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Classics & Virtues

@classicvirtues.bsky.social

Left-Lib w/ White Guelph characteristics || Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Film, and Politics.

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Classics & Virtues @classicvirtues.bsky.social · last wk.

My LRB review of Nolan’s Odyssey would have mentioned how Sinon couldn’t have rose to surface of Hades so quickly because he is in the 10th bolgia of the 8th circle and it took Dante 30 cantos to reach him… but they didn’t ask me

Classics & Virtues @classicvirtues.bsky.social · 2w ago

I have some minor quibbles but overall, I really enjoyed it! For all the talk about how cold Nolan’s films can be, the Odyssey is one of his most emotionally resonant films. 48 hours later and I’m still processing the emotions of the images and performances.

Classics & Virtues @classicvirtues.bsky.social · 2w ago

In light of being able to finally watch The Odyssey tonight, here’s one of my favorite Odyssey-inspired poems, written by George Seferis and translated by @aestallings.bsky.social

GEORGE SEFERIS Upon a Line of Foreign Verse To Elli, Christmas 1931 Happy is he who has made the journey of Odysseus. Happy if, as the journey loomed, He felt the sturdy rigging of a love, stretched taut inside his body like the veins where the blood booms, Of a love with unbroken rhythm, invincible as music and undying, because it was born when we were born, and whether it dies when we do, we do not know, and it is no use trying. God help me to say, in a moment of great joy, what is this love? I sit sometimes surrounded by an alien land, and I hear its distant roar, like the boom of the sea mingled with an inexplicable whirlwind from above. And again and again, the shade of Odysseus appears before me, with eyes red from the brine of the waves, and from a ripe yearning to see once more the smoke wafting from the warmth of his house, and the dog grown old waiting at the door. There he stands, tall, whispering through his whitened beard words of our tongue, as it was spoken three thousand years ago. He holds out a palm calloused from the ropes and the tiller, with skin weathered by the dry north wind, by the scorching heat and the snow. It's as though he wants to banish from our midst the superhuman Cyclops, who watches with one eye, the Sirens, whose song makes you forget, and Scylla and Charybdis, who swallow you whole, so many elaborate monsters that keep us from reflecting how he was a man who strove in the world, with his body and his soul. He is the great Odysseus, the one who directed them to build the wooden horse, and the Achaeans won Troy;