Classical Diversions – Page 4

A classic black out

An op-ed piece …oh! excuse me – a “guest essay”… in today’s NYT alerted me to the demise of the classics department at the renowned Howard University. Two senior academics from the university defend the decision to scrap the department against criticism from without and within; the crux of their argument falling along financial grounds but also with the assurance of Howard’s continued commitment to the humanistic tradition through other departments – English, philosophy and history – and interdisciplinary paths. And, pointedly, that a H.B.C.U. does not have the luxury of NOT having to constantly review their academic programs and their viability (read: Endowment!) This, a jab in direction of what they believe to be unreflected criticism from elite sectors and the “ivory tower”.

As Howard is the only H.B.C.U. to have a classics department, its pending loss is more than unfortunate; my flitting around (digitally speaking) in the last year or so led me to believe there to be a growing interest and presence amongst minorities and women. I recall thinking that the success of some of the books being published and movies being made, suggested a renewed attraction amongst young people to mythologies and the ancient world and the stories they had to tell, and how they may be interpreted for the contemporary world. (I guess, if not zealous college recruitment, then the spectre of student loan repayments might in the end convince that computer science or bio-tech subjects are more prudent options!) On the other hand, after four years of Trump and more than a year of Covid, it is clear that the humanities have suffered the most in attracting funding, and at Howard it may be classics that loses out but elsewhere I dare say some other program.

Related, I think, are the rising tensions and the potential for conflict in classics institutes and in academic scholarship; a lot of which has to do with politics (hijacking by the right), gender (feminist or non-gendered renderings) and race.

On the latter, this is a particularly enlightening piece by Rachel Poser in The New York Times Magazine earlier this year; ostensibly about the young Princeton academic, Dan-el Padilla Peralta, and his experience as a Black student and scholar in classics. (In this respect, his opinion on the Howard decision and the future of university classics departments in general would not be uninteresting.) But Poser’s piece, beyond the personal Padilla narrative, explores the place of classics at the foundation of Western Civilisation, and what that means for the institutionalisation of ideas of race and the supremacy of Western thought in universities. Padilla says that means inherent racism and a myopic world view. I hope that is not true. Regrettably, Howard could have had an interesting role to play in a process of renewal – in making the Classics fit not just for this century but also the next.

The Bacchae

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Euripides’ “The Bacchae” in the March 18th 2021 episode of “In Our Time”.

Listened to this week, and with (Dionysian!) pleasure: Melvyn Bragg’s BBC Radio 4 program “In Our Time”, and his conversation about Euripides’ tragedy The Bacchae with Emily Wilson, Edith Hall and Rosie Wyles.

Mention of Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History from 1992, led to some moments of reflection. A few years ago after reading The Gold Finch, and remembering the hype surrounding the publication of Tartt’s first book (I guess it became a bestseller), I read The Secret History, and whilst I would have recommended it as a good enough read, I recall my expectations for literary fiction were not really fulfilled. (By the way, similarly so, my opinion of The Gold Finch.) A likeable enough but vacillating narrator and his capricious bunch of classics cohorts at an elite college, certainly sucked one into their vortex of deceits, large and small, but I had the feeling at the end of having been chewed up and spat out – unsatisfied, left cold. That the story’s murder and mayhem was created in the pursuit of Dionysian pleasure and dabbling in bacchanalian ritual, I had all but forgotten; rather, what stayed with me was the disturbing ease in which the accoutrements of privilege could be weaponised by an amoral didactic, catapulting young lives into the abyss (in the novel: both in a real sense and an allegorical).

But back to Bragg’s program…On the website there is further information – both concerning the subject matter and the guests. The text can be found here at Perseus; not as easy reading as the above discussion is to listen to, but the theatre of life rarely is – the truth being in the performance, and the borders of pleasure and tragedy fluid.

To set the stage, so to say, and to understand the context of Ancient Greek performance, I recommend Edith Hall’s Gresham Lectures of 2018, of which the following video is part.

In tragic times

Further to the previous post, since earlier this year, CHS and their associated Kosmos Society has also, in conjunction with the UK’s Out of Chaos theatre collective, been presenting creative theatrical readings of many Greek tragedies. A marvellous initiative – and also available on YouTube.

Reading and discussion of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (translation by Oliver Taplin)

Above, as an example, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, which I note uses the Oliver Taplin translation that Emily Wilson spoke of here. And, Mr. Taplin is in fact a guest (approx. 22:00), and has some interesting things to say about translation and performance – in general and in respect to the Oresteia in particular.

And, while we’re with Agamemnon, here a wonderful and free (iBook, ePub) learning resource at APGRD – created by another participant in the above, Fiona Macintosh (et.al.), and in which Mr. Taplin also has a role.

Round the world in 24 hours

A reading of the Odyssey is of course never over; for me, after a concentrated yearlong effort, it is at the moment in abeyance, but surely to be returned to. For many others, their journey may just be beginning, and this recent project from Harvard’s Centre for Hellenic Studies could be an interesting starting point.

24 hour reading of the 24 books of “The Odyssey” – performed December 8-9 2020

Here is the complete YouTube play list.

When new translations sound old

In the LRB Conversations podcast series, Emily Wilson discusses her recent piece in the London Review of Books (8 October 2020) (restricted access) on three (relatively) new translations of Aeschylus’ The Oresteia. One would have to say, mixed reviews; Wilson of the opinion that all fail to adequately reflect newer scholarship in respect to the state of democracy and justice in fifth-century Athens, and how that is reflected in the language of tragedy and specifically that of Aeschylus. She concludes the Oliver Taplin translation to be much the better of the three (though his introduction disappoints), and she recommends also that of Sarah Ruden (in The Greek Plays: Sixteen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, 2017 Modern Library Classics).

Aeschylus’ Ghosts
Emily Wilson and Thomas Jones

Emphasised is the misunderstanding of the breadth of the feted Athenian model of state – a “democracy” that applied in fact only to a very limited constituency and only a handful removed from an oligarchy, and where a majority of the populous had absolutely nothing to say. In this regard, there are through the ages analogies aplenty – countries who adopt “Democratic” to their name and are quite obviously not is one example – but I specifically thought about the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States in which that insinuated by “men” and “people” abounded with obvious exceptions – gender, race – until the last half of the 20th century, and less obviously – through disenfranchisement – still.

My thoughts flying to the young America, are echoed in the turn of conversation to the performative aspects of Greek tragedy, whereupon it is suggested that “Hamilton”, with its use of music and dance (and I would say the “state” folklore it serves) is perhaps the best modern analogue to classical Greek drama. In retrospect, I often wonder whether Athenian statecraft and European puritanism may have always been an imperfect mix upon which to build the foundations of a new nation.

More than once, the difficulty factor of Aeschylus is stipulated to be at the higher end – though in the course of the trilogy it moderates. Should one be deterred or accept the gauntlet handed down?

An interesting afterword: Emily Wilson, referring to her translation of The Odyssey, reveals a little of her criteria for (re-) translation (one of the reasons behind her criticisms of the above): first comes the request (in her case from an editor at Norton, with whom she had previously worked), but then a careful deliberation as to whether it is warranted, and what new stuff, if any, there is to brought to the fore, and her decision being further informed by her experience as a teacher of college students in the US. And, particularly she was convinced of the need for a new translation that returned to the metrical and syntactical rhythm of the ancient text, after years of versions rendered in prose form. Further, she recognised the opportunity to present a work that moved away from a purely Odysseus centred telling and gave the story in many voices, as multi-faceted, if you like, as the hero himself.

And, an after, afterword: Emily Wilson mentions at the very end of the podcast, that her Iliad translation will include Book 10 which, unbeknownst to me (well, who would have thunk it!), has been a matter of controversy over the years; the essence of the argument being that this book was a later addition and to be, therefore, discarded by the purist. The Stephen Mitchell translation, that does just that and to which Wilson refers, was reviewed at The New Yorker in 2011 by Daniel Mendelsohn.

A pig in a poke

In a blog entry for the LRB in 2018, Emily Wilson gave a lesson in reportage gone awry – lost in translation or just plain misunderstood. Whichever, the claims circulating in the media at the time that a clay tablet discovered near Olympia, with lines from Book 14 of the Odyssey, was perhaps the oldest extract from the epic, were way off-base – for all the reasons she explains in her entry.

For my purposes, I mention this in passing only because of where I am at the moment in my epic reading, and Emily Wilson’s comments in respect to the nature of the inscription. Following is some of the passage on the tablet, and in her own translation:

His yard was high and visible for miles,
of fieldstones topped with twigs of thorny pear.
He built it in the absence of his master,
with no help from Laertes or the mistress.
Around the yard, he set a ring of stakes,
of wood with bark stripped off. Inside the yard,
he made twelve sties all next to one another, 
...

Book 14 [lines 8-14] The Odyssey, trans. Emily Wilson

Of course, we have here the beginning of Book 14, and Odysseus, in the beggar’s guise created for him by Athena, is approaching the humble yard of the swineherd, Eumaeus. It is this descriptive passage that leads Wilson to wonder at the purpose of the artefact – the subject matter is hardly the most profound; perhaps its origins were of a more mundane or utilitarian nature than cultural.

Not exactly a pig in a poke, but close. Just as it is wise to check your purchases, so it is to double check sources of information. Emily Wilson ends on a positive note anyway:

The bright side to this inaccurately reported story is that it reveals a hunger among the general public for news about the ancient world. […] Maybe this fake news story will inspire more people to investigate the ancient world for themselves, and also to realise that the stories told about the Odyssey are – like the poem’s wily, scheming, deceitful protagonist himself – not always to be taken at face value.
LRB Blog, 14 JULY 2018, “Making a Pigsty” by Emily Wilson

Look who else is reading “The Odyssey”!

Emily’s Odyssey readings for the young (and young in spirit!)

While hopefully not neglecting working on her awaited Iliad translation, Emily Wilson has been using some of her time with a little playful emoting from The Odyssey – perhaps directed towards a younger audience than I, but a lot of fun anyway. The clip below is from Book 1, and short readings from each book are on her YouTube channel, and here is an overview on Emily’s website. Maybe I can get some pronunciation and elocution tips! I have been making my own recordings (as an incentive to read aloud!) but more often than not fall afoul when it comes to the pronunciation of people and places.

Emily Wilson reads a section from her translation of The Odyssey, Book 1.

And this news of a further lorbeer for Emily. May she not rest on her laurels.

An old pupil writes…

Reading and writing a little in my continuous Virginia Woolf project (s), this 1920 diary entry had me looking about for more information on the classicist Janet Case, and led me to an academic journal article from 1982 which I liked so much that I include the JSTOR link here. (Alley, Henry M. “A Rediscovered Eulogy: Virginia Woolf’s ‘Miss Janet Case: Classical Scholar and Teacher.’” Twentieth Century Literature, vol. 28, no. 3, 1982, pp. 290–301. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/441180. Accessed 23 May 2020.) Henry M. Alley’s piece written following the discovery of Woolf’s 1937 eulogy, says multitudes about both women; the conflicts between generations, the choices made, the hurdles surmounted and sometimes not.

Miss J.E. Case as Athena
in *Aeschylus’ Eumenides* (Cambridge 1885)

An anomaly, by virtue of her sex, at Cambridge at the end of the 19th century, the extraordinary young classics scholar, found her way into The Cambridge Greek Play (mentioned by Woolf in her eulogy), and that I can’t help but notice was first presented in 1882, the year of Virginia Woolf’s birth. And, one doesn’t have to go back to the Antique or Renaissance for evidence of the possessive hand men still held upon theatre and the classics, for her appearance seems to have been an exception – or at least a misunderstanding!

…in the Eumenides of 1885, the part of Athena was played by a woman, Miss J.E. Case, who had made her mark as Electra in an enterprising production of Sophocles’ play a the new Girton College in November 1883 […] despite her acclaimed success no woman featured again until 1950 …
The History of the Cambridge Greek Play

Janet Elizabeth Case became Virginia Woolf’s (or more precisely Virginia Stephen’s) Greek tutor in 1902, and over time her role evolved beyond that of intellectual mentor and into one as confidante and friend. Case entered the young Virginia’s life at a chaotic time; when her mental state was fragile, and into a dysfunctional familial and domestic situation, fraught by grief and power struggles. Obviously Case’s learnedness and intellectual rigour would have impressed, and her lessons would have offered some structure and discipline to her pupil’s often tortured days, but she may also have exemplified for Virginia an alternative life model of what a woman could be – a notion that was taking form in the stifling atmosphere of her Father’s house, and which was to become an essential component of her work and how she lived her life.

As the years passed, the relationship between the two women became complicated variously by age, tradition, expectation and circumstance, but in The London Times 22 July 1937 obituary (reprinted at the end of Alley’s article), the respectful tribute Woolf pens to her old tutor and friend, could be no finer, no more generous in spirit. For the older Woolf had long ceased craving the approval of her old teacher (or just about anyone else for that matter!), was confident enough in her fame and the literary route chosen, and was no longer tormented by petty irritations and jealousies. And she knew then what the younger had not, of the burden of intractability brought on simply by the years lived – of being ‘set in one’s ways’ – for they now were upon her. What remained for Woolf were the ideas sown and lessons learnt long ago, that were essential to the writer she became – and an appreciation for their giver. So, then, was the profound personal loss she felt for Miss Janet Case – the tutor who showed her the way to the Greeks – and without the grammar!