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. 

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!

Epeigeus the exile

English: Jules Bastien-Lepage, Achilles and Priam (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I'm trying to follow Oswald's sequence here.  

In Homer, Hector kills Epeigeus as he's about to strip the corpse of Sarpedon, and crushes his skull with a big rock and he falls dead on the corpse.  He was a prince in Budeion, until he "stripped the corpse" of a cousin, and was sent off as a suppliant to Peleus, and then to Troy, and then died as he stripped the corpse of Sarpedon,or tried to, on the battlefield.  So his life story, in Homer, begins and ends with two corpse-strippings; one successful, one attempted.

Oswald charts this as changes - Epeigeus went from well-regarded prince to runaway, beggar, soldier, and corpse.  And then she uses the astonishing simile used of Priam when he kisses Achilles' bloody hands, and everyone was as astonished to see him, 

"as when strong folly (ἄτη) takes a man, who in his fatherland

having killed someone leaves to the country of others

into (the house) of a rich man, and wonder holds those looking at him,

so Achilles was astonished seeing Priam, like a god".  

But Oswald says "like anger that ... can change any man into a murderer" - but what's like anger? As far as I can tell, here, it's the rock; anger changes a man into something entirely different, a beggar seeking shelter, a different person, the way the rock turned Epeigeus into something different, a shade, a corpse, someone he wouldn't recognize himself as.  

But what does it bring to Oswald's poem that this is the simile used of Priam when he comes to Achilles as a suppliant? Because Epeigeus actually IS a murderous suppliant, where Priam is not; Achilles is the one who has killed, and Priam is the suppliant to him; the blood is printed on Achilles' hands. Anger changed Epeigeus into a killer and ultimately a corpse; it turned Priam into a suppliant and ultimately into a corpse; I'm still not getting this.  

Related articles

• The Next-to-Last Scene of the Iliad

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.

Related articles

• Dahlia Ravikovitch and Alice Oswald
• On Deadlines
• SHORT CUTS : books to read for people with unruly stacks in unlikely places
• Epic Literature in Modern Drama

A change of pace: Alcman and "One Direction"

English: Alcman, Poem in hexameters (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 I was in Toronto this weekend, where I went to the pantomime "Snow White".  At one point the handsome prince and all the little forest animals gather around Snow White, who is standing on a tree stump saying "oh I'm really nothing very special, why would anyone want to look at me?"  The prince and animals responded with very good production number of  of One Direction's " What Makes You Beautiful". 

I had never really listened to the lyrics before, and I was amazed, on being forced to listen this time (while gagging a little to be honest) when I realised the parallels between the "virtuous young woman" performance of gender described in "What Makes You Beautiful" and that enacted in  Alcman's "Hagesichora" hymn. In both, what makes a young woman beautiful is is that "you're beautiful because you don't know you're beautiful" - the line is from One Direction, but Alcman would be completely on board.

The entire text of the Alcman hymn, in an old-fashioned translation, can be found here: http://www.theoi.com/Text/LyraGraeca1B.html . I have cut and pasted a sample stanza here: 

 See you not first that the courser is of Enetic blood, and secondly that the tresses that bloom upon my cousin Hagesichora¹⁰ are like the purest gold? and as for her silvern face, how shall I put it you in express words? Such is Hagesichora; and yet she whose beauty shall run second not unto hers but unto Agido’s, shall run as courser Colaxaean to pure Ibenian-bred; for as we bear along her robe to Orthia, these our Doves¹¹ rise to fight for us¹² amid the ambrosial night not as those heavenly Doves but brighter, aye even as Sirius himself.

Eva Stehle, in Performance and Gender in Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in Its Setting (Princeton, 1997), argues that Alcman's hymn will have been sung by a chorus of young women, possibly at a wedding, and that it will have been used as an occasion for a public demonstration of the appropriate performance of their gender. The chorus of young women praises the beauty of first young one woman and then another, apparently also members of the chorus. However, the chorus never praises its own beauty. The chorus never says "I am beautiful", or "We are beautiful". Instead, it directs the gaze of the viewer to other young women. 

By directing the gaze of the young men in the audience to the beauty of the young women in the chorus, the singers direct the audience's thoughts appropriately towards beauty - their own included - sexuality, and marriage. However, the chorus never owns or acknowledges its own beauty. Each young woman in the chorus acknowledges the beauty of the other members of the chorus, while remaining modestly and charmingly unaware of her own.  The chorus makes a gift of its beauty to the community, but never tries to wield the power of its beauty and fertility for itself. This is the appropriate performance of gender for unmarried young women in Sparta, argues Stehle: they are supposed to be beautiful, and they are supposed to be modestly unaware of it.  The chorus is directing the audience's attention to both aspects of this performance.

"What Makes You Beautiful" is thus an exact parallel.  The young woman addressed in the song is apparently beautiful, but she is beautiful precisely because she doesn't know it; she doesn't own it, she doesn't use it for herself, she does not wield the power of her own beauty. If she did know she was beautiful, she would no longer be attractive.  It is precisely her modesty, her insecurity, the way she looks at the ground instead of looking any male in the eye – these are the things that make her beautiful.  A sample stanza:

Baby you light up my world like nobody else,
The way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed,
But when you smile at the ground it ain't hard to tell,
You don't know,
Oh oh,
You don't know you're beautiful,
If only you saw what I can see,
You'll understand why I want you so desperately,
Right now I'm looking at you and I can't believe,
You don't know,
Oh oh,
You don't know you're beautiful,
Oh oh,
That's what makes you beautiful

So c-come on,
You got it wrong,
To prove I'm right,
I put it in a song,
I don't know why,
You're being shy,
And turn away when I look into your eye eye eyes,

(Full lyrics here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/onedirection/whatmakesyoubeautiful.html )

 The ideal performance of gender in a young woman of Sparta in the eighth century BC, or in the object of adoration for the singers of "What Makes You Beautiful" 2800 years later,  is the same: to be beautiful but unaware of it; to have the power to make men desire, but never to consciously wield that power.   

It's a tricky line to walk, the razor edge of having beauty, even knowing what beauty is, but never seeing it in yourself; because as soon as you know you have it, you are no longer a desirable girl, because you are no longer "innocent".   You might be a desirable woman, but that is a very different thing, more dangerous, more culpable,  more likely to attract anger and blame. 

The only truly safe, utterly non-blameworthy way to  wield the power of being an attractive female in public in ancient Sparta or in 21st-century North America, to  reap the rewards of your beauty without being blamed for inappropriate sexuality, is to perform the difficult maneuver of being beautiful while apparently being unaware of that beauty. 

At the same time, the ideal performance of gender in a young woman in either culture will attract male attention towards the beauty - and modesty - of which she is apparently unaware. The performance is wasted if the male audience misses it, and just carries on obliviously thinking of other things, football perhaps, or homework, or some book they just read.  

So the ideal performance of gender in a young woman directs male attention to her beauty and her modesty alike. Point out that your friends are beautiful, just to get the male audience's mind on the subject. Walk into a room and flip your hair, and smile, but at the ground – because if you actually looked a man in the eye, it would be clear that you knew the effect you were having. It would be clear that you were actually trying to have that effect.  And then you'd be a bitch, and not beautiful at all.

The cognitive dissonance this mandatory performance of gender imposes on the billions of young women trained to think that beauty is essential, but that believing you don't have it yourself is also essential, is - I remark as an aside - naturally frequently catastrophic.  But it wasn't until I actually had to listen to the lyrics of "What Makes You Beautiful" that I realized not only that we had heard all this before, but how long we had been hearing it for.

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• Point Five Project - True Beauty

The research day

I was not going to do this, but just this once:

Scheduled:
an entire free day with no scheduled interruptions! I can get some work done at last!

Actual events of the day
9:00 am - 9:45 am phone call & conversation with family member
10:00-10:05 am  Pet clinic calls re: cat test results.
10:30 am - 10:40 am Vet from pet clinic calls with options re: cat treatment.  None really palatable, all very expensive except option where cat dies in pain.
11:00-11:15 am Perimeter drain cleaners show up; prices outrageous; negotiation not possible; leave, perimeter drains uncleaned
11:30 am roofer calls to schedule repair
12:00-12:15 pm drugstore calls re: cat medication, for some reason requires all my biographical data
12:15-1:15 pm answering urgent email.  Then distracted into answering less urgent email.
1:30 pm son home from school (PD day) and suggests that he is hungry now. Is there lunch?
1:45 pm phone rings AGAIN. Car-related.
2:15 pm realize I'm missing guest lecture at 2:30.
2:30 pm drug store phones again. Apparently cat's heart medication is urgent.  Must go and pick it up NOW NOW NOW.
3:05  back home; can finally start work ... but the phone rings again; I don't answer, but waste time worrying that it might have been important ...
3:30 pm children's piano lesson ... It's time to go for a walk anyway.
4:30-6:00 pm ferry child to Aikido class, wait in parking lot with laptop answering email, ferry child home.

And that is it for the research day.

Solution:
Work in the library, or unplug the phone.