“Metamorphoses” (The Giants’ War, III) – Ovid
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Tag: Prometheus
April 8, 2020
“Metamorphoses” – Ovid, 105
“The Creation” (1935)
Aaron Douglas
________
it should be noted that this exemplary
translation of Metamorphoses was
done by a clutch of eminent poets,
John Dryden principally, England’s
first Poet Laureate, 1688, but with
the help of, notably, Joseph Addison,
Alexander Pope, and William
Congreve, among a number of
celebrated others, under the
direction of the poet and physician,
Samuel Garth, in no later than 1717,
over 300 hundred years ago
this will explain the sometimes
disorienting spelling of some
otherwise common words, you’ve
read already, for instance, “extreams”
for “extremes”, “watry” for “watery”,
“blustring” for “blustering”
it might also be that my own reading
of the text could be influenced by
idiosyncratic interpretations given
by the above poets, who would’ve
written according to the perspectives
of their own time, the 18th Century,
somewhat altering, most likely, the
pristine intentions of Ovid’s original
as I myself, however philologically
scrupulously – mea culpa, mea
culpa, mea maxima culpa, I must
contritely confess – can, can
be forewarned
but onwards to the completion of
the Creation
High o’er the clouds, and empty realms of wind,
The God a clearer space for Heav’n design’d;
Where fields of light, and liquid aether flow;
a description of Heaven, “fields of light and
liquid aether”
Purg’d from the pondrous dregs of Earth below.
“the pondrous dregs of Earth”, our dwelling
Scarce had the Pow’r distinguish’d these, when streight
The stars, no longer overlaid with weight,
Exert their heads, from underneath the mass;
And upward shoot, and kindle as they pass,
“the Pow’r”, or “the God, whatever God was he”,
earlier noted
while gravitation again allows the “fields of light”,
newly “distinguished”, or separated, from the
“pondrous dregs of Earth“, to “streight…upward
shoot, and kindle”, or sparkle, like firewood, or
nebulae, aurorae, very constellations
And with diffusive light adorn their heav’nly place.
diffusive, evanescent, aetherial, nearly
transcendental
Then, every void of Nature to supply,
With forms of Gods he fills the vacant sky:
New herds of beasts he sends, the plains to share:
New colonies of birds, to people air:
And to their oozy beds, the finny fish repair.
note that all life forms are “forms of Gods”,
and “birds”, anthropomorphically, no less
than “people air”
A creature of a more exalted kind
Was wanting yet, and then was Man design’d:
the design follows
Conscious of thought, of more capacious breast,
For empire form’d, and fit to rule the rest:
though the specific initial progenitor will remain
ever the secret of that Creator
Whether with particles of heav’nly fire
The God of Nature did his soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the sky
was it “heav’nly fire” or “Earth”, which malleable
And, pliant, still retain’d th’ aetherial energy:
we are, in other words, quintessentially,
however muddied, starlight
Which wise Prometheus temper’d into paste,
And, mixt with living streams, the godlike image cast.
Prometheus is the Titan who fashioned
us of clay, and gifted us with fire despite
the opposition of the Gods, for which he
was cruelly punished, but that’s another
story
Thus, while the mute creation downward bend
Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend,
mute creation, species who have no
language, animals, lizards, insects
Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes
Beholds his own hereditary skies.
hereditary, received from the Creator,
the primordial ancestor, generator
From such rude principles our form began;
And earth was metamorphos’d into Man.
R ! chard
February 11, 2017
“Is Art Truth?”
“Paradise”
__________
“Is Art Truth?“, a friend asks after speaking of
its benefits, “Art accepts and tells the truth-Is
that it ?“, she inquires, wonders
art, like truth itself and beauty, is in the eye
of the beholder, I submit, and therefore my
definition is, once again, entirely personal,
though I’ve rigorously plumbed it
it requires background
art died for a thousand years, it was
essentially unrecorded, dormant from
the fall of Rome to the Renaissance, nor
promoted but for Catholic purposes,
hence the majestic cathedrals and the
magisterial altarpieces, works produced
by, however, communities until eventually
certain artisans were recognized as more
inspired than others, and given autonomy
enter Duccio, for instance
in time these new, necessarily idiosyncratic
perspectives – see Hieronymus Bosch, Dante
Alighieri – dominated, veering in their search
for truth in their art and beauty – selling points,
incidentally – towards less strictly orthodox
utterances
see above
art, and its contemporary science, were
chipping away at ecclesiastical dogma
till God died, and artists continued their
prescient march forward, shaping our
zeitgeist, our spirit of the times, with
their pronouncements for lack of any
other guides
but the voices grew personal, see Mozart,
often profound and prophetic, see
Beethoven, till the confluence of disparate
realities gave us secularism, each soul for
itself as a tenet, a credo, a belief, a truth
what did they have in common
I believe it was their quest for beauty
through truth, their quest for truth
through beauty, with a nod here to
the salient Keats
art is prayer, a search for, as well as a
manifestation of, one’s personal
identification with the sacred
it is not truth, it is not beauty, it is the
fervent intention itself, linked with a
correspondent workmanship, craft,
which inspires
see for instance van Gogh for this, who,
remember, nevertheless shot himself,
artists are mortal, merely, messengers,
ever, therefore, fallible, unsure, fearful
even, often, of their, perhaps
Promethean, fire
for consolation, or even maybe
transcendence, see again,
pertinently here, Beethoven
Richard
psst: thanks, Joan
April 13, 2013
Beethoven piano sonata no 28 in A major, opus 101
___
Beethoven’s piano sonata no 28, opus 101,
in A major, is the first of what is considered
to be his late piano sonatas, as opposed to
early and middle, three entirely distinct
periods that are easily recognizable upon
closer listening, the early ones are bold,
even headstrong, with Beethoven’s ever
characteristic vigor and Promethean authority,
the length themselves of his early works are
a testament to his sense of his own great
personal validity, the first four, to my mind,
go on much longer than often enough they
should, a typically youthful presumption on
his part, and are musically at best trite, I find,
after their first expositions, the repeats come
as redundant, and tolerable merely, surprises,
even the famous 8th, the “Pathétique“, opus 13,
is, I think, too brash and impudent, however in
this manner, nevertheless admittedly, entirely
effective, listen
the “Pastorale“, of the middle period, opus 28,
no 15, is where I deem the music to become
henceforward sublime, it has a settled
confidence that brims with not only technical
wizardry but with also positively enchanting
and entrancing musical ideas, bursting like
very flowers in springtime, with colour and
inspired, effervescent, imagination
the late period is where Beethoven becomes,
however, a sage, a prophet, and indeed a
hierarch in the new secular order of a
reconstituted Heaven, after all, someone
had to take the place of the now discredited
angels, Nietzsche called them Übermenschen,
Supermen
the 28th sonata starts out slowly, or rather,
more slowly than the earlier forthright ones,
already a sign of less physical, more
measured and considered reponses, my
impression here is of a grandfather visiting
his granchildren, jovial but not too disportive,
merely jaunty, always cheery but for a moment
of haunting melancholy, at the adagio, before
becoming congenial and avuncular again,
with then a big, boastful ending, snapping
staunchly his patriarchal suspenders,
getting the last, and traditional, word, with
a firm, which is to say, a foursquare-major-
chord, finish, the aural equivalent of turning
out the lights
musically, however, the progressions are
exploratory, incremental, more and more
layered with possible, and often apparently
rejected outcomes, in order to try out
something more fitting, maybe, more
accurate, a deconstruction, in other words,
of musical ideas, an investigation, in search
of a viable musically cohesive path
in the 28th sonata Beethoven, I think, is
doodling, however, coming up with the
methods of his great addresses, the
language here is not yet philosophically
precise, a smattering merely of pianistically
plausible ideas, musical sketches, the first
stirrings here, you’ll gather, of formal jazz
in the next sonata, the 29th, the still
unsurpassed “Hammerklavier”, he writes
the definitive book, speaking for music in
the forthcoming history of the world, and
determining its future path, we are still
moving along on his transcendent carpet,
no one ‘s come along still to give us a
more assured ride, kind of like Homer,
some would say Shakespeare, others
Albert Einstein, other, incidentally,
post-Christian, post Revolutionary
Supermen
who do you presently pray to, who are
your angels, who your Superwomen,
-men, towards what do you aspire,
towards whom
Superwomen, -men, incidentally,
cultivate their own efflorescence,
manifest their own, I think, destinies,
or, if you like, their own Heaven
much as I believe angels also do
Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor on the
same program shows him in a nearly
Beethovenian mode atavistically, much
more somber than he usually is, but he’s
nevertheless easily distinguished by
his much less intricate musical
accompaniment and his much more
rigorous melodic line, you’re more
likely to hum it
Mozart also composes from the nursery,
I find, the exhilaration of playful discovery,
you can see the toy soldiers, the golden
tresses on little milkmaids in dirndls with
red circles for cheeks
Mozart’s pieces are like nursery rhymes
Beethoven progresses to literature
before you judge me too harsh on Mozart,
by the way, consider that my favourite
piece of the two in this program is the
Mozart, it’s like comparing apples and
oranges, though, it depends on your
mood that day which you’ll favour
cheers
Richard
psst: just in case you missed it, this version
of the “Pathétique“ is the best I’ve ever
heard, indeed, of all the pieces here
the most extraordinary, don’t miss it
March 27, 2013
Nemo – “Ennead I” by Plotinus (16)
____________
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:47:05 +0000
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
To: Richibi’s Weblog
From: comment-reply@wordpress.com
Subject: [New comment] “Ennead I” by Plotinus
Richard,
As I said at the very beginning, you are “sensitive”, and I was right, because you rightly perceived that I was becoming impatient. My apologies. Patience is not my forte. 🙂 However, you have not “touched a nerve”, as this is by no means an emotional discussion from my pov. I have no intention to “vehemently reject” your position (after all it is yours not mine), but only to share my perspective, including what I perceive to be irrational arguments.
Here are the two statements you made;
” I, and the “demented” Nietzsche, incidentally, equally fervently mistrust, even deem fundamentally impossible”,
“I do not profess to “know what Nietzsche believes or “fervently mistrust[s]‘”.
Is that not a self-contradiction?
You say that you’re making an interpretation. But, what is knowledge but an interpretation? A translation from the concrete and the objective to the abstract and subjective, just as we translate a work of literature from one language to another? By interpreting Nietzsche to yourself, you gain a rational understanding of him, and by interpreting him to others, you share that understanding.
I think an important distinction should be made between a) the belief in the existence of Absolute Truth” and b) the belief of one’s monopoly of the Absolute Truth. You seem to be passionately rejecting b), which is quite understandable. But Platonism is not b) but a). It does not claim monopoly of the Absolute Truth, but instead, Plato and Socrates both exhort their listeners to pursue Beauty, Goodness and Truth, to pursue virtue, to be the lover of wisdom, which is the literal meaning of “philosophy”,
According to Einstein, this pursuit of the Absolute Truth is also the guiding principle of the scientists. Without this passionate pursuit of the truth, we would never discover that the earth is not flat. Now think about this: Can you still insist that it is uncertain whether or not the earth is flat, that it is impossible to have a rational understanding of the shape of the earth?
You argue that uncertainty makes people less likely to kill. But most people who kill are not driven by belief in the Absolute, but by their lust for pleasure, wealth and power. Some may kill in the name of Truth as a disguise for their ulterior motives, but it would be unfair and irrational to blame the Truth for their acts.
I’ll refrain from discussing the Catholic Church, partly because to me this discussion is about Platonism, and Christianity is not Platonism (though they share many similar aspects), and partly because I’m not associated with the Catholic Church and frankly don’t know enough about it to say anything useful
first of all let me raise a glass to our conversation,
a toast that it might live long
and thank you for your continued respectful and
penetrating participation, I will endeavour to as
assiduously hold up
that said, we get into, as I see it, the question
posed by Wittgenstein, an obstacle of the
most impenetrable sort, the egregious
unreliability of language, what do you mean
when you say something, and how does that
synch with the other guy’s interpretation of it,
or, indeed, girl’s
your meat could be my poison, my Plato,
your Proust
indeed which one of us is right about this,
is Plato a saint or a sinner, a boon or a
blight
though Proust, of course, would remain
unquestionably and irreversibly here,
ever, surely, for both of us, a benefactor
of positively Promethean, natch,
proportions
what has become here then of the
Absolute, gone up in a whiff of, just
as insubstantial, smoke, the exhalations,
note, of a fully material mens sana,
sound mind, which can be nothing
without the enveloping corpore sano,
sound body
should there, in the instance, however,
be a One, an Absolute, we would not, nor
can anyway ever, from our intrinsically
divergent perspectives, be able to, in
any meaningful way, know It
more practically and topically, when
my mother had her living room walls
painted, my blue was her green, or vice
versa, in either case adamantly, trying
both of us to eke out from each other
concessions to a position, undyingly,
each, though ever politely, both, held,
a model accommodation, which is to say,
without the often attendant bombs
we remained puzzled, however, each,
ever, by insidious, and inescapable,
doubt, who saw the right colour
there is a technical solution to my mother’s
wall, I know, but only after great psychological
adjustment, even torment, will the blue think
his or her visual impression another colour
and who is mistaken
or can some people be ever right,
and ever wrong
this, incidentally, is the central problem
of philosophy, not just our own central
topic
and its resolution the central problem
of politics
in this instance when her cataracts were
removed, her blue became green, or vice
versa, I’d have to be in her apartment, I
can’t remember which colour, right now,
it was I saw, another philosophical
conundrum, but surely, you get the
picture, interpretation is highly
subjective, and porous
which is why Science requires absolutely
unanimous approval, if you’ll forgive this
metaphorical only use of that prickly
adverb here, to determine Its still
fundamentally ever tenuous theories
we’ve even only recently deconstructed
even time,
or Time
now there’s a God for you, Giver of context
however, even there, It would appear arbitrary,
there may be another Reality beyond our
particular three-dimensional Plato’s cave
but I digress
my misuse of the word “know” in citing
my apparently contradictory statements,
is at fault, I can never know, I can only
interpret, with custom we have come to
accept our suppositions as fact, and hope
that everyone else will do the same, which
we mostly do, except when we have wars
because of some intractable position,
where someone has set a price on his, her
incontrovertible, but still fundamentally
arbitrary, opinion, even of ownership,
family structure, interpersonal affairs,
like this one
but we are talking with only air, no
concrete certainty
I believe Nietzsche, in other words, to
have thought my thoughts, or I, rather,
to have incorporated his, but that is only
my understanding of it, which surely I
propound, though I might quite possibly
be wrong, but, Nemo, I can’t remember
the last time I was, I could check, I keep
a tally
scientists, I believe, are indeed seeking
always to know, perfecting their idea of
Reality, but Truth can only be the sum
of all things we think It is, nothing else,
nothing more, after all what other entity
that we know knows anything at all
about It, about Truth
we can only think there is a Real out
there, and make the best of It, the rest
is, Shakespeare again,
“…………………………………. such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.”
lines 156 -158
cheers ever
Richard
February 18, 2013
Paganini’s 24 “Caprices”
having heard one “Caprice“ of Paganini it’s not
much of a stretch to want to hear them all, and
to my delight and utter astonishment they are
available presently on the Internet in a
presentation so extraordinary it seems
accorded by the very gods, the violinist, an
unchastened Prometheus this one, Alexander
Markov, delivers unadulterated fire, he is, it is,
astounding, nothing short of outright Olympian
the “Caprices” are for Paganini what the
each was exploring the intricacies of his own
particular instrument, which results to date
remain the standard, the Everest to be
conquered, of either by any aspirant
how do you keep your knees from knocking,
first of all, up there, in those headlights, I
would wonder of the performing artist, the
rest being of course, I’m aware, pure but
metaphysical merely physics, moderately
only incomprehensible
pieces, making them electric but for a picayune
quibble, being of Russian extraction he is not
the Paganini I would want him to be, sensuous
and seductive instead of the more Nordic
commanding and fiery, the Mediterranean
Paganini was famously, after all, a Lothario,
a Casanova, with an especially lubricious,
apparently, fiddle
Paganini, incidentally, wrote the “Caprices“
between 1805 and 1809, smack in the middle
of the Romantic Period, you can hear the altered
audience in the distant concert hall, surely not
the aristocrats who would’ve found this music
presumptuous, impudent, in their privileged
salons, but throngs of the newly franchised –
note the French root in the word “franchised”,
probably stemming from the very French
Revolution – who were looking towards their
bold and liberated future
the music is strictly rhythmic, which is to say,
still Classical, keys don’t change within the
individual pieces, the harmonies are still
sufficiently tonal not to distract, though the
melodies are not simple to follow, the stage
is being set for more abstract stuff, Beethoven,
for instance, writing at the same time, being
much less eccentric, and again maybe less
Mediterranean in his own always nevertheless
beguiling flights of Romanticism
Richard
psst: the performance takes place at the
in, I believe, 1989, for your info
note, incidentally, the white tie and tails,
an aristocratic, which is to say, atavistic,
even then, notion
we will always, all of us, conspire to
seem noble
February 6, 2013
Beethoven: Sonata no. 21 in C major, op. 53 (Waldstein)
the “Waldstein” Sonata, no. 21 in C major, opus 53, is
one of the few compositions that Beethoven named
himself, which is to say that he dedicated it to a
friend and patron, Count Ferdinand Ernst Gabriel
von Waldstein, if you can call that naming it
the ones with descriptive titles, the “Moonlight”, the
“Pastorale“, “The Hunt“, for instance, were mostly so
labeled by his publisher for ease of identification in
the growing market place, a more affluent merchant
class eager to take on the refinements of the nobles,
see such an instance of social mobility, however
lampooned, updated and upended, in again the
engaging and not at all unperceptive “The Beverly
Hillbillies“
this means that the suggestive names we’ve come
to associate with his sonatas, “Moonlight”, “Pastorale“,
“The Hunt“, were never conceived as such by
Beethoven, his compositions were ever purely musical
inventions, or more accurately inspirations, prophetic
pronouncements of a much more oracular order,
like Prometheus Beethoven was delivering nothing
short of fire
to match music to specific visual, or even emotive,
cues, incidentally, “Pictures at an Exhibition“,
“The Carnival of the Animals“, for example, came
later, already a nod to Beethoven’s even indirect
propositions
that titles were given to music, rather than the more
clinical and mnemonically difficult numbers, which
is to say, not easy to remember, isn’t very different
from the evolution of popular music in the early
1960′s
the Beatles, you’ll remember, had cuts on albums
that had nothing more than their group name in
the titles, or the title of one of the album’s cuts,
“Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” came
along to change all that, we saw the birth of the
concept album, where the whole extended affair
becomes a musical metaphysics, this is no
different from the move from the music of Mozart
to that of the more expansive Beethoven, music
is no longer a ditty but an extended technical
and philosophical text, listen to Pink Floyd take
on this mantle superbly in the Seventies, the only
other body since ever to effectively challenge
Beethoven in that especially rarefied field, with
the probable exception of the sublimely expressive
Schubert perhaps, who died much too young for us
to tell, for him to have decisively dialectically proven
himself beside these erudite peers, all having,
however, found ways to have us touch beyond the
sky, the very infinite, and into the no less infinite
confines of our more private and secret selves
what they state is that creation itself, absent any
other meaning, remains potent, perhaps even
ultimately redemptive
creation as a bold and noble response to eternity,
art as affirmation
you’ll note here that the structure of this sonata
is entirely Classical, unity of tone, unity of pace,
and the eventual return of the initial melody,
essential Classical components, what has
changed is the personal bravura of the composer,
Beethoven is not playing for the aristocratic court,
but for a wider, an infinite, audience, he is
pronouncing his and, by extension, our own place
and validity in the universe, by our ability as humans
to create, to respond creatively, and even sublimely,
out of only our otherwise flailing and indeterminate
existence
it is the Romantic response to the waning belief
in God, and incidentally a profound spur to,
argument for, our present notion of inalienable
individual rights
the personal soul has taken over from the earlier
unchallenged deity, the wavering concept of God
has had a seismic fall, and all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men will never be able to put it
together undiminished again
Beethoven is showing us that future
Richard
psst: Helena Bonham Carter plays excerpts from the
“Waldstein“, incidentally, in “A Room with A View“,
a movie entirely worth a revisit
September 16, 2012
a Chopin Fantasia, opus 61
in this Chopin Fantasia, his “Polonaise-Fantaisie“
to be specific, opus 61, you’ll more easily notice
already the more abstract peregrinations of his
disciple, Debussy, and even the first stirrings of
improvisation incidentally, which is to say the
free-wheeling of idiosyncratic jazz, the very
inversion of Classical order, personal expression
was trumping even ecclesiastical dictates, those
very earlier immutable fundamentals of the long
unimpeachable Ten Commandments
Oh Moses, Moses you stubborn, splendid, adorable
fool, as Anne Baxter, Nefertiri, pagan, therefore
insidious seductress, would admonish in the film
pronouncements, a film which of course fashioned
the Biblical iconography of my entire generation,
a veritable “Divine Comedy” for our still recent
enough times, nothing has come up to displace it
meanwhile, though a progressively alternative
cultural morality seems steadily to harken
was Moses then a fool, a Prometheus in Christian
clothing
time alone tells, and time is an inveterately
temperamental arbiter
it would appear now that faith equals
unconditional conformity, when I thought
that faith could not, by definition, be
constrained, faith had been meticulously
a considered personal conviction, an
individual emancipation rather than a
conformist, and nefarious ultimately, it
would appear, code
I count on thoughtful efflorescence then,
and a garden of societal consideration,
a pantheistic and cooperative accord
not excluding, let it be noted, the indeed
worthiest, by thoughtful process, of those
very Ten Commandments
without my own children, for instance, I
still recommend honouring one’s parents,
this will bring, I knowlegeably warrant,
untold benefits, indeed grace, peace and
profound satisfaction, plenary solace to
the very reaches of each our indeterminate
soul
take it right here from an appropriately
distinctive Chopin, unparalleled poet to
the panoply of possible gods
Richard
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