Fall 2006 LA C-14 Nov - Jan Exchanges

This page shares e-mailed questions, conversations — exchanges — bewteen students and Professor Nagy and the TFs on topics related to class Dialogues. The e-mails are edited for format onl.

On Jan 8 Kevin McGrath wrote in response to comments from Lekha Tummalapalli:

Dear Lekha,

Greg forwarded me yr astute observations on the alignments between MBh. and the Iliad. I see Karna as being akin to Achilles in his heroic make-up. Also, the poem begins with Ugrasravas, not Samjaya - he begins the Gita - who has heard the epic from Vaisampayana. Yre right to note that S. 'sees' the song which he performs. The other two poets 'hear' the poem from other poets. I find this distinction in the nature of the epic poetry fascinating: perhaps there is a diachronic implication at work here, as well as a relevant quality about poetic knowledge and its source.

With best wishes, from,
Kevin.

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Kevin and hi to Lekha and all

I totally agree with you that there is something very significant about the distinction between *seeing* and *hearing* the song. There is such a distinction between Stesichorus as a master of lyric (who is blinded by Helen but whose sight is restored after he recants what he sang about her) and Homer as a master of epic (who is likewise blinded by Helen but whose sight is never restored because he never recants). I have a write-up of this distinction in ch. 14 of Pindar's Homer. May we ask Mark to post this exchange on the Heroes website?

Gratefully,
Greg

On December 28 Lekha Rani Tummalapalli wrote:

Dear Professor Nagy,

Hi! I’m writing with a question I’ve wanted to ask. Recently, I was thinking about the participation of women in theater, and I thought it was odd how in very different times and cultural settings it was similarly thought that women should not perform onstage—for instance, consider traditional kabuki theater in Japan and theater in London during the English Renaissance. In lecture, you mentioned when discussing “Hippolytus” that the “female” voices of the chorus were in fact performed by men, though you wrote in your “Notes on Athenian Tragedy” that women sometimes performed as chorus-members as well. I was wondering how common female participation was in Greek tragedy; was it limited to a particular time period within the history of Greek theater, or did it just happen at random points in that history, on the whim of tragedians? Also, I was hoping to hear your opinion on why female participation in theater might have struck so many different societies in different time periods as “improper”. Thanks for your time, and I hope you are having a good winter break!

Best wishes for the New Year,
-Graciela Carrasco

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Graciela,

What an important question! I'm so glad you asked it. My sense is the best approach is an anthropological one. I will dig around a bit to find some good reading for you. In the meantime, I also cc the Heroes TFs, who will be as engaged as I am with this topic.

Warm regards and best wishes for the Holidays,
GN

p.s.: B.t.w., I didn't mean to imply that women actually acted in Athenian State Theater. Only in choral evens as in Alcman's Partheneion. But I do think they could attend performances at the Athenian State Theater. Others are more dubious, and the jury is still out on that question.

On December 27 Lekha Rani Tummalapalli wrote:

Hey Stephanie,

I was reading the Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu text, yesterday, and thought it was interesting that it opened in a very similar way to the Iliad, with an invocation of Sanjaya, a mortal endowed with vision of all things in the past, present, and future. The epic begins, "Sanjaya, tell me what my sons and the sons of Pandu did when they met, waiting to battle on the field of Kuru, on the field of sacred duty?" I thought that this was very similar to Homer's invocation of the Muses, as the story is being told by another mortal, Dhritarashtra (who is blind incidentally), but is able to *hear *an account of the battle from Sanjaya through a boon that he was granted.

I also thought it was interesting that Sanjaya, a mortal but also a bard and one who "...shall see all the events of the battle directly. He shall have a divine inner eye...," was used instead of a nonmortal as the Muses are, such as one of the many all-seeing gods. But it is interesting that he is blessed with a *divine* eye.

Anyway, just an observation I wanted to share. Hope you're enjoying your break!

Best,
Lekha Tummalapalli

Stephanie Ann Frampton replied:

Thanks so much for these lovely observations - thanks for pointing out these
striking silimilarities. You see so clearly how interrelated these traditions are. I'm forwarding this on to Prof. Nagy, who I know will appreciate your remarks as well.

Happy holidays to you, too,
Stephanie

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Lekha and hi to Stephanie and to other TF colleagues, I was very taken with your acute observation. The beautiful thing is, the traditions of the Mahâbhârata (including the Bhâgavad-Gîta) and the Râmâyana are actually *cognate* with Greek epic and lyric traditions. You might be interested in reading a wonderful book that incorporates a comparative perspective: it's by my friend Kevin McGrath, and it is called The Sanskrit Hero. It's all about the hero Karna in the Mahâbhârata. Kevin is my fellow teacher in a "night" version of the Heroes Course, administered by the Division of Continuing Education. I'm cc-ing Kevin as well as the "day" Heroes colleagues.

I'm also cc-ing our Heroes webmaster, Mark Tomasko, in hopes that you will give permission for Mark to post this three-way exchange of ours on the Heroes Website.

Warm regards,
GN

Lekha Rani Tummalapalli then replied:

Dear Professor Nagy,

I was first struck by the numerous similarities between Indic and Greek epic and lyric when you talked about Arjuna and Achilles in The Epic Hero. I believe you also mentioned that Arjuna is worshiped in festivals similar to the cult hero rituals that we have talked about.

I would definitely enjoy reading The Sanskrit Hero. I have never read the Mahabharata, so I might be wrong on this, but there might be a parallel between Karna, who fought on the Kaurava side, and Hector fighting on the Trojan side. They are both considered great heroes, arguably the best hero figures in their epics, but they fight on the losing side, their death even more tragic in its inevitability.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. This can certainly be put on the website.

Enjoy your holidays.

Best,
Lekha Tummalapalli

On Dec 15 Anna Bonifazi wrote:

Dear Greg and hi to all,

Here are a few notes on the verbal text of the songs. Of course, please feel free to edit and to add or drop whatever you want. I have put into square brackets some major correspondences between text and music, in the case the website will include a CD record of these songs (there are many masterful recordings of all of them).

The Silver Swan: An outstanding feature of this very famous madrigal (it seems that Gibbons is the author also of the text) is that the self-referentiality of singing about a song is masterfully shown 'on the spot' by the direct quotation of the swans' words "Farewell o joys...": thus, we have a song about the story of a swan song that includes the swan song itself. "More geese than swans, more fools than wise": this theme reminds us of the Socratic "but few are the bakkhoi" with reference to the wisest philosophers.

Me me and none but me: the imagery concerning the dove connects to other doves included in the video material of the dialogues (for example, the end of Blade Runner; the last dream of Kurosawa). [The idea of flying above is underscored by the upward direction of the tune under these words]. Also in Dowland's text, death ("gentle death") is something to long for and to invoke in the most passionate of the pleas (note the triadic climax "me, me, and none but me" [reinforced by what the four voices all do, which is to sing the same note]). "He never happy lived, that cannot love to die": the double negation emphasizes what should be living happy, but the line is so well constructed that living happy is equated to die, and, most of all, loving till the end of life becomes loving death itself, "love to die".

Il bianco e dolce cigno: this variation of the swan song contrasts the swan that dies without any consolation with the singing 'I' who dies happy and blessed, and the wished multiplication of deaths [which results also in the multiplication of the underlying melodic pattern "di mille mort’il dì" performed several times ad imitationem by all the four voices] presumably refers, in a euphemistic way, to an utmost pleasant experience of the senses. Please note the eschatological hint behind the double meaning of "fin(e)", “end”, which also in Italian can be understood both as "conclusion" and as "goal". Finally, "beato" in Italian is the perfect semantic correspondent of ancient Greek "olbios". ["beato" is a most relevant word also according to the unique melodic flourish that accompanies the central vowel "a" of "beato" in the main melody].

Generally speaking, all the three songs were extremely famous already at the time of their composition, and they were performed over and over, in any kind of musical variation. A curious detail about a British quirk we learned from a British friend of ours: from the twelfth century to nowadays, any mute swan of any British park is considered to belong to the Queen.

All best,
Anna

On Dec 12 Anna Bonifazi wrote:

Dear Greg and hi to all,

Just for fun, I am pasting here the texts of three Renaissance beautiful songs related to swans, which Tommaso and I sung so many times in the past (in our Italian a cappella vocal ensemble, called 'Gaudeamus'). All of them are masterfully self-referential (as songs about the power of singing and on the immortality of music, as for Schubert's lied), and, according to the Renaissance euphemistic style, they deal with more meanings of death (as an extreme experience for the senses, so to say; cf. especially the second and the third one). By the way, the dove imagery is included as well (cf. n. 2).

I can tell you that the music of all of them is most solar and sweet.

1. The Silver Swan (madrigal), by Orlando Gibbons (English composer; 1583-1625)

The silver swan, who living had no note,
When death approach'd, unlock'd her silent throat;
Leaning her breast against the reedy shore,
Thus sung her first and last, and sung no more.
Farewell, all joys; O Death, come close mine eyes;
More geese than swans now live, more fools than wise.

2. Me, me and none but me (from the first book of songs, 1603), by John Dowland (Irish - English composer, 1563-1626)

I. Me me and none but me, dart home o gentle death
and quickly for I draw too long this idle breath:
O how I long till I may fly to heaven above,
unto my faithful, unto my faithful and beloved turtle dove.

II. Like to the silver swan, before my death I sing:
and yet alive my fatal knell I help to ring.
Still I desire from earth and earthly joys to fly,
He never happy liv'd, he never happy liv'd, that cannot love to die.

3. Il bianco e dolce cigno (madrigal), by Jacob Arcadelt (Belgian composer, 1500-1568)

Il bianco e dolce cigno cantando more
ed io piangendo giung' al fin del viver mio,
ed io piangendo giung' al fin del viver mio.
Stran' e diversa sorte, ch'ei more sconsolato e io moro beato.
Morte che nel morire
mi empie di gioia tutto e di desire.
Se nel morir altro dolor non sento,
di mille volte il di' morir sarei contento.

(I am pasting here the ChoralWiki translation, which is not bad:

The white and sweet swan dies singing,
and I, weeping, reach the end [anna: but 'fine' in Italian is also 'goal'] of my life.
Strange and different fate, that he dies disconsolate
and I die blessed,
which in dying fills me full of joy and desire.
If in dying, were I to feel no other pain,
I would be content to die a thousand deaths a day.)

Gratefully as ever,
Anna

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear wonderful Anna,

what treasures! Would you authorize Mark T. to publish this on our Heroes website?

Gratefully,
Greg

p.s.: would there be any that you and Tommaso could perform for the whole class tomorrow?

On Nov 8 Ching Zhu wrote:

Dear Professor Nagy,

I'm in your Greek Heroes class, and I just wanted to thank you for showing us Kurosawa's Dreams; I really enjoyed the film and the class as a whole. As such, the weather today got me thinking about Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude (one of my favorite pieces), which was played in the segment "Crows" in Dreams. I've been wondering why Kurosawa decided to use this as the music for the Van Gogh segment; it seemed like such a sharp contrast from the other episodes, which were relatively silent in terms of non-diegetic music. It's an issue that's been pestering me for quite some time now, and today, when I was at the piano, it struck me that the ostinato (repeating notes in an unchanging rhythm) in the bass of the Chopin Prelude in question, which earned the piece its nickname "Raindrop", are really "mutant" raindrops in the same way that Van Gogh's paintings show "mutant" flowers, as you mentioned. I suppose it follows, then, that Chopin and Van Gogh are really the same person in this dream of Kurosawa's; they merely paint with different media.

Anyway, I was curious to hear your thoughts on this topic, and I was wondering if you knew whether Kurosawa was aware of this when selecting the music for the film. Thank you again for a fascinating experience. I look forward to next week's dialogues.

Cheers,
Ching

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Ching and hi to the Heroes teaching team,

I find your comments very perceptive and engaging. I too have long admired Chopin's "Raindrop" Prelude. And I find that it fits well into Dream 5 of "Kurosawa's Dreams." And I think that your point about the ostinato in the bass of the Chopin Prelude is right on the mark. I would add that the ostinato adds a *driving force* to the hurried "journey of a soul" as painted by Van Gogh and imitated by Kurosawa's sequencing of images. When I say "driving force" I think of the metaphor of the locomotive. The montage of the film juxtaposes that metaphor with the moment when Van Gogh - as played by the similarly driven Martin Scorsese - expresses his need to "move on."

On another note. I like your question: what exactly inspired Kurosawa to use the Chopin piece? I don't have the answer.
I am hoping that you will allow our Heroes team to publish this exchange of ours on the Heroes website. In fact, I would also like to include it in the "clips" section of the Media Resources page, if Mark (or webmaster) thinks that this is possible.

Warm regards,
GN

Anna replied:

Dear Greg, Dear Ching,

I would like to share with you what I thought as I watched the movie and I immediately recognized the Chopin's prelude accompanying Dream 5 as well. Many years ago I played that prelude, and I know very well its structure. I like very much the idea of a driving force, especially because of the internal development and transformation of the ostinato between section A ('light' ostinato by the left hand, in the bass) and section B ('heavy' ostinato - with the octave - by the right hand). I would add that another possible link between Van Gogh and that prelude is the idea of obsession. One of my piano teachers was used to say that the music of romanticist composers is most obsessive, and I find this is true.
I am terribly sorry that I have to interrupt this message now; I have an appointment.
If I may, I would like to continue after 2:30, when I come back.

More soon,
Anna

Anna added:

Dear Greg and Ching (and hi all),

I am back, now.

I was saying that obsession could be a link (the centrality of obsession in Van Gogh is well known). Actually, what I found striking is Kurosawa's cut-and-paste of Chopin's piece: only some 'chunks' are played (and more times than in the real version), whereas the entire last section is missing. The actual structure of the prelude is a classical A-B-A: section A (the sweet and clear part with the 'light' ostinato) - section B (the 'tragic' and 'dark' part with the 'heavy' ostinato and the sad melody in the bass) - section A again (the sweet and clear part with the 'light' ostinato). Dropping the final clear part has the purpose, I guess, of emphasizing the dark side of the vision of crows (and, of course, it changes the sense of the musical piece).

Back to obsession: the deep existential feelings behind Chopin's prelude go much beyond what the nickname "Raindrop" suggests. In fact, what generally speaking is not so much known is that every label-nickname to Chopin' pieces has been put after Chopin's death. He actually would have *never accepted any nickname, especially for those preludes, which he deliberately simply numbered without putting any title at all. Chopin (as every other genial artist) was actually much more 'modern' than his contemporaries were thinking: his pieces are much more abstract, more double-face and more deeply unquiet than any misleading nickname would convey. So, to conclude: Kurosawa arguably had in mind Chopin's prelude op. 28 n. 15, not Chopin's "Raindrop"; he had in mind non-diegetic music also for Dream 5.

All best,
Anna

Ching replied:

Dear Professor Nagy and Anna,

Thank you so much for your comments. They really clarified for me the meaning of the dream and of the Chopin prelude. I really like the idea of the music as representative of the obsession that links Chopin and Scorsese and as a driving force. I also feel that the piece has the effect of engulfing and drawing the viewer into the dream, as the dreamer was drawn into Van Gogh's painting. The ostinato, especially in the heavier and darker middle section, has an almost hypnotic and enveloping quality that reminds me of the prickling sensation when one's leg falls asleep - it definitely raised the hair on the back of my neck as I was watching the film. So, kudos to Kurosawa for his choice of music and to you both for an engaging discussion!

Thanks again,
Ching

November 7: A student’s e-mail (excerpted below) and discussions in Stephanie's sections led to the following exchange:

Hi Stephanie and Prof. Nagy,

Section today really brought to a head something I've been thinking about for a while: the origins of myths and cults, as discussed in the class, and the framework through which we might analyze them comparatively.

Specifically, in "The Epic Hero," the types of variation (and thus our comparative methodologies) are parsed into: 1) Typological, 2) Genealogical, & 3) Historical… In biological terms, the methodologies as represented can be couched in distinct evolutionary interpretative mechanisms: 1., typological distinction, finds its parallel in theories of convergent evolution. 2., genealogical distinction, is paralleled in vicariance, in which a mother species A has its range split by a geological event, say, thereby allowing for divergent evolution of species B and C. 3., historical distinction, is thus loosely given to dispersal events, in which movement is less geological and more ecological, incumbent on the idea of niche filling…

Some students struggled with why [point A] couldn't be interpreted as a "real event," as in the case of flood narratives, in which A might represent the physical flood itself, from which myths of causality B and C arose…

- Henry Cowles
………………………………………………………………………………………………

The TFs and Professor Nagy replied:

Dear all,

It seems that the main question is why do we study myths and not the "real
events" behind them. But isn't it the nature of our field, philology/
linguistics, which is the study of language and therefore necessarily the
study of stories and not of events?

I would also like to add that I find the evolutionary model in its
extended version - as described by Henry – to be highly applicable to the
study of myth. There are:

- unrelated myths arising in similar societies (our "typological
comparisons"). We can compare this phenomenon to the existence of similar
ways of coping with the environment in unrelated species.

- myths which originally were created by one social group, which
then split into parts and started to develop separately in far removed
localities (for example, Greek, Celtic and Indian traditions, all having
a common ancestor). We can compare this to a species whose range was split
by a geological event allowing for new divergent species to emerge.

- different variants of the same myth in one society (reflecting
social differences, for example). This can be compared to "niche filling,"
a process in which subparts of one species living in different ecological
habitats start to diverge.

- Natasha Bershadsky
…………………………………………………………………………………………........
Hi All,

This point is interesting. It seems several avenues of approach are possible: certainly one could adopt a Jungian idea where we could then suggest some archetype behind everything. But, with Natasha, I think it should be stressed that we cannot get at the "real" events, that is, we cannot with any certainty know about a Flood as event, although we can look at other correspondences and suggest whether a common Flood story, etc., occurred.

Best,
Janling Fu
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Hi all,

I would suggest – for fun – looking at some secondary literature. After all, it has been quite a while that philosophers, anthropologists, linguists and other intellectuals have been reflecting on the relationship between real events and myths... Lévi Strauss? Whorf? Freud? Jung? Kerenyi?

Best,
Anna Bonifazi
………………………………………………………………………………………………
What wonderful colleagues I have! Thanks so much for your input.

I think these questions hinge on two key issues, so my comments are in two parts:

1.
The content of the section which spurred this was a review of the three models of comparison from the first pages of 'Epic Hero.' (I thought the model of typological comparison might help students think through Kurosawa's Dreams and why we're watching it.) This sparked a lively conversation in which the students themselves came up with several pertinent comparisons, including:

Lion King and Hamlet
Odysseus and St. Elias

The question Henry seems to be returning to is "Why is the relationship between
Hamlet and the Lion King not genealogical and why is the relationship between Odysseus and St. Elias not historical?"

My response is that these comparative models are not mutually exclusive, that there may be overlaps. Because establishing genealogical and historical relationships comes from real-world evidence (which our non-specialist undergrads can’t be responsible for) and fall under the purview of academic debate and specialist research, we are not asking the students to make either historical or genealogical connections in this course. Typological parallels, on the other hand, are exactly what we want them to be noticing!

Although I offer, as examples, Freud and Campbell as ways of thinking about universal genealogies, I also voiced my own concern about the efficacy of using such universal generalizations without proper contextualization/evidence.

2.

As Natasha said, the other major issue here is that we study literature and not events (real or otherwise). One problem with the formulation offered above is to make "point A" an event and "B" a story and to call the movement from the one to the other a "genealogy." This is just not how "genealogical" is being used in this context.

Any more ideas?

Thanks so much for you thoughts.

Yours, Stephanie
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Hello everyone,

I would like to pick up where Stephanie leaves off and talk a little about history. There is a wonderful little book that was published years ago by the British historian E.H. Carr, entitled "What is History?" In it, he suggests that if we take any day in history, for our purposes, yesterday, and then try to get at some "objective" idea of what happened, that there is simply too much going on to be able to do that. Instead, one chooses to remember, or record, only those things that s/he finds important. So what we know as history is really the past seen through the somewhat clouded lenses of the writer. I would add to this that as we go farther back into history, when there was no PBS or CNN or email or newpapers, that is, places in which people can collectivize their memory, there is even less of an agreement about what really happened. Herodotus will be a good experience for the students to see what a very fine line there is between history and literature.

- Sally Livingston
………………………………………………………………………………………………
Dear Stephanie and Natasha and Janling and Anna and Sally and all,

I love your responses.

The reality of a myth is not what it says is the truth. What is real about the myth is that it expresses the thinking of real people at real times and real places.

Gratefully,
Greg Nagy

On Nov 2 Feargus Denman wrote:

Dear Professor Nagy -

I mentioned Simon Armitage's new translation/retelling of the Odyssey after class today. It's a version he did for bbc radio drama that consists mostly in dialogue. it's very much a reworking of the epic, but nonetheless interesting for that. I only picked it up yesterday, so I haven't any strong critical reaction so far, but armitage is a poet i'm quite keen on. (Homer's Odyssey, faber and faber)

As i say, it was Ross Halbert that first introduced his work to me; i was chatting to ross online yesterday morning and mentioned this new 'odyssey' and my participation in LAC-14, which he thinks a Good thing!

I'm sure you've become familiar with a myriad of such works over the years - and here I trust in your continuing enthusiasm for them - but your mentioning the story of Persephone being abducted by Hades brought another irish poet's piece to mind.
This is much more an appropriation than anything else I've remarked upon, but not improper, I think... Anyway, it's probably naive to imagine that Longley's somewhat more direct translation made Homer 'his own' any less than Boland's retelling of this myth - here, at least - makes it hers.

perhaps you've encountered it before, Eavan Boland, "The Pomegranate"?
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pomegranate/

I hope you like it, too!

Do you hold any office-hours, Professor? If you do and happen to have a free slot, I should like to stop by and say hello. I would also like to ask about the possibilities for non-classics concentrators to avail of opportunities at the CHS office in Nafplion.

warm regards,
feargus

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Feargus,
1) Is it OK if I ask our Heroes webmaster, Mark T. to publish the part of our exchange that deals with the poetry? I like very much "The Pomegranate."
2) I'm cc-ing my Executive Assistant, Robin Olson, to help us find a good time to meet.
3) I'm cc-ing Jenny and Chris at Nafplion. You are just the kind of student we are looking for.

Warm regards,
G