Fall 2008 LA C-14 September Exchanges

On September 29 Natasha Bershadsky wrote:

Dear Greg,

Seeing today Goya's "Self-portrait with Dr Arrieta" (1820) in the class reminded me my train of thoughts last year, which I could title "death, reenactment and out-of-body experiences." I remember associating Goya's self-portrait, as well as Sappho 31, with a poem by Joseph Brodsky called "At the exhibition of Carel Willink." In the poem, Brodsky looks at Willink's paintings, walking through their possible genre attributions – a landscape? a still-life? a theater set? – which gives him a pretext to run through a gamut of possible definitions of art (and we just spoke about priamels). The poem comes to a close by identifying the mysterious painting as a self-portrait, and saying that the mastery of art is the artist's ability to depict his (or her) own absence. Here are the two concluding stanzas in my translation from Russian:

VIII
It is a portrait, true, but one that does not flatter:
the surface, whose terrestrial hues
are naturally riveting the eyes,
particularly of a person by an execution wall.
Further away, as a concession to whiteness,
the Olympians swirl, huddled into a cumulus,
feeling on their backs the gaze of the painter
cast from beyond - the gaze of a suicide.

IX
And that's, essentially, what the self-portrait is.
A step aside from one's own body,
A stool turned in profile to you,
the distant view of life that flew away.
So, this is what's called "mastery":
The ability not to be terrified by the process
of the non-existence - as a form of one's own
absence, painting it from life.

Of course, it is unclear what painting by Willink Brodsky had in mind (and most likely it is a collage of several ones); but the extra twist I find particularly interesting in connection to our discussion of Sappho is that Willink (Dutch, 1900-1983) painted a series of self-portraits in which he depicted himself as various Biblical figures. I attach the most famous one, as John the Baptist
(see also the link:
http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/pers/aanwinsten/willink-johannes?lang=en
and another, as Simeon the Stylite. The reenactment of the Biblical figures by Willink is also paralleled on the level of his style, replicating the style of the Old Masters. Yours,

Natasha

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear wonderful Natasha,
I loved your message. I'm taking the liberty of sharing with the other TFs and with Kevin. Also with Mark.
It would be great to post your message on our website, no?
Tvoj
Greg

On Sep 28 Felice Soliel Ford wrote:

Prof. Nagy,

Looking forward to lecture tomorrow. It's a pleasure reading The Iliad again, although I'm painfully close to my least favorite part of it - the death of Patroklos, which is admittedly necessary but which I lament nonetheless.

I have a question regarding the history of the actual text of the Homeric epics. The class has thus far emphasized the point that the epic tradition was primarily an oral one, rooted deeply in performance. But evidently Homer must have put his epics to paper at some point, for them to have been passed down to us. So I wonder, how did future generations come across these works? Were they most likely dictated, particularly given the fact that Homer was supposedly blind? What certainty do we have that the versions of The Iliad and The Odyssey that we have now are close to what Homer originally wrote/performed, and what subsequent generations of Hellenic Greeks performed?

I'm quite interested in the hereditary history of these ancient texts, particularly considering how few of them exist. I must say I always get so disappointed when I'm reading a classic work and find the brackets informing me that the rest of the writing is destroyed, or forever lost.

Thank you,
Felice Ford, 2011

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Felice,

I like so much the way you describe our sense of doom - even as readers - about the impending death of Patroklos. Imagine what it was like for a "live" audience of the Iliad!

About the writing down of the Homeric poems... I have a lot to say about that in a book entitled Homeric Questions. It is available for free if you go to a site called stoa.org ...

Let me know if you can't find it. I'm cc-ing a dear colleague, Leonard Muellner. I have been talking with him about the idea of moving this book to the website of the Center for Hellenic Studies, where I serve as Director.

More on that later.
Warm regards,
GN

Felice Soliel Ford replied:

Prof. Nagy,

Thank you for replying so quickly! And I'll definitely check out that book, it looks fascinating and I'm sure I'd find the answers I'm looking for therein. And I must say, even reading the comparatively flat text gives me chills in the build-up to Patroklos' death and the final release of Achilles' rage. And I really do wish that there was still an opportunity to see The Iliad performed live, or at least a decent film adaptation of it! In this read-through, I noticed the foreshadowing you mentioned, in Rhapsody XI where Patroklos is described as "looking like Ares himself," signaling the beginning of his doom. Funny that emulating a god of war should indicate death instead of victory in battle - I've also noticed that, when victorious, warriors are described as RIVALING the gods, or being on par with them, but not specifically linked to them as Patroklos is before he dies. I wonder if Homer is hinting at death-by-hubris, or implying that mortals are closest to godliness at the moment of death/truth. (Telos, right?)

I'm really loving the fact that this class is sparking all sorts of new insights and connections for me in going through these works again. I think I have you to thank for that. And yes, I give my permission to post this on the site.

Best,
Felice

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Felice,

I'm so glad you noticed the "foreshadowing" of the doom of Patroklos in Rhapsody XI of the Iliad. We will be looking at that passage in the dialogues to come. I'm asking Mark to post this part of our exchange as well.

Warm regards,
GN

On Sep 25 Jennifer Lee wrote:

My name is Jennifer Lee, and I'm a rising junior, currently enrolled in your class. I had a quick question regarding terms from this week's reading. The first scroll mentions the word "menos" to frequently describe Achilles' anger, and I was hoping you could clarify the difference between "menos" and "kholos."

Thank you!

Best,
Jennifer
--
Jennifer Jooyoung Lee
Harvard College Class of 2010

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Jennifer,

Excellent question!

The word _menos_ is closer in meaning to _mênis_ than to _kholos_. Unlike _kholos_, which is an intense form of human anger, _mênis_ is an anger that is in synchronization with the cosmos. When someone has this cosmic kind of anger, you see a confluence of cosmic and human forces. Such is the anger of Achilles himself in Iliad 1.1.May I ask you for a favor? Would you agree to letting Mark, our Webmaster, publish our exchange on the Heroes website? I hope you will say yes.

Warm regards,
GN

On Sep 19, Matthew Tierney wrote:

Hi Professor Nagy,

Here are the questions I have from some of the intro reading. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer them! =)

1. "And take notes about what you are thinking: these will be very useful for you later, when the time comes for you to write your papers and to take the mid-term and final." Are there some general questions we should be asking ourselves as we approach the reading? I realize I can write down what I feel or interesting plot points, but I'm thinking you're suggesting we record something else... If I'm missing the point regarding this advice, please let me know.

2. "From this point of view, the ultimate humanism is achieved politically." The logic leading to this conclusion makes sense, but I'm unfamiliar with the phrase "ultimate humanism." I've been exposed to the term "secular humanism" as a sort of philosophy or religion that we follow in our culture but I'm led to think that "humanism" in Ancient Greece wasn't quite the same. While you may get to this in lecture, I was wondering what you mean by "ultimate humanism"?

3. Also, I had a question about the governance of city-states in Ancient Greece. Given that city-states were so decentralized, how did they coordinate the interpolitical festivals, repositories of knowledge, and poetry? (Maybe not so much the writing of the poetry itself - I assume, but may be wrong, that poems were composed by individuals - but how an individual acquired a Panhellenic perspective.) I'm curious, as it turns out, from a computer science perspective.

Thank you again for addressing my questions as well as indulging my interest in motivating systems design and implementation from Ancient Greek society and culture.

Very cool =)
Matt

Professor Nagy replied:

Dear Matt and hi to Mark, our Webmaster (who will be publishing our exchange on the "Heroes" website, as we agreed),

Great questions!

1) I was thinking of specific questions that might be generated from your readings, not general questions. That is, I was thinking of questions arising from the wording of this or that passage you are reading. Usually, these questions will answer themselves as you read on, but sometimes they won't.

2) You caught me using one of my favorite words. And I probably overuse this word "ultimate"! All I meant was that some thinkers experimented in pushing the ideals of humanity to the point where they were just this short of becoming the ideals of divinity.

3) You are getting into a very big topic here. The best way to address your questions here is from an anthropological point of view. From such a point of view, the factors of composition, performance, and reception need to be viewed together, not separately. About the phenomenon of centralization in decentralized societies... There are various occasions that promote such centralization. For example, a festival is an occasion where all sorts of divergent cultural and political cultural interests converge. Exhibit A is the festival of the Olympics. Exhibit B, in my opinion, is the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, which was the historical context for the emergence of Homeric poetry as we know it. More on all this later.

I'm hoping that these answers will be useful, at least for now.

Warm regards,
GN

Matthew Tierney replied:

Professor Nagy,

"3) You are getting into a very big topic here. The best way to address your questions here is from an anthropological point of view. From such a point of view, the factors of composition, performance, and reception need to be viewed together, not separately. About the phenomenon of centralization in decentralized societies... There are various occasions that promote such centralization. For example, a festival is an occasion where all sorts of divergent cultural and political cultural interests converge. Exhibit A is the festival of the Olympics. Exhibit B, in my opinion, is the festival of the Panathenaia in Athens, which was the historical context for the emergence of Homeric poetry as we know it. More on all this later." [From GN's reply above]

Will we be covering how the Ancient Greek city-states were able to execute these sorts of festivals? Recognizing that it wasn't just that the Ancient Greeks "knew" when these occasions were going to happen and how each city-state was going to contribute exactly, but I'm curious if there were policies or other mechanisms instituted to ensure the provision for and quality of these festivals.

"I'm hoping that these answers will be useful, at least for now." [From GN's reply above]

Absolutely! As I continue through the readings, I'm sure that how I can better learn from the suggestions you gave for thinking about the work will become clearer. I hope too that it might become clearer to me what exactly it means to look at a society through different lenses; e.g., anthropological vs historical (if those are even valid delineations of perspective).

In any case, thank you for your responses!

Matt