Surrounded by buildings and artsy city stock

[sovay]

Despite the snow emergency lights flashing blue all over town since yesterday afternoon, the promised storm was a thin dusting in our back yard and some rain. I am sad not only because of the reinforcement of climate change, but because I really had been looking forward to snow. I miss it. Yesterday morning I found myself at the Back Bay T station for a doctor's appointment and it seemed unreal yet calendrically undeniable that I had not been out there in four years. I meant to wander around afterward and look for the former site of the Copley Theatre, but all I had time to do was make it to my next appointment. Have some links.

1. Graham Fuller's "Powell and Pressburger: the glueman cometh" is a beautifully detailed discussion of A Canterbury Tale (1944), which I am resolved to see someday in a theater. I am afraid I cannot accept any heterosexual reading of Colpeper, but at least the author is one of the very few critics of my experience to have paid attention underneath the closing credits.

2. I read Lilian Bowes Lyon's "Daybreak" (1941) and Edward Field's "World War II" (1967) within a day of one another; there is no moral, except that they chimed.

3. Obviously I took the internet quiz to determine which ancient epic poem you are. It seems to have determined that I am "the argonautica: like if homer and the library of alexandria fucked." Please advise if I should feel attacked.

4. When I was feeling particularly bad, spatch sent me some volcano snails.

5. I was close to tears while reading about the unexpected altruism of elephant seals, which I suppose will continue to happen to me for some time when some small thing in distress is saved. The existence of the Hitler beetle made a sort of astringent chaser.

"Art makes me happy!" Rob just had to listen to me yell. "Why do people make it so difficult to make art?"

Comments

[muccamukk]

I got the Iliad, probably a sign I should read that new translation.

[sovay]

I got the Iliad, probably a sign I should read that new translation.

I don't see a downside. (Other than not liking it, which is the usual risk.)

[chanter1944]

Evidently, I am The Odyssey. Well then.

[sovay]

Evidently, I am The Odyssey. Well then.

Woven of tricky tellings and olive trees. Nice.

[chanter1944]

That... sounds remarkably accurate. Mayhap substitute the olive trees for evergreens, maples in autumn, mature summer oaks in humid green... I'll be quiet now, except to say that I've long had a fondness for Telemachus for reasons I can't quite articulate. Hero of his own story, maybe?

[redbird]

I got the Iliad.

[sovay]

I got the Iliad.

I hope there is actually not that much grief in your life.

[redbird]

The only answer I'm sure was relevant to that was "yes" to dactylic hexameter. Maybe choosing the Akhmatova quote?

[gwynnega]

I got the same result as you in the quiz. I am okay with this!

I assume there must be a band called the Hitler Beetles. (Or maybe the Hitler Beatles.)

[sovay]

I got the same result as you in the quiz. I am okay with this!

Excellent!

I assume there must be a band called the Hitler Beetles. (Or maybe the Hitler Beatles.)

If there isn't, since you need band names . . .

[moon_custafer]

Slight detour, but somebody’s got to have written “As John Lennon awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a Beatle,” right?

[sovay]

Slight detour, but somebody’s got to have written “As John Lennon awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a Beatle,” right?

I can't imagine how not. On the other hand, spatch the other night invented a brilliantly no-brainer Greek theater joke that the internet doesn't seem to have heard of, so there are strange gaps in our pop culture.

[pameladean]

The Annales?

There were no right answers to the food question.

P.

[sovay]

The Annales?

I missed that was an option!

There were no right answers to the food question.

I don't know; I agreed that if an epic poem ate another epic poem, it would be fucked up. I just figured then I'd be the Pharsalia.

[pameladean]

The Annales is not gay-coded! I get a second Punic War as a treat! *sulks*

I, um, have to confess that I thought that if an epic poem ate another epic poem, it would be, well, um, epic. Very cool and meta-textual. Maybe that's where I went wrong. But it was probably when I said the universe was made of atoms, the very first question, that I went wrong. That may not be the right spirit to approach in, you know?

I have sadly never before heard of the Pharsalia and missed your joke; I am desolated.

P.

P.

[sovay]

The Annales is not gay-coded! I get a second Punic War as a treat!

I'm sorry it was not gay enough! At least with the Second Punic War you get Hannibal!

I, um, have to confess that I thought that if an epic poem ate another epic poem, it would be, well, um, epic. Very cool and meta-textual. Maybe that's where I went wrong.

Dunno. I chose my answer hearing "fucked up" in a tone of appreciation, like Boston-regional "wicked."

I have sadly never before heard of the Pharsalia and missed your joke; I am desolated.

It's not entirely a joke! The Pharsalia kind of is what happens when one poem burrows into another and devours it from the bones out, but it is also a poem I love. It's so difficult to recommend because the last time I checked I still didn't love any of the verse translations and the prose one by Robert Graves should be avoided with tongs, but it is a diamond-cut pitch-black splatterpunk anti-epic of the Roman civil war of 49–45 BCE enacted in some of the weirdest hexameters I have ever read for myself. It's never met a trope of its genre it won't subvert, invert, or pervert, at its core a furious grief for the ruination of the world and a bitter glee in pulling down the props of imperium, even on the poet's own head; it was incomplete at ten books when its author was caught in conspiracy against Nero and forced to commit suicide. No one knows how he would have ended it. It is a ghost poem that haunts itself. I was translating pieces of Book 6 in 2010, but it never amounted to a complete project. I did write "Lucan in Averno," which now sometimes makes the rounds on classicist Tumblr.

[pameladean]

Hannibal is indeed a treat!

I am very much entertained that we mostly agree about the value of an epic poem's eating another epic poem, but did not provide the same answer. The general tenor of the quiz makes me think that your Bostonian "fucked-UP" interpretation is probably right.

Thank you for describing the Pharsalia for me. I love your descriptions so much. I will avoid the Robert Graves translation for sure. I knew the salient facts about Lucan's end because of "Lucan in Averno," because I looked him up; but I had forgotten the name of the work he was engaged in.

P.

[sovay]

Thank you for describing the Pharsalia for me. I love your descriptions so much.

You're welcome, and thank you!

I will avoid the Robert Graves translation for sure.

He hated the poem. He spends the entire preface tearing it down with its author for their failings both moral and artistic and then takes the priggish revenge of rendering its genuine weirdness as flatly and dully and without any of the shock effects he so disdains as possible. I carried a red-spined, black-paged edition of I, Claudius (1934) like a talisman everywhere for a year in high school and I still wanted to go back in time and punch him.

I knew the salient facts about Lucan's end because of "Lucan in Averno," because I looked him up; but I had forgotten the name of the work he was engaged in.

In your defense, it's also and nowadays more academically called De Bello Civili (On the Civil War). The Pharsalia is the older name, but the one I'm stuck with.

[anna_wing]

I am the Epic of Gilgamesh, I suspect because of my rejection of dactylic hexameter, which is not my favourite.

[sovay]

I am the Epic of Gilgamesh, I suspect because of my rejection of dactylic hexameter, which is not my favourite.

However you arrived at it, it's not a bad thing to be.

[yhlee]

i got the aeneid??

i still have no clue what a dactyl is - i got the english teacher who didn't believe in making us memorize that stuff and now i have to google it every time :/

[mrissa]

The mnemonic I learned was:

The iamb saunters through my book
Troches rush and tumble
While the anapest runs like a rippling brook
Dactyls are stately and classical

Which does rely on you having an ear for meter so that you can go, oh, right DACtyls are STATely and CLASSical, that one's a dactyl, DAHdahdah, but at least it's a start.

[sovay]

Which does rely on you having an ear for meter so that you can go, oh, right DACtyls are STATely and CLASSical, that one's a dactyl, DAHdahdah, but at least it's a start.

There's always Longfellow's "Evangeline," which is the only reason for that poem. (No better illustration of how dactylic hexameter works in a quantitative meter where the Morse-flashed patterns can shift as needed around the caesura and still come to the same close where stressing the same syllables over and over again the length of a book in English will make you want to gnaw your arm off. But you can memorize the first line for its rhythm and remember that way.)

[ethelmay]

Double dactyls, which is where I learned about dactyls, aren't stately and classical at all,

[sovay]

Double dactyls, which is where I learned about dactyls, aren't stately and classical at all

I first encountered those through John Bellairs!

[sovay]

i got the aeneid??

Not shabby!

i still have no clue what a dactyl is - i got the english teacher who didn't believe in making us memorize that stuff and now i have to google it every time

I learned almost zero English prosody in high school (sonnets) and picked up almost everything I know from Latin and Greek.

[yhlee]

:wry: I didn't get far enough into Latin to get into more than the tiniest bit of that, which, fair; it was an Intensive Latin course that did Wheelock in one semester instead of two, for classics majors in a hurry; and I literally took it my last semester of undergrad so I never followed it up.

We got iambic pentameter because of Shakespeare in high school and like that was it. /o\

[sovay]

We got iambic pentameter because of Shakespeare in high school and like that was it.

Okay, I bet that also happened to me. We did read Shakespeare.

(Half of my high school English classes were experimental and I loved them, but I've been catching up to the Western canon on my own time ever since.)

[selkie]

No, Virgil, no: Not even the first of the Romans can learn His Roman history in the future tense. Not even to serve your political turn; Hindsight as foresight makes no sense. objectively the most Powerful epic...... but will you use those powers for good or evil?

Huh.

[sovay]

Huh.

Hindsight as foresight does too make sense, it just depends on your relationship to time!

(I think you use your powers for good.)

[batdina]

For some reason I'm The Aeneid. I do not know why and I'm not sure I'm up for rereading it now. Maybe next year?

[sovay]

For some reason I'm The Aeneid. I do not know why and I'm not sure I'm up for rereading it now. Maybe next year?

It's not compulsory. (You could always re-read Le Guin's Lavinia.)

[batdina]

Ah. Lavinia is probably in a box in the garage right now. I conceded and picked up Virgil yesterday. I'm not up for reading it in Latin again so I hope the translation I picked up is decent.

[genarti]

God, yes. I was so excited for the snow (not to mention coming home from a visit to my parents a day early in anticipation of it), and then it was just an utter bust. I was sad and frustrated about it all day, for both climate change reasons and personal love of winter snow reasons. I guess it's heartening in a way that nearly everybody else seems equally frustrated and sad about it, but I'd rather have the snow.

[genarti]

Also, I just took the quiz and got Odyssey. Of which I am quite fond, but I'm not sure it particularly applies... but probably more than The Iliad, at least! Maybe it's just that I don't think I'm particularly Odysseus-like (which I'm fine with, heh).

[sovay]

Maybe it's just that I don't think I'm particularly Odysseus-like (which I'm fine with, heh).

You could always be Athene.

[sovay]

I guess it's heartening in a way that nearly everybody else seems equally frustrated and sad about it, but I'd rather have the snow.

We should all have been gratified!

[dhampyresa]

I am The Epic of Gilgamesh. I do want a several days nap and my lacunae are very gay.

[sovay]

I am The Epic of Gilgamesh. I do want a several days nap and my lacunae are very gay.

Yeah, you're set.