Thinking on Puns, Morals, and Comedy

Tags

Aesop, classical greek, comedy, plans, puns, shakespeare

It is another week and, thankfully, we get a chance to explore a little Ancient Greek in the simplistic forms of Aesop. This week, the poetic writers brings us to a household filled with female servants who do not wish to get up early to work. The mistress of the house, using the rooster to wake the girls at dawn, tells them that as long as the rooster sings they will have to obey the call and get up from bed. Naturally, the girls kill the rooster to avoid the wake up call, unfortunately, the mistress, not knowing the time, wakes the servant girls up even earlier to do their chores. What could the moral of the story be?

Τὸ ἵδιον βοὺλευμα τὰς θεραπαίνας βλἀπτει.
Their very plan destroyed the servants.
Su mismo plan destruyó a las sirvientas.

Irony is a fantastic trope used by Aesop to convey moral legitimacy. Nothing can replace experience, suggests the writer, to teach us a life-lesson; the more ironic the experience, the better. Irony, you may have guessed, was not just a tool of humorous effect in the Ancient World, it was a tool of learning. Even today, jokes in Spanish are built in such ironies, momentos of life which are supposed to teach you something by the very pain they bring, and which others can use to learn. We will make fun of a family member for days after they had done something stupid, creating better pun lines every time the story is told. Over time, that story becomes a joke, told to successive generations who can both have a laugh and also learn from the mistakes of their ancestors. This is why I always say that Aesop is comedy, for in his puns, what we identify as morals, are hidden event that some poor soul, at some unfortunate moment, suffered the fate of the story. I can picture an actual mistress, with actual slaves, and an actual rooster.

Speaking of, the rooster is killed in this story. A bit gruesome, right? Fables, like Mythology and any other story related to myth are designed precisely to help us deal with these harsh things about life. Anyone who has ever tried to kill an animal will know that it is not an easy thing to do, or witness, for the first time. We are, most of us anyway, trapped in a world of ease and comfort from which we can learn very little. Stories, be it documentaries, film, plays, or any other art of storytelling is the only method from which we can learn what happens when certain things are done. Aesop is teaching us, with every pun, what we must not do. I think of Shakespeare and the great playwrights in the same way. “Romeo and Juliet” is not about love, is it about what young people should not do while young and when falling in love. Do not kill Paris, do not run away, do not so easily die for something so fleeting as young love, the playwright tells us. Stories, or fables, are a safe environment in which we can kill a rooster and see the consequences without actually living moment; they are the places in which cutting off your toes to fit on a show that will grant you everlasting happiness (Cinderella) will only result in painful feet, infection, and death.

These are the reasons why I love story-puns, why I do Aesop Monday, and why translate only the morals. Stories are awesome, but what you are supposed to learn from them even more so. Thus, after that two-paragraph digression we arrive at the conclusion: sometimes your plans turn against you. When nursing an awesome idea, try to think of the consequences of your actions. Don’t kill the rooster, just like you shouldn’t kill the Golden Goose. Think things through because, at the very least, you will have to get up earlier, at most…well…we will have to make up a fable about that, won’t we?

Xairete!

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Thinking of Life, Ups, and Downs

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Aesop, ancient greek, fables, fish, fishermen, foolishness, philosophy, ups and downs

Yet another Aesop Monday reveals itself to us (you have to love the Greek Middle/Passive)! I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving, if you are located in the US; if not, I hope you had a great weekend none the less.

Today, Aesop is telling us about pain and gain, the latter in the form of blessings, of course; since the gods are the ones who issue out χάρις. As the fable goes, two fishermen are going about their business in a river seeking to gather as many fish as possible from it, to make some money. Suddenly, their net closes up and becomes heavy. Thinking they have caught a huge amount of fish, the fisherman hurry on to shore in order to load up their catch. Rejoicing, the fishermen reach the shore, load the heavy net upon their carriage, drive it away, and arrive at the nearest town. When they finally open the net the poor guys realize that they have only rocks in it. Aesop closes the story thus:

Oἱ θεοὶ τοῑς ἀνθρὠποις χαρὰς πέμπουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ λύπας. ἡ λύπη ἀδελφή τῆς χαρᾶς ἐστιν.
The gods send blessings to human beings, but also pain(s). Pain is blessing’s sister.
Los dioses envían bendiciones a los hombres, pero también dolores. El dolor es el hermano de la bendición.

Let us suspend belief for a moment and assume our fishermen are dumb enough to drag a net, place it on the shore, hoist it up to a carriage bed, drive the load into town, and get it down, without realizing all they are carrying is a bunch of rocks. In fact, this is precisely the point of the fable. When we get over excited, especially when something seems much easier than expected, we tend to make silly mistakes. Have you ever heard the expression “if it is too good to be true, it probably is”? This is precisely what Aesop is getting at here. There is no blessing that comes without trailing some disgrace. Similarly, there is no pain that comes without trailing some blessing. Aesop, of course, focuses on the blessing-followed-by-sadness scenario. I always think of life as a succession of good and bad, I never coast, and I never settle. When something good happens, I think I should be prepared for whatever bad thing is coming up next. Some may say this is a pessimistic point of view, but I rather think of it as the realist point of view. After all, if you are prepared for bad and bad happens, at least you are ready, right?

Whether you believe in God, the gods, or Fate, good things in life are accompanied by bad ones because, let’s face it, you just had a good thing. Anything that does not resemble that good thing you just enjoyed, in turn, will seem unpleasant and disappointing. Think of it this way: you have arrived at the peak of a mountain, and now it is time to descend. Even though you spent just as much time descending the mountain, you wouldn’t constitute that as a failure, right? Because you won. You have succeeded. However, by definition, you could not be a winner, since you had to come down. You couldn’t stay on top. The same thing happens while at sea. You are battered by waves that lift you and drop you, but you stay on your boat, stay the course, and arrive at your destination. Such is life, a bunch of ascends, victories, and descends. No one can stay on top for long, if at all; no one conquers life. Life is like a wave of the sea or the peak of a mountain. We may be tempted, in our inexperience, to say that we have arrived, that we have obtained all we sought in life; but therein lies the greatest danger of all. When you settle, when there is nothing else to look up to you fall, precipitously and inevitably, to the bottom.

Thus, fellow readers, never settle. Never be satisfied with what you have attained. Like the climber who conquers his next mountainous foe, return to camp to plan the next ascent. Like the sailor who braves the storm, assume the waive that just passed, although behind you, will be followed by another wave until the tempest (a Latin word which means ‘a period of time’) passes. Similarly, the ascent may be painful, it may be annoying, boring, or disappointing; but that, too, passes. Eventually, you arrive at the peak of grief, of suffering, only to realize the rest is then downhill; easier, smoother, and much less painful. Everything ends, pain or gain, sooner or later. The key, reader, is not to be deceived by success or failure and the brief moment in which you peak at either one. “ἡ λύπη ἀδελφή τῆς χαρᾶς ἐστιν.” If pain is indeed blessing’s sister, then they will always be hand in hand, regardless of who comes first. Make no assumptions, double check your net, and you will be able to weather much more than you ever thought yourself capable of enduring – good or bad.

Thinking on Friendship, Wrong Roads, and Frogs

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Aesop, ancient greek, fable, friendship, frogs, love, Roads, wrong roads

Good Monday to all of you, my friends. It is fable day, and Aesop takes us to a pond where two frogs are friends.

One frog is on the road, on a pretty big pothole filled with water. The other is away from the road, in a small marsh with little space. The frog on the marsh beckons the one on the road to come to it, for the road is filled with danger. The frog on the road said it was too lazy to move, for it had found a good place to be plus, it was small, what could possibly happen? Suddenly, a carriage passed by and run over the small frog sitting in its waterhole on the road. Aesop writers the moral:

Μὴ μέλλετε, ὦ ἄνθρωποι, ἐπει ἔχετε τρέπειν τὰ κακὰ εἰς καλὰ.
Do not pretend, ō men, while able to move, [that] the bad [is] good.
No pretendais, ō humanos, mientras que podáis moveros, que lo malo es bueno.

I think this fable, as most by Aesop, is absolutely hilarious. Clearly, the frog on the marsh can tell its buddy on the road is on a bad position, thus wants it to come over. However, the frog on the road is too lazy and too comfortable to even make the attempt. “μέλλετε” here is quite telling as it is an imperative (as is usual with Aesop’s morals) and a plural. “Do not you all,” says the writer “plan, pretend, intend;” the choice of the frog is a conscious one, that is why the verb for wishing while planning is used here. We are our own worst enemies, that much is clear, and we may find that we are in a precarious position but, unable to see the full picture, we remain unaware of danger. We must depend on our friends to help us see, as they stand outside of our circumstances, what possible danger we may encounter while in our current positions.

That is the beauty of friends, as Aesop would say; for they have the capability of seeing what we cannot. Sometimes, even as the frog saw the danger but thought itself too small to be squished, we think ourselves immune to the problems others have faced. It is at this moment that we must listen to those beyond our circumstances the most. In the end, despite our not being able to see beyond our nose, we will discover that those who are admonishing us are only trying to protect us from what they know is a danger to our physical of spiritual well-being.

As Aesop puts it, sometimes we have the capability to move and we still choose not to because we turn the bad into good. Let us remember the little frog and the road. We may one day realize that the voice inside our head is not that of a god far of or the nagging of a stranger up close, but the loving warning of a friend who, caring for us, is trying to lead us away from a dangerous road and into friendly marshes.

Thinking on Mothers, Chiding, and Children

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Aesop, ancient greek, chiding, children, deeds, fables, fate, future, morality, mothers, Past, Present, time

One of Aesop’s most alarming fables is that of a bad child who blames his mother for his death. As the fable goes, a child brings a stolen book to his mother; however, she does not chide him for the deed. Noticing no rebuke, the child soon moved on to stealing many and greater things. Eventually, as a youth, that same child was caught stealing from a merchant on the road and killed. With his last breath, he blamed his mother for his death. Aesop closes the fable with this moral:

Μὴ οὖν μέλλετε, ὦ ἄξιαι μητέρες, τοἴς ἀναξίοις τέκνοις ἐπιπληττειν.
Do not hesitate, therefore, o worthy mothers, to chide unworthy children.
No dudéis, por lo tanto, buenas madres, en admonestar malos hijos.

There is so much meaning hidden in these few words, one can almost feel a sense of overwhelming etymology. We shall start here:

Children vs. Youths

Aesop calls the child a τἐκνον (tecnon) in this fable, a child of no more than five years old. This mother, although worthy of her title, decides to allow this child to steal since, in the  beginning, he was only taking little things. The case is also illustrative of how Ancient Greek parents saw their children. A child was literally ‘that which one had made’ or, in other words, technology (the word child is exactly where technology comes from – think of ‘this project is my brain-child’). Because mortality rate was quite big in Ancient Greece, somewhere between 45 to 65 percent according to many scholars, there was a disconnect between parents and children. Although there was a ceremony to name the child after his clan once the baby was eight days old (only for boys) in order to give it what we would think of as a last name (patronym), the child would not get a first name until he overcame his first few years in the world. This child could have easily been called, because of his ‘qualities,’ Kleptiscos (little thief); but only once he had reached identifiable maturity. Consider the mother’s hopes that he would only have been a thief during his youth (hence my diminutive) and will not continue to do so as an adult. Thus, when your technology, with your last name but not a first name, misbehaved, there may have been a temptation on the part of the mother to let it do its thing.

Another fact is that τέκνον was a neuter term, meaning neither male nor female. In our modern world, we have lowered this age of cognitive thinking to a much earlier time. Toddlers (our neuter term for a boy or girl of two) are thinkers, babies have gender since birth; this, to the Ancient Greeks, was visible but not necessarily true. Until a child developed his own conscience sometime after age five, they were a thing. For us, although babies are neuter, we feel the need to ask ‘is it a boy or girl?’ After that, even babies are conscious beings. We have even pushed gender into the womb, so we can attach consciousness to fetuses within the first 12 weeks of life. On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Ancient Greeks believed the child would develop according to the traits given it by the gods, and made no effort to encapsulate their being with a first name or a gender until they were quite older.

A Warning for Mothers

Aesop is warning mothers who are tempted to let the thing be because its actions are small and insignificant. While that was true of good deeds, the writer warns about bad things. After all, it is the duty of a mother ἐπιπλήττειν (literally meaning ‘to hit upon’ – chiding came with a sense of physical violence) her child, especially if the deed was bad. That is why Aesop makes the contrast between “good mothers” and “bad children.” Good mothers with good children have it easy, for they can let the child go; but it was possible to be a good mother with a bad child, in which case it was the responsibility of the mother to teach said child. However, responsibility of the mother did not take responsibility from the adult in which the child would turn into; that is why Aesop insists the mother is good, even though her child is not.

Destiny and Bad Teens

The child-now-turn-youth argues “ἐμοι ἥδ’ ἡ μοῖρα ἐστιν” (this very fate belongs to me) upon his death, because of his mother. Fate here is transient, changeable. Kleptiscos (let us keep the name we have made up for the sake of argument) says that if his mother had chided him (and possibly given him a different name like ‘the chided one’ – Epiplettos) he could have avoided his fate. Fate, then, is dictated by the actions one takes in his or her lifetime. Aesop, while agreeing with the Ancient Greek version of fate, says the boy is incorrect; for mothers do not dictate fate, but your own actions. Aesop still argues, however, that “good mothers” will chide their small children when they do something wrong since, one never knows, they could grow up to be thieves and wrongly blame them for their final fate.

But isn’t fate dictated? You ask. How can mother and child possibly be held liable for fate? Because, as we argued previously, fate is an accumulation of decisions. In “Thinking of the Ancient Greeks, Deeds and Time,” I put forward this very notion. Fate is the irrevocable destination we give ourselves when we have committed certain actions in our past. This is what was so amazing about time in Ancient Greece, if you had made the right decisions, it worked to your benefit; if you had not, you were doomed to a bad fate.

Χαιρετε!

Thinking on Friendship

Tags

Aesop, danger, fable, fables, friendship

How about a little Ancient Greek? We all know of Aesop’s fables; the great original storyteller who used his stories about nature to convey tropes we still use today. Here is one of his puns or, morals:

Ὁ φίλος ἐπεὶ ἐν τοῖς κινδύνοις τὸν φίλον λεὶπει, οὐ τᾖ ἀληθείᾳ φίλος.
The friend that when in danger forsakes a friend, [is] not a true friend at all.
El amigo que estando en peligro abandona un amigo, no es un verdadero amigo.
Amicus ubi in periculum amico relinquit, verus amicus non est.

Notice the friends are in danger together, making the ‘leaving’ that much more important. Both in Greek and Latin ‘leaving’ had a huge importance. The Ancient Greek protected the man next to him with his shield in the phalanx formation; thus if you left, you quite literally caused the death of the man next to you and the breaking of the phalanx. Further, the person next to you in formation was, more than likely, a very close friend, if not a father, uncle, or someone in your family, since the phalanx was formed by house, district, and neighborhood. Also, ‘philo’ was another word for love, love that grew out of common goals and experiences (think philadelphia – the city of ‘Brotherly Love’), so whoever you left behind to die was much more than just a buddy.

Although not tied by family, Romans thought of abandoning the line just as badly; a concept shared with the new brotherhoods of today, such as those created out of the military, aka Brothers at Arms who ‘leave no one behind.’ We could just as easily say ‘the lover (out from shared experiences) who, when in danger, leaves the beloved behind is no true lover at all.’

Thinking on Servants, Masters, and Donkeys.

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Aesop, ancient greek, donkeys, indenture, masters, servants

Χαίρετε (greetings) fellow οἰκέται (servants of the household). Aesop has me thinking about slaves in a cautionary tale of consistency. Is the grass greener on the other side? Of course it is.

Aesop tells the fable of a donkey who, belonging to a gardener, complained of his toil; for, truly, nothing could be worse than the gardener’s work. The gods, ever-caring, allowed the donkey to be sold to a potter, who made the animal work even harder. Finally, the donkey, once more asked the gods to get him sold, One last time, the gods made him to be sold to a Tanner (οφ animal hides), but the donkey, old and disappointed, complained that now even after his death he would suffer, for the tanner would use even his skin, which would never receive rest from labor. Aesop closes his fable with the following:

Μὴ σπεύδετε, ὦ οἰκεται, ἀπολείπειν τοὺς δεσπότας.
Do not hasten, o servants, to run away from your masters.
No os apresuréis, sirvientes, a correr de vuestros amos.

Let it be said that οἰκέτης was, precisely, a Servant of the Household, hence not a plain slave (δοὺλη). Indenture servant-ship was a thing in Archaic Greece (mostly due to debt), but with it came also the possibility of serving this or that house, unlike slaves taken in war.

Much like our jobs today, we have the option to indenture ourselves to companies to make money or pay off debts (funny how little things have changed in 3000+ years), but we must be concerned with our current job. Aesop says that it is easier to learn to do our current job better rather than to move and possibly find our situation worse. Further, as time goes by, you will have a long job history, but little tenure in the position you are in, a major problem then and today. In summary, fellow servants, consistency of resume is appreciated more than mobility; now, and according to the Ancients.

Χαίρετε!

Thinking on Laziness, Teaching, and the Value of Work.

Tags

Aesop, classical greek, laziness, values, work

Happy Monday! Time for Ancient Greek, and our well-liked Aesop Series.

Aesop told the story of a farmer who had lazy kids (who cannot identify with that, right?) and, in order to make them work, he tells them there is a treasure hidden in their farmland. The kids, excited to find the treasure, leave no stone unturned; they clean what is dirty to make things more visible and organize the farmland from top to bottom to make sure they have covered the entire area. In the end, when the sons and daughters find nothing, the farmer makes them look at the field and tells them, with the expected coy smile, that they have found the treasure after all, for:

“Τὸ ἔργον θησαυρὸς τοῑς ἀνθρώποις.”
Work [is] a treasure to human beings.
El trabajo es un tesoro para los humanos.

You will immediately notice the absence of the verb “to be” in the A. Greek; to the speakers of the language ellipsis (omission) was a beautiful thing. After all, they thought, if you understood Ancient Greek then you will, de facto, know what the writer meant to write and say without having to really explain it. Further, Aesop’s fables have the connotation of a joke with a final punch line, and taking the verb “to be” out made it faster to deliver it. One can think of parents telling this fable to their kids at the table and, if one complained about having money or treasure, the pun would be delivered after the ironic tale.

Think about it this way: have you ever heard the term “it is funny because it is true”? The farmer would laugh, because the only treasure his kids would find, being peasants, would be in the work they did, not in meaningless day-dreaming. In that sad truth remained the pun that made the day-to-day worth living; if lived for the right reasons.

Thinking of People, Friendships, and Enemies

Tags

Aesop, classical greek, enemies, fable, friendship, people

Let’s do a little A. Greek to brighten up your Monday morning! We will probably end up naming this the Aesop Series, so let’s take a look.

After a wolf convinces (weird word, from the Latin con-vicere – to win together by multiple things) a sheep to ditch her guarding dog because of some rumors, finally becoming lunch for the wolves, Aesop gives us the following moral:

Μὴ ἀποπέμπετε, ὦ ἄνθρωποι, τοὺς φἰλους διὰ τοὺς λὸγους τῶν πολεμίων.
Do not [you all] send away, O men [and women], your friends on account of words from your enemies.
No os deshagais, hombres [y mujeres], de vuestros amigos debido a palabras de vuestros enemigos.
Propter verba hostes, viri, amici non relinquitis.

Aesop is trying to tell us here that no matter how good our enemy’s arguments/rumors, we should always consider our friends first. After all, our friends have our well-being in mind, while we may easily think our enemies are just trying to get that friendship.

Notice the use of ‘ἄνθρωποι’ in the Greek and ‘viri’ in the Latin. They are both denoting men and women by virtue of language. Just like many writers in our time would say ‘Men’ and actually mean ‘mankind;’ or write ‘mankind’ as meaning both men an women. Despite arguments to the contrary, which are valid for other reasons, Aesop’s meaning includes men and women in it.

So, remember your friends, friends.

Cicero on Punishment and Cures

Tags

Aesop, Agoge, change, Cicero, Cures, diseases, humanity, punishment

Poena istīus ūnius hunc morbum cīvitātis relevabit sed periculum semper remanebit.
A penalty for that one man will relieve the sickness of this state, but danger shall always remain.
El castigo de ese hombre aliviará la enfermedas del Estado, pero el peligro siempre permanecerá.

Consider M. T. Cicero here and his use of “that one man” versus “this state.” He seeks to separate the good from the bad, the worthy from the unworthy. Good Romans were the state, bad Romans were killed or exiled. A very common way of Roman thinking: if you are here, you are us; if you are there, you are them. This is how they voted as well; people who supported one proposition or another would walk to the man proposing it. It really gives new meaning to ‘drawing a line in the sand.’ A very interesting political point.

Yet Cicero makes another subtle suggestion: remove the symptom and the disease remains. How do we solve this, then? As Augustus said: remove the pain and you are still hurt, seek to remove the thought ‘I am hurt’ from your mind, and the pain is gone with it. Men are just actors to life; change their lives, and they will act out something else.