Anne Carson's Nox

Anne Carson's brilliant long poem, Nox, is an exquisite elegy for her dead brother.  Encased in a tomb-like box (the death mimesis is startling), this powerful book, daring to challenge the limits of the bound book, unfolds in accordion-pleated pages.  The design is a bit of distraction:  I have to balance the book on a clipboard so it doesn't fall off my lap and unfold across the living room floor.  But the dazzling language and the originality of the concept transcend the overly-elaborate design.

Carson is a classicist, a professor at the University of Michigan. The title of her new book, Nox, which means "Night" in Latin, is used interchangeably with mors, "death."   Carson's elegy to Michael, who died in 2000, is inextricably entangled with  Catullus' stunning elegy to his dead brother (Poem 101) . In fact, Carson's poem is a homage to Catullus and an exploration of  the difficulties of translation of language, grief, and  customs honoring death across time and cultures.

The poem opens with Catullus' Latin poem 101-- no translation.  It appears in the book as a crumpled scrap  with blurry letters, pasted into the book (that, of course, is an illusion, and I could do without the blur).  But I love her assumption that people are classically educated.  One has to hope that those who haven't read Catullus will do so.
Carson boldly expounds on the meaning of elegy, alternating long dictionary definitions of each word in Catullus CI (as if breaking up the words will lessen the grief) with scraps of biography and memories, cut-up bits of  letters, childhood photos, and meditations on the relationship between history and elegy. There is also plenty of Greek here (translated) for those who love language.

In 7.1  of Nox, Carson muses on Catullus.

"I want to explain about the Catullus poem (101).  Catullus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad.  Nothing at all is known of the brother except his death.  Catullus appears to have travelled from Verona to Asia Minor to stand at the grave.  Perhaps he recited the elegy there.  I have loved this poem since the first time I read it in high school Latin class and I have tried to translate it a number of times.  Nothing in English can capture the passionate, slow surface of a Roman elegy.  No one (even in Latin) can approximate Catullan diction, which at its most sorrowful has an air of deep festivity, like one of those trees that turns all its leaves over, silver, in the wind.  I never arrived at the translation I would have liked to do of poem 101.  But over the years of working at it, I came to think of translating as a room, not exactly an unknown rom, where one gropes for the light switch.  I guess it never ends.  A brother never ends.  I prowl him.  He does not end."

She eventually translates the poem--sorry, there is no page number.  It resonates and recreates her own experience:  she crossed the sea for inadequate funereal rites after her brother died in Amsterdam. She recreates the word order of the poem:  almost impossible.

It is a beautiful poem:  one that could be taught with Catullus.

Homework Due May 4

Wheelock, pp. 125-127.  Learn vocab., P&R even, all Sententiae, and "Aged Playwright..."

Homer's Daughter

Robert Graves' small masterpiece, Homer's Daughter, is not in print. This is not surprising. Although Graves' compelling historical novels, I, Claudius and Claudius the God, are still popular, the feminist classics are disappearing in the wake of desperate trying-to-be-pop-culling-the-backlist decisions that have, if Publishers Weekly is to be believed, nearly bankrupted some publishers.

Publishers are mad not to exploit the commercial potential of this absorbing, well-written, mythic masterpiece, a perfect candidate for revival in the current classics boom that embraced David Malouf's much-revered novel, Ransom, and a misguided remake of the film, Clash of the Titans.  In Graves’ feminist novel, The Odyssey is not the work of Homer, but of Nausicaa, an intellectual princess and rescuer of the shipwrecked Odysseus in Book VI of The Odyssey.  She has listened all her life to bards’ poems about Odysseus’ homecoming.  Nausciaa reshapes the narrative to accommodate her own experiences and to invigorate the characters of women like Penelope. According to the post-Homeric sagas recited by a guild of traveling bards known as the Sons of Homer, Penelope was found “living riotously with fifty lovers, all of whom he killed on his return to Ithaca.” And then Odysseus sent her home to her father.  Not so in Homer/Nausicaa's Odyssey, in which Penelope forever unwinds her weaving at night to delay her suitors--a trick Nausica also plays to deceive her rustic suitors.

Graves speculated that the Odyssey was composed 150 years later than the Iliad and was written by a woman.  Apollodorus informs us that the scene of the poem was traditionally Sicily;  Samuel Butler in 1896 comfirmed this from his own research and speculated that a woman was probably the author.  Graves came to the same conclusion while compiling a dictionary of Greek myths.  

Nausicaa, a princess and priestess of Athena, is the lively narrator of a political drama that comprises the disappearance of her brother, her father's departure on a quest to find his son, political manipulations of rustic suitors, squashed coups, strangers, and returns.  As Graves says in his Historical Note:  "Here is the story of a high-spirited and religious-minded Sicilian girl who saves her father's throne from usurpation, herself from a distasteful marriage, and her two younger brothers from butchery by boldly making things happen, instead of sitting still and hoping for the best.

This novel is exactly the kind of thing that should be in vogue.  Retellings of myths are popular this year.  David Malouf's Ransom, a reworking of the episode in the Iliad about Priam's ransom of Hector's body, was hailed in The New Yorker as a great novel.  John Banville's The Infinities (reviewed here ) is even better, I think, though the New Yorker writer liked it rather less.  

An aside:  I am reading this novel in the company of the former owner of the book. She marked it with red ink, random underlinings, and comments that usually are along the lines of “Interesting!” but left one charming note that almost makes me forgive her.  She defines “oleaster:  a small Eurasian tree having oblong silver leaves...”

I wouldn't have bought this edition, however, if I had known there were notes in the margins. How I hate that!

Guest Blogger on Fata in The Aeneid

The following outstanding article was submitted by a Guest Blogger:

Early in Virgil's epic adventure tale we find the author calling upon his Muse to help him understand why the Queen of the gods (Juno) looked down upon the struggling mortal (Aeneas) with such outrage.  Juno, we learn, favored the people of Carthage, whom she hoped would "rule the nations of the Earth, if only the Fates were willing."  [The Aeneid, Robert Fagles, trans., Book I, lines 20-21]

In the same introductory context we overhear Juno plotting strategy to oppose Aeneas and his men.  She thinks to herself, "Defeated am I?  Give up the fight?  Powerless now to keep that Trojan king from Italy?  Ah...but of course.  The Fates bar my way."   [Fagles, Bk. I, 46-48]

One can't help but wonder how it is that the Queen of the gods, Juno, who is sister and wife of Jupiter [=Jove, =Zeus] would be obliged to make her terrible power and dark plans subject to the Fates!  As modern readers we are also curious about the consistent use of the plural (fata in Latin, not fatum) where we would probably speak of "Fate" in the singular, as a purely impersonal and abstract force.  Not Virgil!

The answer to the question, "Who or what are the Fates?" came to be explained by the Greek authors before it was known to Roman readers.  The Greek playwrights often invoked the role of the Fates in human destiny, as does Virgil.  But the Greek plays (the source of religious information for the common folk, who considered those performances to be religious ceremonies containing inspired truths) did not all express the same ideas about the role of Fate and the gods.  A wise teacher named Socrates told his students that one can't be expected to believe all that the Greek dramatists say because some of it is inconsistent, and that requires a clear thinker to believe contradictory things.  Such "atheistic" views prompted the Athenian elders to judge Socrates guilty of perverting the minds of their youth, and to sentence him to die, by way of a cocktail of poison hemlock.

Whether inconsistent or not, the Greek plays failed to make good sense about the power relationships between the various gods with each other, and between the gods and the Fates.  Modern students of comparative religion classify the ancient religions along the lines of a sort of pyramid of ideas, the earliest being "polytheism," followed by "henotheism," and finally by "monotheism," the religion of the Jews.  Greek and Roman teaching about the gods belonged in the intermediate category;  henotheism being the belief in multiple gods, but among which was recognized one more powerful deity whose authority ruled over the others.  That individual was Zeus to the Greeks, and Jupiter to the Romans.

All very interesting.  But where does Fate fit into this picture?  And in the setting of the life of Aeneas, what about the very high level deity (Juno) who has acknowledged to herself that her actions and efforts to defeat the Trojan leader will be dependent on whether the Fates will allow her to attain her goal?  So, just who is in charge here?

From Greek authors we learn that the Fates (fata in the Aeneid) were not an abstraction.  They consisted of three persons who were gods.  Like the other deities they lived far above the world of ordinary mortals.  These three ladies had special duties which occupied their full attention, mention of which struck terror into the hearts of ordinary folk.  They were known as the Moirae (the Greek title);  their individual identities were also familiar.  Lachesis, Chlotho, and Atropos carried out perpetual tasks which required spinning yarn or thread from wool, and then weaving the thread into a tapestry.  When the design of that work called for a change in pattern, the god Atropos brandished her scissors and cut the yarn at that place.  Of course this action was more than merely finishing a line of the woven work.  Each thread was the lifeline of some mortal, so when that thread was cut, the human individual promptly (and inexorably) died.  No wonder that Atropos was especially feared by mortals!  But still worse was the fact that these three ladies, the Fates, were completely immune to the pleas and the protests of human beings, as well as those of the other gods.

We can understand how it was that there is no mention of votive offerings or sacrifices to this trio of gods.  To do so would have been a complete waste of time.  We can make one slight adjustment in our modern thinking at this point.  We often speak of "blind Fate."  That isn't quite correct.  The three ladies who were the Fates were certainly not blind.  They just cared nothing for the plights or desires which motivated human actions.  Likewise, they saw no reason to comply with threats or requests from other deities.

What we (along with Socrates) are inclined to ask about is how the "power politics" among the various gods worked, especially when it came to the Fates. And in relationship to Jupiter, who stood at the top of the pyramid of authority.  Who had the last word?  The answer to this was never really explained in satisfying detail by the Greek quasi-religious plays.  But we come to an episode in the Aeneid which does shed a good deal of light on these questions.

As warfare is underway on the ground in Italia, the great god Jupiter convenes an assembly of the gods:

     "Now the gates of mighty Olympus' house are flung wide open.

The father of Gods and King of Men convenes a council

high in his starry home, as throned aloft he gazes

down on the earth, the Trojan camp and Latin ranks.

The gods take seats in the mansion, entering there

through doors to East and West, and Jove starts in:

'You great gods of the sky,

why have you turned against your own resolve?

Why do you battle so?  Such warring hearts!

I ordered Italy not to fight with Troy.

What's this conflict flouting my command?' "

                                                 [Flagles, Aeneid, Bk. X, 1-11]

And so we learn that Jupiter has specifically ordered that there is to be no repeat of the Battle for Troy on land, in Italia.  Jupiter does not approve of the manipulation of the "checkerboard" of human lives by his subordinate deities, with the result that blood will be shed again on a large scale, to resolve the issue of mortal rule of the land below.  But Jupiter is well aware of the foment brewing among his fellow gods, so he allows them to speak their views.  As would be expected, "golden Venus is far from brief" as she replies to Jupiter.  But Juno is impatiently waiting her turn, and when it comes, she unleashes a great blast of expected fury.

So, now the stage is set.  Will Jupiter rule for, or against the pending war between these two parties on land, and the two royal queens in the audience of the gods, in Olympus?  And no less with respect to our primary interest here, what about the Fates?  Are they to be ruled as subordinate to Jupiter, along with the allies of Juno and Venus?

The answer is not long in coming.  Jupiter issues his ruling, no doubt still seated on his royal throne:

     "Then the almighty Father, power that rules the world,

begins, and as he speaks the lofty house of the gods

falls silent, earth rocks to its roots, the heights

of the sky are hushed and the Western breezes drop

and the Ocean calms its waters into peace:  'So then,

take what I say to heart and stamp it in your minds.

Since it is not allowed that Latins and Trojans

join in pacts of peace, and there is no end

to your eternal clashes---now, whatever the luck

of each man today, and whatever hope he follows,

Trojan or Italian, I make no choice between them.

Whether Italy's happy fate lays siege to the camp

or the Trojans' folly, the deadly prophecies they follow.

Nor do I exempt the Italians.  How each man weaves

his web will bring him to glory or to grief.

King Jupiter is the king to all alike.

The Fates will find the way.' "

                     [Fagles, Aeneid, Bk X, 121-137, emphasis supplied] 

Wow!  What a brilliant denouement!  In a single stroke, Virgil manages to resolve the age-old uncertainty as to whether Jupiter (Zeus) is the true sovereign over mortal lives and events, or whether it is the Fates whose choices rule all these things.  Note the double meaning of the phrase which Jupiter uses to tell us just how it will work:  "How each man weaves his web will bring him to glory or to grief."

That "weaving" is, obviously, the very image of the work of the Fates, whose pattern determines the destinies of each mortal, including each one of the soldiers from Troy, and from Latium.  So, is Jupiter just wrong about who actually makes the choices for this or that line in the woven fabric of life?  No, not at all.  In this succinct passage, Virgil manages to resolve the question of freedom versus destiny by decreeing that each individual soldier will make what are for him his own choices.  But those choices are part, in each instance, of the larger fabric woven by the Fates.  Thus, even though the outcome appears (on a mortal level) to be determined solely by the success or failure of the leaders in battle and those who follow them, the view from Olympus is that "the Fates will find the way..."  i.e. they will weave the pattern as they always have, not subject to the desires or cries from the heat of battle below.

But this outcome is decreed by the royal order of Jupiter, himself.  So the resolution which Virgil supplies retains the sovereignty of the King of the Universe, and the independence of the Fates, along with the necessity for each individual human being to make what will certainly seem to each mortal as his own independent choices.

The solution here explained by Virgil far outdoes, for philosophical profundity, all of the "tag lines" and hints from the Greek plays and poets.  The unsettled question of human destiny has been answered.

References:   "Moirae" from Wikipedia, and Bullfinch's Mythology. 

Homework Due April 27

Homework:  Wheelock, Chapter 18, pp. 119-121.  Learn vocab, P&R odd, Sententiae all, and "On Death...".


Aeneid, Book 10

Relative Pronouns

RELATiVE PRONOUNS

Below is an explanation of relative pronouns.  I have declined the English relative pronouns and provided some exercises with answers.  The declension of the Latin relative pronouns is in Wheelock on p. 110.

English declension:

 Singular & Plural Masculine & Feminine

NOM.  who

GEN.   whose, of whom

DAT.    to/for whom

ACC.   whom

ABL.    by/with whom

Singular & Plural  Neuter 

NOM.  which

GEN.  whose, of which

DAT.  to/for which

ACC.  which          

ABL.  by/with which

The relative pronoun refers back to an antecedent (a noun or pronoun in a previous clause).  Its gender and number are determined by the antecedent, but the case is determined by its use in the relative clause.

EX.  1:  The boy whom I taught was Marcus.

The antecedent of “whom” is boy.  The Latin relative pronoun will take its gender and no. from “boy.”  Its gender and number are masc. sing.

It takes its case from its function in the relative clause.  “Whom” is the direct object of the verb, “taught.”  Therefore, the case is accusative.:  quem

EX. 2:  The women whose dog was lost wrote me a letter.

The antecedent of "whose" is "women."  The Latin relative pronoun will take its gender and no. from "women."  The gender and number are feminine plural.  It takes its case from its function in its own clause.  It shows possession.  Therefore the case is genitive:  quarum

 II.  Translate the italicized words.  The answers are below the exercises.

1.  tu, qui amas...

2.  Ducis frater quem vidi...

 3,  Copiae quibus dux donum dedit... 

 4.  Nautae, quorum pecunia erat...

 5.  Periculum, quod est magnum....

 6  This is a city in which many people...

 7.  I, who am your sister....

8.  He spoke to the boys with whom you were running...

9,  The women whom we saw...

10.   The boy whose name is...

ANSWERS:

1. ...who love

2. whom I saw

3.  to whom the the leader gave money

4.  whose money was

5.  which is great

6.  in which

7.  quae sum tua soror

8.  quibuscum currebas

9.  quas vidimus

10.  cuius nomen est.

Homework Due April 20

Wheelock, pp. 112-114.  Learn vocabulary; P&R 1-10;  Sententiae, all; "On the Pleasures of..."

Begin reading Book X of the Aeneid.  We will discuss this on April 27.