The Collected Prose
Page 87
2the bloody corpse of her small grandson: Astyanax, the young son of Hector and Andromache. After the Greeks conquer Troy, the boy is killed—in some accounts by Odysseus himself—for fear of future acts of revenge. In Euripides’ Trojan Women, a herald brings the body of Astyanax to Hecuba on Hector’s shield.
1Herodotus tells the story of Phya in History, Book I.60.
2pan-Athenian processions: celebratory processions to mark an important Athenian holiday, held every four years in the last days of the month called Hekatombaion. See also note to the essay “Acropolis” in Labyrinth on the Sea.
1some puffed-up fellow: Aristotle.
1that Swiss painter: Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), painter of works such as In the Sea and The Play of the Waves, both dated 1884.
2Sitzbad: Ger. a chair-like bathtub in which the thighs and hips are immersed in warm water, usually used for therapeutic treatments.
1a lion head…: a Chimera
2Literaturwissenschaft: literary studies
3Boiardo: Matteo Maria di Scandiano Boiardo (1441–1491), Italian poet, courtier to the d’Este family in Ferrara and governor of Modena. His main work is the unfinished epic Orlando inamorato, published in 1506.
1All the ellipses are in the Polish edition.
1Some idiot from Ionia: probably Xenophon (ca. 570–475 BCE).
1One of the great islands of the world…: Homer, Odyssey, Book XIX. 202–211. Tr. Robert Fitzgerald.
2In judging discoveries…: Leonard Woolley, In Search of the Past.
3“Evans was extremely myopic…”: J. Evans, Time and Chance. The story of Arthur Evans and his forebears. London 1943.
4Tout traité d’archéologie passe: Every archaeology treatise passes muster.
5“In February 1960…”: L. R. Palmer, On the Knossos Tablets, Oxford, 1963.
6“There is a paradox here…”: Moses. I. Finley, The Greeks.
7But afterward there occurred violent earthquakes and floods…: Plato, Timaeus 25d (Translated by Benjamin Jowett, Princeton 1961).
8Halfway between Thera and Thirasia…: Strabo, Geography, I.3, 15.
1Brundisium: now Brindisi
2Diktaion antron: Dikte Cave
3thólos: ancient funeral building on a circular plan, often with a colonnade.
4sub Iove: under Jove, under the open sky.
5hieron: a holy place.
6Asklepion: temple of Asklepios, god of medicine and healing.
7koilon: a cavity or hollow. In the theater, the auditorium.
8orchestra: circular space surrounded by an audience, performance space of actors
9“Here is Mycenae…”: Homer, Iliad, Book VII. 180; XI. 46.
10“And you, Iphigenia, will be the keyholder…”: Euripides, Iphigenia in Tauris, v. 1462–1467.
11“Now you will decay…”: To the Pythian Apollo, 1.185–187
12“Regardless of whether it was the last pagans…”: E. Bourguet, Delphes, Paris, 1925.
13One Battos, a citizen of the island Thera…: in Pindar, Pythian Odes, IV.
14“Unfortunates, why do you not act?”: Herodotus, History, Book VIII.
15the one who, as Pindar says, gave us the lute and inspiration…: in Pindar, Olympian Odes, IX and elsewhere.
16kallistefanos: Gr. beautifully wreathed; a wild olive tree in Olympia, from whose leaves wreaths were made.
17Radamanthus and his spouse Rhea: Lucian in his True History has Radamanthus presiding over the Blessed Isles, but I cannot discover a connection between him and Rhea, wife of Kronos and mother of Zeus.
18theoroi: Gr. envoys to the oracle or to athletic games.
19“Delos, if you will…”: To the Delian Apollo, v. 51–60.
1The letter by Freud to Romain Rolland is titled Un trouble de memoire sur l’Acropole, and dated January 1936.
2Ay de mi Alhama…: Woe for my Alhama; The news was sent to him/that Alhama had fallen/He threw the letter into the fire/and had the messenger killed.
1One can still make out…: Pausanias, Travels in Greece, Book I.
2“Il n’allait jamais…”: He never dined out on the town.
3The statue represents Athena standing…: Pausanias, Travels in Greece, Book I.
4naos: the central part of a Greek temple.
5metic: resident alien, a person who did not have a citizen’s rights in his Greek city-state of residence. Some were poor artisans and former slaves, while others were wealthy.
6grosso modo: roughly, approximately
7“that which cannot be painted”: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book XXXV.
8stylobate: upper part of visible foundations, on which the columns stood.
9“All around the earth let out…”: To Athena, 1.9–13.
10metope: any of the square spaces between triglyphs or members in a Doric frieze.
11architrave: the lowermost member of a classical entablature, resting originally upon columns; or, a molded or decorated band framing a panel or an opening, especially of a door or window.
12Arnold Walter Lawrence…: in A.W. Lawrence, Greek Architecture, London, 1957.
13“With an eye to the city’s glory…” “We are the soldiers of the gods…” “The Senate and the Roman people…”: Plutarch’s Lives, “Sulla” and “Pericles.”
14“Paintings thrown into the dust…”: Polybius, History.
15“If you find any sculptures…”: Cicero, Letters to Atticus.
16a temple in Athens dedicated to an unknown god: Paul, Acts of the Apostles 17, 23.
17peristyle: a colonnade surrounding a building or open space; or, the open space surrounded by a colonnade.
18apse: a vaulted semicircular or polygonal recess in a building, especially at the end of the choir of a church.
19“O Athens—mother of wisdom…”: Nicetae Choniatae orationes et epistulae.
20“Foreseeing the abandonment of Athens…”: F. Morosini, Vera e distinta relatione dell’acquisto della città e fortezza d’Athene… Venice-Bologna, 1689.
21Vernhum: assumed to be a name garbled by Jacob Spon, author of an account of travel to the Acropolis.
22“One day when I was drawing…”: E. Dodwell, A Classical and Topographical Tour through Greece, during the years 1801, 1805, and 1806. London, 1819.
23frieze: the part of a classical entablature between the architrave and the cornice.
24pediment: a low gable or gable-like feature, typically triangular and outlined with cornices.
25Jacob Spon’s three-volume report: Jacob Spon, Voyage d’Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et du Levant… (Lyon 1678–80).
26High Porte: also Sublime Porte, or Bab-i Ali, used to refer to the Divan (court) of the Ottoman Empire where government policies were established.
27Voyage pittoresque dans l’Empire ottoman…: by Choiseul-Goufffier, published in Paris in 1842.
28Thomas Bruce Elgin: Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine (1766–1841) British nobleman and diplomat, ambassador to the Ottoman Empire between 1799 and 1803.
29Quod Gothi…: What the Goths failed to do was done by the Scot.
30Giovanni Battista Lusieri: Italian landscape painter (ca. 1755–ca. 1821); from 1799 he led Lord Elgin’s team of draftsmen, sculptors, and architects in Greece and Turkey and spent the rest of his life assisting with building Elgin’s antiquities collection.
31Turkish permit: A firman (a document from the Turkish government authorizing operations) was needed to allow the sculptors to make casts or replicas of the marbles. The following is an excerpt from the firman:
It is our desire that on the arrival of this letter you use your diligence to act conformably to the instances of the said Ambassador, as long as said five artists dwelling at Athens shall be employed in going in and out of the said citadel of Athens, which is the place of their occupations; or in fixing scaffolding around the ancient Temple of the idols, or in modeling with chalk or gypsum the said ornaments and Visible figures thereon; or in measuring the fragments
and vestiges of other ruined edifices; or in excavating, when they find it necessary, the foundations, in search of inscriptions among the rubbish; that they be not molested by the said Disdar, nor by any other persons, nor even by you; and that no one meddle with their scaffolding or implements, nor hinder them from taking away any pieces of stone with the inscriptions or figures…(From B. F. Cook, The Elgin Marbles, London, 1984)
32François-René de Chateaubriand: Chateaubriand (1768–1848) published Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem in 1811.
33images d’Épinal: crude popular pictures; after French prints published by the printing house Imagérie d’Épinal in France in the 19th century.
34anastylos: reconstruction of columns.
35“A lithograph by Georgios Soutzos…”: N. Balanos, Les Monuments de l’Acropole. Relèvement et conservation… Paris, 1938.
36“O noblesse, o beauté simple et vraie!…”: O nobility, o simple and true beauty! Goddess whose worship means reason and wisdom, you whose temple is an undying lesson of conscience and sincerity. From La Prière sur l’Acropole by Ernest Renan (1823–1892).
1“The Athenians gave Pericles…” “Agamemnon spent ten years…”: quoted in Plutarch, Lives. Verse in the translation of B. Perrin.
1“Such was Etruria’s power…” That very same day; “They had the custom of sitting down…” “To the sound of the flute…”: Titus Livy, History of Rome, Book I, V, VII.
2Cloaca Maxima: Largest sewer.
3hastati: spearsmen
4principes: heavily-armed troops
5triarii: reserve troops
6genetrix…: progenitor and mother of superstition.
7“…non enim hic…”: Not, as is the custom among those Tusci/to earn your dowry shamefully with your body. Plautus, Casina, 523–524.
8Ventris: M. Ventris, The Decipherment of Linear B. Cambridge, 1958.
9“During the reign of King Attys…”: Herodotus, Book I.
10“One can easily imagine what I felt.”: R. Bloch, Les Etrusques.
11“The Etruscans are neither a theory…”: D. H. Lawrence, Etruscan Places, London, 1932.
1rana: frog
2Felix qui potuit…: Happy is he who has come to know the causes of all things. Virgil, Georgics, 2, 490.
3Maxima debetur puero…: Much reverence is due to a boy. Juvenal, Satires, 14, 47.
4Repetitio est mater…: Repetition is the mother of learning.
5Gallia Narbonensis: Provence and Languedoc.
6Massilia: present-day Marseilles.
7“tumultuantes Britannos…”: the Britons were rising up because their spies had been picked up [by the Romans].
8“desired the glory…” “Rome wanted to see…” “he made a triumphant entry…”: from Suetonius, Lives of the Emperors, Book 5: The Deified Claudius.
9euthytonos: a war machine, throwing missiles.
10“in accordance with the old custom…” “plagued by a surfeit of cares…” “The enemy’s battle array…” “groves devoted to cruel superstitions…” “Boudica was flogged…” “without any obvious cause…” “It is an established fact…” “and in such an insolent mood…” “our cohorts and cavalry troops…”: from Tacitus, Agricola.
11limitanei: soldiers guarding the border.
12Quid salvum…: Who will be saved if Rome perishes?
13qui bene amat…: who loves well, punishes well.
14“Gavius hic…”: from Cicero, Second Pleading against Caius Verres, Book 5.61: “This Gavius whom I am speaking of, a citizen of Cosa, when he (among that vast number of Roman citizens who had been treated in the same way) had been thrown by Verres into prison, and somehow or other had escaped secretly out of the stone-quarries, and had come to Messana, being now almost within sight of Italy and of the walls of Rhegium, and being revived, after that fear of death and that darkness, by the light, as it were, of liberty and of the fragrance of the laws, began to talk at Messana, and to complain that he, a Roman citizen, had been thrown into prison. He said that he was now going straight to Rome, and that he would meet Verres on his arrival there.” (Trans. C.D. Younge)
15consecutio temporum: order of tenses.
16Constitutio Antoniniana: Constitution of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, also called Caracalla (188–217), granting Roman citizenship to freemen throughout the Roman Empire.
17Dis manibus: Lat. To divine shades; of blessed memory
18Odi et amo…: Catullus, Carmen 85: I hate and I love. Wherefore would I do this, perhaps you ask? I do not know. But I feel that it happens and I am tortured.
1First published in a northern Polish weekly, Tygodnik Wybrzea, in 1948, this essay was prefaced by a note from the editors: “The following article is the first in a series which the author calls Poetics for Laymen. These articles aim to clarify a range of obscured ideas on the value and meaning of the word as poetic material. We consider the views expressed by the author as matter for discussion and we hope they will provoke a response from our readers.”
2“Akerman Steppes”: poem from Adam Mickiewicz’s celebrated cycle of Crimean Sonnets.
1On publication in TW in 1948, this piece was subtitled: “Second in the series Poetics for Laymen.”
2Gałczyski: Konstanty Ildefons Gałczyski, Polish poet (1905–1953). Quotation from a poem in the cycle “Noctes Aninenses” (Anin Nights, 1939) entitled “Nocny Testament” (Nocturnal Testament). Gałczyski is portrayed by Czeslaw Milosz in The Captive Mind as “Delta”
3Who would know what it means…Juliusz Słowacki, from the poem Król-Duch, or Spirit King.
4I regulated… Arthur Rimbaud, from A Season in Hell (tr. Louise Varèse).
5Black A…: “Vowels” trans. Wyatt Mason.
6René Ghil: French poet (1862–1925), disciple of Mallarmé developed “verbal instrumentalism,” adapting elements from Wagner, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud into a poetic theory claiming to provide a scientific basis for the aesthetic equivalence of musical sound, color, and phoneme.
7Norwid: Cyprian Kamil Norwid (1821–1883) poet, dramatist, and artist, one of the second generation of Polish romantics.
8Breathe in my…: from a poem called “Poeci” (Poets) by Jerzy Liebert (1904–1931), a poet of the Polish interbellum; in the three poetry collections he published before dying of tuberculosis, he wrote on predominantly Christian and philosophical themes.
1First of a cycle of psychological sketches Herbert called charactery in Polish. They were printed in a journal called Dzi i Jutro (Today and Tomorrow) under the pseudonym “Patryk.”
2Ama et quod vis fac! A slight misquotation of St. Augustine’s adage (formulated in a commentary to the Epistle of John 7,8): Dilige et quod vis fac: Love and do what you will.
1From Zbigniew Herbert and Henryk Elzenberg, Korespondencja (Correspondence: ZL, Warsaw 2002), edited by Barbara Toruzyk.