John Keats - To Sleep

Sorry guys, I haven't been sleeping well and droppign the bal on here. Poetry blogging it is to catch up. Today, I turn to one of my favourite poets agian: John Keats 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821). He was an English Romantic poet and one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death. He very frequently used Greek mythology as a theme in his work, and used in this poem as well.

'To Sleep' summons images of Hypnos (Ὕπνος), the God of sleep. Dreams (Oneiroi - Ὄνειροι) are sons of Hypnos, sent by Zeus, and delivered by Hermes, but Hypnos is the one who lets us fall asleep. According to myth, Hypnos lives underneath one of the Greek islands, hidden away in a cave without doors. The entrance is overrun by poppies and other hypnogogic plants. The river Lethe--the river of forgetfulness--runs through the cave. Morpheus (Μορφεύς), the leader of the Oneiroi and God of dreams, stands guard to assure none wake Hypnos.

 

'To Sleep' by John Keats

 

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,—
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

• Tuesday, August 17, 2021
  personal poetry blogging this is not a real post

Sophocles on love (and Aphrodite)

I am fairly swamped right now. May I interest you in the words of Sophocles on Aphrodite and love? I'll give you something more tomorrow.

“Children, the Cyprian is certainly not only the Cyprian
But she is a being of many names.
She is Hades. She is immortal life.
She is mad insanity. She is desire undiluted.
She is lamentation. In her is everything
Earnest, peaceful, all that leads to violence
She seeps into the organs of everything
In which life resides. Who is ever sated by the goddess?
She enters into the fishes’ swimming race,
She is in the four-limbed tribe on the land
And guides her wing among the birds.
Among beasts, mortals, among the gods above.
Whom of the gods has she not thrown three times?
If it is right for me—if it is right to speak the truth,
She rules Zeus’ chest without a spear or iron
The Cyprian certainly cuts short
All the best plans of humans and gods.”

[fr. 941 [=Stobaeus 4, 20.6]]

• Wednesday, May 5, 2021
  Aphrodite cyprus poetry blogging Sophocles

Solon's prayer to the Gods

 Those who visit this blog on a regular basis know that I'm a fan of Solon and his reformations of the political landscape of Athens in the sixth century BC. Solon (Σόλων) was an Athenian statesman and lawmaker who lived from 638 BC to 558 BC. He spent most of his adult life trying to legislate against political, economic, and moral decline in archaic Athens. His ideologies are often credited with having laid the foundations for Athenian democracy. Solon's reforms created a system where the power was in the hands of the people, because instead of leaving justice to be administered by the aristocracy. He was also a poet and some of his work has miraculously survived. Today, I would like to share one of the fragments of his work that have survived.

O ye fair children of Memory and Olympian Zeus,

ye Muses of Pieria, hear me as I pray.

Grant, that I may be blessed with prosperity by the Gods,

and that among all men I may ever enjoy fair fame ;

that I may be as a sweet savor to my friends and

a bitterness in the mouth of my enemies,

by the ones respected, by the others feared. 

Wealth I do indeed desire, but ill-gotten wealth I will not have :

punishment therefor surely cometh with time.

Wealth which the gods give, cometh to a man as an abiding possession,

solid from the lowest foundation to the top;

but that which is sought with presumptuous disregard of right and wrong,

cometh not in the due course of nature. 

It yields to the persuasion of dishonest practices and followed against its will ;

and soon there is joined thereto blind folly which leadeth to destruction.

Like fire, it taketh its beginning from small things;

but, though insignificant at first, it endeth in ruin. 

For the works of unprincipled men do not continue long.

Zeus watcheth all things to the end.

Often, in the spring season, a

wind riseth suddenly and disperseth the clouds,

and, stirring up the depths of the surging, barren sea,

and laying waste the fair works of the husbandman

over the surface of the corn-bearing earth,

cometh to the lofty habitation of the gods in heaven

and bringeth the blue sky once more to view ;

the sun shineth forth in his beauty over the fertile earth,

and clouds are no longer to be seen.

Like such a sudden wind is the justice of Zeus.

He is not, like mortal men, quick to wrath for each offense ;

but no man who hath an evil heart ever escapeth his watchful eye,

and surely, in the end, his justice is made manifest.

One man payeth his penalty early, another late.

If the guilty man himself escape and the fate of the gods come not upon him

and overtake him not, it cometh full surely in aftertime :

the innocent pay for his offense —

his children or his children's children in later generations. 

[Fragment 13]

• Tuesday, October 13, 2020
  hymns poetry blogging Solon

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses

Theokritos was a Hellenic bucolic poet who flourished in Syracuse, Kos and Alexandria in the 3rd century BC. His surviving work can mostly be found within an old compendium of 30 poems known as the "Idylls of Theocritus," Many of these works, however, are no longer attributed to the poet. In "Idyll 1" Thyrsis sings to a goatherd about how Daphnis, the mythical herdsman, having defied the power of Aphrodite, dies rather than yielding to a passion the Goddess has inflicted on him. Ift's a lovely song and I would like to share it with you today.

"‘Tis Thyrsis sings, of Etna, and a rare sweet voice hath he.
Where were ye, Nymphs, when Daphnis pined? ye Nymphs, O where were ye?
Was it Peneius’ pretty vale, or Pindus’ glens? ‘twas never
Anápus’ flood nor Etna’s pike nor Acis’ holy river.

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses.

When Daphnis died the foxes wailed and the wolves they wailed full sore,
The lion from the greenward wept when Daphnis was no more.

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses.

O many the lusty steers at his feet, and may the heifers slim,
Many the claves and many the kine that made their moan for him.

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses.

Came Hermes first, from the hills away, and said “O Daphnis tell,
“Who is’t that fretteth thee, my son? whom lovest thou so well?”

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses.

The neatherds came, the shepherds came, and the goatherds him beside,
All fain to hear what ail’d him; Priápus came and cried
“Why peak and pine, unhappy wight, when thou mightest bed a bride?
“For there’s nor wood nor water but hath seen her footsteps flee –

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses –

“In search o’ thee. O a fool-in-love and a feeble is here, perdye!
“Neatherd, forsooth? ‘tis goatherd now, or ‘faith, ‘tis like to be;
“When goatherd in the rutting-time the skipping kids doth scan,
“His eye grows soft, his eye grows sad, because he’s born a man; –

Country-song, sing country-song, sweet Muses –

“So you, when ye see the lasses laughing in gay riot,
“Your eye grows soft, your eye grows sad, because you share it not.”
But never a word said the poor neathérd, for a bitter love bare he;
And he bare it well, as I shall tell, to the end that was to be.

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

But and the Cyprian came him to, and smiled on him full sweetly –
For thou she fain would foster wrath, she could not choose but smile –
And cried “Ah, braggart Daphnis, that wouldst throw Love so featly!
“Thou’rt thrown, methinks, thyself of Love’s so grievous guile.”

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

Then out he spake; “O Cypris cruel, Cypris vengeful yet,
“Cypris hated of all flesh! think’st all my sun be set?
“I tell thee even ‘mong the dead Daphnis shall work thee ill: –

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

“Men talk of Cypris and the hind; begone to Ida hill,
“Begone to hind Anchises; sure bedstraw there doth thrive
“And fine oak-trees and pretty bees all humming at the hive.

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

“Adonis too is ripe to woo, for a ‘tends his sheep o’ the lea
“And shoots the hare and a-hunting goes of all the beasts there be.

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

And then I’ld have thee take thy stand by Diomed, and say
“’I slew the neatherd Daphis; fight me thou to-day.’

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

“But ‘tis wolf farewell and fox farewell and bear o’ the mountain den,
“Your neatherd fere, your Daphnis dear, ye’ll never see agen,
“By glen no more, by glade no more. And ‘tis o farewell to thee
“Sweet Arethuse, and all pretty watérs down Thymbris vale that flee.

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

“For this, O this is that Daphnis, your kine to field did bring,
“This Daphnis he, led stirk and steer to you a-watering.

Country-song, more country-song, ye Muses.

“And Pan, O Pan, whether at this hour by Lycee’s mountain-pile
“Or Maenal steep thy watch thou keep, come away to the Sicil isle,
“Come away from the knoll of Helicè and the howe lift high i ’ the lea,
“The howe of Lycáon’s child, the howe that Gods in heav’s envye;

Country-song, leave country-song, ye Muses.

“Come, Master, and take this pretty pipe, this pipe of honey breath,
“Of wax well knit round lips to fit; for Love hales mé to my death.

Country-song, leave country-song, ye Muses.

“Bear violets now ye briers, ye thistles violets too;
“Daffodilly may hang on the juniper, and all things go askew;
“Pines may grow figs now Daphnis dies, and hind tear hound if she will,
“And the sweet nightingále be outsung I ’ the dale by the scritch-owl from the hill.”

Country-song, leave country-song, ye Muses.

Such words spake he, and he stayed him still; and O, the Love-Ladye,
She would fain have raised him where he lay, but that could never be.
For the thread was spun and the days were done and Daphnis gone to the River,
And the Nymphs’ good friend and the Muses’ fere was whelmed I ’ the whirl for ever."

• Thursday, July 30, 2020
  ancient Hellenic culture Daphnis hymns Muses poetry blogging Theokritos

I come to this city fearfully, sent as an exile’s book

I'm a little melancholic today, so you get to share in that feeling. The Tristia ("Sorrows" or "Lamentations") is a collection of letters written in elegiac couplets by the Augustan poet Ovid during his exile from Rome. Despite five books of his copious bewailing of his fate, the immediate cause of Augustus's banishment of the most acclaimed living Latin poet to Pontus in AD 8 remains a mystery. Ovid spent several years in the outpost of Tomis and died without ever returning to Rome. The Tristia is not, technically, Hellenic, but I enjoy the read.

I come to this city fearfully, sent as an exile’s book.
Reader, my friend, give a calming hand to the weary
and don’t worry that I might shame you in some way.
No line in this manuscript teaches about love.
My master’s fate is such that the miserable man
should not hide it in any jokes
That work which amused him once in his green age
He now condemns—alas, too late—and hates.
Look what I carry: you will find nothing but sorrow here,
a song which matches its own days.
If the lame song breaks off in alternating lines,
then it comes from the meter’s form or the journey’s length.
If I am not bright with cedar nor smooth from pumice,
it is because I turned red at looking better than my master.
If the letters are shapeless, if they are marred by erasure,
it is because the poet wounded the work with his own tears.
If any words seem by chance not to be Latin,
it is because he wrote them in a barbarous land.
Tell me, readers—if it is not too much—where should I go,
What home should I, a foreign book, seek in this city?

[Ovid, Tristia 3, 1-20]

Source.

• Tuesday, May 5, 2020
  ancient Hellenic culture Ovid personal poetry blogging Roman

"As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one"

C.P. Cavafy is widely considered the most distinguished Greek poet of the 20th century. He was born in Alexandria, Egypt, where his Greek parents had settled in the mid-1850s. Cavafy’s father was an importer-exporter whose business responsibilities frequently led him to the port city of Liverpool, England. Cavafy’s father died in 1870, and the business he left in Alexandria proved insufficiently profitable for Cavafy’s mother and eight siblings. The family consequently moved to Liverpool, where the eldest sons assumed control of the family’s business operations.

Cavafy lived in England for much of his adolescence, and developed both a command of the English language and a preference for the writings of William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde. During his lifetime Cavafy was an obscure poet, living in relative seclusion and publishing little of his work. This lack of concern for publication was due, perhaps, to the highly personal nature of many poems. Cavafy, who was gay, wrote many sexually explicit poems. Cavafy was also an avid student of history, particularly ancient civilizations, and in a great number of poems he subjectively rendered life during the Greek and Roman empires. Some of these poems treating ancient times eventually reached English novelist E.M. Forster, who was sufficiently impressed to write an essay entitled “The Poetry of C.P. Cavafy” (later published in Pharos and Pharillon).

In “Ithaca,” one of Cavafy’s highly regarded works, the poet evokes Homer’s Odyssey in stressing the importance of the journey over the destination. I'd like to share it with you today as it's a beautiful work of art with a wonderful theme of hope, which we can all use in these trying times.

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

[Translated by Edmund Keeley]

• Monday, April 6, 2020
  poetry blogging

Virtue - Simonides of Keos

I'm sorry lovely readers. It's a poetry day today as I am just completely swamped. Today, i would like to share a poem by ancient Hellenic poet Simonides of Keos (Σιμωνίδης ὁ Κεῖος). Simonides (556 – 468 BC) was a Hellenic lyric poet, born at Ioulis on Keos. The scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets, along with Bacchylides (his nephew) and Pindar (reputedly a bitter rival). Both Bacchylides and Pindar benefited from his innovative approach to lyric poetry and he was more involved than either of them in the major events and personalities of their times. His fame owes much to traditional accounts of his colourful life, as one of the wisest of men, as an inventor of a system of mnemonics and also of some letters of the Hellenic alphabet (ω, η, ξ, ψ). His fame as a poet rests largely on his ability to present basic human situations with affecting simplicity.

Today only glimpses of his poetry remain, either in the form of papyrus fragments or quotations by ancient literary figures, yet new fragments continue to be unearthed by archaeologists at Oxyrhynchus, an archaeological site in Upper Egypt, located about 160 km south-southwest of Cairo, in the governorate of Al Minya. It is considered to be one of the most important archaeological sites ever discovered. For the past century, the area around Oxyrhynchus has been continually excavated, yielding an enormous collection of papyrus texts dating from the time of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods of Egyptian history. Among the texts discovered at Oxyrhynchus are plays of Menander, fragments from the Gospel of Thomas, and fragments from Euclid's Elements.

Virtue - Simonides of Keos

Ἐστί τις λόγος τὰν Ἀρετὰν ναίειν
δυσαμβάτοισ' ἐπὶ πέτραις,
ἐγγὺς δέ μιν θεῶν χῶρον ἁγνὸν ἀμφέπειν·
οὐδὲ πάντων βλεφάροισι θνατῶν
ἔσοπτος, ᾧ μὴ δακέθυμος ἱδρὼς
ἔνδοθεν μόλῃ,
ἵκῃ τ' ἐς ἄκρον ἀνδρείας.

There is a saying that virtue lies
upon inaccessible rocks
and is all around near the holy place of gods themselves:
it is not visible to all mortals’ eyes,
but only to those whose heart-eating sweat
is coming from within,
leading them to the summit of manliness.

• Tuesday, March 3, 2020
  ancient Hellenic culture poetry blogging Simonides of Keos this is not a real post

Pindar's Olympian 11

“There is a season when people have the greatest need

For winds and there is a season for water from the sky,

The pouring offspring of clouds.

But if someone should ever find success through toil,

Then honey-sweet hymns form the foundation

For future tales and offer certain promise for great accomplishments.

The praise for Olympic victors is not limited

By envy. My tongue is ready to shepherd

These words. A man similarly prospers through wise thoughts

thanks to divine assistance.

Know this now, son of Arkhestratos,

Hagêsidamos: thanks to your boxing

I will sing a sweet-songed adornment

For your crown of golden olive,

Without neglecting the race of Western Lokrians.

Join us in the revel there—Muses, I pledge

That you will visit no country who rejects a guest

a people who are ignorant of noble things,

But you will find wise spearmen there.

For not even the fire-red fox nor the roaring lions

Could change the nature of their kind.”

[Pindar, Olympian 11: For Hagêsidamos, Winner of Boy’s Boxing, 476BCE]

• Saturday, February 22, 2020
  Pindar poetry blogging

"That man seems like the Gods to me..."

It's nearly Valentine's day, so why not share some lovely poetry from ancient times? And, of course, my throughts then go to Sappho. 

Sappho 31 is an archaic Hellenic lyric poem written by Ancient Hellenic female poet Sappho of the island of Lesbos. This poem was in antiquity known as 'phainetai moi' (φαίνεταί μοι) after the opening words of its first line. The poem is a good representation of archaic lyric poetry, in that the persona and personal emotions of the poet are central to the poemʻs form; it is written in the first person singular, and the speaker is a woman in love with another woman, as in so many of Sapphoʻs poems. Some have seen it as a fragment from an epithalamion - a wedding poem, intended to be sung to the bride at the entrance to her nuptial chamber; it does not share any of the attributes of the classic form called enkomion--a poem of praise. It is perhaps Sappho's most famous poem.

Sappho 31 was one of the two substantially complete poems by Sappho to survive from ancient times, written in Sappho's vernacular form of Greek, the Lesbian-Aeolic dialect. Sappho's poems were designed to be sung, and use direct and emotional language, in this case about the longing of love. Sappho starts by praising the beauty of the bridegroom, likening him to a god, but then describes her jealousy and the physical manifestations of her distress upon seeing a young woman whom she loves with her new husband, the epiphany bringing her to a symbolic death.

Longinus's treatise 'On the Sublime' (Περὶ ὕψους, Perì hýpsous) selects the poem as an example of the sublime for the intensity of its passionate emotions. It was quoted in Plutarch's 'Dialogue on Love' (Έρωτικός, Erotikos) in his Moralia (a Latin translation of the original Greek title, Ἠθικά, Ethika, Ethics).

“That man seems like the gods

To me—the one who sits facing

You and nearby listens as you

sweetly speak—

and he hears your lovely laugh—this then

makes the heart in my breast stutter,

when I glance even briefly, it is no longer possible

for me to speak—

but my tongue sticks in silence

and immediately a slender flame runs under my skin.

I cannot see with my eyes, I hear

A rush in my ears—

A cold sweat breaks over me, a tremble

Takes hold of me. Then paler than grass,

I think that I have died

Just a little.”

Fragment 31

[Translation form here]

• Wednesday, February 12, 2020
  ancient Hellenic culture poetry blogging Sappho

Parmenides's "On Nature"

Parmenides of Elea was a Presocratic Greek philosopher. As the first philosopher to inquire into the nature of existence itself, he is incontrovertibly credited as the “Father of Metaphysics.” Parmenides’ only written work is a poem entitled, supposedly, but likely erroneously, On Nature. Only a limited number of “fragments” (more precisely, quotations by later authors) of his poem are still in existence, which have traditionally been assigned to three main sections—Proem, Reality (Alétheia), and Opinion (Doxa).

The Proem (prelude) features a young man on a cosmic (perhaps spiritual) journey in search of enlightenment, expressed in traditional Greek religious motifs and geography. This is followed by the central, most philosophically-oriented section (Reality). Here, Parmenides positively endorses certain epistemic guidelines for inquiry, which he then uses to argue for his famous metaphysical claims—that “what is” (whatever is referred to by the word “this”) cannot be in motion, change, come-to-be, perish, lack uniformity, and so forth.

The final section (Opinion) concludes the poem with a theogonical and cosmogonical account of the world, which paradoxically employs the very phenomena (motion, change, and so forth) that Reality seems to have denied. Furthermore, despite making apparently true claims (for example, the moon gets its light from the sun), the account offered in Opinion is supposed to be representative of the mistaken “opinions of mortals,” and thus is to be rejected on some level. 'd like to share some of those framents today.

"The steeds that bear me carried me as far as ever my heart

Desired, since they brought me and set me on the renowned

Way of the goddess, who with her own hands conducts the man

who knows through all things. On what way was I borne along; 

For on it did the wise steeds carry me, drawing my car,

and maidens showed the way. And the axle, glowing in the socket -

for it was urged round by the whirling wheels at each

end - gave forth a sound as of a pipe, when the daughters of the

Sun, hasting to convey me into the light, threw back their veils

...from off their faces and left the abode of Night.

There are the gates of the ways of Night and Day, fitted

above with a lintel and below with a threshold of stone. They

themselves, high in the air, are closed by mighty doors, and

Avenging Justice keeps the keys that open them. 

Her did the maidens entreat with gentle words and skilfully persuade

to unfasten without demur the bolted bars from the gates.

Then, when the doors were thrown back,

they disclosed a widepening, when their brazen

hinges swung backwards in the sockets fastened with rivets and nails. 

Straight through them, on the broad way, 

did the maidens guide the horses and the car,

and the goddess greeted me kindly, and took my right hand

in hers, and spake to me these words: -

Welcome, noble youth, that comest to my abode on the car

...that bears thee tended by immortal charioteers! It is no ill

chance, but justice and right that has sent thee forth to travel

on this way. Far, indeed, does it lie from the beaten track of

men ! Meet it is that thou shouldst learn all things, as well

the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, 

as the opinions of mortals in which is no true belief at all. 

Yet none the less shalt thou learn of these things also, 

since thou must judge approvedly of the things that seem to men as thou goest

through all things in thy journey."

• Tuesday, January 28, 2020
  ancient Hellenic culture Parmenides of Elea poetry blogging

"Glory that was Greece"

Autumn Journal by Louis MacNeice is a famous piece of work in Irish literature. It is an autobiographical long poem in twenty-four sections. It was written between August and December 1938, when Ireland had many men fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and published as a single volume by Faber and Faber in May 1939. It was written in a discursive form, and it sets out to record the author's state of mind as the approaching World War 2 seems more and more inevitable. I wanted to quote one part to you today, from Part IX, because I think you will enjoy it.

The Glory that was Greece: put it in a syllabus, grade it
Page by page
To train the mind or even to point a moral
For the present age:
Models of logic and lucidity, dignity, sanity,
The golden mean between opposing ills
Though there were exceptions of course but
only exceptions
The bloody Bacchanals on the Thracian hills.
So the humanist in his room with Jacobean panels
Chewing his pipe and looking on a lazy quad
Chops the Ancient World to turn a sermon
To the greater glory of God.
But I can do nothing so useful or so simple;
These dead are dead
And when I should remember the paragons of Hellas
I think instead
Of the crooks, the adventurers, the opportunists,
The careless athletes and the fancy boys,
The hair-splitters, the pedants, the hard-boiled sceptics
And the Agora and the noise
Of the demagogues and the quacks; and the women pouring
Libations over graves
And the trimmers at Delphi and the dummies at Sparta
and lastly
I think of the slaves.
And how one can imagine oneself among them
I do not know;
It was all so unimaginably different
And all so long ago.

• Sunday, December 22, 2019
  poetry blogging

Play a song for me...

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of texts that were discovered at Oxyrhynchus (known today as el-Bahnasa). The city of Oxyrhynchus (meaning ‘sharp-nosed’ in Greek) is located in the Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt, 160 km (99 mi) to the southwest of Cairo. This city lies on the Bahr Yussef (‘Canal of Joseph’), which is a branch of the Nile situated to the west of the main river. For over a millennium, the inhabitants of the city would throw away their rubbish in a number of sites in the desert beyond the city limits. Amongst these items were texts written on papyri that the people of Oxyrhynchus no longer wanted. I found a lovely translation of fragments recently. 

“Don’t try to do injustice nor to return injustice done

Avoid murders and avoid battles, don’t deign to argue—
Then you will hurt only a short time and you won’t think about it later.

Play a song for me.

You saw the spring, winter, the summer. These are eternal.
Even the sun has set and night is taking what’s owed her.
Don’t try to find where the sun comes from or where the water’s home,
But where you can buy some fragrance and wreaths.

Play a song for me.

I used to want to have three free-flowing honey springs,
five milk rivers, ten of wine, twelve of perfume
two from clear fountains and three from snow.
I used to want a boy and a girl near a fountain.

Play a song for me.

The Lydian pipe and the Lydian games of the lyre work for me.
The Phrygian reed and the leather-topped drum work for me too.
As long as I live I love to sing these things and when I die
Put a flute above my head and a lyre near my feet.

Play a song for me.

Who has ever discovered how to measure wealth and poverty?
Or who again has ever found how much gold human beings need?
Today, still, whoever has money always wants more of it
And the wretch is tortured like the poor even though he’s rich.

Play a song for me.

If you ever see a corpse or walk by quiet graves,
That’s when you look into the mirror we all share: the dead expected this.
Time is on loan and life’s lender is a prick.
Whenever he demands repayment, you must pay the bill by grieving.

Play a song for me.

It was the king Xerxes who said he shared everything with god,
But he crossed the Lemnian water in defeat with a single rudder.
Midas was rich; Kinyras was triply blest,
But who has ever gone to Hades with more than a single coin?

Play a song for me.,.”

[P. Oxy. xv. 1921, no. 1795, p. 113 [Anonymous = LCL Anonymous Hexamers 125]]

• Thursday, December 12, 2019
  ancient Hellenic culture Oxyrhynchus Papyri poetry blogging

John Ruskin description of Homeric landscapes

Some beautiful prose today, by John Ruskin. John Ruskin (8 February 1819 – 20 January 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.

His writing styles and literary forms were equally varied. He penned essays and treatises, poetry and lectures, travel guides and manuals, letters and even a fairy tale. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.

The elaborate style that characterised his earliest writing on art gave way in time to plainer language designed to communicate his ideas more effectively. In all of his writing, he emphasised the connections between nature, art and society.

He was hugely influential in the latter half of the 19th century and up to the First World War. After a period of relative decline, his reputation has steadily improved since the 1960s with the publication of numerous academic studies of his work. Today, his ideas and concerns are widely recognised as having anticipated interest in environmentalism, sustainability and craft. This part comes from his book, "Modern Painters."

"Thus, as far as I recollect, without a single exception, every Homeric landscape, intended to be beautiful, is composed of a fountain, a meadow, and a shady grove. This ideal is very interestingly marked, as intended for a perfect one, in the fifth book of the Odyssey; when Mercury himself stops for a moment, though on a message, to look at a landscape “which even an immortal might be gladdened to behold.” This landscape consists of a cave covered with a running vine, all blooming into grapes, and surrounded by a grove of alder, poplar, and sweet-smelling cypress. Four fountains of white (foaming) water, springing _in succession_ (mark the orderliness), and close to one another, flow away in different directions, through a meadow full of violets and parsley (parsley, to mark its moisture, being elsewhere called “marsh-nourished,” and associated with the lotus); the air is perfumed not only by these violets and by the sweet cypress, but by Calypso’s fire of finely chopped cedar wood, which sends a smoke as of incense, through the island; Calypso herself is singing; and finally, upon the trees are resting, or roosting, owls, hawks, and “long-tongued sea-crows.” Whether these last are considered as a part of the ideal landscape, as marine singing-birds, I know not; but the approval of Mercury appears to be elicited chiefly by the fountains and violet meadow.

Now the notable things in this description are, first, the evident subservience of the whole landscape to human comfort, to the foot, the taste, or the smell; and, secondly, that throughout the passage there is not a single figurative word expressive of the things being in any wise other than plain grass, fruit or flower. I have used the term “spring” of the fountains, because, without doubt, Homer means that they sprang forth brightly, having their source at the foot of the rocks (as copious fountains nearly always have); but Homer does not say “spring,” he says simply flow, and uses only one word for “growing softly,” or “richly,” of the tall trees, the vine, and the violets. There is, however, some expression of sympathy with the sea-birds; he speaks of them in precisely the same terms, as in other places of naval nations, saying they “have care of the works of the sea.”

If we glance through the references to pleasant landscape which occur in other parts of the Odyssey, we shall always be struck by this quiet subjection of their every feature to human service, and by the excessive similarity in the scenes. Perhaps the spot intended, after this, to be most perfect, may be the garden of Alcinous, where the principal ideas are, still more definitely, order, symmetry, and fruitfulness; the beds being duly ranged between rows of vines, which, as well as the pear, apple, and fig-trees, bear fruit continually, some grapes being yet sour, while others are getting black; there are plenty of “_orderly_ square beds of herbs,” chiefly leeks, and two fountains, one running through the garden, and one under the pavement of the palace to a reservoir for the citizens. Ulysses, pausing to contemplate this scene, is described nearly in the same terms as Mercury pausing to contemplate the wilder meadow; and it is interesting to observe, that, in spite of all Homer’s love of symmetry, the god’s admiration is excited by the free fountains, wild violets, and wandering vine; but the mortal’s, by the vines in rows, the leeks in beds, and the fountains in pipes.

Ulysses has, however, one touching reason for loving vines in rows. His father had given him fifty rows for himself, when he was a boy, with corn between them (just as it now grows in Italy). Proving his identity afterwards to his father, whom he finds at work in his garden, “with thick gloves on, to keep his hands from the thorns,” he reminds him of these fifty rows of vines, and of the “thirteen pear-trees and ten apple-trees” which he had given him; and Laertes faints upon his neck."

[Modern Painters 13.16-18]

• Sunday, December 8, 2019
  archeology current affairs poetry blogging

Prometheus Unbound - Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets and is regarded by critics as amongst the finest lyric poets in the English language. A radical in his poetry as well as his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron; Leigh Hunt; Thomas Love Peacock; and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

The poetry I'm sharing today is Prometheus Unbound, a four-act lyrical drama first published in 1818. It is concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus, who defies the gods and gives fire to humanity, for which he is subjected to eternal punishment and suffering at the hands of Zeus. It is inspired by the classical Prometheia, a trilogy of plays attributed to Aeschylus. Shelley's play concerns Prometheus' release from captivity, but unlike Aeschylus' version, there is no reconciliation between Prometheus and Jupiter (Zeus). Instead, Jupiter is abandoned by his supportive elements and falls from power, which allows Prometheus to be released.

Shelley's play is closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be produced on the stage. In the tradition of Romantic poetry, Shelley wrote for the imagination, intending his play's stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers. However, the play is filled with suspense, mystery and other dramatic effects that make it, in theory, performable. This is an excerpt.

SCENE.—A Ravine of Icy Rocks in the Indian Caucasus. Prometheus is discovered bound to the Precipice. Panthea and Ione are seated at his feet. Time, night. During the Scene, morning slowly breaks.

Monarch of Gods and Dæmons, and all Spirits

But One, who throng those bright and rolling worlds

Which Thou and I alone of living things

Behold with sleepless eyes! regard this Earth

Made multitudinous with thy slaves, whom thou

Requitest for knee-worship, prayer, and praise,

And toil, and hecatombs of broken hearts,

With fear and self-contempt and barren hope.

Whilst me, who am thy foe, eyeless in hate,

Hast thou made reign and triumph, to thy scorn,

O'er mine own misery and thy vain revenge.

Three thousand years of sleep-unsheltered hours,

And moments aye divided by keen pangs

Till they seemed years, torture and solitude,

Scorn and despair,—these are mine empire:—

More glorious far than that which thou surveyest

From thine unenvied throne, O Mighty God!

Almighty, had I deigned to share the shame

Of thine ill tyranny, and hung not here

Nailed to this wall of eagle-baffling mountain,

Black, wintry, dead, unmeasured; without herb,

Insect, or beast, or shape or sound of life.

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure.

I ask the Earth, have not the mountains felt?

I ask yon Heaven, the all-beholding Sun,

Has it not seen? The Sea, in storm or calm,

Heaven's ever-changing Shadow, spread below,

Have its deaf waves not heard my agony?

Ah me! alas, pain, pain ever, for ever!

The crawling glaciers pierce me with the spears

Of their moon-freezing crystals, the bright chains

Eat with their burning cold into my bones.

Heaven's wingèd hound, polluting from thy lips

His beak in poison not his own, tears up

My heart; and shapeless sights come wandering by,

The ghastly people of the realm of dream,

Mocking me: and the Earthquake-fiends are charged

To wrench the rivets from my quivering wounds

When the rocks split and close again behind:

While from their loud abysses howling throng

The genii of the storm, urging the rage

Of whirlwind, and afflict me with keen hail.

And yet to me welcome is day and night,

Whether one breaks the hoar frost of the morn,

Or starry, dim, and slow, the other climbs

The leaden-coloured east; for then they lead

The wingless, crawling hours, one among whom

—As some dark Priest hales the reluctant victim—

Shall drag thee, cruel King, to kiss the blood

From these pale feet, which then might trample thee

If they disdained not such a prostrate slave.

Disdain! Ah no! I pity thee. What ruin

Will hunt thee undefended through wide Heaven!

How will thy soul, cloven to its depth with terror,

Gape like a hell within! I speak in grief,

Not exultation, for I hate no more,

As then ere misery made me wise. The curse

Once breathed on thee I would recall. Ye Mountains,

Whose many-voicèd Echoes, through the mist

Of cataracts, flung the thunder of that spell!

Ye icy Springs, stagnant with wrinkling frost,

Which vibrated to hear me, and then crept

Shuddering through India! Thou serenest Air,

Through which the Sun walks burning without beams!

And ye swift Whirlwinds, who on poisèd wings

Hung mute and moveless o'er yon hushed abyss,

As thunder, louder than your own, made rock

The orbèd world! If then my words had power,

Though I am changed so that aught evil wish

Is dead within; although no memory be

Of what is hate, let them not lose it now!

What was that curse? for ye all heard me speak. 

• Friday, October 11, 2019
  Mythology 101 Percy Bysshe Shelley poetry blogging Prometheus

Ariadne's Lament

Today is a day for Dionysos, for His maddening touch, for His destructive needs, and His cleansing desire. A poem, then, in his honour, written by Friedrich Nietzsche, published in the 1890's. It's part of his Dionysian-Dithyrambs, and while I won't liken myself to Ariadne, I relate today.

Friedrich Nietzsche - Ariadne's Lament

Who will warm me, who loves me still?

Give warm hands!

Give the heart's brazier!

Prone, shuddering

Like one half dead, whose feet are warmed;

Shaken, alas! by unknown fevers,

Trembling at pointed arrows of glacial frost,

Hunted by you, Thought!

Nameless! Cloaked! Horrid!

You hunter behind clouds!

Struck down by your lightning,

Your scornful eye, glaring at me out of the dark!

Thus I lie,

Writhing, twisted, tormented

By all the eternal afflictions,

Struck

By you, cruelest hunter,

You unknown—god ...

Strike deeper!

Strike one more time!

Stab, break this heart!

Why all this affliction

With blunt-toothed arrows?

How can you gaze evermore,

Unweary of human agony,

With the spiteful lightning eyes of gods?

You do not wish to kill,

Only to torment, torment?

Why torment—me,

You spiteful unknown god?

Aha!

You creep closer

Around midnight? ...

What do you want?

Speak!

You push me, press upon me,

Ah, already much too close!

You hear me breathing,

You eavesdrop on my heart,

Most jealous one! —

What are you jealous of anyway?

Away! Away!

What's the ladder for?

Do you want inside,

Would you get into my heart,

And enter

My most secret thoughts?

Shameless one! Unknown! Thief!

What do you wish to steal for yourself?

What do you wish to hear for yourself?

What will you gain by torture,

You torturer!

You—executioner-god!

Or am I, like a dog,

To wallow before you?

Devoted, eager due to my

Love for you—fawning over you?

In vain!

It stabs again!

Cruelest sting!

I am not your dog, only your prey,

Cruelest hunter!

Your proudest prisoner,

You robber behind clouds ...

Speak finally!

You, cloaked by lightning! Unknown! Speak!

What do you want, highwayman, from—me?...

What?

A ransom?

What do you want for ransom?

Demand much—so advises my pride!

And talk little—my pride advises as well!

Aha!

Me?—you want me?

Me—all of me? ...

Aha!

And tormenting me, fool that you are,

You wrack my pride?

Give me love—who warms me still?

Who loves me still?

Give warm hands,

Give the heart's brazier,

Give me, the loneliest one,

Ice, alas! whom ice sevenfold

Has taught to yearn for enemies,

Even for my enemies

Give, yes, surrender to me,

Cruelest enemy —

Yourself! ...

Gone!

He has fled,

My only companion,

My splendid enemy,

My unknown,

My executioner-god! ...

No!

Come back!

With all your afflictions!

All my tears gush forth

To you they stream

And the last flames of my heart

Glow for you.

Oh, come back,

My unknown god! my pain!

My ultimate happiness! ....

A lightening bolt. Dionysus becomes visible in emerald beauty.

Dionysus:

Be clever, Ariadne! ...

You have little ears; you have my ears:

Put a clever word in them! —

Must one not first hate oneself, in order to love oneself? ...

I am your labyrinth ...

• Thursday, October 3, 2019
  Ariadne Dionysos personal poetry blogging

John Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn

Let me leave you with poetry this morning, one of my favourites--one I can recite from the top of my head even if you wake me in the middle of the night. You know, we used to make our schoolbooks pretty (and lasting) by covering them in wrapping paper and laminating them. Tradition says to add pictures of things you like to the wrapping paper before laminating, and one year, I used poetry only. This one was on my diary, so I read it at least ten times a day. Fond memories. You can read more about the poem here.

John Keats - Ode on a Grecian Urn

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,

  Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape

  Of deities or mortals, or of both,

    In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

  What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

    What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

  Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

    Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;

    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

 

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

  Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearièd,

  For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

  For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

    For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

  That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

    A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

  To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

  And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea-shore,

  Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

    Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

  Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell

    Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

 

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede

  Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

  Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

  When old age shall this generation waste,

    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

• Tuesday, September 24, 2019
  poetry blogging