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| Aphrodite and Ares, caught by Hephaestus' supersnare of resistless metal |
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| I love the incredibly stupid look on Aphrodite's face here. |
I want to know why my students can't understand poet E.E. Cummings' position on righteous, if sadistic and jealous, revenge versus adulterous passion.
I've just finished lecturing about Ancient Greece. I compare it to Ancient Egypt. There's a blog post about the Greece lecture here, and a bit about Ancient Egypt lecture here.
I close out the lecture with modern-day poems inspired by Greek myths. My goal is to emphasize that the Ancient Greeks made a contribution to the world that lasts to this day; their myths still inspire our artists.
These are the poems we read:
We read William Butler Yeats' "Leda and the Swan," a graphic depiction of a beautiful girl being raped by a swan, and the unintended consequence – the catastrophic Trojan War – that Zeus' momentary lust engenders.
We read Edna St. Vincent Millay's heartbreakingly lovely poem, "Prayer to Persephone," in which Millay begs Persephone, who is herself trapped in Hell, to take good care of a dead girl Millay had a crush on.
We read one of the grimmest poems ever written, W.H. Auden's "The Shield of Achilles," whose main message is, "Life is a bitch and then you die." Only it's even worse than that.
It's E.E. Cummings' poem "In Heavenly Realms of Hellas" that confounds my students.
(By the way, I know I am supposed to type Cummings' name in lower case letters. I am dyslexic and selectively breaking orthographic rules like that is just too hard for me.)
The basic plot: Hephaestus, the blacksmith, the one ugly Olympian, is married to Aphrodite, supremely beautiful, the goddess of love. She cheats on Hephaestus with Ares, the handsome war god.
Hephaestus gets his revenge. At his forge, he fashions a very fine net that he throws over the pair while they are making love. He summons the other gods to come and watch the trapped pair, to laugh, and to ridicule.
Hephaestus' act is very cruel. But of course it was very cruel for Aphrodite to cheat on him.
In Cummings' poem, he superficially praises Hephaestus as virtuous, but it's obvious – to me – that he despises Hephaestus, and sides with the adulterous lovers.
My students don't get this at all. They don't get this after I explain it to them. They insist that Cummings is on Hephaestus' side.
This bothers me.
Why don't my students get this? What is it? Is it vocabulary? My students don't use dictionaries. They don't look up words they don't know. I tell them to. Doesn't work.
And … is their inability to read between the lines here symptomatic of some larger problem? I do not know.
Cummings' poem, below:
***
in heavenly realms of hellas dwelt
two very different sons of zeus:
one, handsome strong and born to dare
--a fighter to his eyelashes--
the other,cunning ugly lame;
but as you'll shortly comprehend
a marvellous artificer
now Ugly was the husband of
(as happens every now and then
upon a merely human plane)
someone completely beautiful;
and Beautiful,who(truth to sing)
could never quite tell right from wrong,
took brother Fearless by the eyes
and did the deed of joy with him
then Cunning forged a web so subtle
air is comparatively crude;
an indestructible occult
supersnare of resistless metal:
and(stealing toward the blissful pair)
skilfully wafted over them-
selves this implacable unthing
next,our illustrious scientist
petitions the celestial host
to scrutinize his handiwork:
they(summoned by that savage yell
from shining realms of regions dark)
laugh long at Beautiful and Brave
--wildly who rage,vainly who strive;
and being finally released
flee one another like the pest
thus did immortal jealousy
quell divine generosity,
thus reason vanquished instinct and
matter became the slave of mind;
thus virtue triumphed over vice
and beauty bowed to ugliness
and logic thwarted life:and thus--
but look around you,friends and foes
my tragic tale concludes herewith:
soldier,beware of mrs smith
I've just finished lecturing about Ancient Greece. I compare it to Ancient Egypt. There's a blog post about the Greece lecture here, and a bit about Ancient Egypt lecture here.
I close out the lecture with modern-day poems inspired by Greek myths. My goal is to emphasize that the Ancient Greeks made a contribution to the world that lasts to this day; their myths still inspire our artists.
These are the poems we read:
We read William Butler Yeats' "Leda and the Swan," a graphic depiction of a beautiful girl being raped by a swan, and the unintended consequence – the catastrophic Trojan War – that Zeus' momentary lust engenders.
We read Edna St. Vincent Millay's heartbreakingly lovely poem, "Prayer to Persephone," in which Millay begs Persephone, who is herself trapped in Hell, to take good care of a dead girl Millay had a crush on.
We read one of the grimmest poems ever written, W.H. Auden's "The Shield of Achilles," whose main message is, "Life is a bitch and then you die." Only it's even worse than that.
It's E.E. Cummings' poem "In Heavenly Realms of Hellas" that confounds my students.
(By the way, I know I am supposed to type Cummings' name in lower case letters. I am dyslexic and selectively breaking orthographic rules like that is just too hard for me.)
The basic plot: Hephaestus, the blacksmith, the one ugly Olympian, is married to Aphrodite, supremely beautiful, the goddess of love. She cheats on Hephaestus with Ares, the handsome war god.
Hephaestus gets his revenge. At his forge, he fashions a very fine net that he throws over the pair while they are making love. He summons the other gods to come and watch the trapped pair, to laugh, and to ridicule.
Hephaestus' act is very cruel. But of course it was very cruel for Aphrodite to cheat on him.
In Cummings' poem, he superficially praises Hephaestus as virtuous, but it's obvious – to me – that he despises Hephaestus, and sides with the adulterous lovers.
My students don't get this at all. They don't get this after I explain it to them. They insist that Cummings is on Hephaestus' side.
This bothers me.
Why don't my students get this? What is it? Is it vocabulary? My students don't use dictionaries. They don't look up words they don't know. I tell them to. Doesn't work.
And … is their inability to read between the lines here symptomatic of some larger problem? I do not know.
Cummings' poem, below:
***
in heavenly realms of hellas dwelt
two very different sons of zeus:
one, handsome strong and born to dare
--a fighter to his eyelashes--
the other,cunning ugly lame;
but as you'll shortly comprehend
a marvellous artificer
now Ugly was the husband of
(as happens every now and then
upon a merely human plane)
someone completely beautiful;
and Beautiful,who(truth to sing)
could never quite tell right from wrong,
took brother Fearless by the eyes
and did the deed of joy with him
then Cunning forged a web so subtle
air is comparatively crude;
an indestructible occult
supersnare of resistless metal:
and(stealing toward the blissful pair)
skilfully wafted over them-
selves this implacable unthing
next,our illustrious scientist
petitions the celestial host
to scrutinize his handiwork:
they(summoned by that savage yell
from shining realms of regions dark)
laugh long at Beautiful and Brave
--wildly who rage,vainly who strive;
and being finally released
flee one another like the pest
thus did immortal jealousy
quell divine generosity,
thus reason vanquished instinct and
matter became the slave of mind;
thus virtue triumphed over vice
and beauty bowed to ugliness
and logic thwarted life:and thus--
but look around you,friends and foes
my tragic tale concludes herewith:
soldier,beware of mrs smith
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| Greek myths inspire artists today. Leda and the Swan. source |
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| Leda and the Swan by James LeGros source |
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