From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #122 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, June 1 2000 Volume 02 : Number 122 Today's Subjects: ----------------- b/sappho ["Donald G. Keller" ] o/freudian&jungian ["Donald G. Keller" ] Re: o/freudian&jungian ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/sappho ["Hilary L. Hertzoff" ] Re: b/sappho [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/sappho ["David S. Bratman" ] Re: b/sappho [GHighPine@aol.com] Re: b/sappho ["Hilary L. Hertzoff" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 11:39:46 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: b/sappho I decided to do my own research on the Sappho question, and came home from the library with a volume of the Loeb Classical Library (a venerable institution) titled =Greek Lyric I: Sappho and Alcaeus=, edited and translated by David A. Campbell (Harvard U. 1982). On p. 52 we find the "Hymn to Aphrodite"; the following is my own transcription of the Greek (please correct if I err!) poikilothron' athanat' Afrodita, pai Dios doloploke, lissomai se, me m' asaisi med' oniaisi damna, potnia, thymon, alla tyid' elth', ai pota katerota tas emas audas aioisa pyloi eklyes, patros de domon lipoisa chrysion elthes Campbell's (I'm assuming pretty literal) prose translation: Ornate-throned immortal Aphrodite, wile-weaving daughter of Zeus, I entreat you: do not overpower my heart, mistress, with ache and anguish, but come here, if ever in the past you heard my voice from afar and acquiesced and came, leaving your father's golden house, with chariot yoked. Now, if you pause the tape in the proper spot, you can discern about 80% of that text (meaning if civilization came to an end and scholars only had the videotape, they could mostly reconstruct the poem!); "eklyes" is the last clearly-discernable word, but I continued to the end of the second verse. (The poem runs seven verses in toto.) It's all run together, of course, without word breaks and with line breaks sometimes in the middle of words; but it's all or mostly there. Some curious things: note that what the translation has as "Zeus" is spelled in the text as "Dios." Dialectal variation? I'd always pronounced the poet's name "saffo," but it's clear from the spelling here that it's "sap-fo" (i.e. both a "pi" and the character--also appearing in "Aphrodite"--which we usually spell "ph.") Further, when later in the poem Aphrodite appears to the poet, the text spells how she pronounces the name as "Psappho." How little I know about the classics... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 11:42:01 -0400 (EDT) From: "Donald G. Keller" Subject: o/freudian&jungian Longtime readers of the GEnie topic that is the ancestor of this mailing list (David and Jennifer and Greer particularly) may remember some years ago I was struggling to articulate a distinction I intuited between two kinds of fantasy, which I felt sure were best labeled Freudian and Jungian. I failed so miserably to clearly communicate this intuition that my listeners were sure the labels were wrong. And =I= was sure that the main problem was that I didn't know enough about either Freud =or= Jung. (And I bought my first books by either at about that time.) Well, now I think I can explain it more clearly. Let's remind ourselves, at the outset, that =all= fantasy operates by dramatizing/externalizing inner experience, situations, and conflicts. But any fantasy will, implicitly, implement this strategy according to =some= theory of psychology. =Freudian fantasy=, as I see it, recognizes only the =personal= unconscious, i.e. contents from the protagonist's life-experience that have been forgotten or repressed. The only archetypes this sort of fantasy recognizes are the parents (the Oedipus conflict, the superego) and the double/shadow (the id/libido). Fantasy of this kind includes E.T.A. Hoffman, Poe, =Frankenstein=, =Dracula=, =Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde=, most horror in general, Kafka, Shirley Jackson, =The Silence of the Lambs=. (My intuition tells me that the =Weird Tales= school--Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard--and subsequent "sword & sorcery" like Leiber and Moorcock belongs here as well, but it's much less clearly so. Still needs some thinking out.) =Jungian fantasy=, on the other hand, recognizes the =collective= unconscious as well, not only contents from the protagonist's experience but from "racial memory" as it were; as well as the two "Freudian" archetypes it recognizes the rest, such as the hero, the wise old man, the anima/animus, the trickster, etc. Fantasy of this kind includes George MacDonald, Tolkien, Eddison, C.S. Lewis, Le Guin, etc. etc. (And all older "fantasy"--myth and epic--is Jungian as well.) Bringing this back to the main topic here: =Buffy= is both. Insofar as it's a "teen drama" and deals with Buffy trying to adjust to "everyday life" it's Freudian (and Prof. Walsh's "commentary" on matters is explicitly Freudian); but insofar as it's a "hero's journey" it's Jungian. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 12:33:47 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: o/freudian&jungian Oh, I think you're on the right track, all right. (Ghu knows what, if anything, I wrote about this when you brought it up before.) What strikes me as the most distinctive characteristic of Freudian, and Freudian-like, thought, is its incessant claustrophilia and reductionism. The approach to all problems is to delve inside the self, and everything is to be found there. What great Freudian fantasy does is recognize the horror of this: the dooms of people like Henry Jekyll and Dorian Gray is to be trapped inside themselves with nothing else for company. It's almost solipsistic. But while I've read and enjoyed fiction of this description, it's not what I enjoy most or what's most meaningful to me. What I love in fantasy is the opening out, the finding of an infinite space inside a nutshell (to misapply Hamlet's metaphor), and the transport into other minds, other places, rather than the incessant return to oneself. I have to live with myself all the time: in fantasy I want something else. Or, in other words, what Tolkien called the first function of fairy tales: Escape. I also agree that you've properly classified the Weird Tales school, and indeed all of sword & sorcery, as Freudian. Some time ago I was re-reading Lin Carter's _Imaginary Worlds_, which was one of my first textbooks on fantasy, to see how much I've learned and my thinking has changed since then. And I found myself puzzled by his roping together of two very different traditions, the primarily British (at that time, at least) high fantasy tradition (Morris-Dunsany-Eddison-Tolkien) and the primarily American sword & sorcery tradition, solely because both use secondary world settings. This seems to me an almost accidental similarity. One would as soon write a book on flying animals, including bats and insects with birds, pretending that there's no significant difference between them. This lack of awareness of a distinction tripped me up constantly in my fantasy neophyte days. I loved all the high fantasy I read, and so, guided by Carter and by friends, I read Lovecraft and Howard and Leiber's Fafhrd stories too, and was mystified as to why I didn't care for them at all. It was only years later that I realized there was a consistent pattern. I think the difference may be summed up this way: high fantasy is about the setting as much as it is about the hero. In sword & sorcery, it's about the hero, and the setting is incidental backdrop. And this difference shows up in what we call the books. On the one side, it's Tolkien's Middle-earth, not Tolkien's hobbit stories (even before the Silmarillion was published, mostly, and even more so afterwards); it's the Earthsea books, not the Ged books. On the other side, it's the Conan stories, not the Cimmerian stories, and the Fahfrd & Grey Mouser stories, not the Lankhmar stories. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 13:20:17 -0400 (EDT) From: "Hilary L. Hertzoff" Subject: Re: b/sappho On Wed, 31 May 2000, Donald G. Keller wrote: > > poikilothron' athanat' Afrodita, > pai Dios doloploke, lissomai se, > me m' asaisi med' oniaisi damna, > potnia, thymon, > > alla tyid' elth', ai pota katerota > tas emas audas aioisa pyloi > eklyes, patros de domon lipoisa > chrysion elthes > > Some curious things: note that what the translation has as "Zeus" is > spelled in the text as "Dios." Dialectal variation? > Oddly enough, the genitive of Zeus is Dios or Deos (depending on transliteration), and the rest of the declension follows the genitive. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps because he is THE god. Hilary Hilary L. Hertzoff From here to there, Mamaroneck Public Library a bunny goes where a bunny must. Mamaroneck, NY hhertzof@wlsmail.wls.lib.ny.us Little Bunny on the Move hhertzof@panix.com by Peter McCarty ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 14:06:09 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/sappho In a message dated 5/31/00 8:42:38 AM Pacific Daylight Time, dgk@panix.com writes: << I'd always pronounced the poet's name "saffo," but it's clear from the spelling here that it's "sap-fo" (i.e. both a "pi" and the character--also appearing in "Aphrodite"--which we usually spell "ph.") >> As I have understood it, "ph" in Greek is not pronounced quite as our "f" (upper teeth on lower lip) but with the lips in the "p" position, blowing out and making an f-like sound. (I used to know all the technical linguistic terms for all this.) "F" was the default in English, as the closest sound in this language. As far as people tending to drop the p that precedes the ph, that reminds me of how I always hear people mispronounce "Machu Picchu" by dropping the first c in "Picchu." It's Pic-chu -- "peek-chu" in Hispanicized pronunciation, or "peekh-chu" in Quechua, but not "peechu," which always grates on me. (Means "elder hill" in Quechua, for anyone interested.) Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 14:46:08 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: Re: b/sappho Concerning mispronunciations and misspellings, I would love to know what force compells most English-speakers to misspell Gandhi as "Ghandi". (Or Tolkien as "Tolkein", for that matter.) ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 15:45:38 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: b/sappho In a message dated 5/31/00 10:23:08 AM Pacific Daylight Time, hhertzof@wls.lib.ny.us writes: << Oddly enough, the genitive of Zeus is Dios or Deos (depending on transliteration), and the rest of the declension follows the genitive. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps because he is THE god. >> So you have studied ancient Greek? Neat. Anyway, the genitive seems appropriate because his name occurs in the phrase "daughter OF Zeus," and the only other mention of him is in "your father'S house." BTW, I recently learned (though it's obvious when you realize it) that "Jupiter" (Roman name of Zeus) comes from the proto-Latin form of "Deus (form of Zeus) Pater." Joss, of course, is cognate to Zeus...... Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 May 2000 19:41:16 -0400 (EDT) From: "Hilary L. Hertzoff" Subject: Re: b/sappho On Wed, 31 May 2000 GHighPine@aol.com wrote: > In a message dated 5/31/00 10:23:08 AM Pacific Daylight Time, > hhertzof@wls.lib.ny.us writes: > > << > Oddly enough, the genitive of Zeus is Dios or Deos (depending on > transliteration), and the rest of the declension follows the genitive. > I'm not quite sure why, perhaps because he is THE god. > >> > > So you have studied ancient Greek? Neat. Anyway, the genitive seems > appropriate because his name occurs in the phrase "daughter OF Zeus," and the > only other mention of him is in "your father'S house." > > Joss, of course, is cognate to Zeus...... > Which I would have realized if I'd been thinking. I had one Ancient Greek class in college. Then about two years ago, I noticed a continuing ed. course reading Homer in Greek, so I signed up. The teacher had been teaching classics at a local school and was doing this just for fun. When the class got too small for the college to continue to support it, we met at the teacher's house. We read about 20 lines a week of the Iliad. I had to drop out last November due to financial issues (roof assessment for my condo) and because we switched to meeting late the night before I had to come into work early. It was alot of fun while it lasted. Hilary Hilary L. Hertzoff From here to there, Mamaroneck Public Library a bunny goes where a bunny must. Mamaroneck, NY hhertzof@wlsmail.wls.lib.ny.us Little Bunny on the Move hhertzof@panix.com by Peter McCarty ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #122 *****************************