocation of these theoeconomic questions become imminent, and particularly important for the singer.

For more on κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα and Nestor’s speech above, cf. Cairns 1993, 68-71.

For Stamitz’s works, I recommend his Op. 8 no. 4, the Oboe Quartet in E-Flat Major.

For more on the cicadas in Aesop’s fables and their dew, see van Dijk 1997, 327-330.