Today concluded with the out-loud readings of various favorite lines from the Metamorphoses. I ended up settling on a passage describing the state of natural mourning after the gruesome death of Orpheaus(this after my orginal choice, which comes slightly afterward, was read by another).

The birds, in mourning, wept

o Orpheus--the throngs of savage beasts,

and rigid stones, and forests, too--all these

had often followed as you sang; the trees

now shed their leafy crowns-as sign of grief,

their trunks were bare. They say that even streams

were swollen; yes, the rivers, too shed tears.

The aesthetic clincher for me was that last bit, about how even the rivers shed tears. Odd and lovely for being so.

Also learned were things of etimological(sp?) value. Apparently the Joycean rendering of "phenomenal" is "funanimal". So if something is phenomenal, it is an animal having fun?

And this I found quite piquant. The word ate, which is Greek, and means infatuation to the point were you have ruined your life(numerous stories from Ovid obviously would fall under this category, but I was reminded--probably because I re-watched the film version not so long ago--of The English Patient, which may be in congruence or not). But apparently this, according to Plato's Socrates, is ends up truly giving life a real essence; and hence art.

This information came up as Mr. Sexson was reading Carly's blog entry, which if I may say so was quite eloquent and thoughtful.

And here I now am, left to ponder the existence and drawing out from insubstantial vapor the music of the spheres...

Today we were re-vivisted the notion of something that has sort of been touched on before, but not to the depth that happened today: that is, the redemptive power of Art. We--humanity--are able to whether through the most terrible things our own nature is able to offer because of the refuge of art. The argument has been prosented that this is exactly what the transformations in Ovid's Metaphorses truly are.
Mr. Sexson then put forth that there are two books equal to Ovid in this power: the complete works of William Shakespeare(which I don't know about counting as a single book, but that's not really the point) and James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. The latter is a book for quite some time I'd figured on never endeavoring to read(intellectual vanity notwithstanding)due to the simple fact that it is "unreadable". However, Mr. Sexson proposed something oddly reassuring: you don't have to understand it, you just have to feel it. I can follow that.
We also must pick out what we thought to be the five best lines from Metamorphoses for Friday. Can do, will do.

Though I could easily blog about the absudity and sheer horrific spectacle contained in Euripides' The Bacchae, which was the locus of class today, I won't. I will instead focus on the story from Ovid's Metamorphoses that most struck me, that of Cephalus, Procris and Aurora(for the record, I was also drawn to Orpheus, but that story is much more famous and I knew it before reading Metamorphoses, which was not the case with the former story).

It is in (I believe) book 7 of Metmorphoses and I will give a drastically reduced version of it. Cephalus is a hunter, who marries this woman named Procris, and they are deeply in love. But one day, the goddess Aurora sees Cephalus out hunting and is immediately infatuated with him(he happens to be extremely good looking). But when she asks him if he'll submit to her, he says "No, I love my wife!". Aurora lets him go, but is royally pissed off and vengeful--as the gods are wont to become--. So she disguises herself and goes to Procris, and tells her that Cephalus has fallen in love with the goddess Aurora. Procrsi is heartbroke, and jealous.
The next morning Cephalus goes out hunting again, and he hears a sobbing sound over in the bushes. Thinking it an animal, he casts his enchanted hunting spear(which was a gift from Procris, who recieved it as a gift from Artemis), and hits the mark. And when he goes over the spot, it turns out it was his wife who he speared, and as she dies, she declares her love for him and only asks in return that he not share his bed with Aurora.
The simplest answer I could give for the question "What was it that struck you about this story?", it would probably be the potent force of tragic irony that comes through at the conclusion, coupled with the almost equally potent sting of thwarted love--it should have lasted much longer than this--.

The following are places where I found pictorial representations, including paintings by Rubens and Poussin, and a sculpture by John Flaxman.

http://www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/search.aspx?q=Cephalus&frm

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.asp?venue=7&id=51

Today I learned that Iris Murdoch apparently loved a painting by Titian depicting the flaying of Marsyus--who challenged Apollo to a flute-playing contest and had the great misfortune of winning--, which she felt was expessive of the human condition. It would certainly seem to be a bleak one then.
We also were introduced to this notion of Grace, meaning in a theological sense that God is present in the world, and one becomes aware of it. If one denies it(like Pentheus, aptly named "grief"), then typically very bad things will happen to you and everyone else. Like omophagia, doing sparagmos one better(or worse) by involving the eating of live flesh. We also have yet another way to consider tragedy; namely when the punishment is grossly disproportionate to the crime.

I shall also try and see if I can come up with a visual representation of the story that most struck me from Ovid's Metamorpheses, that of Cephalus, Procris and Aurora.

We finished up Lysistrata and began The Bacchae today. The motif of the scapegoat( a term which comes from the King James translation of the book of Leviticus, just to say so) was brought up in relation to the (temporary)lifting away off of repression, exemplified in the scene where the woman forcibly dress the Councilor as a woman and then as a corpse, because being treated like a woman is the worst thing a male figure of authority can imagine--some things never really change--.
This segued nicely with The Bacchae, because Dionysus is the God of revelry and the lifting of oppression. He also brings about chaos and destruction, as well as healing and happiness. This is deeply baffling, because it is a paradox. This is a notion I will undoubtedly touch upon at a later time, being as I lack motivation at the present moment, because it is a facsinating thing, paradox.

Today was delightfully amusing, not the least because of an event which I would be writing about, but have been forbidden to because it is of an esoteric nature.

Instead, I shall talk again about the subject of comedy, which was touched upon in the last blog entry. Mr. Sexson read to us the passage near the end of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose(also a movie, starring Sean Connery and directed by Jean Jacques Annaud, which had the grace to call itself a 'palimpsest' of a novel), in which Eco puts down what he thinks to be as accurate a reconstruction of the introduction of Aristotle's lost book on comedy as is possible(dear Lord that was a long sentance). Very intriguing. It relates largely to the notion of that which is repressed coming to the surface, which may be the reason why the Festival of Fool's(or the Ass) or the Saturnia would have been tolerated during the Middle Ages.
We then proceeded to read aloud the oath-taking scene from Lysistrata from different translations, some more obscene then others--how curious that the more obscene ones where the ones that got the biggest laughs--. Translation, and the accuracy or lack-there-of of it, is something that I have to resist the urge to get hung up on. I do know that narrative flow and the connections made between images often come through perfectly, but there is always a small part of me that can worry as to what is more accurate, especially when butted against what sounds better(which can sometimes happen) Anyway, I thought it was interesting.

Today's class centered entirely around comedy, principally Old Comedy, which Aristophanes is the sole surviving representative of. New Comedy(revolving around a concept of boy-trying-to-get-girl-and-can't as well as mistaken identity and themes of death/reabirth)is represented by Menander. The essential chord of this comedy is the stabilization of society, personified by marriage at the end. Seems to me that Old Comedy ends up dealing with some form of distabilization of society, even though things do get worked out in the end, when the Happy Idea is realized.

And these are the two things we know about Aristotle's definition of comedy, being that the treatise on comedy from the Poetics has been lost.
1. Comedy is about people who are worse than we are
2.Comedy orignates from phallic processions. (I can now add that I now know what the god Priapus is a personification for--like when you are afflicted with priapsus--)

Before moving onto the hilariously obscene Lysistrata, we finished up the Symposium with a few Platonic observations, via Diotima. The notion that Love(Eros) is the child of Poverty(or Want) and Contrivance. And that, contrary to what many tell you, it is better to be a lover than to be loved. And that, on an elemental level, love a search for two things, immortality of the soul and the good. A way to the immortal is the beggeting(sp?) of children of the brain--The Illiad and The Odyssey are Homer's--, not to be confused with children of the body.

And to Aristophanes, the sole surviving representative of Old Comedy--which had direct politcal commentary in the plot-- and his play Lysistrata, where virtually all the characters(except perhaps the eponymous heroine) are completely off-the-wall horny.

We have also been asked to think of comedy in this sense: If the gist of tragedy was that it was better never to have been born at all, then the gist of comedy is found in the call of Sir John Falstaff: "More life!" It may be lewd, bereft of dignity and honor, and incredibly nasty, but it is life, and so one should have it.

I also think I should see Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties now.

I also liked the nugget about how the Greek word for poetry is poesis, which means to make up. So what does it matter if something is "real" or "plausible" or "contrived" or "just something that somebody made up"?

I went ahead and read Carson McCullers' A Rock A Tree A Cloud, which Mr. Sexson sent to everybody. Quite lovely in its simplicity. But is it really simplicity? It does in fact seem that McCullers knew about Plato's levels of love and the ascension of them, and knew how to articulate it in just this way. One person(the old man)teaching one other(the paper boy) what he ought to know about love, and a rather harsh pessimist(Leo the cafe owner)who scoffs at love.
Perhaps we could even say the old man is comparable to a Silenus statue; ugly on the outside, beautiful within. And I'll not speak more today...