…le plus beau, le plus pur des miroirs.
…the most beautiful, the purest of mirrors.
…el más bonito, el más puro de espejos.
(Simone Weil: L’Iliade ou le poème de la force)
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The Iliad (La Ilíada)
Category: Books & Literature
Aristotle on Homer
Quote of the Week:
Homer, for example, makes men better than they are; Cleophon as they are; Hegemon the Thasian, the inventor of parodies, and Nicochares, the author of the Deiliad, worse than they are.
As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation so he too first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. His Margites bears the same relation to comedy that the Iliad and Odyssey do to tragedy.
So in this respect, too, compared with all other poets Homer may seem, as we have already said, divinely inspired, in that even with the Trojan war, which has a beginning and an end, he did not endeavour to dramatise it as a whole, since it would have been either too long to be taken in all at once or, if he had moderated the length, he would have complicated it by the variety of incident. As it is, he takes one part of the story only and uses many incidents from other parts, such as the Catalogue of Ships and other incidents with which he diversifies his poetry.
In composing the Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of Odysseus- such as his wound on Parnassus, or his feigned madness at the mustering of the host- incidents between which there was no necessary or probable connection: but he made theOdyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to centre round an action that in our sense of the word is one.
(Aristotle: Poetics)
You might also like: ⇒ The Poetics of Aristotle Image credit: Tilemahox Efthimiadis via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]
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Wait Until the Author Is Dead (Esperar hasta que el autor está muerto)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
As for collecting essays as occasional and disparate as my own, one should really wait until the author is either dead or at least in advanced old age.
(Italo Calvino: Letter to Niccolò Gallo, 27 September 1961)
Para recoger ensayos dispersos e inorgánicos como los míos hay que esperar a la propia muerte o por lo menos a la vejez avanzada.
(Italo Calvino: Carta a Niccolò Gallo, 27 septiembre 1961)
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Gloss upon the Odyssey
Quote of the Week:
Everything in this book may well seem both to lovers of poetry and to classical scholars an unnecessary gloss upon the Odyssey. In one sense it is, for it is clearly unnecessary to attempt to trace the voyage of Ulysses when millions of people, for thousands of years, have been quite happy to read the Odyssey as if it was only a fable…
I do not think that anything is lost by attempting to find a skeleton – however magnificent the cupboard that hides it. I have seen coral formations disguising the old bones of ships, but I did not feel less amazed by the beauty of the coral just because I had found the timbers and iron frames which the polyps had disguised and decorated.
(Ernle Bradford: Introduction to Ulysses Found)
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Quote of the Week: Aladdin’s Cave
The serendipity of chance discoveries that bookshops can bring – and the love of the tangible book – are irreplaceable. A bookshop is Aladdin’s cave of chance encounters.
Roger Crowley
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An Idle Woman in Sicily
Quote of the Week:
Ulysses and his fleet, Aeneas, Empedocles, the Giant Enceladus – ah! who can paint it? I hate my pen for being so incapable.
(Frances Elliot: Diary of an Idle Woman in Sicily)
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Why Read the Classics?
In 1981, the Italian writer Italo Calvino wrote an essay titled Why Read the Classics?. It’s less than ten entertaining pages, so I recommend you read it if you can lay your hands on it. (It’s been published in a book form, in a collection of his essays, bearing the same title.)
What follows here is the 14 definitions of what classics are as put forward in the essay – 14 definitions worth thinking about:
Continue reading “Why Read the Classics?”
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Por qué no deberías leer Shakespeare (Why You Shouldn’t Read Shakespeare)
Hace mucho tiempo el escritor argentino, Jorge Luis Borges estaba enseñando literatura inglesa en la universidad de Buenos Aires. Un día dijo a sus estudiantes:
A long time ago the Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges taught English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. One day he said to his students:
La cita de la semana / Quote of the Week:
Si Shakespeare les interesa, está bien. Si les resulta tedioso, déjenlo. Shakespeare no ha escrito aún para ustedes. Llegará un día que Shakespeare será digno de ustedes y ustedes serán dignos de Shakespeare, pero mientras tanto no hay que apresurar las cosas.”
(Jorge Luis Borges: Curso de literatura inglesa en la universidad de Buenos Aires)
If Shakespeare interests you, that’s fine. If you find him tedious, leave him. Shakespeare hasn’t yet written for you. The day will come when Shakespeare will be right for you and you will be worthy of Shakespeare, but in the meantime there’s no need to hurry things.
(Profesor Borges: A Course on English Literature)
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Van Gogh in the Bookshop (Van Gogh en la librería)
Quote of the Week / La cita de la semana:
So often, in the past as well, a visit to a bookshop has cheered me up and reminded me that there are good things in the world.
Vincent Van Gogh: Letter to Theo Van Gogh, 30 October 1877
A menudo, en el pasado también, una visita a la librería me ha animado y me ha recordado que haya cosas buenas en el mundo.
Vincent Van Gogh: Carta a Theo Van Gogh, 30 de octubre de 1877
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Quote of the Week: Communion
It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.
Yoshida Kenko: A Cup of Sake Beneath the Cherry Trees
(Essays in Idleness)
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The Wine-Dark Sea
Quote of the Week:
[Image public domain via Pixabay]
It was evening when we made our way back to the cove. The sun was setting fire to the headlands west of us, and the sea had become absolutely still. Not even a cat’s-paw trailed across the purple water. The sea was truly like wine to look at. The professors who had decried Homer’s adjective and invented other meanings for it, had never been sailors.
(Ernle Bradford: The Wind Off the Island)
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Palabra mágica (Magic Word)
In September 1931, the poet Federico García Lorca made a speech on occasion of the inauguration of the public library in his hometown, Fuente Vaqueros in Granada.
La cita de la semana / Quote of the Week
¡Libros! ¡Libros! He aquí una palabra mágica que equivale a decir amor, amor, y que debían los pueblos pedir como piden pan o como anhelan la lluvia para sus sementeras.
(Federico García Lorca: Medio pan y un libro)
Books! Books! Here is a magic word that is equivalent to saying love, love, and what people should ask for like they ask for bread or yearn for rain for their crops.
(Federico García Lorca; Half a Bread and a Book)
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Quote of the Week: There’s Always Room for a Book
(1817-1862)
There is always room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the first.
(Henry David Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers)
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Last Lines (Últimas líneas)
Some books have unforgettable First Lines – others have unbeatable endings… (And some have both, with some pretty impressive stuff in between.)
Unos libros tienen inolvidables primeras líneas – otros tienen insuperables finales… (Y algunos tienen los dos, con algo muy impresionante en medio.)
Continue reading “Last Lines (Últimas líneas)”
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First Lines (Primeras líneas)
Some books have unforgettable first lines…
Unos libros tienen inolvidables primeras líneas…
Continue reading “First Lines (Primeras líneas)”
