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Sep-23-08
 | | tpstar: <Eyal> Thank you for your perspective. =) I would draw a distinction between "return home" and "death" which is not a point of semantics. I have a feeling that Achilles interpreted not returning home as becoming King elsewhere, maybe even in Troy, and didn't consider the possibilities further until Patroklos died. No offense to Achilles fans, but I always thought his grief reaction to the death of Patroklos was overdone, and frankly quite selfish. He seems to be solely concerned with his own sense of loss, while also blaming himself for allowing him to die. But I also believe he comes to realize his own mortality through this episode, as the other prophecy was how he was fated to die shortly after Patroklos. Thus he now understands that "never return home" really equals "death" and not some other meaning. By grieving for Patroklos, he is already mourning his own death. I would interpret the huge shift in Achilles' behavior and attitude after Patroklos' death as his acceptance of his own mortality, which he may not have seriously contemplated before. The sea change in his maturity is best shown during the games which he supervises with incredible tact and grace, but also notable throughout his interaction with Priam near the end. |
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| Sep-23-08 | | Eyal: <tpstar> Well, of course there's room for different reconstructions of Achilles' "psychology"=) But with regard to his attitude toward the prophecy, I would insist there's no such Delphic-type ambiguity in play here. If by the "return home" you're referring to the passage I quoted from book 9, the full passage should make it clear that Achilles is thinking about his death: "if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, / my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; / but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, / the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life / left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly" (9.412-16). Moreover, this passage indicates that Achilles views the choice he faces not as one between mortality and immortality, but rather between dying young with glory and dying old without glory. I think that in the Homeric world, it's pretty much axiomatic for everyone that immortality belongs only to the gods and not to - well, mortals - even if the latter are "demigods" (i.e., whose one parent is a god) like Achilles. |
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| Sep-23-08 | | mckmac: There's got to be a whole nother story in here somewhere,don't you think? Ta very much by the way. |
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| Sep-23-08 | | mckmac: < the usual suspects > I hope I'm not too far off topic with this... 'The Sound of Madness '
What gets yr vote??
http://www.youtube.com/results?sear... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4-p...
http://www.youtube.com/results?sear... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qloI...
I vote for this!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvdR...
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Sep-23-08
 | | Domdaniel: <Woody> An age-related hint -- I played a lot of chess in the 1980s, then gave it up between 1989 and 2006. I've lost a lot of the old game scores, including that 'demolition'. It's annoying, because I can remember the 'shape' of the game but not the exact moves. |
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| Sep-23-08 | | euripides: I'm in the middle of a reread of the Iliad after a long time away from it so my thoughts may be more informed by the first half of the poem. I am inclined to think that both mortality and morality are up for grabs in the Iliad and Odyssey. The motivation that sustains heroic conduct is not taken for granted but constantly at issue. Immortality is not usually on offer, but is thinkable. Odysseus is offered it and Heracles may get it, though perhaps one should see Od.11.602-4 as an Alexandrian insert. I had never thought of <tpstar>'s imaginative interpretation of Achilles' twin fates. There is an unnverving parallel to Poseidon's removal of the return of Odysseus' companions announced at the very beginning of the Odyssey. But I am inclined to agree with <eyal> that the formulation of the second alternative implies that the first would be short-lived. Achilles and Odysseus both in some sense choose death; Achilles by coming to Troy, Odysseus by leaving Calypso (where immortality is explicitly offered). In a sense, all the Greeks at Troy have done the same thing; the first half of the poem is full of questions and possible answers about why men choose to fight. It is very important that the Greek army is not conscripted in the modern sense or even feudal, but based on some looser affiliation. That said, Achilles and Odysseus share a greater lucidity than most other characters (Glaucus is another case). The Trojans, by contrast, have not chosen death except in the minimal sense that they have stood by Paris (Glaucus, who has come from Lydia, is there by choice). Interesting thought that Hector is less lucid about his own death; the encounter with Andromache seems fairly lucid to me and actually was what I had in mind when I mentioned the role of prolepsis in generating the pathos of the poem. Achilles' grief in book 18 is somehow more than personal; it feels like a rift in the cosmos. What then happens to Achilles during the poem ? One could read it as a kind of reconciliation to an always existing knowledge or an enhanced imaginative apprehension of it, and both do seem to be involved. But there's also a moment of vision early in book 23, when he learns what death is and what does and doesn't survive it - in something of the same way that Odysseus learns somthing about the nature of death from Achilles in book 11 of the Odyssey (a passage that was to haunt Heine). I think there's an element of revelation in both cases. |
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| Sep-23-08 | | Eyal: <euripides> Btw, regarding Hector... You're right, of course, about the the nature (and effect) of his encounter with Andromache in book 6. When I mentioned his being, in a sense, less lucid than Achilles about his impending death I was actually half-recollecting a later passage - where, in response to the dying Patroklos' prophecy of his death by Achilles he answers: "Patroklos, what is this prophecy of my headlong destruction? / Who knows if even Achilles, son of lovely-haired Thetis, / might before this be struck by my spear, and his own life perish?" (16.859-61); whereas Achilles, in his turn, does not attempt to question dying Hector's Prophecy of his death by Paris: "I will take my own death at whatever time / Zeus and the rest of the immortals choose to accomplish it" (22.365-66). |
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| Sep-23-08 | | euripides: <eyal> yes. I vaguely recall that Hector's relations with his colleagues/brothers resembles some of the tensions between Roland and Oliver. One could see all that as lack of lucidity or heroic bluff. No doubt one doesn't have to choose. |
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Sep-23-08
| | Domdaniel: Astonishing. I never knew this place was so full of Homeroids. Carry on, chaps. It's an education. |
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| Sep-23-08 | | Red October: luckily there is preparation H |
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Sep-23-08
 | | jessicafischerqueen: Yes, a bona fide <literary discussion> has indeed broken out. This is what happens when a <Noted Narratologist> and <The Author of "The Bacchae"> get together, of course. I've not read the <Iliad>, so I will limit my commentary. 1. (serious point) In <The Odyssey>, when Odysseus meets Achilles in Hades, Achilles informs him that he would rather be a living slave than the most glorious warrior in the underworld. It seems that, perhaps too late, Achilles has "rethunk" his views on the virtues of glory vs. death. 2. (Slightly serious point) OK what's up with the <Catologue of Ships>?? (I lied- I actually read the first two Books of the <Iliad> because they forced me to at school). What would you say the plot's "dramatic arc" is in this Book? Ok hold up your hands if you REALLY enjoyed reading this particular part of the <Iliad>. NO LYING!! 3. (not at all serious point) OK this one is only for Medical Doctors and Narratologists: Which is better-- narrative prolepsis or a prolapsed uterus? Hint- the answer is not as straightforward as it sounds... |
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Sep-23-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: <Dom>
I greatly appreciated your interesting, and, might I venture, "dashing" comments about my chess game. Thank you!! |
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| Sep-23-08 | | Woody Wood Pusher: <I've lost a lot of the old game scores, including that 'demolition'. It's annoying, because I can remember the 'shape' of the game but not the exact moves.> That's a shame, I was kind of curious about it. I know the feeling though, I was playing chess regularly long before all these electronic devices caught on and had all my games filed the old-fashioned way...on paper in a cardboard folder. lol Having moved house half a dozen times since I gave up playing though, I have lost almost all my games. Since I started playing over the internet 6-months ago I have been storing all my games electronically. What a shame I can't summon up my old abilities though. |
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Sep-24-08
| | tpstar: <Eyal> You are right, and I shouldn't speculate further without reading the whole thing again. I was contemplating the possibility that Achilles was verbalizing something he didn't really believe (as children are wont to do), either from the very start or else after nine years of war which is an eternity to survive unscathed if he was supposed to die young. Consider that "My mother says my destiny is ..." adds a level of uncertainty which wouldn't be needed if he fully trusted the prophecy; after Patroklos dies, there is no uncertainty. The question interests me because only two characters show any growth throughout the proceedings: Achilles and Helen. Maybe Homer accentuated his petulant behavior during the first half to create more tension and foreboding, because Achilles is completely capable of mature interaction as shown in his responses to Odysseus, Phoenix and Ajax in Book 9. But it's too bad he wasn't more of a man earlier, and it took his friend's death for him to learn some lessons. I wonder if chessplayers view the role of espionage differently than other readers, adding a layer of dirty tricks to the brutality of combat, as it violates the sense of fair play. Odysseus reassures the Trojan spy Dolon how he will be unharmed, only to have Diomedes kill him. I am also thinking about Odysseus visiting Troy undercover, and of course the Trojan Horse. <jessicafischerqueen> I would bet that women are generally far less enthusiastic over Homer, given the prevailing treatment of females as property. During the games, a handmaiden is valued at "four oxen" which irritated some of my college friends to no end. At the same time, Athena is fully respected and honored without any second thoughts of her being a woman; same with Hera and Artemis. Also, the female characters seem "nicer" and better behaved than most of the men, yet this could be because they were more peripheral to the action. The Catalogue of Ships is useful for historians and listeners of the time who traced their ancestry to specific characters, but otherwise the only interesting feature is noting whose ships are on each end (Achilles and Ajax) which reinforces their status as the mightiest warriors. |
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Sep-24-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: OK Starting date for <mckmac> FOLDING SENTENCES GAME is this Sunday coming up. If you want to play, check his forum for further details. |
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| Sep-24-08 | | Eyal: <(Slightly serious point) OK what's up with the <Catologue of Ships>?? ... hold up your hands if you REALLY enjoyed reading this particular part of the <Iliad>. NO LYING!!> Heh - as Horace said, even Homer sometimes nods... Besides the matter of its contents, the catalogue's placement along the sequence is pretty lame narratively, being such a huge retardation that comes right after Homer so skillfully builds up the suspense regarding the upcoming clash between the Greeks and the Trojans, in the first half of book 2 (including the magnificent rhetorical flourish of five consecutive epic similes in 2.459-83, one of my favorite passages). |
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| Sep-24-08 | | Red October: what is the meaning of Homer's D'oh! ? does it represent the emptiness of his head ? or is it his fondness for doughnuts ? |
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| Sep-24-08 | | Eyal: <(serious point) In <The Odyssey>, when Odysseus meets Achilles in Hades, Achilles informs him that he would rather be a living slave than the most glorious warrior in the underworld. It seems that, perhaps too late, Achilles has "rethunk" his views on the virtues of glory vs. death.> Yeah, that's a remarkable passage - possibly the high-point of a more general normative shift that takes place between the two epics. In The Odyssey, survival becomes a primary value while the very foundations of the "heroic" code of conduct, which is so dominant in The Iliad, are questioned (perhaps that's one of the reasons why The Odyssey feels so much more modern). A nice retrospective irony, in this context, is that the end of the war (which lies, not coincidentally, outside the scope of The Iliad) wasn't brought about by Achilles-type heroics, but rather by the deception of the horse - which was, of course, Odysseus' idea. |
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Sep-24-08
| | Domdaniel: <Woody> Yeah, those old scoresheets ... I suppose I had about 400 of them, of which less than a third have survived. Now everything goes straight into Fritz/Chessbase ... but in the past I also 'backed up' some of my games using a long-obsolete piece of software on a 1 MB MacPlus, with an operating system nobody remembers. And then I trashed both the computer and the backup disks. The cruel thing is that, with very rare exceptions, the old games that I still have a rubbish. I've lost my only copies of wins against 2200+ guys and a draw against Tony Miles. It's especially frustrating when I can recall the shape of a game -- the opening variation, where the action was, the approximate climax -- but can't reconstruct the whole thing. I'm also a hoarder, surrounded by thousands of books, magazines and various bits of paper. Despite the fact that I stopped using a printer five years ago, paper still accumulates. Maybe those games are still in a box somewhere. |
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| Sep-24-08 | | crawfb5: <Red October: what is the meaning of Homer's D'oh! ? does it represent the emptiness of his head ? or is it his fondness for doughnuts ?> Formally, it is in scripts as <annoyed grunt>, with "d'oh" being Castellenata's vocal interpretation of that direction. His fondness for doughnuts would be, "Mmmmm....doughnuts....auuuggghhh" :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27oh!
I especially love that it's in the online version of the OED: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertai...
"Excellent." :-)
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Sep-24-08
| | jessicafischerqueen: <CABIN>
Yes-- <feels so much more modern>... And perhaps, therefore, no coincidence that of the two works it is the <Odyessy> that, arguably, provides the most allusive inspiration for subsequent literary artists, who elicit various kinds of resonances from it and its characters. Of note, of course, <Alfred Lord Tennis Ball> who manages to convey, at once, both the elegaic and the optimistic aspects of the tale in one of his finest <prams>. And of course the "difficult" <Ulysses> by <Joyce Adams>, who later became even more famous when her pet lion's daughter accidentally ate her (true story). Perhaps only in the imagination of a "literary modernist" could the characterization of Germans as <sausage eating bastards> be drawn, in part, one presumes, from Joyce's reading of the Odyssey. And ambiguous visions of lofty beauty from figures as different as <Eliot> =="I have heard the mermaids singing each to each" and <Dylan>== "Where lovely mermaids flow"... images which in the context of the passages of each of these modern works are also tinged with death and betrayal... Faulkner claimed he only ever read three books-- Bible, Complete Shakespeare, and Complete Keats-- But one suspects that a copy of the <Odyssey> would not have been out of place in such a library. I think the <Iliad> might possibly have inspired subsequent generations as much as did the <Odyssey> if it had had a better title? Possibly FLAMING STAR-- THE TRAGIC AND HARROWING ADVENTURES OF or,
NJORL'S SAGA
Of course I'm just speculating here.
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| Sep-24-08 | | Eyal: <I especially love that it's in the online version of the OED> Here's the OED entry, btw:
<doh, int.
colloq.
Expressing frustration at the realization that things have turned out badly or not as planned, or that one has just said or done something foolish. Also (usu. mildly derogatory): implying that another person has said or done something foolish (cf. DUH int.).> Etymology: <Imitative. Cf. OH int., DUH int.Popularized by the American actor Dan Castellaneta who provides the voice for the character Homer Simpson in the U.S. cartoon series "The Simpsons". The quotation below is his own description of its origin: 1998 Daily Variety (Nexis) 28 Apr., The D'oh came from character actor James Finlayson's "Do-o-o-o" in Laurel & Hardy pictures. You can tell it was intended as a euphemism for "Damn". I just speeded it up. Although the word appears (in the form D'oh) in numerous publications based on "The Simpsons", the scripts themselves simply specify "annoyed grunt" (as did the very earliest). Unofficial transcripts of the programme suggest the first spoken use was in a short episode, "Punching Bag", broadcast on 27 Nov. 1988 as part of "The Tracey Ullman Show". Its earliest occurrence in the full-length series was in the first episode "Simpsons roasting on an Open Fire", broadcast on 17 Dec. 1989.> Quotations [including couple of pre-Simpsonian usages]: <1945 T. KAVANAGH It's That Man Again (B.B.C. radio script: 8th Ser. No. 166-67)> Tom: Yes, out of the nest- Diana: What nest? Tom: In those whiskers- Diana: Dooh! It's no good talking to you ... Diana: The man I marry must be affectionate and call me 'Dear'-Tom: Oh you're going to be a stag's wife-Diana: Doh! Tom: Same thing. <1952 A. BUCKERIDGE Jennings & Darbishire xii. 183> 'Doh!' An anguished gasp of exasperation rang out loud and clear as Mr Wilkins found his voice again. <1989 Beano 11 Feb. 23 (caption)> [Speaker is a man who is knocked against a bus stop.] Doh! <1991 Chicago Tribune (Nexis) 15 Nov. (Friday)> H, 'The movie had one good point: It wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen.' 'It was the worst movie I've ever seen.' 'Doh!' <1993 HP Professional (Nexis) July 28> Along their long path ISO sort of missed local area networks and network management, which gave the market over to TCP/IP and related technologies. As Homer Simpson would say: 'Doh!' <1996 A. FEIN et al. Simpsons Comics strike Back! 14/2> 'Look out, you dern fool! You're gonna cut off your...' 'D'oh!!!' <1998 N. JONES Hollyoaks (Mersey TV transmission script) Episode 256. 44> Cindy: What are we doing here, anyway? Paul: Doh! Use your head, eh? |
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Sep-24-08
| | Domdaniel: <catalog of ships> Catalogs are great. So are encyclopedic fictions, cf Moby Dick, which also has its share of aquatic lists. Or Greenaway - The Falls, or Drowning by Numbers, or Vertical Features remake. Admittedly its more like numismatology than narrative, but us boys like our collections - stamps, harems, things beginning with the letter alpha, and so on. |
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Sep-24-08
| | Domdaniel: <tpstar> a *very* interesting topic there - as to whether chess players in general have different attitudes to things like ethics or narrative or cuisine. On the whole I'm tempted to say not. But the game *does* get into our brains like a drug or a virus, and who knows what kind of neural tampering it gets up to? Thistledown whispers of rust on synaptic girders. Must think about this. |
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Sep-24-08
| | Domdaniel: <Jess> is that the same Eliot who wrote about "Ezra Pound and Bobby Dylan/ Fighting in the Captain's tower"? yours,
Cal Ipso |
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Later Kibitzing> |
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Kibitzing
