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

Showing posts with label Oswald. Show all posts

Wednesday, 8 May 2013

What the I Ching told me about research

Oracle shell with inscriptions This is a replica of an oracle turtle shell with ancient Chinese oracle scripts inscribed on it. Since this is a replica, the color may not be truthful to the real specimen. This photo was taken in July 2004 from an exhibit at Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1989, 5 years before I finished my PhD, I asked the I Ching how I should find a thesis topic. The answer was so extraordinarily apropos that I saved it. I did not, however, follow it, which is why it took me five years to finish, instead of 18-24 months.

I found the response again just now, while tidying up my files and preparing to get back to work after the teaching term. It's still good advice. Perhaps a quarter of a century on I will have the sense to follow it.

Question: How should I go about finding a topic for my thesis?

Response: Modesty

It is the way of the world to fill the empty cup. Modesty is often rewarded in human affairs, just as valleys are filled by the erosion of great mountains. Regardless of your position, Laurel, modesty is a very positive attribute. If you are in a high position but are nonetheless modest, people will be drawn to you and the causes you espouse. If your position is lowly, modesty will endear you to those of higher status. Accordingly, true modesty is a virtue to which all should aspire.

The most successful people are those who know how to bring each situation into balance by reducing that which is too great, and adding to that which is too little. Such a person craves not power, but stable relations among men. Modesty is the virtue which allows you to perceive the balancing force in each situation; humble people are not prey to the many illusions which grow out of self-aggrandizement. If modesty is not natural to your disposition, Laurel, make a conscious effort to develop a strain of self-effacing humor. Either that, or go into politics.

There's an element of transformation in this situation.

Even modesty, the most benevolent virtue, can be carried too far, Laurel. People in humble positions can easily use false modesty as an excuse for weakness or vacillation. True modesty does not imply humble goals, or a slack attitude regarding performance standards. Taking pride in your work, Laurel, is very different from the pride born of self-importance.

I'm back at work on Alice Oswald, and plan to post regular updates on weekdays. Today I've spent shuffling files around on my computer, which (on the one hand) had to be done, but (on the other) I strongly suspect to be primarily a subtle and fiendish form of procrastination, like housecleaning - one can feel virtuous about it but it is, nevertheless, really beside the point.

Monday, 4 February 2013

great feedback

English: Chick pea and Silene vulgaris stew. (Potaje de garbanzos y collejas) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I gave a paper on Memorial yesterday; excellent response comments and discussion later on. I may have to rethink Asius the chickpea. Well, I do have to rethink him. When I'm writing up the paper I think I may just leave him out and use one of the other 100+ examples where Oswald turns the subject of a simile, in the Iliad, into the object in Memorial, or vice versa; and discuss as well, of course, why this matters. (Because that's what she's doing in the entire poem: the objects become subjects, over and over, and that's the whole point.)

Spent an hour this evening cutting and pasting the paper into Scrivener. But I do need to go through my notes and consider what else needs to go into the final paper. That's this week's task. Well, after I do a few administrative things I was supposed to do last week, but I was writing this paper ...

Monday, 28 January 2013

stymied at the last, augh! (ETA: unstymied!)

Diomedes and Glaucus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have nailed down all of the Homeric references for every single thing in all of Oswald's "Memorial", except one. I cannot find one. It has rocks, water, a dam and a marsh. None of these terms in any form I can think of searching for are showing up in the appropriate combination. I think I will just leave it for now.

However, I am very pleased that I think I have figured out what the last dozen pages of "Memorial" are doing. Each page has a single simile, drawn from somewhere in the Iliad. Each one begins with "like". We are done with the death scenes now – all of them are over, ending with the death of Hector – so we only have this string of similes. Each of them is a simile involving an aggregate – a flock of wild waterfowl, or of bees, or of wasps, or of flies, or of sparks. But the first of the 12 is the famous simile of the leaves:

Like leaves who could write a history of leaves
The wind blows their ghosts to the ground
And spring breathes new leaf into the woods
Thousands of names thousands of leaves
When you remember them remember this
Dead bodies are their lineage
Which matter no more than the leaves

- but what is like leaves? Well, of course it's the race of men, from the famous simile when Glaucus is talking to Diomedes, desperately – and successfully – trying to save his own life; so when you read all the rest of the similes, all of which begin with "like", they are all also about the race of men, in the aggregate. Oswald has through the rest of the poem gone one man after another, name by name by name; but now, at the end, she talks about how in the aggregate all men die, In a series of similes, each one of them drawn from a passage in which the fighters at Troy are described as a group.

(I still can't find the one about water, a dam, and a marsh though. I think I'll just ask the audience if anyone happens to know it...) - finally it occurred to me to ask a papyrologist, since papyrologists know everything. It's from the fight over the body of Patroclus: the 2 Aiantes holding off the flood of Trojans. So that is all the similes sorted.

Sunday, 27 January 2013

all the Homer things

This is not the same Polydorus.

Have been working away steadily for the last week but not updating, because I have to give a paper on Oswald next week and haven't got time to work, teach, write the paper and update too. I've got 8 more death scenes and about 16 similes to nail down. Whenever I see a new simile my heart sinks because I know it will likely be hard to find where Oswald has transplanted it from. On the other hand it's rewarding work. She did something particularly cool with the death of Polydorus as his father Priam looks for him, which she juxtaposed with the simile of Ajax guarding Patroclus' body like a lion guarding its cubs.

Still, it really is time to stop researching and start actually putting it together as a paper. But I'm so close to being done! This is a mistake I always make mind you - I always think that once the research is done the paper will write itself, possibly overnight while I'm sleeping, if I leave out a bowl of milk for the fairies...

In fact once the research is done the paper will take every bit as long to write as the research took to do, something Mac Wallace told me (frequently; over and over; in the hope that someday I would take note), and something I tell my students all the time as well.

I don't know if my students pay attention. I know I never do because there's always this One! Last! Thing! I want to find out first ... which of course will lead to another interesting thing ... but I must stop now. It's not as if I don't have enough material.

But I'm so close!

Sunday, 13 January 2013

Sarpedon

Sarpedon’s body carried by Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), while Hermes watches. Side A of the so-called “Euphronios krater”, Attic red-figured calyx-krater signed by Euxitheos (potter) and Euphronios (painter), ca. 515 BC. H. 45.7 cm (18 in.); D. 55.1 cm (21 11/16 in.). Formerly in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (L.2006.10); Returned to Italy and exhibited in Rome as of January, 2008. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Detail from image:Death Sarpedon MNA Policoro.jpg, q.v. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sarpedon gets 15 lines in Oswald. No mention of who might have killed him or why. Of course he gets lots more attention than that in Homer. Oswald's treatment of his death draws in all the major mentions of Sarpedon throughout the Iliad; the wheat fields and apple groves from his heroic code speech to Glaucus, just before they go into the battle which will result in his death. Sleep and Death take him back to Lykia as happens after the death scene in the Iliad. He's called "the son of Zeus" because it matters here, because Zeus is the one who mourns.

I'm not sure why Oswald calls Troy "ungreen ungrowing ground" when it's described as "fertile" (ἐριβώλακι, 16.461) in this passage in Homer. Perhaps there is an alternate reading and I should find out what it is. The description of the wind shaking him out like a linen cloth and giving him his breath back - but not quite, not quite even though he's the son of Zeus and frankly, it was touch and go whether Zeus was going to save him after all - is nice. I tried to find an association between linen and Sarpedon but didn't find one. Still a nice image.

The following simile comes originally from book 11, where Hector has his aristeia, and is described as falling on the Greeks as a hurricane falls on the "violet-flower" sea, dashing the clouds, roiling the waters, spraying foam up high. Here the simile follows on in the discussion of wind; is Sarpedon's breath, or his body, the blue flower of the sea? Bruised between two winds, broken apart, its structure broken the way Sarpedon's organization is now broken? And the battle over his body is the battle between the winds and the waves and foam and destruction caused by the hurricane; so the simile recuperates the battle, and I rather like that.

Also, usually the object becomes subject in Oswald, but here the subject has become object; the sea = Sarpedon is our focus, battered between the opposing forces of the wind, rather than Hector as the battering storm.

Pedasus

I may have already used this cartoon (from toothpastefordinner.com.). It is the most perfect image of my creative process I've ever seen. Apparently everyone else on the web feels the same way, which is reassuring.

I'm back in the classroom. Predictably, this causes me to have all kinds of ideas about work all the time, but now I have no time to write them down. However, I'm giving a paper on Alice Oswald in 3 weeks, which is serving to focus my attention marvellously.

I have 18 death scenes and about the same number of similes to get through before I've finished the Homeric footnotes. Arguably I would be better off skipping finishing that until later and just get on with writing the paper on the part I've already done. But I'd like to feel as if I've got a firm handle on something, and how long can it take me to - yes, I know, months - however, I don't have months. So I've got to the yellow zone in the bar graph, where I still think it's possible to do all the things, if I just do them really fast.

Am also reading a book on "Stylish Academic Writing", by Helen Sword. It is unpleasant to suspect that the result of my work will be articles that I wouldn't want to read myself. I would like to write what I would enjoy reading if I happened on it. Helen Sword's book gives me a modest sort of hope that this is actually attainable. So thank you, HW.

So: Pedasus. Oswald tells the story of his death pretty much from the horse's-eye point of view; first he was fed by one group, that had stone mangers; then by another group, that had bags of grain; then he died. The entire battle scene and the other two horses are missing. I think they are recuperated (according to Helen Sword I should not be using that word here in this sense, because nobody will understand it and I'm just trying to impress people by talking fancy) by the simile, however. Oswald uses the "fig juice curdling milk" simile here. Homer uses it at the end of book 5, where Apollo uses φάρμακα to heal Ares' wound, as fast as fig juice curdles milk. Oswald uses it to refer to the speed of Pedasus' death; his blood, I suppose, coagulating in death, he turning from animate to a solid lump, at the same speed. But the interesting thing is (of course) that Ares is immortal, as Homer points out; and Pedasus' two companion horses are also immortal. If the spear had got one of them, they could have been healed, as fast as Ares. Bad luck, Pedasus.

Friday, 5 October 2012

Patroclus' aristeia, not

Ulysses (with a pilos) and Greek warriors around the body of Patroclus. Detail of a silver oinochoe dedicated ,by Q. Domitius Tutus, made in Italy, first half of the 1st century AD. From the Berthouville treasure. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Homer now gives us 200 lines of Greeks slaughtering Trojans. First every Greek leader kills his own Trojan, a kind of bring-your-own-(dead)-Trojan buffet; then Patroclus starts slaughtering them wholesale. We get descriptions of how each one died as long as they're being killed by different Greek chieftains, but when Patroclus steps in we just get a list of names of the Trojans he slaughters. Oswald gives us nothing but a list of 21 names; we aren't told who killed each one and she doesn't differentiate between the ones killed by other Greeks and the list of those killed by Patroclus. The list ends with the name of Sarpedon's charioteer, Thrasymelos, which in Homer is preceded by the lengthy discussion between Zeus and Hera about the coming death of Zeus' son Sarpedon, which Zeus would like to avoid (and which is important because he is Zeus' son).

The importance of the slaughter in Homer is that the tide of battle has now turned back, and the Greeks are winning again; and that Patroclus may be primarily important as Achilles' close friend and companion, but he is a formidable warrior in his own right. Since he's going to die soon he needs to be given weight and importance of his own, and this aggregation of deaths gives him that. Even the Trojans killed by the other Greeks redound to Patroclus' credit because they occur after his arming scene and because his appearance has heartened the Greeks to go back on the attack. Oswald elides the foreshadowing of the death of Sarpedon, which gives weight to all the deaths, and to the death of Thrasymelos, because here as elsewhere she lets individual deaths stand on their own.

After this list Oswald gives us this simile:

Like hawk wings cut through a sheet of starlings
Like wing-scissors open and close
Through a billow of jackdaws

This comes from a simile that actually shows up fairly close to this scene in Homer. After Patroclus kills Sarpedon, a Trojan kills a Greek (whom we've never heard of before) over his body, and Patroclus, enraged at his sudden new BFF's death, returns to the Sarpedon's corpse:

"And he went straight through the fore-fighters like a hawk
swiftly, who terrifies the jackdaws and starlings;
so you, horse-driving Patroklos, drove off the Lykians and Trojans,
and your heart was angered for your companion."

I initially thought that Oswald was using the simile exactly the same way, and even about the same person (Patroclus), but actually not quite. In Homer, the hawk is the subject. In Oswald, the hawk doesn't appear; only the hawk wings, the hawk's effect, like scissors, cutting through a sheet of starlings, a billow of jackdaws. Homer's hawk is Patroclus; Oswald's hawk is death, impersonal; the starlings and jackdaws are the living beings here.

Wednesday, 3 October 2012

Pyraikhmes and Paeonian bison (?)

English: Picture 47 of the Ambrosian Iliad, Achilles sacrificing to Zeus. Français : Image 47 de lIliade ambrosienne, Achille dédiant un sacrifice à Zeus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Prolonged absence during which I discovered I have arthritis in one hip and moped about it. However, I have bought an expensive chair that makes my hip hurt less, so, back to work.

So: death of Pyraikhmes. (I've worked through a few others since I last posted, but today was Pyraikhmes.) He's important, in the Iliad, because his is the first death after the Greeks are actually chased back to the ships - apparently with very little loss of life, since about a dozen Trojans die for every Greek. Antilochus gets another Trojan, just before the Greeks retreat with the Trojans in headlong pursuit. The Trojans actually manage to set fire to a ship. And at this point, Patroclus persuades Achilles to let him suit up in Achilles' armour and chase off the Trojans. Achilles sacrifices (in vain) to Zeus for Patroclus' safety. Pyraikhmes is the first of the many Trojans Patroclus kills in his subsequent aristeia, culminating, of course, in his own death.

None of this context matters to Oswald; we don't know which side Pyraikhmes is on or that his death is made significant, in Homer, by the fact that Patroclus is the one who kills him. Here's Homer:

"(Patroklos) hit Pyraikhmes who had led his Paeonian horsemen from the Amydon and the broad waters of the river Axios; the spear struck him on the right shoulder, and with a groan he fell backwards in the dust; on this his men were thrown into confusion, for by killing their leader, who was the finest warrior among them, Patroklos struck panic into them all." (Perseus translation.)

Now here's Oswald:

The River Axius has the silverest sweetest water
It flows through Paeonia
Where there are bison in the hills
And men make curved bows from their horns
To get there you have to go miles over mountains
Some of his men might make it
But not Puraichmes

Some of this she got from the Catalog, where Pyraikhmes and the Paionians are again described, with the addition of the 'crooked bows" (ἀγκυλότοξος) they use and the beauty of the water in the Axios river. I was distracted however by the bison. Homer does not, as far as I can find, mention any bison or mountains anywhere. However, an increasingly obsessed search eventually brought me to Aristotle's History of Animals, which tells me

Aristotle, History of Animals,630a20

Ὁ δὲ βόνασοϛ γίνεται μὲν ἐν τῇ Παοιονία ἐν τῷ ὄρει τῷ Μεσσαπίῳ, δ'ὁρίζει τὴν Παοιονικὴν και τὴν Μαιδικὴν χώραν, καλοῦι δ'αὐτὸν οἱ Παίονεσ μόναπον.". "The 'βόνασος' (bison) lives in Paionia on Mt. Messapion, which borders the lands of Paionia and Media, and the Paionians call it a "monapos".

So as far as I can tell, Oswald takes the 'crooked bows" from the Catalog, adds them to the bison mentioned in Aristotle, and throws in the mountain as well, in a casual display of naked erudition. Pyraikhmes' men get a mention (actually not many of them are going to make it).

A puzzling thing: she then uses the most famous simile in the Iliad, the one where Achilles is chasing Hector around the walls of Troy:

Like a man running in a dream
Can never approach a man escaping
Who can never escape a man approaching (Oswald p. 58)

But here, it's about how Puraichmes is never going to make it home. But why use it here? It leaves Puraichmes, and all the other warriors, and us, trapped in the limbo of constant combat, in which no one, including Puraichmes, will ever make it home. Perhaps that's the point. And also, of course, to increase the significance and magnitude of Puraichmes' death by attaching such a famous simile to it.

In breaking things down into such small bits I am missing such overarching patterns as Oswald's poem has. But I'll continue doing this for now; I don't have that much farther to go with it; and then go back, and see if I notice larger patterns.

Related articles

Poets and Profs ~ Homer as Slam Poetry

Wednesday, 29 August 2012

Dolops, and whirlwinds

English: Menelaus (Ancient Greek: Μενέλαος) was a king of Sparta, the husband of Helen, and a central figure in the Trojan War. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A particularly dense passage today. In Homer, Dolops tries to kill Meges, remains hopeful of victory even after his spear bounces off Meges' armour and Meges slices off his helmet crest (or possibly yanks off the whole helmet), but is killed by Menelaus, who gets around him and rams a spear through him from behind. Oswald renders this as Dolops not believing he could die even after his spear fails, even after he loses his helmet:

"It was not until the beak of death
Pushed out through his own chest
That he recognized the wings of darkness".

She follows this with a short simile:

"Like when god unwinds his whirlwind
A single cloud moves into the middle sky "

which, like most weather similes, took awhile to locate; but it seems to be the beginning & end of a simile from book 16, where Patroclus has routed the Trojan army and the cloud of dust whirling up from their chaotic retreat is like a cloud sent by Zeus when he's sending a storm. There is a double shift here from Homer to Oswald.

First, the single cloud from Zeus heralding a storm = the 'beak of death' heralding Dolops' own death (the "wings of darkness").

But using a simile from the route of the Trojans in this passage, where they're still winning, reminds us of their coming defeat; so the spear through his chest heralds Dolops' death to him, as a single cloud augurs a storm; but Dolops' death, in turn, is the single cloud for us, that augurs the whirlwind of the coming Trojan rout.

Then spent the afternoon, or some of it, contemplating sacrificial virgins. We have decided to write the easy version of the paper - that is, the chunk that will be the easiest to write, about S1 Buffy - and see if we can find a journal that wants it.

Related articles

Monday, 11 June 2012

Myth on the Map

English: Map of Homeric Greece with English labels Česky: Mapa homérského Řecka s anglickými popisky (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Organizational day for the website project, "Myth on the Map". I have enough money to get a functioning website up with 2 works mapped, Apollodorus and the Catalog of Ships. Question: should I then map the rest of the Iliad, or map a test book of Pausanias? If so, which book? Not sure yet. Would link to the project but it doesn't appear to be working yet. The plan is, at any rate, to finish Apollodorus and the Catalog by the end of the summer, and have a map which, when one searches for stuff, finds it and displays it.

Tweaked the outline for the "sacrificial virgins" conference paper, and resolved another Oswald simile: a list of five (dead) Greeks, followed by the simile of the eagle attacking the geese by the river. In Homer, it's about Hector, who's the eagle. In Oswald, the geese are named but the eagle is not; the attacker is impersonal; the war.

THE WAR! RAHR! (Source)

(Okay, so I am foolishly reminded of Loki, leaping from the upper level upon Thor. "There is only - THE WAR! RAHR!" The only truly awful line in the Avengers...)

Thursday, 7 June 2012

Medon the donkey

Cover of How to Read a Poem

Oswald skips several Trojan deaths here, and then attaches the simile of the island town on fire from invaders, lighting beacon fires asking for help, which Homer uses of the light from Achilles' head when he terrifies the Trojans by his scream alone, to the deaths of Stichius and Arkesilaus; but instead of the light (of the beacon fires) being like the light from Achilles' head, it is the smoke from the fires Oswald uses as a comparison, that vanishes from the earth like Stichius and Arkesilaus.

Then Aeneas kills off Medon and Iasus, with a line of description for each of them; Oswald concentrates on Medon, bastard son of Oileus, who killed his stepmother's kinsman, fled to Phylace, and wound up (after Philoctetes was abandoned) leading the Phthians at Troy. Oswald adds that he then went on to Troy, and died in the 9th year. To him she attaches the simile Homer uses of Ajax attacked by a flock of Trojans, who can't be moved by them any more than a sluggish donkey who's gotten into a cornfield and just keeps eating until he's had his fill and decides to move on, utterly unresponsive to the blows of the boys trying to drive him out with clubs. Only she attaches this to Medon. How? Medon stubbornly killed a man, fled, fled on to Troy, kept fighting until he'd decided in his own sweet time that he was ready to die?

The translation, as always, is wonderful. Oswald amplifies the mention of his father's wife (μητρυιῆς Ἐριώπιδος) to "grew up under the smile of a slim respectable stepmother", for example. And the description of the donkey, who "thinking good I will wade and eat sideways/ ... does just that eats and eats sunk in a pond of corn".

I've begun reading Terry Eagleton "How to Read a Poem", since it's not something I've been trained in really (nor indeed something my teachers were trained in I think). Eagleton identifies this problem in his students, that modern work tends to be content analysis which is largely oblivious to whether the "content" comes encased in a novel, a poem, or a real-life happening. He says (instead of dealing with the 'literariness' of the work),

"... they treat the poem as though its author chose for some eccentric reason to write out his or her views on warfare or sexuality in lines which do not reach to the end of the page. Maybe the computer got stuck."

(Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem; Blackwell, Oxford 2007: 3.)

That, embarrassingly, would be me; but Memorial makes me want to really up my game, and be able to say precisely what's so cool about it, which isn't just content, or even just its relationship to Homer.

Wednesday, 6 June 2012

a death scene today: Ilioneus

Ilioneus Statue (1850s copy after ancient greec original) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For a look at her translation practice here's Oswald 52-53, on the death of Ilioneus:

Ilioneus an only child ran out of luck

He always wore that well-off look

His parents had a sheep farm

They didn't think he would die

But a spear stuck through his eye

He sat down backwards

Trying to snatch back the light

With stretched out hands

I've bolded the parts that appear in the Greek. Here's the Greek, with a literal translation - the bolded parts, in Greek, are translated by Oswald:

ὃ δ’ οὔτασεν Ἰλιονῆα

υἱὸν Φόρβαντος πολυμήλου, τόν ῥα μάλιστα

Ἑρμείας Τρώων ἐφίλει καὶ κτῆσιν ὄπασσε·

τῷ δ’ ἄρ’ ὑπὸ μήτηρ μοῦνον τέκεν Ἰλιονῆα.

τὸν τόθ’ ὑπ’ ὀφρύος οὖτα κατ’ ὀφθαλμοῖο θέμεθλα,

ἐκ δ’ ὦσε γλήνην· δόρυ δ’ ὀφθαλμοῖο διὰ πρὸ

καὶ διὰ ἰνίου ἦλθεν, ὃ δ’ ἕζετο χεῖρε πετάσσας

ἄμφω·

"And he (Peneleos, a Greek) wounded Ilioneus, the son of Phorbas of the plentiful flocks, whom especially among the Trojans Hermes loved and granted possessions; to him his mother bore the single (child) Ilioneus. Him then he wounded under the eyebrow down through the base of the eye, and drove out his eyeball; and the spear went first through the eye and through the nape of the neck, and he sat down, stretching out both his hands."

Cool things:

switching object to subject (Ilioneus is the object of the Greek, in the accusative until the last phrase, but is the subject in Oswald).
switching personal to impersonal: in the Iliad the important thing is who killed him (Peneleos); in Oswald that's elided, and the spear killed him by itself. A move Oswald frequently makes, because "who killed him" is not important to Memorial as it is to the Iliad.
"μοῦνον" = "an only child".
"μάλιστα Ἑρμείας Τρώων ἐφίλει καὶ κτῆσιν ὄπασσε" (Hermes loved him and gave him stuff, the most of all the Trojans) = "he always wore that well-off look", but also.
"ran out of luck" - also a reference to Hermes, because a ἑρμαῖον is a "lucky find", a "thing sent by Hermes". So Hermes loved his father, but eventually, he, or his father, ran out of Hermes.
ὃ δ’ ἕζετο χεῖρε πετάσσας ἄμφω gets amplified with "trying to snatch back the light", which then leads to the simile, which actually is fascinating, but this is enough for today.

Promachus dies

Similes (Photo credit: teotwawki)

This was pretty straightforward. I hunted around for stuff on Homeric similes; turns out others have noticed the similes in Homer. Quite a few. Wilamowitz among them. Fortunately I'm not writing about the similes in Homer, hah, because if I were I'd be reading for 3 years before I could write a word. I read Taplin's review of Moulton's book on similes (Homeric Similes, 1977, certainly much has been written since, but it was the first thing that came to hand). (See, for a very cursory list, my rapidly growing "Secondary Literature" page. This is not, I need hardly say, a list of works I have already read. It is aspirational.)

Moulton assumes that when he sees subtlety in Homer it's because it's there, not because it accidentally accreted into the poem. I'm inclined to agree but again I am not writing about that, I am so very grateful to say; I am writing about Oswald, and I can certainly argue that subtlety in Memorial is "part of the poem and not there by coincidence" (Taplin, 184). I have to admit though that Memorial's reading of the Iliad highlights a great deal of subtlety in the original text; I suspect that's by design too.

Monday, 4 June 2012

Archelochus and the changing will of Zeus

English: Picture 47 of the Ambrosian Iliad, Achilles sacrificing to Zeus. Français : Image 47 de lIliade ambrosienne, Achille dédiant un sacrifice à Zeus. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In Homer, the gods decide to kill Archelochus, so a spear flung at someone else hits him. In Memorial, the spear decides of its own free will to miss the other guy and hit Archelochus.

But then Oswald continues (p. 52),

Like the changing mind
That moves a cloud off a mountain
And makes rocks and cliffs appear
Pushing the landscape's sharp edges up
Through more and more air

This simile comes from Bk 16, where Patroclus has just suited up in Achilles' armour and is leading the Greeks to fight back the Trojans, who have just set fire to Protesilaus' ship. The Greeks take heart and beat back the Trojans and put out the flames, the way (says the Iliad) Zeus lightning-gatherer moves a cloud etc etc., but (says the Iliad) not forever; this gives them a breather, but the war doesn't stop. ("Changing mind" I take as a translation of στεροπηγερέτα Ζεύς, since nothing changes more quickly than lightning.)

So in the Iliad, Greeks pushing back the Trojans and putting out the flames = Zeus (temporarily) moving a cloud off a mountain. In Oswald, a spear decides to kill one man rather than another, the way a "changing mind" moves a cloud off a mountain and reveals the (sharp, clear) landscape. Oswald highlights the changeability of the spear and of the mind; one man could have been killed just as easily as another. And where the Iliad's simile focuses on those who are benefitting by the divine choice (of the moment) - the Greeks are forcing the Trojans back and putting out the flames - Oswald's simile, as always, focusses on the one that did not benefit; Archelochus, who died because of the will of the gods, rather than Poulydamas who lived.

A further point of context: Zeus' favour is not going to rest with Patroclos forever, either; this simile, in the Iliad, also foreshadows his eventual death. Its use here in Oswald grants the all but unknown Trojan Archelochus' death the importance of Patroclus's eventual death. Finally: I have yet to find anywhere in Oswald that the gods get a mention. But should re-check that.

I need to start collecting these points, and decide what matters most, and what article to write. I'd like to just write an article on the similes, and how they work in Oswald. I would need to talk about how they work in Homer, for comparison.

Euchenor goes to heaven

English: Arabian mare standing in a show halter pose (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Was prepared to find nothing much interesting happening here, but Oswald has cleverly turned another simile on its ear. The simile about the well-fed, pampered aristocrat of horses, happily breaking its halter and running off to the river and where the mares are, is applied by Homer to Paris when he runs off home to visit Helen in the middle of a battle in Book 6 (granted, with Aphrodite's help); Paris is exactly that pampered, over-nourished, over-sexed, gleaming, self-centred figure, beautiful but wholly dedicated to his own pleasure, and inclined to break his halter and run away from his duty when he sees a mare.

But here the simile is turned round and it is used of Euchenor, whom Paris has just killed. (So once again, subject to object, or object to subject; Euchenor, the object of the arrow, becomes the subject of the simile, whose former subject was the man who killed him). Euchenor was happy to die because his father the seer told him it was die gloriously and quickly at Troy or miserably of illness at home. So he knew this was going to happen. And the simile is of a horse breaking free of its halter - its duty, its life - and going running on, a young happy horse, forever, in Paradise.

Saturday, 2 June 2012

Harpalion, and more deer

Homer Simpson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Didn't get far today. Harpalion, son of Pylaemenes, gets killed by Meriones (who kills a lot of people, without ever really having much of a story himself). His weeping father follows his body back to Troy. Which is odd, because his father died in book 5. Did Homer/ the bardic collective/ the oral tradition forget? I bet someone has written a lot about this.

A simile about panic-stricken deer. I may not have found the right one, because the deer is described as fearing her guests, and guests don't appear in the Greek (but they do, in the passage about the death of Harpalion, so maybe that's it). Harpalion is apparently a scaredy-cat. Like the deer. Though unlike the deer around here, who are scared of nothing, and have just eaten all our spinach. Maybe we should import some wolves.

I suspect I'm missing something.

Thursday, 31 May 2012

Antilochus, the Iliad's Mary Sue

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

Oswald lists seven deaths that, in Homer, are given in 120 lines of hard fighting: Oinomaos, Askalaphos, Aphareus, Thoon, Antilochus, Deipuros, and Peisander. Except one of these things is not like the others: Antilochus doesn't actually die here. This is the second time she's killed Antilochus, quietly embedding him in a list of dead warriors, when in fact Antilochus killed someone else in this passage (who isn't listed among the dead). And here she's done it again: Adamas, son of Asios (who has just died), attacks Antilochus, but Poseidon likes Antilochus and saves him. Adamas ducks in behind his friends but Meriones follows him and kills him particularly painfully (spear in the gut, midway between the navel and the privates, and he writhes around painfully until Meriones pulls out the spear and he dies). Oswald skips all this and lists Antilochus among the dead.

The first time Oswald did this I thought it was a mistake, but this isn't a mistake. Why does she keep killing off Antilochus? He doesn't even die in the Iliad. (He's killed later, by Memnon, or possibly by Paris at the same time as Achilles, or according to Hyginus Hector kills him, which would be a surprise to Homer, because Antilochus is still alive in the next book of the Iliad to put in a mediocre performance in the funeral games for Patroclus). And everyone likes him, and he's Achilles' good buddy, and everyone likes his dad, and he's always up to fight some Trojans, bouncy and courageous and gay, he is, in fact, the Mary Sue of the Iliad, the one that has puzzlingly been made way, way too likeable, as if Homer (or the entirety of the oral tradition really really liked him and thought the rest of us should too for no obvious reason.

But she keeps killing him off. As if we should get in our mourning for Antilochus now, because he keeps being mentioned, but he doesn't get a proper death scene in the Iliad, but the fact is he is going to die before he makes it home, so let's mourn him in advance, as the only Greek warrior that everybody really likes, and she wants to remind us that he doesn't make it either?

Or, I don't know. I wonder if Antilochus' inclusion in Memorial might be my way into writing about the poem. It's odd in so many ways. I could talk about the ways.