You have been reading Gadamer. I knew it! 
(I think reservations about removing the Ottoman and Christian accretions to the acropolis were voiced somewhat earlier but I will see if I can find any references. But certainly it would be extraordinary if archaeologists in the mid twentieth century thought the excavations were a model of scientific archaeology. )
That’s very sweet of you but Robert Fitzgerald ruined the surprise for me one languorous summer some 15 years ago! If anything, with time I’ve become more confused by Poseidon’s rage and the Olympian psychodrama that surrounds it.
When they’re provoked by mortals, the anger of Olympian gods tends to be disproportionate, at least to our eyes (and, I think, to the ancient Greeks, too) – even in the absence of human culpability, as Actaeon found out. The selfish and almost childish indifference of the gods to the suffering of human mortals is a persistent theme running through the Iliad, and we see it in Sophocles (Ajax, Trachiniae), too. In the Odyssey, Zeus seems to rise above this, embracing a more equitable conception of justice, at least for Odysseus, but other divinities can be maliciously spiteful or else benignly supportive without any apparent regard for proportion or merit.
But put yourself in Poseidon’s shoes – if you were an earth-shaking god, wouldn’t you be a bit miffed too if some mortal poked out your son’s only eye with a red-hot stake?
It’s a punishing book. Not enjoyable in any ordinary sense, rather like kneeling naked in the snow and whipping yourself. But just as unforgettable.
You might find comfort in our friend Carl Jung’s review of the book from 1932!
I suppose it would depend if my son was planning to eat him or not.
What’s the Greek for ‘a bit miffed’?
On the question of restoration vs. leaving things as they were found, you can twist yourself in knots thinking about this.
Many of the most famous, “iconic” works of ancient sculpture were assembled from fragments found during the Renaissance by contemporary sculptors who specialized in doing this, and are really composite works of art that are as much or more a product of the Italian Renaissance as of antiquity. No one today would suggest undoing the fragments and exhibiting them without the Renaissance accretions.
But in the Munich Glyptotek, you can see the remains of the pediment sculptures that once decorated the Temple of Aphaia on Aegina. The sculptures were carted off to Bavaria at the instance of Ludwig I around 1811, much as the Acropolis marbles were carted off to Britain in the same period. Once they were in Munich, Ludwig engaged the Icelandic-Danish neoclassical sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen to “restore” the sculpture, which he did like a Renaissance restorer, creating a work of art of his own imagination out of the fragments. Thorvaldsen was. after his teacher Canova, the leading neoclassical sculptor in that era, but today he is less highly appreciated (except in Denmark) as interest in neoclassical sculpture has waned.
At some point relatively recently, in keeping with contemporary ideology, Thorvaldsen’s restoration was dismantled, and the naked fragments are now on display, along with a photo of Thorvaldsen’s restoration. But when I saw the pitifully dismembered fragments and the photo of Thorvaldsen’s magnificent reconstruction together with them, I have to admit I regretted the loss of Thorvaldsen’t beautiful sculptural ensemble, even if it may have been nothing like the original pediment sculptures as they could be seen in antiquity.
I suppose it would depend if my son was planning to eat him or not.
Don’t forget, Odysseus had no need to stray into the Cyclops’ territory. He did it out of pure idle curiosity, losing several of his men in the process. To be sure, the Cyclops violated all the norms of hospitality. But again, if you were an earth-shaking god, you wouldn’t care about human moral or ethical values – you would only be concerned about avenging your son.
I think you’ve put your finger on what I find so difficult about the gods in Homer (ignoring the differences between the Iliad and Odyssey) - that they are in some ways ‘sympathetic’ characters motivated by apparently human desires, while in other ways they are dangerously inhuman, elemental, unreasonable (this is perhaps simplification to the point of absurdity but I’ve already written one essay in this thread). More the better on that front I say, but I can’t decide whether to treat Poseidon’s rage as an existential threat, central to the power of the tale, or whether appeasing him is simply a ‘McGuffin’, as they say in the movies. Perhaps my views on this will develop as I read through, but he seems quite comic to me.
I’ve only been once (in 2013) and really enjoyed my visit, but I thought the Glyptothek itself was a very forbidding place - almost a neoclassical mausoleum, surrounded by those acres of tightly trimmed grass. Beautiful light though - it would be a wonderful place to sit and draw.
I think you’ve put your finger on what I find so difficult about the gods in Homer (ignoring the differences between the Iliad and Odyssey) - that they are in some ways ‘sympathetic’ characters motivated by apparently human desires, while in other ways they are dangerously inhuman, elemental, unreasonable (this is perhaps simplification to the point of absurdity but I’ve already written one essay in this thread).
I have to admit, the Greek array of capricious, selfish, spiteful, amoral gods, often at odds with one another, usually indifferent to human suffering, but sometimes arbitrarily favoring certain human individuals, seems much more consistent with my experience than a single just, benevolent and providential deity.
I agree Textkit members can be quite challenging at times.
I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving! Sending my own thanks across the Atlantic (and the North Sea, Paul [and down the A1 Seneca]) for everyone’s continuing help with reading Homer.
I think it is worthy of note that both Arete and Alcinous are Poseidon’s descendants too, he is a grandson and she a great granddaughter and therefore Alcinous’ niece. Perhaps this plays some part in the retribution meted out to the Phaeacians?
One thing that has occurred to me in reading these threads is our desire to find consistency. I wonder whether in part this is because we are readers as opposed to listeners. Certainly one finds inconsistencies in Tragedy which can be understood not as lapses but as a kind of logic which carries the audience through certain passages but will be forgotten later on when the plot needs to advanced in a different direction. (I wish I could remember some instances of this but it arose when I studied Trachiniae and maybe Ajax.) So perhaps this is a feature of oral poetry. It could equally be an aesthetic choice that consistency was just not that important.
We are told (by Athena as a young girl) that Arete is the key figure for Odysseus to win over to gain Phaeacian aid and Odysseus duly supplicates her by grasping her knees. It’s natural for us to look for the fulfilment of this influence but perhaps for all the high regard Arete is held in perhaps the tradition (Poet ) couldn’t bring itself to show her as actually being in control. Perhaps it all happens behind closed doors (7.346-7):
Ἀλκίνοος δ’ ἄρα λέκτο μυχῷ δόμου ὑψηλοῖο,
πὰρ δὲ γυνὴ δέσποινα λέχος πόρσυνε καὶ εὐνήν.
Alternatively her importance might be being presented from a young female point of view. Nausicaa is the first to tell of us of the importance of her Mother and Athene impersonating a young girl amplifies it. Even in this wonderland, of course, it may not reflect the actuality of male domination.
We were possibly there at the same time! I visited on my way to Bayreuth for the bicentenary.
I think these examples from the plastic arts illustrate perfectly the dilemma of interpretation. The controversy that rages over reconstructions involving colour clearly demonstrates this. When science points in one direction and aesthetics in another how do we decide. This is not so different from textual hermeneutics. Perhaps we don’t have to decide but just follow Derrida and say “vive la Différance (sic)”
The science isn’t very good in the existing color reconstructions. They are more or less just German grad students with UV lights. It’s a case of poor science pointing one way, and aesthetics warning you that something is up.
For those who want a more nuanced approach these links might be useful. Sure there is disagreement when was there not in scholarly debate?
Brinkmann’s UV techniques can detect color variation, but exact information about original pigmentation is beyond them (mostly, something like Egyptian blue on a sarcophagus is an exception). Your first link has a decent paragraph listing the different types of spectroscopy available in the Research Methodology section. This could recover original pigmentation, in theory, if it has not been fully eroded, but is invasive and expensive. Brinkmann describes his technique, however, as microscopy + raking light + UV + UVR.
Microscopy can have some very cool results for a very well-preserved artifact. For example, see this photograph in this article from Abbe. But Brinkmann’s various reconstructions go quite a bit beyond what was preserved by time. He’s putting on a good exhibit for a museum.
By all means, go back to more “nuanced” discussions like Talbot’s. However, I think that the word must mean something different to you than to me.
Please, no Derrida, I beg you! I’ll have nightmares.
I think you make an interesting point about the difference in the experience of narrative when you read and when you listen to a story - I remember reading something, though I can’t find it, about how we allow ourselves to assume that a playwright like Brecht is able to introduce deliberate inconsistencies to challenge the viewer, or Nabokov etc. etc. in writing, but inconsistencies even in Shakespeare we tend to view as an oversight or lack of sophistication because we don’t have ‘proof’ that he deliberately left them in. You’re right that ‘local logic’, or whatever dramaturgs call it, is often more important in our experience of a performed text than ‘global logic’, although plot holes are always much more obvious the second time you watch a film - I wonder how many times someone might have heard these epics in a lifetime, and how close together?
I suppose our default position is to assume consistency and sense (unless we’re reading Derrida!), then probe the inconsistencies to find a satisfactory way of incorporating them into our understanding of the text? Characters mysteriously coming back to life in the Iliad seem to require a different response from inconsistencies of character (or ‘inconsistent inconsistencies’, as Aristotle says).
p.s. I am very sorry to see that the forum has updated and your head is now about a tenth of its former size. I can hardly even see your look of inscrutable fatigue any more.
I don’t want to stir the pot, but on the Latin Poetry board I’ve reminded our seneca of Frederick Crews’ Postmodern Pooh and its opening spoof essay on Derridadaism.
I’ll check it out, Michael! But to assume, momentarily, the character of an elbow-patched, pipe-smoking grad student at a 70s faculty party - there can surely be no greater parodist of Derrida than Derrida himself.
Edit: I should probably add that while Derrida is easily mocked, I found that the soul-grinding hardship of Signsponge did make me ask some useful questions about my own reading (as well as my own will to live).