[lit-ideas] Re: Eternal Greece

JL:
>Helm wisely writes and wonders re: the wise Thucydides:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

         --  W, H, Auden

That's all I know of Thucydides, and all I want to know.  The stupidities that 
were Greece are our stupidities too.      

Wish I could contribute more, but I have to get Obama elected, don't have the 
time to learn Greek, much less the desire.



Mike Geary







  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx 
  To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx ; lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 6:16 AM
  Subject: [lit-ideas] Eternal Greece


  I have a "The Spartan Code" which I submitted before my "Socrates Wounded" 
and which may be distributed at a later stage.

  ---

  Helm wisely writes and wonders re: the wise Thucydides:

  "the war [of the Peloponnese and notably the Syracuse operation field] was 
badly planned, badly led and ultimately a military disaster for Athens - one of 
the several major reasons Sparta was able to defeat Athens. . . I hope it 
wasn't Thucydides who invented the expression "war never solves anything." Not 
only did Athens lose the war, but Syracuse was so debilitated by the battle 
with Athens it was soon defeated, and Sparta's victory exhausted them."

  Indeed. Incidentally, I just got yesterday BENJAMIN JOWETT's translation of 
Thucydides. The edition is so cheap it does not give any sort of cultural 
background as to why the wise Jowett thought of translating this, which was 
obviously a good thing -- but his claim to fame rests on his boring translation 
of Plato's anti-officialese little diatribes said to be masterpieces of 
civilisation, called "The Socratic Dialogues" -- which I always have, qua 
Swimming Pool Librarian, anxiety when I accomodate on the shelves, as I want 
them to be below, on the S, but I know they have to go under P -- an author who 
hardly speaks his voice. Immoral!

  Anyway, my recent consideration re: the War of the Pelopponese, which this 
little Thucydides-Jowett book blurbs as being,

             "the stirring chronicle of the holocaust
              that destroyed Greece's golden age."

  has a rubbish for a blurb.

  It should read:

              "the stirring chronicle of a few battles
               that had proud prostituted Athens go
               'down a peg'"

               and

               "the thing that provided classicist with
               the idea that there is something eternal
               about Greece."

  --- I do have a book, silly one, but so big and nice that I have on top of 
the Greek side to the S. P. Library. It's called "Eternal Greece" -- hardback 
in a light blue cover that suits the ambience. We do have zillions on "Eterna 
Roma", Roma the Eternal City, but having been there, I would rather call it the 
Eternal Ruins. It's so dirty, polluted, and artificial! I only found peace 
there following the thread of the Tiber. The only bit of nature worth 
examining, and which the Romans did not totally destroyed, like paved or 
something. It has one bridge too many, but I'm glad they never considered Isola 
Tiberina an obstacle for their commercial things and the thing still stands 
there. Nothing eternal about Roma except their cloacae (drains).

  But Greek is different, and by eternal, I mean what Boardman calls 'high 
classical' basically Perikles time, and basically as it applies to Athens, 
since the man was his major. Imagine having to read in a History of Gotham, 
"The Time of Giuliani" -- with contributions by E. Yost, "The decrease of rate 
crime and the hellenistic influence: or how to build a Greek ghetto if you find 
the right parking lot."

  ---- The Greeks and classicists NEEDED an idea of the eternal. By which I 
mean a 'historical' Golden Age. Not the golden age of the myth, but the Golden 
Age of History, and for some reason everybody has decided it's that period, the 
hundred years before the Pelopponese war.

  This particularly apply to my current field, sculpture. Everything AFTER that 
is said to be corrupted, cheap, disproportionate, ugly, silly, unnecessary.

  Ditto for Philosophy. Having had to pass a few philosophy courses -- after 
all I do have my PhD in Philosophy -- I remember EVERY tutor dismissing 
"Hellenistic philosophy" as if we were dealing with the Gypsies. Only one 
tutor, who was specialized, as we say, in that period, and that period alone -- 
which made him a bore to talk to -- had us read Loeb, Outlines of Phyrronism, 
in which essay I quoted and quoted Grice. Since Sextus Empiricus is concerned 
with things like,

               "the thing is sweet"
               "the thing tastes sweet"
               "the thing seems sweet"

  -- etc. Enough to give you a headache.

  So if it were not for the Spartans defeating the proud Athenians, we would 
have a 'golden age' (because they were 'oh so wise and talented -- look at the 
architecture!' kind of middle brow audiences who still make it to the Akropolis 
and know sh*t about things) lasting for we don't know how much longer.

  I think a hundred years (cfr. Garcia Marquez, "A hundred years of solitude") 
is pretty enough a long time for me. Actually, when the Marquez book got the 
Nobel, Borges was said to opine to the question of what he thought about the 
book, "50 years too long", he said.

  I particularly do find the "Golden Age" of "high classical" style boring and 
pretentious, but must admit that POLYKLEITUS (and his earlier MYRON) were 
geniuses. In particular DORYPHOROS by Polykleitus gave us the right KANON on 
which later sculptures could work.

  He noted that men (he didn't do women) had

       1. One only forehead
       2. Two eyes, one to the left, one to the right. He measured the 
distance, and found that the nose comes pretty
           much in the middle.
       3. He then extended his athlete (who he was stupidly too reticent to 
name by Greek name, and called him,
           Spear-Bearer instead) and noted that the head of the ephebe (it's 
good he was not a paidophile, but perhaps
           a ephebophile, because the proportions would have been different) was

                        1/7

          of the rest of the body. (Eros, being younger, in most 
representations look like a veritable midget, as most
          children do before 'initiation' -- or before they become 'men'.
       4. He noted that the arms and the legs -- four in total, where 
symmetrical.
       5. He wasn't concerned with details on genitalia ("too difficult to 
mould" -- he worked on bronze), or more
           importantly, 'hair'. His doruphoros really looks like he would need 
a better hair do.
       6. He then made it in bronze, spoiling the fact that human skin is 
better than bronze, but at least he did not
           mould it, had he been an Asian, with boiled rice.
       
  The canon is maintained today. Lusippos changed the size of the head, so his 
variation of the canon has 1/8 for the head. Which makes them look too brawny 
and little brainy for my taste. 

  Vitruvius wrote about this years before, and he got everything fine. The only 
bit I disagree is when he notes that the center of the male body is the navel. 
Not being religious, I think the ARTICULATORY point is the annus, rather.

  Cheers,
     JL 
      The Glyptotheca at the Swimming Pool

  APPENDIX: Vitruvius (Loeb)

  “Symmetry and proportion (Gk. “analogia”) consists in taking a fixed module 
in each case both for the part and for the whole. Without symmetry and 
proportion nothing can have a plan; it must have an exact proportion worked out 
like the fashion of the members of a finely-shaped male body.  For Nature has 
so planned the male body that the face from the chin to the top of the forehead 
is 1/10. The palm of the hand from the wrist to the top of the middle finger is 
1/0. The head from the chin to the crown,1/8; from the top of the breast with 
the bottom of the neck to the roots of the hair,1/6. From the middle of the 
breast to the crown,1/4; 1/3 of the height of the face is from the bottom of 
the chin to the bottom of the nostrils; the nose from the bottom of the 
nostrils to the line between the brows, ditto; from that line to the roots of 
the hair, the forehead is given as 1/3. The foot is 1/6 of the height of the 
body; the cubit 1/4, the breast also 1/4. The other members also have their own 
proportionate measurements. And by using these statue-makers have attained 
great and unbounded distinction. The navel is naturally the exact centre of the 
body. If a man lies on his back with hands and feet outspread, the centre of a 
circle is placed on his navel, his figure and toes will be touched by the 
circumference. Also a square will be described within the figure. If we measure 
from  the foot to the top of the head, and apply the measure to the 
outstretched hands, the breadth will be found equal to the height, just like 
sites which are squared by rule. Nature has planned the male body so that the 
members correspond in their proportions to its complete configuration. By using 
these, statue makers have attained great and unbounded distinction.”





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