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For my Odyssey class I am writing "about Helen." Since that means that I'm going to be working off about a hundred lines, I went to the library to find some secondary sources, and for some reason there's not much about her! Through use of the subject heading search in the catalog, I found The Meaning of Helen by Robert Meagher.
About 80 pages in, I thought "Wow, I cannot quote this book ever." This was triggered by his talking about how before the Indo-Europeans came, the Neolithic peoples lived in matriarchal Peace and Harmony.
In hindsight, I should have known from his introduction. "I am the son, the father, and the committed companion of a woman. More abstractly...I know that I share with every woman a common humanity, no slight bond." This is in the middle of a lengthy "discussion" on misogyny and how it's bad. Yes, we get it, you love women.
For a while he uses really purple prose (and by 'for a while' I mean the whole book), but nothing too bad, except identifying Helen completely with Aphrodite, which just doesn't work for reasons that I should probably write about. Then, "Curiously, when Aphrodite...lifts Paris from the battlefield to the bed, she describes him to Helen not as a warrior but as a dancer." Gee, I have no idea why she might not want to describe him as a warrior! [And in any case if she did she'd be lying.]
Oh also Helen's a fertility goddess! because of something with trees. and being part of the Eternal Goddess.
And he objects to Helen's being called argeie because she's not from Argos, like the majority of people who are called argios in the Iliad!
"Helen too belongs there, with her lovers, at the edge of the world, where darkness and light, past and future, west and east, death and life meet." <-- quoted for purple.
Blah blah blah, Pandora's box was really her womb and we all come out of it...
"Here misogyny may be seen to conspire with the love of men for men; for when men make love to men, their seed often finds its way to the head and to the thighs, the would-be "wombs" of Zeus." <-- quoted for the lulz, obviously.
"The essential harmony of the civilizations of Old Europe - harmony with each other and with their world - is silently reflected in their art: their pottery, sculpture, frescoes, and engravings vividly affirm and celebrate life." Yeah, this is pretty much where I started reading only to laugh at it. Are you SERIOUSLY doing this? They lived happily in tune with nature and themselves until the big bad Indo-Europeans came? NO. and I repeat, NO.
And finally the sentence that almost made me throw the book across the subway car: "As if obeying some concealed genetic code, each Indo-European pantheon takes shape along similar lines. Presiding over each is a high-king, a sky-god, governing his household and his world from a sacred acropolis on a northern mountain peak where earth and sky meet in confirmed patriarchy." OH GOD NO. YOU HAVE READ PUHVEL YOU KNOW ABOUT COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY YOU KNOW ABOUT THE INDO-EUROPEANS WHY ARE YOU SAYING GODAWFULLY DUMB THINGS ABOUT "AS IF OBEYING SOME CONCEALED GENETIC CODE" GOD.
So yeah. That is a book that I am not quoting because if Prof. Zeitlin has read it, she will kick me out of school for using it.
About 80 pages in, I thought "Wow, I cannot quote this book ever." This was triggered by his talking about how before the Indo-Europeans came, the Neolithic peoples lived in matriarchal Peace and Harmony.
In hindsight, I should have known from his introduction. "I am the son, the father, and the committed companion of a woman. More abstractly...I know that I share with every woman a common humanity, no slight bond." This is in the middle of a lengthy "discussion" on misogyny and how it's bad. Yes, we get it, you love women.
For a while he uses really purple prose (and by 'for a while' I mean the whole book), but nothing too bad, except identifying Helen completely with Aphrodite, which just doesn't work for reasons that I should probably write about. Then, "Curiously, when Aphrodite...lifts Paris from the battlefield to the bed, she describes him to Helen not as a warrior but as a dancer." Gee, I have no idea why she might not want to describe him as a warrior! [And in any case if she did she'd be lying.]
Oh also Helen's a fertility goddess! because of something with trees. and being part of the Eternal Goddess.
And he objects to Helen's being called argeie because she's not from Argos, like the majority of people who are called argios in the Iliad!
"Helen too belongs there, with her lovers, at the edge of the world, where darkness and light, past and future, west and east, death and life meet." <-- quoted for purple.
Blah blah blah, Pandora's box was really her womb and we all come out of it...
"Here misogyny may be seen to conspire with the love of men for men; for when men make love to men, their seed often finds its way to the head and to the thighs, the would-be "wombs" of Zeus." <-- quoted for the lulz, obviously.
"The essential harmony of the civilizations of Old Europe - harmony with each other and with their world - is silently reflected in their art: their pottery, sculpture, frescoes, and engravings vividly affirm and celebrate life." Yeah, this is pretty much where I started reading only to laugh at it. Are you SERIOUSLY doing this? They lived happily in tune with nature and themselves until the big bad Indo-Europeans came? NO. and I repeat, NO.
And finally the sentence that almost made me throw the book across the subway car: "As if obeying some concealed genetic code, each Indo-European pantheon takes shape along similar lines. Presiding over each is a high-king, a sky-god, governing his household and his world from a sacred acropolis on a northern mountain peak where earth and sky meet in confirmed patriarchy." OH GOD NO. YOU HAVE READ PUHVEL YOU KNOW ABOUT COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY YOU KNOW ABOUT THE INDO-EUROPEANS WHY ARE YOU SAYING GODAWFULLY DUMB THINGS ABOUT "AS IF OBEYING SOME CONCEALED GENETIC CODE" GOD.
So yeah. That is a book that I am not quoting because if Prof. Zeitlin has read it, she will kick me out of school for using it.