Cyborg Frankenstein.

I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before

I put to my lips the hands of the man who killed my son.

I don't care if I've shared this painting five million times already, I am doing it again.

I'm smiling kicking my feet twirling my hair at this painting, alright. Pheidias is me when I give a presentation in art school. okay I will now go lie down and think about this depiction of Socrates and Alcibiades for 25 minutes because they make me insane.

thinking about that hector/andromache statue again 🥺 [insp/ref]

actaeon the hunter and king lycaon

Blessed with visions pt. 3

ClassicsTober Day 5: Chiron

Everyone you raised.

In The Odyssey, Odysseus is extraordinary for the flexibility with which he can inhabit many different names, or no name at all. It is this quality of being multinamed and nameless that enables him to survive. By contrast, almost all the warriors of The Iliad yearn to have a name and a story that lasts forever. Their many names and titles, as sons and brothers and comrades and fathers and rulers, are essential to their identities, their connections with one another, and their fame after death. They fear, above all, being humiliated (cursed with a negative name), or forgotten and nameless. The lists and catalogs of names are essential to the poem’s own work, of memorializing and mourning the dead. Once the bodies return to dust, these syllables are all that remain.

– Emily Wilson, Translator's note for The Iliad.

From The Odyssey Of Homer Engraved From The Compositions Of John Flaxman.

man of progress

Hey friend,

Just curious about some greek retellings you like? I tried to get through 'Clytemnestra' by constaza casti but even the first few chapters felt so anachronistic and out of character I returned the book.

i love till we have faces by c.s. lewis. not encouraging to me that no one** has come up with anything better in that vein (that is, "more or less straightforward retelling from an overlooked female character's perspective") since a white english man in the 50s.

**no one i've READ YET, i should say

but if you step away from the formula of narrative fiction, there's good stuff! denis o'hare and lisa peterson's "an iliad" and derek walcott's "the odyssey" are both interesting plays. of course, my beloved hadestown. alice oswald's poems "memorial" (drawn from the iliad) and "nobody" (drawing much more loosely on the odyssey) are [kisses fingers]. in louise glück's poetry collection meadowlands, she uses the odyssey throughout as a way of exploring marriage and parenthood; it's excellent. the lost books of the odyssey is a short story collection by zachary mason; like most short story collections, i found it very mixed, but it has a few stories i've returned to again and again.