Tacitus

I am still working on the Homeric hymns, but I also want to update my Latin skills, which are extremely rusty. I was looking for something in prose to start with. Grammar is always a lot clearer in prose. I was looking a various things and came across the beginning of the Annuals of Tacitus. The first paragraph is so terse, it is hard to believe that anyone would begin a book or history like that.

1. Vrbem Romam a principio reges habuere; libertatem et consulatum L. Brutus instituit. dictaturae ad tempus sumebantur; neque decemviralis potestas ultra biennium, neque tribunorum militum consulare ius diu valuit. non Cinnae, non Sullae longa dominatio; et Pompei Crassique potentia cito in Caesarem, Lepidi atque Antonii arma in Augustum cessere, qui cuncta discordiis civilibus fessa nomine principis sub imperium accepit.

The city Rome in the beginning had kings. [a very plain spoken sentence, but Vrbem Romam accusative, object of habuere, they have (pl).] L. Brutus instituted Liberty and Consulships. Dictatorships were held for a time. Decemvirs held power not more than two years, nor was the consular jurisdiction of military Tribunes long in days. Neither dominion of Cinna or Sulla was long. The power of Pompeius and Crassus passed quickly to Caesar; the arms of Lepidus and Antonius before Augustus, who, when all were wearied by civil discord, subjected it to empire under the name first. [as in first citizen]

I think, along with all my other projects, I will continue to translate in the Annuals until I am more confident in my Latin--then maybe I will venture to Virgil or Ovid.

Hymn to Demeter Notes 1

At the beginning of Hymn 2 of the Homeric Hymns, the hymn to Demeter, she is described as ἠύκομον, well haired or good haired. I never know what to do with this kind of epithet. "Trim coiffed," is how Pound translated the same epithet, though as applied to Aphrodite, in his Canto I. "Well haired" or "with good hair" don't really cut it, so "with luxurious hair?"

Another word that gives me pause is ἥρπαξεν. Traditionally it is translated as "seize," but it is where we get our word "rape," and it is in every sense a rape. Persephone is a child and unwilling. She is being carried away against her will, crying for her mother. In the ancient world the gods could rape with impunity--witness all the loves of Zeus. Men too seized and raped. It was part of the expected plunder and rewards from war. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is common to raid villages to steal their supplies and women. The lot of women was often harsh. But this hymn does acknowledge the trauma of it, in Persephone's screams and Demeter's sorrows.

As she is being carried away she cries out in a shrill voice to her father, the son of Chronos, and ὕπατον καὶ ἄριστον, most high and virtuous. The epithet seems ironic to the modern ear. He, after all is the instigator of this rape. She is calling out to the one who authorized her abduction. But I suspect there was no irony to the Greek ear. Zeus, by his nature, being the most powerful being, defines what virtue is. Whatever he wills is just, even if his subjects cannot see the justice or wisdom of it.

I also find it interesting that among the list of those who did not hear her cries--gods and men--olive trees are included

but no one of the immortals or of mortal men 
nor even the fruit bearing olive trees heard her voice

This is heartbreaking and beautiful

So, the god, Ruler of Many, Host of Many, 
Son of Chronos bearing many names, carried her away 
against her will with his deathless horses, his own brother's child. 
For so long as the goddess could see the earth and the stars in heaven, 
the flowing swells of the fish breeding sea 
and the rays of the sun, as long as she hoped to see her trusted mother 
and the tribes of the eternal gods, for so long 
hope bewitched her great mind from despairing, 
and the peaks of the mountains and the depths of the sea 
rang with her immortal voice, and her queenly mother heard

Bull God

I have always wanted to translate all the Homeric Hymns, so I finally decided why not. It is something I can work on while working on my long poem, currently titled "Standing Water."

The first hymn is to Dionysus. It is a fragment. (Most of the hymns are intact, but this one, not.) There is a word in the second line, "εἰραφιῶτα." Hugh G. Evelyn White, a translator I much respect, translates it as "insewn" and notes that Dionysus was sewn into the thigh of Zeus to hide him from Hera. This is how the Hellenistic scholars read it. They saw the letters "ραφιῶ" and related it to "rapio" "to sew." We get the word rhapsody from it--a sewing together of melodies or song--. Modern scholars, however, trace the word back to Sanskrit for "Bull God."

Translating this, one is faced with the question which to use. The later Greeks, at least, read it as referencing sewing and the god sewn into the thigh of Zeus. Did it once mean Bull God to the earlier Greeks? It is hard to know. I am tempted to go with both:

Some at Drakanos, some say on windswept Ikaros,
some in Naxos, divine born, god of bulls, 
                             sewn into Zeus’s thigh

But then, I am left with what to do with it when the word occurs again in line 17:

ἵληθ᾽, εἰραφιῶτα, γυναιμανές:

Be gracious, Lord of bulls, thigh born, who drives women to frenzy

Not sure

Excalibur

Reading Philosophical Investigations I came across this discussion of The sword Excalibur: "The word Excalibur is a proper name in the ordinary sense. . ." But in the German text, which is en-face, has no mention of Excalibur. Rather the sword is Nothung,, the sword Siegfried places between himself and Bruenhilde to guarantee her chastity. It is obvious translator has substituted the English sword for English readers. It saves a footnote, and the point of the passage is that a name applies whether a thing exists or not, so that the idea that there is a direct relationship between a noun and a thing doesn't really make sense. Both are famous swords within their own cultural context.

Yet, i will say, i would have preferred the original sword, even if i am less familiar with the legend and the Wagnerian Opera. I like to get the feel of the cultural context of the original. I like a bit of otherness, strangeness.

I see this done a lot with Greek texts too. A strange or difficult idiom or reference is substituted for with a familiar one. In The first elegy of Kallimachos, I remember, the translator wrote "from an ancient people." In the Greek the word was not ancient but προυσέληνς, "before the moon", because the people were said to be so ancient they were older thαn the moon. A much more poetic and interesting take.

New Web Site

I have updated my website http://www.spconger.com. I hope you enjoy

The Ways that Can Be Known

After the goddess greets Parmenides, she tells him there are only two paths that are available for questioning: either things are and are not for non being, or things are not, and of necessity must not be. In other words, things either have being or they don't, either being or nothingness. Of the two, she says, only the first is truly thinkable. The second path has no report. There is nothing that can be really said about nothing.

The first path is persuasive, because it attends upon alethea, Heidegger's favorite word. Coxon translates it as "reality." If there is a fault with Coxon's excellent translation, it is that he has a tendency to too easily gloss ancient words into modern concepts. Heidegger's attempts to "think the Greek in the Greek way" may go to torturous extremes, but it would reassuring to see Coxon wrestle a bit more with the ancient terms. The Greek philosophers were at the beginning, struggling to find a language for their new concepts. To translate them into modern philosophical concepts ignores the struggle and loses some of the dynamism of their attempts.

Alethea, truth, is the unconcealed, the remembered, that which has opened itself to presence. As such, it cannot possibly be nothing. Only something can be, and to be it must be something.

That said, though, a few words about nothing. We cannot, in fact, imagine nothingness. Nothingness has no properties. Imagine a cave with no light. There is a stalagtite dripping into a black pool. Ripples run from the drop to the edges of the pool. Despite the lack of light, you image the shape of the stalagmite, the black pearl of a drop. The ripples have a slight gleam on the crest. Try harder. Even if you concentrate very hard, you will still be left with your own mind hovering over the darkness, like God over the waters. Even the empty space of the physist is not empty. It is a sea of overlapping waves of energy generating a random foam of particles and anti particles that bust into being and then are annihilated. 

Yet nothingness haunts us. The idea of not existing is the source of our deepest anxieties. We cannot truly imagine a world without us. Even when we try we imagine ourselves observing a world without us.

The goddess in Parmenides' poem is correct, that pursuing nothingness will give you nothing in return. Yet, I think, as the Buddhists have long known, there are spiritual aspects and benefits in meditating on nothingness, even if it is not something we can ever fully grasp.

Talking About Being

For the most part, it is wrong to think that a particular word has a given meaning. Dictionaries tend to perpetuate this myth, though if you look you will notice, even there, a word constitutes a cluster of associated meanings. 

Take even the simplest word like "dog." We say things like: "collies are my favorite breed of dog," "it was a dog of a day," "I am dog tired," "he was a good dog," " I worked like a dog today,"  "you're nothing but a hound dog," "don't dog me," etc.. All these phrases relate to some, essentially undefined, dogness. (One shouldn't forget, by the way, that though seemingly simple, dog is an extremely abstract word. It includes at least hundreds of breeds and billions of individuals under it single syllable designation.)

I came across this argument in Heidegger's lectures on Aristotle's Metaphysics where he (Heidegger) is discussing Aristotle's statement that being can be spoken of in many ways. He compares it to Aristotle,s dismissal of Plato's idea of "the Good." He (Aristotle) says that the good can be spoken of in many ways, but that does not imply that there is some absolute idea of the good that has a separate existence on some ideal plane. Rather, the good exists as a cluster of analogous meanings that cannot be reduced to a single meaning.

A similar argument holds for being.

An interesting aside: this is essentially the whole technique of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigation. He asserts that philosophers are too often mislead by taking abstract words as realities. He looks at how words really work, by looking at how we actually use words, not as meaning something, but as analogous to some cluster of related meanings.

Parmenedes comes into Heidegger's discussion of Aristotle because Heidegger asserts that Aristotle is reaffirming Parmenides against Plato, asserting, in fact, that being is one, though we speak of it in many ways. We cannot give it precise definition, but it is the commonality behind every statement of existence. 

This would imply that Being can only be approached by analogy, through individual beings. 

But that is the subject of Being and Time, and I am going to continue focus on Parmenides for the time being, so to speak.