“The manifold self-contradictions in Greek ideas and phrasing about death are not errors. They are styles of imagining the unimaginable, and are responsive both to personal needs and to old conventions. The same conflicts surge up in many cultures. They are necessary ambiguities in a realm of thinking where thinking cannot really be done, and where there is no experience.”
— Emily Vermeule, “Immortals are Mortal, Mortals Immortal,” Aspects of Death in Early Greek Art and Poetry
“Shadowy Death dogs my steps, my seated shape, and has for years— / Draws sometimes close to me, as face to face.”
— Walt Whitman, from “L. of. G’s Purport”, Leaves of Grass
What is your favorite obscure Greek mythological fact
Hm, probably the Orphic fragment that says that Persephone was born with a monstrous appearance (fragment 87 according to Athanassakis, fragment 58 in the translation of Otto Kern’s compilation of fragments at HellenicGods.org):
…"of the daughter of Zeus, whom he begat of his mother Rhea; or of Demeter, as having two eyes in the natural order, and two in her forehead, and the face of an animal on the back part of her neck, and as having also horns, so that Rhea, frightened at her monster of a child, fled from her, and did not give her the breast (θηλη), whence mystically she is called Athêlâ, but commonly Phersephoné and Koré"…
It's so totally different from all other versions that only describe her as very beautiful (as goddesses tend to be). Sometimes I regret that I didn't give my Persephone horns.
sorry i didn't respond i had a katabasis
In other words, Cassandra is not just a translator, she is also an embodiment of the very function of translation: her prophetic speech often appears to be suspended between languages, like Benjamin's translator who operates in the realm of 'pure language' that is beyond any single linguistic code. Cassandra takes and reformulates and incomprehensible message from the future and becomes incomprehensible in the process, (re)producing a message in such a way that it demands a second, or third or fourth translation. Sometimes she descends from a trance-like state of prophecy to initiate the next link in the chain of interpretations herself, reframing her own message in more prosaic language, only to find that this speech too is received with confusion. Her utterance is always both a target and source text at the same time. The proliferation of translation acts within her single body evokes a kind of never-ending self-translation; like the self-translator, Cassandra suffers a splitting of the self, one part of which is committed to the spirit of the original composition, while the other struggles to reframe it for a new audience that can never grasp the meaning of the original.
Emily Pillinger, Cassandra and the Poetics of Prophecy in Greek and Latin Literature
Grace Slick, formerly of Jefferson Airplane (and later Starship) who were one of Woodstock's monumental participants, has been involved in the visual arts scene lately in her life...
The Airplane, most notable for their psychedelic masterpiece 'White Rabbit', entwines the tale of Alice In Wonderland with lyrics advocating for the expansion of one's consciousness through hallucinogens as the ultimate solution; which, in opposition, dismisses the validity to the otherwise socially acceptable norm of the American pharmaceutical diet's true effectivity.
it's refreshing to see that, after many decades have passed, even though she chose to pursue a different artistic avenue than music—the thematics and probable integrity remain the very same.
included are just a few selections from her primary focal point, that eternal fascination with Wonderland; however, she has also paid homage to some of her fellow peers of the Revolution, by painting portraits of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia, amongst many others.
gdrive link where you can find free books regarding Palestine, liberation and orientalism to download and read