The Golden Ass

One of the more interesting stories that we had to read this semester was The Golden Ass. It is one of those stories that combines many of the elements that I learned of in another class. That is to say, it is a prime example of stories within stories. The most obvious is the story of Cupid and Psyche mixed in with the primary story of a man who has been turned into a donkey.

Zeus

Maybe some of you will read this and get a little curious, so I thought that I would put a list of Zeus's infidelities on here and you could all look up the stories later.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeus

The list is pretty far down the page, but its also pretty long so it should provide you with at least a couple of hours of reading. Enjoy.

All that is past possesses the present

I was looking through some old movie quotes for a quote I couldn't quite place and I found this one. See if you can guess the idea that's behind the words:

"Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up! Look up, Hannah! The clouds are lifting! The sun is breaking through! We are coming out of the darkness into the light! We are coming into a new world; a kindlier world, where men will rise above their greed, their hate and their brutality. Look up Hannah! The soul of man has been given wings and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow! Into the light of hope! Look up, Hannah! Listen!"

This quote is from the end of the movie The Last Dictator (1940)

Changes of Perspective

I couldn't figure out a way to get my entire blog onto this sight so I thought that I would give you guys a brief synopsis instead. Much like I mentioned in class my paper deals with the transition I had from the beginning of class to the current point with regards to how I viewed, not only the world of literature and how it connects to the past, but also how we can use the lessons of Classical Lit to connect ourselves to our ancestors.

At the beginning of class I saw human existance as simply moving forward through time, ever advancing with no need or necessity to look back on what was behind us. To look back was simply to allow the past to catch up and perhaps destroy all that we have accomplished over the millenia. However, after taking this class, I have come to realize that it is necessary to look to the past, not only so that we would not repeat our previous mistakes, but also that by soing so we connect to a more instinctual part of the human psyche and in so doing we can remember that the world is not something in which we are isolated, but a sphere teaming with life with which we can interact, learning from it and becoming stronger for it.

Problems with posting paper to blog

I'm having problems with posting my paper to a blog. If anyone can help me that would be appreciated. Thanks

An Imaginary Life

I see An Imaginary Life as pertaining to the overall theme of our class, the idea of all that is past possesses the present. However it is a little different. Those texts we used to connect a past to our own present. An Imaginary Life seems to connect the past with an even further past. That is, it connects humanity with the nature that we seem to have forgotten. Even Ovid, who we seem to see as a man of a far distant and ignorant past can look even further back to see a time when the world was not as civilized as that he was used to in Rome and then again even farther back to a time when we lived among the wild animals of the world, when nature was as much of a master over us as we have, even in Ovid's time, become over it. Ovid is able to witness an unadulterated connection to the natural world in the child he meets in exile, and it is this I would argue that helps him connect to the world and realize that all that is past possesses the present.

Arachne

Arachne is the story of a girl by the same name who is the best at what she does, which is to say weaving. The only problem with this is that she does not see the skill as a gift from the goddess Minerva, the patron goddess of weaving, but as her own skill. She then becomes arrogant enough to challenge Minerva to a weaving contest. Minerva first appears to Arachne as an old woman and cautions her to give thanks for her gifts and the goddess will forgive her, but Arachne does not heed the warning. Minerva then appears in her true form, and even then Arachne does not back down from her claim as greatest weaver. So the two begin their weavings.

Minerva weaves a tapestry that portrays the founding of her city Athens. Around this central image she also puts four images of different people who challenged the gods and were punished with transformations for their indiscretions.

Arachne, on the other hand, weaves a story of the infidelity of the gods, how several of the most powerful gods tranformed into different beings and raped those they saw as beautiful. Around this central image she put a vine of roses as if in mockery of the image.

In the end it was determined that Arachne's weaving was better. Minerva, in her rage, tore the fabric to shreds and broke the loom. Arachne, disgraced, thought to hang herself with the threads she had so recently used, but Minerva instead turned her into a spider so that she would be eternally punished.

The Trojan Women

I just finished the Trojan Women and thought that I would share my thoughts on it. First of all I think that this is perhaps the first play that I have had to read that I have enjoyed without having watched the whole thing first. I am much more oriented towards the visual when it comes to plays and other things that are geared towards watching and listening audiences, however, the Trojan Women is such a powerful story full of raw emotion that I often found myself wondering how I had never heard of the play to begin with. It is something that everyone can fear, the loss of everything that you know and once took for granted and the sheer terror of having to struggle through that loss and still live your life. I myself cannot begin to relate to the horror that Hecuba must deal with in this story. Not only has she been stripped of her crown and lost the city she once ruled to become a slave, but she must also lose every member of her household to the war and even bury the grandchild that had once promised to bury her in a lavish funeral. It is enough to bring even the stoutest heart to tears and wipe away thoughts of one's own suffering in the face of what can only be described as perhaps the worst day for any one person.

Finnegans Wake

Having just recently heard one of our classmates recite the final page and a half of Finnegans Wake, I became extremely interested in the whole thing. It sounds like a bunch of nonsense but after taking an oral traditions class I am beginning to see the importance, not of the printed word, but of the word that stays with us for all time. We read books so often that we enjoy, that strike us as masterpieces of literature. Yet none of us can truly recite word for word any extensive passages from any one book. That is until today, when Jenny-Lynn quoted nearly two pages of a book that most people can make neither heads nor tails of.

I think then, that it is not the book itself which we find memorable, but those ideas which we find in it, and Joyce's Finnegans Wake is so full of memorable ideas and moments that, if we take the time to read it, we might find the greatest book ever written.

On another thoght, I took the time to google Finnegans Wake and came up with some really interesting links from google. Here they are.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4DMUS_enUS305US312&q=finnegans+wake+

Plato and the Eternal Return

I've been thinking about Plato's idea that we already know everything that there is to know. We just have to remember it. What if that were true? What would happen if we didn't learn everything in our first life? Would we come back much like in buddhism where people are always trying to achieve nirvana and those that do not coem back until they do? That would certainly help us to learn, and it would also connect us to another concept of the class, the myth of the eternal return. We are in a cycle of return that would only end once we find a way to remember all that we had forgotten.

If anyone has any thoughts please feel free to comment.

Sympsoium Thoughts

I found it interesting that the original meaning of the word Symposium and that which we use today are two entirely different things. In Plato's day, a symposium was a drinking party. People just sat around consuming more and more alcohol until they probably couldn't hold it any longer.

I thought this was extremely funny considering the fact that we now use the word symposium much as Plato depicts the one in his story. Simply put, we expect to learn in a rather casual environment from multiple speakers, often on a broad subject that can have many interpretations.

Imagine how startled many of todays "symposium goers" would be if they went to one only to find all the other people drunk. Imagine also how startled Plato and Socrates would be going to a symposium to find that there was no intention of drinking there.

Both parties might even be outraged, and it might even be the stuff of comic legend.

Thoughts on Antigone

Having recently finished Antigone, I thought that I would put some thoughts down about the play that came to mind while reading the introduction. The first thing that comes to mind is the fact that there would have been only three actors for the entire play, all of them male. It seems odd that, according to Woodruff, Haemon, Antigone, and Ismene, would have most likely been voiced by the same guy especially since they sometimes appear on the stage together. I can't even imagine seeing one man switching back and forth between two different masks when Antigone and Ismene are disputing over whether or not to bury Polyneices.

I'm also stuck on the fact that all these actors would have been men. I just keep seeing this one big, brawney guy switching back and forth between two different masks trying to change the tone of his false setto in order to engrose the audience. Living in this time period we could easily get the full effect of the play with a half dozen well trained actors, but I wonder what it would look like to watch this play in the ancient times.

Childhood pets

I've had many pets over the years, and yet I can still remember all of their names. I see each of them in my mind's eye as I write this, and perhaps none of them is more cherished than Montana. Those before her were my parents pets, never mine, and so I did not feel much of a connection to them when they died. I was far too young anyway. Montana was differnet though, she was mine, and the day she died was one of the saddest of my life.

I remember the first moment I saw her. I was a small 3 year old child and she was an even smaller puppy amongst a dozen other puppies in a small house that I cannot recall a single detail of, but I can remember seeing Montana. A long story short, we took her home and spent the next eleven years together.

I remeber the night before she died. It was cold and I was getting ready for bed. I heard her bark and thought something might be wrong, but she was quiet almost instantly and so I thought nothing about it.

The next morning, a cold November morning by Alabama standards, I went out to feed her before going to school. There was a small, old barn where she would often sleep at night and so I thought nothing of it to check and see if she was sleeping, and sure enough there she was, but this time she did not wake up when I called her name, and, as I touched her, softly at first but then with more force as if pleading with her to get up, I knew she would never wake up again.

A Question of Time

I think it is interesting that ours is a culture that deals with time in such a linear sense. Some argue that it is our more wordly nature that makes us so inclined to see time in a straight line, that if we were more religious, our sense of time would be more circular.

I disagree with this belief. I think that even before we became a world of science, there was a sense of an end. After all, the calendar that we use today was developed by the church. It is meant to count to the end of days, and only a linear culture can have an end. I think that it is very interesting that we do not have a more cyclical calendar. Most people that I know would prefer the thought of a continual return to the same thing. Why shouldn't they? What is there to look forward to if everthing ends?

In fact, throughout history, people have sought to find ways to beat what they saw as the passing of time from alchemists attempting to find an elixir of life to the conquistador and explorer Juan Ponce de Leon looking for the fountain of youth in America. With a circular calendar, it becomes less pressing of a matter to survive eternally because that is essentially what you will do. Perhaps then, we should change our calendar so that it no longer includes years that continually get larger. Instead we should look to create a calendar that allows for the return of all things and by that become a less fast paced culture and more pressed with doing things right.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

Having recently read the Homeric Hymn to Demetre for only the second time, I am struck by the mystery at the very end

"She went then to the kings, keepers of custom,... And taught all of these her proper rites and mysteries-- Sacred, inviolable, not to be questioned or told of. Fear of the gods holds back the voice. Yet an earthly man is blessed who sees them. The uninitiated have no portion like his, when dead, below in mist and darkness."

I am struck by chills every time I read this passage. What rites and rituals did Demetre teach these people? For thousands upon thousands of years they have been at their mysterious work, yet all we outsiders can do is speculate as to anything that might be going on.

So then we must ask ourselves another question? How did they do it? How did they manage to keep the entirity of their practices quiet throughout the millenia, especially in today's world that is so much smaller than the world when the mysteries were first done? What respect or knowledge could help keep perhaps the greatest secret the world has ever known?