Dante's Inferno

Dante's Inferno presents a very interesting view of hell, in which hell is a funnel shape made up of several circles, with Satan in the center of it all. Along this funnel are different circles of hell, each of which holds a punishment for a different sin. Above, I've included a simple map of the hell that Dante depicts. You can find a larger, slightly less simple map on this page about halfway down.

I noticed that the number three was basically everywhere in Dante's Inferno. The poem both starts and ends with the number three-- beginning with the three beasts and ending with the three heads of Satan. There are also three books to the Comedia, with three categories of sin each containing three circles, and according to this website, each book contains 33 cantos. And of course, it was written in written in terza rema, with three lines to each stanza. It probably should have been obvious, but I had trouble figuring out why Dante used all of these threes. Finally, I realize that it was most likely a religious reference. After all, three is a very significant number in Christianity, representing both the holy Trinity, and heaven, hell and purgatory. 


I found some interesting things online during my research, including a test that told me which level of hell I would spend eternity in, which you can take here.

Down, down, down I'd fall

I had to look up the story "Modern Love" as soon as I was done with class, just because the name reminded me of a song called "To a Modern Love" by my favorite band, the long-split-up and long-forgotten Repeat Offender. The story itself even reminded me of the song a little bit, as the song repeats the line "got what I want, but forgot what I wanted" many times, and that's kind of what happens to the narrator of this story. He got what he want--a relationship-- but forgot about everything else that he wanted because he seemed to be willing to do anything, no matter how ridiculous, for this woman. (I also noticed that both the song and the story mention eyes a lot.)

(By the way, I found the story here on the New York Times website.)

As for the concept of Menippean satire, I'm still a bit confused. The only similarity between this story and Satyricon that I could really figure out is that both seemed to be mocking a more general mental attitude of society rather than something more specific like a person. If this is the case, I'm not sure that I'm a fan of this kind of satire (or at least not modern Menippean satire). There are only so many ways that you can poke fun at society before it all just starts to seem repetitive and cliche. I guess that my problem isn't so much with the genre itself as it is with the fact that satire with a fresh, new topic just seems so rare. I've gotten to the point where I just roll my eyes when I see a satire mocking something like pop culture or technology because I've seen it done so many times that it's just gotten old.

Catullus-inspired poem

I wrote my poem in class today stealing lines from two of Catullus's poems, 8 and 85. I love how he captures the bitterness and conflicting emotions of love; I feel like it makes his work timeless.

A translation of 8 is here, and one of 85 is here.

Hair

I hate & love. And if you should ask how I can do both,
I couldn’t say; but I feel it, it and it shivers me

I love your hair,

I hate what it does to me,

I hate the way you just walk around like it’s absolutely nothing,

With it flowing behind you like a dark waterfall and catching my breath in my throat,

It’s not nothing! Don’t you get it? Weren’t you listening at all? Didn’t they warn you?

It’s becoming an obsession—what’s wrong with me? My dreams are swimming in a river of long hair

I hate how you don’t know

I hate how you might know

I hate knowing that I’ll hate you the day that I’m forced to sit down

And listen to a list of reasons that you hate me

And brush a stray hair off my arm

And feel a pang in my chest knowing that it’s too straight and thick and dark to be one of my own

But I love our talks

I love your smile

So warm that I almost don’t believe that it’s hiding anything at all

And your hair—damn it, your hair

I have to stop this nonsense

I’ve got to stop chasing you now—cut my losses

Harden my heart & hold out firmly against you.

Prometheus: "I have HAD it with these mother****ing alien babies on this mother****ing ship!"

Initially, aside from the ship's name, and the brief mention of the Titan Prometheus at the beginning, the movie  Prometheus didn't seem to have much to do at all with the Greek myth. However, after thinking about it for a while, I started to feel like maybe this movie actually was a retelling of the story of Prometheus.

At the beginning of the movie, we see an alien drinking a strange, gross-looking bubbling liquid, then disintegrating and falling down a waterfall into a river, where its broken DNA triggers the generation of life. At first, this scene confused me, but then I thought of how the alien stole the "fire" (or in this case, the urn of black goopy stuff) and suffered for the creation of humanity.

I found a review here that compares the characters in the movie to various figures from Greek mythology. I'm not sure how it fits in to my theory about the symbolism of the movie, but I did find it quite interesting.

The review compares Noomi Rapace's character to the goddess Athena.

Another late post :(

(Note: Sorry for the lateness! I've been having some computer trouble, and I wasn't able to post yesterday.)

Odysseus and Penelope finally have their joyful reunion.

In episode XXIII of The Odyssey, Penelope is reluctant to believe that her husband has actually returned. At first, I was confused as to why she felt as though she needed to test him, but then I thought back to the times I had read The Odyssey--during my freshman year of college and all the way back in the 6th grade. I realized that because Penelope had been approached by frauds in the past, it was understandable that she would be skeptical.

My 6th grade teacher claimed that Penelope knew that the visitor was her husband the entire time, and was simply attempting to impress him with her thoroughness and caution. I'm not sure if anyone else has addressed this idea, but I think that is an interesting one, albeit a bit of a stretch, and not something that I would have thought of on my own at all. However, I don't think that a woman who loved her husband as much as Penelope claimed to would feel the need to impress her husband by playing games with him. That seems very childish to me.

Penelope playing coy is one explanation for her suspicion, but I think that Penelope was so cautious because she believed the visitor to be her husband, and that she was testing him because she wanted to be certain; she didn't want to get her hopes up only to be wrong and find out that the man was only a stranger. After all, it's a terrible feeling to have one's hopes dashed.

A song from a movie based on the Odyssey that I watched with both my 6th grade class, and my LSIC class.

Day 2: Using this blog as my random creative dumping ground...

Well, since I just wrote "yesterday"'s post, I'm not entirely sure what to write for Day 2, but I'll give it a shot. This might just be an excuse for me to do some songwriting under the guise of a homework assignment (Yep, I write songs. For some reason, that tends to surprise people.), but since we talked about lyric poems in class, I guess I was thinking I could try writing one here. And possibly set it to a catchy tune later. (And yes, I know that lyric poems are a different thing than song lyrics, but they WERE sung in the ancient world, and there are definitely echoes of lyric poetry in modern music. I can't play the lyre, though, so I'll probably have to stick with guitar.)

Hm... I think I'll do four-line stanzas, with one line of iambic trimeter alternating with one of iambic dimeter.

Now, for the fun, creative part.

I bet you are afraid, and that makes me afraid,
Because I know that you will go,
And leave in your wake words that crouch behind your smiles,
In wait until you've walked away,


And put a safe distance between the two of us,
They'll hide, the way I could have hid,
I feel them watching me, like I could have watched you,
Watched your hair shine like onyx,


And tried to stop the blood from rushing to my cheeks,
And stop my knees from feeling weak,
I wish I never did give you this to you to bear,
'Cause one of us afraid's enough.


Wow, that was hard! Maybe I shouldn't have picked such a strict rhyme scheme. I don't think it's long enough to set to music, or good enough, for that matter. But if I do, maybe I'll post the video on here just for kicks.

Hopefully this wasn't too off-topic.

Genesis: My Day 1 Post on Day 2

Well, this was supposed to have been posted yesterday, but I had a lot going on, so instead, I'm posting it today. I know that's not ideal, but I guess better late than never.

During class yesterday, when we talked about how God had given people the power of language, I found it to be a very moving idea. It occurred to me that just as God spoke the words of creation and brought things to life and being in Genesis, humans were the only one of God's creations to be given the ability to create through language and bring things to being with it.

Although I don't actually remember who, if anyone, said this, it says in my notes that some people have an issue with the inconsistency of God's behavior in Genesis. I guess it is true that in Genesis I, God is all-powerful and mighty, creating the world just by speaking words, and in Genesis II, God is more intimate, interacting with people on a smaller scale. But I think that God has a personal connection with people in Genesis I as well. As I said before, God gave people His infinite creative power and the ability to bring things to "life" through language.

Biblical Allusions to the Story of Abraham and Isaac

I found several allusions to the story of Abraham and Isaac. To name just a couple, in the movie "XXX", Vin Diesel's character has to have his loyalty tested to be accepted into a secret criminal society. In order to be accepted, he has to commit murder. Instead of using a bullet, he uses a paintball to imitate a death. Since searching for that movie would probably be dangerous, the IMDb page is here.


Another allusion is in the Simpson's episode "Homer the Great". Like in XXX, the main character wishes to join a secret society. Homer is forced to take the "leap of faith," which is only a one step fall, although people tell him while he is blindfolded that it is a 5-story fall. This is to test to see if he is willing to risk injury, which alludes to how Abraham was willing to kill his son for God.