Study Leave: Occasional Posts on Research, Writing and Other Academic Matters: April 2012

Sunday, 29 April 2012

data tidying

Similes (Photo credit: teotwawki)

Spent an hour tagging all of the various Homeric texts Oswald has used so as to have a sortable list of them. This doesn't work quite as well as I had hoped, but oh well. It is so easy to waste days, weeks, months fiddling with one's table of data instead of, you know, actually writing anything, because it's so much easier to tweak some tags and figure out how to print it out just so and should I put the texts that are similes in a different font, or the same font? Or should I double-tag them "similes" too? Is there some way to print that out? Hey, wouldn't it be interesting to put this in, like, a graph, and show where she's getting all the texts from - oh I know, it would be even better to have TWO graphs, one for the similes and one for the death scenes, and show what order she's putting them in in the poem, and the death scenes are linear but the similes are from all over the place, or wait, are they? maybe I could have ANOTHER graph that shows the narrative order of the similes by book, and then ... or maybe I could, you know, actually write something.

So, why don't I pause and make a few general comments now (of the sort that I may back up with charts! And tables! But not now): So far the deaths are coming from (so far) books 5 through 8. She's skipped a couple, well actually only one I think (Eioneus, beginning of Bk 7); but except that one, all the named deaths in those books are in "Memorial", and in the order given by Homer. She sometimes gives the name of the parents of the dead, sometimes not, but if the mother's name is given she always records it. She often doesn't bother to give the name of the killer, where in Homer that's usually the whole point (since the death is part of someone's aristeia.)

The similes on the other hand are drawn from all over the shop, and I have not looked for an order yet; interesting if there is one. The similes are all drawn from "famous scenes" - battle over the body of Patroclus; the battle at the ships; the weaving-woman simile that everyone knows - and she always repurposes them, by attaching them to unknowns, and often by reversing the subject and object, or otherwise targeting them differently. But she isn't making up any similes out of whole cloth; they're all Homeric too, so far.

Saturday, 28 April 2012

the rainbow

Greeks and Troyans fighting for the corpse of Patroklos - detail (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

No more men die in book 6, so Oswald jumps to the beginning of Book 7, where Paris and Hector re-enter battle after visiting their wives and Paris has killed his man, Menesthius, in the first 10 lines. She mentions his mother Phylomedusa but not his father, here as elsewhere emphasizing women wherever they're named (and it's rare enough) and describes Paris as "running in a love-rage towards him/ With the smell of Helen still on his hands". And it's here that she uses the simile from book 17, of Athena coming to the Greeks like a rainbow, a "bright banner of disruption" sent by Zeus, to stir them up to fight for Patroclus' body. And again, what?

In context, aside from (again) assimilating a simile from a famous death, Patroclus, to the death of someone who gets 3 lines in the Iliad and that is all, ever, his name is mentioned only here once at his death - but in context, it seems as if Paris, or perhaps indeed Helen, is the rainbow, the one that perhaps only portends a minor disruption of work, a summer storm; or perhaps portends a war. If Paris, he portends both a war, and the death of Menesthius; more than a minor disruption. you can't tell until the omen, a rainbow, Helen, Paris running across a field towards you, is fulfilled.

Or ... (later thought) ... obviously Helen is an interruption to Paris' work, a 'bright banner of disruption' - as we are reminded by Hector, scolding him for running off to shag Helen when he should be out here killing people. As we are reminded by Oswald, who has Paris running towards poor Menesthius with Helen still on his hands. Duh. Helen is Paris' rainbow; Paris is Menesthius'; Athena has not yet come to the Greeks.

Friday, 27 April 2012

death of Adrestus; axe and spear

Antalya Archaeological Museum. Ancient Roman sarcophagus of Aurelia Botania Demetria ( 2nd century AD ): Aphrodite is concealing Paris who is defeated by Menelaos. Odysseus is looking at the szene. Deutsch: Archäologisches Museum in Antalya. Römischer Sarkophag der Aurelia Botania Demetria ( 2.Jhdt.n.Chr. ): Aphrodite verbirgt Paris, der von Menelaos geschlagen worden ist. Odysseus sieht zu. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More and more I'm finding that the use of the similes is engaging me; when I originally read this poem I barely noticed them and couldn't figure out what they were for. Here Oswald tells us about the death of Adrastus at Menelaus' hands; he begged for his life and nearly persuaded Menelaus but Agamemnon came up and told him to show Trojans no mercy; after all, had Trojans been good to his house? Better to kill them all. And that was that. Menelaus' spear swung like a sundial indicator, the decision wavering in the balance, but then it fell.

She continues with the simile of an axe, that a shipwright uses to cut timbers for a boat, and it swings his arm for him as "an iron decision", as Menelaus' spear is an 'iron decision' for Adrestus, and swung Menelaus' wavering heart. But the interesting thing is that the simile of the shipwright's axe shows up in the Iliad, only this time it is unwavering and unflinching; Paris uses this image to describe Hector's heart, constantly under Hector's control, adding force to his will - and how unlike Paris' heart, which tends to lead him to sneak off home to shag his wife. But then, Aphrodite's like that, and there's no point complaining.

So the simile, originally spoken by Paris, to describe another Trojan hero's unwavering heart, is used by Oswald to describe the wavering weapon of Helen's last (Greek) husband, who has to be talked into killing by Agamemnon; eventually the axe/spear makes the decision for the man. How does this fit the overall strategy? That Adrastus could have lived; it underlines how indecisive and impotent Menelaus is, rather like Paris in fact; huh - got it - in both cases we are looking at 2 brothers, and the leader/warrior one has to talk the other one into fighting. And in both cases the second brother is or has been married to Helen.That's the association that connects the two.

Thursday, 26 April 2012

Antilochus? Huh.

Antilochus. Side A from an Attic red-figure neck-amphora, ca. 470 BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald is still working through Book 6, and gives us the list of Trojans each of whom is killed by a different Greek - Astyales, Pidutes, Aretaon, Antilochus, Elatus, Phylakos and Melanthius. But which of these boys is not like the others? Antilochus is Greek, and doesn't die here; we don't hear of his death until the Odyssey in fact. Antilochus kills a Trojan, Ablerus, whose name his replaces.

And so I'm wondering if this is just a mistake - she missed the fact that Antilochus was in the nominative - but no; Antilochus is a major figure, everybody's best friend, well-regarded by all, major part in the funeral games for Patroclus 17 books from now, she knows he doesn't die here. So, error? Or is she inserting Antilochus here as an illustration of her general theme, that the deaths of the great and the deaths of those whose names are only mentioned once, in a list, deaths on the winning and the losing team, are equally significant?

The simile comes originally from Iliad 10.1-10, where Agamemnon can't sleep, his mind is as disturbed as the sky when it's disturbed by lightning before a storm. But here she's transferred it to the experience of the almost-nameless about-to-die Trojans; the victims are jolted awake (to the reality of their situation?) by the flash of a spear, as the "god keeps the night awake with lightning" before a storm. Perhaps also significant here that Agamemnon kills one of them - Eletaon - in the company of many other Greeks, Odysseus, Antilochus, Teucer, Polypoites, each of whom kill one. The Greeks are still functioning as a winning team, at this point; but Agamemnon (in the simile) is so worried that he can't sleep.

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

have hit a snag

Xena: Warrior Princess (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Bogged down in marking, setting one foot in front of the other, and asking myself, "what would Xena do?" Why yes, she would set fire to the whole stack of papers and ride out of town whooping. This is not helpful.

Real work soon.

Friday, 20 April 2012

admin day

Helen leaving for Troy with Paris, as depicted by Guido Reni (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Made up an exam. Deleted 200 emails, still have 700 in my inbox. Watched Xena and Helen of Troy. Booked transportation for a conference. Did not indulge in any higher-order thinking of any kind. Though I liked the casting for Helen, and the clever construction of the Trojan Horse, out of wicker mats, which they could have put together pretty quickly.

Xena with Gabrielle. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Wednesday, 18 April 2012

Abarbarea

Herakles (on the left) about to kill Laomedon, king of Troy (on the right). Behind Herakles stands Hesione, raising her right hand to her chin in sign of melancholy. Side A from a terra sigillata flask by the workkshop of Felix (Southern Gaul), late 1st–early 2nd century CE. From the necropolis of Lugone in Salò. Stored in the Museo Civico Archeologico della Valle Sabbia in Gavardo (Brescia). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Euryalos kills 4 men next in book 6, but Oswald doesn't mention two of them, and concentrates on the twin brothers, Pedasus and Aesepus, he kills next. Homer gives their father's genealogy - Boukolion, eldest-born of Laomedon, so (one assumes) should have been king, but his mother wasn't married - and Boukolion in turn mated with a naiad, whose name Homer actually gives: Abarbarea. Oswald ignores all this, even the name of the father, except the name of the naiad, and describes her enjoying lying about as a blue pool, alone, until a young man jumped into her "in the middle of his astonished sheep".

Both the twin boys of the mother died that day, she concludes, and then follows with a simile taken from Achilles' battle with the river Scamander (book 21): a man clears out a path for a little stream and finds himself overwhelmed by a river running downhill.

What's the association? Two river-deities, but one overwhelms (Achilles) and the other is overwhelmed; but she isn't really; she gives birth to twins, an unexpectedly strong response and not one the father had in mind when he cleared out the stream with his mattock.But the focus is the mother, and the unexpectedness of the twins, and possibly "running downstream" = "to their deaths".

Axylus is Hector

Scene from Book XXIV of the Iliad: Hector's corpse brought back to Troy (detail). Roman artwork (ca. 180–200 CE), relief from a sarcophagus, marble. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Here's Oswald on Axylus (Memorial p. 26):

Axylus son of Teuthras

Lived all his life in the lovely harbour of Arisbe

Looking down at the Hellespont

Everyone knew that plump man

Sitting on the step with his door wide open

He who so loved his friends

Died side by side with Calesius

In a daze of loneliness

Their conversation unfinished

She follows it up with a simile which is drawn from the scene in Iliad Bk 22, where Achilles is pursuing Hector around the walls as a hawk pursues a dove. I can't see a more significant connection than simply that giving Axylus the simile from that famous pursuit of Hector by Achilles raises the death of Axylus, who is mentioned only here, to the status of the death of a hero. A couple of other minor things, but they are touches that really show the subtlety of her understanding of the Greek and her ability to manipulate it: "He who so loved his friends" is a translation of "πάντας γὰρ φιλέεσκεν" - she has translated "φιλέεσκεν" twice, so as to make the point that could be made with a single word in Greek. And "that plump man" translates "ἀφνειὸς βιότοιο", which is perfect. Homer says that none of Axylus' friends were there to stand between him and his doom, which Oswald translates economically as "in a daze of loneliness".

And she's doing this all the time. Everything is as carefully thought out as this small passage. I need to learn a lot more about the rearrangement of traditional material in poets generally. Perhaps I can start with Hellenistic poets. Or Virgil. Because she's doing the same thing they did. Well, maybe not Virgil, who added to his sources from elsewhere, something I haven't caught Oswald doing, yet.

Tuesday, 17 April 2012

Administration Day

Deutsch: Ursula Boese (als Jocaste) mit Igor Strawinsky nach der Premiere von "Oedipus Rex" in der Mailänder Scala, 12.06.1963 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Graded a set of exams, a set of papers, calculated grades for my large (235-person) class, submitted grades. All this teaching is playing havoc with my research.

A colleague points out that in the weaving simile (yesterday's post), the weaving woman who 'stops' the scales the way Ajax 'stops' Acamas is, of course, a Fate.

Oh, and I ordered the Julie Taymor production of Stravinsky's "Oedipus" Oratorio, because it is utterly awesome.

Sunday, 15 April 2012

The death of Acamas

Ajax and Hector exchange gifts, woodcut in Andreas Alciatus, Emblematum libellus, 1591. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oswald gives the death Acamas the Thracian (beginning of book 6) a few lines, saying Aias 'stopped' him. She then uses the "weaver woman" simile that Homer uses in the battle at the ships (12.432ff).

The original simile is about the battle at the ships being evenly balanced between Trojans and Lycians, the way a weaver woman holds the scales being careful to get the weight exactly right, get (payment for?) the last ounce of wool, to barely support her children; and at the same time, she's holding on against adversity, fighting her own battle against it the way the warriors are fighting with each other, and like them, she is barely holding the line, all but at at a standstill; her wages are pitiful, she is barely eking out a living.

But Oswald focusses instead on the fact that you have to make the scales stop swaying back and forth to weigh something; weighing doesn't occur when the scales are still in motion, but when they stop. So Aias stops Acamas the way the weaver stops weaving, after working all night (as Aias has been fighting all day?), and then stops the scales so they will give an accurate and final reading of her labour.

So the simile is no longer about holding the battle lines even the way the woman holds the scales even. It's about Aias 'stopping' Acamas the way the hard-working woman "stops" spinning and "stops" the scales. The "stop" is the moment of killing; her work as a spinner is made equal to his work as a warrior; she isn't like a god - like Zeus, holding the battle lines even - she's like a soldier, like Aias, fighting against want, and momentarily winning.

the list

Hermes, Athena, Zeus (seated), Hera et Ares (all named). Side A of an Attic black-figure neck-amphora, end of 6th century BC. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Carrying on through the end of Book 5 of the Iliad, Oswald gives a simple list of the next 18 dead, in the order of the text (almost, and the one switch doesn't look significant to me. Neither do the two typos in the names.) Homer handles these a good deal less expeditiously, breaking them into groups: two Greeks die by Hector's hand, then one Trojan by Ajax'; then Sarpedon and Tlepolemos taunt each other, and Sarpedon kills Tlepolemos and is wounded himself; then Odysseus, angered at Tlepolemos' death, kills six Trojans; Hector rushes in to stop the carnage on his side and kills six Greeks, with Ares assisting him; Athena and Hera discuss this, Athena has a brilliant arming scene, they discuss the matter with Zeus and rush into battle to stop Ares, whom they find on the battlefield stripping the armour from a Greek he's just killed.

Oswald skips all this. Homer listed two groups of six dead without telling us anything about them; Oswald extends that list before and after. We get only the names; no gods, no circumstances of death, no nothing. Tlepolemos son of Herakles and grandson of Zeus, killed by Sarpedon son of Zeus, is just another name on the list.

The article (below) has nothing much to do with any of this but it is SO COOL.

Saturday, 14 April 2012

Orsilochus, Krethon, Pylaemenes and Mydon

Patroclo e Menelao (Photo credit: loungerie)

Have got through the next bit. Oswald gives the deaths of two pairs of fighters, Orsilochus and Krethon, two brothers from Greece, and Pylaemenes and his charioteer Mydon from Paphlagonia, so a pair on either side, in the order also found in Homer Bk 5. There's information about Pylaemenes in the Catalog of Trojans (Bk 2) which she combines with his death scene in Bk 5, says "his heart was made of coarse cloth and his manners were loose like old sacking"; not sure where she's getting the second bit, but the description of his heart comes from 2. 851, "λάσιον κῆρ". The Catalog of Trojans also describes Paphlagonia as home to wild mules, which may suggest the simile she appends after the description of both deaths:

"Like two mules on a shaly path in the mountains/carrying a huge roof truss or the beam of a boat/go on mile after mile giving it their willingness/ until the effort breaks their strength". (Oswald, Memorial, p. 24).

This simile comes from the description of Menelaus and Meriones carrying the body of Patroclos away from the battle, defending it and themselves from attacks, as the two Aias' hold off the Trojans:

Iliad 17.742-746
οἳ δ’ ὥς θ’ ἡμίονοι κρατερὸν μένος ἀμφιβαλόντες
ἕλκωσ’ ἐξ ὄρεος κατὰ παιπαλόεσσαν ἀταρπὸν
ἢ δοκὸν ἠὲ δόρυ μέγα νήϊον· ἐν δέ τε θυμὸς17.745τείρεθ’ ὁμοῦ καμάτῳ τε καὶ ἱδρῷ σπευδόντεσσιν·ὣς οἵ γ’ ἐμμεμαῶτε νέκυν φέρον

There are several reasons it has special resonance here though:

attaching the simile from the death of Patroclos to the deaths of 4 fairly minor characters (3 w e never hear of anywhere else at all, and the 4th only once, in the Catalog) increases the gravity of the deaths of the minor characters
at the death scene of Orsilochus and Crethon, Menelaus & Antilochus drag the bodies back to the Greek line, being menaced only by Aeneas, who killed them both. In the death scene of Patroclos, Menelaus is on his own, since Antilochus is on the sidelines, held in reserve; but both Aeneas and Hector are leading the fight to claim Patroclos' body. So in both cases Menelaus drags the bodies back (eventually) and Antilochus is involved; in both cases there is a further pair of fighters (Menelaus & Antilochus vs. Aeneas & Hector); so, a pair of mules again, redoubled.
the mules recall the Paphlagonian mules from the Catalog
Most importantly, I think: in that the simile gives us a pair of mules, and we have just heard of two pairs of dead warriors, the simile is transferred from the work of those carrying the body to the even greater work of those who actually died, "until the effort breaks their strength" (as opposed to the Greek, which simply has Menelaus & Meriones worn out with toil and streaming with sweat). For Oswald, it's the sufferings and labours of the dead that matter, not the necessarily lesser sufferings of those who outlive them.

Study Leave: daily notes

Achilles tending Patroclus wounded by an arrow, identified by inscriptions on the upper part of the vase. Tondo of an Attic red-figure kylix, ca. 500 BC. From Vulci. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Iliad VIII 245-253 in codex F205 (Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana), late 5th or early 6th c. AD Taken from http://www.lgpn.ox.ac.uk/image_archive/mss/mss2.html (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I think I'm going to start keeping track of the progress I make on whatever the project of the day is. I am done teaching for the term, though I am not done marking for the term heaven knows, but I'm going to spend a little time each day on a research project, by way of easing myself into my summer schedule. And I have a study leave until January, which is such a relief!

So, first up: a paper on Alice Oswald's Memorial. This is in the first instance going to be a conference paper, and I'll see if there's enough in it to publish afterwards. I already think there will be.

Memorial is a re-figuring of the Iliad, a translation that skips the narrative and concentrates only on the death scenes, especially though not exclusively of minor characters, and the similes. The writer did Classics at Oxford and from my reading of her work her Greek is excellent.

My first step is to go through the text and see where she's pulling the scenes from, and compare them to Homer, to see in each instance how her translation compares, what she's doing with the Greek. She is being free with it, in an extremely rooted way. And she is doing the same with the similes, though they are perhaps more direct translations; but she has so far (I'm about 1/3 of the way through) always drawn the simile from a different part of the Iliad than the death scene - so the simile, however apropos, was about someone else in the original. I am trying (at the moment) to figure out how the original informs the choice, and what resonance the original position of the simile (if any) might give to its re-positioning in her poem.

Today I had a look at her bit on Deicoon, who gets 8 lines in the Iliad and 4 short lines in Memorial. Followed by a simile and for the first time I couldn't place where she'd got it from; in the original it either refers to Iris or to the fight at the ships, and I suspect the latter. In both cases it's a Trojan that does or will die. Not sure that matters. The death of Deicoon is followed in the Iliad with a scene in which several people die in short order; perhaps that's what made her choose that simile. Or not. Maybe it just sounded nice.

Must read Terry Eagleton on poetry. There is so very much I'm not getting here.

Sunday, 29 April 2012

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Tuesday, 24 April 2012

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Saturday, 14 April 2012

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