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Hesiod's Theogony Or Hesiod's "Works and Days"
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He
made this lovely evil to balance the good,
Then led her off to the
other gods and men
Gorgeous in the finery of the owl-eyed
daughter
Sired in power. And they were stunned,
Immortal gods
and mortal men, when they saw
The sheer deception, irresistible to
men.
From her is the race of female women,
The deadly race and
population of women,
A great infestation among mortal men,
At
home with Wealth but not with Poverty.
lt's the same as with bees
in their overhung hives
Feeding the drones, evil conspirators
'The
bees work every day until the sun goes down,
Busy all day long
making pale honeycombs,
While the drones stay inside, in the
hollow hives,
Stuffing their stomachs with the work of others.
'That's just how Zeus, the high lord of thunder,
Made women as
a curse for mortal men,
Hesiod,
approx 750BCE; Translated by Stanley
Lombardo
Hesiod came
to see me. I knew him on sight, but that was one of his gifts.
"You
got my message, so I came."
"Huh?"
"You
might be able to deliver another for me."
"Er,...."
He
looked me over for a moment before beginning. "I gather you're a
bit of a storyteller, a philosophiser, so it's not surprising you
understood. You can imagine me back then, working for Kings, may they
prosper," rolling his eyes, "Priests, and the lot. it was a
good living, and I had high status, but their entertainment was my
meat, if you know what I mean."
"Sometimes I could
get out a bit into the provinces, and less often I could sit in on
village fires, and slip in a bit of earthier humour,
what with ploughing the furrows and livestock and gathering wild
fruit and such. Ah, those are some of my best memories! My big
mistake was getting scribes to write it down;
it became holy writ, literally, but only the 'approved ' version,
with all that bullshit about noble rulers and priestcraft. I had to
put in the disclaimer, we all did it, you know, 'the muses came to me
and told me all this stuff. If you disagree, it ain't with me.' You
lot now just say 'the opinions expressed are not necessarily those of
the editor, etc'."
"You can imagine the scene, the
men all gathered around the campfire, perhaps some percussion or a
string, me reciting a story. The story is strung together with bits
of wisdom I've heard here and there, and the odd flash of my own, but
humour is the key, and you've gotta play to your audience. You know
that, and that's why I'm here."
"The surest ones for
a good laugh have always been the Wimmin jokes. I've already
profusely sung the praises of the very feminine muses, in deference
to traditions far older than ours, and now the fun begins.
"You
know, Mighty Zeus, Wind and Lightening,
He wanted to keep fire to
hisself,
But Promethius was tricky, and slipped him a micky,
And
kindled man's greatest adventure.
"But Zeus was so
pissed, He had his blacksmiths,
Chain up the poor boy,
forever,
And wise Ambidexter, (sic!) the unsurpassed Maker,
go
fashion a bane for a blessing.
"Well, you know the rest.
I felt you read it, particularily the second time. By this time,
they're cracking up with every line, and a lot more that haven't come
down in the bloody holy writ versions, and plenty on us guys as well,
when I judged I could get away with it, but mostly they were rocking
in their seats, shouting for the Wimmin to bring more soup or wine,
you know the scene. And the Wimmin would be shouting stuff as well.
They all already knew most of it anyway; there weren't that many acts
around in those days, and we all used the same material with our own
variations and timing. I was pretty good, I guess; I usually got well
fed, watered, and sometimes bedded. Even in those days there were
groupies....," a faraway look,...
"But that's not
what I came about. I have to admit, you've got me remembering the
good times, and I thank you for that. Marty West is a good
translator; I've spent hours with him, but he's mostly indoors with
no fire, and not really a feminist.
"Like I was saying,
the problem seems to have begun with writing it
down. It lost its fluidity; it was never the same again, because
it was always the same, you know. And the jokes are getting awfully
old by now, and the best ones, the ones meant to bring it all back
round to the muses, and get us all laughing lovingly at ourselves?
'You mean to have a fire in front of us,
We've got to
have the Wimmin on our backs?'
'You'll want us on our backs
'fore Dawn, I'll warrant!
A man can't keep a fire alive for
long.'
'Just let me poke yer fire a bit.'
'With what
you've got, you little shit?
You're all burned out in half a
tick!'
"Those ones'r mostly lost, if they ever got
written down properly. You've seen a few of them, I think?" I
nod.
"Do you know what I want?" looking me directly
in the eyes.
"To apologise?"
"Yeah,"
sighing, "especially to the lassies. I know I've done untold
damage, but it wasn't meant, and I can't undo it, and I am sorry.
It's the least I can do. And you've gotta grant I was spot on about
the Iron Age, but that wasn't very funny, was
it?"
"No, but amazingly accurate and still germane.
What shall I say to us menfolk?"
"We should all
listen to our better instincts. There's a lot of good
advice on mundane matters in the 'works and days' collection, and
you can use any of it and modify it as you see fit. It wouldn't do to
try a straight translation, you've got no bloody Greek, and Marty
West has done a pretty good job."
"Aye, The humour
is obvious, but I was certain only a woman could be writing the
introduction. She would feel that to make any comment on such blatant
masculism would be redundant. West has to be grinning, but he's
subtle, perhaps too subtle for some of my female colleagues."
And
he vanished. But I got the clear feeling we could be friends, and I
desperately hoped he liked me (No, not that way!) He left me the last
word; that's a troubling sign. Was it that remark about our Sisters?
I hope I didn't bore him. Oh my God, there I go again; was I
dreaming?
Hesiod, "Theogony", "Works and Days";
a new translation by M L West,1999.
£6.99 Oxford World's
Classics; ISBN 0-19-283941-1
Ed Iglehart is a student at the
centre for Human Ecology, Edinburgh. www.che.ac.uk
A
bit of background, an extended frame to the tale, ...
From Betty
Roszak, in "The Spirit of the Goddess", based on a
colloquia lecture from 1990 collected in "Ecopsychology,"
Roszak et al. :
"Ecofeminists and ecopsychologists
together can move past such dubious dualistic notions, can go beyond
the questionable cultural overvaluation of dominance, competition,
and separation into a new vision of human identity. What we seek is
wholeness and the creation of a kind of knowing that cultivates
rationality, self-confidence, intellect, power alongside the
nurturing, healing, compassionate, intuitive components of
personality. Both ecofeminism and ecopsychology want to break free of
the bonds of patriarchal inheritance, to become grounded in a new
reality, aware of the sacred nature of each person and each being on
the Earth. There is no Goddess in the sky; we are all the Goddess.
Our saints and heroines are not dead; they live within us and, like
phoenix, are renewed each day."
After reading Betty
Roszak's "Spirit of the Goddess" for the second time, I
came indoors, thinking I could show it to my daughter and wife, in
the hope that they might find it resonant, and that it might help
them to understand some part of the things wrestling in my mind.
Annabel said she was unlikely to have time as she had to read Hesiod
before returning to Edinburgh. I asked what that was, could I have a
look? She continued to read sunday papers while watching/listening to
TV; I was immediately drawn in and submerged in the introduction,
devoured it and a good part of the translated text. Hesiod is the
oldest Greek Poet, before Homer, and more peaceful and domestic and I
had never heard of him! A couple of bits which may be of
interest:
(Editor)"...the story of Prometheus. This is a
myth designed to explain the origins of certain institutions and
features of the world as we know it. The practice of eating the meat
of the sacrificed animal and dedicating the inedible parts to the
gods is explained as the consequence of a trick which Prometheus once
played on Zeus. Hesiod's piety will not allow it that Zeus was really
deceived, but the story presupposes that he was. Zeus then tried to
withhold fire from men so that they could not cook their meat, but
Prometheus stole it and delivered it to them: that is how we acquired
that unearthly commodity. Finally Zeus decided to contrive a
punishment for mankind from which there would be no escape. And so we
have women."
(Translation) "When he had made the
pretty bane to set against a blessing, he led her out where the other
gods and men were, resplendent in the finery of the pale-eyed one
whose father is stern. Both immortal gods and mortal men were seized
with wonder then they saw that precipitous trap, more than mankind
can manage. For from her is descended the female sex, a great
affliction to mortals as they dwell with their husbands—no fit
partners for accursed Poverty, but only for Plenty. As the bees in
their sheltered nests feed the drones, those conspirators in badness,
and while they busy themselves all day and every day till sundown
making the white honeycomb, the drones stay inside in the sheltered
cells and pile the toil of others into their own bellies, even so as
a bane for mortal men has high-thundering Zeus created women,
conspirators in causing difficulty."
Describing
the creation of the races of men by the immortals who dwell on
Olympus, first of gold, then of silver and bronze, each to be covered
up by the earth in turn, and the Heroes (demigods), settled at the
ends of the earth, "with carefree heart in the Isles of the
Blessed Ones, beside deep-swirling Oceanus: fortunate Heroes, for
whom the grain-giving soil bears its honey-sweet fruits thrice a
year."
"Would
that I were not then among the fifth men, but either dead earlier or
born later! For now it is a race of iron; and they will never cease
from toil and misery by day or night, in constant distress, and the
gods will give them harsh troubles. Nevertheless, even they shall
have good mixed with ill. Yet Zeus will destroy this race of men
also, when at birth they turn out grey at the temples. Nor will
father be like children nor children to father, nor guest to host or
comrade to comrade, nor will a brother be friendly as in former
times. Soon they will cease to respect their ageing parents, and will
rail at them with harsh words, the ruffians, in ignorance of the
gods' punishment; nor are they likely to repay their ageing parents
for their nurture. Fist-law men; one will sack another's town, and
there will be no thanks for the man who abides by his oath or for the
righteous or worthy man, but instead they will honour the miscreant
and the criminal. Law and decency will be in fists. The villain will
do his better down by telling crooked tales, and will swear his oath
upon it. Men in their misery will everywhere be dogged by the evil
commotions of that Envy who exults in misfortune with a face full of
hate. Then verily off to Olympus from the wide-pathed earth, veiling
their fair faces with white robes, Decency and Moral Disapproval will
go to join the family of the immortals, abandoning mankind; those
grim woes will remain for mortal men, and there will be no help
against evil."
Well, well, well! 2800 years and counting.
The triumph of individualism.
Hesiod, "Theogony",
"Works and Days"; a new translation by M L West, Oxford
World's Classics; ISBN 0-19-283941-1
"Look,
kid," he said, staring me straight in the eye, "I know
these visits are a gas to you, and inflate your ego, but I've got
plenty of others I can spend time with, if you can't be bothered to
do the homework. Now order the fucking book!"
And he
vanished. I connected to the internet to order the bloody book.
(and
send this to you)
Ed Iglehart 11/07/2001
The
book arrives, but it's not ML West's translation I thought I was
ordering (although the
translator pays elaborate respect to West,
who, it appears is the major living authority on
Hesiod.), but
another from some professor in Kansas who has rendered
Hesiod
into midwestern American English.: (see below)
Stanley Lombardo at
Univ of Kansas: http://http://www2.ku.edu/~classics/faculty.html#Lombardo
(Hesiod: Works & Days, Theogony, Translated by Stanley
Lombardo with introduction and notes by
Robert Lamberton. 1993,
Hackett Publishing Co. ISBN 0-87220-179-1)
from the
translator's preface
The poet Jared Carter compares the art of
oral poetry practiced by Hesiod to the art of early New Orleans jazz
musicians, live performers who played not by rote but by heart,
improvising from their common store melodies, riffs, and chord
changes, developing out of the shared tradition their personal
styles, and transmitting the art to the next generation This is a
wonderfully apt comparison for what it suggests about the poetic
process in archaic Greece. Hesiod composed without writing, in a
tradition of oral composition and performance whose origins are lost
us but which has parallels in Vedic and other ancient
cultures....
(From the invocation to the muses:)
And they
once taught Hesiod the art of singing verse,
While he pastured his
lambs on holy Helikon's slopes.
And this was the very first thing
they told me,
The Olympian Muses, daughters of Zeus
Aegisholder.
"Hillbillies and bellies, poor excuses for
shepherds:
We know how to tell many believable lies,
But
also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth."
So
spoke the daughters of great Zeus, mincing their words.
And they
gave me a staff, a branch of good sappy laurel,
Plucking it off,
spectacular. And they breathed into me
A voice divine, so I might
celebrate past and future.
And they told me to hymn the
generation of thc eternal gods,
But always to sing of themselves,
the Muses, first and last.
But why all this about oak tree or
stone?
Start
from the Muses: when they sing for Zeus father
They thrill the
great mind deep in Olympos,
Telling what is, what will be, and
what has been,
-----
(Pandora:)
The famous Lame God
plastered up some clay
To look like a shy virgin, just like Zeus
wanted,
And Athena, the Owl-Eyed Goddess,
Got her all dressed
up in silvery clothes
And with her hands draped a veil from her
head,
An intricate thing, wonderful to look at.
And Pallas
Athena circled her head
With a wreath of luscious springtime
flowers
And crowned her with a golden tiara
That the famous
Lame God had made himself,
Shaped it by hand to please father
Zeus,
Intricately designed and a wonder to look at.
Sea
monsters and other fabulous beasts
Crowded the surface, and it
sighed with beauty,
And you could almost hear the animals'
voices.
He made this lovely evil to balance the good,
Then
led her off to the other gods and men
Gorgeous in the finery of
the owl-eyed daughter
Sired in power. And they were
stunned,
Immortal gods and mortal men, when they saw
The sheer
deception, irresistible to men.
From her is the race of female
women,
The deadly race and population of women,
A great
infestation among mortal men,
At home with Wealth but not with
Poverty.
lt's the same as with bees in their overhung
hives
Feeding the drones, evil conspirators
'The bees work
every day until the sun goes down,
Busy all day long making pale
honeycombs,
While the drones stay inside, in the hollow
hives,
Stuffing their stomachs with the work of others.
'That's
just how Zeus, the high lord of thunder,
Made women as a curse for
mortal men,
Evil conspirators. And he added another evil
To
offset the good. Whoever escapes marriage
And women's harm, comes
to deadly old age
Without any son to support him. He has no
lack
While he lives but when he dies distant relatives
Divide
up his estate. Then again, whoever marries
As fated, and gets a
good wife, compatible,
Has a life that is balanced between evil
and good,
A constant struggle. But if he marries the abusive
kind,
He lives with pain in his heart all down the line,
Pain
in spirit and mind, incurable evil.
There's no way to get around
the mind of Zeus.
Not even Prometheus, that fine son of Iapetos
Escaped his heavy anger. He knows many things,
But he is
caught in the crimp of ineluctable bonds.
--------
(from
Works & Days):
Invite your friend to a feast, leave your
enemy alone,
And be sure to invite the fellow who lives close by.
If you've got some kind of emergency on your hands,
Neighbors
come lickety-split, kinfolk take a while.
A bad neighbor's as much
a curse as a good one' s a Blessing.
You've got a real prize if
you've got a good neighbor.
Nary an ox would be lost if it
weren't for bad neighbors.
Get good measure from a neighbor and
give back as good,
Measure for measure, or better if you're
able,
So when you need something later you can count on him
then.
Now I'm speaking sense to you, Perses you fool.
It's
easy to get all of Wickedness you want.
She lives just down the
road a piece, and it's a smooth road too.
But the gods put
Goodness where we have to sweat
To get at her. It's a long, uphill
pull
And rough going at first. But once you reach the top
She's
as easy to have as she was hard at first
----
Marry at
the right age. Bring home a wife
When you're just about thirty,
give or take
A few years. That's marrying in season.
A
woman ought to wed when she's five years a woman.
Marry her virgin
so you can teach her prudent ways.
The best girl to marry is the
girl next door,
But have a good look around and make sure
first
That marrying her won't make you a joke to your neighbors
A
man couldn't steal anything better than a good wife,
Just as
nothing is more horrible than a bad one,
Some freeloader who
roasts her man without a fire
And serves him up to a raw old
age.
(translator's notes:)769-80 [695-705] The misogyny of the
poem down to this point is, if anything, somewhat mitigated in the
advice on marriage. It is generally characteristic of the poem to put
everything in a bad light, to focus on the dangers and threats
inherent in all the aspects of life it gives advice on, and clearly
women are viewed as a necessary evil and marriage a reluctant
concession to the need to produce an heir. The observation that "a
man couldn't steal anything better than a good wife"
nevertheless goes some way toward restoring balance.
(I would ask
the Sisters about that before commenting further! -- Ed (still sounds
a lot like property to me...))
----
Don't
throw a man's poverty up in his face.
He's already hurting, and
it comes from the gods.
The best treasure in the world is a
tongue
That knows when to stop, the greatest pleasure
Is when
it goes as it should. Say bad things
And you're sure to hear
worse yourself.
Don't be tiresome at a potluck dinner:
It's
good entertainment and cheap at that.
Don't pour a libation of
wine at dawn
To Zeus or any other immortal god
Without first
washing your hands:
They'll spit your prayers out.
Don't
piss standing up while facing the sun.
Between sunset and
sunrise, remember,
Don't piss on the road or on the roadside,
Or
naked. The blessed gods own the night.
A religious man sits down,
if he's got any sense,
Or he goes by the wall of an enclosed
courtyard.
Don't let your privates be seen smeared with semen
Near the hearth at home. Be careful to avoid this.
Don't
beget children after coming home From a burial.
Wait until after
a feast of the gods.
Don't ever set foot in a river you're
fording
Without saying your prayers first. Gaze deep
Into the
current as you wash your hands
In the precious white water
Whoever crosses
A river unwashed (I mean hands and wickedness)
The gods visit with nemesis and suffering later.
Don't
trim the dry from the five-branched quick
Using honed flashing
steel at a feast of the gods.
Don't ever put a jug on top of
the mixing bowl
When folks are drinking It's deadly bad
luck.
Don't leave the wood rough on a house you're building
Or a chattering crow might perch on it and croak.
Don't
eat from impure pots, nor wash from them
Either. There's a
terrible vengeance in them.
Don't let a boy of twelve sit on
gravestones and such.
It's a bad thing to do. Makes a man
unmanly.
Nor a twelve month old, it comes to the same
thing.
Don't wash in a woman's bath-water,
Which for a
time has a bitter vengeance in it.
Don't, if you come across a
sacrifice burning,
Find fault with what the fire consumes.
The
god will visit you with nemesis for sure.
Don't piss in the
mouth of a river that flows to the sea,
Nor in springs either. And
don't ever shit in them.
That's the way to behave. And try to
avoid being
The object of talk. A bad reputation is easy to get,
Difficult to endure, and hard to get rid of.
Talk never
really dies, not when so many folks
Are busy with her. Talk too
is some kind of a god.
all from: Hesiod: Works & Days,
Theogony, Translated by Stanley Lombardo with introduction and notes
by
Robert Lamberton. 1993, Hackett Publishing Co. ISBN
0-87220-179-1
for which grateful thanks to Waterston's and any
other conspirators...
Stanley Lombardo at Univ of Kansas:
Stanley
Ed Iglehart 18/07/2001
Return to North Glen
or Reading List
or Credo
Hesiod's Theogony Or Hesiod's "Works and Days"
Perseus Classics collection and digital library
Some
extracts from The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abrams
p.107
WHEN
THE HOMERIC EPICS WERE RECORDED IN WRITINGS THEN THE art of the
rhapsodes began to lose its preservative and instructive function.
The knowledge embedded in the epic stories and myths was now captured
for the first time in a visible and fixed form, which could be
returned to, examined, and even questioned. Indeed, it was only then,
under the slowly spreading influence of alphabetic technology, that
"language" was beginning to separate itself from the
animate flux of the world, and so becoming a ponderable presence in
its own right.
(Ed: This is what pisses me off! I had already
put similar words into the mouth of my antique visitor, and thought
it to be a unique and wonderfully humourous stroke on the part of my
ineffable genius! Now I discover - not for the first time - that we
can never tread virgin paths.... DAMN!)
"It is only as
language is written down that it becomes possible to think about it.
The acoustic medium, being incapable of visualization, did not
achieve recognition as a phenomenon wholly separable from the person
who used it. But in the alphabetized document the medium became
objectified. There it was, reproduced perfectly in the alphabet . . .
no longer just a function "me" the speaker but a document
with an independent existence"
P. 113
"If men
learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will
cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written,
calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but
by means of external marks." (from Plato's Phaedrus)
P.123
It
is remarkable that none of the major twentieth-century scholars who
have directed their attention to the changes wrought by literacy have
seriously considered the impact of writing and, in particular,
phonetic writing—upon the human experience of the wider natural
World. Their focus has generally centered upon the influence of
phonetic writing on the structure and deployment of human language,
on patterns of cognition and thought, or upon the internal
organization of human societies. Most of the major research, in ther
words, has focused upon the alphabet's impact on processes either
internal to human society or presumably "internal ' to the human
mind. Yet the limitation of such research—its restriction Within
the bounds of human social interaction and personal
interiority—itself reflects an anthropocentric bias wholly endemic
to alphabetic culture. In the absence of phonetic literacy, neither
society, nor language, nor even the experience of "thought"
or consciousness, can be pondered in isolation from the multiple
nonhuman shapes and powers that lend their influence to all our
activities (We need think only of our ceaseless involvement with the
ground underfoot, with the air that swirls around us, with the plants
and animals that we consume, with the daily warmth of the sun and the
cyclic pull of the moon). Indeed, in the absence of formal writing
systems, human communities come to know themselves primarily as they
are reflected back by the animals and the animate landscapes wlth
which they are directly engaged. This epistemological dependence is
readily evidenced, on every continent, by the diverse modes of
identification commonly categorized under the single term
"totemism"
P.124
Although Merleau-Ponty
himself never attempted a phenomenology of reading or writing, his
recognition of the importance of synaesthesia—the overlap and
intertwining of the senses—resulted in a number of experiential
analyses directly pertinent to the phenomenon of reading. For
reading, as soon as we attend to its sensorial texture, discloses
itself as a profoundly synaesthetic encounter. Our eyes converge upon
a visible mark, or a series of marks, yet what they find there is a
sequence not of images but of sounds, something heard; the visible
letters, as we have said, trade our eyes for our ears. Or, rather,
the eye and the ear are brought together at the surface the text—a
new linkage has been forged between seeing and hearing which ensures
that a phenomenon apprehended by one sense is is instantly transposed
into the other. Further, we should note that the Sensory
transposition is mediated by the human mouth and tongue; it is not
just any kind of sound that is experienced in the act of reading. but
specifically human, vocal sounds—those which issue from the human
mouth. It is important to realize that the now common experience of
"silent" reading is a late development in the story of the
alphabet, emerging only during the Middle Ages, when spaces were
first inserted between the words in a written manuscript (along with
various forms of punctuation), enabling readers to distinguish the
words of a written sentence without necessarily sounding them out
audibly. Before this innovation, to read was necessarily to read
aloud, or at the very least to mumble quietly; after the twelfth
century it became increasingly possible to internalize the sounds, to
listen inwardly to phantom words (or the inward echo of words once
uttered)
Alphabetic reading, then, proceeds by way of a new
synaesthetic collaboration between the eye and the ear, between
seeing and hearing. To discern the consequences of this new
synaesthesia, we need to examine the centrality of synaesthesia in
our perception of other nd of the earth.
Ed Again:
My first
glimpse of these matters was in a book by Alan Watts: Tao - The
Watercourse Way (four copies given/lent so far!)
in which a brief
discussion of the differences between ideographic and alphabetic
languages made it clear to me that chinese written language is one
level less abstracted than alphabetic written work, much as described
above. Watts gives an example in our general conception of chinese
being very difficult:
The same text is written in English and
Chinese, and we are then asked to turn the page through 90 degrees
and decide which looks more complicated and difficult! There's no
contest!
Also, Chinese readers can communicate with each other in
writing, even when their spoken languages are totally mutually
incomprehensible! The sounds used vocally may be totally different,
but the characters represent the idea, not the sound.
Also,
Watts reports studies with pupils with "reading difficulties"
who apparently are able to learn to read and write pictographically
(in Chinese!) quite readily..... Food for thought?
from
studentlinks page on student pages, or studentlinks.html:
Alan
Watts may be dead, but he's on the reading list! Started as an
"uptight English theologian," became one of
the most
lucid interpreters of zen, buddhism, taoism...sadly, Nature Man &
Woman is out of print, but there's lots
else, including one of my
alltime favourites, TAO, the watercourse way --
ed
http://www.alanwatts.com/
http://www.alanwatts.com/ac_lectures.html
all
the best
Ed
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