28 February 2007

Symposium - Alcibiades is influenced in his drunken speech by Dionysus.

• Frame - a story within a story withing a story etc...(A Matryoshka doll or a Russian nested doll is a set of dolls of decreasing sizes placed one inside another. Its name is a diminutive form of a Russian female name "Matryona" which in turn came from Latin "Matrona". A set of Matryoshka dolls consists of a wooden figure which can be pulled apart to reveal another figure of the same sort inside. It has in turn another figure inside, and so on. )


• Irony - (Socratic Irony - uses ignorance as a pretense.) There is an awful lot of Plato in Plato's Socrates.
• The nature of love (EROS not Philia)
• Sophia - wisdom
• Philosophy is a combination of spiritual love and wisdom(love of wisdom); although it might be said that there is a connection to Eros in the search for knowledge.
• Rhetoric - erotic.
• Phaedrus discusses the idea that Eros was one of the very first gods.
• Plesanius loves to argue and does so by comparing Aphrodite Urania's Eros to the Eros of Aphrodite Pandemos(he is a lawyer). "Few people are unfamiliar with the phrase The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyer. Rueful, mocking, it often expresses the ordinary person's frustration with the arcana and complexity of law. Sometimes it's known known that the saying comes from one of Shakespeare's plays, but usually there's little awareness beyond that. This gap in knowledge has inspired a myth of "correction", where it is "explained" that this is line really intended as a praise of the lawyer's role.
  For example, one legal firm states:
  "The first thing we do," said the character in Shakespeare's Henry VI, is "kill all the lawyers." Contrary to popular belief, the proposal was not designed to restore sanity to commercial life. Rather, it was intended to eliminate those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution -- thus underscoring the important role that lawyers can play in society. " (They will do anything to explain themselves.)
• Eryximachus (Doctor) - discusses love as an illness and the corrections necessary to not partake in vulgar love. (This seems to me as though he had no knowledge of love, and wanted to flaunt his professional knowledge.)
• Aristophanes - *Test*(was supposed to go before Eryximachus, but developed a sudden case of the hiccups, which Eryximachus prescribed several cures.)*Test* A comic.
• Agathon - (tragedian) expressed the idea that love is beauty and youth. Felt incredibly wrong once Socrates gave his speech. Is in love with youth and external beauty, as he has both. (This kind of thwarts Socrates idea, but I think that Agathon had feelings for Socrates, and that Agathon wanted to view Eros as a portrait of himself.)
• Socrates - Started by saying that he knew nothing, and everything that he had learned about the subject of love came from the teachings of a sage elderly woman(Diotima). (Further reading - Raymond Carver)
• The Symposium expresses ideas concerning Homoerotic love as well as pedophilia.
• There were two roles involved in Grecian homosexual relationships: that of the lover (the older man who was infatuated with the younger boy), and the beloved (the young boy who was to resist the advances of the lover, and not enjoy any of the interactions between himself and the lover.) It was only acceptable for the lover to make the advances, and all that the beloved was to want out of the relationship was wisdom and almost like an apprenticeship to their lover.
• Erastes - one who loves
• Eromenos - recipient of love.
• In issue - having children.
• aesthetic - beauty.
• On the physical level Socrates is the lover and Alcibiades is the beloved.
• On the spiritual level their roles are reversed.
• There is an erotic connotation to the phrase "know thyself".(It is funny, I saw an episode of girls next door where the "brilliant" blondes were discussing this very topic.) In my defense, I walked into the room and the TV was on, and being the average American, I left it on because I was too lazy to change the channel.
• In the end, the woman that Dr. Sexon met on the airline said that she just wanted to appease him, which is a reference to the Tempest(Ceres & Proserpina or Demeter and Persephone).
• We are on rung one of the ladder of life.
• Dr. Sexon has not opened the package that Sarah (the woman on the plane) gave to him even though it has been 15 years. Once you open the package, it loses its possibilities/its mystery.
• When she reached up for her baggage in order to leave, Dr. Sexon saw a tattoo of numerals on her other (left) arm. So, she was lying about lying.

This is a hilarious blog that just shows how short sighted society has become. This just goes to show, just because we are supposed to be PC, that doesn't mean that everyone is. ( I don't know if this is even a real issue, and this is neither my blog nor my post, and in no way reflects my beliefs!!!!! I just thought it was hilariously stupid! What does this have to do with anything? What kind of people ask these questions? I feel very sorry for someone who is so insecure that they generalize such a large group of people into such a small box. The link is to the actual blog this came from.)

• Why are gay people turned on by wrestling?
• I think its more an idealism then a true admiration for many. It stems back to the belief that homosexuality flourished in ancient Greece, birth place of wrestling as we know it today. Evidence shows that Olympic games were a celebration of masculinity and many homosexuals, through a Dan Brownish perversion of history, see it as a celebration of homosexuality. I guess mainly because competitors wrestled nude. Regardless, fast forward to the birth of catch-as-catch can wrestling in the modern world.Much like boxing, wrestling went through a "beer and sausage" phase of gentleman wrestlers (i.e. out of shape Anglo-Saxons). Again a celebration of masculinity but because it was sans the Grecian ideal of muscular nude men in close quarters, it never was popular with the gay community. Over the century or so wrestlers have become leaner and more fit. Chiseled abs replacing beer guts, body hair being shaved or waxed off. Compare guys like the American Dream Dusty Rhodes to guys like Batista and you will see the difference (amazingly, Dusty has more or less, or more, of the same shape he has had since his heyday). As wrestlers appearance returns to the Grecian ideal, so do the homosexual undertones.
• Paul Halsall: Homosexual Eros in Early Greece (1986)

26February07

Athena : first daddy's girl, she posed no threat to Zeus because she was a girl.

Symposium:

• Diotima - Socrates supposed teacher on love. Before they could discuss the topic of love, the "men" had to send out the flute girl.


• Plato used Dialectic philosophy.


• Plato believed in a pre-version of the matrix. People sat in a dark cave, staring at the wall. (come into the light).


• Socratic - (Socratic irony) gentle way of leading us into the light (said that he didn't know anything, he got all of his information from a wise old woman).

1. Phaedrus (speech begins 178a)[1]: also familiar from Phaedrus and other dialogues, his approach here is literary


2. Pausanias (speech begins 180c): the legal expert


3. Eryximachus (speech begins 186a): a stereotyped physician


4. Aristophanes (speech begins 189c): the famous comic poet seems at first to be "played for laughs", but his origin myth for the three genders (homosexual, lesbian, and heterosexual) is both fantastic and serious


5. Agathon (speech begins 195a): a self-consciously poetic approach, which is gently mocked[2] by --


6. Socrates (speech begins 201d): familiar to us as Plato's teacher, in this dialogue he retells religious teachings which he attributes to the priestess Diotima


7. Alcibiades (speech begins 214e): reminiscences of his own encounters, amorous or not, with Socrates

Sexon's airplane revelations : Holocaust survivor

• Raconteur - a person who is skilled in relating stories and anecdotes interestingly. (French)



• (Recent info - Father of Anne Frank, Otto Frank's letters found)Before Anne Frank and her family went into hiding in Holland, her father tried to get visas for the United States, documents released in New York show.
  "I would not ask if conditions here would not force me to do all I can in time to be able to avoid worse," Otto Frank wrote in April 1941 to Nathan Straus Jr., a college friend, son of the founder of Macy's department store and head of the U.S. Housing Authority.
  But even Strauss' money and influence didn't help Frank, who also tried to obtain Cuban visas. "National security fears overrode humanitarian concerns," the executive director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Carl Rheins, told The New York Sun. YIVO released the documents related to the Frank family on Wednesday.
  YIVO received 350 cabinets of refugee material in 1974 and a grant to organize it in 2005. That summer, volunteer Estelle Guzine noted a file jacket was missing a date of birth and opened it and saw the children's names Anne and Margot Frank and said, "Oh my God, this is the Anne Frank file," Rheins told The New York Times.
  


• König - she had to tell him stories (Scheherazade of the airways)
  


• The first story that she told was "The Beggar King". This tales features the famous King Solomon
  


• According to Dr. Sexon, and Dorothy, we all just want to go home.



• I found the parallel between the beggar king and the movie "Contact" very interesting.



• The same thing happened to Picard (if you don't know who this is, drop the class).



• Sarah saved her sister with her stories, but her sister ended up having to wear a chevron on her arm. This is interesting because, in the military, acquiring chevrons on your arm is a very good thing indeed.



• At the end of the plane ride, Sarah wiped the fake tattoo off of her right forearm.



• She showed, did, and said something - in reference to the Eleusinian mysteries.

New Study Finds 'Most Narcissistic Generation' on Campuses, Watching YouTube

FIRST QUIZ

*FIRST QUIZ TOMORROW*

BLOGS TO CHECK OUT:

Elizabeth, Brittany R., Jan, and Mine

anything in parentheses is just notes not questions

all actual questions will be numbered, and remember, the instructor retains the right to reinterpret any of our questions as he wishes.

(Next week have read symposium)

1. Q:What did Demeter do to the earth in revenge for the abduction of Persephone? A: Winter
2. Q:What is a Senex?
   A: Doddering old fool(man), old man from which we derive senate senescence - aging senility.
3. Q: What are the three manifestations of the triple Goddess?
   A: Crone(Hecate), Mother(Demeter), Maiden(Persephone)
   
   (Onomatopoeia (occasionally spelled onomatopœia) is a word, or occasionally, a grouping of words, that imitates the sound it is describing, and thus suggests its source object, such as “bang” or “click”, or animal such as “moo”, “oink”, “quack” or “meow”.)
   
4. Puer - archetype or model of eternal youth(aka Peter Pan or Hermes).
5. Answer: I was born Yesterday
   Q: Why I couldn't have stolen Apollo's cattle.
6. Q: What did Agamemnon have to do to go off to the Trojan War?
   A: Sacrifice his daughter(a virgin). from Aeschylus : The Oresteia
7. Q: What is the heart of all tragedy according to Sophocles?
   A: The best thing would be to never have been born at all.
8. Sparagmos: (Definition) Rending, tearing, or shredding of flesh & bone.
9. Kore - maiden(in our story Persephone)
10. Birth of Dionysus - He of the double doors, stitched in.
11. Q: What is Stichomythia?
    A: A short pungent exchange between 2 characters (one liners).
12. The 5 conflicts Steiner says are represented only in Antigone:
    1. Man vs. Woman
    2. Young vs. Old
    3. Society vs. the Individual
    4. The Living vs. the Dead
    5. Man (Humankind) vs. God(s)
13. Who is Aphrodite Urania: Goddess of spiritual love.
14. Q: At the Eleusinian Mysteries, something was acted, shown, and said. What, according to Dr. Sexon, was shown?
    A: A stalk of wheat.
15. The meaning of Antigone's name: Against the birth.
16. Hubris : act of pride/arrogance that oversteps the gods boundaries.
17. Lines 441-581 of Antigone? Maybe
18. In ancient Greece, who would you invoke for creative inspiration and how many are there? Answer: The nine Muses whose mother was Memory and father Zeus.
19. According to the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, what was the topic of the first song?
    Answer: Stairway to heaven (THIS IS THE ANSWER THAT SEXON WANTS), also a celebration of the gods and their birth.
20. Chthonic - relating to the underworld.
21. Answer : Pomegranate ("Don't eat me.") Q : What did Persephone eat while in the underworld that ensured her return.
22. Q : What has Tiresias done that no one else has?
    Answer: Lived as a man and woman and said that female was better or preferable.
23. Polic - City
24. Father of the Muses - Zeus
25. Catharsis - Purgation of pity or fear
26. Who was Antigone's ma? Jocasta
27. Cassie was born in Grand Junction, CO. on February 2nd, 1987 at approximately 7A.M.
28. Is is time to go? Yes, it's 2:03
    James Joyce fell in love on June 16th 1904, and it is therefore "bloomsday".
    YOU ARE ALSO RESPONSIBLE FOR ASSIGNED PAGES IN STEINER
    DO RESEARCH ON ELIZABETH'S SITE.

16February2007

Tiresias - pg 87 in Ovid
Hermes - Best live concert according to Dr. Sexon
Oedipus -

• killed the Sphinx
• caused plague to set in
• made ruler of Thebes when previous King died (his father).
• Marries the former Queen (his Mother).

Dionysus Dithyrambs - God of the double doors. Copy of English translation of Nietzsche's German originals.

Have an exam ? by Wednesday. Can anyone explain Pg. 221 to Cassie? Extra Credit offered for help.

Antigone -

• Story - mythos
• Drama - Sophocles transformed an existing story(mythos) into a work of art.
• inflects catharsis - purgation of pity & fear.

T.S. Eliot: Tiresias

• The Fire Sermon

Senex - Doddering old man (impotent, stupid) (where we derive senate from)

• Creon repeated Oedipus's mistake

Dionysus - had long, fragrant hair

Antigone -

• When the messenger comes in he describes the horribly violent scenes because in Greek Tragedy they did not show the gore, just described it. Lines 1155-1171 in Antigone
• Sparagmos - Polyneices
• The repetitive use of the word howl when describing Haemon's death was inspired by King Lear.
• Sadistic - Marquis de Sade - French writer of novels, plays, and short stories characterized by a preoccupation with sexual violence.

The best thing in life would be not ever being born, at least according to Sophocles.

Macbeth was to abused by life to weep at the death of Lady Macbeth.

14February2007

THE BIRTH OF APHRODITE:

• The dismemberment of Uranus led to the the birth of Venus(Aphrodite), who rose from a foam in the sea that was caused by the "members" of Uranus falling into the ocean. Venus Anadyomene,"Anadyomene" meaning "rising from the sea"; this title was used for Botticelli's painting. On the Simpsons episode The Last Temptation of Homer, Homer hallucinates The Birth of Venus upon first meeting his new female co-worker, prompting one of the Zephyrs in the hallucination (who is portrayed by another coworker) to ask, "What's the matter, Homer? Ain't you ever seen a naked chick riding a clam before?"


• Aphrodite - the mother of Eros: According to tradition, Eros was principally the patron of male love, while Aphrodite ruled men's love of women. Thus his statue could be found in the palaestras, one of the principal venues for men to associate with their beloveds, and it was to him that the Spartans sacrificed before battle. Meleager records this role in a poem preserved in the Greek Anthology: "The Cyprian queen, a woman, hurls the fire that maddens men for women; but Eros himself sways the passion for males." (Mousa Paidiké, 86)


• Aphrodite - The Greek Goddess Aphrodite has numerous equivalents: Inanna (Sumerian counterpart), Ishtar (Babylon), Astarte (Syro-Palestinian), Turan (Etruscan) and Venus (Roman). She has parallels to Indo-European dawn goddesses such as Ushas or Aurora.


• Eros was a power that had no body that was born to form through Aphrodite.


• Eros wafts Psyche off a cliff, instead of killing her as was his mother's bidding, and sets her down in his own castle.


• Worship of Eros was uncommon in early Greece, but eventually became widespread. He was fervently worshipped by a fertility cult in Thespiae, and played an important role in the Eleusinian Mysteries. In Athens, he shared a very popular cult with Aphrodite, and the fourth day of every month was sacred to him.
• The soul's symbol is a butterfly.
• Read the Symposium
• Aristophanes - created the idea of a soulmate. Originally humans were combined of 4 arms, 4 legs, and a single head made of 2 faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spending their lives searching for the other half to complete them. This theory was presented as a half-serious story by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, after all the participants at the Symposium ("drinking party") were charged to philosophize on the topic of love.
• Hetaera - In ancient Greek society, hetaerae were independent and sometimes influential women who were required to wear distinctive dresses and had to pay taxes. Composed mostly of ex-slaves and foreigners, these courtesans were renowned for their achievements in dance and music, as well as for their physical talents. There is evidence that, unlike most other women in Greek society at the time, hetaerae were educated. It is remarkable that hetaerae not only were the only females who would actively take part in the symposiums, but also that their opinions and beliefs were respected by men. Some similarities have been found between the ancient Greek hetaera, the Japanese geisha, and the Korean kisaeng, complex figures that are perhaps in an intermediate position between prostitutes and entertainers.
• Erotic Possession - Aphrodite's affect.

ANTIGONE:

• Haemon ("bloody") (or Haimon) - Haemon and Creon compleat the Old vs. Young conflict that Steiner speaks of on pg. 242.
• Turgenev - Fathers and sons - The title of this work in Russian is Отцы и дети (Ottsy i Deti), which literally means "Fathers and Children"; the work is often translated to Fathers and Sons in English for reasons of euphony. The fathers and children of the novel refers to the growing divide between the two generations of Russians, and the character Yevgeny Bazarov has been referred to as the "first Bolshevik", for his nihilism and rejection of the old order. Turgenev was born into a landed and wealthy family in Oryol, Russia, on October 28, 1818. His father Sergei Nikolaevich Turgenev, a colonel in the Imperial Russian cavalry, died when he was sixteen, leaving Turgenev and his brother Nicholas to be brought up by their abusive mother, Varvara Petrovna Lutovinova.
• Dostoevsky - Brothers Karamazov - The novel explores the existence of God, the nature of truth, and the importance of forgiveness through the actions of its characters. Sigmund Freud called it "The most magnificent novel ever written" and was fascinated with the book for its Oedipal themes.

Just some fuzzy thoughts.

1. I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you..
2. No man or woman is worth your tears, and the one who is, won't make you cry.
3. Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.
4. A true friend is someone who reaches for your hand and touches your heart.
5. The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can't have them.
6. Never frown, even when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.
7. To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.
8. Don't waste your time on a man/woman, who isn't willing to waste their time on you.
9. Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful.
10. Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened
11. There's always going to be people that hurt you. So what you have to do is keep on trusting and just be more careful about who you trust next time around.
12. Make yourself a better person and know who you are before you try and know someone else and expect them to know you.
13. Don't try so hard, the best things come when you least expect them to.

REMEMBER: WHATEVER HAPPENS, HAPPENS FOR A REASON.
True friends: How many people actually have 8 true friends?Hardly anyone I know ! But some of us have all right friends and good friends!!!

My chosen Steiner page.

On page 35 of George Steiner's Antigones, the conflicts of man and god as well as man vs. woman are both expressed. This page interests me because it explains that Antigone's crime was premeditated and that she knew the price she must pay if she were caught. Steiner calls Antigone a criminal because she disobeyed the laws of Creon, who controlled the city-state, but Antigone followed the laws of the Gods. Her obedience to Hades, and loyalty to her family, was of more importance than her own life. One would think that in honoring the Gods, Antigone would be exempt from execution, as God trumps man, but Creon was too blind to see the end results of his sexism. Steiner quotes Kojeve which translates to, "Woman is the concrete embodiment of crime." Now, this thought process is not so far from the idea of Adam and Eve, but Eves crime was for humankind, and against God, whereas, Antigone had her priorities in order. Antigone saw the eternal afterlife, and decided that since it was a bit longer, and the Gods more powerful than Creon, she would deal with the consequences of burying her brother. She loved her brother unconditionally, and none of his life choices were going to make Antigone change her mind about whether or not he should be returned to the dirt. I am sure that many of us have estranged relatives or friends that we would not wish to be eaten by wild animals and refused burial. If you believed in the gods of the underworld, as Antigone did, would you too not try to give to Hades what is Hades'? Even Jesus said "Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s." When religions see the importance of domain, how can we ignore it?

12February2007

Courtesan - Prostitute or kept woman(Pic from Memoirs of a Geisha).

• Octogenarian - a person of eight generations(in their eighties).

Manon>Set in France and Louisiana in the early 18th century, the story follows the hero le Chevalier Des Grieux and his lover Manon Lescaut

Violetta Valery> Baz Luhrmann's 2001 film Moulin Rouge! was inspired by the story.

Odette> of Swan Lake fame. (This link is pretty cool.)

Anna Nicole Smith>In 1997, she recorded a cover version of "My Heart Belongs To Daddy," originally made famous by Marilyn Monroe. The song was released in France and a video featuring Smith was made to promote it.[citation needed]

• Roman Comedy - The comic slave who is smarter than his master has had a long history and has a number of descendants in the form of servants in novels and movie and television comedies, like Jeeves, Hazel, Mary Poppins, Benson, Mr. Belvedere, and the Nanny.


• George Eliot - George Eliot is the pen name of Mary Anne Evans[1] (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880), who was an English novelist. She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. Her novels, largely set in provincial England, are well known for their realism and psychological perspicacity.


• Screed - A long discourse or harangue.


• Genius - In Roman mythology, every man had a genius and every woman a juno (Juno was also the name for the queen of the gods).



• Life once again has imitated art with Anna Nicole Smith's tragedy.

"Fogs don't exist," One of my favorite parts in Eragon (The Inheritance) : When Eragon and Brom first meet Angela, she is trying to prove that all toads are, in fact, frogs. She thinks that this will mean that, as toads do not exist, they cannot harm people by giving them warts or being used in evil potions. Eragon remains unconvinced. This is brought up again in Eldest; wherein she remarks that "All toads are frogs, but not all frogs are toads". This she uses as a basis for her claim that she was "right all along".

So this is art imitating art, and the past becomes the present. Christopher Paolini changes but one word from fog to become frog, and now it is a "new" story.

We must imitate art this weekend, so don't be a toad.

Cleopatra's knot intrinsicate -

• CLEOPATRA: This proves me base:If she first meet the curled Antony,He'll make demand of her, and spend that kiss which is my heaven to have. Come, thoumortal wretch, tan asp, which she applies to her breastWith thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate of life at once untie: poor venomous fool be angry, and dispatch. O, couldst thou speak, that I might hear thee call great Caesar unpolicied!

Hamlet's mortal coil - the phrase “mortal coil,” meaning “the bustle of life.” by Shakespeare(complete works)

• ‘Hamlet’: ‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause.’ It seems to mean ‘the earth, this place’ or something similar -- but why is that?”

Eccentric - off center, unfamiliar (funny, this is a word that I use to describe my favorite people.) Eccentricity is often associated with genius, giftedness, or extreme creativity; the word itself is often employed to euphemize or invert a connotation of madness hence the phrase "there's a method to his madness", implying inscrutable complexity or originality in lieu of the dismissible randomness of common lunacy.

Antigone's reference to Niobe - pg. 188 of Metamorphosis(can't get the book? check this out!)

09February2007

Assignments:

1. Memorize lines in Antigone
2. do something to make an action memorable to someone else.
3. Describe an argument that I have had with a male.

Sticho(row)mythia(speech) - An ancient Greek arrangement of dialogue in drama, poetry, and disputation in which single lines of verse or parts of lines are spoken by alternate speakers.

Example 1:

ISMENE: And what life is dear to me, bereft of thee?
ANTIGONE: Ask Creon; all thy care is for him.
ISMENE: Why vex me thus, when it avails thee nought?
ANTIGONE: Indeed, if I mock, 'tis with pain that I mock thee.
ISMENE: Tell me,-how can I serve thee, even now?
ANTIGONE: Save thyself: I grudge not thy escape.
ISMENE: Ah, woe is me! And shall I have no share in thy fate?
ANTIGONE: Thy choice was to live; mine, to die.
ISMENE: At least thy choice was not made without my protest.
ANTIGONE: One world approved thy wisdom; another, mine.

Example 2:

QUEEN: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended.
HAMLET: Mother, you have my father much offended.
QUEEN: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue.
HAMLET: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Revisioning psychology - "In each of us enacts Persephone in soul." by James Hillman.

Paradox of the rescuer - Is he a white knight, or Hades in disguise?

This isn't "real" dialogue, but this is how I envision most of the arguments that I have with men. There is just a different way that we women think.

Charade (1963)
by Peter Stone.Draft script, 1 October 1962. More info about this movie on IMDb.com

REGGIE Alex -- how can you tell if someone is lying or not?
DYLE You can't.
REGGIE There must be some way.
DYLE There's an old riddle about two tribes of Indians -- the Whitefeet always tell the truth and the Blackfeet always lie. So one day you meet an Indian, you ask him if he's a truthful Whitefoot or a lying Blackfoot? He tells you he's a truthful Whitefoot, but which one is he?
REGGIE Why couldn't you just look at his feet?
DYLE Because he's wearing moccasins.
REGGIE Oh. Well, then he's a truthful Whitefoot, of course.
DYLE Why not a lying Blackfoot?
REGGIE (confused) Which one are you?
DYLE (entering, smiling) Whitefoot, of course.

It is funny, because I better associate with Dyle(Cary Grant), and Reggie(Audrey Hepburn) is taking more of the role of the seductress here. So there you have it, women can be abductors too(or have cloven hooves), but no matter who is the flower faced child, and who is the lord of the underworld, men and women confuse each other.

Demeter - root metaphor for consciousness.

en-theos - god inside you.

Hubris - an act of pride. Agamemnon commits hubris at his wife Clytemnestra's prompting. Clytemnestra wants revenge for the sacrifice of their daughter. Orestes avenges his father's(Agamemnon's) death by killing his mother, and is in turn attacked by the Furies.

I wonder if someone can be addicted to drama, stress, or tragedy? Perhaps this is why it is all in the family; because some people cannot help but create drama.

07February2007

Søren Kierkegaard - "Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (b.1813, d. 1855) was a profound and prolific writer in the Danish "golden age" of intellectual and artistic activity. His work crosses the boundaries of philosophy, theology, psychology, literary criticism, devotional literature and fiction. Kierkegaard brought this potent mixture of discourses to bear as social critique and for the purpose of renewing Christian faith within Christendom. At the same time he made many original conceptual contributions to each of the disciplines he employed. He is known as the "father of existentialism", but at least as important are his critiques of Hegel and of the German romantics, his contributions to the development of modernism, his literary experimentation, his vivid re-presentation of biblical figures to bring out their modern relevance, his invention of key concepts which have been explored and redeployed by thinkers ever since, his interventions in contemporary Danish church politics, and his fervent attempts to analyse and revitalise Christian faith. Kierkegaard burned with the passion of a religious poet, was armed with extraordinary dialectical talent, and drew on vast resources of erudition. "


Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - First published Thu Feb 13, 1997; substantive revision Mon Jun 26, 2006
Along with J. G. Fichte and F. W. J. von Schelling, Hegel (1770-1831) belongs to the period of “German idealism” in the decades following Kant. The most systematic of the post-Kantian idealists, Hegel attempted, throughout his published writings as well as in his lectures, to elaborate a comprehensive and systematic ontology from a “logical” starting point. He is perhaps most well-known for his teleological account of history, an account which was later taken over by Marx and “inverted” into a materialist theory of an historical development culminating in communism. For most of the twentieth century, the “logical” side of Hegel's thought had been largely forgotten, but his political and social philosophy continued to find interest and support. However, since the 1970s, a degree of more general philosophical interest in Hegel's systematic thought has also been revived.

• Entombment - Theme in Antigone. (Interesting that the movie the Illusionist is such a hit. Are we going back to the Victorian age that was as obsessed with death and tragedy as the Greeks?)
• Hysterical means women with detached wombs(hysterectomy)(I caution people that the included link my be thought of as a bit perverse).
• Steiner - Pg. 231-277 will be tested on.
• Steiner - Pg. 232 professes the importance of lines 441-581 in Antigone.
• Mythos - story.
• Natalie Davis
• Belle et la Bete - author Jean Marie Leprince de Beaumont
• Tragedy - All in the family meaning all families are dysfunctional, and you need look no further than your family for tragedy.
• Europa rode off on Zeus disguised as a bull, sister to Cadmus.

02February2007

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - Eternal Return

Deja vu - been there done that, I just forgot.

The Mysteries of Eleusis lasted 2,000 years

• Barley water & pennyroyal (can be used in birth control to change a woman's pH?).


• High Priest


• Said, saw, and did something that transformed the person.


• Grain is a metaphor for conception.

Look up:

• Dromenon - Drama (we get the word done from dromenon).


• Try to woo with Shakespeare's sonnet 18.


• Born yesterday.


• Korean mass marriage.

Remember this for the test!

• Cassie was born in Grand Junction, CO. on February 2nd, 1987 at approximately 7A.M.


• James Joyce fell in love on June 16th 1904, and it is therefore "bloomsday".


• Find the extraordinary in the ordinary.


• Gnosticism - man who fell to earth.


• Aztec new year, purification of the Virgin, groundhogs day, only 15 times that he hasn't seen his shadow.