Category Archives: English Literature

Vergil’s fancy to the bees, and the heavenly elixir

08 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Academia, English Literature, Latin Classics, Reception

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esse apibus partem diuinae mentis et haustus | aetherios dixere — Vergil, Georgics 4.220-221

Just saw this quoted in Claire Preston, 2006, Bee London: Reaktion Books. Google tells me that Claire Preston is Professor of Early Modern English literature at the University of Birmingham. It’s quoted, in itself a quote, from 17th C. Italian writer. I really, really, want to like this book. I love Bees. I love this sort of scholarship (although this is not really a piece of serious scholarship, and for me, just light-hearted summer reading). It’s a really interesting book about Bees, their natural and social history,

However the book is full of quotes, from English translations, mostly Dryden, of Vergil, quoted by page number. Which is really, really sloppy, because it makes much of the translation’s meaning (bees keep shop, they live in a commonwealth, etc), when the translations can’t be necessarily trusted. But never mind, until I saw the above passage translated as:

It is said that bees share divine intelligence by drinking ethereal draughts.

I just can’t let it pass. Plainly, apibus is dative/ablative apis (“bee”), so it means “to/by/with/from bees”. diuinae mentis is genitive f. singular, so “of the divine mind” and partem is accusative, and forms both the object and forms part of the infinitive-accusative construction esse … dixere. So I think apibus is dative, so that leaves it as “to/from bees”. However I doubt that et haustus aetherios is the agent of partem diuinae mentis, because clearly the et is introducing a new clause, it’s an additional accusative object with an implicit verb like ‘[given] to the bees’, with aetherios a nominative an accusative plural adjective used as a substantive “… and drinking ethereal [elixirs]“, supposing that if you can be drinking anything ethereal, it would have to be an elixir of some sort. So I think something like, to be quite literal for the moment about the infinitives:

to be to the bees a share of the divine mind, and drinking ethereal [elixir], to have said.

But of course, infinitive-accusative, oratio obliqua, indirect speech, and esse with the dative can mean in the sense of ‘to belong’ or ‘to pertain to’, so naturally;

It is said that to the bees [belongs] a share of the divine mind, and drinking ethereal elixirs.

Curiously, Lewis and Short on Perseus gives esse as the present infinitive active also of edo, “to eat”, and the presence of haustus, “drinking” … really makes me wonder if the translation could be rendered along the lines of:

It is said that the bees eat of the divine mind, and drink ethereal elixirs.

There’s also a sense with aetherius can mean “heavenly” or “celestial”, not just “ethereal”, and in that sense it tickles my fancy much better in terms of its relation to “the divine mind”, so perhaps we could render it;

It is said that the bees eat the Mind of God, and drink of Heaven.

After all the part of Georgics here immediately after this expounds on how God permeates all existence:

deum namque ire per omnes | terrasque tractusque maris caelumque profundum — Vergil Georgics 4.221-222. (see here).

More prosaically, however, and bringing it back to earth for a moment, I’d say it most likely translates:

It is said that to the bees belongs a share of the divine mind, and the drinking of heavenly elixirs.

Digital Classics and the data of ineffable mystery

31 Wednesday Oct 2012

Posted by in Digital Classics, English Literature, Greek Classics, Latin Classics, Literature, Science & Tech, Software & Tools

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I found that this article, by Stephen Marche titled Literature is not Data: Against Digital Humanities, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, was very thought provoking as far as polemic goes. Of course literature isn’t just mere “data”; but I also think that data about literature can still give you insight into it. One of the comments, by “mad scientist”, sums up the biggest problem with this critique when it says:

… simply to insist — again — on the ineffable mystery of literature isn’t particularly interesting.

Literature, like all art, does have an element of “ineffable mystery” but that’s not the only thing it has.

Anyway the entire polemic seems to me to be misplaced. It might be a new feeling for academics of English literature to be relying on databases and software tools but I suspect most modern Classicists simply couldn’t live without their Perseus or Brepolis access. Perhaps because Classicists are also nearly always Classical Historians and many of us have a close relationship with Archaeology and Archaeologists. Many of us Are Archeologists first and foremost (I’m not, however). Those of us trained in the Internet Age are completely normalised to the idea of databases and digital resources. Many of us have pocket Latin and Greek dictionaries in the form of smartphone applications.

But I think, in the Classical field, it goes to something deeper. Our field has always had an element of this: lonely scholars slaving over commentaries, compiling dictionaries or creating concordances. I certainly do not envy those who came before us and built up databases of texts with an index for every unique word stem used in it! That, to me sounds like such an amazingly stultifying job description, I’m glad I live in an age when all that prior hard word can be digitised and automated and made available for my daily use at the touch of a button!

But there’s also a great insight that I think is yet to be fully realised. For example, the creation and classifying of stemma codicum, so important to us in understanding how the literature has been transmitted to us through the ages, I think may be an area that will benefit from future computational insights. Another could be understanding the relationship of texts and authors; and the identification of insertions and errata another. These are things which were once done by hand, now the use of computers can speed them up and let scholars do the important work of humanist analysis and understanding rather than the mere donkey-work of collating word-frequency tables and transmission of stylistic markers in different works. Where the understanding of texts intersects with the understanding of history, the use of computational analysis, like that of definitive archaeological data before that, will also help us to sharpen our focus and broaden our horizons.

I for one welcome our new computer overlords.

Bright, unbearable reality: A Review of Alice Oswald, ‘Memorial’

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in English Literature, Greek Classics, Reception

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As if it was June
A poppy being hammered by the rain
Sinks its head down
It’s exactly like that
When a man’s neck gives in
And the bronze calyx of his helmet
Sinks his head down

Poor ARCHEPTOLEMOS
Someone was there
And the next moment no one

Like fire with its loose hair flying rushes through the city
The look of unmasked light shocks everything to rubble
And flames howl through the gaps

Alice Oswald, 2011. Memorial. London: Faber and Faber.

This powerful adaption of Homer’s Iliad, subtitled an ‘Excavation of the Iliad’, consists essentially of a haunting list of the named men who die in it, in the order in which they die, each with perhaps some small biographical detail or story of how they die. Protesilaus is first; Hector is last. It is simultaneously a retelling, abridgement, and translation. Interspersed though these deaths are similes, always repeated. The similes Oswald says ‘are translations’, but of a irreverent kind, and that they are ‘openings through which to see what Homer was looking at’. Oswald stated aim is for ‘translucence rather than translation’. Her stated aim was to recover the enargeia of the poem, its ‘bright, unbearable reality’. And enargeia we certainly have in shocking abundance.

And PEDAEUS the unwanted one
The mistake of his father’s mistress
Felt the hot shock in his neck of Mege’s spear
Unswallowable sore throat of metal in his mouth
Right through his teeth
He died biting down on the spearhead

Like suddenly it thunders
And a stormwind rushes down
And roars into the sea’s ears
And the curves of many white-parched waves
Run this way and that

This poem is beautiful in its austere remembrance of the dead heroes of Homer’s epic, and beautiful in its sorrow. The severity in stripping away from Homer the background of the war, the feuds of Zeus and Hera, Athena and Ares and the other gods, the speeches, reviews, catalogues and endless epithets and leaving just the short and powerful stories of the men who are killed, the manner of their deaths, and a brief lyrical eulogy to their memory, is to my opinion a stroke of genius. Some men are sons, brothers, and husbands, some men die the brave death of a hero, clashing bronze that smashes through flesh, others just die, yet others have only their names recorded.

And ENIOPEUS with high hopes
Drove Hector into battle
Into the terrifying anti-world of the wounded
The wheels kept slewing over bodies
But he held tight he was good with horses
Until a spear shocked him in the nipple
He vanished backwards and hit the ground under their hooves
Clang his soul burst into the open

It is a wondrous thing to read. Oswald’s use of language is ascetic and sparing; yet the poem still mediates Homer’s intense beauty. Whether you’re a hardened Classical Historian, a passionate lover of Greek Epic or a confused neophyte daunted by the many lengthy and cumbersome English translations of the Iliad, I would heartily recommend that you read this short and stunningly beautiful poem.

I will leave you with one last sample;

Like the hawk of the hills the perfect killer
Easily outflies the clattering dove
She dips away but he follows he ripples
He hangs his black hooks over her
And snares her with a thin cry
In praise of her softness

There was a blue pool who loved her loneliness
Lay on her stones clear-eyed staring at trees
Her name was Abarbarea
A young man found her in the hills
He took one look at her shivering freshness
And stripped off his clothes
In the middle of his astonished sheep
He jumped off a rock right into her arms
And from that quick fling there were two children
PEDASUS and AESEPUS
They died at Troy on the same day

Here is its entry in Amazon UK’s catalogue. Here is a review in The Guardian, and another review in the (UK) Telegraph. This is a link to a half-hour long Guardian books podcast in part of which you can hear a snippet of Alice reading her poem (recommended to listen – it was hearing this podcast which prompted my purchase!). This is a link to the book on the publisher’s site.

(this review is based on a much simpler version I wrote on Amazon)

CFP: Swords, Sorcery, Sandals and Space: The Fantastika and the Classical World. (Liverpool, Jun-Jul 2013)

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in English Literature, Greek Classics, Latin Classics, Literature, Reception

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Oh, my two favourite interests: Classics and SF! At the bottom, I’ve embedded the Classics Confidential video interview with the chair of the conference, Tony Keen. He gives an excellent overview and at the end makes perceptive observations about creating disciplinary bridges between Classical Receptionists, SF scholars, and English Literature scholars.

Memorabilia Antonina: Swords, Sorcery, Sandals and Space: The Fantastika and the Classical World. A Science Fiction Foundation Conference in 2013:

Swords, Sorcery, Sandals and Space: The Fantastika and the Classical World. A Science Fiction Foundation Conference

At The Foresight Centre, University of Liverpool, Jun-Jul 2013.

Guests of Honour/Plenary Speakers: Edith Hall, Nick Lowe, and Catherynne M. Valente

Website: http://www.sf-foundation.org/conference

Call for papers

The culture of the Classical world continues to shape that of the modern West. Those studying the Fantastika (science fiction, fantasy and horror) know that it has many of its roots in the literature of the Graeco-Roman world (Homer’s Odyssey, Lucian’s True History). At the same time, scholars of Classical Reception are increasingly investigating all aspects of popular culture, and have begun looking at science fiction. However, scholars of the one are not often enough in contact with scholars of the other. This conference aims to bridge the divide, and provide a forum in which SF and Classical Reception scholars can meet and exchange ideas.

We invite proposals for papers (20 minutes plus discussion) or themed panels of three or four papers from a wide range of disciplines (including Science Fiction, Classical Reception and Literature), from academics, students, fans, and anyone else interested, on any aspect of the interaction between the Classical world of Greece and Rome and science fiction, fantasy and horror. We are looking for papers on Classical elements in modern (post-1800) examples of the Fantastika, and on science fictional or fantastic elements in Classical literature. We are particularly interested in papers addressing literary science fiction or fantasy, where we feel investigations of the interaction with the ancient world are relatively rare. But we also welcome papers on film, television, radio, comics, games, or fan culture.

Please send proposals to conferences@sf-foundation.org, to arrive by 30 September 2012. Paper proposals should be no more than 300 words. Themed panels should also include an introduction to the panel, of no more than 300 words. Please include the name of the author/panel convener, and contact details.

Swords, Sorcery, Sandals and Space is organised by the Science Fiction Foundation, with the co- operation of the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology at the University of Liverpool.

Tony Keen
Chair, 2013 Science Fiction Foundation Conference

(Via Memorabilia Antonina via Classics Confidential.)

And here’s the Classics Confidential interview with Tony Keen, definitely worth watching:

Royal Manuscripts: The genius of illumination

16 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by in English Literature, Medieval History, Post-Classical History, Renaissance History

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A really illuminating (boom, tish) article about an exhibition of illuminated manuscripts and the English kings at the British Library in the Times Literary Supplement’s blog.

The TLS blog: Kingship illuminated:

Among other things, Royal Manuscripts: The genius of illumination, a new exhibition that opened at the British Library last week, reveals how fond medieval monarchs were of seeing themselves illuminated.

Henry VIII illuminated manuscript page

(Via The TLS Blog.)

On Shakespeare’s ‘Small Latin …’ from rogueclassicism

27 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by in English Literature, Latin Classics, Reception

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On Shakespeare’s ‘Small Latin …’ from rogueclassicism:

On Shakespeare’s ‘Small Latin …’ by rogueclassicist at rogueclassicism. Published October 27, 2011 at 07:40PM

Interesting bit (in the context of a film review) in the Telegraph … here’s the incipit:

What do Shakespeare, Keats and Dickens have in common, apart from being great writers, and masters of the English language? The answer is pretty obvious. None of them went to university: to some extent, all three were self-educated. Ben Jonson said that Shakespeare had “small Latin and less Greek”, and likewise I don’t think Dickens and Keats, despite the latter’s Ode to a Grecian Urn, had much of either.

Who is the odd one out, then? Just as easy? Nobody, I think, has ever suggested Keats didn’t write that ode and others, or that Dickens wasn’t the author of Bleak House and Great Expectations. But Shakespeare – ah, Shakespeare – . So here we go again, with a movie from Roland Emmerich, director of Godzilla, called , opening on Friday. The “Shakespearean thriller” hands the authorship to Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, whom the movie, incredibly, has as the love-child and incestuous lover of Queen Elizabeth.

Never mind that Oxford died in 1604, some years before Shakespeare’s last plays were written and produced. Such considerations are a mere bagatelle when conspiracies are being revealed. Never mind that nobody at the time attributed the authorship to anyone but the man from Stratford. Evidently, they were all fooled, even Ben Jonson, a fellow playwright who knew William Shakespeare and was not devoid of jealousy.

It is not hard to guess at the director’s interest in the authorial conspiracy. But what of those not thinking of box office returns? Snobbery is the reason for their nonsense. The “uneducated” Shakespeare, an actor and theatre manager, who attended neither Oxford nor Cambridge, could not – could he? – have had all the knowledge of Greece and Rome and Italy etc displayed in the plays.

This argument falls flat for three reasons. First, the knowledge isn’t that great. Almost all the stuff in the Roman plays is taken – cribbed, if you like – from North’s translation of Plutarch’s Lives. Indeed, some of the great speeches in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra are no more than versifications of North’s prose. There are many lines in the plays which suggest that the author had read Ovid’s works, but this required no knowledge of Latin. Arthur Golding’s marvellous translation of the Metamorphoses was available to him. However, Shakespeare did make mistakes which a better-educated and well-travelled man such as Oxford might not have made. His knowledge of Italian geography is patchy, and he thought Bohemia had a sea-coast. […]

via: Only foolish snobs don’t believe in William Shakespeare (Telegraph)

… it goes on, but not much more is Classics-oriented. One might cynically observe that there seem to be an awful lot of folks who do seem to thing Julius Caesar, e.g., is ‘historically accurate’ in regards to dialog between ancient dead guys.