tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61743674753292252782024-03-13T06:27:11.265-06:00MythMattersUsages of classical mythology are instances where narratives refer to familiar Greek and Roman myths through a sort of shorthand. Such usages, by my narrow definition, are not archetypal narratives but rather deliberate applications, where the modern artist overtly alludes to the classical narrative. macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.comBlogger98125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-47371264246703869212020-06-25T07:46:00.003-06:002020-06-25T07:53:39.595-06:00DiPasquale's "Neptune" at Virginia Beach<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Paul DiPasquale (1952 - ), "Neptune", 2005, colossal bronze sculpture and base, Virginia Beach, VA, oceanfront and 31st Street. — OGCMAPoseidon2.0011_DiPasquale.<br />
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Poseidon the Earthshaker commanded the earth beneath the Greeks' feet and he also ruled the seas. Odysseus ran afoul of Poseidon's pervasive dominion and suffered prolonged absence from home for a decade. Not until he should establish the god's cult in some land so far abroad that it knew no seafaring would Poseidon allow Odysseus to rest from toils.<br />
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Now on the New World's east coastline, the god himself looks inland. A contemporary Richmond sculptor with a propitiously Italianate surname perched in 2005 a colossal bronze image of the classical sea-god atop a reef-like base at ocean's edge in Virginia Beach. One message imbued in this sculpture, according to reports from the artist, is a divine rebuke for us to take better care the ocean from which the god emerges so sternly.*<br />
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The primary plaque on the base's front informs the visitor of civic "visionary" accomplishments that led to the creation of Virginia Beach in the 1960s and 1970s, "today the most populous city in the Commonwealth of Virginia". The visitor — indeed, "citizens and visitors from across the world" — might turn away from the huge bronze momentarily and consider the lengthy string of multi-storey hotels that lining the strand formidably right where Neptune's eyes are gazing. A separate plaque place on a nearby stele informs that the visitor of the bronze's creator.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E0TXjUUoQ0s/XvSrwZluz1I/AAAAAAAAEik/0vl-MAN0X3MQruI_WrIth42BDnBTBSALwCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/NeptuneDiPasqualePlaque.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="594" data-original-width="729" height="162" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E0TXjUUoQ0s/XvSrwZluz1I/AAAAAAAAEik/0vl-MAN0X3MQruI_WrIth42BDnBTBSALwCNcBGAsYHQ/s200/NeptuneDiPasqualePlaque.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chairmen of the annual September<br />Neptune Festival commemorated as<br />Kings of Neptune by VB Chamber of Commerce</td></tr>
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DiPasquale's Neptune stands over 34 feet in height (measured from sand to trident's top). That measurement makes this, reportedly, the largest bronze Neptune in the world. The logistics of creating such a massive work make for an interesting story in themselves. The artist's ingenuity, however, deserves attention: the municipal contest for the commission originally stipulated that entries be limited to 15-feet in height. DiPasquale's creation itself meets that requirement, but poised atop its base, the colossus achieves extra monumentality.<br />
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DiPasquale is a sculptor to be reckoned with. He has achieved notoriety over the last decade and trained in two stints at the American Academy in Rome. His important Arthur Ashe bronze stands monumentally in the tennis great's (and the sculptor's) hometown of Richmond. A 7-foot maquette of the "Neptune" stands in the entrance of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts E. Clairborne and Lora Robins Sculpture Garden since 2018.<br />
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A thematically related usage of Neptune in a civic monument stands in a square in land-locked Durham, England. See <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Poseidon2.0010_Durham">Poseidon2.0010_Durham</a>.<br />
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* J. Eurice (2005) "<a href="https://sunnydayguide.com/virginia-beach/article?edit_id=11" target="_blank">Neptune Rising: creating the iconic statue</a>" in <i>Virginia Beach Travel Guide</i> (accessed 25 June 2020)</div>
Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-79094328123118427832020-01-21T15:36:00.002-07:002020-01-21T15:36:38.854-07:00Titian's Poesie soon to be reunited<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-coxUkbpcdas/Xid5RMNnFmI/AAAAAAAAEbk/ttL09Zz1z5knTSo_fdcahZxXi8iaLNcKwCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Titian_-_Diana_and_Actaeon_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1467" data-original-width="1600" height="293" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-coxUkbpcdas/Xid5RMNnFmI/AAAAAAAAEbk/ttL09Zz1z5knTSo_fdcahZxXi8iaLNcKwCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/Titian_-_Diana_and_Actaeon_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Titian, "<a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-diana-and-actaeon">Diana and Actaeon</a>" (1556-59), <br />National Gallery & National Gallery of Scotland, NG 6611</td></tr>
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Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1488/90-1576), the great Venetian painter, famously sought a lucrative commission from King Philip II of Spain. A suite of paintings (created 1556-1560) was submitted to attract the king's approval, each inspired by classical mythological narratives Titian derived from Latin poets. Especially Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>, but also other classical Latin texts, take on new life and new meanings in the mature conception of Titian's masterpieces. The septuagenarian artist's fixation on the importance of graphic narrative has long invited comparison with Ovid's narrative mastery, and that same fixation justifies Titian's calling the suite his Poesie (poetry).<br />
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The British National Gallery and its sibling National Gallery of Scotland own a portion of the Poesie suite, paintings to be considered discreetly from the several other Titians owned there and beyond. The Spring of 2020 will find the National Gallery teaming with the Wallace Collection, the Prado, and Boston's Gardner Museum to reunite the six-painting suite for the first time since the 16th Century. The exhibition, Titian: Love Desire Death will run from 16 March until 14 June 2020.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pb7J2XbNXWQ/Xid5TqvzCuI/AAAAAAAAEbo/cPYeCMnujqQAWYaOZXs9tviRzR2EqVDzQCNcBGAsYHQ/s1600/TitianDianaCallistoEdinburgh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1477" data-original-width="1600" height="295" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pb7J2XbNXWQ/Xid5TqvzCuI/AAAAAAAAEbo/cPYeCMnujqQAWYaOZXs9tviRzR2EqVDzQCNcBGAsYHQ/s320/TitianDianaCallistoEdinburgh.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Titian, "<a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/titian-diana-and-callisto">Diana and Callisto</a>" (1556-59),<br />National Gallery & National Gallery of Scotland, NG6616</td></tr>
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The ramp-up to the Exhibition involves a short series of brief broadcasts on Facebook Live called "Uniting Titian's 'poesie'". The first installment aired on 20 January 2020, and one per day will show throughout the week at 6:15 GMT. Fortunately, the links on Facebook allow viewers to watch the recorded broadcasts later. <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/titian-love-desire-death/facebook-live?utm_source=wordfly&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NG_2020Jan_Titian_FacebookLive_NM&utm_content=version_A">Follow this link to catch up after the initial showing</a>.<br />
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Of course there are many other Titians to encounter, even within the same museums where the Poesie paintings reside. But the exceptional opportunity to see this suite of paintings together at once is sort of a reason to plan a trip to London this spring!<br />
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Paintings in the <i>poesie</i> are<br />
<i>Diana and Actaeon</i> (1556-1559), <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Actaeon1.0033_Titian.htm">Actaeon1.0033_Titian</a><br />
<i>Diana and Callisto </i>(1556-1559), <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Callisto1.0022_Titian.htm">Callisto1.0022_Titian</a><br />
<i>Venus and Adonis </i>(1554), <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Adonis1.0032_Titian3.htm">Adonis1.0032.1_Titian</a><br />
<i>Danaë</i> (1554-1556), <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Danae1.0008.2a3_TitianWellington.htm">Danaë1.0008.2a3_TitianWellington</a><br />
<i>Rape of Europa</i> (1560-1562), <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Europa1.0028_Titian.htm">Europa1.0028_Titian</a><br />
<i>Perseus and Andromeda</i> (1554-1556), <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/PerseusAndromeda1.0015_Titian.htm">PerseusAndromeda1.0015_Titian</a><br />
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Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-53682332575120436492019-08-20T12:50:00.000-06:002019-08-20T12:50:16.705-06:00Erasmus did some (Herculean) Heavy LiftingThe Renaissance portraitist Hans Holbein worked in 1523 a contemporary image of Erasmus of Rotterdam, still today one of the most important humanist thinkers. One of <i>our </i>contemporaries says that Holbein's Erasmus "arguably is the most important portrait in England. It's where portraiture actually begins." I like the painting for Holbein's learned inclusion of the Labors of Heracles.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvi3mFWYcdQ/XVwP0S57yqI/AAAAAAAAAlc/rGBOMN8pgRcokTXccGEtf7e3vZkL6VP0gCLcBGAs/s1600/Holbein-erasmus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1145" data-original-width="809" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hvi3mFWYcdQ/XVwP0S57yqI/AAAAAAAAAlc/rGBOMN8pgRcokTXccGEtf7e3vZkL6VP0gCLcBGAs/s320/Holbein-erasmus.jpg" width="226" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hans Holbein the Younger, "Erasmus"<br />(1523) National Gallery L658</td></tr>
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Although the British National Gallery, which owns the portrait, has not made the painting available for reproduction, digital images of it are publicly available on the internet. The Wikimedia version I include here (at left) is color "enhanced", washed out, a far cry from the rich detail you can see in the segment of the portrait the Gallery does share (visit <a href="https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/hans-holbein-the-younger-erasmus">nationalgallery.org.uk</a>). Indeed, the NatGal's site is additionally worth visiting because of the lucid instruction by Prof David Starkey (cited above) who contextualizes Holbein's contribution to portraiture.<br />
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Erasmus had published in 1506 a compendium of essays — Renaissance equivalents of mythmatters blogposts? — called the <i>Adages </i>or actually the <i>Adagiorum chiliades tres</i> ("the three thousand <i>adagios</i>"). The term "adagio" from Italian <i>ad agio</i> "at ease" implies something written or done in a leisurely manner. A musical piece or technically demanding ballet movement that ends up looking easy but was actually torturously hard to achieve is an <i>adagio</i>. Even though the <i>Adagia </i>are sometimes now called his "Proverbs", Erasmus published a set of three thousand sayings that come out easy, whose acquisition, however, was really really hard.<br />
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Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam was a scholar of great consequence in the restoration of classical learning to Europe and the West. In the generation after the Fall of Constantinople, Erasmus took up residence in Venice because, among other things, that city at the top of the Adriatic was the cultural crossroads where speakers and scholars of Greek could and did meet up with scholars who wanted to learn whatever Ancient Greek thinking could be reborn in their new age. Erasmus learned Greek and advocated for writing and thinking in Latin as Cicero had done a millennium-and-a-half earlier.<br />
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The heavy lifting of the intellectual Renaissance was assumed largely by Erasmus and his peers. The humanist printer Aldus Manutius virtually invented the publication of Greek literature with Erasmus inspiring the efforts to forge ahead. It was Aldus who first published the <i>Adagia </i>in 1506 and then again in an expanded revision in 1508. Some wag once called Erasmus' <i>Adagia</i> the world's biggest bedside book. It spans actually seven volumes of the Toronto Collected Works (1982-2017).<br />
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If you were wondering, for instance, where the expression "She has eyes in the back of her head!" came from, you might find Erasmus' contribution worth your while. It's <i>Adag</i>. 3.3.41:<br />
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<i>In occipitio oculos gerit</i> — Ὄπισθεν κεφαλῆς ὄμματα ἔχει, He has eyes in the back of his head. Used of cunning and wary people [... like Mrs Dotson, my 6th grade teacher! RTM], and those whom it is by no means easy to deceive. Men of this sort are called by Perseus Januses: 'What a Janus you are! No stork can peck you from behind.' And Homer demands of a prince the he should have 'eyes before and behind.' Plautus in <i>Aulularia</i>: 'She has eyes in back of her head as well.' (Cited entire from Toronto edition.)</blockquote>
Erasmus could ... and did! ... go on in this vein for scores and dozens of scores of exempla, each one manifesting his mining of Latin and Greek literature and each one bringing to the surface some evidence of once ancient wisdom. This is what I mean by the heavy lifting of the Renaissance.<br />
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Holbein's portrait of Erasmus perches the scholar's hands on the rich leather volume. It bears the inscription ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΟΙ ΠΟΝΟΙ ("The Labors of Heracles"). Erasmus himself equated the work of collecting proverbs from ancient texts with "Herculean Labor." The scholarly investigation of ancient adages is painstaking and not always well received.<br />
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All this time I need hardly say that any pleasure to be derived from compilations of this kind is entirely confined to the reader; nothing comes the writer's way except the unpopular and unvarying toil of collecting, of sweeping together, explaining, and translating. Yet pleasure, as Aristotle has truly said, is the one thing which makes it possible for us to remain at work for long spells of time. ... In this task [change] has not been 'twice-served cabbage,' as the Greek proverb has it; I have had to repeat the same things three thousand times — what does an adage mean, what was its original, and for what purpose was it suitable — so that never was there a context more suitable than this for that hackneyed Greek adage 'the twirling of the pestle.'</blockquote>
Erasmus concludes that paragraph, which forms about three percent of his essay on the adage "The Labors of Hercules", with a rumination on "the conditions in which I labor and the demands I have to meet! — On every single adage I must content the leisured reader, give the hungry man what he needs, and satisfy the disdainful." (<i>Adage. </i>3.1.1) To get to his point, i.e. to expand upon the Labors of Hercules generally, Erasmus fills a fifteen-page essay with references to Catullus, Vergil, Ovid, Aristotle, Chrysippus, Clearchus, Didymus..."and other men as well of whom not the smallest fragment has come down to us." Toward its conclusion he summarizes: "I have been fearing for some time that my readers may find it a Herculean task to read through the discourse of inordinate length into which I have been drawn by an adage which has proved a task for Hercules. And so, I will make an end, but after adding a further point — that when this was first published I had surpassed all the labors of Hercules...."<br />
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By the time of Holbein's portrait, Erasmus' life-long labor of the <i>Adagia</i> properly filled a considerably larger volume than the elegant tome Holbein slips under the scholar's hands in the portrait. Even if the Paris edition had included only a couple hundred adages, the collection numbered over four thousand proverbs at the time of Erasmus' death. By any accounting, the intellectual gravity of Erasmus' scholarly accomplishment is monumental. Thus, the portraitist chooses wisely to tinge the humanist's hands with a little ink and to perch them on top of such a weighty accomplishment.<br />
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<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9TXbHH7OLbE/XVxAQHSjDCI/AAAAAAAAAlo/db1pIkS6fgkSfmuIN6ECddu55N9Ro0NUACLcBGAs/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-08-20%2Bat%2B12.46.33%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="668" data-original-width="473" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9TXbHH7OLbE/XVxAQHSjDCI/AAAAAAAAAlo/db1pIkS6fgkSfmuIN6ECddu55N9Ro0NUACLcBGAs/s400/Screen%2BShot%2B2019-08-20%2Bat%2B12.46.33%2BPM.png" width="282" /></a>One subtle touch remains to be noted in the Erasmus portrait. Holbein uses the painting itself to comment with subtle irony on the magnitude of his own work. The fore-edge inscription Holbein paints on the book shelved above and behind Erasmus' head an original, learned (if imperfect) elegiac couplet in unpunctuated Latin:<br />
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Ille ego Ioannes Holbein non facile ullus </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
tam michi mimus erit quam michi momus erit.</blockquote>
This translates into something like this: "The famous Johannes Holbein, painted this. It seems more likely that somebody will copy my work than malign it." The wit at the heart of the boast spins blithely in the erudite wordplay that pits <i>mimus </i>(Lat. "imitator")<i> </i>against <i>momus </i>(Grk. μῶμος "reproach"). μωμήσεταί τις μᾶλλον ἢ μιμήσεται — "Somebody will more likely malign this than copy it" — is itself an adage of considerable background. Holbein the Elder used it in Latin, borrowed from Erasmus, a decade earlier: "Carpet aliquis citius quam imitabitur," is ascribed to Greek painters originally, according to Erasmus <i>Adag. </i>2.2.84 and treated separately, s.v. "<i>momo satisfacere" </i>at <i>Adag</i>. 1.5.74. All this learning goes back prodigiously to Erasmus, the sitter and subject of Holbein's portrait.<br />
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—— RTM<br />
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OGCMA references<br />
HeraclesLabors2.0001_Holbein<br />
HeraclesLabors1.0015_Erasmus<br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The piece is informed by J. Mähly (1868), "Miscellen," <i>Jahrbuch des Vereins von Altertumsfreunden im Rheinlande</i>, <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=X5RFhSu5uT8C&lpg=PA269&ots=MAzb2Yvf8X&dq=Holbein%20%22quam%20michi%22&pg=PA270#v=onepage&q&f=false">44:269-70</a>, and by</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;">H. Vredeveld (2013) "'Lend a Voice': The Humanistic Portrait Epigraph in the Age of Erasmus and Dürer," </span><span style="box-sizing: inherit; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333; font-style: italic; line-height: inherit;">Renaissance Quarterly</span><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: #333333;"> 66.2: 549-50. doi:10.1086/671585.</span></span>macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-35134515797806934172019-02-09T15:07:00.002-07:002019-02-09T15:19:40.065-07:00Medusa and the affair with Poseidon<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What was the nature of Medusa’s involvement with Poseidon? </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Perseus beheaded Medusa and weaponized her head. That bothers me. It also has long rankled me that in the myth Medusa was transformed from a lovely young woman into a hideous monster. But right now I am more bothered that an <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Medusa1.0000_Reid.htm" target="_blank">encyclopedic source I normally trust</a> reports that Medusa’s transformation was <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ax0CoCV_SdU/XF9GSzIWN5I/AAAAAAAAAjU/SeeJBQ0B-NAKWbNbZVHdamc6bA-bQVDugCEwYBhgL/s1600/MedusaHosmer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="740" data-original-width="500" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ax0CoCV_SdU/XF9GSzIWN5I/AAAAAAAAAjU/SeeJBQ0B-NAKWbNbZVHdamc6bA-bQVDugCEwYBhgL/s320/MedusaHosmer.jpg" width="216" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Medusa1.0027_Hosmer.htm" target="_blank">H. Goodhue Hosmer "Medusa" (1854)</a><br />
Detroit Institute of Arts</td></tr>
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punishment by Athena in her temple for “</span><i style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">allowing Poseidon to violate her</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">” there. This authority conflicts with my view. I have long held that Poseidon forced himself upon the girl, a virginal acolyte of a vindictive goddess. Why have I been thinking that? </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">What do the classical sources say about Medusa’s involvement in her relations with Poseidon? Did she really allow Poseidon to violate her? Did she or did he transgress the sanctity of Athena’s temple? Wherever the inquiry leads, I will still be irked that the lovely girl is hideously transformed, that her sudden death is so brutal, and especially that her mutilated body is weaponized by Perseus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ovid’s </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Metamorphoses</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">is the where the confusion might be resolved. That remarkable poem, written in the meridian of western mythological time (ca. 8 BCE), digested mountains of Greek mythographical peculiarity into one compendium for subsequent generations. When Rome’s descendant cultures forgot to read Greek, Rome’s uncrowned laureate poet continued to be read in accessible </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/PerseusMedusa1.0009_Cellini.htm" target="_blank">B. Cellini, "Perseus" (1546-54)</a><br />
Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence</td></tr>
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Latin. The <i>Metamorphoses’ </i>result has become canonical. The text has directed the narratives about the gods’ interactions for centuries now. What Ovid says about, say, Medusa and her disposition is going to matter. His text certainly lies behind this summary by Graves: “The Gorgons were … all once beautiful. But one night Medusa lay with Poseidon, and Athene, enraged that they had bedded in one of her own temples, changed her …” (<i>Greek Myths</i>: s.v. “33. The Children of the Sea”). I will not be distracted by Graves’ minor accreted detail that the intercourse happened at night. Graves’ reliance upon Ovid’s canonicity is what matters at the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ovid’s account does attribute Medusa’s metamorphosis to Athena’s — well, to </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Minerva’s</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">rage. It says precious little about Medusa’s role in the Neptune affair. Using the verb </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">vitiare</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">he says that Medusa was violated; but he introduces some uncertainty by reporting the act indirectly (</span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">dicitur</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">)— “Neptune is said to have violated her…” Upon close reading, Ovid’s text certainly does not say that Medusa </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">allowed the god to violate her</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/PerseusMedusa1.0063_Marqueste.htm" target="_blank">L.-H. Marqueste, "Perseus and Medusa"</a><br />
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ovid leaves unsaid what role Medusa might have played in fateful relations with Neptune. Ovid’s tacit ambivalence comes at the mid-point of his lengthy Perseus narrative in </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Metamorphoses</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">4.610-5.209. Perseus, at this mid-point (4.790-803) is regaling the wedding feast, Cepheus’ guests, with the tale of how he had come to rescue Andromeda. He ends his story </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">abruptly (</span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">ante expectatum tacuit</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">). One of the guests eggs him on to tell how Medusa alone of her sisters had come to have those snakey tresses. Perseus tells that Medusa once had had many suitors </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">and the most glorious hair. “The sea-god <i>is said to have violated her </i>in the temple of Minerva; Jupiter’s daughter averted her eyes and covered her chaste face with her aegis; then, so as to prevent this act from going unpunished, the goddess changed the Gorgon’s hair into poisonous snakes. Even now, she wears those snakes, which she created, on the front of her chest, so as to devastate her foes with dread.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> The Latin I translate, for the record, goes like this:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> ante expectatum tacuit tamen; excipit unus / ex numero procerum quaerens, cur sola sororum<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> gesserit alternos inmixtos crinibus angues. / hospes ait: ‘quoniam scitaris digna relatu,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> accipe quaesiti causam. Clarissima forma / multorumque fuit spes invidiosa procorum<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> illa, neque in tota conspectior ulla capillis / pars fuit; inveni, qui se vidisse referret.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> hanc pelagi rector templo vitiasse Minervae / dicitur: aversa est et castos aegide vultus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: xx-small;"> nata Iovis texit, neve hoc inpune fuisset, / Gorgoneum crinem turpes mutavit in hydros. [angues.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> Nunc quoque, ut attonitos formidine terreat hostes, / pectore in adverso, quos fecit, sustinet</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Ovid fails in this passage to specify that Medusa might have shared some of the blame. But he doesn't exonerate her either. I guess I had always been reading the nuance into the passage. Whether Medusa had enticed Neptune, yielded willingly to advances, or succumbed to the sea-god’s lust, Ovid leaves for the reader to infer. Clearly, though, the girl alone takes the brunt of all the goddess’ ashamed raged, and no punishment is directed at Neptune. In a mytho-theology where condign punishment is rarely measured, Ovid’s readers may likely be justified in reading Neptune’s guilt and Medusa’s innocence between these lines.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Michael Simpson’s </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Apollodorus</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">(p. 87, </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">ad</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">2.4.2 fn.11) observes that Ovid makes Medusa creative, both in life as in death. Her petrifying gaze made her a sculptor. Along those roads leading to the Gorgon’s home, Perseus had seen many </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">simulacra</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">. And at the fiasco in Phineus’ hall when Perseus used Medusa's head to stay his new enemies, many a new statue was created by her severed head. Whether or not this can have played with great subtlety into Ovid’s redemption of Medusa’s shame, it is intriguing to see Ovid regarding Medusa the artisan, like Arachne, who would be despised by the jealous Minerva for any cause.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Metamorphoses </i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">account has held more lasting sway than Hesiod’s </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Theogony </i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">on the matter of Medusa’s involvement with Poseidon. The archaic didactic poem covers the creation of the Cosmos and sometimes dabbles in nuanced details, often unsatisfactorily. </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Theogony</i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">270-329 treat among other genealogies the ancestry and descendants of Medusa. Several lines of descent crisscross inside the passage. When his focus passes over Medusa herself, Hesiod says precious little about the girl’s relations with Poseidon. I read </span><i style="font-family: times, "times new roman", serif;">Theogony </i><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">as a treatise that justifies patriarchy’s suppression of the matriarchal, the imposition of order in the world. This poet’s business is hardly about such fine details as whether or not the girl resisted a god’s advances. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hesiod does mention that Medusa alone of three sisters was mortal and ill-fated: <span lang="EL">Σθεννώ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">τ᾿ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">Εὐρυάλη</span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">τε </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">Μέδουσά </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">τε </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">λυγρὰ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">παθοῦσα</span>· / <span lang="EL">ἡ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">μὲν </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ἔην</span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">θηντή</span>, <span lang="EL">αἱ</span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">δ᾿ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ἀθάνατοι </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">καὶ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ἀγήρῳ</span>, / <span lang="EL">αἱ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">δύο</span>· (276-78). The classical tri-colon style — the third element is spatially as long as the first two combined — emphasizes Medusa’s misfortune. Hesiod’s next detail seems to linger a bit too long on the other sisters’ immortality, doubling up gratuitously on their immortality by the enjambed repetition. Medusa’s exceptionality seems to hinge unsaid on her having slept with a god. Cause and effect seem implied: She was mortal: Poseidon had lain beside her in a flowery meadow. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EL"> τῇ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">δὲ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">μιῇ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">παρελέξατο </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">Κυαναχαίτης </span>/ <span lang="EL">ἐν </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">μαλακῷ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">λειμῶνι </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">καὶ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ἄνθεσιν </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">εἰαρινοῖσι</span>. (278-79) The peculiarity of Hesiod’s oral style lavishes more detail on the meadow’s plushness than upon the girl’s attitude. Did that intercourse render the daughter of Phorcys mortal? Hesiod fails to clarify. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> It may be fair to unpack here what little information Hesiod provides. Poseidon is the verb’s grammatical subject. The verb tense, the aorist, suggests that the encounter was a singular act, not a repeated or habitual affair. The verb’s middle voice may possibly imply that the god engaged the activity for his own interests; but this observation may represent philological overreach! I think the poet’s judgment of Medusa lies in his tight sequencing of events. What is certain is that Hesiod’s text jumps immediately from verdant meadow to the death-blow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span lang="EL"> τῆς </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ὅτε </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">δὴ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">Περσεὺς </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">κεφαλὴν </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ἀπεδειροτόμησεν</span>, / <span lang="EL">ἐξέθορε </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">Χρυσάωρ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">τε </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">μέγας </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">καὶ </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">Πήγασος </span><span lang="EL"></span><span lang="EL">ἵππος</span>. (280-81) Hesiod’s predicate for the girl’s beheading — to sunder head from neck — might surpass Homeric battle savagery. (Cf. <i>Il</i>. 18.336, 23.22; <i>Od.</i>11.35, where the verb occurs before Hesiod.) Hesiod’s Medusa is vilified by her monstrosity; she acquires the monstrosity by the bedding of Poseidon. She dies pregnant and bears her offspring posthumously. And her progeny in Hesiod’s account includes some of the most frightful monsters ever seen in her Cosmos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Apollodorus observes that “[Perseus] flew to Ocean and found the Gorgons, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, asleep. Medusa alone was mortal, and it was for this reason that Perseus went after her head.” (</span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">(2.4.2, </span><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Simpson’s trans.) Then, after the decapitation, Apollodorus describes the birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor who “leaped forth from the Gorgon. She gave birth to these by Poseidon.” Apollodorus is matter-of-fact. No details of the mating, nothing on either location nor consent, are given. Not much later in the text (2.4.3), Apollodorus justifies Medusa’s punishment — the beheading, not her serpentinization — by attributing it to divine jealousy. Athena fixed Medusa’s head on her shield, and he adds that “some say that Medusa was beheaded because of Athena, for she wished to be considered as beautiful as the goddess.” </span></div>
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A final thought: Chris Columbus' cinematic adaptation of Rick Riordan's <i>Percy Jackson</i> works with the Medusa myth. Auntie Em, played by Uma Thurman, hisses at Percy, "Son of Poseidon, I used to date your Daddy!" Did we know that Medusa and Poseidon were "in a relationship", actually? Ovid's report suggests that the violation might have happened on one occasion. Hesiod's aorist verb suggests that the meadowing happened (probably just once). And in Apollodorus no intercourse with Poseidon, but divine jealousy effected the change.<br />
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"> At the end of this rumination, I am left to my own prejudgments. I think that my “authoritative” source — OK, it's J.D. Reid's <i>OGCMA</i> — where the revisiting inquiry began, has overstated Medusa’s involvement in the Poseidon affair. I have yet to find in the classical sources any indication that Medusa <i>allowed the god to violate her </i>in Athena’s temple. Of course, other authors have added that detail to the myth <i>ad lib</i>. I suspect the bothersome detail to be a modern accretion, though. But that’s how myths work. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3dh5HS7VSOQ/XF9GT41NMjI/AAAAAAAAAjs/ZD6-ChY60PgXDKzo_WWqRC0o-trga--4ACEwYBhgL/s1600/MedusaThurmanColumbus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="500" height="205" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3dh5HS7VSOQ/XF9GT41NMjI/AAAAAAAAAjs/ZD6-ChY60PgXDKzo_WWqRC0o-trga--4ACEwYBhgL/s320/MedusaThurmanColumbus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Uma Thurman plays Medusa in C. Columbus (dir.)<br /><a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/PerseusMedusa2.0100_Riordan.htm" target="_blank"><i>Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief </i>(2010)</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">—— RTM </span></div>
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#ogcma.byu.edu Medusa Perseus Ovid <i>Metamorphoses</i> Hesiod <i>Theogony</i></div>
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<a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Medusa1.0000_Reid.htm">http://ogcma.byu.edu/Medusa1.0000_Reid.htm</a></div>
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macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-17193796820917159922018-12-15T16:38:00.000-07:002019-02-09T15:12:07.319-07:00Riordan's Perseus vs. Columbus' cinematic adaptationA stub idea to be updated and expanded.<br />
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Rick Riordan's Aunty Em is a modernized Medusa. And Percy perpetrates her decapitation in an adapted mode, updated to the narrative moment.<br />
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To be clear, Riordan's Percy sees his serpentine foe in a "green gazing ball" procured by Annabeth from among the merchandise in Aunty Em's Garden Gnome Emporium. The Emporium is described as one of those roadside businesses that sell garden gnomes and other cement statuary you might put in your garden. And Aunty Em, it turns out, has been petrifying her clientele for years. Her gaze might turn Percy and Annabeth into similar statuary, if they aren't careful. However, Annabeth has the wherewithal to turn Percy instead into a hero and rid their world of yet one more mythological villain. (<i>PJ:LT</i> 168-185)<br />
Medusa's gaze, if you didn't know, turns people into stone. It has done for ages. And gazing balls for ages have been amusing folks with convectional views of their world. If you knew a menacing snake was creeping up on you from behind, you might see its reflection in a gazing ball. The gazing ball would serve the same function as the shield that Perseus used in classical myth. Athena gave that to the hero so that he could track Medusa's moves without technically looking at her or catching her stony gaze.<br />
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Chris Columbus adapted the Riordan novel in the film <i>Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief</i> (2010), screenplay by Craig Titley. [photo from IMDB courtesy of Fox Film Corp] Things play out a little differently in the cinematic adaptation. One key difference is the film's showing the fateful moment of the decapitation from the spectator's POV. Medusa stands stone-still gazing at the reflection of Percy approaching in the moment before her own decapitation. The script really climaxed in Medusa's statement "Son of Poseidon, I used to date your Daddy." [YouTube link: https://youtu.be/K-Y4q2m9OFE] Percy's ingenious use of the shiny back of an iPhone is more than just gratuitous product placement. Ownership of the gag — one-upping Riordan — belongs perhaps to Columbus, perhaps to Titley. But it's certainly part of the cinematic adaptation and not Riordan's doing.<br />
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Why this all matters:<br />
Analysis of Riordan's adaptation should deal with the text that Riordan wrote. That adaptation of the Medusa/Perseus myth is distinct from Columbus' cinematic adaptation of Riordan's text. Without passing judgment on the relative merits of either — each is very clever —adaptation of Perseus/Medusa, the present post strives merely to document my belief that analysis should distinguish between Riordan's gazing-ball and Columbus' iPhone as adaptations of the shield Perseus traditionally uses to survive.<br />
Those who would write about such adaptations need to distinguish cleanly between the phased adaptations, i.e. myth-novel-cinema, and not conflate them. This is not always easily done.<br />
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<br />macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-21083096608749657972018-12-03T17:21:00.003-07:002019-01-03T09:34:07.417-07:00Osamu Tezuka Apollo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">O. Tezuka, <i>Apollo's Song</i> (1970/2007)</td></tr>
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Osamu Tezuka adapts the myth of Daphne and Apollo within his manga <i>Apollo's Song </i>(1970). While the whole story's narrative arc is reminiscent of Orpheus and Eurydice, Apollo and Athena are acknowledged overtly but Orpheus is not. The protagonist twice receives oracular instructions from Athena at the story's beginning and end; and Apollo is referenced at two key moments in Shogo's salvation narrative. </div>
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Tezuka was one of the most creative and most instrumental practitioners of Japanese manga. Topics and narrative modes applied in his graphic novels manifest astonishing diversity throughout the 20th Century, from the rise of Hitler until the artist's death in 1989. Originally serialized in Japanese as <i>Aporo No Uta</i> in <i>Shukan Shonen Kingu</i>, Shonen Gahosha, <i>Apollo's Song</i> was translated into English in 2007. </div>
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It's hard to surmise from reading <i>Apollo's Song </i>that the artist is not aware of the Orpheus myth. The protagonist is fated to cyclical love and loss, ever closer to attaining real love. The cover art suggests the famous moment in Camus' <i>Orfeo Negro </i>(1960) when Orpheus ascends to the favelas with the limp corpse of Eurydice in his arms. Shogo grapples with his love for Hiromi throughout and ultimately achieves unity with her only in experiencing a hellish death to be with her. Shogo and the Hiromi surrogates perish recurrently and experience resurrection in new stories. Themes of joint suicide, questions about why violence so often interferes with love, lovers who lose their beloved, and human search for the meaning of true love crisscross Tezuka's tale.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z92-cBK5LFY/XAq0OTyUFjI/AAAAAAAAAg8/c32mlc5EmCA7rZVoWO6Tr2peyi1VCGOLgCLcBGAs/s1600/ApolloCover_TezukaREDUCED.tif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1600" height="160" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z92-cBK5LFY/XAq0OTyUFjI/AAAAAAAAAg8/c32mlc5EmCA7rZVoWO6Tr2peyi1VCGOLgCLcBGAs/s200/ApolloCover_TezukaREDUCED.tif" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">O. Tezuka, <i>Apollo's Song</i> (1970/2007)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Athena is never clearly identified by name in <i>Apollo's Song</i>. Her identity is, however, unmistakable. Phidias' classical masterpiece of Athena Parthenos, ensconced in the naos of the Parthenon (the iconic sculpture portrayed in mirror image in English translation) — speaks an oracle to Shogo in Chapter 1 (of 5). Her utterance is as the Divine would speak: "Thou shalt love one woman again and again, but before the two are united in love, one shall perish. Even in death, thou shalt be reborn, to undergo yet another trial of love." (1.41) Then, the manga's final scene, its epilogue centers on Shogo's return to the unnamed Parthenos to learn that "Thou shalt see [Hiromi] again soon. In every era, in every world, she shall await thee." As Hiromi rises naked from behind Athena's panoply and exits the Parthenon into the light where Shogo has gone, Tezuka's omniscient narrator instructs that "Nature divides us into male and female... We come together and create offspring for posterity..." (2.254-57) Athena, the virginal goddess, therefore directs both Shogo's fate and the eternal prospects of human procreation. In her management of a hero's sexual destiny, Tezuka's mythmaking has contrived a remarkable new role for Athena Parthenos.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d_8eBxzza_w/XAq0PAk1ZZI/AAAAAAAAAhk/iJ1JYIz8VSsgOH2RLSa-htqCDxjEIEWZwCEwYBhgL/s1600/DaphneApollo_Tezuka2_2.205.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="713" data-original-width="888" height="160" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d_8eBxzza_w/XAq0PAk1ZZI/AAAAAAAAAhk/iJ1JYIz8VSsgOH2RLSa-htqCDxjEIEWZwCEwYBhgL/s200/DaphneApollo_Tezuka2_2.205.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pursuit in water, <i>Apollo's Song</i> 2.205</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z4nIVu2l_b8/XAXCsuo49AI/AAAAAAAAAgA/x4H-E9EAXmcQ1SgzDd6WWI_NEAPwTQ0mACLcBGAs/s1600/DaphneApollo_Tezuka2_Page_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1074" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-z4nIVu2l_b8/XAXCsuo49AI/AAAAAAAAAgA/x4H-E9EAXmcQ1SgzDd6WWI_NEAPwTQ0mACLcBGAs/s200/DaphneApollo_Tezuka2_Page_2.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">traditional <i>Apollo's Song</i> 2.203</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Apollo's treatment in <i>Apollo's Song</i> is more overt and at first glance less novel. Late in the final chapter, Hiromi confides in her doctoral advisor, Dr. Enoki (2.199), that she is beginning to have feelings for Shogo and that she is aware of his infatuation with her. The Doctor advises her to "become a laurel tree." Hiromi fails to see the connection. The Doctor then helps her to learn "the Greek myth about the girl Daphne." He explains the myth of Daphne and Apollo along the lines of Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses </i>1, the western classic ending in a Bernini visual; but, subtle divergences from Ovid are intriguing. Much of the pursuit occurs in water, for instance, recalling the manga's recurrent instruction on reproductive biology, sperm swimming upstream. Tezuka's adaptation explains how the god Apollo pursued and came to hold the object of his lust, how the daughter of Peneus lost her identity at the end of a frightened flight. Dr. Enoki summarizes, "Miss Watari, I'm telling you to become a laurel tree because if you continue to allow Shogo's feelings for you to intensify, he will eventually fall into despair." (209)<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PF3HAjzpOtg/XAq0M3awfxI/AAAAAAAAAgo/CzvJBOd9GEgxXYIi-9NDefTIsIl3YDFXQCLcBGAs/s1600/Apollo%2BShogo%2B1.239.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="381" data-original-width="364" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PF3HAjzpOtg/XAq0M3awfxI/AAAAAAAAAgo/CzvJBOd9GEgxXYIi-9NDefTIsIl3YDFXQCLcBGAs/s320/Apollo%2BShogo%2B1.239.tiff" width="305" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shogo as fallen Icarus, <i>Apollo's Song</i> 1.239</td></tr>
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Apollo is first acknowledged mid-way through the manga. The first acknowledgement in a novel titled for him is rather obscure. "Apollo" is the only word in the principle frame that fills 1.239. Shogo has collapsed, exhausted by Hiromi's sternly regimented training him for a marathon. In an bout of training that one expects will likely result in sexual intercourse, the fleet Hiromi eludes Shogo for many laps around a small lake. As Shogo's physical fatigue darkens his mind, Tezuka in nearly every frame includes a glimpse of Hiromi's running legs and backside clothed explicitly in Shogo's underwear. (1.227-38) Hubris brings Shogo down in the end. He falls flat on his face on the strand. Icarus. And his only utterance rises to the top of the frame — "Apollo..." Next frames find Hiromi now willingly removing her clothing over the collapsed boy, now that he poses "no threat" to her safety. Hiromi is his coach. For now, Hiromi is fully in control. Over 200 pages later Dr. Enoki coaches <i>her</i> to play Daphne and relinquish control.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fq1044eQU8Q/XAq0OzuvGSI/AAAAAAAAAhI/6EKMXOMcplgzXXHnRysw4Sqt65tvI9p1QCLcBGAs/s1600/AthenaApollo_Tezuka1.23.tif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1097" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fq1044eQU8Q/XAq0OzuvGSI/AAAAAAAAAhI/6EKMXOMcplgzXXHnRysw4Sqt65tvI9p1QCLcBGAs/s320/AthenaApollo_Tezuka1.23.tif" width="219" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lefty Athena, <i>Apollo's Song</i> 1.23; the<br />
Japanese original mirrors this, with<br />
Nike extended in the right hand.<br />
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</tbody></table>
Tezuka's broader narrative in this manga treats the development of Shogo from sociopath to lover. Much is at work in Tezuka's highly original narrative, the whole stands very interestingly as a reception of Orpheus, with Shogo's love and loss of Hiromi never further than arm's reach from the plight of Eurydice and Orpheus. Yet, it is never closer than arm's reach, either. Tezuka's work is hardly a pastiche of the Eurydice narrative, nor is it a mindless pastiche of any classical myth. The overt acknowledgements of the roles of Athena and Apollo secure Tezuka's manga as a worthwhile narrative for exploring adaptation of classical mythology. The most fruitful analysis will approach the reason why Tezuka names the narrative framed by rumination on "the endless drama" of human procreation "Apollo's Song".<br />
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Osamu Tezuka, story of Daphne and Apollo told within <em>Apollo's Song</em>, manga, graphic novel 1970 and 2007 — originally serialized in Japanese as <em>Aporo No Uta</em> in <em>Shukan Shonen Kingu</em>, Shonen Gahosha, and translated by Camillia Nieh — New York, Vertical. </div>
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Hiromi is advised by the Doctor on 2.199 that the only way to avoid Shogo's infatuation with her — "Then become a laurel tree.... Do[n't] you know the Greek myth about the girl Daphne?" The narrative then unfolds along the lines of Ovid's telling, but with subtle divergences worth exploring. </div>
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Tezuka's greater narrative in this manga treats the development of Shogo from sociopath to lover. The whole stands very interestingly as an adaptation or reception of the myth of Orpheus, with Shogo's love and loss of Hiromi never further than arm's reach from the plight of Eurydice and Orpheus. Yet, Tezuka's work is hardly a pastiche of the Eurydice narrative. </div>
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#ogcma.byu.edu Athena Apollo Orpheus Eurydice<br />
<a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Daphne2.0003_Tezuka.htm">http://ogcma.byu.edu/Daphne2.0003_Tezuka.htm</a><br />
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macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-63998717940635496732018-11-28T21:15:00.000-07:002018-11-30T07:32:41.152-07:00Haskell Coffin's Nike<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PSKmj-p6kng/W_9j5fLQKqI/AAAAAAAAAfE/jrZewYMG5aQhDmk6wW0F2W3XFSEiwPwswCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/NikeCoffin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PSKmj-p6kng/W_9j5fLQKqI/AAAAAAAAAfE/jrZewYMG5aQhDmk6wW0F2W3XFSEiwPwswCK4BGAYYCw/s320/NikeCoffin.jpg" width="212" /></a>W. Haskell Coffin idealized the appearance of victory as America entered the Great War, as he had done in a wide range of illustrations published in and on American magazines over the first quarter of the 20th Century. He applied his idealized American woman in an image of Nike for a campaign to support the sale of war bonds. A pair of important posters by Coffin helped boost national response to America's entry into the Great War. His "Joan of Arc Saved France," included recently in an exhibition at the BYU Museum of Art ("For Home and Country: Posters and Propaganda from the Great War," curated by K. Hartvigsen) may be better known than Coffin's winged Nike in "Share in the Victory". Coffin's Nike is remarkable for his artistic application.<br />
Iconographically, Coffin's Nike is clearly derived from classical models. The winged figure is draped in a flowing chiton held over her left shoulder leaving her right should bare, precisely as the Winged Nike of Samothrace (Louvre). <br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GOSzDGf9Ums/W_9k9odkFbI/AAAAAAAAAfM/D0rqvG0zvosTGSat-QoxER9R4DEmPRL-ACLcBGAs/s1600/1024px-Victoire_de_Samothrace_-_vue_de_trois-quart_gauche%252C_gros_plan_de_la_statue_%25282%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1365" data-original-width="1024" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GOSzDGf9Ums/W_9k9odkFbI/AAAAAAAAAfM/D0rqvG0zvosTGSat-QoxER9R4DEmPRL-ACLcBGAs/s320/1024px-Victoire_de_Samothrace_-_vue_de_trois-quart_gauche%252C_gros_plan_de_la_statue_%25282%2529.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
The Louvre Nike's drapery is carved to suggest much finer weight fabric, as it blows back so blithely as to show the navel and other anatomical features of the form beneath the carved cloth. Coffin's Nike has a full, if not voluptuous, figure beneath her clothing, even if the overall impression is rather modest. Likewise, the drapery coming forward in three pleats over the left hip on Coffin's Nike is contrived precisely the same as her Samothracian forebear. Both Nikai stride forward with their right foot, unlike another similar Nike at Olympia. Coffin's model for the poster is certainly the sculpture in the Louvre.<br />
The attributes held by Coffin's Nike, a palm frond and a longsword, are an interesting invention. Of course the Nike of Samothrace lacks head and both arms; aside from the wings growing naturally from her shoulders, whatever attributes she held in her hands are missing. She might have held something aloft in one or both of her hands. Since the Louvre Nike's arms are completely missing, it is hard to determine their disposition. The Winged Nike from Olympia, holds her left arm high and her right arm low, as does Coffin's. Her hands missing also, it is unknown whether the Olympia Nike held anything; but her gesture may suggest her pointing, like a herald, to the heavens and to the earth asa messenger might. Classical Nikai often extend laurel wreaths over the head of conquering heroes; thus, for Coffin's Nike to be wearing one herself diverges somewhat from classical iconography. The palm frond extended in her left hand recalls Thomas Brock's Victoria Monument (1901) opposite Buckingham Palace which extends a palm frond in one hand (left) and a wreath in the other.<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QPswz834lNw/W_9na93JWoI/AAAAAAAAAfk/FwvcxBXaiJg2fMgzFHa3wAAp3NHhvsofwCK4BGAYYCw/s1600/8c240c79-21c1-4348-b4fd-2ae4b117fee2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QPswz834lNw/W_9na93JWoI/AAAAAAAAAfk/FwvcxBXaiJg2fMgzFHa3wAAp3NHhvsofwCK4BGAYYCw/s320/8c240c79-21c1-4348-b4fd-2ae4b117fee2.jpeg" width="212" /></a><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1KSJvc17yys/W_9lnmDc2gI/AAAAAAAAAfU/I_71b-5RtOgA08f4aQqdC18oI6YckJhtQCLcBGAs/s1600/ElisCoin_Zeus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="500" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1KSJvc17yys/W_9lnmDc2gI/AAAAAAAAAfU/I_71b-5RtOgA08f4aQqdC18oI6YckJhtQCLcBGAs/s200/ElisCoin_Zeus.jpg" width="200" /></a> Secondary depictions of Phidias' great sculptures indicate that Nikai playing minor roles were preparing to crown victors. A coin stamped at Ellis shows the colossal Zeus sculpture at Olympia extended in his right hand a Nike who held out a laurel wreath. Similarly, the Varvakeion replica of the Phidias' Athena Parthenos likewise held emblems to crown victorious Athens. This Athena is emerging from the battle, not heading toward it. Coffin's decision for his Nike to offer the extended sword seems unprecedented in depictions of Nikai. She enters the fray. Whereas Nike typically comes after the battle has been waged and won, Coffin's new conception offers simultaneously both clean-clad (i.e. easy?) victory and the emblem of peace.<br />
Coffin's conception of Nike is a youthful American beauty. The blue eyes and rosy cheeks feature regularly in the artist's other portrayals of young women on magazine covers such as <i>Redbook</i>, <i>Metropolitan Magazine</i>,<i> </i>and <i>The Saturday Evening Post</i>. His Nike's short bobbed hair further diverges strongly from classical iconography, a feature tending the image more toward strong young women of contemporary US culture than toward a divinity from Ancient Greece. Portraying a strong, lovely girl who might live next door Coffins aims his message at men and women alike. Both women and men can contribute equally to the cause this Nike represents.<br />
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— <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Nike2.0010_Coffin.htm">OGCMA.BYU.edu/Nike2.0010_Coffin.htm</a>macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-48312306506832369522016-12-27T07:19:00.003-07:002016-12-27T07:19:52.087-07:00Authority for citing mythological source material<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Even Ovid is suspect. </span><style><!--
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">“The
popularity of mythology means that it is treated by innumerable websites;
precisely this popularity means that many of these websites are created and maintained
by people whose knowledge of the classics, and indeed of mythology, is far from
perfect.” <br /> ——David M. Schaps, <i>Handbook for Classical Research, </i>327 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Schaps' statement above will strike some as being awfully pedantic and classicizingly stuffy. It may not be comforting to this blog's reader(s) to learn that I endorse Schaps' view. With all due respect to the people who work hard at compiling those innumerable websites he mentions, I concur that it is important to keep one's eye on the classical texts from which classical mythology derives. And some knowledge of the classics is important for this. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">In my opinion, any discussion of the reception of a classical myth should take into account the classical source(s) from which the myth is derived. Then, analysis should note the points of divergence from the classical source-myth and the modern reception of it. Where the versions differ, opportunities for analysis occur. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> For studying the Reception of Classical Mythology, these resources are <s>useful</s>
essential. Reception papers in the ClCv241 should rest upon these sources for authoritative statements of the source myths treated. </b></span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Reid, Jane
Davidson. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Oxford Guide to Classical
Mythology in the Arts, 1300-1990s</i>. 2 vols. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>— Great for reception;
starts with authority; cites both classical sources and jumping-off points for
scholarly research.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Moog-Grünewald,
Maria, ed. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reception of Myth and
Mythology</i>. Brill’s New Pauly, Supplements, 4. Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2010. — Even stronger for reception, but more densely packed that OGCMA; next
stop for researching reception of a myth, after Reid.</span></div>
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</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Simpson,
Michael, trans. and comm. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gods and Heroes
of the Greeks: the </i>Library<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> of
Apollodorus</i>. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976. —
Apollodorus is critically important, but always worth second-guessing;
Simpson’s notes help with that, and they often include very useful observations on intriguing receptions of classical myths.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Grimal, Pierre.
Ed. and trans. by S. Kershaw and A.R. Maxwell-Hyslop. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Penguin Dictionary of Classical Mythology</i>. Harmondsworth and
New York: Penguin, 1990. — A quick guide worth sticking in your pocket anytime
you go to a museum; I carry it on my iPad.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Graves, Robert.
Introduction by R. Riordan. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Greek
Myths</i>. Harmondsworth and New York: Penguin, 2012. — Quirky, over-the-top
erudite, infected by Cambridge ritualism, not nearly as sexy as the Penguin
cover (or Riordan’s endorsement!) would have you believe. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae</i>.
8 vols. in 16 + index & supplements. Zürich: Artemis, c. 1981 -2009. — For
reception <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">per se</i> perhaps less
valuable; but for teaching that reception will ever be with us, this is da
bomb. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in; text-indent: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-69858219618944338112016-11-25T15:18:00.000-07:002019-01-03T10:00:27.804-07:00S1mOne: Andrew Niccol and Linda Hutcheon<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><i>Simone</i> (technically: <i>S1mOne</i>, 2002) offers a usage of the Pygmalion myth that surprises with an overt endorsement of Linda Hutcheon's adaptation theory. Not an especially sophisticated narrative, the technologically fantastic film directed and written by Andrew Niccol has a defining moment that could qualify it as one of the most interesting of all Pygmalion films. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The reader(s) of this blog may not agree with my hang-up on the presence of an overt, smoking-gun allusion to the classical myth being used in a given narrative adaptation; but I hope my insistence on finding the overt allusion to the source-myth in an a adapted texts is clear. I want to know that the creator of a classical mythological usage is aware of the source myth and not merely creating an archetypal cognate. (I.e. not every son with problematic father relationships is a big-O Oedipus, although such sons may manifest oedipal tendencies.) That awareness of conscious development of a myth Hutcheon calls "acknowledgement".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">31 minutes into <i>Simone</i>, the prodigious cinemaste Victor Taransky (Al Pacino) is enjoying a domestic moment in a sunny kitchen with his precocious teenage daughter Laynie (Evan Rachel Wood). She is working on her laptop at the counter. Her activity on the laptop <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x_vEIGoU3aM/WDixIqv0rxI/AAAAAAAAAdo/7OuGPLA8KPsCCFuEsiRz3HSjCjQM7PeYgCLcB/s1600/IMG_1444.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x_vEIGoU3aM/WDixIqv0rxI/AAAAAAAAAdo/7OuGPLA8KPsCCFuEsiRz3HSjCjQM7PeYgCLcB/s320/IMG_1444.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A screen shot of <i>S1mOne</i>, 31:34, showing monitor<br />
of Laynie's laptop Gérôme's Study for <i>Pygmalion and<br />his Statue</i> and text from theoi.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">manifests her knack for computer technology which she shares with her father and which will resolve the film's final crisis, albeit implausibly. Laynie's skill gets foregrounded by Dad in the moment. He notes that she works on her computer too much. What he can not notice in this apparently meaningless moment is that Laynie is writing something about Pygmalion on her computer. In a fleeting shot past Laynie's left shoulder, a POV 180 degree opposite to Victor's (whose hands are in a sudsy sink of dishes anyway), for less than one second of screen time, the viewer sees a fleet image of Jean-Léone Gérôme's "</span><a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/Pygmalion1.0157b_Gerome.htm" style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;" target="_blank">Study for Pygmalion and his Statue</a><span style="font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">". The image is cropped somewhat from the original; but the figure of Pygmalion embracing his marble sculpture in the moment of her erotic vivification is readily recognizable. Because Laynie's fingers are tapping at her laptop's keyboard we assume that she is writing something. To the right of the cropped image, a text is momentarily visible: <span style="background-color: white;">"</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: georgia, "times new roman", serif;">Pygmalion saw these women waste their lives in wretched shame..." Laynie seems to have written a couple of paragraphs on this topic. In point of fact, the text that appears on Laynie's screen is the text describing Ovid's Pygmalion narrative at <i>Metamorphoses </i>10 on the <a href="http://www.theoi.com/Text/OvidMetamorphoses10.html">website theoi.com</a>. Although Pygmalion thus enters our awareness, Laynie and her father do not discuss the myth. No oral reference to Pygmalion occurs, neither at this moment in the film nor elsewhere in the film. By entering the film this way, the narrative is rendered into an acknowledged usage of the Pgymalion myth.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">We might have seen the Pygmalion myth coming. Taransky has reached a professional precipice with the shenanigans of Hollywood's <i>prime donne</i> (exemplified in the character of Winona Ryder as director Andrew Niccols' antithetical Niccola Anders). Rather than jump of the ledge, Taransky throughout the film makes use of a mysterious computer code proffered by a probable lunatic who pioneered a simulation so realistic that the fabricated actress would dupe all viewers into believing her to be a real actress on screen. Simone is a name shortened from Simulation One. In the hands of the consummate director, which Taransky must certainly be, this encoded actress comes from out of nowhere to win two Oscars for Best Actress in one year. Plausible? No. Pygmalion? Yes. That moment in the kitchen reads the Pygmalion myth formally and securely into the record. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sfV6OnIT_cI/WDixIvGwkyI/AAAAAAAAAds/9HCUx3TyLdMndGayuAwoTZ3J16O1ehY0wCLcB/s1600/S1mOneNiccols.tif" imageanchor="1" style="background-color: white; clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sfV6OnIT_cI/WDixIvGwkyI/AAAAAAAAAds/9HCUx3TyLdMndGayuAwoTZ3J16O1ehY0wCLcB/s320/S1mOneNiccols.tif" width="217" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;">Promo poster for <i>S1mOne</i> (2002)</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333;">The film, by the way, bears a PG-13 rating. Nicolls' screenplay largely steers clear of suggesting that disturbing eroticized relationship Pygmalions often have with their Galateas in the Rezeptionsgeschichte. Moralizers in late antiquity and early Christianity castigated Pygmalion over their discomfort with his creation of what they took to be a marble doll crafted for playing out lurid perversions sordidly realized by Venus' animation of the girl made flesh. Ovid, introducing the myth for the first time into established Western literature, </span></span><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">had done nothing </span><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">to allay such judgmental readings of Pygmalion's motives. Ovid's sculptor has a physical relationship with his statue. That's sure. Pygmalions of our age seem always destined for the sack with their lovely creation. (E.g. Zoe Kazan's remarkable, but in this regard, utterly predictable <i>Ruby Sparks</i>.) Nicoll's digitized fantasy is mostly a pretty face. Taransky creates her as a facial amalgam of Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, Winona Ryder, and other gorgeous starletts. When he creates her voice, he throws in highlights of Bacall. Fawning entertainment reporters in the film observe that Simone bears resemblance to Sophia Loren; but the actress who plays Simone (Rachel Roberts) is statuesque more in the mode of early millennial Sports Illustrated models than from the Hollywood age of Loren. </span><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Taransky leads everybody in the film on to believe that he and Simone are romantically involved. </span><span style="background-color: #fefaf1; color: #333333; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When Taransky does interact with Simone below her neckline, he is mostly interested in clothing her with the right outfit for the moment. Not in disrobing her. Indeed, Taransky's involvement with Simone is asexual. Platonic. For he is creating the form of a woman. If anything, his actual love life improves as women — including his ex-wife — seem more turned on by his association with his famous, fictional fabrication. Niccol's Pygmalion is a creator who goes against today's grain, and not just because this is a family show.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Hutcheon's <i>Theory of Adaptation</i> (Routledge, 2006) defines an adaptation as an intertextual narrative that engages three principal matters: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Therefore, an adaption is a derivation that is not derivative
— a work that is second without being secondary. It is its own palimpsestic
thing." (Hutcheon, 8-9)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Nobody who knows the Pygmalion myth will get very far into <i>Simone</i> without seeing the narrative as a Pygmalion adaptation. The elements of the zero-grade Pygmalion myth are all present and clearly developed: The artist despises the women in his society, so he creates an idealized woman as substitute for them; only superhuman intervention can personalize the creation and render it a reality. This is all true of Taransky, his spite for starletts, his fetishization of a bygone age, and his creation of a new girl endowed with perfect artistry. Yet, until the moment with Laynie and her laptop in the kitchen, when Gérôme's Pygmalion flashes on the screen (minute 31), the myth does not overtly achieve <i>acknowledgement </i>within the narrative. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">Niccol's screenplay takes a somewhat too clumsily orchestrated moment to read the Pygmalion myth purposefully into the narrative. It defines Hutcheon's element of <i>acknowledgement</i>. Once Pygmalion is recognizable by the creator's admission in the body of the narrative, the viewer is free to enjoy the creative and interpretive act of appropriation that takes place across the film. In other words, once we know that screenplay intends to adapt the Pygmalion myth, per se, the myriad choices the director makes in the film have particular bearing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">So, is <i>Simone</i> a clever film? I tend to agree with the film's low scores on Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB. The film is not especially clever in many of its choices. A 2002 filmmaker's assessment of tricky relationships between coddled actors and the studios makes for a worthwhile tale, a satire on the remnants of the studio system. As a manifestation of Adaptation, it is textbook. For manifesting the adaptor's penchant for acknowledging the mythological usage it follows, Niccol steps right into line.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: small;">#ogcma.byu.edu Pygmalion Ovid Andrew Niccol S1mOne http://ogcma.byu.edu/Pygmalion2.0037_Niccol.htm</span></div>
macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-43464686900023025002016-05-25T11:14:00.004-06:002016-05-25T11:19:18.725-06:00Two courses on the reception of classical mythology in Fall 2016<br />
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Dear
Mythographers and other Friends,</div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might like to
know about my F2016 courses:<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">“Reception
of Classical Myth in the Arts in the Modern Era”</span> Clscs 490R/Clscs 690R.</b><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span>MW 1:00 – 2:15 p.m. and "Studies in Themes and Types: The Eurydice Theme" CmpSt 640R M 8:00 — 10:45.</b><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The courses are intended to explore theoretical and practical issues
pertaining to the reception and adaptation of classical myth in the arts —
literature, cinema, opera, painting, sculpture, landscape,<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
orchestral, graphic
novel, television, video game, whatever. In particular, we will look closely at
reception of two mythological figures especially: Electra and Pygmalion in the one, Eurydice in the other.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ2AYpyhudA/V0XaZDh9ZMI/AAAAAAAAAc4/k_hXDaQ3gl0-LZFMQ2y9a7uJRx1UwwlHQCKgB/s1600/Perth%2BElektra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="274" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zQ2AYpyhudA/V0XaZDh9ZMI/AAAAAAAAAc4/k_hXDaQ3gl0-LZFMQ2y9a7uJRx1UwwlHQCKgB/s320/Perth%2BElektra.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ad for 2012 Perth Opera's <i>Elektra </i>(Strauss) </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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In our exploration, we will deliberate on what constitutes
usage of a classical myth, a sometimes challenging enterprise. </div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We will read classical mythological
treatments, such as are found in Sophocles, Euripides, and Ovid, and then
proceed to standard treatments of Electra and Pygmalion in representations such
as Strauss’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elektra</i>, O’Neill’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mourning Becomes Electra</i>, Bernard Shaw’s
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pygmalion</i>, Lerner & Loewe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Fair Lady</i>, Hitchcock’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vertigo</i>, and so forth. Student
contributions in this seminar will drive collective success; thus, I am loathe
to dictate up front what the<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
parameters of our study will be. Once we establish the
groundrules for the course, the direction will be subject to interesting twists
and turns. Hundreds of usages of these myths are available for consideration. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KDuz_VuA-wA/V0XaZm-dZdI/AAAAAAAAAdM/2rZFQC1hNBMTanlwH00Sq4vZPYew10g2QCKgB/s1600/Pygmalion_Gerome1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KDuz_VuA-wA/V0XaZm-dZdI/AAAAAAAAAdM/2rZFQC1hNBMTanlwH00Sq4vZPYew10g2QCKgB/s320/Pygmalion_Gerome1.jpg" width="248" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean-Leon Gérôme's <i>Pygmalion</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Please contact me with any questions you
might have. </b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="mailto:macfarlane@byu.edu">macfarlane@byu.edu works most directly, but macfarlane241@gmail.com works, too.</a> </div>
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<br /></div>
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Imaged here: Strauss’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elektra</i>, Gerôme’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pygmalion
and Galatea</i>, <br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Miller’s (actually Bendis/Austen's) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elektra: Assassin</i>, Lerner/Loewe’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Fair Lady</i></div>
<br />
<br />
Both these courses will allow me to explore matters pertaining to reception of classical myth with the students. <br />
The CmpSt 640R should have a broader base of theoretical readings, because the course should be pertinent to individuals from every walk of our program’s life. There ought to be more interdisciplinarity in that course. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CqB9PCciOe4/V0XaZXW-_pI/AAAAAAAAAdM/0yo8FBB35YQ5ZjXa_xqXx6mDpU1KVEP9ACKgB/s1600/Elektra_BendisAusten.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CqB9PCciOe4/V0XaZXW-_pI/AAAAAAAAAdM/0yo8FBB35YQ5ZjXa_xqXx6mDpU1KVEP9ACKgB/s200/Elektra_BendisAusten.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Frank Miller developed<br />
Elektra, but others have<br />
adapted the character.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Clscs 690R will have some of that, but perhaps a good deal less than CmpSt 640R ought to have. <br />
Further, Clscs 690R will be taught in a room that is largely populated by undergraduates (I hope!) who are enrolled in the 4xx-level course.<br />
In both I will be expanding my core articles for the eventual OGCMA-online project. The 690R course will involve the creation of two articles, while the CmpSt 640R will be more focused and result in the creation of only one article. See below.<br />
<br />
Differences will be readily apparent in the topics approached. Beyond the theoretical groundwork, the Clscs course will explore the reception of both the Electra myth and the Pygmalion myth, while the CmpSt course will dig as deeply as we can into the Eurydice myth. <br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6174367475329225278" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a> In the Eurydice course (CmpSt 690R) I hope to sideline Orpheus as much as possible and look for interesting psychological developments of Eurydice in myth and the arts. She deserves her own scholarship, and artists have been exploring Eurydice for a long long time. Geoffrey Miles stated (erroneously, I believe) that Edward Dowden’s 1876 “Eurydice” is “perhaps the first serious attempt to give Eurydice a voice and to see the Orpheus-Eurydice relationship from her point of view.” (Miles, 126) Dowden post-dates the Orfeo by Gluck (libretto by Calzabigi, 1762), whose Euridice expresses her plaintive rather pathetically and takes matters into her own hands, by over a century. (Gluck Orfeo premiered 1762.) But Gluck/Calzabigi may not be the first in this regard.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LKUjiFR5jec/V0XaZZmabJI/AAAAAAAAAdM/AgyTSnmz9RM6KSW7gv12u3wF6FGPryFgwCKgB/s1600/Myfairlady.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LKUjiFR5jec/V0XaZZmabJI/AAAAAAAAAdM/AgyTSnmz9RM6KSW7gv12u3wF6FGPryFgwCKgB/s320/Myfairlady.jpg" width="198" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poster for <i>My Fair Lady</i>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the Electra/Pygmalion course, disparate mythological strands will be united by the common fact that OGCMA-print lacks adequate depth. Electra deserves her own article and Pygmalion’s cinematic reception is not even remotely explored by JDReid et co. Pygmalion is one of the trickiest test-cases for my anally myopic theoretical rules on reception, especially because I doubt that most descendants of My Fair Lady know anything about the classical myth that lies before it. You know this about me. As for Electra, some fascinating receptions of Electra come into play cinematically — Il Pistolero dell’Ave Maria, or Electra, My Love, or the Jennifer Garner Elektra —among others. This course, the Clscs 490R/690R ought to find us looking into lots of films. <br />
<br />
Let me know if I can clarify anything. <br />
<br />macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-52020004158127994342016-05-16T15:51:00.001-06:002016-05-23T15:18:28.747-06:00A New and Improved Athena on the Teatro San Carlo ceiling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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OGCMA0249NOTAthena_Cammarano</div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A recent visit to
Naples found me tracking a long-dead painter I never knew, Giuseppe Cammarano (1766-1850).
Though not a great master from our perspective of 150 years, Cammarano was
important during the Bourbon moment and influential as the “principal proponent”
of Neapolitan neoclassicism.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The central frescoed
ceiling of the famous Teatro San Carlo brought Cammarano to my attention. The
huge round canvas hoovers high over the seats where artsy patrons have watched
operas continuously since 1814. On my visits to this opera, I have been tucked
away among the
nose-bleed seats, too close to the ceiling to see it. San Carlo is the
oldest continuously functioning operahouse anywhere, its musical majesty a
critical reminder that Neapolitan culture is like the best stracciatella ricotta,
extraordinary and rich. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bhvPK-Mr2Uk/Vzo7FBY0e1I/AAAAAAAADf4/7FOmdnWKDT4ShwWSsf8CDNydUz1ijdTcgCKgB/s1600/CammaranoNapoliSanCarloCeiling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="454" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-bhvPK-Mr2Uk/Vzo7FBY0e1I/AAAAAAAADf4/7FOmdnWKDT4ShwWSsf8CDNydUz1ijdTcgCKgB/s640/CammaranoNapoliSanCarloCeiling.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G. Cammarano, "Apollo presents the Great Poets from Homer to Alfieri to Minerva", ceiling of<br />
Teatro San Carlo, Naples. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cammarano’s ceiling
at the San Carlo presents a remarkable interpretation of the roles of Minerva
and of Apollo. The artwork <i>Apollo che presenta a Minerva i maggiori poeti,
da Omero ad Alfieri</i> (“Apollo presents to Minerva the greatest poets from
Homer to Alfieri”, 1814) covers a whopping 500 square meters. Cammarano was commissioned
to paint it as part of the restoration of the S.Carlo Theatre following a devastating
fire. The commission was extended by Antonio Niccolini, who conceived the work. [NB: Cammarano's proscenium curtain was lost in an 1844 fire.****]</span></div>
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The
novelty of this remarkable painting attracts your eye to its center then
maintains your interest as you work your way outwards. A brilliant cloudburst
emanates from her head, ruled shafts of light bursting from the divine central
scene. Minerva occupies the middle position, sitting in glory atop the throne of
heaven, presiding over the coronation of poets arriving in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">apotheosis</i>. Nine Muses flank her, six to her left and three to her
right. They clearly serve Minerva here, not Apollo <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">musagetes</i>. He stands apart from Minerva in posture every bit like
the Apollo Belvedere, though he wears a regal robe tossed about his shoulders
and plays a lyre. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The
central elements of this painting constitute a kind of Parnassus scene. Such
scenes are common in neoclassicizing art.* Typically the Muses or their leader
Apollo stands in a lofty place and receives a numerous string of artists who
have achieved immortality. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-09ObK8Uaev0/Vzo_Hrvq3aI/AAAAAAAADgE/G950_YIqrNkF2XEARXr0ejAAYATgeVSigCLcB/s1600/CammaranoNapoliSanCarloCeilingDETAIL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-09ObK8Uaev0/Vzo_Hrvq3aI/AAAAAAAADgE/G950_YIqrNkF2XEARXr0ejAAYATgeVSigCLcB/s320/CammaranoNapoliSanCarloCeilingDETAIL.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Cammarano’s conception of the Parnassus scene works
Athena into an uncustomarily superior role over her half-brother and
subordinates Apollo to a gatekeeping role. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Beyond
Apollo, a gathering of poets awaits admission to the heavenly audience. In
their rear (our far left), Hercules skips merrily with his newlywed bride,
Hebe. Neither has any sense of urgency about getting to the painting’s center. A
handful of robed men are ready to step upward toward the scene. Four particular
artists attend the scene, identifiable as Homer, Vergil and Dante, (and is that
Petrarch behind them all?). One surges forward, his time come, toward the accepting
gesture of Apollo. It’s this poet’s coronation we are witnessing. He steps
ahead of the all-time greatest to claim his prize over the heads of generations
of <span id="goog_1240684959"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/">opera-goers in the San Carlo<span id="goog_1240684960"></span></a>.</div>
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The poet chosen for the
immortalizing moment is Vittorio Alfieri. The Italian Romantic movement would
have amounted to little, except for the contributions of Alfieri’s pen. Though
Alfieri died at the fairly young age (1749 – 1803), his spirit captivated the
hearts of Italians. His tragedies drew deeply from classical sources and played
the central theme of liberty, the valorization of an individual transcending
tyranny. Mdme Stendahl recorded in her journal a night in Napoli’s Teatro Nuovo
when she emerged from a performance of Alfieri’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saul</i> thinking “that this tragedy touches the secret heartstrings of
the Italian national spirit.”*** <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
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<br />
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>As Alfieri enters immortality,
other figures on the massive canvas surge upward toward a heavenly reward. Is
it Orpheus lower center who looks up at the woman who is being ushered away
from him? He holds a lyre and the act of separation is distinctly portrayed. The
throng of ghostly individuals is being led by a scythe-bearing Grim Reaper. Throughout
the canvas, Cammarano has subtly adjusted the teleology from a classical
setting to a heavenly scene in which a not a Judeo-Christian divinity presides
but a classical goddess. The fitting ending for Alfieri in his quest for
immortality.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1krUZFzGZZk/Vzo7FttH9bI/AAAAAAAADf0/thbF_ad_Cuo1VRgRUBVb0eYn_zLUMwCZACLcB/s1600/Cammarano_CasertaConsiglioMinervaRewardingArts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1krUZFzGZZk/Vzo7FttH9bI/AAAAAAAADf0/thbF_ad_Cuo1VRgRUBVb0eYn_zLUMwCZACLcB/s200/Cammarano_CasertaConsiglioMinervaRewardingArts.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G. Cammarano, Sala<br />
del Consiglio, Caserta Reggia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cammarano received
the San Carlo commission two years after his first big Bourbon gig, when in 1814 he had collaborated
with his brother, Antonio, to paint the Council Chamber of the Reggia at
Caserta, depicting there “Minerva Crowning the Arts and Sciences” and,
elsewhere in the same building the ceilings of the King’s bedroom with “Theseus
Killing the Minotaur” and of the salon with “Hector Reprimanding Paris”. The
Bourbon king Ferdinando IV had sent Cammarano to learn painting in Rome before
any of the work at Caserta was undertaken. After San Carlo he would in
service with Ferdinand as court decorator painting in the Palazzo Reale in Naples. His "Apollo with Muses" still adorns the ceiling of a reading room at the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. (Cioffi, p. 286 does not identify the room.)</span></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w1yVW88WXn0/Vzo7FM3kEWI/AAAAAAAADfs/tlEYVMMvdowTJpIBMMhlUoRLKZyP33jZgCLcB/s1600/CammaranoCasertaHectorParis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w1yVW88WXn0/Vzo7FM3kEWI/AAAAAAAADfs/tlEYVMMvdowTJpIBMMhlUoRLKZyP33jZgCLcB/s200/CammaranoCasertaHectorParis.jpg" width="196" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G. Cammarano, "Hector Reprimanding<br />
Paris", Caserta Reggia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nvKG0jAdgw0/Vzo7FNOx67I/AAAAAAAADfw/CahQg8QX0RQ4pCrJUQ7ejDlDgxsGNY9bwCLcB/s1600/CammaranoCasertaTheseusMinotaur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nvKG0jAdgw0/Vzo7FNOx67I/AAAAAAAADfw/CahQg8QX0RQ4pCrJUQ7ejDlDgxsGNY9bwCLcB/s320/CammaranoCasertaTheseusMinotaur.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G. Cammarano, "Theseus and the Minotaur", Caserta<br />
Reggia, Getty Images</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">His latest work was
the Last Supper in the apse at the cathedral in Caserta. In all these paintings
Cammarano develops his own stylistic program of fundamentally overt neoclassical
that is also aware of color-modes of late 18<sup>th</sup>-century painting. The
result of this is a distinct eclectic that comes also from peaceful
refinement.” (Treccani; trans RTM) Cammarano's "<a href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Cammarano#/media/File:Famiglia_di_Francesco_I.jpg">Family Portrait of Francesco I King of the Two Sicilies</a>" (1820, at Capodimonte), strikes me as extraordinarily ho-hum.</span></span><br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Better is Giuseppe
Cammarano’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Apotheosis of Sappho</i>
(1831) on the ceiling of the monumental west staircase of Palazzo Zevallos
Stigliano in the Via Toledo. <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wKER0FbTtaE/VyJDilBNdFI/AAAAAAAADe0/vvSDG42vkxY6P8b7N8B9u7AYU5eAUlIiACLcB/s1600/Sappho_ZevallosNapoliCropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wKER0FbTtaE/VyJDilBNdFI/AAAAAAAADe0/vvSDG42vkxY6P8b7N8B9u7AYU5eAUlIiACLcB/s320/Sappho_ZevallosNapoliCropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apollo receives Sappho in apotheosis, G. Cammarano<br />
Palazzo Zevallos Stigliano, Naples <i>in situ</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The apotheosis presents the same basic central
scene as the San Carlo parnassus scene, but in a smaller format and as a fresco.
A poetess holds her lyre and strives upward from left to center where Apollo receives
her arrival at his cloud-strewn throne. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Palazzo Zevallos
Stigliano is <a href="http://www.gallerieditalia.com/it/palazzi/palazzo-zevallos-stigliano">primarily an art gallery now</a>, with a few spectacular pieces of
painted and sculpted art from all periods. The key holding is Caravaggio’s last
canvas, “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martyrdom_of_Saint_Ursula_%28Caravaggio%29#/media/File:CaravaggioUrsula.jpg">The Martyrdom of S.a Orsola</a>.” It’s a painting with a history but
catches your eye especially when you know that it contains the painter’s own
self-portrait. </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Zevallos
Caravaggio is safely tucked into its own room, which is a gem in its own right.
The Wedgewood blue walls and ceiling of the room are decorated with white
intaglios of erotic (though not overtly too naughty) scenes from classical
mythology. I never stood inside a Wedgewood pyxis, until I entered this room. You
should try it sometime. The wall opposite the painting has Mars and Venus
ascending in a divine caress; the left wall shows Cupid and Psyche doing the
same but with less petting; the right wall has Leda holding a very tame swan;
but when I went to look behind the Caravaggio at the intaglio on the fourth
wall, I triggered the alarm and left the room blushing, not from the
naughtiness. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">————— RTM</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Not in OGCMA, neither s.v. "Athena," s.v. "Apollo," nor s.v. "Parnassus".</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">* For Parnassus in literature: </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Classical sources: Ov. Met. 1.317,
2.221, 4.643, 5.278, 11.165, 11.330; Pausanias 10.6.1 </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">** Treccani<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani</i>
vol. 17 (1974), s.v. “Cammarano, Giuseppe”: </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: MingLiU; mso-fareast-font-family: MingLiU;"></span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
“Nel frattempo aveva svolto un'intensa attività di decoratore per i Borbone:
nel 1814, con la collaborazione del fratello Antonio, affrescò la volta della
sala del Consiglio della reggia, di Caserta, raffigurandovi <i>Minerva che
premia le arti e le scienze </i>e, nella stessa reggia, affrescò poi le volte
della camera da letto del re (<i>Teseo che uccide il Minotauro</i>) e di un
salotto (<i>Ettore che rimprovera Paride, </i>con data 1818). Nel 1816 intanto
era stato chiamato dal Nicolini a decorare la volta del rinnovato teatro S.
Carlo, con una vasta composizione su tela, ideata dallo stesso architetto e in
cui figura <i>Apollo che presenta a Minerva i maggiori poeti, da Omero ad
Alfieri. </i>Il C. lavorò quindi nel palazzo reale di Napoli e nel 1819 ne ornò
un salone con un affresco raffigurante <i>Minerva che premia le Virtù. </i>In
tutte queste decorazioni il C. sviluppa una sua formula stilistica di impronta
fondamentalmente neoclassica e però sempre memore dei moduli coloristici
tardosettecenteschi: risultandone così un certo eclettismo, comunque di
piacevole raffinatezza.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">For more on Cammarano, see Greco, F.C. and R. Di
Benedetto, edd. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Donizetti, Napoli,
l’Europa: Atti del Convegno (Napoli 11-13 dicembre 1997)</i>. Scientifiche
Italiane, 2000. P. 282-83.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*** </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Diaries of Mdme Stendahl: <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">27
febbraio 1817. “Si direbbe che questa tragedia tocchi le corde segrete del <i><a href="https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriottismo" title="Patriottismo">sentimento
nazionale</a></i> italiano.]</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">**** Translation of a description of Cammarano's proscenium curtain, "il sipario": "...destroyed by a fire in 1844,... its attention to a theme represented and strongly promoted by the Bourbon agenda. A chronicler of the time, described its iconography precisely — You could see on the curtain Jupiter upon the height of Mt Olympus, whence came a ray of sunlight that fell upon the Genius of the Reign illuminating it. Upon this Genius was affixed the facial likeness of Ferdinando. Minerva guides to his proximity the various provinces of the realm personified and happy as they come together to pay tributary homage to the magnanimous Princeps through whom their inhabitants are just, humane, blessed, harmonious, agreeable, moderate, active, lovers of the public weal and they obtain today the affection, the esteem, and the admiration of all Europe and enjoy not disturbed internal peace because they are founded upon the true and lasting happiness of nations. ... Justice and Peace seem at the top to come forward to crown the August monarch whom they have recalled to this blessed land." Emanuele Taddei, <i>Descrizione istorica dello incendio e del restauramento del Real Teatro di San Carlo </i>(Napoli, 1817), 26 - 27 cited in R. Cioffi, "La Pittura di 'storia' a Napoli, all'epoca di Donizetti: persistenze neoclassiche a barlumi romantici," in R.C. Greco e R. Di Benedetto, edd., <i>Donizetti Napoli l'Europa </i>(Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 2000), 283-85. </span> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 115%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
</div>
Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-6228517784839730412016-01-19T15:47:00.001-07:002016-01-19T15:47:40.982-07:00Reuben Nakian's Juno, Part IIOn the day I encountered the Juno by Reuben Nakian at my campus art museum, I wrote to the Nakian Atelier seeking further information that might help me understand the sculpture and its history.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dLwlUf6KbwI/Vp68qsiCAZI/AAAAAAAAAcY/uxMRkt2pXVg/s1600/NakianJuno.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="259" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dLwlUf6KbwI/Vp68qsiCAZI/AAAAAAAAAcY/uxMRkt2pXVg/s320/NakianJuno.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reuben Nakian, "Juno", outside the BYU Museum of Art;<br />photograph courtesy of Museum Director, Mark Magleby.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I received some days later an email from the artist's son, Paul S. Nakian, an attorney in Connecticut. The letter informs that Dr. Robert Metzger wrote the text of a catalogue of Reuben Nakian's works and that, even if the Juno is not easily explicated, it is known. According to Metzger and P. Nakian, who reports the scholar's ideas, "Juno" was dedicated first at Norwalk, CT in the early 1980's and belongs to the artist's "Stonehenge Period".<br />
<br />
I will have to dig into Metzger's book, which I now have ordered via Interlibrary Loan.<br />
Corcoran Gallery of Art and Reading Public Museum and Art Gallery, <i>Reuben Nakian: a centennial retrospective, 1897 - 1986 (Feb. 6 - April 4, 1999) </i>(Reading, PA, 1998).<br />
<br />
I will prefer looking at this book before I phone Robert Metzger, whose number was provided for me.<br />
<br />
Surely there is some scholarly writing on the sculpture. But I haven't found it yet.<br />
<br />
——— RTM<br />
<br />
<br />
<i> </i> macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-10266645530567268242016-01-18T17:52:00.001-07:002016-01-18T20:06:14.177-07:00Abduction of Oreithyia by Boreas in Hitchcock's Vertigo<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
A large tapestry with a classical mythological theme plays an incidental role in Hitchcock's <i>Vertigo</i> (1958). There seems to me no likely interpretive connection between the film's Orphic theme and the tapestry's narrative. The tapestry depicts the abduction of Oreithyia by Boreas (<a href="http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0028%3Abook%3D6%3Acard%3D675">Ov. <i>Met. </i>6.683ff.</a>) Just in case the allusion becomes apparently purposeful, I jot this quick note.<br />
<br />
The setting is San Francisco's Palace of the Legion Honor, where Madeline Elster frequents the "Portrait of Carlotta Valdes". Directly opposite the Carlotta portrait the large colorful tapestry fills the wall. Scottie Ferguson lurks in the gallery tracking Madeline on his first day. Having ascertained that Madeline is mirroring Carlotta in posture and dress (minute 27), Scottie exits the gallery in search of a docent who can identify the portrait's subject. Hitchcock's visual shot has Scottie walk across the tapestry toward the camera. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hYNphBWCBOw/Vp2FX-XDRJI/AAAAAAAADVY/4DLaI4bBAg4/s1600/8529319101880025.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="236" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hYNphBWCBOw/Vp2FX-XDRJI/AAAAAAAADVY/4DLaI4bBAg4/s400/8529319101880025.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">R-A Houasse (tapestry by P. Behagle Atelier; 1720) "Abduction of<br />
Oriethyia by Boreas", Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Rene-Antoine Houasse designed the silk and wool tapestry for execution in the French workshop of Phillipe Behagle ca. 1720. Designed as part of a series of tapestries with scenes from Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>, the piece represents conventional techniques and stylistic trends of early 18th Century neoclassicism. About 10 years before Hitchcock's film, the Legion of Honor (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco) acquired the tapesty as a gift of Mrs. Bruce Kelham and Mrs. Peter Lewis. (<a href="https://art.famsf.org/rene-antoine-houasse/abduction-orithyia-boreas-metamorphoses-ovid-series-19484">art.famsf.org</a>)<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7ajbKgv4Ejc/Vp2IA0FiYjI/AAAAAAAADVk/cdk7GnyRaD4/s1600/0249.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7ajbKgv4Ejc/Vp2IA0FiYjI/AAAAAAAADVk/cdk7GnyRaD4/s400/0249.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Vertigo</i>(dir. A. Hitchcock, 1958); Scottie Ferguson exits the gallery in<br />
the Palace of the Legion of Honor in front of the Houasse tapestry.<br />
credit: 1000 Frames of Vertigo — frame 249 (<a href="http://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/1000_Frames_of_Vertigo_%281958%29_-_frame_249">click</a>)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In the center of the tapestry (122 x 208 inches, overall) the winged Boreas, divinity of the North Wind, abducts the girl Oreithyia while the remaining seven earthbound daughters of the Athenian founding king Erechtheus, her sisters, manifest various expressions of distress. The story as told in <i>Metamorphoses</i>, an abduction that leads to the begetting of the Argonauts Zetes and Calais, can hardly now be counted among the most familiar of the narratives within that poem. It is slipped into the sequence of Athenian monarchy, right after the horrors of Procne and Philomela and right before Jason and Medea. Yet it contains many themes recurrent throughout the poem — abduction, divine coupling to produce prodigious offspring, and male imposition of power upon hapless girls.<br />
<br />
Madeline's problematic identity notwithstanding, the mythological reference seems coincidental. Gavin Elster has hatched a plot together with a young woman whose name ultimately <i>seems</i> to be Judy Barton, "just a girl from Salina, Kansas" (1:35). The circumstances of Gavin's association with Judy/Madeline might be reflected in Boreas' abduction of Oreithyia. But the narrative never provides such information.<br />
<br />
It would seem more logical to conclude that the tapestry is coincidentally hanging in the gallery where Hitchcock arranged for the Portait of Carlotta to be shown. That painting was commissioned and painted by John Ferren specially for the film. But the tapestry was displayed for several years as an actual part of the permanent collection. (It is no longer on display in January 2016.)<br />
<br />
— RTM<br />
OGCMA0277NOTBoreas_Houasse<br />
______________<br />
For the Metropolitan Museum of Art's related holding, see <i>Tapestry in the Baroque: threads of splendor</i> (fig. 189, p. 415).<br />
Most information pertaining to this tapestry is taken from the FAMSF's website (consulted 18 Jan 2016): <a href="https://art.famsf.org/rene-antoine-houasse/abduction-orithyia-boreas-metamorphoses-ovid-series-19484">https://art.famsf.org/rene-antoine-houasse/abduction-orithyia-boreas-metamorphoses-ovid-series-19484</a><br />
<br /></div>
Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-49753727987320964212016-01-05T13:38:00.001-07:002016-01-05T14:44:21.869-07:00Reuben Nakian's Juno ... OGCMA0515NOTHera_Nakian<style>
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Modern usages of classical mythology really interest me.
Artists express various ideas by way of classical mythological allusions all
the time. But, frankly, living in the western United States, I tend to bump
into classical mythological usages a little less often than I do when I go visiting elsewhere. Still, sometimes, they're right under my nose! </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the north side of BYU’s Museum of Art a big abstract
sculpture confronts nearly every visitor. Since I enter on the south side
normally — coming from campus rather than from the parking lot — I experience
that confrontation less often. Last week’s entrance changed that. Visiting the
Norman Rockwell exhibition with my mother and her friend, I was asked “What is
that sculpture?” I didn’t know. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A large abstract bronze sits atop a rectangular pedestal bloc.
It abstraction — if I ever took time in the past to think about the sculpture — had
made me liken the sculpture’s profile to the ridgeline of nearby Provo Peak and
Cascade Mountain, and not so much to the outline of Mt. Timpanogos.
Fortunately, in that moment of maternal interrogation I avoided professorial
guff. I didn’t pretend to know what the sculpture was “doing”. It turns out, it
has nothing to do with the mountain backdrop. The facts are on the bloc’s east
face: “Reuben Nakian, American 1897 – 1986, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Juno</i>,
bronze”. </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-edxjVjJVK-Y/VowoqWwrISI/AAAAAAAAAbw/V7GBkp0gKjY/s1600/Nakian_JunoReduced.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-edxjVjJVK-Y/VowoqWwrISI/AAAAAAAAAbw/V7GBkp0gKjY/s400/Nakian_JunoReduced.jpg" width="310" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
So. Um. It turns out the only thing I actually had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">right</i> about the sculpture was its
material — bronze. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Its creator is an American… I would have guessed European; maybe
Scandinavian. Wrong. I’d never heard of Reuben Nakian. But the biggest baffler
to me is that, even though I have professed to be interested in classical
mythological usages, this looming bronze has been sitting in front of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my </i>museum of art for over 20 years and
its one-word title gives it away as a usage of the myth of Juno, the Roman
sky-goddess!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“I’ve got some work to do!” I confessed to my Mom. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That night I looked through the BYU-MOA on-line materials to
find something scholarly about Nakian’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Juno</i>,
my new nemesis. I found very little, but in about 10 minutes of browsing, I was
able to piece together some elements of apparent truth. So, I am resolved to
learn more about this sculpture and work on it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did Reuben
Nakian have in mind when he named this mass of bronze after the Roman
sky-goddess? Did he <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mean</i> anything by
it? Why call it anything at all? Is it a happenstance that this sculpture got
so named? Did its acquisition at the BYU MOA happen because it’s called Juno? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s what I presently know, listed not necessarily in the
sequence I discovered the details: </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Oxford Guide to
Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 – 1990s</i> does NOT list Nakian’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Juno</i>, though it could have, since the
sculpture was created over a decade before the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">OGCMA </i>was published (1994). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it were
listed in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">OGCMA</i>, it would have been
in the article on “Hera” on page 515. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 2;"> </span>OGCMA0515NOTHera_Nakian</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And its entry
would look like this:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reuben Nakian, “Juno,” abstract sculpture, 1980, Brigham
Young University Museum of Art.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nakian created many sculptures with titles drawn from
classical mythology. Other titles include “Hecuba”, “Juno: from the Judgement
of Paris”, “Minerva, from the Judgement of Paris”, “Leda and the Swan”, “Nymph
and Seven Dolphins” and others. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">“No other sculptor of the twentieth
century has matched Nakian’s heroic grapplings with the grand themes of Western
art, returning classical mythology to the foreground of human consciousness.” Robert
Metzger, cited by Atelier Nakian <a href="http://www.nakian.org/">http://www.nakian.org</a>
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;">
When the “Juno” was placed at the
north entrance to the Museum of Art in 1993, an article in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deseret News</i> included some information
that might be considered authoritative. According to the article, “<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It
represents an artistic style based in abstract expressionism, yet with a
classical structure that was not embraced by abstract expressionists -
according to Neil Hadlock.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the full article try this link: <a href="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/303892/BRONZE-SCULPTURE-PLACED-AT-Y-MUSEUM-ENTRANCE.html?pg=all">http://www.deseretnews.com/article/303892/BRONZE-SCULPTURE-PLACED-AT-Y-MUSEUM-ENTRANCE.html?pg=all</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A summary accompanies it:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-left: .5in;">
“<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A
sculpture by famed artist Reuben Nakian now graces the entrance to Brigham
Young University's new Museum of Art. The work, an 8x8x8-foot, 4,900-pound
bronze was lifted by crane July 29 onto a pedestal on the east side of the red
granite museum.<br />
Called ``Juno,'' the work was a National Endowment for the Arts commission Nakian
received in 1981. It represents an artistic style based in abstract
expressionism, yet with a classical structure that was not embraced by abstract
expressionists - according to Neil Hadlock. Hadlock, a sculptor and member of
the BYU art faculty, selected the work and oversaw the coloring of the piece at
the Tallix Foundry in New York.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Nakian.org website has a plentiful bibliography page,
with articles listed by decade. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Deseret
News </i>article is not listed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Nakian Atelier
website lists approximately 100 scholarly works on the artist, Reuben Nakian,
and his artistic production. My next step is to dig into the interesting items
and see whether I can learn something about this work of art. Stay tuned to
Mythmatters, if you care to see this story unfold.<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l4LTdtai3xE/Vow410GLK7I/AAAAAAAAAcE/irJBpuJEPAU/s1600/Nakian_JunoWithSharon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-l4LTdtai3xE/Vow410GLK7I/AAAAAAAAAcE/irJBpuJEPAU/s400/Nakian_JunoWithSharon.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Macfarlane's female relations and a friend pose on 30 Dec 2015 beside<br />Reuben Nakian's </i>Juno<i> outside the BYU MOA. </i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u><span style="text-decoration: none;"><br /></span></u></div>
—— RTMmacfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-68970994512487394572015-12-04T09:42:00.000-07:002015-12-04T09:42:22.828-07:00JKBrickwork’s Kinetic Sculpture of Sisyphus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<br />
OGCMA1009NOTSisyphus_JKBrickworks<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Everybody knows something about Sisyphus, it seems, especially
that he spends eternity pushing a boulder to the top of a hill in the World of
the Dead. Odysseus saw him there and told how every time Sisyphus nearly
muscled the boulder to the summit, it would bound back down and settle in the
plain. Odysseus did not, however, explain WHY Sisyphus is consigned to this
eternal labor. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Explanations about reasons for the Sisyphean punishment vary
among mythographers in classical texts, both Greek and Latin. He cheated Death
(Thanatos), some say, in arranging with his wife to leave<span> his mortal remains
unburied so that as a disembodied shade he could persuade the nether gods to
allow his return to living; upon his return to our realm, Sisyphus ventured to
abide among the living. Zeus, in another telling, frowned upon Sisyphus’ irreverence
— for </span>Sisyphus had told Asopus that the
Olympian had abducted his daughter — and sent Thanatos to deal with the
transgressor. Sisyphus bound Thanatos in chains, thus temporarily interrupting
the need for mortals to die, until Ares intervened, freed Death, and sent Sisyphus
to the eternal toil of pushing that stone ever upwards. </span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_ORgXryOhfs/VmG_atAEgQI/AAAAAAAAAbg/7ZjfrY8S-zw/s1600/sisyphusJKBrickworks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="243" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_ORgXryOhfs/VmG_atAEgQI/AAAAAAAAAbg/7ZjfrY8S-zw/s320/sisyphusJKBrickworks.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">JKBrickworks, Jason's Kinetic Sisyphus: <br />see <a href="http://jkbrickworks.com/sisyphus-kinetic-sculpture/">http://jkbrickworks.com/sisyphus-kinetic-sculpture/</a></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Since ancient authors touched upon Sisyphus’ labor — and it
would surprise us if they were consistent entirely in the whys and wherefores —
literary and other artists in all ages have written about the legendary
trickster. My personal favorite is Ally Condie’s remarkable telling in her <i>Matched </i>trilogy of teen-directed novels
(Dutton 2010-2012), where Sisyphus is shown to have undertaken his eternal push
for purpose of wearing down a canyon through a ridgeline and thereby channeling
a stream for subsequent ages to follow. Albert Camus’ 1942 articulation of the
absurdity of Sisyphus’ task is itself a classic: “Sisyphus, proletarian of the
gods, powerless and rebellious, know the whole extent of his wretched
condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent.” And collecting occasional
<i>New Yorker </i>cartoons playing with the Sisyphus
myth, especially those by Chas Addams and Christopher Weyant, was for many
years a welcome diversion for me.</span></span>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now, a Lego engineer at JKBrickworks.com named Jason has
crafted a remarkable kinetic sculpture of Sisyphus pushing a boulder. Jason’s
YouTube was picked up by Disney Research and forwarded to me by Abi Pettijohn,
an attentive student in my Myth class. In ClCv 241, I hope to train students to
look for interesting modern usages of classical myths. My hope is that the
really interesting ones will spark further thinking. Abi has done her job very
well indeed. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The JKBrickworks Sisyphus can be seen in action on <a href="https://youtu.be/pKrHTYqm8pw" target="_blank">YouTube</a>
(use this link: https://youtu.be/pKrHTYqm8pw). Aside from the marvelous engineering on display, I draw
attention to the mythological artwork explained by the engineer himself in the
video. Jason introduces himself and his creation, but makes sure we understand
the freize panels adorning the base upon which his Sisyphus moves. (Jason is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">long</i> way, in every measure, beyond any
of the Lego fabrications I built when I worked in Danish brick!) Jason explains on the video:</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, before I explain how all the mechanics work, I thought I would show you the base of the model where I
have depicted my interpretation of some of the scenes of Sisyphus’ life in this
Greek relief style. On the front we have him in his chariot and horse attacking
some of the visitors to his kingdom. [On the back panel:] This is actually
Hades in the Underworld being chained up. He was actually intending to chain
Sisyphus up, but Sisyphus managed to turn the tables on him. [On the opposite
long flank:] Here he is hosting a dinner party and he was stabbing some of his
guests. He really was a pretty evil dude. [On the short front flank:] This is
Zeus who finally had enough of shenanigans and punished him by having him roll
the boulder up the mountain. And of course Zeus cursed the boulder so that it would
always roll back to the bottom when it got to the top. </div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jason is not pretending to offer up a scholarly discourse on
Sisyphus. So, I gladly allow him his narrative. Moreover, the brickwork involved
in his four remarkably skilful friezes (not to mention the stunning figure of
his Sisyphus itself) gives this mythographer a bit of a free pass. However, the
four narratives Jason offers are novel and unfounded in classical accounts. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jason’s Sisyphus is regarded as “a pretty evil dude” and is
thus depicted killing guests at a “dinner party”. Gross violations of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">xenia</i> are not part of customary,
classical (if you will) narratives of Sisyphean criminality. The binding of
Hades is similar to the Sisyphus’ binding of Thanatos, to be sure; and maybe a
critic of Jason’s mythopoesis is going to far to make him split a hair
distinguishing between Death and Hades, the god of the dead. I know of no
classical myth that tells of Sisyphus trampling by chariot visitors to his
kingdom. Corinth, Sisyphus’ kingdom, was known for many things in antiquity,
but not primarily renown for its inhospitality. Nor was Sisyphus known among
classical authors for dangerous treatment of visitors in general. Jason’s
fourth claim, that “Zeus finally [tired] of Sisyphus’ shenanigans” is pretty
much right on the money, even if classical authors give the cursing of the
infamous boulder over to other gods at times. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I write in response to Jason’s Kinetic Sisyphus not out of
pedantry, not to mark the contents and explanations of his friezes as
erroneous, but rather to welcome this remarkable contribution to the world of
modern usages of classical mythology, that corpus of timeless narratives that
continues to change and grow. </div>
<div class="MsoListParagraph" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Garamond; mso-fareast-font-family: Garamond;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">—<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span>RTM, with thanks to by Abigail Pettijohn</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some bibliography offered by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Classical Tradition</i>, comp. by A. Grafton and G.W. Most (Harvard,
2010), s.v. “Sisyphus” [G.B.]</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
B. Seidensticker and A. Wessels, eds., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mythos Sisyphos: Texte von Homer bis Günter Kunert</i> (Leipzig 2001).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also, see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oxford Guide
to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1300 – 1990s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>(Oxford University Press, 1994).</div>
</div>
macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-72740785241442438862015-11-02T13:30:00.002-07:002015-11-02T13:39:58.962-07:00George O'Connor's Olympians: Poseidon and the horse<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cpxpOkTDsG8/VjfFJ4TohAI/AAAAAAAAAaw/60durZPIPws/s1600/Poseidon-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cpxpOkTDsG8/VjfFJ4TohAI/AAAAAAAAAaw/60durZPIPws/s320/Poseidon-cover.jpg" width="239" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">G. O'Connor, <i>Olympians: Poseidon, earth shaker</i><br />
Neal Porter Books: New York, 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
George O'Connor's graphic-novel treatments of Greek mythology caught my eye this weekend. I wish I had come to know them earlier! O'Connor attempts to work rather sophisticated questions about standard mythologies into a series he aims at a 9-to-14 year old audience. Though pitched at kids, grown-ups can probably enjoy <i>The Olympians </i>as well. This quick assessment of the series' fifth book <i>Poseidon: earth shaker</i> is supposed to convince the reader to look into the series as a whole.<br />
<br />
A website created by the publisher promotes sales of the books. See <a href="http://www.olympiansrule.com/">www.olympiansrule.com</a>. <br />
<br />
<br />
Horses are sacred to Poseidon. This puzzles O'Connor, and rightly so. The ancient Greeks prayed to Poseidon as "Pelagios, Asphaleios, and Hippios" (i.e. god of the sea, god of protection from earth-quake, and god of horses), according to Pausanias (<i>Description of Greece </i>7.21.7). Poseidon's affiliation with horses in myth and in cult is ubiquitous. Poseidon is regarded as the direct progenitor of the horse in cults at Thessaly and Athens, where his semen spilt upon the rock engendered the first horse. The winged horse Pegasus is the direct offspring of Poseidon's mating with Medusa, born at the gorgon's decapitation. Pegasus lighted upon the earth with a prodigious hoofbeat and opened a fresh-water spring, Hippocrene, from which the Muses draw inspiration and fresh water. Appeasement of the gods at the end of the Trojan siege was effected by means of a horse. The human-voiced horse Arion is the offspring of Poseidon, sometimes in union with an earthborn Erinys and sometimes with the earth-goddess Demeter Erinys. It is Poseidon's essential characteristic as the god of the earth, the Earth Shaker, that associates him most naturally with chthonic entities such as the <br />
earth-born horse. (For more on this, see W. Burkert, <i>Greek Religion </i>(Harvard, 1985), 138 - 39.) <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kqPJ-q87Fmg/VjfFJNwQ5bI/AAAAAAAAAas/U-ZMvIFf-u0/s1600/OConnorPoseidon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="167" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kqPJ-q87Fmg/VjfFJNwQ5bI/AAAAAAAAAas/U-ZMvIFf-u0/s320/OConnorPoseidon.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">O'Connor, <i>Poseidon</i> p. 9, frm. 2</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
O'Connor's coverage of a broad set of Poseidon myths is impressive. Polyphemus and Odysseus, the <br />
drawing of the Lots after the Titanomachy, Athena's contest for primacy in Athens, Arion's birth from Demeter, the Trojan Horse, how Theseus was both the son of Aegeas and of Poseidon, and so forth.<br />
<br />
The audience of 9-to-14 year olds will not be too scandalized by naughtiness. No sexual nudity is explicitly drawn, though Poseidon throughout wears nothing more than a flowing loincloth. Ariadne is shown wearing one of those crazy topless <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IPXyu6NFzFM/VjfFJJSQ5OI/AAAAAAAAAa0/NrKzN4qN-BA/s1600/OConnorPoseidon%2B2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IPXyu6NFzFM/VjfFJJSQ5OI/AAAAAAAAAa0/NrKzN4qN-BA/s320/OConnorPoseidon%2B2.jpeg" width="161" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poseidon's salt-water spring on<br />
Acropolis, <i>Poseidon </i>p. 49 frm. 2</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
dresses that you might remember the "Minoan Snake Goddess" of Heracleion wearing in art history books; but O'Connor places captions and speaking-bubbles strategically throughout. If you are looking for such things, you'll notice them. Kids won't. Likewise, only very close scrutiny of some frames that depict naked youths running in a footrace reveals the depicted runners to be naked, and only then if you know what to look for. The narrative of Aethra's unions with Theseus' two fathers is drawn (in the Poseidon part) as captionless silhouettes in a moonlight swim, unlikely to spark too many questions from youngsters. Still, O'Connor remains culturally correct in these moments.<br />
<br />
<i>Poseidon</i> offers plenty of material for young geeks. I imagine my nephew poring over the genealogical tree inside the front cover. You can view it on the <a href="http://www.olympiansrule.com.vhost.zerolag.com/about-the-greek-gods/" target="_blank">OLYMPIANSRULE site</a>, also. The author's propensity to includes lots of myths in a linear narrative is appealing; plus it keeps them short. The amusing "G<strike>r</strike>eek Notes" (note the strike-thru!) at the back of the book explain sometimes nuanced graphics within the narratives. I won't be surprised when <i>so tired</i> of seeing theoi.com there!] It will be a welcome day when my students in the Myth class know their stuff from O'Connor and not from Rick Riordan's adaptations.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TOIv-ROKLdA/VjfFJF0yZZI/AAAAAAAAAa4/iTHXokDP-Sk/s1600/OConnorPoseidon%2B3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="107" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TOIv-ROKLdA/VjfFJF0yZZI/AAAAAAAAAa4/iTHXokDP-Sk/s320/OConnorPoseidon%2B3.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">O'Connor, <i>Poseidon</i> p. 14 frm. 1</td></tr>
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O'Connor starts showing up in footnotes of my college students' papers. [If only!... I'm <br />
<br />
O'Connor's questions about the connection between Poseidon and the horse arise several times within his <i>Poseidon</i> book. He is clearly amused, but also intrigued. Several references to horses, visual and stated, recur in <i>Poseidon</i>. A discussion question (p. 74) asks "Why do you think the God of the Sea was also the God of Earthquakes? How about horses?" Several of the "G<strike>r</strike>eek Notes" mention horses, e.g. "Page 9, Panel 2 [see panel at right, above]: Stallions. Poseidon really likes horses. More on this later."<br />
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According to O'Connor's "Bibliography" (p. 76), "without doubt, the single most valuable resource" for classical mythology is theoi.com. I heartily wish this clever purveyor of classical mythology were inclined to pursue more authoritative source materials than what is available on the internet. The author himself notes that theoi.com is limited, in that "it's not quite complete, and it doesn't seem to be updated anymore." Still, it is delightful to see what results from O'Connor's encounters. He does <i>The Orphic Hymns </i>(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2013)! ISBN 9781421408828] I'd like to see future volumes derive authority from authoritative source materials such as <i>Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts</i>. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x-qyeXHp9q4/VjfFJ1YNqeI/AAAAAAAAAa8/cCsikCoWEHA/s1600/author_photo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x-qyeXHp9q4/VjfFJ1YNqeI/AAAAAAAAAa8/cCsikCoWEHA/s200/author_photo.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George O'Connor from olympiansrule.com</td></tr>
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admit that he has struggled to find the Orphic Hymn to Poseidon, even though it "was very hard to find in an actual book". [Next time use A.N. Athanassakis and B.M. Molkow, transs. <br />
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O'Connor's recommendations for further reading range very very broadly, from good recommendations "for younger readers" like <i>D'Aulaires' Books of Greek Myths</i> to (under Odysseus' blurb on the facing page) a recommendation for Joyce's <i>Ulysses</i> as "widely consider to be one of the greatest books in the English language." OK. That's a broad range! <br />
<br />
If I were recommending Greek mythological books for young readers — and in fact I was asked just this weekend by a family member — I would be really comfortable watching George O'Connor's <i>Olympians</i> continue to fly off the shelves. I ordered the set for myself this morning!<br />
<br />
— RTM<br />
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By the way... Horses and plate-techtonics came up on Saturday's Weekend Morning Edition: <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/10/31/453393899/author-speculates-long-history-of-human-horse-companionship" target="_blank">click here</a>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LUMFiSpbP1o/VjfJ4WjZznI/AAAAAAAAAbM/kzPC_fk_Ke0/s1600/olympians_illustration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="356" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LUMFiSpbP1o/VjfJ4WjZznI/AAAAAAAAAbM/kzPC_fk_Ke0/s640/olympians_illustration.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George O'Connor's Olympian pantheon, from olympiansrule.com</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-16007749968679277892015-10-08T17:37:00.005-06:002015-10-08T17:39:19.023-06:00Icarus Flies Again — Baltimore Symphony Orchestra<style>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>My
favorite D.C. attorney, Christopher Meldrum, is a student of classical
mythological reception. It’s great to see what one can do after graduating with
honors in Classics from BYU! He shares the following observations on an
interesting usage of the Icarus myth. Thanks, Chris!</i></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goltzius' Icarus is one of his <br />
etchings of the Four Disgracers (Icarus, <br />
Phaethon, Ixion, and Tantalus), 1588.</td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A performance by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra
is a symphonic work entitled “Icarus At The Edge of Time”
[OGCMA0593NOTIcarus_GreeneGlass] (<a href="http://www.bsomusic.org/calendar/events/2015-2016-events/midweek-concert-icarus-at-the-edge-of-time/"><span style="color: #0000e9;">http://www.bsomusic.org/calendar/events/2015-2016-events/midweek-concert-icarus-at-the-edge-of-time/</span></a>).
The piece was originally commissioned and produced by World Science Festival
(New York) with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Southbank Centre (London)
with the Royal Society. The Festival has the following blurb on the piece
"What if Icarus traveled not to the sun but to a black hole? This
40-minute full orchestral work is a mesmerizing adaptation of <i>Icarus at the
Edge of Time</i>, Brian </span></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Greene’s book for children. A re-imagining of the Greek
myth, which brings Einstein’s concepts of relativity to visceral, emotional
life, it features an original score by Philip Glass, script adapted by Greene
and David Henry Hwang, and film created and directed by AL + AL."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The performance intermeshes music by Philip
Glass, narration by astrophysicist Mario Livio, and a film into a
STEAM-activated concert. STEAM activation equates to highly participatory
opportunities for audiences of all ages, creative brainchildren of Annemarie
Guzy of the BSO (cf. blog, <a href="http://blog.americansforthearts.org/author/annemarie-guzy">Americans for
the Arts</a>.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As the BSO blurb states<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">cover of B. Greene's <br />
<i>Icarus at the Edge of Time</i></td></tr>
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, the multimedia piece itself is
an adaptation of <i>Icarus at the Edge of Time, a</i> children’s book by
Cambridge physicist Brian Greene (a proponent of Sting Theory who you might
remember from the NOVA special <i>An Elegant
Universe</i>). Wikipedia says that it is "a science fiction
retelling of Icarus' tale. It is about a young man who runs away from his
traveling, deep-space home to explore a black hole." You can read
additional information about the book, as well as an interview with Green about
the book, on Amazon.com (<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Icarus-Edge-Time-Brian-Greene/dp/0307268888/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443652434&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=Icarus+at+the+Edge+of+Tome"><span style="color: #0000e9;">http://www.amazon.com/Icarus-Edge-Time-Brian-Greene/dp/0307268888/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1443652434&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=Icarus+at+the+Edge+of+Tome</span></a>).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the Q& A, two of the following are of
particular relevance to the myth</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"<b>Q: Where did the idea to re-imagine the
Icarus legend (set in outer space and involving black holes!) come from?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A: I recently told my two and a half year old son
a bedtime story that involved space travelers moving near the speed of light.
Within days he was telling his own animated stories of dinosaurs and monsters
outrunning a new and wonderful concept--"the speed of dark." Which
got me thinking. Storytelling is our most basic and powerful means of
communication. We listen with a different kind of intensity--and open ourselves
most fully--to a gripping tale. So why not allow some of science’s greatest
wonders to be experienced not through pedagogy but through the force of narrative?
Science in fiction, as opposed to science fiction. Scientific insights that are
absorbed rather than studied. <i>Icarus At The Edge Of Time</i> is my first
attempt to explore this terrain. Instead of a journey near the sun--a
"light" star--Icarus heads to a black hole--a "dark" star.
And then the wonders of Einstein's relativity kick in, warping the more
familiar ending into a painful conclusion, to be sure, but perhaps one that's
more hopeful than the original. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Q: The story of Icarus is a cautionary tale, what
do you think it has to say when applied (as it is here) to the nature of
scientific exploration of the universe?</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A: Great scientists are great adventurers, boldly
exploring unknown terrain--"anxiously searching" as Einstein once put
it "for a truth one feels but cannot find, until final emergence into the
light." Icarus's fearlessness fits this profile to a "T". But
there's another side to scientific exploration. Scientific research has the
capacity to reveal realms that turn the status quo on its head. And when this
happens, we're often not prepared--as a society we're often not sufficiently
mature--to take on the responsibility that such new realms can require. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">From nuclear knowledge to stem cells, from global
climate change to cloning, science not only opens up new vistas but confronts
us with profound challenges. In this new version of the Icarus tale, Icarus's
unrestrained explorations take him, literally, to a startling new realm--one in
which the universe as he knew it becomes forever beyond his reach. We can
imagine him maturing into his new life and experience, but we also feel the
wrenching pain of his being torn from his familiar reality--and from his
family--and entering a completely new world--the very process of maturation we
collectively navigate as science rewrites the rules of what's possible."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">— submitted by Christopher Meldrum</span></span></div>
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macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-71422948521981958502015-08-24T17:45:00.003-06:002015-08-24T17:55:39.990-06:00Electra, My Love<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Xq2xVx0sNy8/VduuYEoMwqI/AAAAAAAAAZU/jdQh1MPKcVc/s1600/250full.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Xq2xVx0sNy8/VduuYEoMwqI/AAAAAAAAAZU/jdQh1MPKcVc/s320/250full.jpg" width="216" /></a>Miklós Jancsó adapted the stageplay by L. Gyurkó, <i>Szerelmem, Elektra</i>, into the 1974 film <i>Electra, My Love. </i>The film is very watchable as cinema ... for some viewers (to judge by the Amazon.com reviews!). As a usage of classical mythology it is quite remarkable. Its 71 minutes constitute one of my best Netflix rentals in an active year.<br />
<br />
The narrative <span style="color: green; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">adapts the Orestes myth to the milieu of Soviet-occupied, post-1956 Hungary
so as to incite in the audience’s minds active emulation of classical role
models who risked dire consequences to revolt against pervasive tyranny.</i></span>
When Gyurkó wrote the play in 1968, a little more than a decade had passed since the failed revolution of 1956, which the Russians quashed. In the film's present, it has been fifteen years since Clytemnestra murdered Agamemnon and now ten years since the queen herself passed away. Aegisthus rules a populace that proclaims felicity, and Aegisthus is a tyrant who willingly admits to Electra the necessity of bloody discipline: "Roads must be paved with skulls and walls plastered with cries. I don't like blood, Electra. But it buys order." <br />
<br />
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BK6Lf3KPNus/VduueS7qpYI/AAAAAAAAAZg/AvebkL3IgKs/s1600/electra-my-love.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BK6Lf3KPNus/VduueS7qpYI/AAAAAAAAAZg/AvebkL3IgKs/s320/electra-my-love.jpg" width="320" /></a>The film opens with an allusion to Sophocles' <i>Electra</i>. Chryosthemis urges Electra to forget and move on. Because Sophocles instituted the character of Chrysothemis, we expect the narrative to unfold along Sophoclean lines. The film, however, scarcely follows that anticipated path. For Sophocles' drama focuses on the psychology of a daughter who will kill her mother in the name of justice. Jancsó's telling has another directive to deliver. Revolution and regime-change are the message here, not the standard fare for an <i>oresteia</i>. Indeed, in Aeschylus' hands the message of the <i>oresteia</i> was all about reconciliation. With Gyurkó and Jancsó the last Tantalids are all about revolution. Neither sibling is actually capable of contriving
tyrannicide alone; but, their dynamic combination achieves the necessary
energy that eliminates Aegisthus and his cronies.<br />
<br />
Cinematically, too, the film is remarkable. 71 minutes are covered by about one ten principle shots, each about as lengthy as a mid-70's film processing could manage. [See listing below.] Jancsó opens this film with a remarkable "oner" 11-minute shot. It sets the cinematic tone for the film. Essentially, Jancsó shoots each section of each act in one shot. Like paragraph markings in a book, or scenery changes on a stage, the cuts mark strophes in this elaborate orchestration. A tremendous amount of orchestration has gone into every single shot.
More like an analogue ballet than an edited film, the Jancsó’s visual
narrative involves tremendously precise blocking from sometimes hundreds
of actors and not a few dozen wild horses. It’s pretty stunning. The first very long sequence constitutes orchestration of several dozen actors, two glimpses at the setting sun, the wrangling of a herd of wild horses, the choreography of a lean swordsman, three dwarves with cymbals, and about 40 lines of dialogue between Electra, Aegisthus, and his deputy tyrannt. The opening sequence will leave no doubt in any viewer's mind: we are definitely not in Kansas here. This is an artsy film.<br />
<br />
You
can get an appreciation for this blocking in Richard Brody’s New Yorker
online clip from 24 August 2010, which shows about half the opening shot. (See the link on my <a href="http://cal.byu.edu/macfarlane/OGCMA/0771NOTOrestes_Jancso.htm" target="_blank">OGCMA slide</a>.) <br />
<br />
A ministrel with a folk guitar constantly crisscrosses the film. He is a balladeer with a song about Orestes' epic return. Mind you, the hero is not named in the song. But the foreboding arrival of the revolutionary is going to be as monumental as it is going to be epic. The minstrel sings: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Though cornered, he stayed alive.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bUY-rnz6CeY/VduuYdGdkII/AAAAAAAAAZQ/T3T4a5rXrVE/s1600/movie-electra-my-love-by-miklos-jancso-s4-mask9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="316" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bUY-rnz6CeY/VduuYdGdkII/AAAAAAAAAZQ/T3T4a5rXrVE/s320/movie-electra-my-love-by-miklos-jancso-s4-mask9.jpg" width="320" /></a><i>A master at this game. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Lost warrriors greet him. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i>
<i>Stones ask me, grass implores me</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>People come to me crying</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>and shatter the rock of my wanderings. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Fiery steeds stand before the sun and the moon. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>I'll take their manes</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>to make a scarlet cloak</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Swallows shoot the dawn</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>By the time I get my freedom.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>the gate I'll open wide,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>And break the wagon of bondage. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The stranger is familiar</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>yet we know him not. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>We knew from afar it was him. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>We know his horse's step.</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>Lost warriors greeet him. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>See him alone on the plain. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The people await him. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>D'you hear his horse's steps?</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>It can only be him. </i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>The people await him....</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i>It can only be him. </i></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<i> Elektra, My Love</i> is all about justice. But it is also about the politics of revolution. Electra's alter-ego is an attractive brunette in the sheer blouse (Mária Bajcsay)
who administers the message of the party's leaders. Kikiáltó, "the Herald",
is this character's name in the film's credits. She enters the film with reports of Agamemnon's murder,
fifteen years ago. In an orchestrated account of local political history
she chants the story of Agamemnon's demise. "Since then the people are
happy." And nobody would deny it — not openly, at any rate, given the iron-fisted support she
musters. Men crack whips and long lines of the people voice their
support, after Kikiáltó reminds them of dire punishments that await
those who resist. This is the annual feast day of Agamemnon's death and
Aegisthus' rise to power. And she presents Electra to the assembled people at the
moment where the regime expects her to recant. When Electra proclaims,
instead, the full truth of her belief in the regime's corruption, they
stop their ears. Today will bring change, Electra vows; but it will
not transpire before we behold the regime's lies.<br />
<br />
You may not feel like watching it, because there is a good
deal of female nudity in it (and some male nudity, as well). The nudity
makes the film unusable in a BYU context, but it needn’t render the
film unwatchable for a discerning viewer. For, the film's use of nudity
is largely de-eroticized. The disclosure of the human body — primarily
female in Jancsó's treatement — illustrates the depravity of the
regime that fosters it. When the tyrants themselves are compelled to dance naked, their weakness is most overtly manifest. Electra, on the
other hand, is fully covered in a dark dress throughout the film, wrists
to neckline clothed in a dark dress.<br />
<br />
The Herald's quasi-erotic affinity for
the Chief (Vezér; played by Lajos Balázsovits), the handsome young man
in the linen frock. Though nude women appear frequently throughout this
film, one fully nude male only appears. After the regime change and
under the administration of Electra, the Chief is compelled to serve
naked and dance with his Herald. The nudity they earlier inflicted upon countless others now symbolizes the humility to which Electra so dearly subjects them. Later Orestes clothes them before
administering his form of justice. Whether the Herald is also killed is left unclear, but the Chief certainly falls.<br />
<br />
The concluding scene is kind of weird. Every talks about it. Reminiscence of a Euripidean deus ex machina is certainly there, when a red helicopter intrudes upon the a-chronistic landscape the director has contrived for the audience. Only a handgun had broken the illusion, quite late in the film. Besides that ... and the helicopter! ... Electra's collision with Aegisthus has occured in a world altogether devoid of machinery. The ending is all a bit jarring. As the revolutionary protagonists, Electra and Orestes, rise in a symbolic resurrection and the people sing a hymn of the Phoenix bird, the prospects of Soviet-style socialists seem to wane. By the film's last frames, Electra and Orestes exude a confidence and optimism that suggests their audience might someday succeed in rising above the tyranny that has held them down for so long. <br />
<br />
<i>Electra, My Love </i>is distributed on DVD by Facets
Multimedia. I might expect Criterion to have picked it up first. The
disc would benefit from the inclusion of such historical commentary as
Criterion might arrange.<br />
<br />
If you get a chance to see <i>Electra, My Love</i> (1974, Miklos Jancsó = <i>Szerelmem, Elektra</i>) is an astonishing usage of classical mythology. And the Hungarian play from which the film is adapted would seem to warrant an English translation. I have located German and French translations, but no English published translation of the Gyurkó play.<br />
(OGCMA0771NOTOrestes_Jancso)<br />
<br />
—— RTM<br />
<br />
______________ <br />
The oners:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1-11:15<br />
11:15 - 20:25<br />
22:45 - 32:00<br />
32:00-40:50 <br />
40:50 - 42:00 (electra smiles at the camera)<br />
42:00 - 43:30 horses in twilight — regime change<br />
43:30 - 46:25<br />
46:30
- 54:00 the ballet of the Herald and the Chief, approach of the ball
pushed by horses, discussion with Orestes, arrival and song of the
minstrel<br />
54:00 - 1:01 Begins with Aegisthus on a gigantic
ball, execution, "This story is at an end", piano music, Orestes and
Electra wander away from the camera zigzagging, numerous corpses strewn
on the field, , Our story's just starting", starting each day anew, they
are covered by a shroud,<br />
1:01 - end epilogue: Orestes and Electra
are up and walking, smiling, embracing, arrival of helicopter —
discussion of the firebird and its fomenting of revolution</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-78904714186717533292015-05-11T13:45:00.000-06:002015-05-12T08:52:42.749-06:00Petersen's Troy scrunches the denouement<div class="MsoNormal">
Achilles died at Troy, shot by Paris’ arrow precisely in the
critical spot. Apollodorus gives half the credit to Apollo: “Achilles was shot
in the ankle by Alexander and Apollo at the Scaean Gates.” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bibl.</i> Epit. 5.4) This scene is set
outside the Trojan walls (πρὸς ταῖς Σκυλαιαῖς πύλαις). Apollodorus’ concise
narrative entails several intervening phases between Achilles’ death and the
construction of Epeus’ Horse (Epit. 6.15-17). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In Apollodorus’ conglomerate account, the
Trojan War hardly comes to a close at Achilles’ death. Until Wolfgang Petersen
told the story (with David Beniot’s screenplay), it hadn’t occurred to me that
Achilles might have gotten <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inside</i> the
city. And, if <o:p></o:p></div>
he had penetrated the citadel, what might me have done?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C96VnCmlOZs/VVEGXtazrOI/AAAAAAAAAYg/5zfKTqbTG7E/s1600/wall5_1024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C96VnCmlOZs/VVEGXtazrOI/AAAAAAAAAYg/5zfKTqbTG7E/s320/wall5_1024.jpg" width="320" /></a>Homer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iliad</i>
focuses all the events of the Trojan War, of course, on the development and
cessation of Achilles’ rage. Sown in the quarrel with Agamemnon over Briseis in
Book 1, the persistent wrath of the godlike hero is abated in the Homeric
masterpiece-scene of Book 24. Once Priam receives Hector’s brutalized corpse,
the great epic narrative closes quickly. And details of Achilles’ own fate mix
into a quick narrative close. Achilles’ ill disposition is satisfactorily but
summarily concluded without further narrative development. It has all come down to this.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Extra-Homeric classical tradition attributes three major
events to the life of Achilles after the critical moment of ransoming Hector’s
body.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Penthesileia still has Achilles’
heart to win. Thersites will still perish for his mockery of Achilles’ abiding
infatuation with the Amazon. And Memnon will still fall to Achilles’ prowess.
Nor does Homer take time to narrate the collective reaction to Achilles’ death,
the funeral games, the burial beside Patroclus on Leuke, the contest for
Achilles’ armor. These elements of the epic tradition are fully outside the
scope of Homer’s Achillean narrative, which effectively closes down at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Il</i>. 24.675. Once Achilles sees Peleus in
Priam, the world instantly changes, and the brutalizer becomes humane. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Homer’s final glimpse at Achilles has him lying down to
sleep with lovely Briseis inside his tent. Priam retires outside but beneath
the tent’s awning. Homer pays no attention to Achilles’ reaction to Priam’s
furtive departure in the night. Was he going to order a Myrmidon’s breakfast
for Priam in the morning? We never know. Instead, Homer’s Priam, safely
conveyed, tacitly oversees the burial of Hector that it proceed as Achilles had
provided (24.650-58). And within about 100 lines of Priam’s departure from
Achilles’ tent, the great epic closes tersely with one line: “Thus they
performed the burial of Hector breaker of horses.” (24.804) Just 150 lines
earlier, one might not have anticipated that outcome might never transpire.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Ransom’s powerful denouement can scarcely be
understated. Narrating the Ransom’s conception, planning, execution, and effect
fill the entirety of Book 24. Apollo’s urging begins the events that reverse
the impasse that has pertained since the epic’s outset. The Ransom occupies the
space and pathos commensurate with its narrative importance. Achilles has
descended to beastial conduct; he emerges as the Greek alliance’s true king.
And Homer’s rhetorical approach leaves the poet with nothing further to tell. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
About 20 minutes remain in Petersen’s film when Priam enters
Achilles’ tent by night. Repeated viewings find me asking myself whether the
scene resonates only because it’s Petersen’s truest re-creation of a poignant
Homeric moment. It succeeds because the scene’s internal elements correspond
quite closely to the narrative in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iliad</i>
24, but perhaps there’s more. The interlocutors say less here than they do in
Homer. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: -45.0pt;">
Priam:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I cannot change what happened. It is
the will of the gods. Give me this small mercy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: -45.0pt;">
Achilles:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">silence
</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: -45.0pt;">
Priam:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I loved my boy from the moment he
opened his eyes until the moment you closed them. Let me wash his body. Let me
say the prayers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let me place two coins
on his eyes for the boatman. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: -45.0pt;">
Achilles:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">silence
— <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>If I let you walk out of here… If
I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">let </i>you take him, it doesn’t change
anything. — You’re still my enemy in the morning. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: -45.0pt;">
Priam:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You’re still my enemy tonight. But even
enemies can show respect. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.0in; tab-stops: 81.0pt; text-indent: -45.0pt;">
Achilles:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">silence
— </i>I admire your courage. Meet me outside in a moment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Besides merely ransoming Hector’s body, Petersen’s cinematic
scene narrates a three-fold expansion beyond Homer’s: Achilles’ expression of
affection for Hector (“my brother”), the relinquishment of Briseis to the
Trojans, the parting shot that Priam is, in Achilles’ judgment, “a far better
king than the one leading this army.” Homer needed the scene to do one thing. Petersen/Beniot require it to do three.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That indirect jab at the absent Agamemnon plays upon Petersen’s
primary theme in the film, that unworthy kingship is ugly. Accordingly, the
film’s narrative hinges on Achilles’ barb and cuts immediately to the face of
Agamemnon’s outrage: “What business does Achilles have cutting deals with the
enemy?!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Agamenon’s impiety is matched
only by his Gulf-War military mismangement: “Even if it costs me 40,000 Greeks,
I will smash their walls to the ground. Hear me, Zeus! I will smash their walls
to the ground.” Coming from a man who throughout the film has manifest nothing
but irreverence for the gods, this oath is scarcely reverend.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Achilles, on the other hand, comes away from the Ransom a
sincerely changed man. This is true both in Homer and in Petersen. In the film,
though, the hero now kisses men, living and dead, on the cheek and on the
forehead. He decides to withdraw the Myrmidons from the war’s finale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t want the men to be a part of this.” We
know they have twelve days to get out of Troy, the timeframe dictated by the
moratorium Achilles unilaterally offered as king to King Priam for Hector’s
funeral rites. Petersen’s Achilles, further, maintains an inclination to abide
Troy’s sack so that he can protect virtue to the last. One final beheading of a
Greek, one last kiss for Briseis, and he’s gone. Had he merely slipped away, Petersen’s
Achilles would not have perished. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AcWj70Dy1UY/VVEGWzlZQHI/AAAAAAAAAYc/2flbxxz98wc/s1600/2575338340_bf659e46a7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AcWj70Dy1UY/VVEGWzlZQHI/AAAAAAAAAYc/2flbxxz98wc/s320/2575338340_bf659e46a7.jpg" width="320" /></a>This resumes the first matter I mentioned at the outset. Why does
Achilles stay at Troy, if he doesn’t want his men to “be part of” the sack of
Troy? In Petersen’s film, Achilles charges into the heart of burning Troy in
order to save Briseis from Agamemnon’s ravishment and (maybe) death. In the end
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
(of Agamemnon), Briseis shows that she has learned a thing or two from her
Thessalian lover, but Achilles himself is also needed for her full extrication.
Their final dialogue ends the film. <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; tab-stops: 67.5pt; text-indent: -.75in;">
Achilles:
It’s all right. Its’ all right. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fondling
Briseis’ hair, as Paris comes closer for the kill. </i>You gave me peace in a
lifetime of war. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; tab-stops: 67.5pt; text-indent: -.75in;">
Paris:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Briseis, Come.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; tab-stops: 67.5pt; text-indent: -.75in;">
Briseis:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; tab-stops: 67.5pt; text-indent: -.75in;">
Achilles:
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You must. Troy is fallen. Go. Begin
anew. … It’s alright. Go. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">They kiss</i>.
Go. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">She departs with Paris</i>. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Achilles dies peacefully. The POV rises upward to long crane shot tracking his soul’s POV, to contrast the grassy
lawn where Achilles's body lies with the burning houses of Troy. — Cut to Odysseus’
ponderous lighting of Achilles’ funeral pyre inside the Trojan citadel.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; tab-stops: 67.5pt; text-indent: -.75in;">
Odysseus:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">places coins on Achilles’ eyes</i>. Find
peace, My Brother. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 67.5pt; tab-stops: 67.5pt; text-indent: -.75in;">
Odysseus:
voice over: If they ever tell my story, let them say that I walked with
giants.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Men rise and fall like the
winter wheat; but these names will never die. Let them say I lived in the time
of Hector, breaker of horses. Let them say I lived in the time of Achilles. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Because I promised — and tried to teach my class sincerely —
that I would not be distracted by Wolfgang Petersen’s narrative
“inauthenticities” in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Troy</i>, I will
gladly grant the poetic license the film’s direct uses throughout the film. I
bite my tongue, rather than gripe, that Achilles dies after Priam in the sack
of Troy. For <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aeneid</i> 2 to work,
Neoptolemus’ father Achilles must already be among the shades at the moment he
kills Priam. Vergil’s chronology always makes me uneasy, anyway. But I still
think that Vergil’s a great poet than Petersen, even if they do work in
different media. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Traditional tellings of the Iliupersis have Achilles
involved as agressor to the end, storming Troy’s citadel and stirring it up to
the last. Homer, of course, doesn’t go this far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-92165331023880579462015-04-07T15:02:00.001-06:002015-04-07T15:25:57.090-06:00Dwayne Johnson as Hercules is not at all bad.The first 5 minutes of Brett Ratner's 2014 <i>Hercules (I)</i> conveys a remarkable point succinctly: This is not an entirely conventional Heracles narrative. A handful of divergences begin to flow quickly by. The Radical Comics graphic novel by Steve Moore clearly deserves closer inspection. Where the screenplay diverges from Moore's creation will reward analysis; in this quick blogpost I focus on details in the screenplay by Ryan Condal and Even Spiliotopoulos directed by Ratner. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O39D7Kk2I78/VSRFkYVgxiI/AAAAAAAAAYE/UeCnXVROQFo/s1600/dwayne-johnson-hercules-wallpapers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O39D7Kk2I78/VSRFkYVgxiI/AAAAAAAAAYE/UeCnXVROQFo/s1600/dwayne-johnson-hercules-wallpapers.jpg" height="250" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">OGCMA0551NOTHeracles_Ratner: Hercules (aka son of Zeus) is flanked<br />
by Iolaus and Atalanta.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The Maecedonian Coast in 358 B.C. is an extraordinary time — if not also place — to set a mythic narrative. The year 358 B.C. is well within the frame of history, half a century after the demise of the Athenian Empire and well within the period of Maecdonia's meteoric rise under Philip. It is hardly the period one might assign, if one had to, to the time when a demigod roved upon the earth.<br />
<br />
The film opens with a partial explication of the Heracles' canonical labors. Three alone are needed to get Ratner's narrative under way. And the three are told in a rather inverted sequence with dramatic crescendo: Lernean Hydra, Erymanthean Boar, and the Nemean Lion. Typically, in Classical mythology, the Lion that roves the hills above Tiryns near Nemea comes first, the Hydra bred in the swamp of Lerna comes second, and the Boar on Mt Erymanthus is the fourth canonical Labor. <br />
<br />
We soon learn that the three labors are being narrated by a young captive, who is presently afflicted with a bit of hero worship and the vicious designs of his captors. This narrator will turn out to be none other than Iolaus, a nephew of Heracles who canonically helps Heracles slay the Hydra (but not here).<br />
<br />
Before Iolaus' identity is learned, though, the most remarkable element of Ratner's Heracles narrative comes clean: this brawny hero is accompanied by a cast of super-heroic sidekicks. The team is a remarkable hybridization from the myths that deal with the generation before the Trojan War.<br />
<br />
Autolycos — played with deft comic timing by Ian McShane, Autolycus is mythologically the maternal grandfather of Odysseus; by some later accounts he is the son of Hermes; in Homer he outstrips all mortals in "thievery and (ambiguous) swearing" (<i>Od</i>. 19.394ff) and one perpetrated a memorable theft (<i>Il</i>. 10.367). <br />
<br />
Atalanta — brings a strong female to Heracles' supporting team, Atalanta is mythologically a veteran of the Calydonian Boar Hunt, the defender of her chastity against the advances of centaurs Rhoecus and Hylaeus whom she slew, and sworn to perpetual virginity as hunting companion of Artemis. If I have seen Ingrid Bolsø Berdal in a previous film, I have not notice her.<br />
<br />
Amphiaraus — a participant in the Seven Against Thebes expedition, Amphiaraus is a rather shadowy character in classical mythology. He was bribed by Polynices with the necklace of Harmonia to march against Eteocles' Thebean defenders; other myths have him killed by Zeus' thunderbolt and swallowed with his chariot into the gaping earth. Since Rufus Sewell plays him in this film, people will notice him closely.<br />
<br />
Tydeus — a berzerker with a menacing headwound, in this film, and a propensity for dog-like behavior, Tydeus also — as the others here — technically antedates the Trojan War. The father of Diomedes in myth (not overtly in this film), Tydeus is so bloodthirsty that he slew Ismene (Aesch<i>. Septem</i> 377ff.) and impiously devoured the brains of Melanippus. Aksel Hennie plays this character with convincingly crazed demeanor.<br />
<br />
and Iolaus — the boy here who strives to be like Hercules is in mythology the nephew of Heracles who assists in one Labor (the Hydra) but forebears from assistance when Eurystheus disqualifies any of Heracles' tasks that include assistance. Reece Ritchie is amusing in this part.<br />
<br />
Why the side-kicks are so intriguing to me may be summed up in one particular observation pertaining to Heracles' canonically assigned Second Labor, the slaying of the Lernean Hydra. According to Apollodoros <i>Libr</i>. 2.5.2, "Eurystheus ordered Heracles to kill the Lernaean Hydra, a water creature bred in the swamp of Lerna, which invaded dry land destroying livestock and ravaging fields." Though heroically successful in "overcoming the growing heads, then cutting off the immortal one", Heracles' effort was disqualified by Eurystheus who said that Heracles "had not conquered the Hydra alone but with the help of Iolaus." From that moment forth, Heracles always acted as a soloist. In classical mythology it is typically the far inferior hero Jason who assembles a dream-team of helpers to foster his great quest. <br />
<br />
So, where does this leave me? I'm at the "that" part of my consideration of this compelling film. It's clear that the narrative belonging to Moore, Spiliotopoulos, Condal, and Ratner is aware of classical mythological ancestry. The development of a hero-with-sidekicks narrative seems right for the comic-book age. I need to turn the corner and explain now the "why" of all this remarkable alteration. And especially intriguing will be answering why Hercules now in a sceptical post-9/11 age needs helpers and why <i>these</i> helpers especially come to the fore. <br />
<br />
—— RTM<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-62164713029189602602015-03-30T16:59:00.000-06:002015-03-30T20:14:46.449-06:00CAMWS scholars present numerous papers on mythological usages<style>
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The CAMWS (Classical Association of the Middle-West and
South) annual meeting 2015 took place this last weekend in Boulder. Four full
sessions on the first day of papers treated the reception of classics kept me
busy for a very instructive day. The next day featured two further sessions,
nearly four more hours!, in the afternoon. While not all paper-topics in these
sessions pertain to the reception of classical mythology, every one taught me
something new. The papers that fit into the scope of the MythMatters blog
receive here some commentary, even if they deserve much more. The abstracts for
the papers are published at camws.org.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V0JjzFYJBrc/VRnUSXz89NI/AAAAAAAAAXg/MhDDM7ga3MA/s1600/SPN-CW-poster-supernatural-17335672-1752-2560.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-V0JjzFYJBrc/VRnUSXz89NI/AAAAAAAAAXg/MhDDM7ga3MA/s1600/SPN-CW-poster-supernatural-17335672-1752-2560.jpg" height="320" width="219" /></a>Meredith E. Safran (Trinity College) talked about “The
Heraklean and Promethean Protagonists of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Supernatural</i>
(2005-2015).” I learned from Safran to regard <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Supernatural</i> as a “post 9/11 narrative”. Having watched a grand
total of one episode of the CW series, I could still follow Safran’s detailed
explication of how characterization of the one Winchester brother manifests
systematic allusion to the traits of Heracles from Greek mythographical
sources. The classical Heracles’ famously voracious appetites for food and sex
play subtly into the character of the monster-slaying protagonist. Numerous
details were presented in Safran’s compelling treatment. All the way from his
near-miss brush with death in the cradle to his consumption of ginormous
sandwiches, according to Safran, the character is drawn with intentional
similarity to Heracles. Prometheus got somewhat shorter schrift; but, I quite
enjoyed learning about the numerous characters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Supernatural</i> whose attributes involve the great Titan’s willful
recalcitrance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though she presented
less information about the one episode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Supernatural
</i>I know — I watched “Remember the Titans” (season 10, ep. 13) for its
Prometheus content, because current myth student Danielle Orrock’s spectacular
paper— Safran dealt with this particular episode in Q&A. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Polly Hoover (Wright College) read a paper about “Theo
Angelopoulous’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Traveling Players </i>and
the Transformation of Aeschylus’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oresteia</i>.”
This is a film I have never seen, but its usage of the Orestes myth was
presented in an engaging way. The play-within-the film, a traveling production
of a drama called “Gorgo the Shepherdess”, brings together several elements of
an oresteia, and the film’s narrative frame has only one character named after
the mythological Tantalids. Others assume roles like unto Aegisthus, Agamemnon
and so forth.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8UJ_SYEGEKc/VRnURJwVZ6I/AAAAAAAAAW4/3cOy8Hjs8Lw/s1600/10182617313.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8UJ_SYEGEKc/VRnURJwVZ6I/AAAAAAAAAW4/3cOy8Hjs8Lw/s1600/10182617313.jpg" height="246" width="320" /></a>Yasuko Taoka (Southern Illinois University) treated compelling
questions of mythological reception in her paper “Reception and Pastiche in
Peter Milligan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Greek Street</i>.” Taoka
showed that the creator of the graphic novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Greek Street</i> raises matters of reception in a rather sophisticated
way. As gritty and off-putting as Milligan’s unpleasant style may be, the
narrative includes characters who know their classical mythology. And Taoka
left the audience reconsidering whether a low-brow façade can front a useful
mythological reception. One wonders whether the reader to whom the cartoon’s
sleaze and gore will appeal most is going to care about the high-brow ideas
Taoka introduced today. I think she is raising serious question about the
groundrules for reception studies. Whether I will dig deeper into the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Greek Street </i>narratives, I have to admit
that today’s paper made me think. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3OStJ8KX764/VRnURBlShRI/AAAAAAAAAW0/31xY_frpUsc/s1600/04farnes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3OStJ8KX764/VRnURBlShRI/AAAAAAAAAW0/31xY_frpUsc/s1600/04farnes.jpg" height="163" width="320" /></a>Summer Trentin (Metropolitan State University of Denver)
walked us through Raphael’s fresco cycle on Cupid and Psyche in the Chigi Villa
Farnesina. “Apuleius and Intellectualism in Raphael’s Loggia of Psyche” was a
well illustrated talk. Even if Trentin’s pictures were primarily available in
public domain online, it was still delightful to walk virtually through the Psyche
cycle with a trained expert. Q&A brought out some detail pertaining to the
specifically named Neo-Platonism that the presenter had grouped into the rubric
of “intellectualism” during the paper. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I regret that another commitment kept me from hearing Sarah
G. Titus (University of Washington) discuss “Socrates, Fénelon, and Kauffman:
negotiating identity through common experience”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was reported as a very fine paper. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
The 1699 didactic prose work <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les avantures de Télémaque </i>by François
de Salignac De La Mothe-Fénelon was tremendously influential in the 18<sup>th</sup>
Century in Europe and then secondarily in 19<sup>th</sup>-century America. It
is a myth built neo-classically into the narrative space Homer and the
classical tragedians left wide open, namely the experiences of Telmachus after
the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey’s</i> conclusion. Familiar
faces from Homer are there: Idomeneus, Nestor (again), Athena (though called
Minerva, of course), the Sirens, and many others are all here.</div>
<br />
The panel on recent literary reception of the classics
capped the afternoon quite nicely, with a session of five good papers.
Catherine M. Schlegel (University of Notre Dame) explicated “Auden’s Homer:
‘The Shield of Achilles.’” Sarah H. Nooter (University of Chicago) read “The
Loss of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">telos</i>: the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oresteia</i> of Athol Fugard.” This paper
left me thinking that I will have to examine connections between Fugard’s play
and Tug Yourgrau’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Song of Jacob Zulu</i>,
which I addressed in an earlier Mythmatters blogpost. Though Sarah Ahbel Rappe
(University of Michigan) was unable to attend, her paper was read in absentia:
“Teaching ‘Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition’ as a Course in the State
Prison System” is a personal experience of Rappe’s reading classical tragic
texts with convicted felons in the Michigan penal system. Remarkably, many of
these women have experienced first-hand the very unspeakable crimes that the
classical tragedians narrate. Especially because a student in my myth course
last week told me that Medea-like crimes “statistically never happen,” Rappe’s
account was personally moving for me. <br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ps22dtioE3I/VRnURFThbHI/AAAAAAAAAWw/KRK4bPGyEqI/s1600/11962873-large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ps22dtioE3I/VRnURFThbHI/AAAAAAAAAWw/KRK4bPGyEqI/s1600/11962873-large.jpg" height="200" width="130" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, the afternoon’s most passionate paper was delivered
by Carolin Hahnemann (Kenyon College): “Translucent Transplants: on the sublime
similes in Alice Oswald’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Memorial</i>.”
Hahnemann demonstrated intimate familiarity with the formidable 2012 poem.
Because Oswald’s poem focuses on the mythological elements of Homer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Iliad</i>, the poem deserves to be included
in the OGCMA’s next edition. Hahnemann has been lecturing much on Oswald’s
rather innovative reception of Homer and the Troy War myth. Let’s call it OGCMA1047NOTTrojanWar_Oswald.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bDedFS_aY4I/VRnUSWWXEWI/AAAAAAAAAXI/CXCUVaKq-B8/s1600/cover_183462112008.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bDedFS_aY4I/VRnUSWWXEWI/AAAAAAAAAXI/CXCUVaKq-B8/s1600/cover_183462112008.JPG" height="198" width="200" /></a>On Friday, an entire session treated classical reception in
music. And the topics were broadly divergent. Byron Stayskal (Western
Washington University) presented on “Innovation and Tradition: Charon in the
Libretto of Claudio Monteverdi’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Orfeo</i>.”
Robyn M. Rocklein (Ringling College of Art and Design) treated “Distortions of
Dejanira: visions of female virtue in Handel’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hercules </i>(1745). And David T. Hewett (University of Virginia)
introduced me to the remarkable mythological depth of the band Genesis during
the 1970s especially: “Forever to Be Joined as One: Genesis’ ‘The Fountain of
Salamacis’ and Ovid.” Other songs by the band in their formative years manifest
classical mythological sophistication. Educated schoolboys knew their myths and
worked them into their albums and stage shows. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Friday’s session of papers on reception in film had a
surprisingly small audience, perhaps because the springtime weather was so
fine. Chris Ann Matteo (Fairfax County Public Schools) argued from an
anthropological interpretation that Baz Luhrmann’s treatment of Orpheus
reenacts the Dionysiac <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sparagmos</i>
(ritual dismemberment of the poet). In “Dissecting Orpheus in Baz Luhrmann’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Moulin Rouge!</i>” Dr. Matteo considers the
songs of the film’s soundtrack as artistic dismemberments of their originals,
wrenched from their original contexts and significantly altered in style or
intent. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ri4p11lIXW8/VRnUS6NbRDI/AAAAAAAAAXM/WncufOhluAw/s1600/tumblr_lwslrdRqrl1qkoakl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ri4p11lIXW8/VRnUS6NbRDI/AAAAAAAAAXM/WncufOhluAw/s1600/tumblr_lwslrdRqrl1qkoakl.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a>In another paper Scott A. Barnard (Rutgers University)
sought to rehabilitate the reputation of the filmmakers, who have been for a
decade now the target of narrow-minded classicists’ pedantry. The author looked
for and provided evidence of truly Homeric details in “Authentic
Inauthenticity: Homeric resonance in Wolfgang Petersen’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Troy</i> (2004).”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">O Brother, Where Art
Thou</i> has taken on new meaning for me, because of the paper by Ryan C.
Platte (Washington University in St. Louis) called “Scholarly Feedback: homeric
studies and American song culture in Coen Brothers Films.” He argues that that film
narrates the musical event called the first folkmusic revival. Homer’s
historical bearing, at the transition between oral and written culture, makes
his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey</i> narrative especially apt
for the vehicle for telling it. Likewise, in another Coen Brothers film,
matters of folk music are addressed and, again, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey</i> is the narrative frame. Platte’s paper now has me looking
for all manner of electrical innovations that populate the visual landscape of
Coen Brothers’ sophisticated film. But his interpretation of the “stringing the
bow” episode is for me the most persuasive part of Platte’s paper. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2Vfx3aNTYs4/VRnURxfBMtI/AAAAAAAAAXE/fI0DoSPzQIs/s1600/MV5BMjE2OTM5OTUyOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODI4Nzg3Nw%40%40._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2Vfx3aNTYs4/VRnURxfBMtI/AAAAAAAAAXE/fI0DoSPzQIs/s1600/MV5BMjE2OTM5OTUyOF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODI4Nzg3Nw%40%40._V1_SX640_SY720_.jpg" height="200" width="127" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Rocki Wentzel (Augustana College) offered commentary on a
less-than-obvious mythological paradigm in one of my favorite mythological
films in “Beyond Pygmalion: the writer as Narcissus in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ruby Sparks</i>.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZZEP7kU-Imc/VRnURssIs2I/AAAAAAAAAW8/8RD6kt2hTo4/s1600/MV5BMjA1MDI3ODgxMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODYxNDE0MQ%40%40._V1_SY317_CR6%2C0%2C214%2C317_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZZEP7kU-Imc/VRnURssIs2I/AAAAAAAAAW8/8RD6kt2hTo4/s1600/MV5BMjA1MDI3ODgxMV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODYxNDE0MQ%40%40._V1_SY317_CR6%2C0%2C214%2C317_AL_.jpg" height="200" width="135" /></a>And in “Politics and Violence in Jorge Alí Triana’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edipo Alcalde</i>,” by Prof. Annette M.
Baertschi (Bryn Mawr College) the remarkable Chilean film was analyzed in a
sensitive treatment of the film’s violence. The paper was more about Creon,
perhaps, than about Jocasta’s incest. [The Mythmatters reader(s) may recall my
blogpost about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edipo Alcalde</i>’s
gut-wrenching Jocasta narrative.] For me the most valuable part of Baertschi’s
paper, the detail I will anticipate most eagerly prior to publication, is her
documenttion of Nobel-laureate screenwriter Garcia Marquéz’ preoccupation with
Sophocles’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oedipus Rex</i> throughout his
career and correspondence. The film is absolutely worth further study, and Baertschi’s
interpretation will play an important role in classicsists’ understanding it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Finally, the conference ended on a reception high-note, when
George Frederic Franko (Hollins University) offered a paper that seemed to me
more about Shakespeare than about Ovid. “Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe: lamentable
new comedy,” was a highlight of the conference for me, especially because
Franko has clear control of the Sahkespearean context as well as the Ovidian
text. Because I was presiding as the session where he spoke, I was able to tell
Prof. Franko how much I enjoyed his insightful paper. in the blogpost, I can
only encourage the reader(s) to go and consult Franko’s abstract, and all the
many others, at camws.org.</div>
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<br /></div>
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—— RTM, 29 March 2015</div>
macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-31119059320433640282015-03-06T11:14:00.000-07:002015-03-06T11:14:43.615-07:00Hermione's statue in Winter's Tale: is Leontes Pygmalion or not?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Shakespeare's <i>Winter's Tale</i> concludes a stunning scene of transformation in its final act. Queen Hermione was reported to have died in the most abject circumstances some sixteen years earlier (<i>WT</i> 3.2.3). Over the years her memory has been kept alive by a sculpted likeness by her husband's Leontes. In the play's finale a remarkable denouement occurs to the amazement of the on-stage characters (as well as the audience, to be sure). Some critics see the transformation of the statue into a living Hermione (<i>WT</i> 5.3.11) as a a parallel to Pygmalion's creation in the classical myth (Ov. <i>Met</i>. 10.243-98).<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jl36Iz0Lk6U/VPnkmnqB8vI/AAAAAAAACzI/TY8bj9fH16A/s1600/winters_tale_-by-w-hamilton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jl36Iz0Lk6U/VPnkmnqB8vI/AAAAAAAACzI/TY8bj9fH16A/s1600/winters_tale_-by-w-hamilton.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Engraving by Robert Thew of Wm Hamilton, R.A., <br />"Statue of Hermione".</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Jane Davidson Reid's <i>Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts</i> lists the statue of Hermione as a usage in the Pygmalion article (p. 956). Corroborative scholarship includes Carroll (1985) 213ff. and Barkan 1986 283-87.<br />
<br />
The MythMatters blog's reader(s) know(s) of my reticence to <i>allow</i> Shakespeare's <i>Hamlet</i> to be listed as a usage of the Orestes myth. Nutshelled: <i>Hamlet</i> clearly references Neoptolemus' murder of Priam and imposes the mythic paradigm of that narrative upon the events raging in Elsinore and in Hamlet's tormented mind; overt reference to Orestes' plight is wholly lacking in the bard's masterpiece. When Shakespeare alludes to a classical myth, in my opinion, he knows how to do so, and he tends to let his audience know it.<br />
<br />
<i>The Winter's Tale</i>'s application of a classical myth is somewhat problematic for my narrow definitions of what is allowable in Shakespearean myth-use criticism. For, I see no overt reference to Pygmalion and his ivory girl (aka Galatea in post-classical parlance). Criticism perhaps ought to pause at the threshold of treating this "parallel" — i.e. Leontes:Pygmalion::Hermione:"Galatea" —and settle merely to observe that the scene merely <i>seems</i> to draw upon the Ovidian forebear. Yet, that positively-spun Pygmalionism infuses Leontes' dedication to his lost wife, who after years of separation comes back to him. Presumably all the work that Pygmalion had put into prayers to Venus and into masterful craftsmanship has been expended by Leontes in the interim since Hermione's unfortunate demise. (The play's text itself states that not Leontes himself but one Giulio Romano had sculpted Hermione's likeness for the widowed king.)<br />
<br />
Shakespeare clearly knew Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>. The Pygmalion myth comes into Western literature through no other way than through the text that the bard is known to have read, at least in Claxton's translation if not in Latin, in his school days. Reid offers as "classical sources" for Pygmalion "Ovid, <i>Metamorphoses </i>10.243-98. Apollodorus <i>Bibliotheca</i> 3.14.3." However, that latter passage includes no tale of an animated sculpture: "οὕτος [Κινύρας] ἐν Κύπρῳ, παραγενόμενος σὺν λαῷ, ἔκιστε Πάφον, γήμας δὲ ἐκεῖ Μεθάρμην, κόρην Πυγμαλίωνος Κυπρίων βασιλέως..." (Cinyras migrated to Cyprus with a people, founded Paphos, and married there Metharme the daughter of Pygmalion the king of the Cypriots). Ovid alone gets the provocative sculptor into our literary tradition.<br />
<br />
Was Shakespeare working with the Pygmalion story as he received it in Ovid's <i>Metamorphoses</i>/ The motif of a statue-made-flesh was certainly available to him. But does Leontes become a Pgymalion in the <i>Winters Tale</i>? I'm leaving the jury out a bit longer.<br />
<br />
BYU's dramatic production of <i>WT</i> in late March 2015 may give me a chance to watch the play and sharpen my judgement. <br />
<br />
M<br />
<br />
MIT's Shakespeare project text: <a href="http://shakespeare.mit.edu/winters_tale/full.html">http://shakespeare.mit.edu/winters_tale/full.html</a><br />
J. Miller, "Some Versions of Pygmalion: in C. Martindale, ed., <i>Ovid Renewed</i> (Cambridge University Press, 1989).<br />
Leonard Barkan, <i>The Gods Made Flesh: metamorphosis and the pursuit of paganism</i> (New Haven, 1986).<br />
William C. Carroll, <i>The Metamorphosis of Shakespearean Comedy</i> (Princeton, 1985).<br />
<br />
</div>
Roger Macfarlane, AFOH Boardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05256879359345934909noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-51133447924465645082015-03-04T11:24:00.001-07:002015-03-16T10:18:21.892-06:00Jean-Luc Godard's elegy for Penelope: Le Mépris (Contempt)<style>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Le Mépris</i> (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contempt</i>) dir. by Jean-Luc Godard 1963</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Godard's <i>Contempt</i> is nearly as old as I am. But, where has this film been all my life? I watched it last night and don't plan very soon to stop thinking about it. It's a game-changer for married adults. And it's an extremely provocative treatment of Penelope (and, oh yes, Odysseus). This highly intriguing film is clearly about
film-making. The opening credits make that clear by deconstructing the process
of filming a tracking shot, while a disembodied voice reads audibly the details
of director, producer, cinematographer, etc. And this dialogue with film-making recurs all throughout the film. </span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kGOBQwBPFOM/VPdMzRJS6iI/AAAAAAAAAWM/eDC8Ks4S0JA/s1600/8512132681_a23390cd84_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kGOBQwBPFOM/VPdMzRJS6iI/AAAAAAAAAWM/eDC8Ks4S0JA/s1600/8512132681_a23390cd84_b.jpg" height="223" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Blonde-bombshell Bridget Bardot plays a tragically <br />
Penelopean figure in Jean-Luc Godard's <i>Contempt</i>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">But <i>Contempt</i> is also about deeply human relationships. In the guise of an Odyssey adaptation, Godard tells the tragically tender failure of a marriage. The skeletal narrative treats an
international production of the filming of an adaptation of Homer’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>An insufferably boorish American producer Jerry Prokosch (Jack Palance)
has tired of the German director’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(Fritz Lang, ipse) waning attempts to construct a film a deeply hormonal American
simpleton male can understand. Accordingly, the producer has summoned a new French
screenwriter Paul (Michel Piccoli) to the ragged backlot of Cinecittà for a
consult. The screenwriter’s wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot) is clearly a
Penlope, but here she is drawn away from her failing Odysseus by the
questionable attractions of the American in a red Alfa Romeo droptop. Every time the actor-qua-Odysseus appears on the set, Paul's progressive failure as husband becomes increasingly apparent. The
film-within-a-film is an artsy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Odyssey</i>,
but it is structured enough and sufficiently recurrent to provide the subtext
and framework upon which the couple’s agonizing failure can be hung and dried. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One critic calls <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Contempt</i> “Godard’s richest study of human relations, and a film
very much about a tortured kind of movie love.”
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;">Prokosch
promotes from the start his thesis that Penelope is unfaithful to Odysseus.
Lang and Paul see the fault as Odysseus’ and his specifically criticize his
apparent eagerness to stay away for 10 years beyond what he could have
achieved. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Bardot in 1963 was at the height of her sex-appeal. Godard was pressured by his actual producers to prostitute her famous physique and her attendant attitude made legendary in <i>Et Dieu ... créa la femme</i> (<i>And God Created Woman</i>) (1956) and other films. While Godard's camera features <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CCrAcFUSdWo/VPdO5HoQX1I/AAAAAAAAAWY/t0h6JqBY2eI/s1600/MV5BMTA3MjY5MjQ5ODleQTJeQWpwZ15BbWU4MDU4NjQ5NDIx._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CCrAcFUSdWo/VPdO5HoQX1I/AAAAAAAAAWY/t0h6JqBY2eI/s1600/MV5BMTA3MjY5MjQ5ODleQTJeQWpwZ15BbWU4MDU4NjQ5NDIx._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg" height="320" width="208" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bardot never assumes this pose in<br />
the Godard film. The poster-maker <br />
exploits the star's physique in ways<br />
the film-maker overtly avoids.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Bardot's famous backside in several scenes from beginning to end in <i>Contempt</i>, the sexuality of the starlet actually declines precipitously through the narrative. The patriotically red-white-and-blue filtered nude-scene at the film's outset is the rare moment of tenderness between Camille and Paul, the chaste height from which the couple's relationship plummets. Paul falls out of love with his sizzling wife as the film progresses. She vice-versa. So, when late in the film Camille plunges (off-camera) into the spectacular waters off Capri and swims (unclothed and on-camera) away from Paul and out to sea, it is the last time they are seen together in one shot; they could not have grown farther apart. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The American producer — acting a part that has autobiographical significance for Godard's own marital mishaps — has come between Camille and Paul in a way that Homer's Odysseus never really allowed. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I assign the film to OGCMA-Penelope rather than to the perhaps more obvious choice of "Odysseus-Return of Odysseus". The film is a loving elegy to Penelope. Casting the hottest French cinematic commodity (Bardot) in the female lead indicates Godard's belief in the importance of the role. Piccoli did acquire considerable fame for his part. But the critical performance is Bardot's Camille. She is the one who responds to the failures of her capable husband; she is the one who must consider the advances of Prokosch. While caught between her Odysseus' negligence and the primitive testosteronic advances of her Suitor, Camille is willing to sublimate her inherent Bardotesque sexuality (her hyper-famous blonde mane) beneath a brunette bobbed wig. Paul's failure to see this cry of submissiveness leads to the Camille's open rejection of his later feeble attempts to recover her for his pride's sake. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Godard's <i>Contempt</i> belongs among the most provocative Penelope receptions we'll see.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">RTM </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Criterion Collection has done a tremendous service by
overdubbing the film (reissued 2002 as Criterion Collection #171) with a
provocative audio commentary by Robert Stam. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A fine essay by Phillip Lopate, “Totally, Tenderly,
Tragically” (copyright 1998, available excerpted on the Criterion’s website) is
very useful<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(<a href="http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/240-contempt-the-story-of-a-marriage">click
here</a>). — He calls Palance’s Prokosch “vilely virile”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Joanna Paul, "Homer and Cinema: translation and adaptation in <i>Le Mépris</i>," in A. Lianeri and V. Zajko, edd., <i>Translation and the Classic: identity as change in the history of culture</i>, Classical Presences (OUP 2008), 148 - 65.</span></span></div>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Colin MacCabe and Laura Mulvey, edd., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godard’s </i>Contempt<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">: essays from the London Consortium</i>,<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Brief contextualization in the short overview of “The French
New Wave (1959 – 1964)” in Bordwell & Thompson’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Film Art: an introduction</i> 475 – 77.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Godard's film is itself an adaptation of the 1954 novel by Alberto Moravia originally entitled <i>Il Disprezzo</i> which was variously translated: <i>A Ghost at Noon</i>, trans. Angus Davidson (London: Secker & Warburg, 1954) and <i>Contempt</i> (New York: New York Review of Books, 1999). <br />— characters in the Moravia novel are named Riccardo and Emilia Molteni, Rheingold (=Lang), and Battista (=Prokosch).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: x-small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Valuable for its
contributions by Godard himself: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 1;">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Histoire(s) du cinéma — </span></b><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">DVD<span style="mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">
</span></span></b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">St. Charles, Ill.:
Olive Films, 2011, 2 videodiscs (266 min.): sd., col.; 4 3/4 in., French<b><span style="mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"> </span></b>DVD 7246 pt.1 </span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Floor
4–S, HBLL Media Center Desk —</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Description </span></span></span></div>
<div class="disclose">
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";">"An
extraordinary look at motion pictures as seen through the eyes of the reknowned
filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, who transformed the face of cinema with his
prolific, influential, and revolutionary body of work, which includes such
classics as Breathless, Weekend, and Contempt. Consisting of eight episodes
made over a period of ten years, the series covers a wide range of topics, from
the birth of cinema to Italian neo-realism to Hollywood and beyond."</span></span></div>
macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-22366176868758099112014-12-29T12:09:00.002-07:002019-11-19T14:08:09.559-07:00Simon Stone's Medea, toneelgroepamsterdam (review)<style>
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Medea and Jason have changed their names to Anna and Lucas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simon Stone’s stimulating adaptation of
Euripides’ familiar classic is titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Medea</i>
and it clearly follows the plot line so closely that nobody can be surprised by
the outcome. Anna is a pharmaceuticals researcher. Lucas is attracted to the much
younger daughter of his own boss — Clara's name is a fine translation of Euripides' Glauke, and
Christopher here is the new name for her father, Creon. </div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A8OOOQ-p7EM/VKGmLIWaAdI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/GiQcwtcvYw4/s1600/9012_791x545.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A8OOOQ-p7EM/VKGmLIWaAdI/AAAAAAAAAVQ/GiQcwtcvYw4/s1600/9012_791x545.jpg" width="229" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Marieke Heebink plays the lead in<br />Simon Stone's </i>Medea<i> at Amsterdam's</i><br />
<i>Stadsschouwburg thru March 7.</i></td></tr>
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A fortunate airline misfortune stranded me in Amsterdam for
a choice opportunity to see this new adaptation of Euripides’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Medea</i>. Open seating allowed me to arrive
a few minutes before curtain and still get the best single seat in the house,
precise center of row 5. The box office clerk asked
whether I would be OK with a play in Dutch. Since I have read Euripides’ play
few times, I felt confident that I would be able to follow it. And I am glad I
took the chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Stadsschouwburg
will feature the Toneelgroepamsterdam through the middle of March in this
extraordinarily provocative production. </div>
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The boys have personalities. They are personalized with
names, even. Stagecrafting in this production puts the boys on the empty stage
for at least 10 minutes before the play starts. One plays on his laptop,
as the other clad in a hoodie leans idly against a wall. This dramaturgical
gesture shifts the focus of the tragedy more from Medea’s solitary plight to
her murder of the children themselves. During the play, the boys’ pranks
involve catching Mom and Dad in bed, offstage but with video camera rolling. Mom’s
far more amused than Dad to be caught in flagrante with his estranged wife. And the prank becomes a critical plot element far beyond
what Euripides conceived. The kids interact with their future stepmother both
before and during the delivery of Medea’s auspicious gift. Anna/Medea has been slipping into an alcoholic emotional abyss since it was clear she would not regain her husband's heart. Here, too, Stone’s
script probes new depths that Euripides overlooked.</div>
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Stone has plied rather deftly his adaptor’s tool in this
new play. Rather than opening with the original’s ominous fears of the Nurse —
“Would that the Argo had never penetrated the Symplegades…” The play opens with Anna and Lucas in dialogue softly and face-to-face, but separated by at least 20 feet. Later, the
nurse's role will be filled by a social worker who comes in on assignment to supervise
Anna’s increasingly frightening activities. Anna is a 40-something mother whose
self-confidence is clearly shattered by her husband’s pursuit of a girl with
long legs and a powerful father. Euripides' Jason had harbored similar motives, of course, but the circumstances are naturally modernized.</div>
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The only mythological allusion I caught was an overt reference to Ovid's Philomela and Itys, with citation overtly pointed out within the text of the <i>Metamorphoses</i>. Anachronism such as this cannot stall pedants who want to enjoy this 21st-century adaptation, for it can't matter that Euripides' 5th-century masterpiece is explained by way of a Roman narrative. Can it?<br />
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Some technological razzmattaz draws the audience into the
most intimate proximity to the actors on stage. A large screen above the stage
displays projected images from a wide variety of angles throughout. When the
estranged couple explicates their rift in the opening scene, an offstage camera
zooms in on Medea’s face then Jason’s, and the audience can simultaneously see their
distance and fading lustre of Medea’s hair, the crows feet in her saddened
eyes. A stunning shot late in the play gazes down directly down, 90-degrees
from the rafters high above the stage in one of the most etherial views. Is the
director showing us the vantage point of Medea’s divine grandfather, the only
savior for this horrific mother? </div>
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Simon Stone’s play is not especially preachy. And in its
most chilling moments Medea’s unthinkable crime becomes somehow plausible. The
program notes chronicle briefly the horrific parricide of the Kansas physician
Debora Green who in 1995 began poisoning her estranged husband, Michael Farrar,
and then burned down the family home killing two of their three children. The
sensationalism of Green’s murder is the subject of Ann Rule’s book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0671868691/ref=rdr_ext_tmb" target="_blank">Bitter Harvest: a woman’s fury, a mother’s sacrifice</a> </i>(2014)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">. </i>Mrs. Green is
serving two consecutive 40-year death sentences incarcerated in federal
penitentiary. While Ann Rule’s reviewers compare Green to Medea more readily than
the author herself seems to, clearly Simon Stone has knitted a mythological layer over the top of Rule’s recent NYT Bestseller.</div>
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Stone produces the plot with a good deal of verve. The
play’s second half is physically dominated by ash. The first phases bring a
contstant falling column of black ash that falls into a heap in the middle of
the stage, thematically visualizing the ruins of Medea’s ruined marriage. Then,
when the rift is final and there is no going back, the column stops but the ash
heap comes into play. It is tampled. It is scattered. The actors frollick
through it and grieve in it and grovel in the most telling ways. A stark-white
set that is otherwise utterly void of props becomes a gutwrenching backdrop to
the blackened ash of a once smoldering love affair.</div>
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— <a href="http://ogcma.byu.edu/MedeaANCIENT_EuripidesStone.htm">OGCMAMedeaANCIENT_EuripidesStone</a>
</div>
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—— RTM</div>
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For the toneelgroepamsterdam website:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><a href="http://www.tga.nl/en/productions/medea">http://www.tga.nl/en/productions/medea</a> (click)
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For Simon Stone: </div>
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<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2013/aug/09/simon-stone-theatre-director">http://www.theguardian.com/culture/australia-culture-blog/2013/aug/09/simon-stone-theatre-director</a></div>
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macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6174367475329225278.post-53194707410556243842014-11-17T09:41:00.000-07:002014-11-17T09:46:33.841-07:00Cassandra and her name: a modern woman and her classical namesake<style>
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OGCMA0288NOTCassandra_Strang</div>
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My purpose in the Mythmatters Blog is to explore the
reception history of classical myths. It is known to the Follower(s) of the Blog
that my primary interest is the narrative gain accruing to artists in their
usage of classical mythological allusions. What goes through an artist’s
consideration to allude to a myth? This post is the first to engage a new usage
type, the naming of a real person. Maybe sometime I’ll turn to Ulysses S. Grant
or Penelope Cruz or some other child of a classical-mythological name dropper. </div>
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I have a terrifically attentive TA this semester. She has been
helping me also with research in the OGCMA project for about a year. Her mother
named her Cassandra, and I quipped a few weeks ago what the narrative gain of
that name might have been back on the day when Cassandra was named. Did her
mother know what she was getting into when she selected the name of Priam’s
daughter, the most tragic of the Trojan victims, yet the most noble of her
generation?</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-STvNPc7bKc0/VGoh9h9wmlI/AAAAAAAAAU0/DSga0vcUy4I/s1600/Cassandra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-STvNPc7bKc0/VGoh9h9wmlI/AAAAAAAAAU0/DSga0vcUy4I/s1600/Cassandra.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cassandra marks Apollo's<br />
unwelcome approach in Aesch.<br />
<i>Agamemnon. </i></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Cassandra — The Other Cassandra — of course, was Trojan princess
who prophesied nothing but truth and was never believed. This gift and this
curse befell Cassandra when she refused the advances of Apollo, the prophetic
god. The curse’s pain was realized in the fall of Troy. Disbelieved, or at
least misunderstood, by her family and townsmen, Cassandra took refuge at the
foot of the cult statue of Athena, but she was brutally removed by the lesser
Ajax. It is one of the most abiding images of Greek violence run amok in the
sack of Troy. Then, intensifying the tragic demise of the prophetess, Agamemnon
claimed Cassandra as his personal prize and led her to her final demise back in
Mycenae a bloody victim in Clytemnestra’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">lex
talionis</i>. Classical literature could never quite achieve the pathos of
Cassandra’s final prophetic drama outside the House of Atreus in Aeschylus’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oresteia</i>: “I went from door to door, I
was wild with the god, I heard them call me ‘Beggar! Wretch! Starve for bread
in hell!’ And I endured it all, and now he will extort me as his due. A seer
for the Seer. … The cleaver streams with my life blood, the first blood drawn
for the king’s last rites.” (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ag. </i>1291
– 99 Fagles) Indeed, it has been hard to beat Aeschylus’ Cassandra (458 BC) for
sheer tragic nobility.<br />
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Cassandra’s
mother wrote a personal account to her in October 2014, answering the question
about how she had come to be called after the Trojan prophetess. Baby Cassie
was spending the first days of her mortality in the Neonatal ICU. </div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;">I knew in NICU nurses would be taking care of
you, and I wanted them to call you by your name-- not just refer to you as
generic "Baby Girl". … [Y]our dad and I talked about one of the
names we had considered, which was Cassandra. … I liked the name Cassandra, I
thought it was pretty, it went well with our one syllable last name, and I
mostly liked the meaning-- a Greek prophetess. I wasn't that well versed on
Greek Mythology, but I decided to tie "prophetess" into a gospel
meaning. … All of your brothers also have names that tie into the gospel. I
wanted you to have a name with great meaning, but not be so obvious as are a
lot of religious girl names.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
always have thought that the name fits you very well, and I have never had a
moment's doubt about it being the right name for you. I have always thought you
were a unique and special girl. You had interests that were unusual for your
age. And of course, when you were 4, I bought a book about Greek and Roman
mythology, and you just ate it up. You carried it around for weeks. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> Hecuba
and Priam named their daughter either Cassandra or Alexandra, whom Homer calls
(<i>Il.</i> 13.365) the loveliest of their
many daughters. She is the first (<i>Il</i>.
24.699ff.) to see Priam returning with the ransomed body of her brother Hector.
Homer, however, makes no mention of her prophetic abilities. These come first
in Proclus’ <i>Cypria</i>. Later authors
(e.g. Verg<i>. Aen. </i>2.246) have her
sternly warn against the Trojan Horse’s entrance into the city. Euripides’ <i>Troiades</i> has Cassandra foresee Odysseus’
trials and death.<i> Aeschylus</i>
cannonized the traditional curse of the girl’s Apollonian “gift”; although
Antikleides would have Apollo’s gift bestowed upon her as a </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">sleeping child when
she and her brother Helenus had their ears licked by the god’s sacred serpents.
Years prior to the Trojan War, therefore, Cassandra was endowed with the
prophetic <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wSmRyA6C9Kg/VGokR4CBVYI/AAAAAAAAAVA/8HQAqDja40s/s1600/Pompeii_-_Casa_del_Menandro_-_Menelaos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wSmRyA6C9Kg/VGokR4CBVYI/AAAAAAAAAVA/8HQAqDja40s/s1600/Pompeii_-_Casa_del_Menandro_-_Menelaos.jpg" height="320" width="269" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cassandra vainly seeks sanctuary where she <br />
ought to receive it during the Sack of Troy — from <br />
Pompeii, House of Menander</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
foresight that identified her brother Paris — aka Alexander — as a
threat to the city and anticipated generations of historical mishaps for both
Trojans and Greeks. (Lycophron <i>Alexandra</i>,
2<sup>nd</sup> Century BC) </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"> Classical Cassandra passed nobly into literary
reception with Boccaccio’s treatement in <i>De
claris mulieribus</i> and thence into Chaucer, Shakespeare, and beyond. Christa
Wolf’s remarkable <i>Cassandra</i> follows
an important development in German literature from Schiller’s ballad (1802) to
her own 1983 novella that has the princess mindfully approach her imminent
demise with a retrospective monologue that liberates her heroically from
masculine militance. Cassandra’s “emphatic and persistent” gains in importance
during the 20<sup>th </sup>Century, according to Seidensticker, are due to our
age’s “rediscovery of the dark side of antiquity, and especially the great wars
and crises [that] endowed the unheeded prophet of impending calamity with new
timeliness. ... It remains to be seen, however, whether in the long run this development will result in [Cassandra's] once again becoming more than a mere metonymic cipher for the foreteller of disaster.” (in Grafton’s <i>The Classical
Tradition</i>, s.v. “Cassandra”)</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"> Because of my own personal insistence in
recovering authorial intent, I am very pleased that Cassandra’s mother was
willing to share this account of her daughter’s naming. Because Priam’s
Cassandra achieves such great dignity in her prophetic finale she remains an
especially noble namesake after whom so many Sandys and Cassies and Cassandras have
been named.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;">— RTM with permission of CB </span></div>
macfarlane241http://www.blogger.com/profile/08354713582450193256noreply@blogger.com0