[lit-ideas] Things to Die For/Things to Live for -- The Overlap and Lack of It: A Lit-Ideas Questionnaire
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2008 14:12:56 -0500
Lysistrata: Loeb is all you need
I referred in my previous note, "Et in Arcadia ego" to ´dudes´like Auden -- and
I´m using such a slow computer where I´m writing from that I forgot about the
scare quote on ´dude´, since, for the record, is not a word I would use myself.
Also, I would not use, "Problem, Helm" -- informal and disrespectful -- but
believe me, if you´d see this computer I´m using in Villa Speranza, while
vacationing on Speranza Island, you´d be surprised I get off the swimming-pool
at all!
Anyway, the fine Lit-ideas L. K. Helm politely responds to my post, and writes:
“But in my note I quoted: Nevertheless, in the midst of such killing and
calamity, Aristophanes staged his masterpiece antiwar comedy Lysistrata (411),
followed by Thesmophoriazusae – fantasy plays in which women take state policy
and the courts into their own hands.”
-- Right. And I should say, "oops, sorry". I do have the Lysistrata, in the
Loeb, and pasted in my Swimming Pool Library catalogue some of the Aubrey
Beardsley illustrations. My, weren´t they in bad taste! Beardsley later
regretted even having _drawn_ those grotesque erections (The Greeks never
valued an erection, hence the penis does not belong in what is called "The
Vitruvian Polykleitan Kanon" -- for female statuary it´s easy because they
don´t really have a penis, so the proportions are focused in the ´breast´(e.g.
of Venus)
As Cole Porter recalled, in the iterwar period (1930s)
You´re the tops,
You´re the tits of Venus
You´re the tops
You´re King Kong´s penis.
-- Geary knows the alternate lyrics, too.
I never understood why Beardsley felt the need to illlustrate the profanic
comedy by Aristophanes in the first place and later regret it. It´s a boring
play, as most Aristophanes´s plays are. He was anti-everything. Anti-war in
Lysistrata, anti-philosophy in Nubes, and anti-wasps in Vispae.
My reference to the bucolic Arcadian shepherd by W. B. Richmond was meant to
indicate that art may have two functions:
-- there´s war-oriented art indeed, where we have Ares with his spear (offense)
and shield (defense) and the symbol indeed of masculinity (versus the
narcissistic hand mirror that symbolises Venus). Then there are full lengths of
the Tyrannicidae which are meant as ´moral´of good citizens who are willing to
take up arms for the common good of the polis; and there´s the bust of
Diomedes, but which I think was composed at a later date, and is sadly now
decomposing at Thermopylae with little protection by the state.
-- But there´s also an art of peace, or better of a gold age (in Hesiodic
terms) where shepherds were only thinking of playing the flutes of Pan. This is
a universal too, and I´m reminded of the musical comedy which opened in London
in 1910, ¨The Arcadians¨, ten years after the Boer War, and where the hit was
the ¨Pipes of Pan¨, a waltzy song by Monckton. Recall two the "Apres midi d´un
faun" which so much did for the development of 2oth century art, with the
innovatory costume by Diaghilev and the mastery of Nijinsky -- who incidentally
married at St. Michael in Buenos Aires.
So I would think there is this polar and antipolar force. The war instinct has
the support of the educational system -- and I mean the paideia, and of course
the Spartan agoge. But also this lasted till the LYRA GRAECA of the Etonians.
The Battle of Waterloo was fought in the playing fields of Eton. For it is only
EPIC Greek poetry -- or body-oriented athletic poetry -- that made it to the
canon. The "Arcadian" tradition was thought of as "too soft" for the "little
ones" growing up, who would find it perhaps too boring and bucolic for their
testosteronic rapid growth.
But, and this is my point, a shepherd -- and McEvoy may agree with me on this
-- needs his dose of testosterone too. The Romans knew this, and loved de re
rustica, agriculture, the odes of Horace, the outness of the maddening crowd.
The bucolic peace of a flute, a couple of sheep, and the vast Egean at your
feet and at a distance.
This also connects with a topic we´ve been discussing with Helm and Geary: and
I will invite lit-ideas readers to contribute their own:
THINGS TO DIE FOR THINGS TO LIVE FOR
For Helm, it´s category A that matters. And he would place ¨the honour of one´s
country¨(or polis) on top. Where polis does not mean, narrow-mindedly, neither
San Jacinto or Memphis, but America. (In my case, it´s different, since I would
not take up arms to defend Rosario -- still part of Argentina but on the wrong
side of the River Plate, and not part of MY polis, Buenos Aires and its
adjacent pampa. (People call me coward for that, but I say I´m being
Thucydidean).
I´m not sure S. Ward would provide his ultimate sacrifice, martyrdom, or
suicide (there is a nice distinction there), for, say, Yorkshire!
Not even if a Lancastrian would! There´s this little rhyme I learned from a man
of Preston:
He´s strong in the arm
But weak in the head.
And yes, he´s Yorkshire born
And he is Yorkshire bred.
Or as R. Paul would say, ¨reared¨(for ´raised´is for cattle).
Things to live for is my mother. And things to die for are my mother. So Palma
will have to explain this pragmatic self-contradiction. But there is an overlap.
Things to live for is wine (for the Greeks) but not necessarily to die for
(unless you mean the Athenians are thinking of sacking the vinyards of Argos).
The three types of Greek love (EROS, AGAPE, and the best, PHILIA) are things to
both die for and live for.
Dancing to the tune of Zorba the Greek Geary says it´s something to die for,
not to live for.
Etc.
War is nice, and Ares is my favourite god (besides Jesus). But if we have a
good statuary of Ares encouraging battle, it´s the delightful anecdote where he
was caught in the net with his penis inserting
the pudenda of Venus (then Lady Hephaistus as she was) that fascinated the
Greeks -- and later the Helenes and the Romans.
The Romans thought Ares was too good a thing to forget and they automatically
translated ALL the rites they associated to their powerful MARS to Ares.
And the thing is Indo-European based. Indeed, Tuesday´s boys are the worst (for
the mamma) because Tues (or Tuwes) was the Anglo-Saxon (indeed Teutonic) god of
War -- and tewasdaeg was Tuesday. The interesting there is the semantic
narrowing undergone by the Anglo-Saxons. From the diuspater (Jupiter) to the
theos of theology we have Tiws which while it meant just GOD in Indo-European
came to mean the god of what Humanity always valued MOST: War and its Victory!
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
-- or its defeat, for after all, we did lose the F*cklands War
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