Author Topic: Classics Book Club, The  (Read 492854 times)

Dana

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #280 on: January 27, 2011, 11:44:21 AM »

Welcome to


We have a winner!  Our first ever read in the Classics Book Club   to begin on February 15,  with the initial segment, schedule still to be decided but we'll break it up into parts,   of Homer's Odyssey!

If you have been casting about for a great book to lose yourself in this winter, you've come to the right place! Help us decide on a schedule, how far DO we want to go that first week? How to divide this? Whose translation do you have?

**NB: There are probably 50+ famous translations of the Odyssey. If you find the translation you have does not speak to you or does not convey to you what's happening, this book is too fabulous to waste on an old outdated translation: try a new one.


Free SparkNotes background and analysis  on the Odyssey



"I haven't felt this excited about a prospective read/discussion for years."--- Gumtree

  
Discussion Leaders:  Joan K & ginny  



Everyone is welcome!  






I just got my copy of Fitzgerald.  It has a fascinating introduction by someone called D.S. Carne Ross who is described as one of the finest critics of classical literature in English translation since Arnold.  Anyway, it puts The Odyssey in context very nicely I think.

I don't have a copy of it in Greek, I do have it in my favourites on my laptop.  I just ordered a dictionary--never had one before, just used the dictionaries in my various books, but the words describing Telemachus' getting up are not in them!  Tme to get a dictionary, I thought!!

If we do want to talk about a Greek word there's no point writing it in Greek, I would think people would want to be able to pronounce it, especially as its such a beautifully onomatopoeic (? sp.) language.

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #281 on: January 27, 2011, 05:19:10 PM »
I received my Penguin Classic (Deluxe Edition) and look at the "goodies" it includes:
Intro by Bernard Knox -67 pages
Maps of the area in the book-6 pages
Translators Postscript
Genealogy Charts for the families of Odyseus:Phaecia: Theoclymenus: Tyro
Notes on the translation
Suggestions for further reading
Pronouncing Glossary. Both a general one for Greek words and a Specific one for every name in the book.
All this for ten dollars. Oh what a winner this is.

JoanR

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #282 on: January 27, 2011, 05:26:26 PM »
Hi, Jude - That's the one I have.  A beauty, isn't it?

pedln

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #283 on: January 27, 2011, 05:42:53 PM »
JoanR and Jude -- what is the ISBN no. of the Fagles / penguin ed. that you have?

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #284 on: January 27, 2011, 09:33:51 PM »
Dana and JoanR - I agree with you Dana, that Greek words written in Greek are not much help if one is wondering about pronunciation.  I endeavoured to write an English pronunciation guide for φροντίζω = fronteezw.  In my opinion this is the best way to do it if those who know some Greek are asked to help, as it satisfies those who know Greek or may like to learn Greek. If spelled out in English it helps give the others some idea of how the word is actually pronounced.

Following up that topic I was thinking about the name Odysseus itself.  In English we pronounce it as Odi-see-us, but if it follows the rule of most Greek names ending in -eus, e.g. Perseus, Zeus and Theseus, we should pronounce it as Odi-ss-use, if you get my drift.  Of course, because this is an online discussion we never hear how our companions pronounce Greek words.   If I, and the other Greek speakers, could be heard speaking Greek, to those interested, that would be of great benefit. Having said that my Modern Greek pronunciation is much better than my Ancient Greek.  As I explained before there are some changes from AG pronunciation to MG pronunciation.

Jude - that book sounds as though it is worth its weight in gold, especially the glossary.  btw glossary is a Greek word.  η γλώσσα = glossa means tongue or language in both AG and MG. 
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #285 on: January 28, 2011, 08:04:28 AM »
6  pages of maps?!!! 6 pages of MAPS? It sounds like that IS  winner, Jude and Joan R,  we'll rely upon you both to fill us in on every aspect. We'll need maps here, too. There are bound to be some on the internet. And then we can see Odysseus' journeys for ourselves,  it will make it more understandable. I think there are some on the internet which actually trace his journey. The ones I use in our classes  are not of the best quality so I hope we can get some new ones here.

OH my goodness and guess what?  I can't believe it but I have the Odyssey in Greek here on my old (puff puff off the dust) shelves!!!

So  I can scan in any passage we should  wonder about,  should we want to know for instance why Pope said "anxious," and our Graiae here can help us with understanding that particular word!!

So here again we have the benefit of group work, we can actually see the original (should it come up that is) and we have three (or is it 4) people who can then tell us the word, so we can compare translations, love it.

And there are several classicists who have recorded parts of Homer on the internet, I know Lombardo has the Iliad's opening lines, let's see if we can find somebody reading the Odyssey.

Good point Roshannarose on Odysseus being pronounced O dis seus, like Dr. Seus, but call him what we'd like, (what, Jude S and Joan R does your pronouncing area say for his name?) we'll be here with bells on on the 7th with background and on the 15th with our read.

And due to the internet I bet somebody here can find a super map of Odysseus' wanderings and perhaps Troy and Greece, so we'll really get a lot out of this experience.

I think sometimes things happen for the best, I absolutely love sitting down with the blazing sun book  in bleak January and reading a good story. I'm interested to see which version I keep on with, that's going to be the test, and it may depend on what you all are getting out of YOURS.  What fun!

Welcome, All!


JoanR

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #286 on: January 28, 2011, 08:20:03 AM »
Good morning!  Up to our eyeballs still in snow so have had to cancel 2 appts. today.  My DH is 88 and I'm not far behind so our shoveling is limited!

The ISBN, Pedln, is  ISBN 0 14 02.6886 3  (paperback - a good sturdy one)
           hardcover is ISBN 0-670-82162-4

Ginny  -  My book gives the pronunciation of Odysseus as  (o-dis' yoos )  That's a relief since it's easier to say than some I've heard!!

Babi

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #287 on: January 28, 2011, 09:15:13 AM »
 Oh, goody, JUDE. I do hope you'll share the pronouncing glossary
and the maps with us. Though I imagine GINNY will have maps, too.
I've noticed that different maps tend to emphasize different
things.
  And here, all my life, I've heard the name pronounced
O-dis'-see-us.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

pedln

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #288 on: January 28, 2011, 11:16:47 AM »
Thanks JoanR for the ISBN number. It's the same as the one I found on Amazon. After reading what you and Jude had to say about the Fagles Penguin Deluxe edition I decided to order it.  I've got it in my cart, so off to  purchase.

Done

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #289 on: January 28, 2011, 12:55:36 PM »
Nope!  Sorry, I am sticking with O Dys- se-us.  It sings, doesn't it?
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #290 on: January 28, 2011, 01:35:02 PM »
Joan R gave you most of the info on this Fagles Odyssey.
I will add the content of the maps:
Homeric Geography:Mainland Greece (2 pages)
  "              "            : The Peloponnese "  "
   "             "             : The Aegean and Asia Minor (2 pagess)

It seems Fagles has done some original writing on the period we are about to study. Here are some of his titles:
Oedipus at Thebes:Tragic Hero and His Times
The Heroic Temper:Studies in Sophoclean Tragedy
Backing into the Future:The Classical tradition and Its Renewal
 Now its time to start reading the intro; I feel as though I am about to embark on a real journey. Hope its not as frought with dangers as was that of Odysseus.

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #291 on: January 28, 2011, 03:48:22 PM »
Project Gutenberg had an audio recording of Butler's translation. It comes in several formats including mp3 and Apple iTunes. They open when I click one them so I don't think I can download them to my Kindle. That means I would have to stay glued to my computer while listening. Bummer!

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #292 on: January 28, 2011, 06:37:56 PM »
oops-made a mistake .
The books I mentioned were not written by Fagles but by Bernard Knox-he who wrote the intro to Fagles translation.

Fagles has written:
Homer-A collection of Critical Essays
I Vincent:Poems from the Pictures of Van Gogh

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #293 on: January 28, 2011, 09:16:36 PM »
Well as my mother used to quote frequently, 'the best laid plans of mice and men...'  My friend was clearing out books from Bill's library and wouldn't you know among them was a 1996, Penguin hardback copy translated by, Robert Fagles with intro and notes by Bernard Knox. - there are 64 pages of  intro and 6 pages of maps.

And so why buy a copy as I intended.  I was going to order the Everyman edition with Robert Fitzgerald (Translator) and Seamus Heaney (Introduction)  - .

Also in the pile is an interesting book "The World of Odyssues" by M.I.Finley and Bernard Knox writes the Intro for it - published in 1982 and first published in 1954.

In the intro Knox gives an example of a young women on the Island of Crete who sacrifices her virtue to a German general during WWII in order to help  partisans capture him at the request of the British and American headquarters in Cairo and how after the war the story was ignored although she was sold on the idea that she held the honor of Crete in her hands. The upshot, the story is promoted 9 years later to the leadership as a purely fictitious character of a different nationality. His point, there is nothing to connect Agamemnon, Achilles, Priam, and Hector with the fire-blackened layer of thirteenth century ruins known as the Troy Vii A except a heroic poem which cannot be fixed in its present form by writing until the late eighth century, at least four illiterate centuries after the destruction

In the first chapter, Finley tells us that Homer is not the equivalent of Anonymous. Homer was a man's name. Before Homer and Hesiod tablets from Linear B demonstrate people speaking Greek - writing appeared 2000 BC and no one knows from where these Greeks came. The original migrants were not Greeks but people who spoke proto-Greek just as Angles and Saxons were not Englishmen but they became Englishmen. Up until 300 BC Greek was a language of many dialects with different pronunciations and spelling.

Huh - interesting - only in Egypt did papyrus texts last indefinitely because of the natural dehydration by the climate. Greece came under control by Alexander the Great with an extensive migration of Greeks to the Nile -  in the library established at Alexandria all the scraps and fragments of literary works was published in 1963. Of the  1,596 books copied half were of the Iliad and Odyssey with the Iliad outnumbering the Odyssey by about three to one.  

Finley says, Homer is not a poet he is a teller of myths and legends. He finishes the first chapter explaining that
Quote
"...Homer occupies the first stage in the history of Greek control over its  myth; his poems are often pre-Greek, as it were in the treatment of myth, but they also have flashes of something else, of a genius for ordering the world, for bringing man and nature, men and the gods, into harmony in a way that succeeding centuries were to expand and elevate to the glory of Hellenism.

If it is true that European history begins with the Greeks, it is equally true that Greek history began with the world of Odysseus. For history,  as Jacob Burckhardt  remarked  is the one field of study in which one cannot begin at the beginning."
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #294 on: January 29, 2011, 09:02:45 AM »
Quote
For history,  as Jacob Burckhardt  remarked  is the one field of study in which one cannot begin at the beginning."
  I like that.  It's  saying that we always have an intriguing element of mystery surrounding the past.  But human nature doesn't change much.  It's a given we can use to judge the myths
and draw some idea of what could have actually happened.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs

straudetwo

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #295 on: January 29, 2011, 03:19:29 PM »
There could not have been a better choice than Home's Odyssey to start our venture into the Classics. The excitement is contagious.

A long time ago we read the 24 "Gesänge" (Cantos)  in class in the German translation by Johann Heinrich Voss .  I look forward to reading the English  text in Stanley Lombardo's translation, which is on order.

Ginny, re your # 220, may I say that Edith Hamilton's Mythology (illustrated) also is an excellent resource  on every aspect of classical literature and mythoogy, especially the first chapter of Part I on The Titans and the Twelve Great Olympians.
 

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #296 on: January 29, 2011, 08:31:06 PM »
As I read the intro. to the Odyssey I am amazed at this fact and can't stop thinking about it.
All the characters in the Odyssey were illiterate! The intro goes to great lengths to prove this (and does).  But what is amazing to me is that this fact would never have occurred to me without the help of this fascinating introduction.

The next thing that fascinated me from going on line about the development of the Greek language was that from 600 to 800 BCE they wrote Boustraphadonically. This word means "as the Ox plows". . When you get to the end of a line you continue from that end and write in mirror letters.
 Thinking to overwhelm my husband with this new knowledge I asked him if he knew what Bousterphonic meant. 
"Sure" he answered ." Its the way you make Microchips. The machine (called a Stepper)  inprints the "wafers" in a snake like manner in order to save time and energy.Its called the Boustrophonic method-a mathematical term."

I knew i would be learning new things on this journey with you all. I just couldn't imagine these particular facts.


JoanK

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #297 on: January 29, 2011, 08:54:29 PM »
That is amazing!

JoanR

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #298 on: January 29, 2011, 09:14:37 PM »
Well, I'll be ding-dinged!  Ingenious! Not easy to do mirror writing, but my mother could.  She enjoyed astounding us children with it.

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #299 on: January 29, 2011, 09:44:44 PM »
As I read the intro. to the Odyssey I am amazed at this fact and can't stop thinking about it.
All the characters in the Odyssey were illiterate! The intro goes to great lengths to prove this (and does).  But what is amazing to me is that this fact would never have occurred to me without the help of this fascinating introduction.



The Greeks today still say in conversation "There is nothing new under the Sun" and can rattle off many instances in whuich this is the case, going right back in Ancient History.

For those interested:  Myceneae (the spelling may vary) in AG is η Μυκήνη and pronounced in English as Meekeenee or Mykeenee.  btw there is no C in Greek, only K (kappa).

  After the Myceneans were wiped out and the empire of King Minos disappeared there was a "dark age" in which writing was no longer used.  Another "dark age" happened when the Turks occupied Greece in 1453AD.  Greece literally came to a standstill culturally.  This in many ways explains why to some  Europeans, Modern Greece still may appear "culturally lacking".  For instance whilst Dante was writing "The Inferno", Greeks were writing poetry about milk maids and shepherds, influenced in part by the Venetian occupation of many islands.   The Ottoman occupation was to hold Greece under its yoke for 400 years.

I found the following quote from about.com/Ancient History which may help to explain the illiteracy of the people during the first Dark Age.

"The period when the events of the Iliad and the Odyssey took place is known as the Mycenaean Age. The period when Homer sang the epic stories is known as the Archaic Age, from a Greek word for "beginning". Between the two was a "dark age" in which somehow the people of the area lost the ability to write. We know very little about what cataclysm put an end to the powerful society we see in the Trojan War stories.

Homer and his Iliad and Odyssey are said to be part of an oral tradition. Since the Iliad and Odyssey were written down, it should be emphasized that they came out of the earlier oral period. It is thought that the epics we know today are the result of generations of storytellers (a technical term for them is rhapsodes) passing on the material until finally, somehow, someone wrote it. This is just one of the myriad details we don't know. "


Some modern historians says that part of Crete (Minos/Knossos) was wiped out by a huge tsunami resulting from the eruption of the Thera volcano (modern day Santorini).  Thera is said to have erupted with four times the force of Krakatoa, so the impact must have been cataclysmic.

Santorini History www.santoriniweb.com/Santorini_History.htm
Ship in the Caldera - Pic of Santorini by yours truly www.flickr.com/photos/roxanataj/2167913384
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

kidsal

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #300 on: January 30, 2011, 04:30:19 AM »

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #301 on: January 30, 2011, 10:07:10 AM »
Thanks, Kidsal. I lost my bookmark when my other computer died. I have yet to finish the Roman Architecture series.

ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #302 on: January 30, 2011, 10:39:44 AM »
That's incredible, Jude! Bousterphonic  and Microchips!  I love it!

It's amazing how modern computer technology echoes ancient stuff. I had mentioned something about needing to show print in a certain way for parsing  to the Geek guy who was restoring my computer and he said PARSING? That's a bad word in computers. I said huh? He then explained what it IS, it sounded very time consuming,  but it surprised me that it was a word used in computer-ese.

And now here's Bousterphonic, fascinating.

And what interesting history and background here. It's clear we will all emerge knowing something we did not at the outset.

 What a journey this will be!  Dearest to our hearts will be the discoveries we each make individually,  and I hope there will be a million of them, what a joy!

This apparently is some book we've undertaken!!




I do have the Fagles now and it is a wonderful book. I love the ending of the pages, they are not uncut but they are ...rough? Some stick out, some don't, I love that. It (this is the paperback) looks like going on a trip, it looks like a passport stuck here and tickets there, maps over there, some explanations here and there, and I love the way the cover makes bookmarks. Also like the dolphins on the chapter headings if that's what they are.

Love the maps.

But I also like  the  Lombardo.  It  also has a map of Homeric geography and a Troy inset,  and a diagram of the Palace of Odysseus, which I think will be extremely useful, have always had a problem picturing it.   Also I love the cover, a photo of Earth taken from the Apollo 11 mission, it's called "Earthrise." Love it. An Odyssey, for us, too,  not just in space or maybe from Troy to Greece but in other ways, too. .

I'm only two words into the Lombardo,  and already I have questions. He did not write the long intro, but the woman who did does address what he does particularly with the epithets which I am so glad to see somebody doing.  But 2 words in he's done something different  (and she may address this, and I just haven't gotten to it) but instead of Muse in the first lines (Butler: "Tell me o Muse;"  Fagles: "Sing to me of the man, Muse;"  Pope: ".....O Muse;"  but Lombardo says   "Speak, Memory,"   and I'd like to know from our Graiae here what there is about this particular word which might make him choose that:



I looked up the Muse of Memory Mneme (Lower Greece) and found out a LOT about the early 3 Muses and the later 9 Muses, they are quite interesting and a good bit of other stuff,  but why has Lombardo chosen "Memory" over Muse here, can our Graiae enlighten us?

He's not the only translator that uses "Memory" here for "Muse," either, we know there's a reason, and I'm sure  it's an excellent one, can we figure it out?


JoanR

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #303 on: January 30, 2011, 11:41:06 AM »
Homer is quoted all over, isn't he?  "Speak, Memory!" is the title of Vladimir Nabokov's autobiography!!

ALF43

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #304 on: January 30, 2011, 03:24:05 PM »
Was that before or after his seduction of Lolita Joan? ;D
Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.  ~James Russell Lowell

Dana

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #305 on: January 30, 2011, 03:45:35 PM »
I think the Muse is the cultural memory,or the collective unconscience, which breathes into the poet so that he is inspired to weave a true tale, realistically, culturally, psychologically, true, which I guess the most perfect tales are The verb eneppe means breathe in, same as inspire.  I think muse and memory are interchangeable in this context.

JudeS

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #306 on: January 30, 2011, 07:01:40 PM »
OK Ginny-Thank you for talking about our individual journeys through the Odyssey. Our discoveries will be our own but we can share them with all.
What I have discovered in reading the first part of the intro is this (Please bear with me for the background):
Five years ago a friend who is interested in Biblical Archeology got me a subscription to the magazine "Biblical Archeology".  I really wasn't interested but the magazine has continued to come each month for the past five years. Its here and so every now and then I read an article. Then I read more and more articles especially on methodology and dating of artifacts.

LO and behold the same methods have been used in dating the Odyssey as has been used in Biblical dating (i.e. figuring out when the various books of the Bible were writtten). Using a linguistic analysis is the favored method of scholars.  That is figuring out when certain words and forms of words entered the language-wether it be Hebrew or Greek. Together with Archeological finds this helps scholars relate to the various layers of the poem.
Many folks see the Bible like I saw the Odyssey.  It appeared full blown and finished, all at once.

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #307 on: January 30, 2011, 07:46:26 PM »
Seems to me Jude that I read back some time ago that the linguistic analysis was favored because there was no funding for an Archaeological approach. And that it is only the past 20 years or so that funding has been available for the work to translate the Archaeological finds to these ancient texts plus the additional resources in the case of the Bible to explore and locate more Archaeological material.

Finley, in the small paperback from which I was quoting, suggested that there was more material written on papyrus that disintegrated because the climate in Egypt was such it preserved the writings where as not so in Greece. And so his thesis is that the poems were not just word of mouth - but who knows - until there is more evidence anyone can have a theory.

There is a book about the ancient practice of memorizing but I have gone way over my book budget this month by 3 to 4 times and so It will  have to be for another time. Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity by William V. Harris -   http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674032977/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

I was blown away with what you shared about Boustraphadonically - keep 'em coming - wow...
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #308 on: January 30, 2011, 08:25:43 PM »
boustrophedon: n.

[from a Greek word for turning like an ox while plowing] An ancient method of writing using alternate left-to-right and right-to-left lines. This term is actually philologists' techspeak and typesetters' jargon. Erudite hackers use it for an optimization performed by some computer typesetting software and moving-head printers. The adverbial form ‘boustrophedonically’ is also found (hackers purely love constructions like this).

Note spelling of "boustrophedon".

The only similar example in EnglishI could think of is AMBULANCE (called Mirror Writing) so that the drivers ahead of the ambulance can read what is on the front of the vehicle behind them.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

JoanR

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #309 on: January 30, 2011, 08:26:12 PM »
Ginny - When Fagles says " Sing to me of the man, Muse",... he is asking for a tale to be recalled and recited . The muses were goddesses of poetry, music and song - The Odyssey was originally sung,it is believed.

According to  Harvard's new encyclopedic work, The Classical Tradition (  I got it too, Ginny - love it!)  The muses were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (memory) so it would seem as if whoever was calling on Memory was calling on the Muses' mother. Thus, I really like the use of "Muse" in preference to "memory".     Or am I way off?

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #310 on: January 30, 2011, 09:33:40 PM »
A nice pic of a boustrophedon text.  Back then they didn't separate words, use accents, or lower case.  Would have been hell to translate, at least for me.

www.flickr.com/photos/fillzee/2731230851/

I have sought the photographer's permission.
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

Frybabe

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #311 on: January 30, 2011, 10:33:22 PM »
Leonardo Da Vinci was famous for his mirror writing.

bookad

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #312 on: January 31, 2011, 01:38:01 AM »
I have started reading my copy of 'The Odssey' translation by E.V. Rieu
1946 Penguin edition
I think I am going to need to keep a line drawing of characters to keep all these gods straight in my mind, along with their specialties of Godmanship or whatever one calls it
--it looks intriguing but I must begin a mind-map
-the history courses on ancient Greece look interesting...am only sorry now I didn't really jell with the book on Greece by Will Durant when he was being discussed online......oh well I may just have to go back to that book

Deb
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wildflower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Gumtree

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #313 on: January 31, 2011, 04:04:47 AM »
Roshanarose - Great pic of boustrophedron text - unfortunately its all Greek to me  :D

Oddly enough I can do mirror writing - a childish whim I developed when I should have been studying other things perhaps. I can also write equally with my left and right hand and can write with both simultaneously - in unison or as mirror. A quirk of the brain maybe or signs of misspent youth. - It my adult years I realised it was really rebellion against being made to use my right hand when I was naturally a leftie. I'm sadly out of practice these days.

 
Perhaps by calling on Memory (the mother) in preference to a particular Muse (poetry or song etc) the poet is calling on the source of all the muses so that he may invoke not just one but all the muses - poetry, song, music etc - and bring to bear their individual attributes on his story thus producing a fully dimensional product rather than one composed of only one element eg poetry alone.

 
Reading is an art and the reader an artist. Holbrook Jackson

ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #314 on: January 31, 2011, 10:03:13 AM »
Gracious day, what intelligent  readers we have here!  I love all the excitement, the information shared here (I agree Deb, and I find myself wanting some kind of time-line here also, to get not only the geographic stuff straight but the general dates as well)...

I'm in "awr" of you all, as Tony Soprano used to say. hahaha And what wonderful ideas, Dana, JoanR and Gum, on the puzzle of "Memory."

I thought with so many different thoughts perhaps I should ask Dr. Lombardo himself (he's a great guy) and before doing so I first read the Introduction to his translation by Shelia Murnaghan of the U of Pennsylvania, which talks, among a million other things about Lombardo's "creative solution to one of the most difficult problems of translation, the way in which there is almost never a single word or phrase that captures what is in the original."

I thought that seemed on point and then I stumbled into a long interview about Lombardo's  translation of the Odyssey (those of you who have Lombardo may find this interesting:) http://jacketmagazine.com/21/leddy-lomb-iv.html and then there it was right down at the bottom, I couldn't believe my eyes!  Right from the horse's mouth! (Fagles also has these types of interviews and it interests me that he and Lombardo see the Odyssey as about something different). I think we can all make our own decisions at the end WHAT in fact the Odyssey IS about, something to dream about. :)

But he says:


Quote
Leddy: One last question. Is there a muse of translation, and if so, what is her name?

Lombardo: Mind. The word Muse in Greek means ‘mind’ originally. It’s originally mont, cognate with ment, which comes into Latin. The suffix was a -ya sound, montya, and eventually that came to be Mousa, which I sometimes translate, though not in poetry, as ‘mind-goddess.’ Memory could be another answer. Memory, Mnemosyne, is the mother of the Muses, and memory is the closest word we have in English to ‘mind-goddess.’

Mind is for me the essence of translation. Odysseus has to attain the minds of many people in his wanderings. That’s what Homer has done, and it’s why his characters are so real — he attains the human mind, he attains many human minds. Translation is mind to mind, not dictionary to dictionary. Homer is a mind that I try to attain.

So there it is, and I think I'm pretty impressed with our group here for getting instinctively right to the heart of the thing immediately! I think we can count on the acumen of this group for anything!

Oh  and Jude? Our discoveries will be our own but we can share them with all. Oh I do hope so, that's why we're here. That way we can all be fellow discoverers. Thank you for generously sharing what you've found!  :)

Everyone is welcome! It's clear that this one will be "one for the books." Come with us!


ginny

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #315 on: January 31, 2011, 03:22:26 PM »
I love these lines and in reading them over today I thought they seemed to fit us here and our journey:

 Come, my friends,
    'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
    Push off, and sitting well in order smite
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    Of all the western stars, until I die.
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
    And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
    Though much is taken, much abides; and though
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
    One equal temper of heroic hearts,
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


Ulysses by Alfred,Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)   


Here's the whole thing, full of famous lines:


Alfred,Lord Tennyson : Ulysses

    It little profits that an idle king,
    By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
    Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole
    Unequal laws unto a savage race,
    That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

    I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
    Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
    Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
    That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
    Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
    Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
    For always roaming with a hungry heart
    Much have I seen and known; cities of men
    And manners, climates, councils, governments,
    Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
    And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
    Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
    I am a part of all that I have met;
    Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
    Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
    For ever and for ever when I move.
    How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
    To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
    As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
    Were all too little, and of one to me
    Little remains: but every hour is saved
    From that eternal silence, something more,
    A bringer of new things; and vile it were
    For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
    And this grey spirit yearning in desire
    To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
    Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

       This my son, mine own Telemachus,
    To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle—
    Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
    This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
    A rugged people, and through soft degrees
    Subdue them to the useful and the good.
    Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
    Of common duties, decent not to fail
    In offices of tenderness, and pay
    Meet adoration to my household gods,
    When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

       There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
    There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
    Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought
       with me—
    That ever with a frolic welcome took
    The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
    Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
    Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
    Death closes all: but something ere the end,
    Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
    Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
    The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
    The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
    Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
    'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
    Push off, and sitting well in order smite
    The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
    To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
    Of all the western stars, until I die.
    It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
    It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles4,
    And see the great Achilles5, whom we knew
    Though much is taken, much abides; and though
    We are not now that strength which in old days
    Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
    One equal temper of heroic hearts,
    Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
    To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


Alfred,Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)   1833

roshanarose

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #316 on: January 31, 2011, 08:19:14 PM »
The last five lines of Tennyson seem most appropriate to us.  Thanks for that Ginny.

If any of you are still "musing" about the word muse, there are many derivatives in my Dictionary.  The one I liked was from the word "mouseion" (το μουσείον).  The Mouseion is the temple of the Muses.  We get our word museum from mouseion.  "ou" in Greek is a "oo" sound. No Gwendoline, it is not a mouse house! 
How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?  - Plato

rosemarykaye

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #317 on: February 01, 2011, 02:59:09 AM »
Last night I tried  to buy the Fagles edition on-line using a gift card that my daughter had been given (we exchanged, I didn't just pinch it!),  Website acknowledged that card had £10 credit, book cost £9.74.  After I placed the order I received an email from them "Your credit card has been declined" - aaaaargh.  I hadn't even used a credit card.  Now I don't even know if they've debited the gift card or not.  Have sent them a stroppy email, to which I will no doubt receive no response, and in the meantime still no book.  These things are sent to try us!

Borrowed "Ancient Greece for Dummies" from the library.

Rosemary

BarbStAubrey

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #318 on: February 01, 2011, 06:04:12 AM »
One thing leads to another on the web -

I found several Youtube links showing Greek antiquity held in Greek museums - this is a link to the Youtube video of the New Museum of Pella/Νέο Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Πέλλας The exhibits include finds from the Macedonian and Hellenistic periods excavated in the area of Pella.-

This is the link to a series of 3 Youtube videos from the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion where some of the Cretan Archaeological finds are displayed.

I knew enough from classes taken at the Blanton UT museum of Art that the age of the life size statues of women - [since, I have learned they are called Kouros] can be determined by the drapery of the clothing - the actual draped look came later and the earlier look almost looks like accordion pleats and before that, simple straight with a larger hip area in relationship to the body - next I was trying to date Homer - it appears the Odyssey and the Iliad were written during the time called the Dark Age which extended in Greece between 1200 - 800 BC.

I have not yet matched the Kouros from that period but I am working on it - aha - this information may help
Facts on Ancient Greek Art -

In the meantime I found this wonder that is held at the British Museum. It is a Apotheosis which is a word suggesting the person featured has been given a godlike status. It is a marble relief found in Italy however, sculpted in Egypt around 300BC.

Throned on top Zeus presides over all the characters.  The nine Muses are above Homer on the middle tier.

On the bottom tier Homer is seated to the left side of the alter - On the right of the altar, from left to right, History, Poetry, Tragedy and Comedy, then Nature (Physis), Virtue (Arete), Memory (Mneme), Good Faith (Pistis), Wisdom (Sophia).. .

Here is a close up of the area of the relief with Homer seated and the names of those sculpted around him to the left of the alter...
http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Bios/PtolemyIVPhilopator.html

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” ~ Goethe

Babi

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Re: The Classics Book Club
« Reply #319 on: February 01, 2011, 08:54:05 AM »
 One can see what an enormous amount of sculpting/carving went
into that apotheosis.  One could spend hours studying it in detail. It's beautiful.
"I go to books and to nature as a bee goes to the flower, for a nectar that I can make into my own honey."  John Burroughs