Homer today: βάν ῥ᾽ ἴμεν ὥς τε λέοντε δύω διὰ νύκτα μέλαιναν/ ἂμ φόνον, ἂν νέκυας, διά τ᾽ ἔντεα καὶ μέλαν αἷμα.

They went like two lions through the black night/ through the slaughter through the corpses through the equipment and black blood

[Although inclined to the view that Book 10 is an organic part of the whole Iliad rather than a later insertion, something about the syntax here suggests to me the opposite.]

I was looking today at the curious extended simile surrounding Menelaos’ arrow wound, in which his blood-covered legs are compared to colored cheek pieces for horses. Let’s see how Pope does with this. This is Iliad Book 4, around 150.

As when some stately trappings are decreed
To grace a monarch on his bounding steed,
A nymph, in Caria or Mæonia bred,
Stains the pure ivory with a lively red;
With equal lustre various colours vie,
The shining whiteness, and the Tyrian dye:
So, great Atrides! shewed thy sacred blood,
As down thy snowy thigh distilled the streaming flood.

(Well, this is not at all literal, of course, and this is not Pope at his poetic best, but I think it brings into relief the essential meaning of the simile that there is something special about royal blood being spilled.)

Greek:

ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε τίς τ᾽ ἐλέφαντα γυνὴ φοίνικι μιήνῃ
Μῃονὶς ἠὲ Κάειρα παρήϊον ἔμμεναι ἵππων:
κεῖται δ᾽ ἐν θαλάμῳ, πολέες τέ μιν ἠρήσαντο
ἱππῆες φορέειν: βασιλῆϊ δὲ κεῖται ἄγαλμα,
ἀμφότερον κόσμός θ᾽ ἵππῳ ἐλατῆρί τε κῦδος:
τοῖοί τοι Μενέλαε μιάνθην αἵματι μηροὶ
εὐφυέες κνῆμαί τε ἰδὲ σφυρὰ κάλ᾽ ὑπένερθε.

etymology of “interest,” literally to be between, and hence a thing of importance.

Food pantry. The all-star diaper lady, after an injury, was back after two months, and I found myself asking her what her favorite parts of the Bible were. (The pantry is in a church, of which she’s a member.) The historical parts, she said, Kings, Chronicles, Samuel…

I asked her, why was it the Israelites abandoned having judges in favor of adopting a king? And why was it thought a bad thing for them to have adopted a king? (As I think of literary comparisons to the U.S.’s adoption of Trump, the Israelites’ adoption of Saul will first come to mind.)

Diaper lady said that her opinion was that God was always trying throughout the Old Testament to make the Israelites more responsible for themselves, and having a king was a step in the opposite direction.

The King was responsible, not them, was what was desirable to the Israelites about having a king, she said, and that was the problem.

It was the problem of Saul and the problem of Trump.

jointure: (law) An estate settled on a wife, which she is to enjoy after her husband’s death, for her own life at least, in satisfaction of dower.

renitent: resistance to pressure, compulsion; unyielding, recalcitrant.

Curious elements of last night’s dream:
— I was not a protagonist of a large part of the dream, a friend was
— the dream was, as it were, a multi-media event: it now seemed a dream, now a “movie dream,” now a book, now a video game
— I told a joke that made someone laugh in the dream
— I ordered a double caramel latte with skim milk in the dream (whereas in real life I order almost exclusively a small black coffee.)
— finally, in the train car, I’d asked “what is reality?” meaning the basic question “what is reality versus our perception on it” but people took it to mean “what is reality versus what our politicians claim it to be” and the crowd on the train car got uneasily quiet.
— finally finally I’ve been noticing how I’m oriented with respect to people in my dreams (are they to the left or to the right) and I find almost always, even when we’re face to face, I experience them as being to the right.

No not *that sort* of “good person” but the sort we haven’t identified yet

A sense that my Virtue was cared about by Lawrence Sterne

Catalogues, lists. Preventing myself from making another chart. Preventing myself from contemplating my stuckness (which is an aspect of the stuckness, it’s believed, for when have we not been both stuck and thinking of it?)

Dad has been mixing his food together. Today he put iced tea on his salad. Next time bring a condiment

Falsely grave

Seeing things as they are

You appear to be reasoning toward an answer you already know, and we are unsure if you don’t know that you know, or just don’t want to say…?

No action without an associated sentence

Don’t *tell me* your a Christian, Christian customer had said, *show me* you’re a Christian… It seemed to me this passage I had just written was showing me something of that kind: a gentle spirit, I could almost look at as an example to follow

Art a means by which to locate your gentle temperament and best self

Once again it’s revealed you’ve been dwelling in a kingdom of hypotheticals, whose borders, despite many battles, you can’t manage to extend toward the ground

This is not me anymore — and it might not have ever been anything — and without it I’m nothing

Ah well, not the end.

“Let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.” (Augustine)

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opacular: obsolete for ‘opaque.’

Was looking today at the passage where Odysseus strikes Thersites, Iliad book II 265-269, noticing that “tear,” “back,” and “scepter” are all repeated in similar parts of the line. (“Scepter” toward the front, “back” toward the middle, “tear” toward the end, which, incidentally, rather indicates the order of events when Odysseus strikes Thersites.) I like how “blood-red welt” contrasts with “golden scepter” which occurs in the same position of the line that follows it. The gold of the scepter corresponds with the goriness of the welt, as if the goldenness created the redness: the scepter made the welt but the goldenness made the welt red.

ὣς ἄρ᾽ ἔφη, σκήπτρῳ δὲ μετάφρενον ἠδὲ καὶ ὤμω
πλῆξεν: ὃ δ᾽ ἰδνώθη, θαλερὸν δέ οἱ ἔκπεσε δάκρυ:
σμῶδιξ δ᾽ αἱματόεσσα μεταφρένου ἐξυπανέστη
σκήπτρου ὕπο χρυσέου: ὃ δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἕζετο τάρβησέν τε,
ἀλγήσας δ᾽ ἀχρεῖον ἰδὼν ἀπομόρξατο δάκρυ.

I’m reminded of that zipper beating against the pocket of my windbreaker that sounds exactly like a jogger behind me, who is always catching up to but never passing me, by the sounds of this jogger who is actually catching up to and now passing me.

Être un homme utile m’a paru toujours quelque chose de bien hideux. (*)

hide a stone among stones and a man among men — says Hidden Fortress.

POST coincidentally making me barf today: “The parade is scheduled for June 14, the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, coincidentally, Trump’s 79th birthday.”

Wayne C. Booth: “However impersonal he may try to be, his readers will inevitably construct a picture of the official scribe who writes in this manner — and of course that official scribe will never be neutral toward all values. Our reaction to his various commitments, secret or overt, will help to determine our response to the work.”

“‘The object of life is to make sure you die a weird death. To make sure that however it finds you, it will find you under very weird circumstances. To live that kind of life. . . .’” (Gravity’s Rainbow, Counterforce.)

“I went into bed with a headache and Sophocles; I came out with Sophocles alone.”

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operose: busy, industrious, or painstaking.