‘Hail and Take Pleasure!’ Making Gods Present In Narration Through Choral Song and Other Epiphanic Strategies in the Homeric Hymns to Dionysus and Apollo

This paper explores how the complementary gods Dionysus and Apollo, in their very specific manner reflecting their essence, become present through song. It shows how, in both Homeric Hymns (7 and 3), song is the medium and the kernel of the inner story, while the choral performance of the diachronic past blurs with the present rhapsodic hymn in synchrony. Dionysus is focused as the epiphanic god per se, appearing all of a sudden, in a sketchy and enigmatic Hymn that elicits the recipient to decode his signs on the pattern of mysteries, whereas the long and winding Hymn to Apollo, put in several frames and pursuing Apollo’s career from his birth to his rise to full power, reflects his “palintropic harmony of bow and lyre” fusing in poignant and violent immediacy.