In which translation and recreation dovetail.
As a break from Catullus 64, I re-read Seneca's Thyestes tonight—a pleasant domestic drama of exile, revenge, and cannibalism. ("All the things we hold near and dear to our hearts.") In its opening soliloquy, the shade of Tantalos, ancestor of this cursed house of Atreus whose every generation commits some terrible crime and which will self-destruct spectacularly with the murder of Agamemnon and the human and divine reprisals that follow, introduces himself:
Who hauls me from my luckless seat among those below
where I chase the food that flees my hungry mouth—
what god once more shows Tantalus his sadly recognized
home? Has there been discovered anything worse
than parching thirst among waves, worse than hunger
always gaping? Will my shoulders
bear now Sisyphus' slippery stone
or the wheel that scatters limbs as it spins
or the punishment of Tityrus, who lies torn open
and black birds feed on his excavated entrails,
who recovers at night all that he lost by day
to lie as plentiful food for the latest torment?
To what evil am I transferred? Whoever you are,
strict arbiter of shades who hands out new punishments
to the dead, if there is anything left to add
at which the prison-keeper himself would shudder,
that would frighten desolate Acheron, at which we too
would tremble for fear—find it. From my stock
now has sprung a crowd that would outdo its kindred
and make me look innocent, dare the undared.
Whatever place lie fallow in the unhallowed regions,
I will fill it; never while Pelops' house stands
will Minos want for work.
(And indeed, what Atreus does may be considered worse than Tantalos' crime: at least Tantalos only cooked and served up his own child.)
On a cheerier note, I also re-watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). It's a fantastic film; I can only hope that the sequel lives up to its bizarre and utterly compelling swashbuckling. If all Captain Jack Sparrow did was read the phone book, I'd still listen. Nevertheless, I maintain that the best speech in the film belongs to its villain, Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa, and his tale of the cursed Aztec gold:
. . . And we took them all. We spent them and traded them and frittered them away on drink and food and pleasurable company. The more we gave them away, the more we came to realize—the drink would not satisfy, food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner. Compelled by greed, we were, but now we are consumed by it . . . The moonlight shows us for what we really are. We are not among the living and so we cannot die, but neither are we dead. For too long I've been parched with thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing—not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one.*
It seemed an appropriate convergence; although perhaps the curse is only a common one, in its devastation. But I thought Tantalos would sympathize.
*I will confess, I'm also fond of his line about the apples.
As a break from Catullus 64, I re-read Seneca's Thyestes tonight—a pleasant domestic drama of exile, revenge, and cannibalism. ("All the things we hold near and dear to our hearts.") In its opening soliloquy, the shade of Tantalos, ancestor of this cursed house of Atreus whose every generation commits some terrible crime and which will self-destruct spectacularly with the murder of Agamemnon and the human and divine reprisals that follow, introduces himself:
Who hauls me from my luckless seat among those below
where I chase the food that flees my hungry mouth—
what god once more shows Tantalus his sadly recognized
home? Has there been discovered anything worse
than parching thirst among waves, worse than hunger
always gaping? Will my shoulders
bear now Sisyphus' slippery stone
or the wheel that scatters limbs as it spins
or the punishment of Tityrus, who lies torn open
and black birds feed on his excavated entrails,
who recovers at night all that he lost by day
to lie as plentiful food for the latest torment?
To what evil am I transferred? Whoever you are,
strict arbiter of shades who hands out new punishments
to the dead, if there is anything left to add
at which the prison-keeper himself would shudder,
that would frighten desolate Acheron, at which we too
would tremble for fear—find it. From my stock
now has sprung a crowd that would outdo its kindred
and make me look innocent, dare the undared.
Whatever place lie fallow in the unhallowed regions,
I will fill it; never while Pelops' house stands
will Minos want for work.
(And indeed, what Atreus does may be considered worse than Tantalos' crime: at least Tantalos only cooked and served up his own child.)
On a cheerier note, I also re-watched Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003). It's a fantastic film; I can only hope that the sequel lives up to its bizarre and utterly compelling swashbuckling. If all Captain Jack Sparrow did was read the phone book, I'd still listen. Nevertheless, I maintain that the best speech in the film belongs to its villain, Geoffrey Rush's Barbossa, and his tale of the cursed Aztec gold:
. . . And we took them all. We spent them and traded them and frittered them away on drink and food and pleasurable company. The more we gave them away, the more we came to realize—the drink would not satisfy, food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the pleasurable company in the world could not slake our lust. We are cursed men, Miss Turner. Compelled by greed, we were, but now we are consumed by it . . . The moonlight shows us for what we really are. We are not among the living and so we cannot die, but neither are we dead. For too long I've been parched with thirst and unable to quench it. Too long I've been starving to death and haven't died. I feel nothing—not the wind on my face nor the spray of the sea, nor the warmth of a woman's flesh. You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner. You're in one.*
It seemed an appropriate convergence; although perhaps the curse is only a common one, in its devastation. But I thought Tantalos would sympathize.
*I will confess, I'm also fond of his line about the apples.
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