Fall 2010 Exchanges (FAS and DCE)
This page shares Exchanges among Professor Nagy, Head TFs Keith Stone and Dr. McGrath, section TFs — and students in both FAS and DCE courses. Most recent Exchanges are at the top of the page.
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On November 4 Gene Parulis wrote:
Hi Greg,
I was fascinated in the last Proseminar by the parallels that were drawn between Hesiod and the Code of Manu in India concerning ritual correctness. You mentioned too that there was a connection in Hesiod regarding the perfect natural formulas and the prefect moral formulas. This put me in mind of Confucius in China who was a lot closer in time to Hesiod than Manu was. Confucius talked frequently about the importance of li. Li is an interesting word that original referred to sacrifice and over time came to mean ritual decorum, manners, behavior. Huston Smith observes that before Confucius, li referred essentially to ceremonies connected with the veneration of ancestors and that it gradually came to be applied to the notion of correct behavior in general.
Here are a few quotations from The Analects.
The Master said, Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by chastisements, and they will flee from you, and lose all self-respect. Govern them by moral force, keep order among them by ritual (li), and they will keep their self-respect and come to you of their own accord. [2:3]
Yan Yuan asked about humaneness. The Master said, “Through mastering oneself and returning to ritual one becomes humane. If for a single day one can master oneself and return to ritual, the whole world will return to humaneness…Look at nothing contrary to ritual; listen to nothing contrary to ritual; say nothing contrary to ritual; do nothing contrary to ritual.” [12.2]
The Master said. “Without knowing what is ordained [by Heaven], one has no way to become a noble person. Without knowing the rites (li), one has no way to take one’s stand. Without knowing words, one has no way to know other people.” [20.3]
I’m not sure how far one can really extend the parallels between Hesiod and Confucius, but it seems there are some intriguing points of convergence.
Best regards,
Gene Parulis
Professor Nagy replied:
Dear wonderful Gene and hi to Kevin,
I'm also cc-ing a dear colleague in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civlizations, Michael Puett, who I think will be interested in this typological parallel (I say it that way because I don't think we are dealing here with mutual influences).
I'm also cc-ing Lenny and Mark and Keith and Guy and Dan, because I think that the videos of the Proseminars are really good for jump-starting the kind of creative dialogue that you have initiated here.
As ever,
Greg
p.s. Dear all, how could we publicize the Proseminars in other ways?
Dr. McGrath replied:
Dear Gene and Greg et al,
This is very interesting, how the propriety of the solemn ritual becomes in time, the decorum of the superior individual. For Hesiod, the precision of human ritual and economic life supplies a means for securing equilibrium in the natural kosmos. For the Manava Dharmasastra, the exactitude of the sacrificer becomes extended to the domestic world insofar as the varna or caste system is socially profound: a good sacrificer is therefore, by definition (because the varna system is so certain), a well-mannered brahmin. As the world becomes more secular it is thus interesting for us as readers of these texts, to observe how ritual determination carries over into mundane moral decency. (Comp. Lit. scholars have written about the European idea of the Gentleman or the Courtier in this respect.) Gene, I hope that You will allow Mark Tomasko, our Webmaster, to publish this on our Exchanges Board ...
With best wishes, from,
Kevin.
Gene Parulis replied:
Dear Kevin,
By all means, Mark can publish this exchange. I wonder, after reading your reply, if the Hesiodic "perfection" and the "exactitude" of the brahmin sacrificer are related to the Greek concept of arete?
Best,
Gene
Dr. McGrath replied:
Well ... in terms of language or of historicity they are certainly not related; but conceptually there is a potential homology, shall we say ... Thank You for your percipient thoughts, and I hope that the Proseminars and other elements of the Course continue to inspire You! It is a pity that You cannot join our Thursday evening Sections ...
K.
On October 7 Dave McAlpin wrote:
Since the intent of the song was to make the neighbors think Penelope had chosen one of the suitors as her husband, I'd personally like Phemios' song to operate on different levels for different audiences - as a credible marriage song from the perspective of the neighbors and as a song that somehow mocks the suitors for those in the palace.
One possibility is the liaison between Aphrodite and Anchises as told in the Hymn of Aphrodite, where Zeus tricks the goddess into falling in love with the mortal Anchises, whom Aphrodite would otherwise consider unworthy of her affections.
Another possibility is the marriage of Thetis and Peleus, where the not entirely willing goddess marries a mortal man, the wedding is derailed by Eris (strife) and the eventual outcome is the bloodbath of the Trojan war.
I'm sure you can do better, but this ironic theme is fun to think about.
Dave
Dr. McGrath replied:
Dear Dave,
Thank You for these pertinent observations which I think are certainly on target. Can I ask our Webmaster, Mark Tomasko to publish them on our Exchanges Board, please?
As we have seen, Phemios is keen to be observed by Odysseus as especially loyal to the kingship now, so he might also wish to praise that institution in general and perhaps old Laertes and his wife in particular ... another possibility. Perhaps Laertes was sung of as being Like A Daimon?
Thanks again for your good thoughts ...
Kevin
Dave McAlpin replied:
Yes, of course.
Singing about Laertes is a good idea. You could also go back further in Odysseus' family tree. As Guy pointed out in the Proseminar, there's a tradition that Odysseus is a trickster because he descends from Hermes on his mother's side. Maybe Phemios could sing about that, since the song itself is a trick by Odysseus. This is a little obscure, but what if Phemios sings about the courtship of Chione, who was Odysseus' great grandmother and the not entirely willing consort of Hermes. Here we get a conflict between suitors (Hermes and Apollo), a reluctant object of suitor's affection and the trickster heritage of Odysseus. To top it off, some stories say Chione was shot by Artemis for her vanity, a nice tie in to the end of Penelope's suitors. Not a particularly romantic story, though.
Dave
Guy Smoot replied:
Dear Dave and hi to All,
You've done a lot of research, that's great! I love the way you analyze Phemios' song, allowing it to be laden with multiple layers of interpretation, I think this is especially useful in oral literature in which we find competing versions of the same story: you can easily imagine how a clever poet would want some of his narratives to be ambiguous enough to accommodate different interpretations and versions. The parallel between Chione's being shot by Artemis and the Penelope's suitors by Odysseus is very interesting.
Guy
Dr. McGrath replied:
Dear Dave, Guy, and the Team,
I think that we have fine material here for an excellent Paper! A poet in Phemius' position would be made even more precarious if he were to sing of his Patron as trickster. The arrow that strikes home and wins the Bride for a suitor is an old Indo-European motif, in Sanskrit called the Svayamvara (ironically referring to the 'choice' of the bride; so anything on this them by the Ithaki poet would sit well with the times ...
With best wishes, from,
Kevin
On September 17 Gene Parulis wrote:
Dear Professor Nagy,
Thank you, first of all, for your inspiring dialogues and readings. I am a distance learner taking my seventh course through the Extension and I am delighted to be a part of this wonderful experience that you have crafted so marvelously. My reason for writing is to send along a couple of images. In Dialogue 3 you mentioned the connection between a woman's headdress and the citadel of a city. This spurred my memory to the museum at Ancient Corinth where I saw such a visible embodiment in sculpture. I send you two views of the same head which, if memory serves me correctly here, was attributed to Tyche. I have been to Greece on several occasions and have a large collection of images that I would gladly share with you and others; these involve archeological sites (some not very well known, such as a town/citadel in Southeastern Naxos), museums, landscapes, nature, and cityscapes. In any case, thanks for the Dialogue which made me realize an exciting new connection.
Corinth, image 1 Corinth, image 2
Best regards,
Gene Parulis
Professor Nagy replied:
Dear Gene,
I'm so grateful to you for your kind words, and for sending me these most relevant images. May we post this exchange on the Heroes website?
Yours, with admiration and gratitude,
Greg
On September 12 Dave McAlpin wrote:
In this week's proseminar you wondered whether 6.485, where Hector caresses Andromache's hand, was unique in the Iliad. The full line "cheiri te min katerexen epos t' ephat' ek t' onomaze" occurs three other times in the song. The commonality between the four scenes, however, is interesting.
- In 1.361, Thetis comforts Achilles for the loss of Briseus.
- In 5.372, Dione soothes the wounded Aphrodite.
- In 24.127, Thetis comforts Achilles for the loss of Patroklos.
In each case, a mother offers comfort to an injured, grieving child. So while the phrase is not unique, it seems possible that it might continue in some way the image of Hector as Andromache's mother, which Andromache introduced (a little surprisingly) in line 429.
Dave
Dr. McGrath replied:
Dear Dave, Greg & Mark,
This is very interesting ... I hope that You will allow our Webmaster, MarkTomasko, to post this on our Exchanges site.Thanks so much,
Kevin.
On September 9 Andrew Satz wrote:
Prof. Nagy,
I have been enjoying this class and the readings thus far. I have a question regarding the translation and the loss of meaning.
I speak 2 languages and realize that is difficult and sometimes impossible to translate certain things, such as jokes. Much of the humor that is lost is because of deeper, often hidden meanings that are limited to those who speak and understand the language, homonyms, and heterographs. These ideas lost are not limited to humor and can extend to deeper imagery and more philosophical matters. In addition, when translating lyrics, it is often impossible to translate meaning, as I find when I try to explain the lyrics of hip hop to my 91 year old aunt. How can one account for the items lost in translation when examining such a piece of oral poetics as The Iliad?
As well, since this was a piece of work meant to be heard rather than read, and due to the diversity of the Achaeans, how can one account for the loss of translation between one individual singing it to another in the same language? For example, the word "fag" in American English is an ethnic slur against homosexual males while in British English it is slang for cigarette.
I look forward to hearing back from you.
Best Regards,
Andrew Satz
Professor Nagy replied:
Dear Andrew,
I'm happy to hear from you, and I enjoyed reading your comments. May we post on our website?
Best regards,
G
Dr. McGrath replied:
Dear Andrew et al,
I think that there is a loss in meaning due to the cultural distance that separates us from the society and values depicted in Iliad, then there is the loss that occurs in translation. For the latter, there is not much we can do apart from examine a few vital words as they occur, like kleos, or telos &c. Such words are given in our Glossary, towards the back of the Sourcebook. As to the loss due to the distance between cultures and their valence, through Close Readings, which is our active and practical methodology, we can gently and carefully reconstruct the various significant values and meanings that occur within this poetry. Such a practice, if rigorous, can be most revealing ... This is what we do in the Sections and the Proseminars and what Students do in their writing assignments ... This is a quick answer to your most pertinent question, but I hope that it is useful.
With best wishes, from,
Kevin.
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