Presentations

The presentations have been great so far. I think that it is interesting that even though we have all read the same material, everyone has found something different to discuss and explore. There are so many opportunities to find profound conclusions from the literature that we have read.

Class Discussion

"The final belief is to believe in a fiction you know to be a fiction."



This quote seems to have extensive implications. It says that the only truth that exists is the one that each individual sees. It says that perceptions are all that matter--there is nothing else. There is no one way in which to see the world, in which to experience the world. The only "good" and "bad" that exist in the world are the ones that are determined by each individual. It seems to say that "the world does not control me, I control the world." Reality is not something that stands alone, but something that is invented constantly by each individual.

This statement continues with the adage that the most knowledgeable thing someone could say is to admit that they know nothing. Just as Socrates jokes in the Symposium. It seems that knowledge is everything and nothing at the same time. The world is a paradox that cannot be solved. This dichotomy seems to be at the heart of reality.



This quote can also be used to discuss beauty. There was some questions raised about how something like Ovid's Metamorphoses can be considered beautiful when it is comprised of violence and horror. Using the quote is could be argued that beauty and ugliness are not two separate entities. The world is too entangled with both beauty and ugliness to rationally be called by either name. It takes a fiction to see the true beauty. This fiction is, of course, recognized as a fiction, for this is much ugliness in the world. Yet, with this fiction, a person may now call the world beautiful and be able to believe it. Maybe truth is not all that we are searching for. Maybe truth is fiction. Maybe the only way to see complete beauty, even in the presence of morbid ugliness, is to pretend that it is there and believe in it with all your heart.

Cupid and Psyche

Cupid and Psyche is a story about love, mystery, and consequence. This story has great influence in literature throughout the ages. Milton speaks of the story in one of his poems:

"Celestial Cupid, her famed son, advanced,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet entranced,
After her wandering labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal bride;
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn."



And then Milton carries on the tradition of influence by inspiring many artists later on.











His work has influenced many, including Keats and Mary Shelly.

This is another example of how the past lives in the present. Artists, writers are always finding inspiration in the works of the past and then they transport that inspiration into their own art. It seems that there is a continuous flow of creative energy from modern day that travels back to the stories of the Greeks. It seems that in artwork--and maybe everything--that there is not a distinct past and present, but one source of inspiration and creativity that is always present in every work of art.

5 Lines

For class we chose five lines to present from Ovid's Metamorphoses. I chose lines on p. 374. My lines say:
"No one could catch him; keen to kill himself, he raced up to Parnassus' peak--and leaped down from a cliff. Apollo, pitying my brother, made of him a bird with wings that sprouted suddenly"



transforms to



These five lines seemed to condense the theme of the Metamorphoses. In this short passage, there is a physical metamorphosis--a human is changed into a bird. But there is also another central theme that appears in the book and in these lines. Beside the physical change there is also another change. A suicidal man is now a bird that has the freedom of the sky. At the beginning there is misery and distress, yet, now, there is change and things may or may not be better, they are just different. I think that Ovid shows this a lot. There is not clear good and bad in all of the stories. There is change. Ovid seems to say that the black-and-white of "good" and "bad" may not actually be very prominent in day-to-day life. What is always present is change. Good changes to bad, bad changes to good, the only constant is change.

5 lines from Ovid

The professor pointed out five lines from the story of Jove and Europa

"Europa is now terrified; she clasps one horn with her right hand; meanwhile the left rests on the bull's great coup. She turns to glance back at the shore, so distant now. Her robes are fluttering--they swell in the sea breeze."



These lines represent the loss of innocence, the loss of precious past. Europa is being carried away. She is no longer in control of what is happening to her. She is no longer able to control her life. We talked about how this horrible event transformed Europa into a status of immortality. She had to go through something terrible, yet we will now never forget her and her story. It seems there is a price for immortality. The question is the raised: "How much is immortality worth?"

These images of the sea and a woman bring to mind the poem by Wallace Stevens.

The Idea of Order at Key West
by Wallace Stevens

Here is the first stanza, which is filled with beautiful words and beautiful imagery.

"She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean."


This poem has similar imagery to the story of Europa.

George Bernard Shaw

"The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time."

George Bernard Shaw

Shaw's words echo the message of this class. With this view, not only does the past possess the present, but it seems to go a little further and say that there is only one present that is forever and unceasing. With this view, there is no tangible difference between the past and the present--there is simply a present that is occupied by echoes of the past.



Shaw also wrote a play, Pygmalion, that was eventually turned into a movie, which Shaw was awarded an Oscar for. The play is, or course, about Pygmalion from Ovid's tale. Pygmalion was the character that crafted a statue so beautiful that he actually fell in love with it. He is so infatuated with the statue that he prays to Venus and she feels pity and turns the statue into a real woman.



This is an artistic interpretation of Pygmalion and his statue that has now become a real woman. This was painted by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Symposium

The term "symposium" is a term that originally had to do with a drinking party that often included rigorous discussion. The Greek verb sympotein means "to drink together." Today, the term usually refers to an academic discussion, the presence of alcohol is now optional.

Here is a picture of an ancient symposium:


While a present-day symposium would look something like this:


Even though the look of the event has changed it has the same purpose. A symposium focuses on sharing ones views and also to experience the different knowledge that others can offer.