A woman went crazy and offed herself because she thought the Da Vinci Code was real and that Opus Dei was out to get her. I’m worried that Tom Hanks’ hair is out to get me, but you don’t see me OD’ing! Man up!
Explain that to St. Peter, mon General
It’s all a bit of a blur after I invented wine.
–Bacchus
Doing the Islands with Bacchus, a collection of comics by Eddie Campbell, is one of my all-time faves. Consisting of a travelogue of Bacchus and friends around the Greek islands, the comics relate the “real” stories behind some of the Greek myths, along with digressions on the history of fashion, the art of vinoculture, the discovery of champagne, and the nature of the afterlife (or afterdeath, as it turns out). Importantly, Campbell achieves this while keeping his characters as characters. That is, they don’t simply recite facts, but rather bring different perspectives and styles.
The Last of the Summer Wine, a 24-pager narrated by Bacchus’ companion Simpson as he, Bacchus and Hermes travel to Naxos by boat, is a marvel. The story manages to convey the glory of ancient Greek culture, make wry observations (verbal and visual) about the power of myth, and lead to a wonderfully poignant conclusion about the essence of love. Maybe it’s that inner classics-geek I’ve been referring to lately, but the final page of that comic always chokes me up.
I bring all this up because Campbell recently wrote about one of his major influences on those comic strips: the books of Walter James. I’d never heard of James before this, and with good reason. Sez Campbell, “He was an Australian wine maker who wrote several volumes of diaristic thoughts on just about everything, but mostly about winemaking and his enthusiasm for reading. They were published between 1949 (Barrel and Book,) and 1957 (Antipasto) and amounted to six volumes, of which I’ve managed to find four.”
Give Eddie’s post a read, take some delight in the excerpts of James’ writing, and tip a little libation to Bacchus, wouldja?
Monday Morning Montaigne
I was pretty excited when I saw that the next essay in my Montaigne collection
Of Friendship is intended to introduce poems by Montaigne’s dead friend, political philosopher Etienne de La Boetie, but what it focuses on is the character of their “once in three centuries” friendship. In the process of describing the intense, four-year relationship the men shared, Montaigne proceeds to dismiss the possibility of true friendship between a man and
- his dad (too much respect)
- his brother (too much sibling rivalry)
- a girl (too much lust; a 16th century version of When Harry Met Sally)
- a fag (see above, and note “[T]hat other, licentious Greek love is justly abhorred by our morality.”)
- more than one guy (too much sharing)
So I was let down, especially because my brother and my wife are two of my closest friends, there are a number of other friends I’d (essentially) go to the end of the earth for, and I once contemplated having two guys killed to avenge a brutal assault on a queer friend of mine (not that we shared that other, licentious Greek love or anything).
Anyway, rather than pass on any excerpts from that stuff, I thought I’d share with you the opening to the essay. It mirrors my own tendency to start off strong and end up all over the darned place:
As I was considering the way a painter I employ went about his work, I had a mind to imitate him. He chooses the best spot, the middle of each wall, to put a picture labored over with all his skill, and the empty space around it he fills with grotesques, which are fantastic paintings whose only charm lies in their variety and strangeness. And what are these essays of mine, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, without definite shape, having no order, sequence or proportion other than accidental?
“A lovely woman tapers off into a fish.” [Horace]
I do indeed go along with my painter in this second point, but I fall short in the first and better part; for my ability does not go far enough for me to dare to undertake a rich, polished picture, formed according to art.
Fortunately, the next few essays are Of Moderation, Of Cannibals, and Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes, so I figure there should be some more entertaining posts in the weeks ahead.
Skygod is keepin’ it real
Zeus is such a player he can bed his old lady by telling her about all the times he cheated on her:
But now let us go to bed and turn to love-making.
For never before has love for any goddess or woman
so melted about the heart inside me, broken it to submission,
as now: not that time when I loved the wife of Ixion
who bore me Peirithoos, equal of the gods in counsel,
nor when I loved Akrisios’ daughter, sweet-stepping Danae,
who bore Perseus to me, pre-eminent among all men,
nor when I loved the daughter of far-renowed Phoinix, Europa
who bore Minos to me, and Rhadamanthys the godlike;
not when I loved Semele, or Alkmene in Thebe,
when Alkmene bore me a son, Herakles the strong-hearted,
while Semele’s son was Dionysos, the pleasure of mortals;
not when I loved the queen Demeter of the lovely tresses,
not when it was glorious Leto, nor yourself, so much
as now I love you, and the sweet passion has taken hold of me.
Iliad, 14, 313-328
Hot Gates, Hot Box Office?
A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to mark-out for 300, and that Amy & I would likely go catch it this weekend at the local IMAX, so as to get the full theme-park experience of Thermopylae on a giant screen.
This morning, I went online and discovered that every single IMAX screening this weekend is sold out.
I have to admit, my powers of prognostication aren’t the greatest, when it comes to movies and other pop phenomena. I mean, Ghost Rider looks like a godawful movie, and it’s based on a godawful character from Marvel’s nadir. So of course it ran away with the box office and is going to pass $100 million in sales this weekend. Did I underestimate how bored and/or stupid teenagers can be in February? I guess so.
But 300? Projected to pull in $60 million in its opening weekend? I’m happy that it’s getting so much exposure, but I’m just afraid that it’ll give Frank Miller so much Hollywood cachet that he’ll pursue a bigscreen version of Give Me Liberty.
Unrequired Reading: Mar. 9, 2007
Always with interesting links that I didn’t have time or motivation to write about!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Mar. 9, 2007”
Not just tan: Spartan
In keeping with my inner classics-geek of that previous post, here’s Victor Davis Hanson on 300, the movie adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book
[T]he impressionism of 300 is Hellenic in spirit: its buff bare chests are reminiscent of the heroic nudity of warriors on Attic vase paintings. Even in its surrealism — a rhinoceros, futuristic swords, and an effeminate, Mr. Clean-esque Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) who gets his ear flicked by a Spartan spear cast — it is not all that different from some of Euripides’ wilder takes, like Helen or Iphigeneia at Taurus, in their strange deviation from the party line of the Homeric epics. Like the highly formalist Attic tragedy — with its set length, three actors, music, iambic and choral meters, and so forth — 300 consciously abandons realist portrayal.
I don’t remember a ton of the comic book. The one time I read it, I was at a friend’s house in Auckland, NZ, trying desperately to stay awake till nightfall, so as not to get wrecked by jetlag. Fortunately, he was one of the greatest cartoonists in the antipodes, and had a room full of comics that I hadn’t read.
And, yes, I’m thinking of catching 300 at the local IMAX. Sue me.
(Here are some terrible pix from the premiere.)
Giving old meaning to “homecoming”
Lately, I’ve been rediscovering my inner classics-geek. I guess it might be obvious from the contents of this blog, between those Monday Morning Montaigne snippets and my return to the Iliad
During the weekend, I opened up the Poetics
Last night, I got a brochure in the mail from my graduate school, the inestimably important (to me) St. John’s College. The college is launching a continuing education program for alumni, consisting of weekend (or slightly longer) sessions on some of the great books.
The first offering, Aristotle & Aquinas on the Unity of Intellect, didn’t appeal to me too much, but the second one, a 4-day session in June on the Odyssey
I saved the flyer. This morning, when I looked it over, I noticed something strange. See, this being St. John’s, the program is named after the port where Socrates and his buddies had the conversation that comprises The Republic
That said, the school is referring to the program as “Pireaus”, and that’s what struck me as odd. I had to run downstairs to my library to check that I wasn’t misremembering, but as far as I can tell, it’s supposed to be “Piraeus”, not “Pireaus”. That’s how Bloom has it, and that’s how Jowett has it. Unfortunately, I can’t find my Greek/English lexicon down there (I’ve got a ton of books, okay? And, yes, I do own a Greek/English lexicon), and don’t have a Greek version of The Republic around.
So, can anyone (that means you, brother) get me a ruling on why they’re called it Pireaus?
(Now if I can just make an early start on those Top Company reports. . .)
Monday Morning Montaigne
This week’s Montaine passage comes from On the Education of Children, which was written to Madame Diane De Foix, Comtesse De Gurson, who was expecting the birth of her first son. How do we know it’s a son? Well, “[You] are too noble-spirited to begin otherwise than with a male,” Michel tells us.
Montaigne uses the occasion of this essay to praise the merits of a liberal arts education. I wish I had it on hand to explain my master’s degree to people. He’s telling us to learn how to think, and how to be curious (and also how to inure ourselves to torture in case we end up in the clutches of an Inquisition). In this passage, we find that it’s not so important to quote the great thinkers (which Montaigne still does a bunch) as it is to understand how they thought:
Let the tutor make his charge pass everything through a sieve and lodge nothing in his head on mere authority and trust: let not Aristotle’s principles be principles to him any more than those of the Stoics or the Epicureans. Let this variety of ideas be set before him; he will choose if he can; if not, he will remain in doubt. Only the fools are certain and assured.
“For doubting pleases me no less than knowing,” says Dante. For if he embraces Xenophon’s and Plato’s opinions by his own reasoning, they will no longer be theirs, they will be his. He who follows another follows nothing. He finds nothing; indeed he seeks nothing. “We are not under a king; let each one claim his own freedom.” [Seneca] Let him know that he knows, at least. He must imbibe their ways of thinking, not learn their precepts. And let him boldly forget, if he wants, where he got them, but let him know how to make them his own. Truth and reason are common to everyone, and no more belong to the man who first spoke them than to the man who says them later. It is no more according to Plato than according to me, since he and I understand and see it in the same way. The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram. Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work that is all his own, to wit, his judgment. His education, work, and study aim only at forming this.
Let him hide all the help he had, and show only what he has made of it. The pillages, the borrowers, parade their buildings, their purchases, not what they get from others. You do not see the gratuities of a member of Parliament, you see the alliances he has gained and honors for his children. No one makes public his receipts; everyone makes public his acquisitions.
The gain from our study is to have become better and wiser by it.
Oh, and Montaigne also offers up some advice for tutors, in the off chance this liberal education doesn’t take:
If this pupil happens to be of such an odd disposition that he would rather listen to some idle story than to the account of a fine voyage or a wise conversation when he hears one; if, at the sound of a drum that calls the youthful ardor of his companions to arms, he turns asideto another that invites him to the tricks of the jugglers; if, by his own preference, he does not find it more pleasant sweet to return dusty and victorious from a combat than from tennis or a ball with the prize for that exercise, I see no other remedy than for his tutor to strangle him early, if there are no witnesses, or apprentice him to a pastry cook in some good town, even though he were the son of a duke.
Major, Burns!
Charles Burns, one of the finest cartoonists currently practicing the craft, recently released a book of “paired photographs” called One Eye