Thursday, February 18, 2010

nympholepsis (gazing at 'Lake Avernus, Fates, & Golden Bough' by JMW Turner)

So benignant do these dancing Fates appear,

Yet rule in awesome potency o'er all who live;

I was momentarily aMUSEd,

an' ta'en away wi' the Fae.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/7258607/Golden-Bough-from-Roman-mythology-found-in-Italy.html

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Tempests on Planet Academe: STEM and the "careful manipulation of metaphor"

This discussion is interesting and of great importance even for us hobbyist amateurs. Don't miss the 'Comments'?

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/02/12/worley

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Ἡ ἝΩΣ ἡ θέα AURORA, the Dawn



from 1881 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eos

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Culture Study : Carthaginian Child Sacrifice

A cutural anthropology study of Phoencian or Punic or Carthaginian child sacrifice, that explores the loaded semantics and politics involved:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/archaeology/journal/newdraft/garnand/paper.pdf

So far, I've read to page 22 : "Bernal’s expectation of a static British/Jewish Phoenician identity reveals the appeal of
essentialism — the reduction of peoples to their static essence — one of the broad categories of
ills that he and Said wish to combat. In reference to identity, this essentialism portrays and
understands social and cultural practices and institutions 'as what they are for all time, for
ontological reasons that no empirical matter can either dislodge or alter' (Said 1995 [1978]:70). It
is a distortion that suppresses temporality and 'assumes or attributes an unchanging primordial
ontology to what are the historically contingent products of human or other forms of agency'
(Herzfeld 1998:189). Of the forms of essentialism addressed by Said and Bernal, I summarize two
here: racism, and Orientalism."

'Supposititious', appearing in that below, means " (1)fraudulently substituted as a genuine heir; (2) illegitimate; (3) of the nature of, or based on, a supposition; hypothetical."

http://rogueclassicism.com/2010/02/17/child-sacrifice-at-carthage/

Latest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/africa/8536313.stm

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

GANYMED - first stanza with my translation

"Was schläfst du, Bergsohn, liegest in Unmut, schief,
Und frierst am kahlen Ufer, Geduldiger!
Denkst nicht der Gnade du, wenns an den
Tischen die Himmlischen sonst gedürstet?" Friederich Hoelderlin

Why stay you there, mountain boy, sulking askew,
Chilling on the shore so bare, gentle shepherd boy!
Don't you think of that world, where formerly upon
Olympian banquet tables. thirsty was the longing?

Monday, February 01, 2010

The Boy and the Eagle



'Ganymed' by Hermann Hubacher, 1952
on Lake Constance, Zurich, Switzerland

http://bit.ly/3sTcdM