tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post4540621547701658722..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Euripides: Hecuba (The Fall of Troy)Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-73977660944527100292012-05-10T21:31:12.227-07:002012-05-10T21:31:12.227-07:00Thanks, Steve. Sleep is of course heaven. The puni...Thanks, Steve. Sleep is of course heaven. The punishment is the pain that destroys heaven.<br /><br />The solace that palliates pain is laughter.<br /><br />Who'd have thought a post about the tragedy of Hecuba would elicit palliative laughter?<br /><br />But it has!!<br /><br />Gratitude to the brilliant John Tranter for giving us a rare glimpse of the previously-unseen Side C of the Attic red-figure amphora at the top of this post:<br /><br /><a href="http://johntranter.net/2012/05/armour-fitting-in-ancient-greece/" rel="nofollow">Hector putting his armour on, with dialogue </a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-54379995603657811812012-05-10T06:18:28.658-07:002012-05-10T06:18:28.658-07:00Ah Tom,
Hope your sleep wasn't too punishing ...Ah Tom,<br /><br />Hope your sleep wasn't too punishing -- maybe there'll come a time to find the LIttle Old Lady riding again, around here.STEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50174295993151909222012-05-09T14:45:33.689-07:002012-05-09T14:45:33.689-07:00A small party of worker trolls from the Office and...A small party of worker trolls from the Office and Facts & Figures has informed that the above sparkling chat contains a few significant departures from consistency on my part, which is always a pity if perhaps not the first time. <br /><br />Having quoted my expert classicist and mythographer as saying of Hecuba, "She was the mother of Hector and eighteen others of Priam's fifty sons...", I have in the subsequent delirium of repartee said, ahem, "though by that time she had already fathered 18 of Priam's fifty sons..."<br /><br />Which would have been a wonderful Ripley's Believe It Or Not trick on the part of Hecuba.<br /><br />Furthermore the number of sons she had produced one way or tother, by that "point in time", was obviously nineteen not eighteen.<br /><br />The best that can be said for the latter error is that it tends to support an implication which was already holding itself up well enough, i.e. that having done all that fathering/mothering, it would have taken a lot of pluck on Hecuba's part to pursue the program of exacting revenge through sexual lures. <br /><br />That idea is rather silly and makes me think for some odd reason of the ancient Jan & Dean ditty about the Little Old Lady of Pasadena. Normally I would provide an exit link to that immortal classic. Instead however I believe I shall choose for myself a more suitable punishment. Sleep, perhaps.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-64084321833693981962012-05-09T09:51:48.195-07:002012-05-09T09:51:48.195-07:00Steve, Well, you know those players. There's a...Steve, Well, you know those players. There's always so much that we know that they don't. Unless they've been hiding offstage, eavesdropping. But they do do that, don't they?<br /><br />Poor Hecuba, her reputation dragged through the theatrical sawdust, all these centuries, all for a laugh and a bit of a tickle in the wings.<br /><br />(Though ticklish wings can bring all sorts of problems upon themselves, too, one supposes.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-6339140066219666072012-05-09T08:46:01.890-07:002012-05-09T08:46:01.890-07:00What a great opening scene that is. He's been ...What a great opening scene that is. He's been lying there silent like a dog (kunos diken) for an entire year, too, that watchman. And a nice reception the woman of the house has in store for her husband the conquering hero, home from the wars. The watchman of course could tip off the proleptic victim, but no such luck. An ox has stepped on his tongue.<br /><br />By then all the sympathy in the long bloody story has anyway belonged with the Trojans. Expeditionary armies are hard to love. Hector is admirable in a way Achilles is not. Hecuba earns her way into even the numbest heart. Whereas, back at the ranch, Clytemnestra...TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-70702436664456042682012-05-09T08:44:09.462-07:002012-05-09T08:44:09.462-07:00Tom,
"And then the noise broke out in the st...Tom,<br /><br />"And then the noise broke out in the streets and a cry never heard before<br />. . .<br /><br />Out of our bed, half naked <br />like any Dorian girl I ran for the sanctuary of Artemis' shrine. No use, for I never made it. I saw my husband die."<br /><br />Or as the Player in Hamlet tells it,<br /><br /> "Roasted in wrath and fire,<br />And thus o'ersized with coagulate gore,<br />With eyes like carbuncles, the hellish Pyrrhus<br />Old grandsire Priam seeks. . . .<br /><br />But as we often see, against some storm,<br />A silence in the heavens, the rack stand still, The bold winds speechless, and the orb below<br />As hush as death, anon the dreadful thunder<br />Doth rend the region, so after Pyrrhus' pause,<br />Aroused vengeance sets him new awork,<br />And never did the Cyclops' hammers fall<br />On Mars' armor, forged for proof eterne,<br />With less remorses then Pyrrhus' bleeding sword<br />Now falls on Priam."<br /><br />(The Player of whom Hamlet asks, "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,/ That he should weep for her?" The player who perhaps didn't know that "She was the mother of Hector and eighteen others of Priam's fifty sons.")<br /><br />5.8<br /><br />light coming into fog against invisible<br />ridge, song sparrow calling from branch<br />in foreground, sound of wave in channel<br /><br /> or standing in front of sun,<br /> brightness of the sky<br /><br /> outside moving toward place,<br /> between us, the eye’s<br /><br />silver edge of sun rising above ridge,<br />white circle of moon in pale blue skySTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-40030901946732691782012-05-09T08:22:18.108-07:002012-05-09T08:22:18.108-07:00Apropos oneiric barking, don't forget the sent...Apropos oneiric barking, don't forget the sentinel who lies "dogwise" on the roof of the house of Atreus at the beginning of the Agamememnon, full of well-justified fear now that the Greeks are finally coming home. <br /><br />Because the war always comes home with them.Chrishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04214178206307289834noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-10236308216508019912012-05-09T05:10:38.629-07:002012-05-09T05:10:38.629-07:00Nora,
Very well said, and it does seem true. Hecu...Nora,<br /><br />Very well said, and it does seem true. Hecuba is perhaps knowable in the sense that the ultimate in extremis moments of human experience seem unknowable until you go through them, and then they become knowable. Alas and alackaday!<br /><br />It seemed to me (semi conscious at the time, but still, that's probably the best state for taking in certain things) (the Super Bowl say?) that the middle-of-the-night atmosphere in the triage unit of the Alameda County Trauma Center (Highland Hospital) resembled a battlefield hospital in many respects. Though of course at Troy there were no battlefield hospitals. Just the battlefields. <br /><br />According to statistics, Hector would have had a 20-25% better chance of making it through the night had he been rushed to a Level I or Level II Trauma Center. <br /><br />But Hecuba would have been nonetheless distraught, and the outcome might well have been pretty much the same.<br /><br />It gives pause to consider that her final decisive retributive actions were enabled by her "female wiles" (erotic attractions), though by that time she had already fathered 18 of Priam's fifty sons.<br /><br />One wonders how things went for Priam's other wives.<br /><br />The sense given by the bereft and desolate chorus in the utterly and profoundly poetic passage from the most intensely emotive and psychologically perceptive of all dramatic poets is that of souls consigned to final loss, completely aware of the facts of the consignment, and yet not giving in to some concessive resignation, but still spitting furiously into the wind. That's incredibly moving when you think of it. <br /><br />Yay Hecuba and her women!! May their hairdos attain perfection and retain it, in the Elsyian Fields!!<br /><br />Nora, you remain my favourite classicist.<br /><br />Tied for first that is with Nin.<br /><br /><br />Nin,<br /><br />The choice of the passage was affected by thoughts of your particularly privileged form of home schooling and it did seem the Lattimore had a bit of the strength and grit of the Heyward women in it. <br /><br />What the Greeks did at Troy had a bit of the primordial fracking impulse in it, mayhap. <br /><br /><br />Hazen, what's scariest is the oneiric form of canine barking which we encounter in nightmares (the dogs appear to be barking, but there is only silence) and while watching political debates with the sound off. <br /><br />Though e'er since being badly bit on the street in 2012 (two cafe patrons too engrossed in chat to control their unleashed killer hound), I've given up tuning in on political debate altogether.<br /><br /><br />Vassilis,<br /><br />Back to the crimescene, then, with<br /> <br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/constantine-p-cavafy-trojans.html" rel="nofollow">Cavafy: Trojans</a>.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11136312944050890862012-05-08T22:01:02.762-07:002012-05-08T22:01:02.762-07:00http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181856http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/181856vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-46167255131350024942012-05-08T15:17:32.432-07:002012-05-08T15:17:32.432-07:00This seems one of those days that 'barking mad...This seems one of those days that 'barking mad' fits all too well. And I don't mean just personally.Hazenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13417573435195561519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-79947290057171562282012-05-08T12:16:25.991-07:002012-05-08T12:16:25.991-07:00I was just doing my hair for the morning and heari...I was just doing my hair for the morning and hearing about all the cities burning and or people dying. One does get used to it after a while. One after another, going up in flames.<br /><br />It seems we would all be mad . . . or maybe we are.Nin Andrewshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12643167108589844026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-51861718494796798682012-05-08T11:43:42.163-07:002012-05-08T11:43:42.163-07:00Hecuba is the ultimate mortal -- all loss and powe...Hecuba is the ultimate mortal -- all loss and powerlessness. I want to say that there's something inherently unknowable to her fate, becoming "all voice", or scrabbling about the ship like a dog. But I have a horrible feeling that 'unknowable' isn't the right word at all.Norahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14439557611640319928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89343750277795178552012-05-08T09:33:19.809-07:002012-05-08T09:33:19.809-07:00No more Troys to burn<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEGvDBDPQKU" rel="nofollow">No more Troys to burn</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com