Odyssey 8

They reached for the good things that lay outspread
and when they'd put aside desire for food and drink,
Odysseus, master of many exploits, praised the singer:
"I respect you, Demodocus, more than any man alive--
surely the Muse has taught you, Zeus's daughter,
or god Apollo himself. How true to life,
all too true . . . you sing the Achaeans' fate,
all they did and suffered, all they soldiered through,	550
as if you were there yourself or heard from one who was.
But come now, shift your ground. Sing of the wooden horse
Epeus built with Athena's help, the cunning trap that
good Odysseus brought one day to the heights of Troy,
filled with fighting men who laid the city waste.
Sing that for me--true to life as it deserves--
and I will tell the world at once how freely
the Muse gave you the gods' own gift of song."
Stirred now by the Muse, the bard launched out
in a fine blaze of song, starting at just the point	560
where the main Achaean force, setting their camps afire,
had boarded the oarswept ships and sailed for home
but famed Odysseus' men already crouched in hiding--
in the heart of Troy's assembly--dark in that horse
the Trojans dragged themselves to the city heights.
Now it stood there, looming . . .
and round its bulk the Trojans sat debating,
clashing, days on end. Three plans split their ranks:
either to hack open the hollow vault with ruthless bronze
or haul it up to the highest ridge and pitch it down the cliffs	570
or let it stand--a glorious offering made to pacify the gods--
and that, that final plan, was bound to win the day.
For Troy was fated to perish once the city lodged
inside her walls the monstrous wooden horse
where the prime of Argive power lay in wait
with death and slaughter bearing down on Troy.
And he sang how troops of Achaeans broke from cover,
streaming out of the horse's hollow flanks to plunder Troy--
he sang how left and right they ravaged the steep city,
sang how Odysseus marched right up to Deiphobus' house	580
like the god of war on attack with diehard Menelaus.
There, he sang, Odysseus fought the grimmest fight
he had ever braved but he won through at last,
thanks to Athena's superhuman power.

That was the song the famous harper sang
but great Odysseus melted into tears,
running down from his eyes to wet his cheeks . . .
as a woman weeps, her arms flung round her darling husband,
a man who fell in battle, fighting for town and townsmen,
trying to beat the day of doom from home and children.	590
Seeing the man go down, dying, gasping for breath,
she clings for dear life, screams and shrills--
but the victors, just behind her,
digging spear-butts into her back and shoulders,
drag her off in bondage, yoked to hard labor, pain,
and the most heartbreaking torment wastes her cheeks.
So from Odysseus' eyes ran tears of heartbreak now.
But his weeping went unmarked by all the others;
only Alcinous, sitting close beside him,
noticed his guest's tears...  Trans. by Robert Fagles, 1996.

I promise I will post about my summer research soon...

(it's really awesome and I'm so excited about it, but at the moment it is too hot to think—first ridiculous sunny day in Portland—so I will give you in the meantime this beautiful GIF):

Classics meets current events

My fellow classics student and friend Ben (@plmwinedrnkrd) posted this earlier on twitter - got a kick out of it and thought I'd share:

It's almost summer

I know it's almost half past midnight, but I can't help but wish I were sitting on a grassy lawn under the sun, in a light cotton dress, sipping Pimm's cups.


It'll happen.

The final statistics

29 pages
8,688 words
13 poems (Greek and Latin) translated and analyzed
2 hilarious epigrammatists
2 crazy emperors (this could be a sitcom)
1 semester-long junior qualifying exam (a.k.a. qual, a.k.a. qualrus)


/victory


My orals board is on Friday. I'm scared (I know I shouldn't be, but I can't help it). Really I should just put it out of my head and focus on the fact that I still have four papers to finish before Renn Fayre rolls around in a week and a half.


I have been an awful blogger as of late (sorry to my non-existent readers!). I promise frequent updates in the future - especially once the end of the semester rolls around and I will have oodles of time and will be reading/translating/researching many delightful things.


A wordle for your enjoyment:

Unless I miraculously get better at time management, this is the rest of my semester

Courtesy of Fuck Yeah, History Major Heraldic Beast

The Violoncellist

[This post is left-over from several weeks ago. Forgot to post. Whoops!]


I feel a bit wrong updating this blog from the library (usually I am very particular these days about only using my computer in here for writing papers, doing research, or checking email, though I will occasionally deviate from that and do an online crossword or read the blogs I follow; thankfully I have left my younger self's days of library facebook/tv watching/text twist behind me), but I just finished writing a significant chunk of a paper in the last half-hour, and so this seemed to me to be at least a (vaguely) constructive break.

The paper in question is for my art history class this semester, and I've really fallen in love with the work that I'm analyzing for it. 

 Gustave Courbet, The Violoncellist, 1847, oil on canvas

My previous familiarity with Courbet, one of the foremost figures of the Realist movement in France during the mid- to late-19th century, has extended mostly to two of his most famous works, Un enterrement à Ornans (A Burial at Ornans), and the highly controversial and scandalous (click at your own risk, it is very much NSFW) L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World).


Courbet's use of tenebrism in The Violoncellist is striking, no? I'm struck by the similarities to some Rembrandt paintings I've seen in various museums - the intense chiaroscuro, compelling figure, very painterly. What do you all think?