tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48032816287090991792024-03-05T17:10:51.804-06:00The Memphis odyssey.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger115125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-52813771730822898682021-10-12T07:14:00.000-05:002021-10-12T07:14:05.230-05:00"Listen to this, now . . . . [Homer] was meant to be listened to."<p> </p><p>[From the <a href="https://www.garrisonkeillor.com/radio/twa-the-writers-almanac-for-october-12-2021/" target="_blank">Writer's Almanac</a> for Tuesday, October 12]</p><p><br /></p><hr style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 16px;" /><p style="color: #202020; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyd22mkQw2wDakrf7rCShGU453A47RyDfRAlw_WJ2C4NbVmsr-_bSsZQ0vQFMxeSb0oKjTlOn4zYyhHmA1w8Ro-5i2HLL1M7-hWq5GANdqraEu1zdwQG-0NxKTWfSPbxokUm5GP739lJU/s400/Fitz.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyd22mkQw2wDakrf7rCShGU453A47RyDfRAlw_WJ2C4NbVmsr-_bSsZQ0vQFMxeSb0oKjTlOn4zYyhHmA1w8Ro-5i2HLL1M7-hWq5GANdqraEu1zdwQG-0NxKTWfSPbxokUm5GP739lJU/s320/Fitz.jpeg" width="208" /></a></div><strong>It's the birthday</strong> of the poet and translator <a href="https://garrisonkeillor.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad0660dfefb8eb9ffe140530c&id=ca503ea5e6&e=aff2083f63" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold;"><strong>Robert Fitzgerald</strong></a> (<a href="https://garrisonkeillor.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=ad0660dfefb8eb9ffe140530c&id=60437effd8&e=aff2083f63" style="color: #336699; font-weight: bold;">books by this author</a>), born in Geneva, New York (1910), best known for his beautiful English translations of Homer's <em>Odyssey</em> (1961) and <em>The Iliad</em> (1974). He was also an influential classics professor at Harvard and he believed that Homer's work should be always read aloud. One of his students said, "Every Tuesday afternoon, he'd start [class] by saying to us, 'Listen to this, now [...] It was meant to be listened to.' The 12 of us would listen, very quiet around the blond wood table, our jittery freshman muscles gradually unclenching."<p></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;">Robert Fitzgerald described Homer as:</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: Georgia, Times, "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;">"[A] living voice in firelight or in the open air, a living presence bringing into life his great company of imagined persons, a master performer at his ease, touching the strings, disposing of many voices, many tones and tempos, tragedy, comedy, and glory, holding his [listeners] in the palm of his hand."<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-74380024560127440732021-10-10T11:13:00.001-05:002021-10-10T11:13:05.303-05:00"Always start with Homer's 'Odyssey'" — Mary Beard<p><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /><a href="https://www.classics.cam.ac.uk/directory/mary-beard" target="_blank">Mary Beard</a> recommends Homer:</span></p><p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/books/review/mary-beard-by-the-book-interview.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/books/review/mary-beard-by-the-book-interview.html</span></a></p><p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"><span class="css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">What books got you interested in Ancient Rome and the classics?</span></p><p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> The first was Moses Finley’s “<a href="https://delong.typepad.com/finleyodysseus.pdf" target="_blank">The World of Odysseus</a>.” I had read quite a bit of Homer’s “Odyssey” at high school (some in Greek, but mostly in English!); but it was Finley’s book that made me see that you could think about the “Odyssey” historically and that there were big historical questions about what kind of society was being depicted, and whether it ever existed. . . . </span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSXEA9AY4x12ffiELMA2fzgIGgJrAl-zOTxa44XONKFSwmNASWcOuuvoJgQF4w-lBkm8iIrTp6BNCCpQMd8gT-papYI1ObXU-u2XFF7nfycUZ4GY5hfRjOx0MESRIi_RTW1RLFVO3yBVI/s1790/MaryBeard.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1765" data-original-width="1790" height="316" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSXEA9AY4x12ffiELMA2fzgIGgJrAl-zOTxa44XONKFSwmNASWcOuuvoJgQF4w-lBkm8iIrTp6BNCCpQMd8gT-papYI1ObXU-u2XFF7nfycUZ4GY5hfRjOx0MESRIi_RTW1RLFVO3yBVI/s320/MaryBeard.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></div><p></p><p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"><span class="css-8qgvsz ebyp5n10" style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">For readers new to the classics, what books make the best entree to the great works of antiquity?</span></p><p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Always start with Homer’s “Odyssey.” It is such a foundational text for so much of the rest of the Western cultural tradition, while at the same time questioning that tradition before it was born. It raises big issues about what we think “civilization” is, the long history of turning our enemies into “barbarians” and why it might be “us” who are the barbarians, not “them.” No wonder it has been so important for writers and artists such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omeros" target="_blank">Derek Walcott</a> and <a href="https://www.sites.si.edu/s/archived-exhibit?topicId=0TO36000000Tz69GAC" target="_blank">Romare Bearden</a>.</span></p><p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></p><p class="css-axufdj evys1bk0" style="border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.875rem; margin: 0px 0px 0.9375rem; max-width: 100%; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 600px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-7955301447140226222019-10-25T12:56:00.001-05:002019-10-25T12:56:12.227-05:00Ravana’s Mechanical Flying Peacock<br />
<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: "eb garamond", serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">In this essay, Justin Henry, a 2017-18 </span></span><a class="_2qJYG blog-link-hashtag-color _3sz0l" href="https://www.caorc.org/fellowships" rel="noopener" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: #8c8f60; font-family: "eb garamond", serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;" target="_top"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">CAORC NEH Senior Research Fellow</span></span></a><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: "eb garamond", serif; font-size: 18px; font-stretch: inherit; font-weight: 700; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">, discusses the origins and implications of Ravana's flying machine, a popular figure in Sri Lankan versions of the </span>Ramayana<span style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> epic. All photos are courtesy of the author.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://www.caorc.org/post/2019/06/10/ravanas-mechanical-flying-peacock" target="_blank">https://www.caorc.org/post/2019/06/10/ravanas-mechanical-flying-peacock</a><br />
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“Ravana was a great king of Sri Lanka 8000 years ago,” he went on earnestly. “And, you know, he had an airplane powered by a mercury vortex engine. We had such technology in those days.”</div>
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This was not the last that I would hear of Ravana’s flying machine and its “mercury vortex” propulsion . . . </div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-30609313732947170822019-10-10T22:11:00.001-05:002019-10-10T22:11:44.346-05:00"finding human voices in the clay"A review of a new book on "Gilgamesh," by Michael Schmidt:<br />
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<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14/how-to-read-gilgamesh</a><br />
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<a class="Link__link___3dWao " href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/14" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; text-decoration-skip: objects; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: geometricPrecision;" title="Published in October 14, 2019"><time class="IssueDate__issueDate___2e_OC" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; font-family: "Irvin Text", Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.23; margin: 0px; text-rendering: geometricPrecision;" title="Published in October 14, 2019">October 14, 2019 Issue</time></a></div>
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How to Read “Gilgamesh”</h1>
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The heart of the world’s oldest long poem is found in its gaps and mysteries.</h2>
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By <a class="Link__link___3dWao " href="https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/joan-acocella" rel="author" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; box-sizing: inherit; color: inherit; text-decoration-skip: objects; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: geometricPrecision;" title="Joan Acocella">Joan Acocella</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsKI0_AIQTcw9fgd722-xQZE3i49PALrg35KLXVkch-g9V580QcyLgkTRd_z2ZrLKUHWHK2nt4azUbFZFBWIdbfjCTNHWSUKnhwkCxxcBgEt9kpT5BBgzgp6g7N5b9uJcBq9hE78KNFBU/s1600/Gilgamesh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1150" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsKI0_AIQTcw9fgd722-xQZE3i49PALrg35KLXVkch-g9V580QcyLgkTRd_z2ZrLKUHWHK2nt4azUbFZFBWIdbfjCTNHWSUKnhwkCxxcBgEt9kpT5BBgzgp6g7N5b9uJcBq9hE78KNFBU/s320/Gilgamesh.jpg" width="230" /></a></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-89484351807824794712017-11-05T21:48:00.000-06:002017-11-05T23:57:58.783-06:00New translator of “The Odyssey”<a href="https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/magazine/the-first-woman-to-translate-the-odyssey-into-english.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/magazine/the-first-woman-to-translate-the-odyssey-into-english.html</a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW2dSokagZ3bQs4zylcEFaYbooGrw8I1y-efvqLWqogz1KaB4W6lMVawJPSx2LvDUClpUfZK1STsCxfyESm0MNNoGfHiTI6bS8GXJ-3GWH5pYxQiVzKdwcxXsOKcB5tpthm8f7GwTwpKY/s1600/Screen+Shot+2017-11-05+at+11.55.26+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1068" data-original-width="1184" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW2dSokagZ3bQs4zylcEFaYbooGrw8I1y-efvqLWqogz1KaB4W6lMVawJPSx2LvDUClpUfZK1STsCxfyESm0MNNoGfHiTI6bS8GXJ-3GWH5pYxQiVzKdwcxXsOKcB5tpthm8f7GwTwpKY/s320/Screen+Shot+2017-11-05+at+11.55.26+PM.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: Georgia;">Since the “Odyssey” first appeared in English, around 1615, in George Chapman’s translation, the story of the Greek warrior-king Odysseus’s ill-fated 10-</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">year attempt to return home from the war in Troy to Ithaca and his wife, Penelope, has prompted some 60 English translations, at an accelerating pace, half</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">of them in the last 100 years and a dozen in the last two decades. Wilson, whose own translation appears this week, has produced the first English rendering</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">of the poem by a woman.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-7425776688126350452017-06-05T18:51:00.003-05:002017-06-05T18:51:50.233-05:00Bob Dylan on Odysseus<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7so1wcEAYzsT0PDww1vUV8WfGrIzU0-d2LtaxDg-Qn4qjSD01AygJccMAHPcQ-papFtBr_QlurAik3wtnHjVFp2wVF-_K8OgWx5wBWbBvq7g9NBDI4hBI7bKOIUIRgMgXmpu0HzP-khg/s1600/DylanNobel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7so1wcEAYzsT0PDww1vUV8WfGrIzU0-d2LtaxDg-Qn4qjSD01AygJccMAHPcQ-papFtBr_QlurAik3wtnHjVFp2wVF-_K8OgWx5wBWbBvq7g9NBDI4hBI7bKOIUIRgMgXmpu0HzP-khg/s320/DylanNobel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">from Dylan's Nobel Prize speech:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.htm">http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2016/dylan-lecture.htm</a>l</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">The Odyssey</em> is a great book whose themes have worked its way into the ballads of a lot of songwriters: "Homeward Bound, "Green, Green Grass of Home," "Home on the Range," and my songs as well.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">The Odyssey </em>is a strange, adventurous tale of a grown man trying to get home after fighting in a war. He's on that long journey home, and it's filled with traps and pitfalls. He's cursed to wander. He's always getting carried out to sea, always having close calls. Huge chunks of boulders rock his boat. He angers people he shouldn't. There's troublemakers in his crew. Treachery. His men are turned into pigs and then are turned back into younger, more handsome men. He's always trying to rescue somebody. He's a travelin' man, but he's making a lot of stops.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He's stranded on a desert island. He finds deserted caves, and he hides in them. He meets giants that say, "I'll eat you last." And he escapes from giants. He's trying to get back home, but he's tossed and turned by the winds. Restless winds, chilly winds, unfriendly winds. He travels far, and then he gets blown back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">He's always being warned of things to come. Touching things he's told not to. There's two roads to take, and they're both bad. Both hazardous. On one you could drown and on the other you could starve. He goes into the narrow straits with foaming whirlpools that swallow him. Meets six-headed monsters with sharp fangs. Thunderbolts strike at him. Overhanging branches that he makes a leap to reach for to save himself from a raging river. Goddesses and gods protect him, but some others want to kill him. He changes identities. He's exhausted. He falls asleep, and he's woken up by the sound of laughter. He tells his story to strangers. He's been gone twenty years. He was carried off somewhere and left there. Drugs have been dropped into his wine. It's been a hard road to travel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In a lot of ways, some of these same things have happened to you. You too have had drugs dropped into your wine. You too have shared a bed with the wrong woman. You too have been spellbound by magical voices, sweet voices with strange melodies. You too have come so far and have been so far blown back. And you've had close calls as well. You have angered people you should not have. And you too have rambled this country all around. And you've also felt that ill wind, the one that blows you no good. And that's still not all of it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When he gets back home, things aren't any better. Scoundrels have moved in and are taking advantage of his wife's hospitality. And there's too many of ‘em. And though he's greater than them all and the best at everything – best carpenter, best hunter, best expert on animals, best seaman – his courage won't save him, but his trickery will.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All these stragglers will have to pay for desecrating his palace. He'll disguise himself as a filthy beggar, and a lowly servant kicks him down the steps with arrogance and stupidity. The servant's arrogance revolts him, but he controls his anger. He's one against a hundred, but they'll all fall, even the strongest. He was nobody. And when it's all said and done, when he's home at last, he sits with his wife, and he tells her the stories.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">. . . When Odysseus in <em style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: inherit;">The Odyssey </em>visits the famed warrior Achilles in the underworld – Achilles, who traded a long life full of peace and contentment for a short one full of honor and glory – tells Odysseus it was all a mistake. "I just died, that's all." There was no honor. No immortality. And that if he could, he would choose to go back and be a lowly slave to a tenant farmer on Earth rather than be what he is – a king in the land of the dead – that whatever his struggles of life were, they were preferable to being here in this dead place. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That's what songs are too. Our songs are alive in the land of the living. But songs are unlike literature. They're meant to be sung, not read. The words in Shakespeare's plays were meant to be acted on the stage. Just as lyrics in songs are meant to be sung, not read on a page. And I hope some of you get the chance to listen to these lyrics the way they were intended to be heard: in concert or on record or however people are listening to songs these days. I return once again to Homer, who says, "Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story."</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-57258287678253335712017-05-24T10:02:00.004-05:002017-05-24T10:03:43.502-05:00"Some Other Odysseus"From the fun website "Sententiae Antiquae":<br />
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<a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/some-other-odysseus/">https://sententiaeantiquae.com/some-other-odysseus/</a><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="https://sententiaeantiquae.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/odysseus-riding-turtle.jpg" src="https://sententiaeantiquae.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/odysseus-riding-turtle.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Odysseus Rides a turtle (6th Century BCE Black Figure Skyphos)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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When Odysseus reveals himself to Telemachus in book 16, his son at
first balks, certain that this man in front of him is a god or some
delusion. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2011/11/13/homer-odyssey-16-204/" title="Homer, Odyssey 16.204">Odysseus responds memorably</a> (16.204):<br />
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“No other Odysseus will ever come home to you”<br />
οὐ μὲν γάρ τοι ἔτ’ ἄλλος ἐλεύσεται ἐνθάδ’ ᾿Οδυσσεύς,<br />
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I have long discussed this with my students as doing double work in the <i>Odyssey</i>:
(1)it speaks to concerns of identity and sameness and the difficulty of
knowing who anyone is at any time; and (2) it also allows our narrator
to ‘wink’ at the audience who have been treated to a bit of a carnival
ride during the epic as they figure out which Odysseus <i>this is</i> who is going to come home.<br />
Ancient myth and literature present us with many different Odysseis
(the plural of Odysseus) and one of the great achievements of our <i>Odyssey</i>
may just be the creation of a complex hero within and against these
parameters. Close readings of the epic can find that there are hints of
these other traditions, these other Odysseys and Odysseis everywhere.<br />
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So, occasionally we will be posting on this theme:<br />
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1. First we discussed how Aeschylus had Odysseus dying from complications associated with being <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/04/30/the-death-of-odysseus-by-feces-aeschylus-fragment-275-r-478a1-5/" title="The Death of Odysseus by Feces: Aeschylus, fragment (275 R; 478a1-5)">defecated upon by a bird</a>.<br />
2. Then we noticed that the epic mentions that <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/07/11/homer-odyssey-15-361-370-odysseus-family/" title="Homer, Odyssey (15.361-370) Odysseus’ Family">Odysseus has a sister</a><br />
3. We also considered how Telemachus’ bath in book 4 led to a <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/10/10/odysseus-was-a-grandfather-telemachus-night-at-nestors/" title="Odysseus was a Grandfather: Telemachus’ Night at Nestor’s">grandson for Odysseus in the Hesiodic tradition</a>.<br />
4. Here’s a rumination on the<a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/10/27/three-islands-in-the-odyssey-laertes-was-a-conquerer/" title="Three Islands in the Odyssey: Laertes was a Conquerer!"> politics and geography in the </a><i><a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/10/27/three-islands-in-the-odyssey-laertes-was-a-conquerer/" title="Three Islands in the Odyssey: Laertes was a Conquerer!">Odysse</a>y</i><br />
5. And a <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/10/27/odysseus-children-fourteen-and-counting/" title="Odysseus’ Children: Fourteen and Counting!">beginning count of Odysseus’ children</a><br />
6. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/11/05/the-sons-of-odysseus-part-1-evidence-from-hesiod-eustathius-and-dionysus-of-halicarnassos/" title="The Sons of Odysseus, Part 1: Evidence from Hesiod, Eustathius and Dionysus of Halicarnassos">The Evidence for Odysseus’ Children, Part 1: Eustathius, Hesiod and Dionysus of Halicarnassos</a><br />
7. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/11/12/the-sons-of-odysseus-part-2-penelopes-children-telemakhos-and-arkesilaosptoliporthes/" title="The Sons of Odysseus, Part 2: Penelope’s Child(ren), Telemakhos and Arkesilaos/Ptoliporthes">Odysseus’ Children with Penelope (yes, more than one!)</a><br />
8. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/11/17/greek-anthology-3-8-temple-epigrams-odysseus-sees-his-mother/" title="Greek Anthology 3.8: Temple Epigrams–Odysseus Sees His Mother">An Epigram from the <i>Greek Anthology</i> about Odysseus seeing his mother, Antikleia</a><br />
9. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/11/19/the-sons-of-odysseus-part-3-kirkes-children-except-for-telegonos/" title="The Sons of Odysseus, Part 3: Kirke’s Children (except for Telegonos)">Odysseus’ Children, Part 3: The Sons of Kirke, (except Telegonos)</a><br />
10. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/11/26/the-sons-of-odysseus-part-4-telegonos/" title="The Sons of Odysseus Part 4, Telegonos">The Sons of Odysseus, Part 4: Telegonos</a><br />
11. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/12/04/the-sons-of-odysseus-part-5-kalypsos-brood/" title="The Sons of Odysseus, Part 5: Kalypso’s Brood">The Sons of Odysseus, Part 5: Kalypso’s Brood</a><br />
12. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/12/05/diomedean-compulsion-or-remember-the-time-odysseus-tried-to-stab-diomedes-in-the-back/" title="‘Diomedean Compulsion': Or, Remember the Time Odysseus tried to Stab Diomedes in the Back?">Odysseus Tries to Stab Diomedes in the Back</a><br />
13. <a href="https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2014/12/12/the-children-of-odysseus-part-6-babies-with-princesses/" title="The Children of Odysseus, Part 6: Babies with Princesses">Odysseus’ Children Part 6</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-73986864863114202902017-04-17T05:42:00.002-05:002017-04-17T10:56:21.323-05:00A Father and Son's Final Odyssey<div class="dek" itemprop="alternativeHeadline" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; border: 0px; font-family: 'Adobe Caslon', Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: italic; font-variant-ligatures: none !important; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.25; margin: 5px 0px; padding: 0px 15px; text-align: center; text-rendering: geometricprecision;">
In the last year of my dad’s life, we retraced Odysseus’ voyage and learned what Homer teaches about life’s journeys and what it means to yearn for home.</div>
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<a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/a-father-and-sons-final-odyssey" target="_blank">http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/24/a-father-and-sons-final-odyssey</a><br />
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<span id="goog_204459612"></span><span id="goog_204459613"></span><br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-90130382778758697732016-10-10T16:57:00.002-05:002016-10-10T16:59:01.816-05:00"the oldest melody in existence"<a href="http://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/oldest-song-melody/" target="_blank">http://www.classicfm.com/music-news/videos/oldest-song-melody/</a><br />
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The lyrics are very difficult to translate, but one academic has come up with this rendering of them:<br />
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‘Once I have endeared the deity, she will love me in her heart,<br />
the offer I bring may wholly cover my sin, <br />
bringing sesame oil may work on my behalf in awe may I'<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-21736457960190912812016-10-10T10:56:00.000-05:002017-04-17T11:01:58.529-05:00Gilgamesh and tyranny<br />
<a href="http://ethics.harvard.edu/people/danielle-allen" target="_blank">Danielle Allen</a> in the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/10/08/donald-trump-is-a-walking-talking-example-of-the-tyrannical-soul/" target="_blank">Washington Post</a>:<br />
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The world’s oldest surviving text is about how to deal with a problem like Donald Trump.
In the “Epic Gilgamesh,” which dates to 2100 B.C., the people of the
city of Uruk in Mesopotamia lift their voices to the gods in complaint
about their king, Gilgamesh. In David Ferry’s marvelous translation, the
people of Uruk lament: “Neither the father’s son nor the wife of the
noble is safe in Uruk; neither the mother’s daughter nor the warrior’s
bride is safe.”<br />
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The people first try to protect themselves by
seeking a double for Gilgamesh, someone who is in some important sense
like him, who can contend with him and who can keep him in check. . . . In the epic, the double’s name
is Enkidu, and it is Enkidu who finally blocks Gilgamesh from entering a
bridal chamber ahead of the bridegroom. . . . In the epic “Gilgamesh,” the tyrant becomes a good king only when he
comes to recognize that in his own mortality he is no greater than the
lowliest peasant. Reflecting on death, he says, “And then I saw a worm
fall out of his nose. Must I die too?” Assimilating this lesson,
Gilgamesh is at last able to rein in his passions, develop virtues and
become a beneficent king.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-4913930676286596732016-10-10T10:54:00.000-05:002017-04-17T11:02:15.059-05:00Scientists Trace Society’s Myths to Primordial Origins<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/3C2940ED-9C0F-4EEE-8BD3DF10F9175BF8_source.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/3C2940ED-9C0F-4EEE-8BD3DF10F9175BF8_source.png" width="371" /></a><a href="https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julien_DHuy" target="_blank">Julien d'Huy</a> in <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scientists-trace-society-s-myths-to-primordial-origins/" target="_blank">Scientific American</a>:<br />
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The first version of the Cosmic Hunt, the ancestor of all the other
accounts of the story of Callisto, reconstructed from three different
databases, would have gone like this: A man is hunting an ungulate; the
hunt takes place in the sky or ends there; the animal is alive when it
is transformed into a constellation; and this constellation is the one
we know as Ursa Major.<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-67956238044590777062015-10-01T04:10:00.001-05:002019-10-25T13:00:12.626-05:00Gilgamesh-ish?<div>
A newly discovered Gilgamesh tablet, with Humbaba -- and monkeys?</div>
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<a href="http://etc.ancient.eu/2015/09/24/giglamesh-enkidu-humbaba-cedar-forest-newest-discovered-tablet-v-epic/">http://etc.ancient.eu/2015/09/24/giglamesh-enkidu-humbaba-cedar-forest-newest-discovered-tablet-v-epic/</a><br />
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<img src="webkit-fake-url://ba76416d-659d-404e-88ab-462f9475e93f/imagejpeg" />Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-46139867842674600272015-06-16T09:50:00.001-05:002017-04-17T11:02:32.433-05:00James Joyce Explains Why Ulysses Is the Most “Complete Man” inLiterature<blockquote style="border-left-color: rgb(74 , 74 , 74); border-left-style: solid; border-width: 0px 0px 0px 0.4em; box-sizing: border-box; font-style: italic; margin: 1.75em 0px 1.75em -2.2em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1.75em; quotes: ""; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">"</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Hamlet is a human being, but he is a son only. Ulysses is son to Laertes, but he is father to Telemachus, husband to Penelope, lover of Calypso, companion in arms of the Greek warriors around Troy and King of Ithaca. He was subjected to many trials, but with wisdom and courage came through them all. Don’t forget that he was a war dodger who tried to evade military service by simulating madness. He might never have taken up arms and gone to Troy, but the Greek recruiting sergeant was too clever for him and, while he was ploughing the sands, placed young Telemachus in front of his plough. But once at the war the conscientious objector became a </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-style: normal; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">jusqu’auboutist</span><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-family: "helvetica neue light" , , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">. When the others wanted to abandon the siege he insisted on staying till Troy should fall."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">A <i style="border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">jusqu’auboutist </i>is one who sticks it out to the end.</span></div>
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<a href="http://biblioklept.org/2011/02/11/hamlet-is-a-human-being-but-he-is-a-son-only-james-joyce-explains-why-ulysses-is-the-most-complete-man-in-literature/"><span style="background-color: rgba(255 , 255 , 255 , 0); font-style: italic;">http://biblioklept.org/2011/02/11/hamlet-is-a-human-being-but-he-is-a-son-only-james-joyce-explains-why-ulysses-is-the-most-complete-man-in-literature/</span></a></div>
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"Nausicaa," from Henri Matisse's illustrations to the 1935 edition of Joyce's "Ulysses." </div>
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<a href="http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/henri_matisse_illustrates_1935_edition_of_james_joyces_iulyssesi.html">http://www.openculture.com/2012/04/henri_matisse_illustrates_1935_edition_of_james_joyces_iulyssesi.html</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-88747936088658947152015-05-03T12:32:00.002-05:002015-05-03T12:32:47.305-05:00"Chekhov for Children"<div class="" style="border: 0px; color: #717070; margin: 0px; max-width: 99.9000015258789%; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline;">
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/xCGCKWPfuMo/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xCGCKWPfuMo?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="color_15" style="border: 0px; color: #4a4a4a; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">This documentary recalls our kids' projects of creating and performing serious work based on complex stories:</span></span></span><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="color_15" style="border: 0px; color: #4a4a4a; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> filmmaker Sasha Waters-Freyer "t</span></span></span><span style="color: #4a4a4a;">ells the inspiring story of an ambitious undertaking – the 1979 staging on Broadway of Uncle Vanya by New York City 5th & 6th graders, directed by the celebrated writer Phillip Lopate. Using a wealth of never-before-screened student documentary videos and dramatic super 8mm films from the era, </span><span class="" style="border: 0px; color: #4a4a4a; font-style: italic; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Chekhov for Children </span><span style="color: #4a4a4a;">explores the interplay between art and life for a dozen friends across 30 years."</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #4a4a4a;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="https://uh2307.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/lopatechekhovforchildren.pdf" target="_blank">Lopate</a> wrote an essay on his work with this production.</span></span></div>
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<span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;"><a class="" href="http://www.fandor.com/films/chekhov_for_children" style="border: 0px; color: #717070; cursor: pointer; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank"><span class="color_15" style="border: 0px; color: #4a4a4a; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="" style="border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">View at Fandor</span></span></a></span><span class="color_15" style="border: 0px; color: #4a4a4a; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"> or email <a class="" href="mailto:swfreyer@vcu.edu">swfreyer@vcu.edu</a> to order a DVD</span></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-29362037774208927112014-12-27T12:24:00.001-06:002017-04-17T11:05:34.497-05:00Why Homer Matters (review)<div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/books/review/why-homer-matters-by-adam-nicolson.html?_r=0" target="_blank">https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/books/review/why-homer-matters-by-adam-nicolson.html?_r=0 </a></span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Homer has become a kind of scripture for me, an ancient book, full of urgent imperatives and ancient meanings, most of them half discerned, to be puzzled over. It is a source of wisdom.” So begins the third chapter of Adam Nicolson’s highly accessible new book, “Why Homer Matters,” in which he compares his relationship with epic poetry to a form of possession, a “colonization of the mind by an imaginative presence from the past.” The world needs more Adam Nicolsons, unabashedly passionate evangelists for the power of ancient poetry to connect us with our collective past, illuminate our personal struggles and interrogate our understanding of human history.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For centuries, the study of Greek literature has been seen as the province of career academics. But Nicolson’s amateurism (in the best, etymological, sense of the word: from the Latin <i>amare</i>, “to love”) and globe-trotting passion for his subject is contagious, intimating that it is impossible to comprehend Homer’s poems from an armchair or behind a desk. If you’ve never read the “Iliad” or the “Odyssey,” or your copies have been collecting dust since college, Nicolson’s book is likely to inspire you to visit or revisit their pages.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">According to Nicolson, a British baron who has written books on subjects that span the making of the King James Bible, the challenges and joys of farming, nautical voyages, and long walks through France, “you don’t acquire Homer; Homer acquires you.” Nicolson describes how he set out on a personal odyssey from the coast of Scotland to the gates of Hades in search of the origins of Greek poetry and Western consciousness. In all of this, he is most at home as a writer when describing landscapes, as in his depiction of Homeric Hades by way of the estuary at Huelva in southwestern Spain: “Flakes of white quartzite shine through the water between ribs of rock that veer from red to tangerine to ocher and rust to flame-colored, flesh-colored, sick and livid.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As Nicolson relates, Homer, the blind bard of Chios who supposedly composed the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” may never have existed. Or, if he did, he most likely wasn’t the sole author of the epic poems for which he became famous. Instead, he may have culled, arranged and interpolated these foundational myths from within a living, oral tradition reaching back — through the Greek Dark Ages — to a primitive, preliterate era of Bronze Age wars and warriors sprawled across the Eurasian plains. “The poems,” Nicolson writes, “were composed by a man standing at the top of a human pyramid. He could not have stood there without the pyramid beneath him, and the pyramid consisted not only of the earlier poets in the tradition but of their audiences too.”</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">This is the central idea behind Nicolson’s book, which traces the origins of the story of the Trojan War and its aftermath — by way of the Minoan ruins of Knossos, the great library of Alexandria, and the National Archaeological Museum in Athens — to a period 1,000 or more years earlier than the one suggested by what he defines as the reigning orthodoxy. Nicolson contends that the epic poems reflect “the violence and sense of strangeness of about 1800 B.C. recollected in the tranquillity of about 1300 B.C.,” though not captured in writing until roughly 700 B.C. And so he believes that whoever wrote the poems down belonged to “a culture emerging from a dark age, looking to a future but also looking back to a past, filled with nostalgia for the years of integrity, simplicity, nobility and straightforwardness.” </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It is difficult to assess Nicolson’s theory, which is based on a conjecture that the “Iliad” describes a pre-palatial warrior culture that seems to align well with the “world of the gold-encrusted kings buried in the shaft graves at Mycenae,” now dated to the 17th and 16th centuries B.C. But as a thought exercise, it is often gripping and, at times, electrifying. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">According to Nicolson, “Epic, which was invented after memory and before history, occupies a third space in the human desire to connect the present to the past: It is the attempt to extend the qualities of memory over the reach of time.” The purpose of epic “is to make the distant past as immediate to us as our own lives, to make the great stories of long ago beautiful and painful now.” </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Romanian scholar of comparative religion Mircea Eliade called this basic human impulse — to connect our quotidian existence, through ritual and myth, with the lives and struggles of the great heroes of the past — the “eternal return.” In the telling and retelling of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey,” we imbue our insignificant lives with meaning, transporting ourselves to a mythical time, while bringing the heroic age into our own. Throughout the book, Nicolson describes moments when his own life has been elevated or illuminated by the epics — such as his sailing across the Celtic Sea with the “Odyssey” fastened to his compass binnacle, tied open to the story of the sirens — but also moments when harrowing experiences, including being raped at knife point in the Syrian desert, have revealed to him something powerful within the poems.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The Homeric epics are long, contradictory, repetitive, composite works, riddled with anachronisms, archaic vocabulary, metric filler and exceedingly graphic brutality. Over the millenniums, Nicolson asserts, they have been cleaned, scrubbed and sanitized by generations of translators, editors, librarians and scholars, in order to protect readers from the dangers of the atavistic world lurking just below the surface of the words. He writes that everyone from the editors at the Ptolemaic library in Alexandria to the great 18th-century poet Alexander Pope wished to civilize or tame the poems, “wanted to make Homer proper, to pasteurize him and transform him into something acceptable for a well-governed city.” Part of Nicolson’s objective is to follow the poems back to the vengeful, frighteningly violent time and culture from which they came, and to restore some of their rawness.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">For Nicolson, the commonly held belief that the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” were products of the late eighth century B.C., a period of Greek resurgence and prosperity, cannot account for the heterogeneity of the poems and all they contain. He prefers the view that, instead of being the creation of a single man, let alone of a single time, “Homer reeks of long use.” Try thinking of Homer as a “plural noun,” he suggests, made up of “the frozen and preserved words of an entire culture.” Seen through this lens, the ancient poems appear as a bridge between the present and an otherwise inaccessible past, a rare window into a moment of cultural convergence around 2000 B.C., when East met West, North met South, and Greek consciousness was forged in the crucible of conflict between a savage warrior culture from the flat grasslands of Eurasia and the wealthy, sophisticated residents of cities in the eastern Mediterranean. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">“Homer,” Nicolson writes, “in a miracle of transmission from one end of human civilization to the other, continues to be as alive as anything that has ever lived.” Reading “Why Homer Matters” makes one yearn for a time, almost lost to us now, when many others shared Nicolson’s enthusiasm. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">WHY HOMER MATTERS</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">by Adam Nicolson</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Illustrated. 297 pp. A John Macrae Book/Henry Holt & Company. $30.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Bryan Doerries is a stage director and a translator. His first book, “The Theater of War: What Ancient Tragedies Can Teach Us Today,” will be published next fall.</span><br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-17916450841284819422014-12-12T13:52:00.001-06:002017-04-17T11:05:45.538-05:00My inspiration: Sarwat Chadda on Indian hero, Rama<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #636363; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Rama, hero of the Hindu epic the Ramayana, showed the author of the <a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/ash-mistry-and-the-savage-fortress.html"><span style="color: #084376; text-decoration: none;">Ash Mistry</span></a>
trilogy what true heroism is: swords and magic armour aside, it means
self-sacrifice, humility and defending the weak<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #636363; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">by <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/dec/08/rama-sarwat-chadda-rama-indian-hero-ramayana-hindu" target="_blank">Sarwat Chadda</a></span></div>
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<span style="color: #636363; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Monday 8 December 2014 03.40 EST<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">I grew up reading the Greek myths. I
loved Jason and the Argonauts, Theseus (many a rainy day spent drawing his epic
battle versus the Minotaur) and the heroes of the Iliad. Time went on and I
became a fan of the Norse Gods. Odin, Loki, Sif and the whole golden, brooding
crew. Oh to have a pair of pet ravens!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">It wasn’t until I was in my 20s that I
really discovered Indian mythology. I travelled around the subcontinent and the
Far East as visited places as awe-inspiring as anything out of a fantasy book.
The palaces of Angkor Wat. The labyrinthine streets of Varanasi. The
monasteries of Tibet. Why live in Middle Earth when you had places like this,
for real?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">The idea of writing a series sent in the
East took almost 20 years to come to the page. The <a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/ash-mistry-and-the-savage-fortress.html"><span style="color: #084376; text-decoration: none;">Ash Mistry</span></a>
trilogy takes a modern, British kid and hurls him neck deep into the war
between the gods and monsters of Indian myth. I want to give the reader a taste
of the magic of the Eastern world, take them on adventures beyond the now-familiar
tropes of Western fantasy. The first book, <a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/ash-mistry-and-the-savage-fortress.html"><span style="color: #084376; text-decoration: none;">Ash Mistry and
the Savage Fortress</span></a> is set in the holy city of Varanasi. The next in
Kolkata and the last in Tibet and China. It’s about reincarnation, about
destiny, and about making the ultimate sacrifice. It’s about becoming a hero.
But I wanted my hero, Ash, to be based not on Thor or Achilles, but on an
Indian hero. And the biggest of them all is Rama.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">What Rama showed me is the universal
nature of true heroism. Simply put, swords and magic armour aside, it means
self-sacrifice. To put all others, loved ones and strangers, before yourself.
To defend the weak. To be humble and generous in victory. Things that might be
called “old-fashioned”, but I prefer to call them “classic”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Rama is the hero of the Indian epic, the
<a href="http://bookshop.theguardian.com/ramayana.html"><span style="color: #084376; text-decoration: none;">Ramayana</span></a>. Reduced
to its bare bones it’s the story of how a prince gives up his claim to his
father’s throne, lives as a peasant in the forests with wife and younger
brother, and how he battles against a demon king to reclaim his wife when she
is kidnapped. The demon king, Ravana, is one of the greatest villains in
literature.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Honourable in his own way, it is his
pride that is his downfall. He will not bow to a mere man. Even a man like
Rama.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Rama doesn’t want war. He is not a
glory-seeker like Achilles, nor a boastful blow-hard like Thor. He is quiet,
thoughtful, and devastating. Both a man of peace and god of war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #262626; font-family: "optima"; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-fareast-language: JA;">I think this duality is why, perhaps,
Indian mythology is harder to access than more familiar and partisan myths of
good guys and bad guys. But that’s what makes it so special and Rama one of the
most human heroes of all.</span><span style="font-family: "optima";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-63036014666311205772014-09-09T11:03:00.002-05:002017-04-17T11:06:02.275-05:00Hear The Epic of Gilgamesh Read in the Original Akkadian!From <a href="http://www.openculture.com/2010/10/the_sounds_of_ancient_mesopotamia.html" target="_blank">openculture</a>:<br />
<div style="background-color: #f6f2e3; color: #414141; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
<a href="http://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/gilgamesh-sound.jpg" sl-processed="1" style="clear: left; color: #366884; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; outline: none; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="gilgamesh sound" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-78712" height="400" src="https://cdn8.openculture.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/gilgamesh-sound-e1383106647668.jpg" style="border: none; float: left; margin-bottom: 15px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 5px;" width="328" /></a></div>
<div style="background-color: #f6f2e3; color: #414141; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
Long ago, in the ancient civilization of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesopotamia" sl-processed="1" style="color: #366884; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Mesopotamia</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akkadian_language" sl-processed="1" style="color: #366884; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">Akkadian</a> was the dominant language. And, for centuries, it remained the lingua franca in the Ancient Near East. But then it was gradually squeezed out by Aramaic, and it faded into oblivion once Alexander the Great Hellenized (Greekified) the region.</div>
<div style="background-color: #f6f2e3; color: #414141; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;">
Now, 2,000+ years later, Akkadian is making a small comeback. At Cambridge University, Dr. Martin Worthington, an expert in Babylonian and Assyrian grammar, has started recording readings of poems, myths and other texts in Akkadian, including<i> <a href="http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/gilgamesh/" sl-processed="1" style="color: #366884; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">The Epic of Gilgamesh</a></i>. <a href="http://downloads.sms.cam.ac.uk/759117/759123.mp3" sl-processed="1" style="color: #366884; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">This clip</a> gives you a taste of what <i>Gilgamesh</i>, one of the earliest known works of literature, sounds like in its mother tongue. Or, you can jump into the <a href="http://www.soas.ac.uk/baplar/recordings/" sl-processed="1" style="color: #366884; outline: none; text-decoration: none;">full collection of readings right here</a>.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-40269203027560580522014-09-04T19:50:00.001-05:002017-04-17T11:06:12.831-05:0030 minute guitar OdysseySeptember 30, 2014<br />
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7:00pm</div>
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Amphitheater, Rhodes College</div>
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"<span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">a 30 minute long composition for solo acoustic guitar and voice, which tells the story of <i style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Odyssey</i> in song, invoking the spirit of the ancient Greek bards who originally brought forth the timeless stories of Odysseus and the heroes of the Trojan War."</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.joesodyssey.com/about/"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">http://www.joesodyssey.com/about/</span></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj36q6y1VnK67IzUzjRLRmxESG1EsdGeY39ISLRiFk__Cbf3CBAaMZpES8ZA06jnEsgETUpv4wW50Br62u6-ZJl3QZ4gAAgY8ZSEaJ32QXGe1FliHoOgNr9aqscq-VpJeP_ya9IZG7hnd8/s640/blogger-image--1748192213.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj36q6y1VnK67IzUzjRLRmxESG1EsdGeY39ISLRiFk__Cbf3CBAaMZpES8ZA06jnEsgETUpv4wW50Br62u6-ZJl3QZ4gAAgY8ZSEaJ32QXGe1FliHoOgNr9aqscq-VpJeP_ya9IZG7hnd8/s640/blogger-image--1748192213.jpg" /></a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-7825289215078327682014-08-24T15:26:00.007-05:002014-08-24T15:26:50.214-05:00Day 24, Book 24<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTorHBe0bOnTa3QNj7V14YzkHTno7zcB_cQjCu027RfCS4MdOi054d9SkK30juWA9DwvcogDq-vllJLcE5rbMHQI2OaBNV7td8iI-EQvQWpkHPHLRbszOEwno1mFSL166bdR4X4jX1FI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-24+at+3.24.23+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqTorHBe0bOnTa3QNj7V14YzkHTno7zcB_cQjCu027RfCS4MdOi054d9SkK30juWA9DwvcogDq-vllJLcE5rbMHQI2OaBNV7td8iI-EQvQWpkHPHLRbszOEwno1mFSL166bdR4X4jX1FI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-08-24+at+3.24.23+PM.png" height="320" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Odysseus reunited with Laertes,<br />photo of Roman sarcophagus<br />(<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/roger_ulrich/8136895466/" target="_blank">Roger Ulrich</a>)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">The ghosts of Achilles and Agamemnon – both figures who have loomed large over Odysseus' martial and marital quests – unite in marveling at "</span><i style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">Happy Odysseus!</i><span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">" (210) as they receive the shades of the slaughtered suitors in Hades. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">Then, another reunion (with Laertes, Odysseus' father), but not before another test through tale-telling, and another sign of "</span><i style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">Living proof</i><span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">" – both his scar (that disclosed him the Eurycleia) and his trees (the vineyard here recalling the rooted bed of Book 23). </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;">At long last, Athena commands peace, restoring order to Ithaca and drawing closure to the epic.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-44093177041858499982014-08-24T15:19:00.002-05:002014-08-24T15:19:48.940-05:00Day 23, Book 23<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmY0-euWdnSZ2logBbknZEAZN5bMnIUFVym_fkW35jPXGaYWTuH6Tqcy7I1mlWseUQv0xLPotttGxSIU1RicvcOBL26fNyyVYsl2QgU7hac69xYinpS_xVAeX5RNpjogncmcvXAjJxbWc/s1600/RootedBed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmY0-euWdnSZ2logBbknZEAZN5bMnIUFVym_fkW35jPXGaYWTuH6Tqcy7I1mlWseUQv0xLPotttGxSIU1RicvcOBL26fNyyVYsl2QgU7hac69xYinpS_xVAeX5RNpjogncmcvXAjJxbWc/s1600/RootedBed.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Tree Dream," <a href="http://www.joanharmon.com/" target="_blank">Joan Harmon</a> (2003)</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;">Penelope tests Odysseus by telling Eurycleia to "m<i>ove the sturdy bedstead out of our bridal chamber</i>" – impossible, since (as the infuriated Odysseus retorts)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>I know it, I built it myself – no one else . . .</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>There was a branching olive-tree inside our court,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>grown to its full prime, the bore like a column, thickset.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>Around it I built my bedroom, finished off the walls</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>with good tight stonework, roofed it over soundly</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>and added doors, hung well and snugly wedged.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>Then I lopped the leafy crown of the olive,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>clean-cutting the stump bare from roots up,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>planing it round with a bronze smoothing-adze –</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>I had the skill – I shaped it plumb to the line to make</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>my bedpost, bored the holes it needed with an auger.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>Working from there I built my bed, start to finish,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>I gave it ivory inlays, gold and silver fittings,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>wove the straps across it, oxhide gleaming red.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>There's our secret sign, I tell you, our life story!</i> (210–28)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;">Their mutual recognition confirmed through their intimately crafted space.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-76060953324369399152014-08-24T15:17:00.001-05:002014-08-24T15:17:06.327-05:00Day 22, Book 22<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyS1vPVoBz-FDIRn81wRI0KnpojndzL4WmwSWH8KXvDZnk98zHBiLvUI9qFSsu3pZobbm-zJpQu4gAHvgKWYv5k3S-wvF_sE_9oMtC8GSLOeHxxqWVaNQCBFioUIb7j36p839821FoMY/s1600/greeks2.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikyS1vPVoBz-FDIRn81wRI0KnpojndzL4WmwSWH8KXvDZnk98zHBiLvUI9qFSsu3pZobbm-zJpQu4gAHvgKWYv5k3S-wvF_sE_9oMtC8GSLOeHxxqWVaNQCBFioUIb7j36p839821FoMY/s1600/greeks2.gif" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;">The pent-up fury of revenge (with a guest appearance by Athena) produces gore matching any battle in</span><span style="font-family: Optima;"> </span><i style="font-family: Optima;">The Iliad</i><span style="font-family: Optima;">. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;">Even the punishment of the women is gruesome – first, forcing them to clear the bodies and scrub the floors; then, </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>as doves or thrushes beating their spread wings</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>against some snare rigged up in thickets – flying in</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>for a cozy nest but a grisly bed receives them –</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>so the women's heads were trapped in a line,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>nooses yanking their necks up, one by one,</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>so all might die a pitiful, ghastly death . . . </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;"><i>they kicked up their heels for a little – not for long.</i> (494–99)</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-73398859938242716062014-08-21T16:54:00.002-05:002014-08-21T16:54:22.817-05:00Day 21, Book 21<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1U-32d-WxHV1n9UPtFys2Fu_9ibLohsckyZZOvnRjYFZDb5bljdKY5CXxO1Ps4PEVK4pSgefzcaaTEVLrxsxPILRS8-mRBHjrUm1-Jq-RIjASzv9ADgJAthX-urxAvYC8z44rn2n8ft0/s1600/Apollo-Bow-Lyre,-Vase.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1U-32d-WxHV1n9UPtFys2Fu_9ibLohsckyZZOvnRjYFZDb5bljdKY5CXxO1Ps4PEVK4pSgefzcaaTEVLrxsxPILRS8-mRBHjrUm1-Jq-RIjASzv9ADgJAthX-urxAvYC8z44rn2n8ft0/s1600/Apollo-Bow-Lyre,-Vase.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apollo with lyre</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Penelope has declared that she will marry the suitor who <a href="https://web.duke.edu/classics/grbs/FTexts/50/Ready.pdf" target="_blank">can string the bow</a> of her supposedly absent husband. Of course everyone tries, everyone fails, and Odysseus prevails. But in the midst of the prevailing, we are given an extraordinarily lovely detail, a prolonged hesitation between the stringing of the bow and the vengeful launching of the arrows. <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/75/37.html" target="_blank">Colum</a>'s version reads: <i>"For long Odysseus stood with the bow in his hands, handling it as a minstrel handles a lyre when he stretches a cord or tightens a peg. Then he bent the great bow; he bent it without an effort, and at his touch the bow-string made a sound that was like the cry of a swallow." </i><br /><br />Here's how <a href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/george-chapman" target="_blank">George Chapman</a>'s translation (c. 1615) lingers further with this same pause:<br /><br /><i>But when the wise Ulysses once had laid<br />His fingers on it, and to proof survey’d<br />The still sound plight [pliability] it held—as one of skill<br />In song and of the harp, doth at his will,<br />In tuning of his instrument, extend<br />A string out with his pin, touch all, and lend<br />To ev’ry well-wreath’d string his perfect sound,<br />Struck all together—with such ease drew round<br />The king the bow. Then twang’d he up the string,<br />That—as a swallow in the air doth sing<br />With no continu’d tune, but, pausing still,<br />Twinks out her scatter’d voice in accents shrill—<br />So sharp the string sung when he gave it touch,<br />Once having bent and drawn it.</i><br />Listen to how Chapman stretches these lines beyond their endings—"extend / A string out with his pin," "drew round / The king the bow." Those two extended similes likewise draw out the tension before the conclusive outburst of violence.<br /><br />As noted for <a href="http://memphisodyssey.blogspot.com/2014/08/day-19-book-19.html" target="_blank">Book 19</a>, the great philologist Erich Auerbach famously opens his study <a href="http://www.westmont.edu/~fisk/Articles/OdysseusScar.html" target="_blank"><i>Mimesis</i></a> with a comparison between Homeric style and the Genesis account of the sacrifice of Isaac. Auerbach insists upon the "externalization" of phenomena in Homer, characterizing the narrative as concentrating on "foreground" instead of being "fraught with background": <i>"the element of suspense is very slight in the Homeric poems; nothing in their entire style is calculated to keep the reader or hearer breathless." </i>Perhaps true on the whole, but I'm not so certain that's the case here in this felicitous conflation of warrior and artist. The poem itself was likely sung to the accompaniment of a lyre—the epic is lyrical. <br /><br />What a wonderfully self-conscious moment, then, to say that Odysseus re-familiarizing himself with his <a href="https://rowman.com/isbn/0742565971" target="_blank">bow</a> is somehow akin to a singer tuning a harp (and to say this via lyrics themselves performed with a lyre). As Shakespeare's <a href="http://faculty.up.edu/asarnow/eliz2.htm" target="_blank">Ulysses</a> puts it, when discussing "degree" (order and hierarchy), <i>"Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows."</i> Odysseus' kingdom is a mess; it's out of tune. It's time to re-pair it. And the power compressed in the singular stringing of that bow chimes with the power compressed within the poet's lyre. Pluck it, and the string sings. <br /><br />(p.s. an enigmatic line from the later Greek philosopher <a href="http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/heraclitus/herpate.htm" target="_blank">Heraclitus</a> (who thought Homer should be flogged) also fixes upon this productive tautness: <i>"that which differs with itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre" and elsewhere: "the name of the bow is life, but its work is death."</i>)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-46084677495736924202014-08-21T16:47:00.001-05:002014-08-21T16:47:46.194-05:00Day 20, Book 20More laughter from the suitors:<br /><br /><i>. . . Athena set off uncontrollable laughter in the suitors,<br />crazed them out of their minds—mad, hysterical laughter<br />seemed to break from the jaws of strangers, not their own, <br />and the meat they were eating oozed red with blood—<br />tears flooded their eyes, hearts possessed by grief. (385–89)<br /><br />At that<br />they all broke into peals of laughter aimed at the seer—<br />Plybius' son Eurmachus braying first and foremost, (398–400)<br /><br />So they jeered . . . (428)</i><br /><br />Are they meant to look insipid? rude? verging on madness?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-20755637721395002332014-08-19T17:07:00.001-05:002014-08-19T17:07:49.788-05:00Day 19, Book 19<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JIM_PUGFcFPpdaOhx0Zy-HPLMP1pKS3KyFywHN6GAwlNhFeHKk0SmHi9vDFWrd9EolX0RUQ5iVAdgdnI0VJZKcDDcHCLNxOe0GR8UdoaXjnglCC4o_KaVIo7Wxmwl1LicH-Q6kcQfpM/s1600/Eurykleia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JIM_PUGFcFPpdaOhx0Zy-HPLMP1pKS3KyFywHN6GAwlNhFeHKk0SmHi9vDFWrd9EolX0RUQ5iVAdgdnI0VJZKcDDcHCLNxOe0GR8UdoaXjnglCC4o_KaVIo7Wxmwl1LicH-Q6kcQfpM/s1600/Eurykleia.jpg" height="320" width="269" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Optima; font-size: 16px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bending closer<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>she started to bathe her master . . . then,<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>in a flash, she knew the scar –<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> that old wound<br /><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>made years ago by a boar's white tusk . . . (444–47)</i><br /><br />This marvelous instant of recognition occasioned an extraordinary meditation by <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/09/the-book-of-books">Erich Auerbach</a>, a brilliant critic who contrasted the narration of the Homeric epic with that of the Hebrew Bible. He concludes: </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><i><span style="font-family: Optima;">the Homeric style knows only a foreground, only a uniformly illuminated, uniformly objective present. . . . </span></i></span><div>
<span style="font-family: Optima;"><br /><i>It would be difficult, then, to imagine styles more contrasted than those of these two equally ancient and equally epic texts. On the one hand, [the Homeric is] externalized, uniformly illuminated phenomena, at a definite time and in a definite place, connected together without lacunae in a perpetual foreground; thoughts and feeling completely expressed; events taking place in leisurely fashion and with very little of suspense. On the other hand, the [Biblical] externalization of only so much of the phenomena as is necessary for the purpose of the narrative, all else left in obscurity; the decisive points of the narrative alone are emphasized, what lies between is nonexistent; time and place are undefined and call for interpretation; thoughts and feeling remain unexpressed, are only suggested by the silence and the fragmentary speeches; the whole, permeated with the most unrelieved suspense and directed toward a single goal (and to that extent far more of a unity), remains mysterious and “fraught with background.”</i></span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Optima;">The entire essay can be found <a href="http://www.westmont.edu/~fisk/articles/odysseusscar.html">here</a>; really, I can't recommend it highly enough. Please take a moment to read it, in conjunction with <a href="http://pages.cabrini.edu/jzurek/homer/odyssey19.htm" target="_blank">Book 19</a>. </span></div>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4803281628709099179.post-11178819599999280132014-08-18T12:35:00.001-05:002014-08-18T12:35:59.178-05:00Day 18, Book 18<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhay-1NMvs1IukIt_O-NJfvkx71gn2eo2IAR4Brby9MFaqazRpM_hjQxZhCTjXusECqcyZROTP9bzguWxkq7dNlNrDzJyviyuFYs7V7kLP3PALV5alsfbY9_FcG90UNEFXx_atdwB15gqQ/s1600/GreekLaughter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhay-1NMvs1IukIt_O-NJfvkx71gn2eo2IAR4Brby9MFaqazRpM_hjQxZhCTjXusECqcyZROTP9bzguWxkq7dNlNrDzJyviyuFYs7V7kLP3PALV5alsfbY9_FcG90UNEFXx_atdwB15gqQ/s1600/GreekLaughter.jpg" height="320" width="213" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Stephen Halliwell, <a href="http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical-studies/classical-studies-general/greek-laughter-study-cultural-psychology-homer-early-christianity" target="_blank"><i>Greek Laughter</i></a> (2008)</td></tr>
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<i>"And Antinous, that grand prince, hearing them wrangle,<br />broke into gloating laughter . . . <br /><br />All leapt from their seats with whoops of laughter . . . "</i> (41–42, 48) <br /><br />Why do we laugh? Because we are <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/humor/#SH2b" target="_blank">relieved</a>, or find something <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/humor/#SH2c" target="_blank">incongruous</a>? Philosophers have often puzzled over an explanation for this oddly human behavior. <a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0168:book=3:page=389" target="_blank">Plato</a> was discomfited by the Gods' laughter at lame Hephaestus in <i>The Iliad</i>. <a href="http://facultypages.morris.umn.edu/~mcollier/Moral%20Sentimentalism/hobbes%20on%20laughter.pdf" target="_blank">Hobbes</a> thought laughter a sign of superior feeling, the apprehension of "sudden glory."<br /><br />The <a href="http://facultypages.morris.umn.edu/~mcollier/Moral%20Sentimentalism/hobbes%20on%20laughter.pdf" target="_blank">suitors</a>' laughter, here instigated by Antinous, confirms yet again their callousness, their willful delight in witnessing <a href="http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9781405106795_chunk_g97814051067954_ss1-257" target="_blank">cruelty</a> (sadly akin to contemporary youtube videos of fights between homeless people). Odysseus, of course, has the last laugh.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com