That it can be helpful to seek insights from other disciplines and non classicists

Greek Homeric Greek and Early Greek Poetry
1

When I first started off on Latin and Greek in Middle school I was teased by a fellow pupil that the virtue of classics is that it taught people to think but not too much. It comes from the Head master of Rugby School I shall be unclassic from now on and not offer references. It’s horrible if its true because it seems all academic disciplines now encourage this conservatism. So what have I missed out on. I had the privilege to meet an elderly Indian Academic at her home for other reasons a year before she died. It struck me later that I had missed out on so much because when she gave forth on one of her theories on Homer and she had brought Homer and Ovid to Indian students at the main university in West Bengal back in the day. I asked for a copy of Homer in Greek so we could look at a few lines I thought were quite touching. It was then that things started to go downhill.

She was an interpreter of the classics for Indians in the way that Coleman Barks brought Rumi to modern Americans. At my age I shouldn’t have suggested that she was a dilettante even though I later switched that to Renaissance figure. I was the one who missed out at that meeting. Though I guess I have always liked to tease and flirt with older women it was a missed opportunity.

She died last year a year after I met her. Only then did I try searching for her books but she published only in Bengali. She was an award winning creative Bengali writer like Tagore before her. But although one of her projects was to research the adivasi subaltern women’s tradition of folk memories of Indian epics like the Ramayana she could not herself understand any south indian language either I’m pretty sure of too. She never answered what languages she did speak I had just assumed being an Indian it would be half a dozen.

So clearly there is a lot you cannot understand about classical authors if you don’t make the effort to learn Latin and Greek and then spend time specialising in a genre. But I think it is a form of self harm not to engage with those from other disciplines. At her death anniversary an Oxford Indologist Emeritus Professor gave a sort of eulogy for her describing her work (again after reading a book written by her colleague translated into English because he was primarily an expert on Hiniyana buddhism but he kindly agreed to give a zoom eulogy). But I got a better sense of the woman from his talk then I allowed myself to have from a face to face meeting.

I am not an academic. I would like my kids to learn classics to help them learn to think independently. In some countries publishing thoughts is a crime so they could if so interested publish works or engage discussions on de bello gallico and no one would accuse them of accusing Mr Modi of doing anything. And if they try to cross the abyss that separates indology from Classics I hope they do so from a background of familiarity with primary texts in both Sanskrit and Tamil, Latin and Greek. But they may decide they want to be dancers or make up artists or watch nursery rhymes on YouTube as they are only two years old so there’s that.

I wrote what I still think is a brilliant analysis of the Odyssey long before I had actually read the Odyssey. I think I had struggled through book 1 in the original. If anyone has come across How to talk about books I have not read by the French postmodernist academic. You can get greater perspective on a text if you aren’t hindered by considering all those trees and make a guess at what the wood must look like.

My theory on the Odyssey brilliant that it was merely developed from watching the film Sommersby which itself is a wordier version of the French original La retour de Martin Guerre. I pitched it to some class mates. What if Odysseus is actually who he says he is Metis not one person, like the fellowship of the black arrow last man standing takes the prize. What if one of the stories he tells about who he truly is is closer to the truth than any of the others. That he is a sea pirate who was captured by Pharaoh because their group was too slow leaving with the pillage of slave girls and bronze cooking vessels so beloved of Homeric heroes. Then I didn’t even have to read the Odyssey. Every now and then someone would come up and say if that’s true explain this. Why does his dog recognise him. Why doesn’t Penelope say something. What about the scar. And all I had to do was solve each problem one by one like a good defence attorney or publicist.

Would the world miss out by not listening to some kid with a fancy tinselly theory about a book he could not read. The late professor shared a one line summary of one of her lectures that the Ramayana is not really another version of the Odyssey but a retelling of the Illiad. It involves a captured princess and a war band setting out to a distant land to rescue her. I said at the time this is either a very shallow interpretation or one of complete genius. In essence you are also inferring that the Odyssey is merely a retelling of the Illiad. But she didn’t give me the full lecture because of my constant teasing. I think I missed out.

I know there is a snobbery to classics and an arrogance among young men now some women but I think it hurts us and the discipline. No she could not appreciate some of the more touching moments the pathos of some of the memorable lines of poetry. She never really made any connection with the poetry of Homer. What she picked up on were broader structural connections between world epics not just indian and European. I think it can be too easy to dismiss other disciplines when from time to time a layperson writes a sensational book that claims to have resolved a classical problem. For me I would never have looked into the destruction of the Library of Alexandria but for that layperson’s populist take. I’m not suggesting non-specialists always offer the final answer like Michael Ventris. But they can put a fire under lazy students and kick start wider debate.

I guess I want to say as I get older I feel sad at the way I have excluded non-specialists who are embarrassed when pointed out that they cannot read the original text only translations and secondary sources. We should learn more eat their wisdom leaving what is unhelpful the way the Romans consumed Greece. And Greece consumed Sumer via Anatolia and North Africa via Egypt and possibly the classical world consumed China and India. If they refused to engage at all with barbarians who spoke no Greek maybe Homer would not have been able to write anything at all.

2

You developed a brilliant theory on the Odyssey without reading it, just from watching a movie? That’s astounding and you’ll forgive, I’m sure, my skepticism. Pardon me, but this is like saying you can become a brilliant surgeon only by looking at a picture book of the human organs. It doesn’t work that way. Simply this, you can’t become an expert on something written in another language unless you know that language. Now, I’m all on board with listening to people from other disciplines. I had a political science professor who, although he didn’t know Greek, taught a truly wonderful section on Aristotle’s Politics based solely on the translation he assigned us. I was a beginning Greek student at the time taking the class with another beginning Greek student, and we once asked him if he knew the language. He answered, “No, but I really wish I did…” You can go a long way with good translations and commentaries, but you can’t go all the way.

Whqt’s the opposite of preaching to the choir? That’s where you are making these comments on this forum. The thought also occurs to me: Where would your non-specialists and the like be if it weren’t for classicists giving them their translations and commentaries?

3

Obviously a little rhetoric involved when I came up with the theory I had taken five years of Latin and three years of Greek we were asked by the second master to come up with projects but it is impossible to have a conversation with someone if there is no mutual respect yes. You didn’t call me a liar so perhaps I’m being oversensitive. I was quite impressed with it at the time. But if there’s one thing worse than sacrificing a favourite daughter it’s having some stranger do it for you. So kindly unhand her Sir if she needs to be put down then she’s my daughter and I will be the one to do it no matter what your gods say.

If there is any fusion of horizon to be had it’s with your experience of the political science professor.

Obviously I did go on to read Homer. When I was a child I babbled like a chid. You get more from that one if you read νηπιος though it’s captured equally in Jerome’s vulgate infans. But you must be familiar with academic martial arts M101 the hand wave. You might have been taught a different set of categories. That’s when you dismiss the Political Scientist completely saying I’m terribly sorry I am not prepared to discuss anything of Aristotle with you until you have gained some fluency in Greek and at least a passing acquaintance with textual criticism. Do you recognise that at all I am not suggesting you do it but in some classicists. I always thought I had lived a life sheltered from Academe I’ve seen that one a few times.

I was talking specifically though about the late Nabaneeta Dev Sen whom you will know nothing about. And thinking perhaps I could have learnt more by listening and paying obeisance. But that has something to do with caste and matriarchy which you have read about perhaps. Put it this way instead of clasping the knees of Arete Queen of whatitsname I decided to give her peck on both cheeks and ask her if she’s dancing as if she were a liver bird. She was a real person I actually met her. If you insist on scepticism about actual life events I describe then I’m not really sure how we can talk about anything.

I’m certainly not suggesting that you can’t squeeze a little more information from the text by construing the importance of Porson’s Bridge at a key moment. And that is when the non specialists should perhaps remain silent till the grown ups have side barred and decided among themselves whether it matters all that. much.

But there are other issues involved. I am an Indian. My children are daughters. Just as there are issues that non-specialists would struggle to understand because they would lack the tools to understand what was being discussed there are other issues involved in the lack of inclusiveness which you have pointed out you don’t share. You didn’t dismiss an academic teaching you political science just because he had little latin and less greek.

I don’t want to spread this to these other issues maybe I’ll write another thread. The odd thing mind aside from the raising of the hackles of your scepticism that a bratty kid might have had something worth saying about a western classic that his elders and betters had already analysed to death resurrection and the myth of the eternal return. I don’t think you said anything I disagree with.

It’s important to learn vocabulary and basic grammar. Then it becomes important to develop a sensitivity to the language by reading widely frequently consulting grown up dictionaries. Mastery of Grammar gives precision. And then there needs to be guided imagination to become a time lord. How else can we travel back and forth between the worlds when not only have the words changed meaning but the thoughts and constructs are continually phasing in and out of interleaving realities.

I think a corrollorary would be to argue that just because you do not understand Sanskrit or Tamil Akkadian Middle Egyptian or Mediaeval Welsh it should not prevent you from thinking about and discussing the relationship between classic texts or entering into at least diplomatic relations with disciplines such as Indology. But if it’s too much opening the envelope is not for everyone. Some can make excellent pilots but not everyone is equipped to be.a test pilot.

We all depend on each other in this world. Where would linguists be without archaeologists. If you aren’t confident in textual criticism where would you find a text to translate without others poring over texts emending and restoring them. There are other issues. They are related but not enough for me to introduce them here.

I do have one question though for you. You suggest by making this post that I am doing the opposite of preaching to the choir. Are you saying that this way of approaching classical texts multidisciplinary, antiracist following black Athena, feminist following so many it seem mainstream, is not welcome here and I should not post anything else on this vein.

If so that’s fine I can find somewhere else to discuss these ideas. But who speaks for this forum?

4

To address you last point first, no, I’m not saying that at all. Our principle purpose here is learning the languages, discussing various texts in those languages, and generally having fun doing so. You are raising some fairly large philosophical questions, and I was responding specifically to the question of expertise vs. lay knowledge. BTW, I have been the “victim” of academic arrogance more than once. In grad school, I once made a comment challenging a professor’s understanding of the book of Genesis (it came up in a private conversation with a few other students, not remembering the exact context now). She asked me “Do you read Hebrew?” I said “Not yet…” to which she replied, “Then you have nothing to say on the subject!” which pretty effectively shut things down. My response was to go and study Hebrew… :slight_smile: But that was years later.

BTW, I’m American, and have two daughters… Our cultural contexts are vastly different in many ways, but some similarities as well.

5

I’m really new here and still finding my feet on what to post on. Also suffering quite a bit with the lock down. I’ll figure it out slowly. I’ll start catching up on the posts already made and book recommendations. And if I came across too grumpy it’s partly because I’m old grumpy and am continually exhausted with the twins. And sometimes I have bad days too. Thank you for your patience

6

In my personal opinion, Textkit is mostly a language forum, and not really a great place to get into the intricacies of Black Athena, feminism, antiracism, or other topical movements in classico-political studies. On the other hand, the worst that will happen to a post is that it will get moved over to the Academy subforum, usually either for nuttiness or politics.

Really though, still in my personal opinion, the worst posting sin is self-indulgence. Textkit is not a vanity press. It’s a place to interact with other people, presumably because we find their contributions helpful or rewarding in some way. Posts, especially new thread posts, should be created with discussion or conversation in mind.

7

On conversation I usually find it helpful to have at least one other person willing to converse. If nobody does it’s a monologue. If nobody had responded to my first then it would have ended there. But fair enough stick to the text and then there’ll only be blood on the table because your reference is bigger than my reference.

8

I suggest that you look through any number of the discussions in this forum and get a feel for how people are contributing. Again, the main focus is on the languages and understanding the literature from that perspective. Then you can see how best to interact – or not, as you may choose.

9

That seems fair enough. If you are figuratively speaking ironmongers and I keep demanding half a pound of sausages and some corgettes there’s really no point in your engaging with me and I shouldn’t be here in the first place. It’s works for book references mind if that’s ok with yous guys I might just stick to coming here for that.