Posts Tagged: Homer

Writing — 6 Comments
25
Feb 10

The Most Exquisite Works Of Art Ever Created

Benjamin Franklin coined the phrase “Beauty, like supreme dominion, is but supported by opinion.”* But Franklin was wrong.

According to my friend Science, beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses. Using a complex algorithm that has been thoroughly supported through experimental research, Science has definitively ranked the most exquisite works of art.

#11 Guernica

Creator: Pablo Picasso

What sets it apart: Picasso’s most famous painting, he applies his Cubist style to the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica. The painting graphically exhibits the atrocities of war. Since its creation, Guernica has become a symbol of peace, and is frequently touted as a monumental anti-war emblem. Every leader should have to sit in front of this painting for an hour before voting their country to war.

#10 Ryoan-Ji Temple

Creator: The Sound Of One Hand Clapping

What sets it apart: The pinnacle of Zen architecture, Ryoan-ji, located to the Northwest of Kyoto, houses the famous Karesansui Garden. Everything about the temple espouses its main theme, “What one has is all one needs.” The key ingredient in true art is artlessness.

#9 The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Creator: T. S. Eliot

What sets it apart: If nothing else, the lines:


Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

Eliot elegantly summarizes the paradox of human existence, that an entire lifetime can be contained inside a single moment, yet all our seemingly endless days are not enough to fulfill us. We look forward at our beginning, and look backward at our end, and never make full use of the moment at hand. Maybe we should spend more time in Ryoan-ji

#8 The Iliad

Creator: Homer

What sets it apart: In one, beautiful, elegaic, epic poem, Homer summarizes what war and love and pride mean to an entire culture. In Achilles, the tragic hero, we have literature’s greatest example of the defiant one, who refuses to bow before his king in the face of injustice. But his defiance costs him dearly, and he eventually throws his life away in the name of avenging his slain companion. In so doing, Achilles reveals the greatest secret of The Iliad, that we in fact have the ability to determine our own fate.

#7 Citizen Kane

Creator: Orson Welles

What sets it apart: Sure it revolutionized filmmaking, with its use of deep focus and special effects, but the real importance of Citizen Kane is the inspiration it provided for Charles Montgomery Burns.

#6 Snow Man, 1989

Creator: The Scott Family

What sets it apart: In the aftermath of the great blizzard of ’89, and clearly inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, Walter Scott, his wife Diane, and their children, Richie and Hannah, set about building the greatest snowman of all time. The fact that it melted 3 days later only adds weight to its poignancy.

#5 Hamlet

Creator: William Shakespeare

What sets it apart: Any truly great work of art, from The Epic Of Gilgamesh to Snowman, 1989, centers on one theme, and one theme alone, the futility of human existence. Hamlet, thanks to the perfidy of his Uncle, contemplates suicide. Instead, he decides to expend his life fighting for love and justice. But in the end, does it really matter?

#4 The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha

Creator: Miguel Cervantes

What sets it apart: Don Quixote: madman, idealist, the butt of jokes. But he didn’t care, because he truly understood the human condition, that we create our own reality.

#3 Dogs Playing Poker

Creator: Cassius Coolidge

What sets it apart: Subversive without being demeaning, Dogs Playing Poker points out the animal in all of us. More importantly, the painting symbolizes that working class art has a place in our culture, despite what certain pretentious art critics might say.

#2 Requiem Mass In D Minor

Creator: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

What sets it apart: The Requiem is scored for 2 basset-horns in F, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets in D, 3 trombones (alto, tenor & bass), timpani (2 drums), violins, viola and basso continuo (cello, double bass, and organ or harpsichord). The vocal forces include soprano, alto, tenor, and bass soloists and an SATB mixed choir.

#1 David

Creator: Michelangelo

What sets it apart: If all the works of art ever created suddenly sprung to life, and they subsequently fought in a gigantic cage match, David would totally win.

*Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

Please note that this blog post was published posthumously

Writing — No Comments
8
Jun 09

We All Share A Measure Of Wretchedness


In school, I rarely enjoyed being forced to read long, boring novels from the distant past. Even worse was being told what to think about them. Thus, I never did well in English class.

One of my few favorites was The Iliad. The character who always stood out the most was Achilles. Of course, the other name for The Iliad is “The Wrath of Achilles,” which summarizes nicely what drew me to the story. The world’s greatest hero, feeling wronged, refuses to fight and would rather bring doom down on everyone around him than to succumb to injustice. It spoke directly to my anti-authoritarian sentiments. I would rather fail than let someone force me to read something that did not appeal to me. How dare they waste my genius?

Of course, in the end, Achilles realizes the price for fighting his fate is too high. His best friend is slaughtered by Hector, Achilles laments his pride and vows revenge, and he rejoins the war knowing that he will die soon after Hector.

I just finished rereading The Iliad. I picked it up again after reading “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer” by Keats:

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific–and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise–
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

I wanted to see what Keats saw. I wanted to be dazzled, because how often are we really dazzled by a work of literature.

As it turns out, the 400 year old translation is a hard read. It uses so many archaic words, and the constraints of writing in meter make for convoluted sentences. It took me more than six months to get through the 400 pages. I wished I had picked up a more modern prose translation instead.

But for all the difficulties, it was worth it in the end. The narrative is just as fascinating and powerful as an adult as it was as a teenager. But this time, the aspect of the story I was most drawn too was not Achilles and his anger, but instead the final book, when Priam comes to beg Achilles to release his son Hector’s corpse for a proper burial.

With the help of the God Hermes, Priam sneaks into Achilles tent at night, and reminds the young warrior of his own father. He says:

Achilles, fear the gods,
Pity an old man, like thy sire, different in only this,
That I am wretcheder, and bear that weight of miseries
That never man did, my curs’d lips enforc’d to kiss that hand
That slew my children.

Achilles relents, as he realizes an important truth. All men are destined to suffer a mix of fortune and misfortune. Both Priam and Peleus, the father of Achilles, enjoyed long fruitful lives, only to see their sons stricken down in their youth. He learns that the enemies he has been fighting for ten long years are no different from himself. His anger assuaged, Achilles finds respect for the king of the Trojans, and grants him 12 days to proffer the funeral rites for Hector, before resuming the war.

I find a measure of comfort and affirmation about humanity to find that a lesson taught 2500 years ago can still be so applicable in today’s world.

Poetry / Writing — 3 Comments
14
Dec 08

Betrayal Is A Thorny Crown


Prior evidence to the contrary, I have never really had a passion for poetry. I like the romantic poets, especially Keats, but even with them I am only attracted to a few of their most famous works. The bulk of their poems I find inaccessible. When I write my own poetry, it is more as an exercise in language than any deep attachment to the process.

What I do enjoy are epic poems by Homer and Dante and Milton, as well as the verse of Shakespeare’s plays. Even when the language is dense and dated, if the writing is driven by character or story, that makes all the difference for me.

Maybe I have not been looking in the right place, but modern poetry has never drawn much interest from me. I am open to suggestions if anyone has some poetry they especially want to share with me. Until now, though, I have been entirely underwhelmed by even the most famous poets of the last century.

Except for songwriters. My favorite poetry all comes from music. Perhaps it is an unfair advantage, because being able to combine lyrics with music obviously provides for more of an emotional impact. Someone like Michael Stipe or Kurt Cobain can write nonsensical, even unintelligible, lyrics, but you marry it to the right tune, and you get magic. It will bore its way into your soul.

Yet somehow I believe that with the best songwriters–Elvis Costello, Lou Reed, Liz Phair–their lyrics transcend the music and work just as well by themselves. All my favorite songs are based on the words much more than the music.

Just recently, I have become deeply entranced by the music of Jenny Lewis. She is the lead singer for Rilo Kiley, but she has also put out a couple solo albums. She’s a supreme story teller, and able to capture an emotion with just a few lines. Her song Rabbit Furcoat feels like a four minute feature length movie.

From the song “Melt Your Heart”:

When you’re kissing someone who’s too much like you
It’s like kissing on a mirror
When you’re sleeping with someone who doesn’t get you
You’re gonna hate yourself in the morning

It’s bound to melt your heart
One way or another
It’s bound to melt your heart
For good or for bad
It’s like a valentine
From your mother
It’s bound to melt your heart

From the song “The Absence Of God”:

And you’re not happy but you’re funny and I’m tripping over my joy
But I just keep on getting up again
We could be daytime drunks if we wanted
We’d never get anything done that way baby
And we’d still be ruled by our dueling perspectives
And I’m not my perspective
Or the lies I’ll tell you every time

From the song “You Are What You Love”:

I’m fraudulent, a thief at best
A coward who paints a bullshit canvas
Things that will never happen to me
But at arms length, it’s Tim who said
I’m good at it, I’ve mastered it
Avoiding, avoiding everything

And from what I am convinced is the happiest break up song of all time, “Breakin’ Up”:

It’s not as if New York City
burnt down to the ground
once you drove away
It’s not as if the sun won’t shine
when clouds up above
wash the blues away

The truth is, I do not know that much about Rilo Kiley and Jenny Lewis, other than how fantastic their music is. I do know that other members of Rilo Kiley have their own side project called the Elected, so perhaps Jenny Lewis is not responsible for all the lyrics. But I am not going to take the time to look up all the liner notes myself. I will instead just recommend all of you to take a listen for yourselves. Just make sure you pay attention to the lyrics.

Lyric of the Day:

Betrayal is a thorny crown
you wear it well
just like a king
revenge is the saddest thing
honey, i’m afraid to say
you deserve everything

-Breakin’ Up
Rilo Kiley

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