This, below, the preamble to an old book of notes, chapters, really, 40 chapters that considered American history in entire, every art, every craft, every variation. The thing is cumbersome, not likely to be published in its present form, if at all. Yet, opening statements, because brief, would like sharing for the introduction of a…
Fellow Americans: You might be surprised to learn that you are Greek, in the first instance; that you are Roman, a child of Lucius Junius Brutus; that you are Catholic, even if atheist; that you ascend from victories in the Art of War; that you, fellow Americans, are Hellenocentric, even if citizens of the One…
A Review of Civilization in Little Songs: You, friend, ascend from many victories. All who read these words shall know we won, that we through three millennia have won upon the bloody fields of contest; that through rolls of papyrus, through vellum folios, through books stitched in hard-covered paper we won the sharp battle of…
Reality is a mundane enchantment, a make-believe typical to creatures of our type, to sensate creatures who cannot see over the horizon, who cannot hear through walls, who feel but by direct touch, whose peculiar quality of taste can be known only to the self, alone. We are pretty creatures, flesh alike pearl, geometric in…
LITERATURE Essay 1: Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns Part 4: Homeric Hymns; What We Are * * * IN JOY, in praise we lift our voices to God, all of them; we lift our voices in communion with the life-giving force of the universe; in song we participate, we join in meaning, one with the Divine. …
LITERATURE Essay 1: Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns Part 3: Introduction, Hesiod; What We Are * * * THE SOURCE of our religious imagination is HESIOD, more than any other author he codified the liminal character of our nature, the traditions of our cults, our ritual practices, et cetera; yes, even into Christianity, that Roman assumption…
LITERATURE Essay 1: Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns Part 2: Homer, Odyssey; What We Are * * * Sing through me, O Muse, of the man of many turnings, many devices who off-course wandered time-and-again after plundering the citadel of high walled Ilium. Many cities he saw, many men, and learned their minds; many pains he…
LITERATURE Essay 1: Homer, Hesiod, Homeric Hymns Part 1: Introduction, Homer, Iliad; What We Are * * * μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆοςοὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε Here begins our literature, and all that came thereafter: Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses Fagles, Robert….
