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Auguste Rodin: Two Hands (1909)

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huge fan of reading and learning, but also an even bigger fan of sleeping and being unconscious.

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LMAO

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Memory itself, the ability to describe this founding moment in the future of the ills of the house of Argos, is beginning to strain and crumble under the the terrible weight of the past. The focus on silence and speech in the two stanzas we have been listening to sets up the aposiopesis that follows, as though these old men knew already that the end would have to be left out, unspeakable and unspoken. It is as though, recalling in words the terrible scene at Aulis, they are also inaugurating a meditation on the impossibility of continuing the story; as if, faced with the agonizing clarity of the tableau they are describing, they are already dimly aware that their speech will be unable to show the whole picture, that they will have to leave it fragmented, leave us with an image that will have to serve as synecdoche for the whole narrative. Her death is effaced even as it is described.

This happens not only through silence, but through transformation as well. Agamemnon, bridling the girl and holding her aloft, treats her like a sacrificial beast. When he does this, the old men resort to similes that transform her into an image. She "stands out, as though in a painting" (242). This simile does not refer specifically to her silence but to her position in the scene: πρέπουσα here means "standing out," being at the focal point of the image. Fraenkel visualized the scene with striking vividness: "At this moment, the great complex group of men, chieftains and ministrants at the sacrifice, is in the foreground; away behind them the mass of the army; both alike appear as a mere foil against which stands out the central figure of Iphigenia."

But this figure marks a literal transformation of the human victm into an aesthetic object. A τε (and) in 242 includes her "standing out as though in a painting" in the narrative sequence. As the old men in this version of the text tell it, Iphigenia casts bolts from her eyes at her slaughterers while pouring her robes to the ground and standing out, as though in a painting; that is, her silence, her nakedness, and her being transformed into the kind of visual object that can be vividly described are all part of the narrative: in this story, Iphigenia turns into an image. At the moment of her death, she is transformed, not into an animal but into a mimetic representation, a painting. All this is done by the placement of a single particle.

In a curious way this memory of Agamemnon's attempt to transform his daughter into a mute sacrificial beast tells us something about the impossibility of remembering the atrocity. Iphigenia's death begins to disappear behind a cloud of occluding language and gestures, and it is clear speech, memory itself, that is being killed. Faced with the task of uttering what we cannot, we resort to literary language. We speak in figures that, we hope, will conceal the unspeakable while leaving it legible at the same time. Thus the task of remembering and narrating the sacrifice of Iphigenia has something in common with undertaking the sacrifice: in both cases we must proceed toward the impossible, hoping that at the final moment the thing will be elided or replaced in salvific transfiguration. Just as the old men leave off their story before the critical moment, so would Agamemnon hope that something will transform or translate Iphigenia, so that the impossible act would itself be transformed into something possible, as Isaac was replaced at the last moment beneath the blade of Abraham. Agamemnon tries to do this for himself twice, first by silencing Iphigenia, an attempt to make her mute and bestial, and second by forgetting ("setting at naught") her former status in the house. These are attempts, in the absence of a divine intervention, to make Iphigenia into something she is not, into an empty simulation of the thing that would have made his murder atrocious.

—Sean Alexander Gurd, Iphigenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology

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they should make a little thing pop up before you go to post a joke abt catullus 16 that's like question 1. how is catullus using, playing with, subverting, and/or reenforcing roman ideas about masculinity, manhood, & sexual dynamics in this poem? question 2. what is catullus saying about the power dynamics between the poet, the subject of the poem, and the reader? how is he making use of the medium of poetry to make this point? connect your answer to question 1. question 3. how does this poem fit into the thematic context of catullus' other poetry?

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from plutarch:

When [Alcibiades] was past his childhood, he went once to a grammar-school, and asked the master for one of Homer’s books; and he making answer that he had nothing of Homer’s, Alcibiades gave him a blow with his fist, and went away.

i go to a place of learning to read some homer. the guy says "we don't have any homer here sir". i immediately start swinging.

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RIP Elektra of Mycenae you would’ve loved Child Protective Services, recreational axe throwing, the riot grrrl scene, and court mandated anger management classes 💔

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Idk how "when interacting with ancient texts, it is important to understand the cultural norms and practices at the time, while still being able to interrogate the ways in which these perpetuate a system of violence and oppression, or the ways in which it gives you a glimpse of what they believed during that time period and how it's affected their stories and narratives. Context is important but not justification. Interest is not endorsement." is such a hot take

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ᴀɴ ᴀᴄᴀᴅᴇᴍɪᴄ ᴡɪɴᴛᴇʀ

P.D. Why does winter have to end so quickly??

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τύχα τύχα δυσπάλαιστος ἥκει, πέρας δέ γ᾽ οὐδὲν ἀλγέων τίθης

"Fate, the fate that has come, is hard to wrestle with, but no one can place a limit on suffering."

— Euripides, Alcestis

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grammar this. grammar that. sometimes 'grammatically correct' just doesn't hit the spot. the vibes are telling me to laugh in the face of the english language and that's exactly what I'm going to do, one incorrectly structured sentence at a time.

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Roman ring, 1st century. Silver two-headed snake with gold eyes.

British Museum

A ring like this one was found in Pompeii, but made entirely of gold. Apparently this type of ring was fashionable in the first century of the Roman imperial era.

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I hate when people are discoursing on The Secret History and are like "oh I never fell for it, I knew they were pretentious assholes the whole time" like okay???? I'm sorry you have such a devastating lack of imagination. sorry you missed out on the silliest and loveliest part of the book. that's sad.

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being a humanities major who’s friends with stem majors is so funny because you’ll ask your friends what they’re doing today and they’re like “UGH it’s so stressful i have to stabilize the reactor core for my nuclear power midterm and then i have to build the supercomputer from i have no mouth yet i must scream for my electrical engineering homework :/ what about you” and you’re like “oh well i have to read a fun little book and write an essay about gender.” and they still think you have it worse

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Say NO to conclusions for essays! All my friends HATE conclusions for essays!

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"𝐼 𝑑𝑖𝑑𝑛'𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑏𝑒 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑎𝑠𝑡 𝑚𝑒𝑒𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔." ⏳️

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language resources on the internet i love you. i cannot believe i can just start learning a language like that. i can lookup any word in seconds. i can find grammar explanations. there are teachers who put out whole videos for me to learn. amazing. i am so lucky.