… of life, of literature … & MORE
Posting here today only to note that I have finally completed my rereading and personal reflections on the first volume of The Diary of Virginia Woolf, covering the years from 1915-1919 – and I must say it was an enthralling and intellectually stringent endeavour, that led me off on wide tangents on occasions. Volume Two will now follow; more condensed and at a speedier pace to be hoped.
Before accompanying Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta, I would like to mention a favourite book from a couple of years ago: the terrific memoir by Daniel Mendelsohn entitled An Odyssey – A Father, A Son and an Epic (Alfred K. Knopf, 2017). One could say: “As if everyone doesn’t have one those! Is in the midst of…” An “odyssey” that is. For each and every life is just that of course; however eventful, however modest, but when one is a classicist and estranged from an aged father and the reconciliation comes to be in a university seminar room and aboard an Aegean cruise ship then there is an added impetus.
Written with honesty and warmth, and garnered with some most extraordinarily poignant moments, I devoured Mendelsohn’s book in few sittings so taken was I by the fine prose. And it was not just the filial interactions between Daniel (Telemachus) and Jay (Odysseus) but the cast of “not just supporting” characters – mother, siblings, grandparents, uncles and aunts and “aunties”, cousins, students – making up a tableau of fellowship every bit as Homeric as the modern world allows.
I mention Mendelsohn’s book here because in the chapter titled “Telemachy” (as such are the first four books of The Odyssey referred to) he provides an interesting appraisal of Books 3 and 4 and the significance of the journeys to Pylos and then to Sparta intertwined with interactions in the seminar room and with Mendelsohn family history – enough myth to go around. And in this context, be it in epic or biography, two central concepts are explored. Firstly, nostos (ie. homecoming), in all its breadth of meaning relating to place and person. And secondly, paideusis (education), formally pursued or personal growth in the course of things – “lifelong learning”.
To Pylos and Sparta!
Greeted gracefully by King Nestor and his sons and men, and all finding favour with the gods, Telemachus, encouraged by Athena and growing in confidence, makes his person known and pleads for knowledge of his father’s fate. Nestor tells of the destruction of Troy, of Athena’s wrath, of the death of heroes, of Menelaus and Agamemnon (& Clytemnestra & Aegisthus & Orestes – the whole complicated story of fidelity, betrayal and revenge), and how the gods granted he and his men safe passage, but the fate of Odysseus knows he not. What he does know; is that a wise son should not stay away too long from his father’s land for lurking amongst his mother’s suitors may well be an Aegisthus. Menelaus, Nestor says, may well know more, and when all the rites of hospitality are over, he sends Telemachus on his way to Sparta; honouring him with his son, Pisistratus, as companion.
Arriving amidst an elaborate wedding feast, Telemachus and Pisistratus are granted a warm and gracious welcome; “hospitality” sounds so, well, medicinal, better is the German “gastfreundschaft“, a ‘let’s eat and enjoy and ask questions later’ attitude of acquaintanceship begging to be contrasted with our modern manner which is so often conditional on who, when and why.
Menelaus tells of the trials and tribulations of his journey home, reveals his love of Odysseus, later of his encounter with the sea god Proteus and what he told about Agamemnon and Aegisthus and Odysseus being trapped upon Calypso’s island. Telemachus is identified as the hero’s son by Helen, who uses her potions to hold back the young man’s grief and instead to regale him with tales of his famous father, especially that surrounding the Wooden Horse at Troy. Telemachus hopeful now that his father may well live, makes haste to return to Ithaca.
[631-847] The book ends in Ithaca where the suitors, enraged by Telemachus’ mission to find news of his father, make plans to ambush him upon his return. And, Penelope, initially angered at not being made aware of her son’s journey, is placated, firstly, by the loyal Eurycleia and then by a dream construed by the godly powers of Athena.
Hilary Mantel’s The Mirror & The Light is out today! Welcomed by Wolf Hall fans everywhere, and in London with long queues – though why that should be necessary in this day and age I really wouldn’t know – and with various degrees of mostly ecstatic reviews. Ms. Mantel it seems has survived the hype – alone that, a feat! At almost 900 pages I will need some time, but time that will absolutely be found, and sooner I hope rather than later. I had pondered some time last year returning to the first two of the trilogy in preparation, unfortunately…! Perhaps a browse back is in order, and the hope that knowing we are rid (to put it crudely!) of More and Boleyn and approximately how we got there is enough! Maybe a little more than a browse.
Here is a NY Times review, and also an informative magazine piece on Mantel. Should you have access, The Time Literary Supplement review by Edmund Gordon will surely persuade the unpersuaded.
By the way, Holbein, whose portrait of Th. Cromwell is perhaps the most recognisable reproduction, and whose rising star in the Tudor court was courtesy of the patronage of Cromwell, has again a recurring presence in this final novel of the series and with psychological dimensions beyond the historical or purely narrative; another NY Times review (this time from Thomas Mallon) makes the interesting observation:
“…For all its political and literary plotting, “The Mirror and the Light” is most memorable for its portraiture, with Cromwell acting as our Holbein, challenging us to weigh his interpretive assessments against our enormous accumulated knowledge of his concerns, biases and kinks.”
The New York Times, Book Review, Feb. 25 2020
In plain language for a general audience, Emily Wilson explains the motivation and intent behind her new Odyssey translation. Recorded at the Bucknell Forum in October 2018.
“Economics” as a discipline may ring dry and so,well… economical; that which remains once the human is removed from capital – a once succulent fruit; peeled, shredded, cut to the core. And the practitioners? The stars of any day seem often to be forgot, the theoretical paths taken rarely crossing and the enmity great. I actually do read some here and there, that is, somewhat economically – for instance, Krugman (because he is cranky and often says what I like) and other pieces of NY Times reporting and opinion, and Duflo & Banerjee. The Economist, I rather loathe – but it sometimes comes my way and I attempt to take what I can from stuff written by god knows who (they don’t tell you!), and in a language decipherable to but a few. Fairly regularly I browse the “Wirtschaft” pages of German media; the Suddeutsche Zeitung and sometimes the Frankfurter Allgemeine which is big on business (thankfully, not only) in a big way.
This is all to say, whilst I am not an absolute duffer, economics, and especially the business side, is not my thing. But John Maynard Keynes I do know, and I know him by way of the company he kept, and a piece by Jonathan Kirshner in The New York Times last December reminding of the publication one hundred years before of Keynes’ seminal work written in the aftermath of the Versailles peace conference, brings this back to mind.
…The book, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” turned out to be a phenomenon. It swiftly went through six printings, was translated into a dozen languages, sold over 100,000 copies, and brought world fame to its 36-year-old author, John Maynard Keynes…
…“Economic Consequences” is majestically written — Keynes was close to the iconoclastic Bloomsbury cohort of artists and writers, and his incisive, candid portrayals of the peacemakers (Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson) reflected the no-holds-barred influence of Lytton Strachey’s recently celebrated “Eminent Victorians.” The book was also wildly controversial for its assessments of the capacity of Germany to pay the reparations demanded by the victorious Allied powers…
Opinion, The New York Times, Dec. 7 2019
Without having (yet) read the book, it seems clear Keynes prophesied that which would later be agreed by many in hindsight; the aggravating role the Treaty would play in creating an economic and social environment that would lead, and alone in the interests of satisfying extreme French reparation demands, to very bad places. And they did; a brief period of recovery was followed by political uncertainties, the market crash, a worldwide depression with all the accompanying societal and personal catastrophes, and which would ultimately facilitate the rise of tyranny and fascism in Germany and elsewhere.
I have just been writing a little about Lytton Strachey in my meanderings through Virginia Woolf’s daily life, as recorded by herself, and as it happens I am in the midst of a time (July, 1919) in which Eminent Victorians (various copies available at the Internet Archive) is being lauded as a resounding success, so Kirshner’s observation in respect to this book attracts my attention. Whether this attraction will run to reading either or both only time will tell, but in terms of the preoccupations of this extraordinary group of friends, where the lines are often blurred between (auto)biography and literature, and memoir-writing practiced with fervor as the true repository of truth, that, beyond the situational, theoretical and factual world of politics and finance, Keynes application of colorful brush strokes to his portraits of the movers and shakers of the time would hardly surprise. More determinedly then I now say: yes, two works, both a century old, that should be read.
…to titillate or torment or both, The Guardian today has published an extract from the opening chapter of Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Thomas Cromwell Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light, that is to be published in the UK on March 5 – beginning just as Bring up the Bodies ended with the spectacular execution of Anne Boleyn; in all its grotesqueness and nobility.
A reading by Ben Miles from the audio book is there to! And here is a video clip from the opening scene of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 2014 production of Wolf Hall, with Miles as Cromwell.
In the last week or so, two disparate associations have made me consider just how much European culture (that is, the western Christian version) has invested in commanding the narrative of (their) inherent superiority, and how even today there are some who would seek to reverse or suppress an appreciation and wider representation of cultural diversity. To perpetuate their lineal myopic narrative they return now, as was so during the Enlightenment, to the Mediterranean and Aegean of the classical antiquity.
Firstly, the bizarre Presidential decree, entitled – believe it or not – “Making Federal Buildings Beautiful Again”, that instructs planners and architects to resist the dictates of a zeitgeist determined to be obsessed with diversity and inclusiveness (and presumably any innovative design tendencies of the 20th century), and instead adhere to a traditional architectural form, that is, one inspired by the classical lines favoured in the founding years of the new republic and perfected in the moral wastelands of the antebellum South.
As The New York Times says in an editorial:
…The proposed executive order reflects a broader inclination in some parts of American society to substitute an imagined past for the complexities and possibilities of the present. It embodies a belief that diversity is a problem and uniformity is a virtue. It is advocating for an un-American approach to architecture.
The Editorial Board Feb. 4, 2020
Beyond the retrograde aesthetic that seems to be espoused, I can’t help but ponder that here we have another insidious attempt by the President and his cohorts to undermine a fragile social cohesion, and that along racial lines. One can well imagine how the power and grace of David Adijaye’s wonderful National Museum of African American History and Culture would send them off on a delusory tangent, whereby the Times’ architecture critic Michael Kimmelman writes this wonderful piece offering a more nuanced definition of “classical” – but then “nuance” is not a category applicable in some thought processes.
And a second association arose out of my reflections upon visiting an exhibition in Frankfurt a few days ago. At the Liebieghaus, and entitled “Gods in Color” , displayed were an impressive range of reproductions of antique sculpture reimagined in the colorful splendour of their time.
I was interested in many different aspects, including the historical narrative and cultural significance of the sculptures, the techniques and materials used in their creation and the contemporary techniques used to expose the polychromy. But, prompted by learning (short video clip below) that there had been evidence enough in the 18th century of antique polychromy, contrary to the essentially monochrome narrative inherited from the Middle Ages, and, further, that the preeminent art historian of the time, Johann Joachim Winckelmann (this a Wiki link, better is this from a 2017 exhibition in Weimar, unfortunately only in German), was erroneously seen as a proponent of the marble-white theory (until 2008!), I have been thinking a lot about the enduring public perception of the “whiteness” of antiquity – be it in sculpture, attire…and buildings.
And here I return to the very Trumpian view of the architectural imperative: the State embellishing (better said, white-washing) history and defining the present in the image of this falsely received and often discredited past.
Firstly, Homer, I have now concluded, is meant to be read aloud. Browsing and rereading passages is one thing, but to capture the rhythm and maintain concentration one must, absolutely must, emote! So that is precisely what I am doing in video chunks of a maximum of fifteen minutes – privately I should say. Being unsure sometimes of a correct pronunciation, I have found the comprehensive glossary with pronunciation key at the back of Wilson’s book [pp. 553-577] to be very helpful, and as a last resort a “how to pronounce…” request to Google has an answer every time. And, it is not cheating to refer to the Notes, including summary paragraph! [pp. 527-552]
To also be said, English translations of The Odyssey have named each of the twenty-four sections variously: “Song”, “Rhapsody”, “Scroll”, “Chapter” or, as Emily Wilson like other translators has chosen to do, simply “Book”. Further, she gives each of the books a title, which, if not unique, seems at the very least to be unusual, and I think a really nice touch – adding to the work’s order and accessibility.
This most famous of epic journeys does not begin with an actual journey, nor with the hero, the principal journeyer, rather in medias res at the point in which Athena intervenes, sanctioned by the will of Zeus, upon the woes of her favoured one, Odysseus, to facilitate his homecoming. Under the guise of Mentes and familial friendship, Athena infiltrates the chaotic Ithaca household of Odysseus’ wife Penelope and son Telemachus, overrun as it is by bawdy, avaricious suitors, and with all her wiles and powers of persuasion sets the path Telemachus will follow on a journey of his own – a journey in search of the absent father and in a wider sense a journey to manhood.
But before his journey is to begin, Telemachus must bring his case to the Ithacans – and the suitors. One of the suitors, Antinous, reveals Penelope’s trick of the never finished burial sheet for Laertes – weaving by day and surreptitiously unweaving by night. Zeus sends down swooping eagles, but the prophecy foretold by one is not heeded. Telemachus shows his stuff and faces down the suitor’s taunts, but again it is only with the divine help of Athena that a ship and crew is procured – and the earthly loyalty of his old nurse Eurycleia in keeping his secret safe and gathering together the rations required. Under the guidance of Athena (guised as Mentor), and the winds and seas under her control, the curved ship sets sail.