SNAPSHOTS within Snapshots within snapshots ...

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Hour 1. The Homeric Iliad and the glory of the unseasonal hero

The meaning of KLEOS

Achilles has started to understand the consequences of his decision to reject the option of a safe nostos or ‘homecoming’.

He is in the process of deciding to choose the other option:

he will stay at Troy and continue to fight in the Trojan War.

Choosing this option will result in his death, and he is starting to understand that.

In the fullness of time, he will be ready to give up his life in exchange for getting a kleos, which is a poetic ‘glory’ described as lasting forever.

This kleos is the tale of Troy, the Iliad (the name of the poem, Iliad, means

‘TALE of Ilion’;

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What's interesting is how like the case with IE, THE ILIAD also has other STORIES within the MAIN story ...

and it also has a MAIN PLAYER (DERN) ...

and another more MINOR CHARACTER (LOST GIRL)...

Or what in his 24 HOUR BOOK the professor calls

MICRO and MACRO NARRATIVES.

http://kleos.chs.harvard.edu/?p=1275

1§16. To distinguish the story of the Iliad from such short stories that exist inside the story of the Iliad, I will as a rule refer to the Iliad as the Narrative, with an upper-case N, and to the stories inside the Iliad as narratives, with lower-case n.

Such narratives are micro-narratives in comparison to the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad. Also, I will as a rule use the word Narrator in referring to ‘Homer’, whom I have already described as a culture hero venerated by the ancient Greeks as the ultimate ‘singer’ of the Iliad and Odyssey.

1§17. In order to appreciate the poetic artistry that produced the micro-narrative that we have just read in Text B, we must consider the artistic device of compression in the traditional media of ancient Greek songmaking. This device of compression is to be contrasted with the device of expansion. Whereas expansion produces macro-narratives, such as the monumental composition of the Iliad itself, compression produces micro-narratives, such as the story-within-a-story that we are now considering

[6] In many ways, a “trailer” in today’s culture of film-making is produced by techniques of compression that resemble the techniques used in producing such micro-narratives in ancient Greek songmaking.

Why did he give up his life, a life of newlywed bliss, just to fight and die at Troy? The Narrator of the macro-Narrative gives the answer to this question:

this hero did it in order to get included in the kleos or epic ‘glory’ of the Greek song culture.

He was ‘seeking the kleos of the Achaeans’. This kleos is the macro-Narrative of the Iliad.

he is like the major hero Achilles, whose death is the core theme of the Iliad.

But this minor hero, Iphidamas, dies for just a “bit part.” By contrast, Achilles will die for the lead part.

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The immortalizing power of kleos as epic ‘glory’

1§21. So, why is the kleos of the Achaeans so important that you are ready to die for it - not only if you are Achilles, the best of the Achaeans, but even if you are not an Achaean, as in the case of our “bit player” Iphidamas?

The answer has to do with the immortalizing power of kleos as epic ‘glory’, which as we have seen is described as aphthiton, ‘imperishable’, in Iliad IX 413.

Achilles will chose the glory of epic song, which is a thing of art, over his own life, which is a thing of nature.

The thing of art is destined to last forever, while his own life, as a thing of nature, is destined for death.

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This part explains the difference between the way the GREEKS think about what's REAL or NOT REAL compared to the way we think:

1§22. In the culture represented by the heroes of the Iliad, the distinction between art and nature, between the artificial and the natural, is not the same as in our modern cultures. Their culture was a song culture, as I have described it earlier.

In our modern cultures, artificial implies “unreal” while natural implies “real.”

In a song culture, by contrast, the artificial can be just as real as the natural, since the words of an “artificial” song can be just as real as the words of “natural” speech in a real-life experience. In a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself.


1§24. Because we as users of the English language have a different cultural perspective on the words tale or story, which for us imply fiction and are therefore not expected to be “true,” I have also been using the more neutral word narrative in referring to the tale or story of the Iliad and other such tales or stories. [7]

1§25. As I have been arguing, the epic macro-Narrative of the Iliad is just as real to its heroes as their very own lives are real to them. For Achilles, the major hero of the Iliad, the song of kleos is just as real as his very own life is real to him. The infinite time of the artificial song, the kleos aphthiton or ‘imperishable glory’ at Iliad IX 413, is just as real to him as the finite time of his natural life.

The meaning of hōrā

1§26. The very idea of such a coexistence between infinite time and finite time brings me to the second key word for this hour. It is hōrā (plural hōrai), ‘season, seasonality, the right time, the perfect time’. This word hōrā stood for natural time in a natural life, in a natural life-cycle. The English word hour is derived from ancient Greek hōrā. Relevant are such expressions in English as The hour is near.

1§27. The goddess of hōrā (plural hōrai) was Hērā (the two forms hōrā and Hērā are linguistically related to each other). She was the goddess of seasons, in charge of making everything happen on time, happen in season, and happen in a timely way.

1§28. Related to these two words hōrā and Hērā is hērōs (singular) / hērōes (plural), meaning ‘hero’. As we will see, the precise moment when everything comes together for the hero is the moment of death.

The hero is ‘on time’ at the hōrā or ‘time’ of death. Before death and in fact during their whole lifetime, however, heroes are not on time: as we will see, they are unseasonal.

The need for heroes to “script” their own death

death must be a defining moment of reality for the hero, and it must not be feared but welcomed

HEY WATCH THIS MOVE

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This part mentions BLADE RUNNER (the reason xxpo signed up for the course), and says ROY also SCRIPTS his OWN DEATH (the same way as ACHILLES does in THE ILIAD and DERN seems to do in IE).

1§33. I see a point of comparison in modern popular culture. The example I have in mind comes from the film Bladerunner, directed by Ridley Scott (1982), based on the science fiction novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (1968). In particular, I have in mind the moment when Roy Blatty, an artificial human, “scripts” his own death, which is meant to be natural.

[[In “live” meetings, I show at this point a clip entitled “Like tears in rain. Time to die,” from Bladerunner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott. I draw attention here, for the first time, to a collection of film clips, with commentaries that accompany them. These film clips and commentaries can be found at chs.harvard.edu. I wrote these commentaries with the purpose of complementing some of the observations I make in The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours.]]

1§34. We now turn to a model for Achilles in the “scripting” of his own death. This model is a hero from an earlier age, who exemplifies the perfect timing of his own death. That hero is Hēraklēs, otherwise known by the Romanized version of his name, Hercules.

Hēraklēs as a model hero

Hēraklēs means ‘he who has the kleos of Hērā’.

1§36. In the Iliad, we find an embedded micro-narrative that tells the story of Hēraklēs as it relates to the story of Achilles in the macro-Narrative that is the Iliad.

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1§45.
The goddess of being on time makes sure that the hero should start off his lifespan by being not on time and that he should go through life by trying to catch up - and never quite managing to do so until the very end. Hēraklēs gets all caught up only at the final moment of his life, at the moment of death.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCfzl5Ae3cU

There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.
Empty chairs at empty tables,
Now my friends are dead and gone.

Here they talked of revolution.
Here it was they lit the flame.
Here they sang about tomorrow,
And tomorrow never came.

From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn.
And they rose with voices ringing.
I can hear them now.
The very words that they had sung
Became their last communion
On the lonely barricade at dawn.

Oh my friends, my friends forgive me
That I live and you are gone.
There's a grief that can't be spoken.
There's a pain goes on and on.

Phantom faces at the window,
Phantom shadows on the floor.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

Oh my friends, my friends, don't ask me
What your sacrifice was for.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will meet no more.

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HOUR 2

mnemonics.

It is in this connection that we confront the mentality of total recall.


2§11. The wording total recall is meant to convey a special mentality of remembering,

of putting things on record,

(LIKE ON TO AN AXXON N RECORD)

common in traditional societies.

In terms of this mentality,

to remember is to re-live an experience, including someone else’s experience,

including even the experiences of heroes in the remote past of the heroic age.

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This part gets back to the NARRATIVE STRUCTURE:

2§21. But what about a story-within-a-story,

that is, where a narrator narrates a micro-narrative within the macro-Narrative of the Iliad? In such a situation, the narrator of that micro-narrative has to reassure his listeners that he has total recall matching the total recall of the Narrator of the macro-Narrative, which is the Iliad.

2§22. When Phoenix says that he has total recall, totally recalling the epic action he narrates, his power of memory depends on the power of the omniscient Narrator who tells the framing story of the Iliad, and that power in turn depends on the power of the omniscient Muses themselves, who are given credit for controlling the master Narrative

2§23. In Text B, as we have seen, Phoenix refers to his tale as tōn prosthen … klea andrōn | hērōōn, ‘the glories [kleos plural] of men of an earlier time, who were heroes’ (IX 524-525). It is an epic tale about the hero Meleagros and his anger against his people, parallel to the framing epic tale about the hero Achilles and his anger against his own people, the Achaeans (as I noted in the Introduction to this book, these people are also known as the Argives or the Danaans). The telling of the tale by Phoenix is an activation of

epic within epic.


Phoenix here is narrating to listeners who live in that distant heroic past tense. And his

narrative-within-a-narrative

is about heroes who lived in an even more distant heroic past tense.

2§25. There are close parallels between the framing epic about the anger of Achilles and the framed epic about the anger of Meleagros. Just as the framed epic about Meleagros is a poetic recollection of the klea, ‘glories’, of heroes of the past, so too is the framing epic about Achilles

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narratives within the master Narrative of the Iliad contain markers for and about the listeners of the master Narrative. [18]

Axxon N., the longest running radio play in history

2
00:01:17,910 --> 00:01:21,664
tonight, continuing in the Baltic region.

3
00:01:21,664 --> 00:01:25,731
A gray winter day in an old hotel.

I am going to find out one day.

5
00:05:01,679 --> 00:05:04,077
When will you tell him?

6
00:05:08,769 --> 00:05:12,419
Who could have known??

7
00:05:17,528 --> 00:05:20,135
What time is it

8
00:05:35,046 --> 00:05:38,174
I have a secret.

9
00:05:45,265 --> 00:05:49,748
There have been no calls today.

10
00:06:06,119 --> 00:06:09,768
I hear someone.

11
00:06:19,570 --> 00:06:23,740
I do not think it will be much longer now.

May l help you?

13
00:10:01,983 --> 00:10:04,485
I am a new neighbor.

14
00:10:04,589 --> 00:10:08,239
I live just down the street.

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“Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them … if you want to. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

2§9. The word “history” here refers simply to keeping a record. For the moment, I highlight the idea of keeping a record.

We have an interesting way of using the word “record” these days - in an era when new technologies have replaced the old vinyl “records.”

Some of us still speak of “records” even though vinyl imprints hardly exist anymore. I suspect we speak this way because the idea of memory is embedded in the word “records.”

2§10. Let us pursue further the concept of keeping a record, recording, putting on record. In the earliest phases of ancient Greek song culture, the process of keeping a record of things that must be remembered, of putting things on the record,

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2§58. In the case of the emotions that we know as sadness and love, I can offer some analogies in contemporary popular media:

[[In “live” meetings, I show at this point two clips, both from Bladerunner.

The first is entitled “Implants, just implants,”

and the second is “You play beautifully,” from Bladerunner.

chs.harvard.edu]]

In the film Bladerunner, which I cited already in Hour 1§33, there are two scenes that illustrate the idea that the musical recalling of a memory is the “same thing” as the reliving of an experience, with all its emotions.

If you “recall” someone else’s experience by way of song or music, then that experience and all its emotions become your own, even if they had not been originally yours.

http://vimeo.com/14336846

And she “recalls” someone else’s experience ...

then that experience and all its emotions become her own ...

even when they had not been originally hers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1rrcOrXt80

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4N48d9eLsI

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the musical recalling of a memory is the “same thing” as the reliving of an experience, with all its emotions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1rrcOrXt80

Contrasting the artificial and the natural

4§34.

In ancient Greek song culture, as I noted in Hour 1, the distinction between art and nature, between the artificial and the natural, is not the same as in our modern cultures. When we say that something is artificial, we imply that this something is “unreal,” while natural means “real.”

In a song culture, by contrast, the artificial can be just as real as the natural, since the words of an “artificial” song can be just as real as the words of “natural” speech in a real-life experience.
In a song culture, the song can be just as real as life itself.

And the ‘I’ who is speaking is also a she. She is the lead singer who sings the song, and she is ‘Sappho’.

This woman who speaks in the first person here is vicariously speaking for the whole group that is notionally participating in the ritual of the wedding. Such a female lead singer is a prima donna, to borrow an Italian term used in the world of opera.

And this lead singer, this female speaker, experiences an attraction to both the bridegroom and the bride. Or, we might say, she experiences an attraction to the attraction between the two. The attraction is both esthetic and erotic. It is a totalizing attraction, creating feelings of total connectedness. And this totalizing connectedness activates all the senses of the speaker, who experiences an “erotic meltdown.”

To translate phainom’ emautāi at line 16 on such a deeper level proves to be difficult:

‘I am manifested to myself in an epiphany’.

5§43. The wording in line 16 of Song 31 of Sappho, however we translate it, expresses the idea that the speaker is personally experiencing an epiphany.

QUOTE from back at the beginning of this thread regarding the 24 HOUR BOOK:

are you then in your right mind, or outside yourself?


Does your mind [psūkhē], possessed by the god [enthousiazein], suppose that you are in the midst of the actions you describe

7g§3. As we are about to view these two pictures once again, this time back-to-back, I recall the formulation of Emily Vermeule concerning the “window effect” created by the picture frame in both pictures.

She had made her original formulation with reference to Image B1 only, but it applies to Image A1 as well. I repeat here how she said it:

“The technique gives the impression that the myth is circling around in another world,

outside the window frame through which the spectator views it,

in endless motion which is somehow always arrested at the same place whenever we return to the window.”


7g§4. I have this question to ask the viewer before the viewing begins again:

as you are looking through the window, are you looking in from the outside or are you looking out from the inside?

My own answer is that

the viewer is on the inside looking out and
seeing a panorama of a heroic world out there,

which is a world so immense that it will never ever be fully visible in the interiority of one’s own small world of everyday experience .

painting is silent poetry, but poetry is talking pictures. [14]

Of course the concept of “talking pictures” is most familiar to us from that moment in the history of filmmaking when the “audio” of recorded speech gets to be finally integrated with the “video” of film.

So, we may say that Simonides anticipated such a concept, even though the required technology was invented only two and a half millennia later.

7§12. But the sēma in ancient Greek song culture works not only as video embedded in audio. It can work also as video pure and simple, in the form of images produced by way of visual

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The problem is sometimes the things someone says one CAN'T FOLLOW AT ALL ...

like the case with DROPKICK ...

and then they get FRUSTRATED because they think the problem is someone hasn't READ what they've said ...

when one has READ IT but just can't comprehend it ...

because what they read MAKES NO SENSE (to them).

So the person who wrote it blames the CONFUSED PERSON ... instead of blaming themselves ... for saying things one can't understand.

SO it isn't a matter of NOT being in AGREEMENT with them.

IT's a MATTER of NOT UNDERSTANDING what they've said enough to either AGREE or DISARGEE with it.

No. I believe Jack Rabbit and mr K. could be the same or that Mr K. works for Jack Rabbit. It could be that Jack Rabbit indeed morphed into Janek. Could this imply that mr. K works for Janek and that it is Janek on the phone to whom he is talking?

WOMAN in WHITE

Maybe it could also be the OTHER DETECTIVE who is with DORIS SIDE sitting there with the SCREW DRIVER STUCK in her SIDE and telling him how she's been HYPNOTIZED ???

Maybe it could also be the OTHER DETECTIVE who is with DORIS SIDE sitting there with the SCREW DRIVER STUCK in her SIDE and telling him how she's been HYPNOTIZED ???

This could also mean one ST. PETER would be calling another one???

It's OFFICIAL ...

TWIN PEAKS is COMING BACK in 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNHsA4WIFvc

to SHOWTIME.



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So maybe we'll also learn more about BOB from TP and if this other PHANTOM from IE and BOB are connected somehow???

Or maybe they could also be the SAME ENTITY???

Or at least be from the same LODGE???

Otherwise WHY use the same RED CURTAINS and same ZIG ZAGGY FLOOR PATTERN in IE???


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