Le sixième Péan de Pindare, un drame rituel en trois actes pour une conjuration de la violence

Because of its surprising structure and of the unusual place it assigns to the first person, Pindar’s Sixth Paean breaks with the traditional religious grammar. The poetic voice of this Paean, though it was meant to relieve the Delphian chorus of its artistic failure, thwarts this expectation by rebelling against the oracular authority of the Delphians. The Trojan rivalry between Achilles and Apollo is then re-enacted in Delphi: the reference to Neoptolemos encapsulates the poet’s excessive claims, through a play of lexical echoes that brings the two figures together in a relationship similar to that between the scapegoat and the surrogate victim in René Girard’s sacrificial theory. The story of the hero’s death during a quarrel rings out, at the very moment when the drama reaches its violent climax, as a fearsome warning. But the opportunity for reconciliation is provided by the arrival of an Aeginetan chorus, which eventually incorporates the poetic voice into a community, a place where ritual communion can emerge.