SOURCE: Smethurst, Mae J. “The Style of Nō.” In The Artistry of Aeschylus and Zeami: A Comparative Study of Greek Tragedy and Nō, pp. 148-204. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.

[In the following excerpt, Smethurst chronicles the extensive literary and stylistic similarities between Zeami's play Sanemori and Aeschylus's Persians.]

From the discussion of structure in the two preceding chapters, it should be apparent that, although the finales of both Aeschylus's Persians and Zeami's Sanemori feature vigorous movements and gestures, excited rhythms and music, the effective use of “literary” sources, religious formulas, emotional intensity, and the most important presentation of the main character, the finale of the Persians lacks some of the interest that an audience can derive from that of Sanemori, namely, an engrossing account of the tragic event enacted by the main character. The messenger's narrative account of the battles of Salamis and Psyttaleia in the middle of the tragedy preempts this aspect of the climax in the Persians. In addition, Zeami gains a sharper focus with his use of language. As I pointed out, when the shite says in the rongi that the deep-rooted attachment of warrior hell has again come around, and mentions in the same breath the name of Kiso, the cause of his attachment—Sanemori wanted to fight with him and not a lesser opponent—the syllable ki serves both as a word meaning “come” and as the first syllable of Kiso's name. In the kommos of the Persians, when Aeschylus mentions the goddess Atē by name (1007), refers to the disasters at sea (atai, 1037), and calls Xerxes “great in disaster” (megalate, 1016, that is, both the cause and the victim of disaster), a number of meanings converge; however, they do so less economically and with less focus than in the nō because Aeschylus uses three separate words, whereas Zeami uses but one syllable. This economy of expression in Zeami's style, manifest in his language elsewhere, accounts for one difference in the style of the two playwrights. And yet Aeschylus's style more often bears resemblances to that of Zeami than do Sophocles' or Euripides'. It is to the discussion of style, both the similarities and the differences between the styles of Zeami and Aeschylus, that this chapter and the next are devoted.

Both Zeami and Aeschylus, as might be expected, drew on and were influenced by traditional and contemporary “literature” and rituals.¹ Because much of this material was public, such as the legends handed down by word of mouth, other theater, history, prayers, religious rituals, and the orally recited and sung, even performed, poetry, it was familiar to many members of the audiences. Among nō and tragedy, Sanemori and the Persians were particularly accessible to their audiences since these plays involved the enactment of “real” events—it was noised abroad in Japan that the ghost of Sanemori had appeared to the priest,² and much of the Athenian audience had experienced the Persian Wars firsthand. If Zeami followed his own advice concerning the use of the written classics, we can infer that his literary allusions and borrowings did not pass by the ken of the audience either.³ His son indicates that Zeami suggested the use only of suitable materials and of familiar phrases from the classics, inasmuch as an audience would not understand phrases that were too obscure.⁴ In Aeschylus's case, we must conjecture that, since he drew on a heavily oral and performance-oriented “literary” tradition, his allusions and borrowings were also easily recognizable.

If our evidence from the extant Greek texts is representative of the literature as Aeschylus knew it (and I work on that assumption here), then we can confidently say that in his plays he made allusions. Sometimes Aeschylus, like Zeami, borrowed significantly from other poetry; however, he did not quote directly as Zeami did and, given the more sophisticated written literary tradition at Zeami's disposal, was likely to do.⁵ Another difference in their use of pre-existing materials lies in the extent to which they made their debt explicit: Zeami on occasion went so far as to specify by name the author of a work to which he alluded or which he quoted;⁶ Aeschylus was less specific and never more explicit than to make a statement like, “As the proverb goes,” or, “As they say.”⁷

The special characteristics of medieval Japanese and ancient Greek as languages explain in turn some of the similarities and differences in Zeami's and Aeschylus's handling of literary allusions in their dramatic texts. Both imbedded these allusions in the very fabric of the plays by means not only of transitional phrases, but also of single words. Zeami could integrate these allusions with an economy and subtlety of expression that was more difficult to achieve in the Greek. Because the Japanese language is written using a syllabary, because only the verbs and the adjectives are inflected, and because there are an extraordinary number of homonyms, Zeami could use a single syllable, a unit of sound bearing two meanings and two grammatical functions simultaneously, as a pivot between the borrowed and his own written word. Because the ancient Greek language is alphabetic and highly inflected, Aeschylus was forced to use letters and syllables at the ends of most words as indicators of their grammatical function. Both classical Japanese and classical Greek could express, through inflection of verbs, a variety of tenses, aspects, and moods, and through inflection in the Greek and by means of particles in the Japanese, various grammatical functions of nouns. (Adjectives were inflected like verbs in the Japanese, like nouns in the Greek.) However, the Japanese did not and do not express number, gender, or person except by separate words and, in the case of number, a few isolated suffixes, whereas these categories are unavoidably specified by the inflection of the Greek language. Unlike Greek, moreover, Japanese does not have definite articles. These differences allow for a greater degree of ambiguity in the use of the Japanese language. Yet, compared to Latin, for example, the ancient Greek language exhibits a “naturalness” of syntax, an “elasticity and multiplicity” of vocabulary, and “grammatical liberties in the use of case and tense”⁸ of a sort that allows Aeschylus to write in a style that can be compared to Zeami's.

Zeami's written style, as I have mentioned, is often more economical than that of Aeschylus; however, both playwrights, inasmuch as they write poetry, share the ability to multiply levels of meaning in their plays by means of words rather than the formal syntax of prose. In addition, they both occasionally connect one “scene” to another, one passage to another, one line to another, or one word to another verbally, that is, with an attention to words qua words, rather than to the explicit thought that a combination of the words syntactically grouped together expresses. The resulting progression often involves words used at least as much for their various associations of meaning and their etymological or phonic potential within the environment of other words as for their syntactic and logical relationship to these words. To be sure, Aeschylus's style displays a higher incidence of the explicitly logical rather than what I call purely verbal progressions than does Zeami's. Yet given the attention that both playwrights pay to the special power of words and phrases, not only in the texts of their works, but also within the context of the performance, and given the relative lack of abstract nouns in classical Japanese and Aeschylean Greek, which makes the styles of both playwrights verbally concrete, their styles are comparable.

Before turning to an examination of Zeami's style in Sanemori, I shall begin by identifying some important features of Japanese literary style. In part, these features can be learned from Zeami himself. For example, in the first section of the Sandō, he advises that in the composition of nō an understanding of what kind of character is involved is essential to the process of choosing words appropriate to the character from the beginning of the play on, and that literary material should be appropriate to the nature of the work and express emotional qualities.⁹ He also specifies on occasion where within a nō one should place literary allusions or quotations. (This type of statement makes it eminently clear that Zeami intended his audience to be able to hear and understand the words. Performances in his day must have differed from those today, for in present-day performances the words are sometimes difficult to understand when the actors chant in muffled tones and because some members of the audience do not know the classical Japanese language and its literature.) In another treatise, the Sarugaku dangi, his son transmits Zeami's advice about specific plays and about the effect of words, poetic allusions, and literary borrowings within them. For example, he says (sec. 15) that in the play Furu when the waki, a priest, begins the spoken exchange with the shite, a woman who is washing cloth, it is necessary, if the original order of the story is to be strictly followed, that the actor chant the history of the sacred sword of Furu (the god named Furu Myōjin).¹⁰ However, he adds, to chant instead the lines,

          Hatsu mi yuki furu no takahashi
First deep snow falls [on]
Furu no Takahashi
[High Bridge of Furu],

gives the audience a sense of enken. Enken, though not technically a rhetorical term, is a stylistic device whereby an author creates a geographical perspective, for example, by naming places (Zeami even recommends using legends of famous places as a basis for nō in order to achieve this effect). Place names, in turn, often enrich a text because the author capitalizes on the literal meanings of the names or on associations that the names derive from their use in poetry. Of the chanted line above, we are told in the Sarugaku dangi that, in the phrase hatsu mi yuki furu, “the first deep snow falls,” the word furu creates an effect “so appropriate to nō.” What is meant, in part, is that by means of the single pivot word furu, the line shifts the context from the expected narration about the history of the sword of the god Furu Myōjin to a geographical perspective appropriate to the act of washing cloth. (“Pivot word” is a verbal device often called kakekotoba, which Brower and Miner define as “a rhetorical scheme of word play in which a series of sounds is so employed as to mean two or more things at once by different parsings.”¹¹) The word furu is part of the place name, Furu no Takahashi (“High Bridge of Furu”); it is also the verb of the introductory phrase, hatsu mi yuki furu, inasmuch as it means “fall,” as in falling snow. The introductory phrase, in turn, is a preface, a verbal device called joshi, or simply jo, which is a phrase of unspecified length, often a conventional poetic phrase, that adds verbal texture to the passage in which it occurs. As in the example from Furu, joshi prepares for and anticipates “the basic ‘statement’ of the poem” to which it is related with a connotative or metaphorical affinity, often by means of wordplay.¹² The pivot, furu, is particularly significant in the quoted line because the word is also the title of the play and the name of the relevant deity; it is prominent because Zeami introduces it with joshi and because it is connected to the performance of the shite on stage, who is washing cloth.

Since Furu is not being performed in the repertory of nō today, one cannot appreciate the chanted line within its full context; however, in the often-performed nō Matsukaze, for example, one can appreciate not only poetic allusions and borrowings, but also the use of enken, kakekotoba, and other verbal devices, such as engo (“word association”).¹³ In fact, since an example of wordplay in the rongi of Matsukaze is specifically mentioned in the Sarugaku dangi (sec. 12),¹⁴ it seems an appropriate passage whereby to illustrate the degree to which Japanese poetic style can be verbal in orientation, focused on words qua words, rather than formally logical and explicit in its progressions from one word, line, or stanza to another—and how, because this is drama, some words are connected to the action on stage. To be sure, some, if not all, of the stylistic features to be discussed here resemble features found in poetry elsewhere; however, it is important that only a minimal number of Western terms be applied in this introduction to Zeami's style so that something that approaches a Japanese outlook emerge as clearly as possible.

THE RONGI OF MATSUKAZE AND THE BEACON SPEECH OF THE AGAMEMNON

The rongi occurs in an early scene of Matsukaze during which Matsukaze, the shite, and her sister Murasame, the tsure, are engaged in the labor of scooping salt water from the sea, and with it the reflection of the moon, into pails at Suma, a seashore lined with pine trees.¹⁵ In the exchange between the shite and the chorus, Zeami creates a distancing effect, enken, through the names of places famous for salt kilns where brine is boiled down to obtain salt and for the scenic beauty of beaches and pine trees, which thus pertain to the action of the two sisters and to the setting of the play. (The term enken is here applied to what is technically called a monozukushi, that is, a list of things; here it is a list of places where salt kilns are located.) The chorus introduces the rongi with a short song, a sageuta, immediately preceding the exchange:

Matsushima!	Matsushima ya.
At Ojima the women	Ojima no ama no
Take delight in	Tsuki ni dani
Scooping the reflection	Kage o kumu koso
Of the moon,	Kokoro are,
Delight in scooping	Kage o kumu koso
The reflection.	Kokoro are.16

These lines, one of several verbal bases for Matsukaze's gesture of scooping, begin with two place names: Matsushima, a bay filled with pineclad islands, and Ojima, one of the islands in that bay. Both of these names, because they appear in what is a formal poetic introduction, joshi,¹⁷ are prominent. The places named introduce the geographical perspective; they are far away from Suma, the setting of the play. In addition, because the literal meaning of Matsushima is “Pine Tree Islands,” it is verbally associated with Suma, a pineclad beach, and, because the women at Ojima are carrying out the same labor as the two sisters on stage in the nō, the small island is thematically connected to the dramatic action.

After the short song, the nō continues with the rongi, the sung exchange, in which the chorus and Matsukaze, by mentioning names of places, move verbally from the distant Matsushima mentioned in the song back to the beach at Suma. The chorus begins:

They carry brine far away	Hakobu wa tōki
In Michinoku.	Michinoku no
Ah, that name! Chika no	Sono na ya Chika no
Shiogama.	Shiogama.

With the word tōki (“far away”), Zeami underscores the distancing effect and enhances it with his choice of the place name Michinoku, which literally means “Back Road.” This area, the northern part of Japan's main island of Honshū, is the location of Matsushima, mentioned in the preceding song, and is thus distant from Suma. The self-conscious reference to the name in the phrase sono na ya, “Ah, that name,” helps to point out the pun on Chika no Shiogama, a place located on the southwest shore of Matsushima Bay. The first part of the name, Chika, meaning “near,” emphasizes the proximity of the place to Matsushima, while setting up a contrast with tōki (“far away”).¹⁸ The second part of the name, literally meaning “salt kiln,” helps to associate this place and the action mentioned as occurring in Michinoku with the immediate context and action of the nō.

The rongi continues with the shite's words:

The lowly makers of salt	Shizu ga shioki o
Take firewood	Hakobishi wa
To the bay of Akogi	Akogi ga ura ni
When the tide is receding.	Hiku shio.

Akogi, a place several hundred miles nearer to Suma than Matsushima is, brings the geographical perspective within closer range of the setting of the nō. The lines are connected to what precedes not only by means of this spatial progression but also by the repetition of shio in shioki (“firewood,” literally “saltwood”), and shio (“salt,” as in salt water), which echoes the first syllable of Shiogama from above.¹⁹ In the faraway place, Michinoku, mentioned in the first stanza of the rongi, women collect brine as Matsukaze and her sister do; at the bay of Akogi, the action is slightly different—the saltmakers carry wood. However, in the latter case, the repetition of the word shio brings Akogi and Suma together, as does the mention of the lowliness of the people and the ebbing tide, two themes introduced in the preceding scene of the nō. In this passage, there is no pun on the name Akogi; instead, the place enhances the song because it is made famous in poetry treating the subject of wood used in salt kilns.²⁰

The chorus continues the rongi:

In the waters of that [place] Ise	Sono Ise no umi no
Lies Futami no Ura	Futami no Ura.
Oh, that [we] could twice	Futatabi yo ni mo
See [our] lives again!	Ideba ya.

Here the geographical setting remains the same as in the preceding stanza since Futami no Ura, a bay in which twin rocks lie off the pineclad shore, is located in the province of Ise, near Akogi. Zeami uses the place name Futami no Ura, “Bay of Two Glances,” so that, through the repetition of the syllables futa, meaning “twice,” he can prepare for the last two lines,²¹ in which the chorus expresses a wish for the sisters that they might see (i.e., live) life a second time. Both the repetition of the syllables and the resultant pun are examples of how Zeami moves verbally rather than “logically” from one line to another.

The shite continues the rongi without overt reference to the thought expressed at the end of the preceding stanza:

Pine trees stand in a grove	Matsu no muradachi
On a hazy day	Kasumu hi ni
When the tide recedes far beyond	Shioji ya tōku
Narumigata.	Narumigata.

This stanza moves geographically from Akogi to Narumigata, another bay, which, though in a different area, is approximately the same distance from Suma. Although the location shifts here and the subject of saltmaking is dropped, the words “pine trees stand in a grove,” derived from a poem set at Futami no Ura,²² provide a poetic link between stanzas. At the end, the shite names Narumigata, which is connected to the preceding line by means of the first two syllables, naru. In isolation these mean “is” and serve as a copulative verb to the preceding line, which literally means, “When the tide is far in the distance.” Thus the syllables, which also serve as the first two of the place name Narumigata, are an example of a kakekotoba,²³ the pivoting verbal device that was seen earlier in the lines from Furu and that so often contributes to the compactness characteristic of Japanese poetic style.

The chorus then continues with a self-conscious reference to the preceding stanza:

That is Narumigata.	Sore wa Narumigata
Here is Naruo	Koko wa Naruo no
In the shadow of the pines	Matsukage ni
The moon is concealed from	Tsuki koso saware
Ashinoya.	Ashinoya.

This stanza moves geographically closer to Suma than the preceding, from “that” place, Narumigata, to the one “here,” Naruo. Contrast and repetition of syllables between Narumigata and Naruo²⁴ within the stanza and the repetition of Narumigata from the preceding stanza help to effect the shift. The mention of the pine trees is well suited both to Naruo, a place associated with pine trees in poetry,²⁵ and to the play. The mention of the moon, in turn, recalls the chorus's introductory song and the words, “scooping the reflection of the moon.” The stanza ends with the name Ashinoya, which refers to a place closer to Suma than Naruo and which literally means “thatched hut.” It is possible that here Zeami verbally echoes part of the word shioya (“saltmaker's hut”), mentioned by a priest in the first scene of the play. (Zeami's recommendation in a section of the Sarugaku dangi [sec. 12] on the subject of chant that the shite emphasize the words “fishergirls' hut,” ama no ie, in Matsukaze might suggest that not only the musical effect, but also the content of the line is important.²⁶ This phrase appears in the first passage in which the shite, soon after his entrance, mentions the hut.) By drawing attention to the hut through repetition, intonation, and a pun, Zeami prepares for the next scene, in which the priest requests from the two sisters a night's lodging in their dwelling, a saltmaker's hut.²⁷ The sisters at first refuse because the hut is so modest, but after references to the hut and their lowly condition, they finally consent. The word Ashinoya serves a preparatory function.

The remainder of the rongi focuses on the action, location, and atmosphere of the dramatic and thematic context that preceded it. The shite says:

At Nada—bailing salt water	Nada no—shiokumu
For [our] livelihood.	Uki mi zo to
But, oh, that to anyone should be announced	Hito ni ya taremo
[Our] lowly plight [literally, boxwood comb].28	Tsuge no kushi.

The stanza is connected with what precedes geographically, since Ashinoya is located in Nada, a place near Suma, and verbally, since the sisters' condition is lowly, like a thatched hut. Because Zeami alludes to a poem here, he also maintains the literary dimension evident throughout the rongi. The stanza is drawn from a poem in which the relevant lines read as follows:²⁹

At Ashinoya	Ashinoya no
In Nada, from boiling salt water	Nada no shioyaki
[I] have come without even inserting	Tsuge no kushi mo
A boxwood comb [in my hair].	Sasade kinikeri.

The words Ashinoya, Nada, shio-, tsuge, and kushi are repeated from the poem in the nō. Ashinoya, a place located in Nada, provides the verbal connection between the preceding stanza in which it appears and this stanza. Shio- (“salt water”) is a repetition of several words within the rongi and the substance of the sisters' labor. Tsuge (“boxwood”) and kushi (“comb”), words well integrated into the context of the poem, the mood of which they help to evoke in the nō, are intrusive within the context of the rongi. However, they are used to connect the line in which they appear to both the preceding and the following lines. Tsuge means both “boxwood” and “announce,” and thus serves as both a description of the comb and as a verb in the expression, “Oh, that to anyone should be announced our lowly plight.”³⁰Kushi, which means “comb,” a decorative piece inserted in the hair, prepares for the next line of the rongi, which begins with the word sashi,³¹ meaning both “insert,” as a comb, and “rise,” as the tide.

The word sashi introduces the conclusion to the rongi shared by the chorus and the shite:

Chorus: From the rising tide	Sashi kuru shio o
[We] draw salt water.	Kumi wakete
Look! The moon is	Mireba tsuki koso
In [my] pail.	Oke ni are.
Shite: In mine as well, the moon	Kore ni mo tsuki no
Has been caught.	Iritaru ya.

The rongi returns, with a reference to the pails of the two sisters with which it began and to which the author draws attention with the word kore (“this,” translated “mine”), to the location of Suma and, with the gesture of the tsure's placing the pail onto a cart (a prop visibly prominent on stage), to the dramatic action. The setting, the action, the object of that action (shio, “salt water”), and the word “moon,” associated with the tide, all form part of the frame within which is created the effect called enken. The rongi ends after the shite and the chorus make further references to the moon, its reflection, the rising tide, and hauling brine.

Without considering fully the religious, emotional, and thematic significance of the rongi, I have pointed to the author's use of such features of Japanese poetic style as enken, kakekotoba (a kind of paronomasia), ren'in (alliteration), anaphora, repetition of words, engo (words associated in meaning), words contrasted in meaning, and joshi (preface), as well as more or less explicit allusions to other poetry. In addition, I have pointed to a feature of style not mentioned in the Japanese commentaries, that is, a kind of preparation in the word Ashinoya. What these features of style have in common is the preeminence they give to words qua words over the thought and the formal syntax of the lines. This does not mean that the playwright is unaware of the significance of the words to the rongi and the play as a whole; indeed, he multiplies the levels of meaning in both. For example, the mention of pine trees and famous places associated with them helps to prepare for other passages in the nō that focus on a single pine tree at Suma. Among these passages is the finale, where before the exit of Matsukaze, whose name literally means “Wind in the Pines,” the playwright has her circle around the prop on stage, which represents a pine tree, while the chorus is singing:

All that remains is the wind in the pines.

Matsukaze bakari ya nokoruran.

The name of the character Matsukaze and the setting of the play, which the audience can see represented by the tree, become fused. The repeated references to pine trees within the rongi help to prepare the audience for this finale and for the added dimension of meaning in it and the other passages of the nō in which a pine tree figures prominently.

Within the rongi, individual words as much as conventional syntax are the means by which Zeami moves from one line or one stanza to the next, even when there may not be an expressed connection between them. For example, between the first and the second stanzas, “salt” and “tide” connect the action of the firewood carriers with those who carry brine in Michinoku. The continued repetition of shio in turn prepares for the development within the rongi from the receding tide, called shioji and mentioned before the exchange, to the rising tide, mentioned at the end. The shift in the tide, connected with the new position of the moon in the pails at the end of the exchange and with the suggestion that the sisters' plight is a sad one, marks a rise in the emotional pitch of the play. This effect is achieved, as in much poetry, through verbal techniques and allusion, rather than explicitly. In addition, since Matsukaze is performed, the poetry is brought alive visually by the actors on stage, their gestures, and the props, which, being few in number, help in turn to emphasize the words.

The example from Matsukaze, not unique in form among nō, serves as a measure of the degree to which Zeami could place emphasis on words rather than syntax and illustrates the degree of economy in style that could be achieved. There is no passage quite like it among the works of Aeschylus; and yet an examination of the beacon speech in the Agamemnon—a passage chosen for comparison against the background of the rongi because it too involves a geographical perspective and a list of places³² but is not unique in Aeschylus's plays—provides a preliminary example of the way in which an understanding of Japanese poetic style can enhance our appreciation of Aeschylus's style. The sum of my examples, not this one passage, will reveal the extent to which it is appropriate to speak of similarities and differences between the styles of tragedy and nō. But because the beacon speech is indeed a speech, where one would not expect the poetic mode to dominate over the prosaic, it provides a good test of this comparison of style.

In the first dialogue shared by the chorus and Clytemnestra, Aeschylus reveals his interest in the use of words qua words and thus employs features of style that bear a resemblance to those I noted in the rongi of Matsukaze: alliteration, anaphora, intrusion, introductory words or phrases, pivot words, paronomasia, word association, and allusions. For example, in the beacon speech Aeschylus applies the name Makistos, literally meaning “highest” or “farthest” (289),³³ to a mountain in the phrase Makistou skopais (“to the lookouts of Makistos”). In conjunction with the word hekas (“far away,” 292), and supported by the compound adjective tēlepompon (“sent from afar,” 300), Aeschylus's pun on Makistos underscores the length of the beacon's journey in a manner analogous to the way in which Zeami's pun on the word Michinoku (“Back Road”), used in conjunction with tōki (“far away”), underscores the distance from Suma in Matsukaze. Near the end of the speech, Aeschylus, like Zeami, returns verbally to the theatrical setting of the play. Clytemnestra says “To this … roof” (Es tode … stegos, 310). The repetition of the word “lookouts” in line 309, where the noun is modified by the adjective astugeitonas (“neighboring on our city”), emphasizes Aeschylus's return to the setting of the play. (The repetition of the name Ida in line 311 from lines 281 and 283 provides verbal support for the repetition of the word skopas.) The deictic tode (“this”) draws the audience's attention to the palace roof, which, like the pails³⁴ in Matsukaze, is visually prominent; it is the backdrop to the dramatic action that Aeschylus explicitly introduces in the prologue. We can only conjecture that at line 310 the queen Clytemnestra points to the palace roof—in other words, like the shite and tsure in the nō, she makes a gesture.

Within the beacon speech, which both provides evidence that the Greeks have defeated the Trojans and creates a distancing effect, Aeschylus draws further on the meanings of place names. The reference in line 285 of the Agamemnon to the place Athōion aipos, meaning “the ridge that causes no harm,” may help to emphasize Zeus's name within the triad of the gods, Hephaestus, Hermes, and Zeus, who are mentioned significantly in the first five lines of the speech. In the phrase triton / Athōion aipos Zēnos (“third / the Athos ridge of Zeus”), Athōion aipos, positioned between triton and Zēnos, functions somewhat, though not entirely, like a kakekotoba. At first, the ridge, modified by the adjective “third,” is mentioned as the place to which the beacon light passed third on its way from Troy to Argos. The ridge is then followed by the name of Zeus, the god connected with it.³⁵ With the word Zēnos, Aeschylus does not pass on to a different and grammatically unconnected expression, as Zeami does with the double function of naru in the rongi of Matsukaze. However, because the word athōion means “unharmed or harmless,” almost synonymous with sōtēr, it may serve two semantic functions: it both names a ridge and evokes the well-known epithet of Zeus, sōtēr, “the savior.”³⁶ Within the trilogy, of which the Agamemnon is the first play, and at a major climax after the trial scene in the third play, the Eumenides, Orestes thanks Athena, Apollo, and finally tritos sōtēr, the one who ordains all things (759-760), by whom he means Zeus.³⁷

The verbal anticipation of a specific later scene in the Oresteia by the proper name in the beacon speech may or may not have been intended by Aeschylus. In fact, an audience would not be expected to remember that Aeschylus had referred to Zeus as third or as savior from one passage to another.³⁸ It is more probable that Aeschylus, like Zeami with his reference to pine trees in the rongi, begins to establish the role of Zeus as savior at the beginning of the Agamemnon, in a passage in which he exhibits a close attention to words qua words. Some of the examples of his verbal techniques, like Athōion aipos, are more prominent and significant than others. Aeschylus's mention of a “goat-trodden mountain” (oros aigiplangkton, 303), which prepares for the word pōgōna (“beard,” as in a goat's beard, 306),³⁹ in the phrase “great beard of the flame” is not significant to the meaning of the play. (The alliteration of the “p” sound within the passage helps to signal the verbal technique.) The use of words associated in meaning here is analogous to the stylistic feature engo in the Japanese. However, Aeschylus makes no more of the pun later than Zeami does of his pun on tsuge, meaning “boxwood,” in the phrase tsuge no kushi (“boxwood comb”).

There are other signs within the scene, of which the beacon speech is a part, that point to Aeschylus's interest in words qua words. For example, at the beginning of the scene, Aeschylus puns on a word; repeats syllables to suggest the pun; signals that there is a pun by repeating other words that draw the audience's attention to words in the passage; and uses a proverb for emphasis. The chorus opens the dialogue preceding the beacon speech by saying to the queen (261-262):

[If] in hopes of a favorable report you offer sacrifices,	Euaggeloisin elpisin thuēpoleis,
I would be glad to hear. …	Kluoim' an euphrōn. …

Clytemnestra responds with the allusion to a proverb (264-265):

With favorable report, just as the proverb goes,	Euaggelos men, hōsper hē paroimia
May dawn be born from her kindly mother night.	Heōs genoito mētros euphronēs para.

Within this context of an allusion to a proverb,⁴⁰ Aeschylus repeats the word euaggelos (“with favorable report”) and the syllables euphron in order to underscore the pun on the latter.⁴¹ In the chorus's request, euphrōn means “glad” or “with kindly intent”; in the response, euphronēs means “night” and, because of the preceding use, also “kindly.” In line 271, Aeschylus uses the words eu … phronountos … sou (“you being kindly”) as reinforcement of the earlier use of the word; in line 279, he turns to the meaning “night” again: tēs nūn tekousēs phōs tod' euphronēs (“the night now that gives birth to this light”). The word's shift in meaning at line 265 is aided by the repetition of other key words from the chorus's request in Clytemnestra's response: pepusmenē (“learning,” 261) recurs in peusī (“you will learn,” 266), elpisin (“hopes”) in elpidos (“hope,” 266), and kluoimi (“I would hear”) in kluein (“to hear,” 266).⁴² The twofold use of the word euphrōn is somewhat like a combination of Zeami's use of naru- in Narumigata and Naruo (that is, a word with two different meanings), and futa- in Futami no Ura and futatabi (that is, syllables repeated in two different contexts and with two different uses in the former, one of which applies to the latter).

In addition, Aeschylus's use of euphrōn and Zeami's references to pine trees and Matsukaze's name are comparable. Just as the latter, appearing frequently in the nō Matsukaze, provide verbal preparation for the fusion of word and dramatic character at the end of the nō, so the repetition of words based on the syllables euphron—in the first scene of the Agamemnon—and the references to the Furies and use of the word euphrōn throughout the trilogy may provide verbal preparation for the Eumenides. (There are also many significant uses of the syllable eu, meaning “good.”) There the Furies, who are daughters of Night, change into “Kindly Ones,” Euphrones (992). Stated another way, the word euphrones, sounding like the word meaning “night,” is visually translated into the daughters of Night, who become euphrones in the other sense of the word. (In Agamemnon 265 the appearance of the word mētros, “mother,” before euphronēs helps.) Although the meaning of Matsukaze is more concrete than that of Euphrones, there is in the tragedy, as in the nō, a visual manifestation in a character of what was introduced as a word.⁴³

A further examination of the verbal texture of the beacon speech in the light of nō suggests that Aeschylus's emphasis on the name of Mount Ida—he repeats it twice within the speech—might invite special attention. In line 281, the queen says:

Sending the bright light out of Ida.

Idēs lampron ekpempōn selas.

In line 283, she continues:

Ida [sent it] to the Hermaion rock	Idē men pros Hermaion lepas
Of Lemnos.	Lēmnou.

And in line 311, she adds:

This light not unsired by the fire of Ida.

Phaos tod' ouk apappon Idaiou puros.

In the first appearance of the name, Aeschylus identifies the geographical source of the beacon; in the second, he personifies that place; and in the third, he emphasizes it for the audience in several ways: with the deictic tode (“this”); with the double negative (“not unsired”); with personification again; and with the repetition of the word puros in the same position, at the end of the line, as it appears in three other places in the speech (282, 299, and 304).

In the first use of the word puros (282), which occurs between the first two references to Ida in the phrase aggarou puros (“courier fire”), the word aggarou, in proximity to the name of the god Hephaestus, suggests the aggarēion, the Persian “pony express,” and a variation of the lampadēphoria (“torch race”) held in honor of Hephaestus.⁴⁴ The torch race resembles the relay of beacon lights described in the speech, as Aeschylus suggests with the word lampadēphorōn (“torchbearers”), appearing immediately after the third mention of Ida. The relationship in meaning of aggarou and lampadēphorōn, not unlike engo “word association” in nō, is marked by the repetition of both puros and Ida's name. It is introduced with another related word—when the chorus asks Clytemnestra what messenger could arrive so quickly, she answers not with the identification of a messenger as a person, but with the name Hephaestus, both metonymy for fire and the god of the torch race festival. (The festival is something to which Aeschylus alludes—not a poem, to be sure, but part of what was presumably common knowledge with the audience.)

Toward the end of the rongi in Matsukaze, Zeami repeats the phrase “bailing salt water” (shio kumu and shio o kumi), once within the context of the allusion to the Ashinoya poem and once after. With the second use of the phrase, Zeami introduces an expression of surprise that the moon is in the pails of both sisters. Because, in the song immediately preceding the rongi, Zeami uses the verb kumu with the word kage in the phrase kage o kumu (“bailing [translated, ‘scooping’] the reflection [of the moon]”) and mentions the moon at Naruo, he prepares the audience for mention of the moon's appearance in the pails. This, in turn, is signalled by repetition of the word tsuki (“moon”), the deictic kore, and the actors' gestures. Aeschylus's preparation for the word “torchbearers” with the repetition of the name Ida and the word puros (“fire”) at the end of the line is similar. There is also the possibility that a torchlight may have been represented on stage, as it surely was at the end of the Eumenides, and that the actor playing the role of the queen may have pointed to it as a way of translating the word into a concrete and visible thing.

During the beacon speech there is very little, if any, action on stage. Instead, Aeschylus sometimes enlivens the description of the beacon relay with personification and brings action in with words. For example, the queen says in lines 282-283 not that a person relayed the beacon fire, but that “beacon sent beacon here from the courier fire [aggarou puros].”⁴⁵ In addition, Aeschylus anchors the activity of the beacon relay in the beacon itself: he mentions the beacon repeatedly and even describes the material out of which the fire was kindled. Thus, in line 288, he calls the torch a pine torch (peukē) and in 295 says it was kindled from a heap of silvery heath brush (graias ereikēs), a phrase that is unnecessary and almost intrusive, but that makes the fire concrete. Given Aeschylus's mention of the kindling wood and the final use of Mount Ida's name, and given the methods applied to an analysis of style in nō, it is possible (although I make the suggestion with caution) that Ida, like Shiogama, not only serves as the name of a place, but also may suggest another meaning in its final use. In line 311, the word, because of the emphasis on places preceding it, refers to the mountain, but when taken with puros (“fire”) suggests the meaning “firewood.” (Ida literally means “firewood,” a meaning found in Herodotus.) It is this type of suggestion, inspired by methods used in the analysis of Japanese poetry, that can illuminate features of the tragedian's style that have either been noted and then ignored or have remained unremarked. However, whether this approach to Aeschylus's style is justified will depend on the strength or weakness of the comparative analyses presented below.

In Matsukaze, Zeami refers to places and alludes to poetry in a manner characteristic of writers of nō and of Japanese poetry and creates a poetic mood particularly appropriate to the setting of the play and the plight of the two sisters; in the tragedy, Aeschylus refers to places to produce a geographical perspective such as one can find elsewhere in his works and in the works of other Greek poets, and alludes to a proverb and a festival, but does not create the same kind of poetic atmosphere as that found in Matsukaze. Aeschylus's purpose is in part to express the queen's exultation and to make a transition from Troy to Argos in preparation for the arrival of the herald and Agamemnon on stage. These differences obtain. However, in spite of the differences between the nō and the tragedy, we can conclude at this point that at the very least, to be appreciated fully, both passages demand from the listener a close attention to words qua words. (We know that the rongi provides the shite and the chorus with the opportunity to display their singing skills. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the beacon speech provides the actor who plays the role of Clytemnestra an opportunity to display his speaking skills.)

Stated in general terms, the stylistic features shared by Aeschylus and Zeami and illustrated in part by the analysis of the passages above are as follows: both pun on words and place names; both repeat words and sounds to emphasize, for example, the concreteness of important elements; both prepare verbally for later lines and scenes within their dramas; both use words that are intrusive in terms of the main tenor of a passage, but not on another level of its meaning; both employ pivot words or pivot syllables; and further, as in much poetry, both draw on the associative value of words so that they speak simultaneously on more than one level of significance; both make transitions from one word or line to another by means of individual words, as well as syntax; both allude to other works; and both bring out prominent words in performance, in props, gestures, or the actors' appearance.

Notes

1. In the Japanese case, this literature certainly included many prose writings.

2. It was not uncommon in kyōgen, but it was rare in nō, for a commercial theatrical troupe to put on a topical nō. See Kōsai, “Sakuhin kenkyū: Sanemori,” 6.

3. In the Japanese poetic tradition, a distinction is made between direct borrowing and honkadori, “allusive variation.” The latter is defined by Robert H. Brower and Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry (London, 1962), 506, as the “echoing of the words, sometimes only the situation or conception, of a well-known earlier poem in such a way that recognizable elements are incorporated into a new meaning, but one in which the meaning of the earlier poem also enters, in a manner distinguished from mere borrowing and use of similar materials and expression.” Other distinctions are made as well; for example, honzetsu is also allusion, but one that involves allusions to prose. For the most part, these distinctions will not be taken into account in this comparative study.

4. In the Sarugaku dangi, in ZZ, 192, and Rimer, 221.

5. Brower and Miner, in Japanese Court Poetry, passim, provide an account of the level of sophistication attained in the court poetry, which lay before and influenced Zeami.

6. For example, Zeami refers to Murasaki Shikibu, author of the novel The Tale of Genji, in the nō Yūgao, and to Yukihira Chūnagon, the poet, in the nō Matsukaze.

7. In Agamemnon 264, Aeschylus invokes a traditional maxim with the words, “As the proverb goes”; in Eumenides 4, he refers to a written or oral version of the earliest succession to the oracular seat at Delphi by saying, “As it is told.”

8. William Bedell Stanford, Greek Metaphor: Studies in Theory and Practice (New York and London, 1936), 106.

9. In ZZ, 135, and Rimer, 150. Examples used by Zeami to characterize the “emotional quality” of a play are auspiciousness, grace (yūgen), love, “complaint,” and “despair.” I have translated the last two of these qualities according to Hare, Zeami's Style, 54.

10. In ZZ, 288, and Rimer, 217.

11. Brower and Miner, Japanese Court Poetry, 507 (see 13).

12. See ibid., 14. I use the term joshi rather than jo so as to avoid confusion with the jo of jo-ha-kyū.

13. Brower and Miner define engo as a “relation of disparate elements in a poem by the use of a word that has or creates an ‘association’ with a preceding word or situation, often bringing out an additional dimension of meaning and giving two expressions a secondary richness” (Japanese Court Poetry, 504). On Zeami's use of verbal devices, see Hare, Zeami's Style, 118-122. For a list of verbal devices used in nō, see, for example, Sanari, Yōkyoku taikan, 1: 73-76.

14. In ZZ, 284, and Rimer, 209. This passage from the Sarugaku dangi will be discussed in Chapter Four. Matsukaze was revised by Zeami from a nō by his father Kan'ami entitled Matsukaze murasame, which was based on an earlier nō by Kiami entitled Shiokumi. The passage treated below, the rongi, is in turn said to derive from an original work called Tōei, See YKS, 57 and 429 n. 26. Thus the rongi should not be thought of as Zeami's composition alone; however, in my text I use his name as the author's for the sake of convenience.

15. The Japanese and Greek of passages discussed in detail in this and the next chapter are printed in Appendices 3 and 4. First the entire text of Sanemori (except for the kyōgen section) and passages from other nō, beginning with the rongi of Matsukaze, are printed in Appendix 3. The Greek passages that are analyzed in this chapter and the next appear in Appendix 4 in the order in which they are treated. The Greek or Japanese versions of passages discussed more than once are not repeated in the Appendices.

16. The text is that of YKS, 60-61. However, I have printed Ojima, the Kanze reading, rather than Oshima, as YKS does. All translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.

17. YKS, 60 n. 16.

18. See Koyama Hiroshi, Satō Kikuo, and Satō Ken'ichirō, eds., Yōkyokushū, vol. 1, Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, vol. 33 (Tokyo, 1973), 367 n. 10, hereafter Koyama.

19. YKS, 60 n. 19, calls this ren'in, that is, the repetition of sounds. The commentary also points to the alliteration between shio and shizu, the first word of the stanza.

20. See Koyama, 367 n. 13.

21. This is an example of a joshi in which one word echoes another in the line following; YKS, 61 n. 21.

22. A poem by Ōnakatomi Sukehiro in Kinyōshū. See ibid., 61 n. 22.

23. Ibid., 61 n. 23.

24. See ibid., 61 n. 24.

25. See Koyama, 368 n. 18.

26. YKS, 61 n. 24, understands it in this way.

27. Before the shite and tsure enter the stage, the waki says he will spend the night in the “saltmaker's hut” (shioya). After the rongi, the shioya is referred to four times in the exchange between the priest and the sisters.

28. The translation “lowly plight” is that of Japanese Noh Drama, NGS 3: 44.

29. The poem comes from the Ise monogatari (The Tales of Ise), no. 87. See YKS, 61 n. 25.

30. See Koyama, 368 n. 22.

31. YKS, 61 n. 27, says that kushi introduces sashi.

32. The scholia to Aristophanes' Frogs 928a suggest that Aeschylus wrote often about mountains, rivers, etc.

33. A. W. Verrall, The “Agamemnon” of Aeschylus (London and New York, 1889), 32, says the “mountain by its name would seem to have been ‘the highest.’” Makistos, that is, mēkistos, may mean “greatest” or “tallest,” but it may also mean “farthest,” a meaning found in Xenophon and Apollonius of Rhodes.

34. Compare the use of kore (“this”).

35. See Fraenkel, Aeschylus Agamemnon 2: 154. For further discussion of the passage and the speech, see J. H. Quincey's “The Beacon-Sites in the Agamemnon,” JHS 83 (1963): 118-132.

36. See Quincey, “The Beacon-Sites,” 118 and George Thomson, The Oresteia of Aeschylus (Amsterdam, 1966), 2: 29. Fraenkel, Aeschylus Agamemnon, 154, thinks Beazley's suggestion that there is an allusion to tritos (sōtēr) Zeus (“Zeus, the savior, the third”) is worth considering.

37. In Libation Bearers 244-245, after Electra recognizes that her brother Orestes has returned, she names Zeus tritos (“the third”). She does not call him sōtēr.

38. For the same reason, the words Arachnaion aipos (“Spidery Ridge,” 309), are not necessarily a verbal anticipation of the later scene in the Agamemnon in which the chorus exclaims that the king lies dead in the web of a spider (1492 and 1516). See Verrall's suggestion, “Agamemnon,” xxxviii.

39. See Thomson, Oresteia, 30.

40. This is not properly a “literary” allusion and hence is different from the poetic allusions Zeami makes. However, even though the proverb cannot be definitively identified—it may be represented in Hesiod's Theogony, 124—there is reason to assume that Aeschylus, when he writes “as the proverb goes” (264), is drawing attention to words borrowed from an oral or written source outside the tragedy and familiar to the audience.

41. Fraenkel, Aeschylus Agamemnon, 149, does not think a pun is intended. However, see Verrall, “Agamemnon,” 30, and his notes on lines 276-278.

42. Similarly, in the Suppliants 249-273, where Aeschylus sets up another geographical perspective, he emphasizes words meaning “earth” and “land”: gē, khthōn, and aia. Of these three words associated in meaning, Aeschylus puns on the first, with the help of the second, in King Pelasgus's self-introduction: “For I am Pelasgos, the son of the earth-born [gēgenous] Palaikhthonos [Palaikhthonos, literally, ‘ancient earth’], and leader of this land [tēsde gēs].” This introduction is followed by the repetition of words meaning “land” within the speech and by another pun on Apollo's name Paian (“Healer”). The pun is suggested by the reference to the Paeonian people, Paionōn (257), before Aeschylus introduces in the speech the names of Apollo and his son Apis, the healer of the land. In another list passage, in the prologue of the Eumenides Aeschylus emphasizes the connection between the names of Phoibos and Phoibē (8) by means of the repetition of words.

43. In some nō, characters are named after flowers or insects, as in Yūgao and Kochō respectively, and are transformed into the spirits of these. In tragedy, on the other hand, characters whose names are significant in their literal meanings are named after actions or states; for example, Apollo is Cassandra's “destroyer” in the Agamemnon; Polyneices is the cause of “much strife” in the Seven against Thebes; and Pentheus is “grief” in the Bacchae.

44. See Herodotus 8.98. Fraenkel, Aeschylus Agamemnon, 153, and Verrall, “Agamemnon,” 31, comment on this.

45. While personification is not unknown in nō, place names are not personified, as they are in the Greek. What does occur, as it does in the Greek as well, is that the words are made concrete in dramatic characters' actions on stage. There is, as in the example of Matsukaze, a very real “personification.”

Works Cited

Works on Greek Tragedy and Related Subjects

Fraenkel, E. Aeschylus Agamemnon. 3 vols. Oxford: 1962.

Quincey, J. H. “The Beacon-Sites in the Agamemnon.” Journal of Hellenic Studies 83 (1963): 118-132.

Stanford, William Bedell. Greek Metaphor: Studies in Theory and Practice. New York and London: 1936.

Thomson, George. The Oresteia of Aeschylus. 2 vols. Amsterdam: 1966.

Verrall, A. W. The “Agamemnon” of Aeschylus. London and New York: 1889.

Works on Nō and Related Subjects

Brower, Robert H., and Earl Miner. Japanese Court Poetry. London: 1962.

Hare, Thomas B. Zeami's Style: The Noh Plays of Zeami Motokiyo. Stanford: 1986.

Kōsai Tsutomu. “Sakuhin kenkyū: Sanemori.” Kanze (January 1970): 3-9. Also in Nōyōshinkō: Zeami ni terasu, 274-282. Tokyo: 1972; reprinted 1980.

Koyama Hiroshi, Satō Kikuo, and Satō Ken'ichirō, ed. Yōkyokushū, vol. 1. Nihon koten bungaku zenshū, vol. 33. Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1973.

Rimer, J. Thomas, and Masakazu Yamazaki, trans. On the Art of the Nō Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami. Princeton: 1984.

Sanari Kentarō. Yōkyoku taikan. 7 vols. Tokyo: Meiji Shoin, 1931; reprinted, 1983.

List of Abbreviations

NGS: Nippon Gakujutsu Shinkōkai, The Noh Drama, 3 vols. (Tokyo and Vermont, 1955-1960)

YKS: Yokomichi Mario and Omote Akira, eds., Yōkyokushū, vol. 1, Nihon koten bungaku taikei, vol. 40 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1972)

ZZ: Omote Akira and Katō Shūichi, eds., Zeami: Zenchiku, Nihon shisō taikei, vol. 24 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1974)