Back, a bit dazed

[heliopausa]

It's been a full-on few weeks, including (as was always on the cards) a funeral.  I feel like such an idiot to need to learn again and again (I am so sick of this) about the finality of death and what living in time means.  Time is change and things not being the same.  Yes, of course.  Everybody knows that.

Well.  Well, so back to Dreamwidth.  What can I write about?  Books and video/television viewing?  Okay...

My reading took a huge dive - I abandoned both the books I was properly, attentively, reading, and will have to start them all over again. Mostly, I just read scraps of things picked up from what was around.  Two such things were:
Sallust, Jugurtha and The Cataline Conspiracy, as translated for a Penguin Classic, I think - it was an oldish paperback, anyway.  I read them because I was pleased to be learning even one name of an African king, even if he was a ratbag (according to Sallust), and also because I vaguely wondered if looking at pre-Caesar Roman evolutions might give me some ideas of how to look at how things are changing politically, now.  But mainly just because the book was to hand.
I also read great chunks of the Iliad, in an online translation by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island University, in order to argue (amiably) with someone about whether Paris was a coward etc.  (I would be delighted to discuss such stuff while it's fresh in my mind, if anyone's interested.)

I've watched three oldish British television renderings of PD James novels featuring the detective Adam Dalgliesh.  The first one I saw was about the residents of a stately old abbey, stuffed with priceless art, facing the prospect of its shutting down.  The second one was about the residents of a stately-home-turned-museum, facing the prospect of its shutting down.  The third one was about the residents of a stately home, facing the prospect of... but I gave up on that one before we'd even got to the second murder, because I thought I was getting the drift.

I watched - now this is good! - parts of several episodes of an Australian six-part mystery, called Seven Types of Ambiguity - yes, of course the title's a steal, and that's not something I like, in general, but the Empson book is part of the plot, sort of.  The acting and the writing is mostly very, very good, and the cinematography as well.  I had to leave and so have missed the closing episodes, but what I saw was very good indeed, good enough to have conversations with strangers about.  (What?  I'm not sure if that's a sane measure of anything.)

Comments

[asakiyume]

LOL the PD James-based television series ;-)

I definitely understand what you mean about something that's good enough to have conversations with strangers about, too--it's great to have something like that up your sleeve.

What are the pro and con arguments about Paris as a coward?

[heliopausa]

I did fall into conversation with one woman on the tram - or rather, two of us were on the tram together, and talking about the Seven Types show, and she was listening with such interest that it became a three-way conversation. She was a very lovely woman, too - on her way to her work helping a couple of school students who had particular difficulty fitting in to the school system.

Paris... well, strike one against him is that when he was in the midst of a duel (single combat, which was intended to end the war), the goddess Aphrodite, fearing that he would be beaten, whisked him up and dumped him in his wife's bedroom to distract him from the fight via sexual pleasures. (Compare Uriah, who famously declined such distraction, though in his case the string-puller was only a king.) But when the goddess has just exerted her power, what can you do? I would argue this doesn't make Paris a coward, just a realist.

Also: Achilles, the big strength of the Greeks team, spends most of the poem sulking and refusing to fight because the woman he wanted as war prize has instead been given to Agamemnon, for internal army political reasons. Is this not a more paltry reason than Paris's for avoiding the manly art of getting stuck into the other side? If Achilles is not called coward for combat-avoidance, why should Paris be?

(Paris does return to the fight, though not to the single combat. Achilles returns to the fight, too, though after a longer period of avoidance.)

Strike two is that Paris' older brother Hector, the best fighter on their side, and the hero of the whole Iliad, roundly rebukes him (in Book 13) for not being a manly warrior type, saying that he is a pretty boy, and pointing out that many of their comrades have already died fighting. But Paris replies that he has indeed been fighting, that he is not a coward, and that he's ready right then to follow Hector into battle. Hector accepts this, and off they go, into the thick of things.

Strike three is that Paris' preferred weapon is the bow, which was thought, by the person I was arguing with, to have been shown in the Iliad as a low-grade weapon, compared to the manly spear or hand-to-hand fighting. And I'll have to stop there and marshall a few thoughts. :)

[asakiyume]

This is great!

I did read the Iliad, but some time ago. It seems to me that Paris's problem isn't cowardice, it's that he's the sort of man who, when confronted by three powerful goddesses and asked to choose the most beautiful, picks Aphrodite. All his (and everyone else's) troubles flow from that decision!

"What's wrong with choosing Aphrodite?" someone might well ask. Certainly as a child I thought that Aphrodite *had* to be the most beautiful, because she was the goddess of love, and I figured beauty had to adhere to love. As I got older, it occurred to me (a) that there are many types of beauty, and what you find beautiful is dictated by--well, lots of things--but also (b) when you're dealing with the gods, you really have to think through the consequences of your decision--in other words, "They asked me who was prettiest, so I picked the one who appealed to me most" is maybe not the best way to handle the situation.

Maaaybe Paris did think long and hard--it's a pretty rotten position to be in--but the answer he gave definitely is at the root of his troubles.

[heliopausa]

Oh, that's unfair! They gave him the job of picking the most beautiful because he had previously in some contest or other given a decision against himself, against his own interests, because it was the just decision. I do agree that a wilier hero (Odysseus?) would have found a less dangerous way forward, but Paris was bound by who he was. (I'll ignore the bribes, and I hope he did, too!)

Yes, agreed it's made trouble for him, but what's an honest (but simple) man to do, when he's asked such a question?

And every hero except Odysseus suffers from having a god for him or against him, pretty much. If you're going to die from some god's vindictiveness, you might as well do it as an honest man.

The matter of whether a bow is a low-grade weapon is maybe too complicated for me to go sensibly into it - the idea is that it's cowardly to shoot from afar, not hand-to-hand, and the fact that the Greeks' best archer is a bastard (ie his parents are not married) is held to support the idea that a truly dignified warrior wouldn't stoop to using a bow.

Paris is without doubt a slight person, physically, next to the major warriors (Hector, Ajax, Achilles) - and there's enough said about his looks to be certain that he's being presented as a pretty boy, not a beefy warrior type - but as he himself says the beauty was a gift from the gods, and who can refuse their gifts? - and by implication - so is Odysseus' wiliness, and Achilles' fighting prowess and everyone's particular gifts. Here's Paris speaking in response to Hector's accusation that he's not "manly", just before he proposes (it's his own idea!) a single combat with Menelaus):

"Hector, you’re right in what you say against me.
Those complaints of yours are not unjustified.
Your heart is tireless, like a wood-chopping axe
wielded by a craftsman cutting timber for a ship.
The axe makes his force stronger. Your mind’s like that—
the spirit in your chest is fearless. But don’t blame me
for golden Aphrodite’s lovely gifts.
Men can’t reject fine presents from the gods,
those gifts they personally bestow on us,
though no man would take them of his own free will."

[asakiyume]

That's a good point about Paris just acting according to his nature, and reading your remarks makes me feel better about that nature--I had forgotten what you said about their choosing him as a judge for his honestness: I think I did him an injustice in my earlier comment!

So I think I'd say it's not a case of "You reap what you sow/You get what you deserve," said in a vindictive voice, but rather that our natures make trouble for us, and at some level we're helpless in that regard. (Some things we can change, but not our entire nature.)

I definitely think that the Iliad has its cultural preferences for hero types, and I definitely *don't* like some of those types--like Achilles, for instance. And I think you're right (if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly) that the narrative itself is biased against Paris in a way that's unfair to Paris--and yet still manages to portray his strengths well enough that, coming from a very different time and culture, we can appreciate him. (Especially if we have friends who stick up for us and get us to think!)

[heliopausa]

I'm not sure if I think it's the narrative that's biased against Paris - maybe more the commentators? e.g. wikipedia says "Homer's Iliad casts Paris as unskilled and cowardly."

He is certainly portrayed as not a warrior by nature. Paris doesn't much like war. The anti-Paris, Menelaus, by contrast is repeatedly called "war-loving" - but I don't think it's intended as a positive attribute.

I don't think the narrative likes war, and doesn't like those who push for war (as opposed to those who honorably respond when called to defend - i.e. Hector). Book 4 characterises war as "hateful war" - when the gods stir up the reluctant armies to fight:
"With them came Terror, Fear, and tireless Strife,
sister and companion of man-destroying Ares—
at first small in stature, she later grows enormous,
head reaching heaven, as she strides across the earth.
Strife went through crowds of soldiers, casting hatred
on both sides equally, multiplying human miseries."

And though it's brilliant about the excitement of seeing great battle-hosts move and clash, still the most powerful, lasting, mood of the poem (isn't it?) is grief for loss - first of Patroclus, then, devastatingly, of Hector.

(I don't like Achilles either. I do like Hector, though, and Patroclus.)

[asakiyume]

I do like Hector too; my only recollection of a strong feeling about a character was that I liked Hector.

My memories of the Iliad do get very much confused with other tellings/interpretations, not least from Greek tragedies, but extending up more or less to the present. Lloyd Alexander had a book, The Arkadians, that retold various Greek myths and also elements of the Iliad/Odyssey in a very antiwar way.

That quote is excellent.

[blueinkedfrost]

Sorry to hear about your friend. I think everyone learns the same lesson over and over again - we heal, and know we will be wounded again.

I have Jugurtha and The Caitiline Conspiracy on my bookshelf - I think it might be the same one. I found Jugurtha very sympathetic, and the Catiline Conspiracy rather dull (although I read the book twice, so it can't have been that dull).

[heliopausa]

Thank you. One day I'll be wise.

Jugurtha was so savage to his brothers that I couldn't sympathise with him; I did find it interesting, though, how Rome was so much an empire before it had an emperor.
What interested me most in the Cataline Conspiracy was Sallust's idealising of the old days and his line on conspicuous consumption leading to political instability - also his championing of history-writing as worthy, even if not quite as good as action. :)

[moon_custafer]

I suppose it's hard to keep death always in mind because unless you're in the middle of a plague or a war, the days when you lose someone you know are greatly outnumbered by the days when you don't, and so it slips to the back of your mind for a while. That's probably necessary, or it'd get in the way of living; even people who've lived through plagues or wars say that grief doesn't scale.

[heliopausa]

I can see about it getting in the way of living, but I can see it as useful, too. Possibly why Sarah Bernhardt slept (did she?) in a coffin. Though that might have been simple love of drama.

[autumnia]

I've got the Adam Dalgliesh series on my future reading list -- do you think I'd be better off reading the books or watching the tv adaptations?

[heliopausa]

:D I've never read an AD novel! I expect that reading the novels would feel more worthy, but that watching the adaptations would be quicker and more entertaining.

[sovay]

It's been a full-on few weeks, including (as was always on the cards) a funeral.

Their memory for a blessing.

Sallust, Jugurtha and The Cataline Conspiracy, as translated for a Penguin Classic, I think

I have really good memories of reading both of those in Latin—I don't know what the Penguin translation is like, but it's very compressed, character-sketch, archaic (with showers of neologisms) style. I'm sure Sallust wrote about somebody he didn't think was a ratbag, sometime.

(I would be delighted to discuss such stuff while it's fresh in my mind, if anyone's interested.)

I am always down for Homeric debate.

[heliopausa]

Thank you.

I'm impressed that you've read Sallust in Latin! Yes, most of those appearing in the narrative are ratbags, save for those in the Good Old Days he fantasises about, where honesty and restraint prevailed.

As for debate - I'd love to hear your opinion about whether the Iliad-writer subscribes to the character-voiced attitude that women are properly seen as mere chattels. I was taking the POV that the writer doesn't subscribe to this view, and that the Iliad was intended for a female audience as much as a male - the person I was discussing with was of the view that no, in those days that was just how it was seen by everyone, including the writer and the male audience.</iN

[sovay]

I'm impressed that you've read Sallust in Latin!

My professional training was as a classicist. It is one hundred percent irrelevant to the jobs I have nowadays unless you count writing (in which case it informs pretty much everything), but it made me very happy at the time.

save for those in the Good Old Days he fantasises about, where honesty and restraint prevailed.

I really love how from certain angles all of history looks like an endlessly receding succession of generations yelling GET OFF MY LAWN.

I was taking the POV that the writer doesn't subscribe to this view, and that the Iliad was intended for a female audience as much as a male - the person I was discussing with was of the view that no, in those days that was just how it was seen by everyone, including the writer and the male audience.

My immediate if inelegant response is that the person you were discussing the Iliad with is stuffed full of wild blueberry muffins. I am coming at this conversation from a slight angle in that I subscribe to the idea of Homeric epic as an eventually codified oral tradition rather than a single-source narrative with an identifiable writer/author, so for me it's less a question of an author's views than cultural values reflected in the epic, but there is good reason to believe that the assumed audiences of both the Iliad and the Odyssey included women as well as men, not least the fact that we find women in the audiences of epic performances in the Odyssey.