Quick Painting Before I Go Pass Out

Hey friend,

Just curious about some greek retellings you like? I tried to get through 'Clytemnestra' by constaza casti but even the first few chapters felt so anachronistic and out of character I returned the book.

i love till we have faces by c.s. lewis. not encouraging to me that no one** has come up with anything better in that vein (that is, "more or less straightforward retelling from an overlooked female character's perspective") since a white english man in the 50s.

**no one i've READ YET, i should say

but if you step away from the formula of narrative fiction, there's good stuff! denis o'hare and lisa peterson's "an iliad" and derek walcott's "the odyssey" are both interesting plays. of course, my beloved hadestown. alice oswald's poems "memorial" (drawn from the iliad) and "nobody" (drawing much more loosely on the odyssey) are [kisses fingers]. in louise glück's poetry collection meadowlands, she uses the odyssey throughout as a way of exploring marriage and parenthood; it's excellent. the lost books of the odyssey is a short story collection by zachary mason; like most short story collections, i found it very mixed, but it has a few stories i've returned to again and again.

gods' blessing

penelope didn't have to turn the tree bed into a riddle. she could have asked odysseus to prove his identity, to tell her something only he would know — which she actually did a few books earlier, when she asked the beggar to describe odysseus, and odysseus told her about a purple cloak with a particular golden brooch that she fastened herself twenty years ago. when penelope tells telemachus they have signs by which they'll know each other, you sort of expect more of the same. and instead, she decides to trap him. like a bug in a cup.

and it's delightful to me, idk, how odysseus has been trapped and cornered in various way throughout the odyssey, but arguably never so that he has to tell the truth to get out. (with the phaeacians, maybe? the omniscient narrator corroborates some of what he tells them, but do we really know everything?) and in fact he is not trying to get free of penelope. he wants something from her, wants to convince her, wants to be welcomed home, but until this point he's lied to her, revealed himself to other people before her, and been distant with her (though also patient! he doesn't try to strongarm or rush her into accepting him; it's his idea to sleep elsewhere).

except penelope isn't looking for him to be distant and patient. penelope lies in a way that requires odysseus to stop playing along — not only to prove that he knows what odysseus knows, but that he's willing to tell the truth about himself.

reunion.

some sketch I drew in March;)

he was right to fear the helmet: it makes it impossible to tell father from foe.

The last image was the first image and only one I meant to make. starting thought (that I don't think I communicated well tbh): "A shot looking up the walls of Troy where Odysseus is dangling Astyanax from the top by his heel, reminiscent of Thetis dipping Achilles, ready to plunge him into his namesake, the river Scamander, brimming with Trojan blood below, while the Achaeans watch in expectation. And the walls are cyclopean, of course!"

you know. standard classicist mental illinois.

maybe one day i'll be better at art and think of a better way to communicate that concept? dipping the baby in the river to cement his legacy? idk. i'll probably come back to it someday.

“Penelope Unravelling the Web,” by Willy Pogany

Illustration for “The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy” (aka “The Children’s Homer”), by Padraic Colum

Cyborg Frankenstein.

Blessed with visions pt. 3

–if that ever happened.

“Moreover, the language she uses of herself evokes the heroes of Greek epic and specifically Achilles - “equal to the gods, save for death alone”. Death gives Polyxena the opportunity to confer herolike status upon herself, while condemning the Greeks for the life and the assault they would have subjected her to.”

— Casey Dué, The captive woman’s lament in Greek tragedy