by beatriceotto | Mar 7, 2019 | a quote to note
Hemingway’s protagonist goes recruiting and chooses quality over quantity. Trust is what sorts the good men from the ‘undependables’. ‘I could use twenty more men, to be sure,’ Robert Jordan said.‘Good ones do not exist. You want...
by beatriceotto | Mar 7, 2019 | a quote to note
In January 1942, a score of Verdi’s Requiem was smuggled into Theresienstadt concentration camp and performed by prisoners, conducted by Rafael Schäcter.Starting with about 150 singers, the numbers dwindled as they disappeared into this or that hellish ending....
by beatriceotto | Feb 18, 2019 | metaphors
A heartening simile in a vivid, gripping narrative of humans ground between the shifting tectonic plates of contradictory but equally totalitarian ideologies. There is neither much sunshine nor hope in the book, but such hope as there is is tenacious and connected to...
by beatriceotto | Feb 12, 2019 | triologisms
Famed with good reason – see his bringing another warrior to meet his ‘dark-named destiny’. However, the most graphic and distressing spearing I recall from the Iliad is by Patroclus, Achilles’ great pal. And that’s before we let loose...
by beatriceotto | Feb 5, 2019 | triologisms
Consider the vital role of the herald before mechanical forms of broadcast, and how important the quality and strength of their voice. Here, like leaders before and for millennia after, Agamemnon relies on heralds to summon his men. Another age-old though unlamented...
by beatriceotto | Feb 5, 2019 | triologisms
The Trojan war was a Bronze Age affair, magnificently evoked in different sea-surrounded places by two books of Adam Nicolson. His Sea Room touches on the Bronze Age in a remote island off the coast of Scotland, while Why Homer Matters brings it into vivid view in...
by beatriceotto | Feb 5, 2019 | triologisms
The wild card of ancient Greek military planning was the existence and randomness of divine intervention. You never knew which god was backing your enemy, or when or how they might suddenly rouse themselves in wrath and take destructive action against you. Hence, the...
by beatriceotto | Jan 22, 2019 | triologisms
In with the gore and glory of Homer’s war-words, there are repeated expressions of sorrow at human hatred. ‘Soul-perishing’ echoes our more commonly used ‘soul-destroying’. Either way, to be avoided if possible. See other such pleas by...
by beatriceotto | Jan 22, 2019 | triologisms
Homer’s Iliad pulsates with war and violence, sometimes wrapped in glory but often shrouded as much in sorrow. Here, hostility and quarrel are portrayed as heart-breaking, or as we might say, soul-destroying. The second stretch simile is particularly a plea...
