Thinking on the Self, Conflict, and Overcoming

Tags

ancient greek, latin, Life, philosophy, trying

Like a faint heartbeat, a post to give proof of life.

The ironic thing is that I have been far more active on my Facebook page (wow, Word just corrected my grammar when I did not capitalize ‘Facebook’, I guess it is a thing now) than I have been here, apparently. Truth is, I haven’t had time, but I do not think that matters much. I have time now, and that, however brief, must not be ignored. You may be asking yourselves ‘why now?’ That’s the beauty of it all: I was never ‘not thinking like an ancient’ so I was technically never ‘not posting’. It is just that posting part that kept being left behind. Alas! I do have something to share:

τὸ νικᾶν αὐτὸν αὑτὸν πασῶν νικῶν πρώτη τε καὶ ἀρίστη, τὸ δὲ ἡττᾶσθαι αὐτὸν ὑφ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ πάντων αἴσχιστόν τε ἅμα καὶ κάκιστον.

“It goes something like this: victory over the self [is] in itself both of all victories foremost and also the highest, although to be made less than one-self, that is of all things the worst, and the most shameful.”

This, of course, was written by Plato (Laws 1.626e). I have this, in the Ancient Greek, in a poster on a classroom wall. Often, as point my students to my Greek helmets, I will tell the stories of men who dared to fight against themselves. I feel that, perhaps, things will sink in more when words are ancient and people are known. I don’t know if that is having any effect. Yet there is hope. One thing is certain: as much as I focus on Cicero or Plato, my students never make a sound while I do. I wonder if it is the power of the words or the telling of them in somber voice and passionate retelling, but something does take place. Despite it all, the success or the failure, I had never really paid attention to the words that followed:

ταῦτα γὰρ ὡς πολέμου ἐν ἑκάστοις ἡμῶν ὄντος πρὸς ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς σημαίνει.

Listen intently to these: “For these things are the direct result of war in those of us being pressed to fight against ourselves.”

“The direct result” of looking into our souls is the imminent defeat or conquering of it. We must look, Plato suggests in Laws, because if we don’t we risk remaining who we are forever, unable to change, unable to become anything more. Doesn’t that seem like the worst thing that can happen to anyone? I think so. Cicero would have definitely agreed:

Nescire autem quid ante quam natus est acciderit, id est semper esse puerum.

“To know nothing, however, of what which took place before one had been born, that is to be always a child.”

I love Cicero, I love Plato, and I love ancient history. I find in it reasons for teaching and learning and, maybe, my students do as well. Hopefully I can instill in my students a sense of discovery of the self, so they can begin that struggle for self-determination and self-discovery. I feel like Plato understood the necessity for students to struggle against themselves and find within a reason to question life and each other. Today’s world is too much about victory without focusing at all on loss. Everybody wins, all the time. Perhaps it is time that we revived the possibility, however faint, that we could lose. I think that, alone, would give us the necessary energy to try things a little more.

Well, it may be short, but there it is.

Strength!

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Sapientia victa et semper erit

Tags

latin, philosophy

I am not sure of many things. Some of them are obvious; others, not so much. The obvious I can tolerate, even fix, when the situation demands it. The others…well, let’s just say that unlike many others out there I am not in tune with the hidden meaning of things.

It has been a long summer.

I have written a thesis, finished and published a book, written curricula for three classes, and managed to survive the demands of a family of seven. To many, it is the happiness of a single moment which drives them to struggle against the tide of life that so overwhelmingly entraps and drowns some wanderers along its course to higher things. To me, it is many. There are many moments in life that can be considered success; many ends, in fact, that can drive that final crossing of the line. Here is one: when I write about anything, the very act of writing becomes a success. How many cannot write? I don’t mean those who are unable, but those who won’t. Anyone can write. Yet to write well requires a certain finesse of thought. A certain kind of pedantry. Words are aligned on a page and are required to fit into the mold piece by piece, step by step. One can never see what the final product is until the entire work has been completed. That is why writing is art. Like those articles and nouns bunched together followed by adverbs and verbs that permit the entry of conspicuous and inconspicuous direct and indirect objects. The comma, which allows for the interjection of another thought. The semicolon; that symbol which rudely interrupts the flow of a sentence to give succinct pause to an idea before it continues on the thread upon which it was set before. That conjunction, master of all breathing thought, which joins together and gives little room for pondering and even less for a response. I enjoy it, writing. There is no better way to pass the time than to revel in the empty white pages of an electronic document before it becomes filled with the pixels of thought, and black-colored letters. It is not the writing that made summer fester like an infected wound filled by unwanted parasites and pus. It was people. People whose voices were muddled by the unyielding course of ideas that gave birth to my writing. Voices yet heard and headed, but weak and languishing. Voices that despite their faintness held auctoritas over me. I think that my lack of heeding made the price higher, in respect of the happiness I was to have experienced.

One can never rely on another to gain the heavens.

Veritas indeed. No one will cross the threshold with you when you are about to win the race. Too busy. Successes cannot take place in company because the company will leave you, and you will leave it, when the end is near. In thought, for example, people always leave you when you are closest to the goal. There you stand, figuratively, at the gates of the temple of truth. There they leave you, as the door opens, and you fall. I wonder what it would be like to watch a fireman do the same, or a police officer. I wonder how one would feel when the fireman, about to reach the threshold of the house on fire, burning with complete determination to take with it the suffering being that occupied it and failed to recognize its demise, left the victim on the ground and with a tip of his hat and a smile on his face ran outside alone. We would be dumbfounded at the fact, although we would too soon have died and have little room to ruminate on the matter. Equally would the victim of a shooting be confounded if the policemen, having almost killed the assailant, turned to the victim and with a tone of newly-found success uttered that the rest could now be handled by the fallen person, dying in the poor misery of an inflicted gun shot wound. I suspect that, gun in hand, the dying devil fiend would finish the job all too promptly to allow a proper response.

We have become corrupted by self-sufficiency.

I depend on many to complete my day. Unsung heroes who are devoted to their craft as much, if not more, as I am to mine. There was once a janitor who smiled at me and gave me the courage to continue on with a day I thought wholly obliterated by disappointment and exhaustion. There was once a man who fed me at no charge when I was ready to pay for the delicious and meat-stocked sandwich I ordered at his deli. Having decided to be the best they could be at their particular professions had given them a sense of perspective beyond that of many others. They were educated in social relationships, they were committed to their accomplishment, but also to the accomplishments of others. They would not only get the person with whom they were connected only in passing to understand they were content with their choice, they would also have them know they too could be content with theirs. Those people carried me through the threshold and unto victory. Sapientia victa et semper erit.

It has been a long summer.

I may not be in tune with the hidden meaning of things, unlike many others. I can barely tolerate the obvious as it is. Yet, although I tend to fix the obvious I am not sure of many other things. I know, despite it all, that wisdom has conquered, and that it always will.

Thinking on Despair, Courage, and Fear

Tags

climbing, courage, despair, etymology, Fear, latin, philosophy

There are three words that I have been pondering of late.

Despair.

Courage.

Fear.

It is perplexing to me how the etymology of words can encourage further investigation, even if the results are so highly individualized that we cannot find any meaning in them except that which we have found for ourselves. I find that, although the meaning of our universe remains hidden to those outside of its sphere, we can still write about what we find in hope, perhaps, that someone else of similar tendencies will find us. In essence, it is as if we were lost sailors in a tempestuous sea of darkness and destruction sending messages into the void and hoping someone, anyone, will notice our seeking for like-minds. We hope that in the vastness of that life-like sea there is a small island of hope in which our fellow human beings are also seeking what we seek. I don’t know if this means that, at some point, we will dock our small boat and commune with the equal-minded in some very-particular island of thought. Yet I do hope that in sending those faint and small messages out there, into the void, we can one day receive a reply that will testify to us of the truth of our personal musings. Thus I send my pings into the night. Seeking to find what others, in their differences, do not. My signal is as unique as those of others in this world with different thoughts.

Despair.

The Etymology Dictionary defines the verb as “c. 1300, from Anglo-French despeir, Old French despoir, from desperer.” I like to push a little deeper. French is a combination of two languages, Latin and Old German. I believe compound words have their genesis in Latin and Greek, something that has proven right time and time again. Looking at the Latin, the possible composition of the word may be de-sperare. Those of you acquainted with Latin will immediately notice two things, a participle (de) and the infinitive of the verb spero (sperare). The verb itself comes from the noun spe, which means ‘hope’ as an embodiment of the feeling, but which also means to ‘inherit’ as a factual contract. The noun is Fifth Declension, a complex idea in itself – I will just take ‘hope’ and go from there. The interesting thing is the participle, for it basically means ‘by, with, or from’ and it’s followed by an ablative noun, if one were present. Here we have a verb, but if that infinitive was a noun it would translate to something like ‘from (emphasized) hope.’ Thus, Despair, basically means ‘from to hope’ or ‘from hoping.’ It is interesting how ‘despair’ represents the going away from hope. A hope in which we had been firmly rooted up to whatever point it was that we left it. In other words, to come away from hope is to despair. Like most human affairs, it is a choice, it cannot be chosen for us. We, the hopeful ones, can rest on hope as long as we need to before resuming our inexorable race towards whatever goal we aim. That is the crux, the rub, and the meaning of it all. We choose. Despair is a choice. We choose when we come out of the protective circle of hope and move towards our intended goal, as it is meant to be, or towards the abyss of desperation, as we never intended.

I know this sounds maddening. I know people will say people do not choose despair. I am not saying that one chooses to be desperate. I am saying that one chooses the moment in which desperation takes place by letting go of hope. Let us think of the climber and his rope. When footing is lost, the climber hangs on to that rope, seeking to save his life. The rope is hope. As the climber struggles to find footing it is hope that keeps him alive, for things have gone astray, life has dealt that climber a dose of life itself. When will the climber let go of hope? Enter fear and courage. There are two scenarios to consider.

One, the climber will find courage, footing, and no longer needing hope, he will resume his expected path. What is courage? Once again the definition of the Etymology Dictionary runs thus: “c. 1300, from Old French corage (12c., Modern French courage) “heart, innermost feelings; temper,” from Vulgar Latin *coraticum (source of Italian coraggio, Spanish coraje), from Latin cor “heart,” from PIE root *kerd- (1) “heart” (see heart (n.)) which remains a common metaphor for inner strength. In Middle English, used broadly for “what is in one’s mind or thoughts,” hence “bravery,” but also “wrath, pride, confidence, lustiness,” or any sort of inclination. Replaced Old English ellen, which also meant “zeal, strength.” Quite nice. I like to think we can take a step back from the PIE “kerd-”, however, and visit Rome again to get a better sense of the word ‘courage’. In Latin, ‘cor’ was the heart. ‘Agere’ meant ‘to lead’. Thus cor-age(re) meant, quite literally, to lead with your heart. Now that is a definition as romantic as it is true. What is courage? I like to think that it is what drives us to act when all logic tells us we are doomed. Courage is the means by which the impossible (according to the mind, at least) can be overcome. We are no longer led by reason, but by the heart – the impossible. Courage is a place in which reason has no place, a realm in which logic has no bearing. Courage, thus, is the illogical pull of love, the overwhelming push of hatred, the madness of fear, the finality of entrapment. Courage is to lead with the heart and to lead with the heart despite the odds is courage applied. It is the last push of the strong, the last thought of the unwilling, the refuge of the ambivalent. It is the heart telling your mind that the odds count little when a life is on the line. The climber knows the end, and chooses to disobey the laws that dictates he has to fall. Courage leads him away from hope and he lets go into the despair that pushes up, to a better future.

Scenario two is grimmer. The climber will despair, his muscles will give into tiredness, and he will fall – this is the realm of fear. One last time, the definition of the Etymology Dictionary: Old English færan “to terrify, frighten,” from a Proto-Germanic verbal form of the root of fear (n.). Cognates: Old Saxon faron “to lie in wait,” Middle Dutch vaeren “to fear,” Old High German faren “to plot against,” Old Norse færa “to taunt.” Fear does not find its root in Greek or Latin, it is purely Germanic (the other half of French). It is not a composite word, which is another clue. Yet I like this word the most, because the farther back one goes the more one realizes that fear means to stand still, waiting for whatever the imagination has thought of as a possible scenario. Death. Our fear leads us to expect it, to await it, to embrace it. Dying is the most likely result of losing footing while climbing life. It is fact. Yet courage leads us to avoid standing still; to avoid receiving death with open arms. Whether we are afraid of death or not fear will tell us, in the end, that it is okay. We can let go of hope, the end is here. We despair for the wrong reasons, we despair and allow ourselves to fall.

To climb up this mountain we call life we must never despair for the sake of fear. We need to find our footing as courage would have us do, against the odds, even when life has dealt us such a blow that we are thrown completely out of balance, one that stopped us in our tracks. As we cannot move forward, we can take refuge only in hope until we find footing again and can then move forward, letting go of hope to find our path once again before us. That is hope. That is despair. They are polar opposites that allow us to continue our climb to the top of whatever plans we have made for ourselves or plunge us into obscurity. To ‘come away from hope’ (despair) is to give up on it. Use the precious moments you have to retrace your steps, reposition yourself, and regain the confidence you need to move forward – use courage. Come away from hope with courage towards the factuality of your plans, otherwise you will come away from hope in fear of the fall and, irrevocably, plunge into the abyss whence you came.

Lead with your heart instead.

Of Pride, Falling, and Rising

Tags

ancient greek, apollodorus, bible, G. Julius Caesar, latin, philosophy, Plato, proverbs

“Pride cometh before the fall.”

That was the comment a family member made to me when I was reminiscing with someone else about my youth and the times shared with a dead person at his funeral. The subject was how “awesome I had been when I was young, and how much my son loved my stories, so much so that he did not mind if I was his teacher at school – it was not embarrassing for him at all.” The person I was speaking to agreed that the deceased had always admired that about me – my stories and personality. Then my family member (in-law, thankfully) said:

“What was that again? Pride cometh before the fall?”

My answer was as quick as it was clear:

“And I am still falling.”

“Yeah,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

My friend, who was actually the mother of one of my best friends said:

“He has always been like this.” Then she let out a hearty laugh.

I am not sure what my family member was going for with that comment. Perhaps it was that she wanted to be part of a conversation that was clearly not including her. My in-laws have known me for fourteen years, most of my friends for twenty. Nevertheless, I thought of the comment for a while – well, I am still thinking about it – and realized the problem. Let us quote the verse of which this individual was probably thinking:

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)

I prefer the Latin:

Contritionem praecedit superbia et ante ruinam exaltatur spiritus.

Overbearing pride (hubris) shall precede contrition and before ruin an exalted spirit.

Fascinating, is it not? It is not pride that brings the fall, but the overstepping of pride into hubris or, as the verse says, overbearing pride. Now, here is the trick. Pride is not bad. One can be proud of his/her accomplishments.

Let’s try the Ancient Greek:

Πρὸ συντριβῆς ἡγεῖται ὕβρις, πρὸ δὲ πτώματος κακοφροσύνη.

Hubris (I was right) is made to come before the crushing, and before the falling (associated with epilepsy, interestingly enough) an accumulation of bad deeds (folly, basically).

There is only one thing I dislike more than lazy translation: lazy quoting.

The pride that both the A. Greek and the Latin speak of is ‘overbearing pride.’ To the Greeks, this kind of pride brought on nemesis, in other words, righteous anger. To the Romans, the equivalent punishment to their overbearing pride was the bringing on of contrition, that is, the crushing of the soul and the body with the things pride has made truth when not so. I am certain that thinking myself good enough so that my son does not feel shame to call me father and teacher does not qualify for this overbearing pride. Considering my response, however – and I am terrible at responses on the spot – the verse becomes even clearer.

When does this fall take place?

“I am still falling,” I said. In the moment I answered like Apollodorus (the Gift of Apollo was his name). When Apollodorus’ friends were making fun of him, thinking him crazy for being a philosopher and not making money, he replied ἐγὠ μέντοι ὑμας οὐκ οἵομαι άλλ΄ εὐ οἰδα (Plato Symp. 173.2-3). “You think it, I however, know it well.” I know it well too. I am in a state of fallness. I drank my hemlock, like a good boy. Yet are we not all fallen? Man is in a fallen state, this individual and I both believe this as a product of our religion. I am down, perhaps if you think you are not so yourself, you should help me become risen as well – those of us who are still fallen and are not, unlike you, it would seem, enlightened. Instead, the comment made was not geared towards enlightenment, it was a pun. A pun on my fallen state from an individual who thought herself too far above me to make any other comment. Now that sounds like overbearing pride to me. Hold the hemlock for a second.

I really like the second half of that verse. Let us recall it in the three languages:

…and an haughty spirit before a fall.
…et ante ruinam exaltatur spiritus.
…πρὸ δὲ πτώματος κακοφροσύνη.

The conjunction ‘and’ is inseparable, all three languages use it (and, et, δὲ). That alone should tell us that those who do not quote the verse as a whole are missing out on something.

What could it be?

Well, that the fall only happens after one suffers of a haughty/exalted/badly-accumulated spirit. It is the spirit who thinks itself above others that causes the body to fall. As the Greek suggests, it is not a matter of if, but of when. Πτώματος is the fall provoked by the gods (nemesis) due to our κακοφροσύνη, not much different than epilepsy to the Greeks – of course, to them it was just the falling caused by pride, something that would annoy G. Julius Caesar quite a bit. Kακοφροσύνη is in direct opposition to συμφροςὐνη, which means to act wisely or to ‘act with wisdom’ – aka moderation. The opposite literally meant to ‘act with bad wisdom.’ Bad wisdom indeed, to quote scripture to give weight to words that would otherwise be absolutely empty but must be spoken nonetheless in order to bring ease to an exalted spirit.

Well, no. That is the answer. You are not better than me. I am not superbus, I am not hubristic, I am simply proud of the fact that I am a good enough father that my son won’t feel ashamed of me if I have to teach him and his friends in a classroom setting. Further, if we are all fallen, must we not learn to rise on the things we have been given? Are we forever to remain fallen? I don’t think so. Whether we have been cast into this world by god or by our parents alone, we were born to nothing, and it is up to us to use Good Wisdom in order to rise to something. Pride, the good kind, is not so much a tool of destruction as it is the rope by which we can pull ourselves out of this mud-pond that is life.

Besides. It is a funeral, we are supposed to tell stories and remind ourselves of the fools we were when the person now deceased came into our lives and made things run in a different direction. We are supposed to remember the dead, through the effect he or she had in our lives. Perhaps next time I will be able to answer that destruction happens in two stages to the religious. Overbearing pride brings about a destruction of the body, an exalted soul the fall of the spirit. Perhaps next time I won’t feel like I have to smile while explaining to others why my in-laws are the reason the word Bad-Wisdom exists at all.

No worries. I will drink my hemlock now.

Thinking of Caesar, Grammar, and How Conservatives Behave

Tags

conservatives, G. Julius Caesar, Grammar, latin, Life, philosophy

I have been thinking on a phrase that Caesar used in his De Bello Gallico for a while now. Perhaps I am just overthinking it (yes, it happens) but I really like how the sentence speaks to his battle tactics.

Caesari omnia uno tempore erant agenda.
To Caesar, all things had to be done at a single time.
Para César, todas las cosas debian de haber sido hechas en un sólo momento.

The composition of the sentence, which flows quite well in the Latin, needs all sorts of prepositions and complex participles to make it work in English and Spanish. I could render it in English somewhat all-encompassing-like (how’s that for an adverb) without losing a lot of the meaning but, surprisingly, the Spanish gave me a lot of trouble. The verb to be, usually smooth in the Spanish, was somewhat awkward here, perhaps due to the language’s aversion to participles. Who knows.

The cool thing about this bit of writing, is that Caesar is talking about himself in the third person. Caesari is Caesar himself, in the Dative. Not only is he third person, but he makes himself the Indirect Object of the sentence (and the verb). Humility? I doubt it. Rather, he was expressing his opinion about a fact that he had experienced, and that all should consider, especially since he knew first hand. Sometimes will will construct something like ‘to me, it seems the best…’ In that sense, we are placing ourselves as an indirect actor, allowing the real subject of the sentence to come through in hopes that we can carry a point. So, what is our subject, if not almighty Caesar? Everything.

No, literally, omnia is the subject of the sentence. This little word in the nominative case and neuter gendered (I am not a fan of the neuters because they like to make you think they are direct objects – accusatives – when they aren’t) literally means ‘all things.’ ‘Everything’ as the subject seems almost fallacious. After all, no one can like ‘every kind of food,’ or ‘every person,’ or even ‘every good thing;’ but the use of the expression brings Caesar’s mind to us in an interesting way. The guy loved his extremes. Believe or not, conservatives tend to be far more all encompassing in their statements than liberals or democrats (ya, I just went there), and therefore use more words like ‘every,’ ‘always,’ ‘never,’ or ‘none’ more often than the aforementioned people. Why? Conservatism is pretty close to an ‘all or nothing’ sort of philosophy. In other words, conservatives are like the Sith.

The bad guys are conservatives? Well, sure; but hey, you didn’t think the Jedi weren’t liberals, right? Freedom for all races, rights for all creatures, nature(force)-lovers…

It is no wander that Obi Wan Kenobi’s answer to Darth Vader in Episode III is “Only the Sith deal in absolutes.” After all, “you are either with me or against me” is quite a conservative statement to make. Things are black and white when extremes are applied – ask any conservative. Caesar is doing the same thing here by separating ‘all or nothing.’ By saying ‘all things’ Caesar forces the reader to take into account everything they think about when they ponder Roman issues, culture, and ideals. In writing this to the senate at Rome, which is what Caesar was doing, he was challenging their changing beliefs, because he had won in Germany and that gave him the right, therefore he was in the know of life, right? Well…

Uno tempore is an Ablative of Time in Which, ya, that exists. This ablative set the reader into a time, a single dot of time in which the action of the sentence happens. Why choose to write it here? Well, Caesar, like the Romans, was a Subject-Object-Verb kinda guy. We, English speakers, are a Verb-Subject-Object people. We say ‘The Dog Runs to me’ because that’s how we like our sentences, and we don’t really have a way to express the same idea in any other way. If I were to say ‘The Dog me runs’ people would wonder if you got run over by some Great Dane or something. Romans didn’t care as much for word order, because the ‘to’ in the sentence was embedded into their dative case. Equally, here, instead of using a preposition, such as ‘in,’ the position and spelling of Uno tempore tells us that ‘one time’ is the time in which the action happens. Fun!

But here’s the kicker: erant agenda is a construction made up of an imperfect verb and a participle. Verbs are awesome little things that tell you when things are happening, which tend to be useful – usually. In English, because we conjugate little, we need aiding verbs to tell us time. ‘I eat’ is a present, ‘I was eating’ is a past, ‘I will eat’ is a future. Caesar’s Latin modifies the verb proper to give us meaning. The verb mutates something like this:

I eat – eato
I will eat – eatebo
I was eating – eatebam

I have left the verb roots in English to give you an idea of what is added. You may say, ‘aha, there are too words there!’ And you would be right. Because prepositions can act as nouns, the verb is complimented by one. Erant literally means ‘they were being’ in the imperfect past. Here is Caesar being a Sith again. The imperfect past denotes an action that begun in the past and is still taking place. Thus, he is saying that since he begun to do things this way, he has always done things this way. ‘Things never change.’ Conservative much? Just in case you think I’m going crazy, take a look at agenda. Yes, we get our word agenda from this. The participle literally means ‘to be done’ or ‘about to be done.’ Future participles, such as this one, also carry a sense of duty (ought to be done) with them. The more accurate translation would be ‘ought to be done’ or ‘has to be done.’ Remember that famous phrase from Cato: “Carthago delenda est”? Same thing. Carthage ought to be destroyed, and Caesar’s being ‘ought to be done.’ Literally, the Roman Imperator (general, here, not Emperor) was saying that ‘to Caesar, all things ought to be done that were [being done] at a single moment.’

I just love that. To do things at that level of preparation, considering how massive Caesar’s army was, is impressive enough. To picture conservative Caesar writing to the senate of Rome telling them their indecision was shameful and that, in order to save the city, they too ought to do things within a single moment, is just impressive. But to understand that to Caesar life was but a moment in which all that could be done should be done in order to leave behind the greatest memory possible of oneself, giving meaning to the phrase alea iacta est, is just mind-blowing. Caesar stopped for no one (not just a phrase in Spaceballs, apparently), rather he understood the importance of carpe diem, and seized indeed. Maybe the Romans got tired of the guy because he didn’t give them a moment’s respite. Yet again, who does business on March 15th anyway?

Valete amicos!

Disclaimer: as much fun as it is to judge Caesar’s character on a single phrase, you probably shouldn’t compare him to a Sith Lord Conservative whilst amongst friends. Actually, don’t compare your conservative friends to the Sith either… come to think of it, don’t compare anyone to siths, they may think you are being mean.

Thinking about John Milton, Paradise Lost, and Recognition

Tags

John Milton, Life, Paradise Lost, philosophy

It is a fact of life that we are to be pushed down and opposed in all things. I do not pretend to know that fate will be any easier on anyone for trying their hardest, pushing to the limits of mental exertion, or exhausting all physical energy. I really don’t. However, there are times in which one must demand something from life, too. When dues have been paid and courses run, whether life has acknowledged that or not one should claim a reward, a destiny, a result, better than one has. In this one thing I oppose the Stoics, for they would accept life and her gifts as sufficient for their efforts. I do not. I believe Pindar. He once wrote that honors should be sought because we had put the efforts towards obtaining them. To demand glory, to do so when we have paid our dues, it is not wrong, the product of hubris, or the manipulation of an overambitious soul. We demand to be given what is ours, regardless of who or what believes we do not deserve it. It is ours by virtue of our efforts, our sacrifice, our suffering.

John Milton wrote, in Paradise Lost, of a Satan that demanded glory despite his rebellious state. As he escaped Hell to confront God directly, he faced a cyclops-like creature that had been placed there to keep him from completing the attempt. A monster that:

…black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as Hell,
And shook  a dreadful Dart; what seem’d his head
The likness of a Kingly Crown had on.
Satan was now at hand, and from his seat
The monster moving forward came as fast,
With horrid strides, Hell trembled as he strode.
Th’ undaunted Fiend what this might be admir’d,
Admir’d, not fear’d; God and his Son except,
Created thing naught vallu’d he nor  shun’d;
And with disdainful look thus first began.

Some would argue Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost, I neither agree nor disagree. Suffice it to say that John Milton was a very religious man, more Protestant than Catholic, whose hero would not have been the rebel who started all conflict. Let us focus instead on what Milton believed the muses had told him about the infamous primordial rebel. Satan, alone, faces this gigantic monster now bent on stopping him. The monster is life. We are all Satan. We have all committed some terrible mistake at some point in our lives. We have rebelled against authority, we have done things we are not proud of or reject. We have all suffered the scorn of a life that seems to taunt us, a life placed there by some unknowable force, bent on our submission, fixated on our destruction. Such is life, such will always be life. If that is the case, if we are all satans in disguise, then his answer in this fictional work of Milton’s is all the more relevant to us:

Whence and what are though, execrable shape
That dar’st, though grim and terrible, advance
Thy miscreated Front athwart my way
To yonder Gates? through them I mean to pass,
That be assur’d, without leave askt of thee:
Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,
Hell-born, not to contend with Spirits of Heav’n.

Life is huge, and ugly, and scary. It charges at us with its mighty spear, shaking the ground beneath her, as if we were to sink into the abyss below us by its sheer weight. All shakes, all trembles, and all fall to their knees. But not us. We who have done the work, paid the price of our genius in sweat, and blood, and tears; we have a different duty. We have a different calling. We are too invested in what we have accomplished to stop now, before the dawn, and call it quits. We cannot fail, because we have done too much already. Every moment of our lives we have done the deed, and we will not be pushed aside by life; not now, not anymore. We may find, after all, that huge and scary life is nothing more than a mirage of power, set up by that huge nature, spirit, or god, in fear of what we might do. Said the beast:

Art thou that Traitor Angel, art thou hee,

Who first broke peace in Heav’n and Faith, till then

Unbrok’n, and in proud rebellious Arms

Drew after him the third part of Heav’ns Sons

Conjur’d against the highest, for which both Thou

And they outcast from God, are here condemn’d

To waste Eternal daies in woe and pain?

And reck’n’st thou thy self with Spirits of Heav’n,

Hell-doomd, and breath’st defiance here and scorn,

Where I reign King, and to enrage thee more,

Thy King and Lord

Why yes, that’s me. Recognition, even in the face of the worst of circumstances, is the reward life gives only when taken. Also, only when taken with right to be taken. Life is a monster, it is true. No matter who you speak to, and how well-going their lives sound, life is a beast no one can get rid of. We should respect it, yes, all the more, because it is our lives. But remember this, reader, as well, even the worst of us have to face it and demand from it what belongs to us. The result may be you still don’t get what you want, but within, in our souls, we will have gain the respect we are owed; a recognition of our deeds and the necessity of our reward which, soon or late, will come. Let us be not dismayed at the thought of a hard and ignominious life. Although, as well, let us not fade so deeply into the abyss that we are never seen despite our deeds. Too hard have we worked, too long have we labored, to allow life to keep us on our knees.

Our path is the road to take, let us walk in it with pride.

Thinking on Pindar, Reflections, and the Road we Follow

Tags

Ancient Greece, ancient greek, Life, Marathon, meaning, philology, philosophy, Pindar, Reflections

Reflections, like dreams, are a state of the mind in which we cannot find what is, but what should be. Perhaps, even, if we are to find something of the truth amongst the shadows of our own lives we must, also, become something more, or something else. I have thought of Pindar several times in the last few days, holidays and all (the US just celebrated Presidents’ Day), and the ideas that make us who we are. Going through old notebooks from classes I took years ago I found this quote by Pindar (Nemean 1, 25-26) and its subsequent translation:

τέχναι δ᾽ ἑτέρων ἕτεραι: χρὴ δ᾽ ἐν εὐθείαις ὁδοῖς στείχοντα μάρνασθαι φυᾷ.
Though skills being one or the other it must thus be that a person marching in a straight and narrow road is made to fight as a boxer by his nobility.

Once again, I have fought the classical translations; not because I did not like them, but rather because I do appreciate them. What Pindar meant here has been a bit of a conundrum to me, but one must appreciate the meaning of the original vs the translation. I love Pindar here because he uses one of my favorite words in the A. Greek, τέχναι. If teknon (child) is that which we make, technē is the skill which makes the child possible. In other words, technology is the product of our mind and our skill. Pindar is using τέχναι and ἕτεραι as comparatives for his audience, a form of the verb to be has been elided as unnecessary for context, something the Greeks loved to do. Ancient Greek students will tell you that elided verbs are the bane of their existence, yet you see it most often with the verb to be and when obvious nouns which don’t belong together seem to be used as an adjective and noun pair. Technically simple, practically hard. Thus, ‘skills [being] one of the two.’ His usage of ἑτέρων as an attributive genitive is fascinating. in other words, he is using the same word  as before, ἕτεραι, but in a different context, to say something like ‘skills [being] one of the two of the two of them.’ A very complex way to say that to each man is a different skill. It is Pindar, after all, composer of the Olympian Odes, right?

The second part of the statement is not so bad. χρὴ δ is a conjunction that introduces a statement which must take place for the previous statement to be true. Thus, what is to follow, must take place if different skills can be attributed to different men. I love χρὴ because it denotes something that must happen, but it also translates as money in χρηματα or, in other words, what one must have. Although, I am not sure if this use of money as the possession that matters most was a thing with the Dorian and Ionian Greek dialects as much as it was in the Athenian Attic. One day I will have to look at that. ἐν εὐθείαις ὁδοῖς is just a preposition+dative construction that indicates the place in which the action is taking place. We may call it a prepositional phrase, I suppose. εὐθείαις is not quite a straight road, but sort of the ‘straight and narrow’ or morally-sound road. Pindar again uses metaphor to indicate that whilst ‘in the straight and narrow road’ στείχοντα μάρνασθαι.

There is no reference to man or a transitive verb in the second part of the secondary clause. Using a participle (στείχοντα) and an passive infinitive (μάρνασθαι), the author expects you will fill in some meaning. Στείχοντα literally means ‘able to be standing;’ don’t think of it as an infinitive, but rather as a hyphenated verb. Then we have μάρνασθαι, ‘to be fought.’ Funny thing about μάρνασθαι (marnasthai), it shares roots with marathon (map-). Now, Marathon was named after the Fennel that peppered the field surrounding the city. Marnasthai relates to a conflict fight of boxers. The root proper refers to a wasting away. Could this be a reference to the ‘wasting away’ of flowers, men, and boxers? More than likely. Words like madness (a wasting away of the mind) come from this root, so the theory seems sounds. At any rate, what we lack is a conjunctive verb. So we can supply ‘to be’ for our purposes. Thus, ‘a [man] marching [is] made to fight as a boxer’ is added to the phrase.

One may think that with only a word left there is not much to be done here. Alas, Ancient Greek is a language far beyond assumptions. Remember what I said at the beginning? That thing about reflections being like dreams? Pindar has brought us on a journey of self-discovery, his rhetoric has served the purpose of a vehicle to our minds and our souls in the search for meaning in ancient words. A single step on the ladder remains, φυᾷ (phua). Physis is the nature of a person, phua is the growth of the soul based on said nature. This growth is only possible by the good things anyone person does in life, say, by walking ‘in the straight and narrow road.’ Another conundrum, Pindar places the word ‘phua’ in the dative, it is the indirect object of the sentence. However, like the Latin ablative, the dative in Greek is the Jack of All Trades. Datives take on certain characteristics, especially when you don’t see their article (τῂ) somewhere in the sentence. What is that mean? Well, the dative is acting as a Dative of Means/Manner or a Dative of Agent – there many other dative constructions but they don’t die here. The first dative form tells us by which means the action is being made or the manner in which it is made. The second, especially when a passive verb exists, tells us the agent by which an action is being done (notice the passive verb in this sentence and the agent ‘which’). Considering that marnasthai is a passive construction, we can conjecture that phua, the nature of the person, is the agent making said person struggle.

Huh? I know. Nuts. But here is the thing: in life we only fight ourselves and our reflection in the mirror of life. We become great at what we do, whatever that skill is, only because we struggle the most against the thing that matters the most to us. We love our families because we can’t let them go, we fight for them. We love architecture (for example) because we have put in the time and money to learn the skills necessary to make it happen. We love writing because we have struggled to understand the intricacies of the written language. Life shows us who we are now, telling us we do not deserve the future we have planned for ourselves. But we can understand who we are only because we take time to reflect, to see ourselves in that mirror of life and choose to fight ourselves by virtue of the noble road we seek to take rather than the path we are currently taking. We change, because we have the courage to see ourselves as we are, and then fight ourselves, like a boxer in the ring against an equal, to make something else happen in our lives. Fight yourself, reader, for your own sake. Let us reminisce on that one for a while.

Χαιρετε!

A Quote on Life and Doing

Tags

eternity, Life, moments, philosophy

Begin doing what you want to do now. We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand-and melting like a snowflake…

– Sir Francis Bacon –

Thinking on Poetry, Catullus, Living and Loving

Tags

Catullus, claudia metelli celeris, Lesbians, lesbos, Life, philosophy, Poetry, Sappho

A dangerous subject, poetry, since the cultural aspects of metaphor tend to be lost to time when reading it; although, perhaps, we should give it a try none the less:

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
…
Da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
Dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,
Deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum.

Let us live, my Lesbia, and also love,
…
Give me kisses a thousand, thereafter a hundred,
Then another thousand, next a second hundred,
thereafter yet another thousand, next a hundred.

One can almost imagine Catullus raising his hand to the sky as he speaks to the thousands, then bringing it down again, upon his face, to speak of the hundreds. The poet speaks of heaven and hell, of the best and the worst, the high and the low. The dichotomy plays on a certain idea, that even the worst is the best when Lesbia is around to kiss him. It is clear what Catullus wants, basia mille is his whole purpose, he even demands it, for Da is a Present Active Imperative verb, characterized for the dropping of the s in das, the regular Present Active Indicative. Why is Catullus so demanding? Well, it is Catullus. As far as we know, he never spoke to his Lesbia (a pseudonym for the girl he supposedly loved), or spent some time having an affair and she dumped him in the end. It is perhaps in this light that he expresses his frustration, demanding kisses he will never get again. In other parts of this particular poem, Catullus also speaks of the rumors of old men, and how Lesbia and him should just ignore them and enjoy each other. This poem is definitely a precursor to what we will see in the Medieval and Renaissance periods with poetry: lots of longing, lots of kiss-asking, and suffering, lots of suffering, for another.

In regards to the name Lesbia, there are quite a few theories. One of them is that the girl – and if it is Rome and she is not married she would be no more than fourteen – or married woman he is after had relationships with other women. The reference there of course is another poet, much more ancient than Catullus, Sappho of Lesbos (Lesbos is an island in the north-eastern Aegean). Another theory is that Sappho proper, who also wrote of the beauty of women and her passion for them is the one Catullus is referencing because she was an inspiration to him – if you have ever wondered where the word ‘lesbian’ came from, now you have an answer. A third theory is that the woman was named Lesbia because in Ancient Greek women from Lesbos (Lesbians) were renowned for their fellatio skills. Any theory is as good as the next for, in the end, we just don’t know.

As for me, I think Lesbia was Claudia Metelli Celeris, and her name was encoded to avoid the public finding out about their encounters; Cicero seems to me to make some good points in regards to who Lesbia was in one of his speeches.

So vivamus atque amemus, reader. Let us live and let us love. Let us long for and seek after love, for there is something Catullus said that affects us all. Whether one kiss or a ton, it is living and loving that makes us human the most.

Salvete!

Thinking on Moments, Reflections, and Days Lost

Tags

days, latin, Life, philosophy, Stoicism, tacitus, titus

In recognition of my extremely long post for yesterday, in Greek, I shall leave this one short and sweet. That means, of course, less than 1000 words… ok, so it won’t even be anywhere near that long.

Tacitus, arguably one of the best chroniclers and historians of Ancient Rome, took quite the pains to write, verbatim, some sayings of the Emperors. Perusing his writings, I found this by the Emperor Titus (b. 39- d.81):

Amici, diem perdidi.
Friends, I have lost the day.
Amigos, he perdido el día.

Titus, according to Tacitus, said this because whilst sitting down for dinner, he realized he had done no favors for anyone through the entire day. The historian was impressed, calling Titus’ words memorabilem illam meritoque laudatam, meritorious and praiseworthy, liable to be remembered. We always speak, and at length, of seizing the day. We dwell on how the Romans saw themselves as go-getter stoics, infallible in their logic, mighty with the sword, and who knows what else. I liked this particular quotation because, even to Tacitus, it showed a different side of the Romans and their Emperors. There sat Titus, at a table, eating dinner, hanging out with his family, friends, those most close to him (and a bunch of slaves, of course), and whoever else mattered to him. As he laughed and perhaps plotted, it occurred to him he had bestowed no favors (praestitisset) to anyone; he had presented nothing to another. He would have stopped laughing, joking, or conversing and, in the moment, when all had quieted, uttered the words. I am certain it was not long before the revelry ensued, but the impression remained.

So, reader, etiam unum diem possumus non perdere, we cannot lose even a single day. Let us seek those we love; those we care about. Let us find someone in need, a moment of pensive reflection. Let us hunt for sunsets and rainbows, waterfalls and dawns. After all, the nicest thing you can do in any given day can also be for yourself. Write that poem, that story, write that letter of love’s declaration, say you are sorry, hug someone you cared about once. Let us seize the day, so that none of them are lost to the passing of time and the unrighteous forgetting of memory.

Salvete!