Tweet: day of love

Instant meaning present in legal terminology

“The first people in the Universe,” Dickens called the French.

Dickens giving some insight into Uriah’s character, chapter 39: “I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting and revengeful spirit must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression,” Uriah having learned “when he was quite a young boy” that the way to get along was to “keep yourself down.” “I had seen the harvest,” reports Copperfield, “but never thought of the seed.”

While I would blame the press not the Presidential campaigns, I actually agree with George Will on the substance of this: that the threat of a global conflict among major powers is not nearly as salient in the news as it should be.

Main-truck. Moby Dick: But oh! shipmates! (…) Is not the main-truck higher than the kelson is low?

These lines spoken by Hector (when he proposes to duel a member of the Achaeans) brings to mind (along with the fate of his own body in Book 24) the exchange of armor between Glaukos and Diomedes in the preceding book. In fact, the first half of book seven seems generally rather preoccupied with armor: people putting it on, people taking it off, its appearance in Nestor’s story, its appearance in these lines…. 7.76-86 (Lattimore):

“Behold the terms that I make, let Zeus be witness upon them.
If we the thin edge of bronze he takes my life, then
Let him strip my armor and carry it back to the hollow ships,
But give my body to be taken home again, so that the Trojans
And the wives of the Trojans may give me in death my rite of burning.
But if I take his life, and Apollo grants me the glory,
I will strip his armor and carry it to sacred Ilion
and hang it in front of the temple of far-striking Apollo,
But his corpse I will give back among the strong-benched vessels
So that the flowing haired Achaens may give him due burial
And heap up a mound upon him beside the broad passage of Helle.”

This passage also looks forward to the end of Book 7, with its gathering of the corpses and heaping up of a grave mound.

Mangle, as noun, from David Copperfield.

revealing picture (*)

I wonder if Dickens, in naming David Copperfield’s antagonist Uriah, was suggesting or thinking of the relationship between King David and Uriah the Hittite, in the story of Bathsheba.

In that story, of course, the David, as distinct from David Copperfield, is somewhat the villain, but still.

φύονται δὲ καὶ νέοις ἐν ἀνδράσιν
πολιαὶ θαμὰ καὶ παρὰ τὸν ἁλικίας
ἐοικότα χρόνον.’

Pindar, Olympian 4. Svarlien: “Even on young men gray hair often grows, even before the expected age.”

To be fair, Athens was much more proactive in its fall than Sparta was successful (*)

Apropos of nothing, looks to me like when Menelaos “pushes away” Adrestos in Iliad book 6 (for the purpose of stabbing him) it is the same verb as the one with which Achilles “pushes away” Priam (for unclear to me reasons) in book 24 — ἀπωθέω.

1-36 “Obituaries”
37-71 Tamarisk scene, Adrestos
72-115 Helenus’ proposal (Hector departs)
116-236 Diomedes-Glaucos
237-529 (Hector arrives) Hector in Troy:
237-529.237-312 Hecabe and Athena ceremony
237-529.313-368 Paris and Helen
237-529.369-502 Andromache
237-529.503-529 Hector and Paris

………..Icommination y
………..n……………. e
………..d…………… l
………..e………….. l
………..f…………. e
………..e……….. h
………..n……… s
………..s…….. t
………..e…… e
Squirrels listening to birds…………o…. iSquirrels listening to birds.
………..f… r
………..h. r
………..a
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Need to read the Gluacus- Diomedes dialogue again: wonder if there’s a contrast with Hector-Paris to be made (probably not). Also the question — are we to understand that Troy is “hateful to the gods” (like Lycurgus was)?

There’s a place in life for shouting but they are shouting on behalf of a bad analysis of the situation. (x)

Opening of Chapter 36, “Enthusiasm.”

“I began the next day with another dive into the Roman baths, and then started for Highgate. I was not dispirited now. I was not afraid of the shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallent greys. My whole manner of thinking of our late misfortune changed. What I had to do was, to show my Aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do was, to turn the painful discipline of my early days to account, by going to work with a resolute and steady heart. What I had to do was, to take my woodsman’s axe in my hands, and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty, by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora. And I went on at a mighty rate, as if it could be done by walking.”

Etymonline doesn’t make this connection, but I’m guessing English prone comes ultimately from Ancient Greek πρανής “with the face downwards, falling forwards.”

Another curious thing about Book 6 is how dominated by women it is, relative to the other books: we see Andromache, Hekabe, and Helen, all the female “stars,” as well as frequent mentions of handmaidens, while goddess Athena is the central divine figure of the book. The ceremonial plea to Athena is itself a very feminine affair.

We also see Hector and Paris with respect to their women: the former twice refusing offers of rest and comfort, by Hecabe then Andromache, the latter needing to be urged into action by Helen. (And of course there can be no parallel scene of that kind on the Achaean side, where there are no mothers and wives.)