… of life, of literature … & MORE
… Again, like, HE doesn’t HAVE to, THEY don’t HAVE to. For him, maybe a matter of conscience and good citizen of the world -ship. For her, perhaps too, but it is also her job; which gives authenticity to the project.
The Clooney Foundation for Justice – of celebrity put to better use I am unaware. A whole lot better than the cesspool of US politicking.
During the UK leg of her book tour at the end of last year, Emily Wilson accepted the London Review of Books invitation to present her Iliad translation. And they found a wonderful discussion partner for her in Edith Hall. And complimented by a thespian pair conjured from amongst the embarrassment of riches which is the theatrical talent of a nation – Juliet Stevenson and Tobias Menzies. Stellar, I say! Such an evening could only happen in London.
And, should you ask: And what is that? I do quote:
Established in June 2020, the Thalia Potamianos Annual Lectures Series seeks to create a stimulating environment to draw the academic community and the public to the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Every year, a highly distinguished, internationally renowned scholar is selected to conduct research and develop programs on a topic relevant to the Gennadius Library. The research will culminate in a minimum of three annual public lectures, which will be delivered in Athens and the United States.
This program is being made possible by a generous grant from Gennadius Library Overseer Phokion Potamianos. Mr. Potamianos named the series in memory of his grandmother, a distinguished Greek biochemist, scientist, and philanthropist.
American School of Classical Studies at Athens
And, of particular interest to me, is that the current presenter is Dr. Emily Wilson. As per the schedule below, the first lecture was held in October in Athens, and the next two are in the US next year. (Of course, very timely considering Emily Wilson’s new Iliad translation!)
LECTURE SCHEDULE 2023–2024 Schedule for The Myth, Magic, and Mystery of the Ancient Greeks Lecture I: The Vulnerability of Heroism Tuesday, October 3, 2023 – ATHENS, GREECE 7:00 p.m. EEST (Greece) / 12:00 p.m. EDT (US) Cotsen Hall, Anapiron Polemou 9 Lecture II: Destiny, Tradition, Choice Wednesday, January 24, 2024 – GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY (Washington, DC) 6:00 p.m. EST (US) Gaston Hall, located inside the Healy Hall Building, 37th & O Streets, NW Lecture III: The Wisdom of Stories Wednesday, May 8, 2024 – NEW YORK CITY 6:00 p.m. EDT (US) St. Bartholomew’s Church, 352 Park Avenue (between 50th & 51st Streets)
I embed here a video of the first lecture; and I will so do again with the remaining of the series – and in a more timely fashion.
Update: January 27 – Well, the first lecture has disappeared so herewith the second – though it may also have a limited life!
Update: February 2 2024 – Ditto the above! Time zone disparity didn’t allow for a live watching of the second lecture, and so I belatedly began to look at it a couple of days ago, only to get distracted and now the second lecture is also gone!
Update: May 21 – Gladly managed to watch the final lecture delivered in NYC last week (just in time!). From what I saw at least, these lectures were for a much more learned audience, but even a lay person/aged fan-girl such as I could garner rewards – and especially in this last one which focused on narrative and story-building. The juxtaposition of Pandora (from Hesiod) and Helen (from Homer); the former presented as a passive participant in her own story and the latter speaking in her own voice.
I don’t know why these recordings had such a ‘limited release’; should they return I will embed them again – but I fear not. Schade! I do wonder whether Dr. Wilson is not looking towards publication. I have noticed of late that very many lecture series are ending up in book form. That’s okay … I guess!
From my recent post and having been inspired by the newly (by me) discovered Gertrude Trevelyan and, therefore, as ever, by musings on Woolf, as one who had (probably) inspired her (and in more ways than the room and 500 quid), I had thought to write some more on the Pargiters. But, as I am only right now going about, and rather ponderously at that, re-reading and writing up Woolf’s diary that covers that period immediately following her speech to the National Society for Women’s Service on 21 January 1931 from which The Years (as lived by the Pargiter family) would evolve (and not in the way Woolf had at that time envisaged), I realize now this to be a more complex exercise than I thought; it seems there is a lot to be said on literary method and creative choices, and deserving, therefore, of greater attention. Simply said: this, whilst not exactly relegated to the bucket list, a task to be held in abeyance until I have pulled the very many threads together to do it justice.
…as “threads” with their own “tale to tell” – hanging there like stitches in Time […] so cleverly entwined that they become inherent to the composition; implemented to establish the focus, shift the perspective – visual or temporal …
On which, then, this thread must find an end … but just before finishing up on Trevelyan’s book (and the Trevelyans), it has occurred to me that I didn’t previously emphasize one particular characteristic enough. From the very first page, the novel’s narrative is interspersed by the listing of factual events – some short, some long; from close to home and from far shores; some of historical significance such that they are still familiar but very many now lost in the passing years; and which David Trotter in his essay variously refers to as a “database”, “news crawl”, or as “threads” with their own “tale to tell” – hanging there like stitches in Time. But they are so cleverly entwined that they become inherent to the composition; implemented to establish the focus, shift the perspective – visual or temporal, often reflecting out of or into Katherine’s classroom, or Robert’s lab or bed-sit.
An unusual stylistic choice, and one that could easily date a book; and one that may have contributed to Trevelyan’s novel disappearing into obscurity for so long – others perhaps making the (superficially based) decision that later and contemporary readers would be put off by (or ignorant of) the real world goings on during those between the wars years.
Finally, I end with the admission that I can not think of a book quite like Two Thousand Million Man-Power. (Writing about the same time but on a grander scale, Dos Passos – sorry a gap in my education! – is mentioned as one employing a similar methodology.) Coming to my mind is only a song – albeit, a list song – that tracks the post-war years in the second half of the century, and that has special significance to me (another story!). Radically different, yet with something in common, these two listings of the people and events of different generations – strewn realities to be made palpable, and therefore relatable, only with the sensory overload stimulated by the natural phenomena of noise and fire respectively. Take it away … Mr. Billy Joel!
Today is the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington (for Jobs and Freedom). The extraordinary visuals and atmospherics of that hot summer day, now long ago, in the nation’s capital – the warmth emanating from that place and the crowds that filled it, the affirmation to a faith that had sustained, the richness of words and music reaching its crescendo in the “I have a dream” speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King (Jr.) before the Lincoln Memorial – are the stuff of which legends are made. In the air was hope rather than despair, a promise of better days. A dream for all ages.
What remains all these years on? The sonorous tones of Dr. King and Mahalia Jackson, imbued with the words and music according to any Gospel, soar today as then, but humanity without hope is a humanity not fulfilling its promise, and for many peoples, in all corners of the world, that is the reality. On this day to recognize that that reality still applies to many Black people living in the most powerful nation on the earth can fill one only with anger – and it especially must do so for just those people; for they the descendants in spirit of the multitudes who would have left Washington that day sixty years ago infused with Dr. King’s dreams, his lyrical words ringing in their ears. It is the legacy of each generation to embrace the spirit of that day and, in each, in their own way keep those dreams alive.
That, a lesson in positivity, now …
The year after the march, the Civil Rights Act (1964) was signed into law, but in 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dreams seemed as far from fulfillment as ever, impelling him to deliver the below embedded speech at Stanford University – sometimes titled “The Other America”. Startling, to me, is the extent to which King’s disillusionment has grown in the passing of so few years. No longer does he feel convinced that alone the good will and essential kindness of many will win over the day, rather that the few (or just as many) are embedded so deep in the power structures and institutions of the nation that a more radical approach is demanded. Eloquently he deconstructs the so-called “white backlash”; as if it describes some kind of reasonable reaction to the realignment of society brought about by civil rights and the accompanying activism (and militantism) when it was, in fact, a response triggered by inherent racial animosity.
“I Have a Dream” is beautiful. Tragically, “The Other America” is closer to the reality. A year later on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
As this BBC centenary year draws to a close, the Reith Lectures (inaugurated in 1948 and delivered by Bertrand Russell) remain a last highlight in an extraordinary year in broadcasting. Already recorded at different venues and before an audience, and with the first in the series airing this week on Radio 4, the lectures have in the past been (mostly always?) delivered by one person. This time, however, entitled The Four Freedoms – of Speech, of Worship, from Want and from Fear – the lectures are given by four individuals over four weeks: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Rowan Williams, Darren McGarvey and Fiona Hill. The first two of these I am very well familiar with indeed – Adichie through her wonderful writing and her presence in the public forum and Williams as an Archbishop of Canterbury who may have left office but has not shied from public debate. McGarvey, is a young man who has fleetingly come to my attention in very recent times – not for the rapping (Loki) but for his generous and insightful exploration of the working class experience and poverty in Britain and Fiona Hill burst onto my radar a few years ago when she seriously came to blows with Trump and since has become an oft heard voice of expertise and clarity in respect to the global rise of autocratic and even fascist tendencies, Russian aggression and their war upon the Ukraine, and all the ensuing disruptions in foreign policy.
The contrarian side of my nature must emphatically state the obvious that the idea behind this series is far from original; steeped in 20th century American mythology, inspired as it is by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union speech. Delivered while war was raging in Europe and tensions rising in the Pacific, the speech focused on America’s national security interests and the threats to democracy being posed from within and beyond its borders, and indeed, by years end Pearl Harbor would be attacked and the United States would be at war. However noble Roosevelt’s words, the sentiments expressed remain just that – sentiments preached from the high western perch of possibilities. And the society he was speaking to or, at least, the segment for which he was interested, was another – best represented in Norman Rockwell’s 1943 depictions below in which these “four freedoms” apparently applied only to a very white, ‘conservative’ America. I can’t help wonder just a little that the BBC were unable to find inspiration a little closer to home.
Enough diversion – the four voices to be heard this year will hopefully catapult us into the here and now! First up on Wednesday, and the one I most look forward to, is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaking on Freedom of Speech. In The Guardian today there is a sort of interview and a bit of a taster; also reminding me of her first appearance on the “world stage” so to speak in a TED Talk way back in 2009 (!) – 18 minutes … and 32 million odd views I now see! – that I revisit gladly below.
I mentioned here that Goethe’s Faust will soon no longer be compulsory reading in most of the German secondary curriculums. But these nine minutes – courtesy of Michael Sommer and his Playmobile support cast – should very well be.
Lots of fun! And, more generally, Sommers Weltliterature to go offers an off-beat and creative introduction to some great works of literature – from ancient times to the contemporary. Mostly in German, but so cleverly constructed that even non-speakers should be able to get the gist and, if all else fails, the auto-translate works reasonably well. Potentially, also, an excellent resource for German language learners.
Good grief – what an odd expression; coming, surely, only at the end of a good life. Such is my state of the doldrums. If it’s not enough to confront, and daily, one’s own mortality and those near, there are those more distant who have somehow been there on life’s journey.
The death of two Melbourne girls made good – very good – and only days apart, moves one (such as I) for whom they were omnipresent from childhood through teenage years, then fading into the background as time passed and life got messy – but always sort of there. Essential accompaniments to the sound track of this one life.
Until she came to my mind last year in an unusual context, I hadn’t thought of Judith Durham for a long, long time, and I was initially quite taken aback at how familiar she remained, and the ease with which she transported me back to my childhood – suddenly I was there (in front of the TV) watching The Seekers farewell concert in Melbourne in 1967 – and how thrilled I was to hear her distinctive voice again.
As fate would have it, in a Guardian piece reporting Judith Durham’s death on 5th August, Olivia Newton-John is mentioned as one, after The Seekers played at her Melbourne school, inspired by Durham, and is quoted as once having said: “She was one of the first Aussie girls to make it overseas.” Olivia Newton-John died on 8th August, just three days after Judith Durham.
Not everyone’s music to be sure – too folksy, too poppy, whatever – but, even when not, in and about Melbourne, at different times, everyone’s darlings, both. In retrospect, it is clear that the trajectory of their careers and how that effected their lives says a lot about the demands of the music business and the pitfalls of celebrity. Especially when that celebrity is catapulted outside the provincialism of home-shores and played out in the international arena. For Judith Durham, her relatively modest star shined only for a relatively short time; the end of which she alone determined. For Livvy (everybody in Melbourne called her Livvy), it was a fame, that was greater, lasted longer but took its tribute. Two women, two talented artists – both driven and confined by the dictates and the expectations of an industry, both visited by serious illness, but nevertheless bravely making the (very different) decisions that each could live with. Until they couldn’t anymore.
Following are a pair of videos as tribute. Chosen at random from You Tube, they are sentimental for sure, some would say overly so, but they are songs I remember vividly. Firstly, coming to my notice because it was embedded in The New York Times obituary and is wonderfully remastered, is a video from The Seekers’ 1965 hit “I’ll Never Find Another You” and, secondly, and it’s harder to find free stuff for Olivia, this (available for the moment at least) 1978 performance in Amsterdam of “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from the mega-film Grease released that year, in which she starred with John Travolta – and which, as I remember it, made her a superstar.
In both songs, You sing of some idealized other You. By the many who, in one way or another, grew up with You both, You are remembered. Not just because You were so exceptional, but rather because, during those heady days of youth when everything or nothing seemed possible, we could imagine – with just a little bit of good fortune – being just a little bit like You.