… scrawling out in nameless numbhood futile notes (Barth.)

I found these notes on Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse helpful. I don’t have a lot of experience with Barth but was surprised, in Menelaiad, by how well he knew the Iliad — the arrow of Pandoras, e.g.. Sotweed Factor shows a lot of learning too.

En un mot, je veux que l’expression de mes souvenirs soit sincère et, pour cela, il est nécessaire qu’elle reste entièrement secrète….

“Like a chamber perpetually locked up” — said of an incurious mind in Conrad’s Chance.

ngrams: gray area,gray zone,grey area,grey zone.

Just learned of Anki (wiki) — name is Japanese — and am trying that for the first time. My first cards:

ὑπισχνέομαι: to take upon oneself, promise. δὲ ὑπέσχετο τοῦτο ποιήσειν, ἂν μὴ πορευόμενος Ὀρφεὺς ἐπιστραφῇ πρὶν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν αὑτοῦ παραγενέσθαι (*)

ἀστραπή, fiash of lightning, lightning. καὶ Κύκλωπες τότε Διὶ μὲν διδόασι βροντὴν καὶ ἀστραπὴν καὶ κεραυνόν, (*)

κτέανον, possessions, property. “χρυσέα φόρμιγξ, Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ ἰοπλοκάμων/ σύνδικον Μοισᾶν κτέανον” Golden Lyre, joint possession of Apollo and the violet haired Muses... Pythian 1.

βαθμός — stair step

They both decided that they would remain unmarried and live together for the rest of their lives, in a state described by Charles as “a sort of double singleness”. (*)

Greek “ to cry like a raven”… It’s interesting that English too makes a verb out of “crow” but the sense is figurative, to boast, to vaunt.

“[Proust] likened Agostinelli to a ‘nun of speed,’ because of his motoring attire — boots, a long hooded coat, and goggles — which nearly covered his body. Early chauffeurs were often exposed not only to the elements and the dangers of primitive roads but to untrained drivers speeding toward them from the opposite direction. Proust later interpreted as ominous a passage in the article referring to the risks of being a driver: ‘May the steering wheel of the young chauffeur who is driving me remain always the symbol of his talent rather than the augury of his martrydom!” [Marcel Proust, A Life, William C. Carter.]

Idea that there is something inherently selfish-seeming or even (not to put a moral judgment on it) something actually *selfish* or self-involved about mental illness or illness generally — when we are sick our sickness tends to become a predominant concern — and this creeps into the tone of The Bell Jar’s second half; meanwhile, Wallace’s short story The Depressed Person (which very probably owes a debt to The Bell Jar) somewhat obviates this issue by tackling it head on: the character is really trying not to make it all about himself but in so doing is comically only making it worse.

ngrams: space, area, location, zone, place

Not knowing anything about it I would hypothesize Melville’s literary development went something along these lines:

— Melville wanted to be Shakespeare — wanted to be everything. Scientist, philosopher, adventurer, poet.

— He realized with Moby Dick this was an absurd thing to undertake, that he had been joking all along. His philosophizing wasn’t philosophy, his cetology wasn’t science.

— He says, now let’s get serious, what can I say that isn’t an absurd joke, what real truth is accessible to the novelist? And his style becomes more spare.

That Melville commentary I found in a free library having remarked on the change in style between Moby Dick and Bartleby — which really is striking. Melville seemed to have utterly turned his back on Elizabethan grandiloquence and utterly turned his front to modern austerity and prosody.

Ant having decided
to move that way
…
lust commination lust
ro………….………….ro
nhouAir moving across bulletin board.nhou
sebuPlate resting on my stomach.sebu
ngabDrops of water from an apple.ngab
un………………un
g……..……..g
a Ugalia
……

Assuming the Iliad was originally divided in three for a three day performance, how would they be divided? Author argues 1-8, 9-15, 16-24.

(I had been looking for evidence that books 3-7 could be considered their own unit.)

About the division into books of the Iliad and Odyssey — when and by whom?

1. Does praying for an outcome in The Iliad increase the likelihood of achieving that outcome? Thus, for instance, Meriones beats Teukros in the archery competition after praying for success (23.859-881), but Pandoras does not succeed in taking down Menelaos though he prays to Apollo before shooting at him (4.119-121).
2. Do characters have any proficiency in identifying which outcomes are the result of the god’s influence and which are not? In book 3, for example, Menelaos blames Zeus, for his mischances in attacking Paris, (whose influence over this event the narrator doesn’t mention), but says nothing of Aphrodite, whose direct intervention — as the audience is explicitly told — makes possible Paris’ escape.

Never heard of this law of contonation before, which explains why you can’t ever have a circumflex on the antepenultimate syllable or have it on the penultimate syllable if the ultima is long.

The law is that there can’t be more than one mora between the end of a word and the contonation, a short syllable being one mora and a long syllable being two.

See video.

Noticing an odd symmetry, or asymmetry, in the single combat between Hector and Aias (7.244-272). They attack each other three times a piece — a cast spear, a jabbed spear, and a thrown stone — and each time Aias’ shield is hit and resists the attack and each time Hector’s shield is hit and is compromised by the attack, until finally the stone thrown by Aias causes Hector’s shield to crumple in on itself entirely.

What does this suggest?

Also notable is that Aias wounds Hector in the neck in this passage, which is where Achilles later wounds him.

Marveling that that raindrop has managed to penetrate the complex skein of intervening tree canopies to reach the sidewalk exactly here (looking up from the wet mark it’s become) — “a million in one shot — if that’s what’s actually happened.”

Another fleeting fragmentary scent as I rub my nose, making me wonder if any odd orientation of the olfactory sensors there will result in a sensation of scent.

Right there is the point where, if the car intended to yield to my right of way, it would have stopped or started to, I imagine. And so I retreat.

Day one cherry blossom tree or dogwood blown over by the wind, day two chopped so that only bottom trunk remained, day three trunk covered in snow.

Forced to cross the street in the place I always used to because they’re working on power lines ahead… Fire engine performing 3-point turn into the garage of the fire house…. Gas prices “moving sideways from last week.”

Black skid mark perfectly centered within one white strip of the zebra stripes, sides perfectly parallel to the white reflective stripe.

Find empty Advil box on the ground to be put in the trash — but it’s not entirely empty, there’s something in it, a bottle of Advil?– no, an old chicken bone, still some of the fried breading around the top and base of the drumstick.