The Lyric I

The “lyric I” names the first-person speaker who emerges in the personal poetry of Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon between the seventh and the fifth centuries BCE. For bruno-snell, its appearance marks a decisive turning in the history of the European interior. Where Homeric epic celebrates the deeds of heroes, the lyric concerns itself with the speaker’s own condition: “the poets show that next to the eulogy which forms their primary theme they consider it an important task to talk about themselves” (Snell 1953, p. 45).

What distinguishes the lyric I from any analogous Homeric moment is its sustained reflexive stance. Homer’s Odysseus may apostrophise his own heart on a single night in Ithaca, but “Homer’s recollection extends to only one earlier episode comparable to the present event” (Snell 1953, p. 59). Archilochus extends this episodic gesture into a whole posture toward life: the self that can address its own thymos, name its own divided feeling, and locate its own personal centre against the social and heroic norm. Archilochus declares that his ideal general is not the tall and well-shaven figure but the small, bow-legged man who “stands firm on his feet, full of heart” (Snell 1953, p. 49) — an inner standard set against the outer.

The lyric I is the philological evidence for what depth psychology will later assume as native to selfhood: the reflective ego capable of standing apart from its own feeling, naming it, and addressing it. This is the prehistory of the interior dialogue, of active-imagination, of every conversation the depth tradition holds with the figures of the soul.

Relationships

• discovery-of-depth
• homeric-plural-self
• thumos
• soul

Primary sources

• snell-discovery-of-the-mind (Snell 1953)