Wednesday, October 9, 2024
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Apollo and the Furies
Narration by the fictional schoolgirl Pagan Moore in a novel
apparently first published on March 4, 2004 —
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"Now, can anyone else tell me or shall I ask Miss Moore again to help us out?” “Apollo is a symbol for the male, the rational, the young, and the civilized. The Furies represent the female, the violent, the old, and the primal. Aeschylus captures a mythical moment in history, one in which the world was torn between a savage and archaic past and the bold new order of Greek civilization, the young Olympian gods, and rationality. The difficulty of the struggle between these two worlds is dramatized by the cycle of violence in the House of Atreus and the clash between Apollo and the Furies.” No one giggled after Dank finished.
—Existence (first novel of a trilogy), pp. 80-81. |
Update at 1:37 PM ET the same day —
A check for the source of the above speech yields …
"Apollo is a symbol for the male, the rational, the young, and the civilized.
The Furies represent the female, the violent, the old, and the primal."
This passage is from
https://www.gradesaver.com/the-eumenides/study-guide/themes.
From the citation data there —
"By Borey, Eddie. 'The Eumenides Themes.'
GradeSaver, 24 October 2000 Web."
Thursday, October 9, 2014
October Nine: Lyche at Bodø
Click to enlarge.
See also Apollo in this journal.
“Nine is a very powerful Nordic number.”
— Katherine Neville, who deserves some sort of prize for literature.
— Heidegger, “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry,”
translated by Douglas Scott, in Existence and Being ,
Regnery, 1949
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Sunday October 5, 2008
Last night's entry presented a
short story summarized by
four lottery numbers.
Today's mid-day lotteries
and associated material:
Pennsylvania, 201– i.e., 2/01:
Kindergarten Theology —
"In a game of chess, the knight's move is unique because it alone goes around corners. In this way, it combines the continuity of a set sequence with the discontinuity of an unpredictable turn in the middle. This meaningful combination of continuity and discontinuity in an otherwise linear set of possibilities has led some to refer to the creative act of discovery in any field of research as a 'knight's move' in intelligence."
I Have a Dreamtime —
"One must join forces with friends of like mind"
Related material:
"Schizophrenia is not a psychological disorder peculiar to human beings. Schizophrenia is not a disease at all but rather a localized traveling discontinuity of the space time matrix itself. It is like a travelling whirl-wind of radical understanding that haunts time. It haunts time in the same way that Alfred North Whitehead said that the color dove grey 'haunts time like a ghost.'"
"'Knight's move thinking' is a psychiatric term describing a thought disorder where in speech the usual logical sequence of ideas is lost, the sufferer jumping from one idea to another with no apparent connection. It is most commonly found in schizophrenia."
I know more than Apollo,
For oft when he lies sleeping
I see the stars at mortal wars
In the wounded welkin weeping.
For more on the sleep of Apollo,
see the front page of today's
New York Times Book Review.
Garrison Keillor's piece there,
"Dying of the Light," is
about the fear of death felt
by an agnostic British twit.
For relevant remarks by
a British non-twit, see
William Dunbar–
Monday, October 9, 2006
Monday October 9, 2006
To Apollo
“This is the garden of Apollo,
the field of Reason….”
John Outram, architect
To Apollo (10/09/02)
Art Wars: Apollo and Dionysus (10/09/02)
Balanchine’s Birthday (01/09/03)
Art Theory for Yom Kippur (10/05/03)
A Form (05/22/04)
Ineluctable (05/27/04)
A Form, continued (06/05/04)
Parallelisms (06/06/04)
Ado (06/25/04)
Deep Game (06/26/04)
Gameplayers of Zen (06/27/04)
And So To Bed (06/29/04)
Translation Plane for Rosh Hashanah (09/15/04)
Derrida Dead (10/09/04)
The Nine (11/09/04)
From Tate to Plato (11/19/04)
Art History (05/11/05)
A Miniature Rosetta Stone (08/06/05)
High Concept (8/23/05)
High Concept, Continued (8/24/05)
Analogical Train of Thought (8/25/05)
Today’s Sermon: Magical Thinking (10/09/05)
Balance (10/31/05)
Matrix (11/01/05)
Seven is Heaven, Eight is a Gate (11/12/05)
Nine is a Vine (11/12/05)
Apollo and Christ (12/02/05)
Hamilton’s Whirligig (01/05/06)
Cross (01/06/06)
On Beauty (01/26/06)
Sunday Morning (01/29/06)
Centre (01/29/06)
New Haven (01/29/06)
Washington Ballet (02/05/06)
Catholic Schools Sermon (02/05/06)
The Logic of Apollo (02/05/06)
Game Boy (08/06/06)
Art Wars Continued: The Krauss Cross (09/13/06)
Art Wars Continued: Pandora’s Box (09/16/06)
The Pope in Plato’s Cave (09/16/06)
Today’s Birthdays (09/26/06)
Symbology 101 (09/26/06)
Wednesday, October 9, 2002
Wednesday October 9, 2002
Annie’s Song
In honor of Apollo (see entries below) and of the Red Mass celebrated tonight on the TV drama “The West Wing,” this site’s music is, for the time being, Bach’s
Mass in B minor (BWV.232)
§ 17. Et in spiritum sanctum (10k) (arr. for 2 guitars by Richard Yates) (David Lovell)
from the Classical Guitar Midi Archives.
Wednesday October 9, 2002
ART WARS:
Apollo and Dionysus
From the New York Times of October 9, 2002:
Daniel Deverell Perry, a Long Island architect who created the marble temple of art housing the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., died Oct. 2 in Woodstock, N.Y…. He was 97.
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From The Birth of Tragedy, by Friedrich Nietzsche (tr. by Shaun Whiteside):
Chapter 1….
To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apolline art of the sculptor and the non-visual, Dionysiac art of music.
Chapter 25….
From the foundation of all existence, the Dionysiac substratum of the world, no more can enter the consciousness of the human individual than can be overcome once more by that Apolline power of transfiguration, so that both of these artistic impulses are forced to unfold in strict proportion to one another, according to the law of eternal justice. Where the Dionysiac powers have risen as impetuously as we now experience them, Apollo, enveloped in a cloud, must also have descended to us; some future generation will behold his most luxuriant effects of beauty.
Notes:
- On the Clark Art Institute, from Perry’s obituary in the Times:
“When it opened in 1955, overlooking 140 acres of fields and ponds, Arts News celebrated its elegant galleries as the ‘best organized and most highly functional museum erected anywhere.'”
- The “Nymphs and Satyr” illustration above is on the cover of “CAI: Journal of the Clark Art Institute,” Volume 3, 2002. It is a detail from the larger work of the same title by William Bouguereau.
- Today, October 9, is the anniversary of the dedication in 28 B.C. of the Temple to Apollo on the Palatine Hill in Rome. See the journal entry below, which emphasizes the point that Apollo and Dionysus are not as greatly opposed as one might think.
Wednesday October 9, 2002
| To Apollo
On this date in 28 B.C. the Temple of Apollo Frui paratis et valido mihi, O grant me, Phoebus, calm content, — The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace, Representations of Apollo: |
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See also
The Angel in the Stone
"Everything is found
and lost and buried
and then found again"
— Tanya Wendling
Friday, May 24, 2024
For Harrison Ford at the Temple of Doom
Related philosophy . . . Apollo October.
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Monday, March 25, 2019
Espacement
(Continued from the previous post.)
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In-Between "Spacing" and the "Chôra " (Ch. 2 in Henk Oosterling & Ewa Plonowska Ziarek (Eds.), Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics , Lexington Books, October 14, 2010) "The term 'spacing' ('espacement ') is absolutely central to Derrida's entire corpus, where it is indissociable from those of différance (characterized, in the text from 1968 bearing this name, as '[at once] spacing [and] temporizing' 1), writing (of which 'spacing' is said to be 'the fundamental property' 2) and deconstruction (with one of Derrida's last major texts, Le Toucher: Jean-Luc Nancy , specifying 'spacing ' to be 'the first word of any deconstruction' 3)." 1 Jacques Derrida, “La Différance,” in Marges – de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972), p. 14. Henceforth cited as D . 2 Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” trans. A. Bass, in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 217. Henceforth cited as FSW . 3 Jacques Derrida, Le Toucher, Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2000), p. 207. . . . . "… a particularly interesting point is made in this respect by the French philosopher, Michel Haar. After remarking that the force Derrida attributes to différance consists simply of the series of its effects, and is, for this reason, 'an indefinite process of substitutions or permutations,' Haar specifies that, for this process to be something other than a simple 'actualisation' lacking any real power of effectivity, it would need “a soubassement porteur ' – let’s say a 'conducting underlay' or 'conducting medium' which would not, however, be an absolute base, nor an 'origin' or 'cause.' If then, as Haar concludes, différance and spacing show themselves to belong to 'a pure Apollonism' 'haunted by the groundless ground,' which they lack and deprive themselves of,16 we can better understand both the threat posed by the 'figures' of space and the mother in the Timaeus and, as a result, Derrida’s insistent attempts to disqualify them. So great, it would seem, is the menace to différance that Derrida must, in a 'properly' apotropaic gesture, ward off these 'figures' of an archaic, chthonic, spatial matrix in any and all ways possible…." 16 Michel Haar, “Le jeu de Nietzsche dans Derrida,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Etranger 2 (1990): 207-227. . . . . … "The conclusion to be drawn from Democritus' conception of rhuthmos , as well as from Plato's conception of the chôra , is not, therefore, as Derrida would have it, that a differential field understood as an originary site of inscription would 'produce' the spatiality of space but, on the contrary, that 'differentiation in general' depends upon a certain 'spatial milieu' – what Haar would name a 'groundless ground' – revealed as such to be an 'in-between' more 'originary' than the play of differences it in-forms. As such, this conclusion obviously extends beyond Derrida's conception of 'spacing,' encompassing contemporary philosophy's continual privileging of temporization in its elaboration of a pre-ontological 'opening' – or, shall we say, 'in-between.' |
For permutations and a possible "groundless ground," see
the eightfold cube and group actions both on a set of eight
building blocks arranged in a cube (a "conducting base") and
on the set of seven natural interstices (espacements ) between
the blocks. Such group actions provide an elementary picture of
the isomorphism between the groups PSL(2,7) (acting on the
eight blocks) and GL(3,2) (acting on the seven interstices).
Espacements
For the Church of Synchronology —
See also, from the reported publication date of the above book
Intermedialities , the Log24 post Synchronicity.
Monday, October 9, 2017
Sunday, May 11, 2014
For the Perplexed
From a New York Times obituary by Bruce Weber tonight—
Charles Marowitz, Director and Playwright, Dies at 82
“There are two kinds of bafflement in the theater: the kind that fascinates as it perplexes, and the kind that just perplexes,” he wrote in The Times in 1969 in an essay about Mr. Shepard’s play “La Turista,” which had recently opened in London. “If a play doesn’t make quick sense, but enters into some kind of dialogue with our subconscious, we tend to admit it to that lounge where we entertain interesting-albeit-unfamiliar strangers.
“If it only baffles, there are several courses open to us: we can assume it is ‘above our heads’ or directed ‘to some other kind of person,’ or regretfully conclude that it confuses us because it is itself confused. However, the fear of being proved wrong is so great today that almost every new work which isn’t patently drivel gets the benefit of the doubt.”
Another play by Sam Shepard mentioned in the obituary suggests a review of…
- “From the Witch Ball,” a post from May 2,
the reported date of Marowitz’s death - “Two Satanic Majesties Request All-Devouring Fame,”
a NY Times review from October 9, 2006 - This journal on that date— October 9, 2006—
“Art Wars: To Apollo.”
Tuesday, October 15, 2013
The Field of Reason*
Or perhaps the Richman.
Roger Richman, agent who represented image rights for the
estates of celebrities, reportedly died on October 9, 2013.
This journal on that date —
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* For the title, see Apollo + Outram in this journal.
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
According to Hoyle
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Midnight in the Garden (continued)–
Tracking Shot
Related material—
See also this journal's September 2009 posts.
This post was suggested by today's previous post and by today's NY Lottery.
For some background to the ioncinema.com post numbered 4210 above,
see, in conjunction with the page headed "Azazel" linked to here earlier today,
the ioncinema.com post numbered 5601.
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“Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, But in my case it was not from thence, methinks, Translation by A.T. Murray, in two volumes. Quoted in a press release for the film "Two Gates of Sleep." |
From the post numbered 460 in this journal—
At the still point… from the film "Absolute Power" :
Photo credit – Graham Kuhn
I’ve heard of affairs that are strictly plutonic,
But diamonds are a girl’s best friend!
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Vine*
See "Nine is a Vine" and "Hereafter" in this journal.
As quoted here last October 23—
Margaret Atwood on Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and Art—
"Trickster is among other things the gatekeeper who opens the door into the next world; those who mistake him for a psychopath never even know such a door exists." (159)
What is "the next world"? It might be the Underworld….
The pleasures of fabulation, the charming and playful lie– this line of thought leads Hyde to the last link in his subtitle, the connection of the trickster to art. Hyde reminds us that the wall between the artist and that American favourite son, the con-artist, can be a thin one indeed; that craft and crafty rub shoulders; and that the words artifice, artifact, articulation and art all come from the same ancient root, a word meaning "to join," "to fit," and "to make." (254) If it’s a seamless whole you want, pray to Apollo, who sets the limits within which such a work can exist. Tricksters, however, stand where the door swings open on its hinges and the horizon expands: they operate where things are joined together, and thus can also come apart.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
True Grid (continued)
"Rosetta Stone" as a Metaphor
in Mathematical Narratives
For some backgound, see Mathematics and Narrative from 2005.
Yesterday's posts on mathematics and narrative discussed some properties
of the 3×3 grid (also known as the ninefold square ).
For some other properties, see (at the college-undergraduate, or MAA, level)–
Ezra Brown, 2001, "Magic Squares, Finite Planes, and Points of Inflection on Elliptic Curves."
His conclusion:
When you are done, you will be able to arrange the points into [a] 3×3 magic square,
which resembles the one in the book [5] I was reading on elliptic curves….
This result ties together threads from finite geometry, recreational mathematics,
combinatorics, calculus, algebra, and number theory. Quite a feat!
5. Viktor Prasolov and Yuri Solvyev, Elliptic Functions and Elliptic Integrals ,
American Mathematical Society, 1997.
Brown fails to give an important clue to the historical background of this topic —
the word Hessian . (See, however, this word in the book on elliptic functions that he cites.)
Investigation of this word yields a related essay at the graduate-student, or AMS, level–
Igor Dolgachev and Michela Artebani, 2009, "The Hesse Pencil of Plane Cubic Curves ."
From the Dolgachev-Artebani introduction–
In this paper we discuss some old and new results about the widely known Hesse
configuration of 9 points and 12 lines in the projective plane P2(k ): each point lies
on 4 lines and each line contains 3 points, giving an abstract configuration (123, 94).
PlanetMath.org on the Hesse configuration—
A picture of the Hesse configuration–
(See Visualizing GL(2,p), a note from 1985).
Related notes from this journal —
From last November —
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From the December 2010 American Mathematical Society Notices—
Related material from this journal— Consolation Prize (August 19, 2010) |
From 2006 —
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Sunday December 10, 2006
“Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry
– J. G. Ballard on Modernism
“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance –
— Daniel J. Boorstin, |
Also from 2006 —
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Sunday November 26, 2006
Rosalind Krauss "If we open any tract– Plastic Art and Pure Plastic Art or The Non-Objective World , for instance– we will find that Mondrian and Malevich are not discussing canvas or pigment or graphite or any other form of matter. They are talking about Being or Mind or Spirit. From their point of view, the grid is a staircase to the Universal, and they are not interested in what happens below in the Concrete. Or, to take a more up-to-date example…."
"He was looking at the nine engravings and at the circle,
"And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune
The nine engravings of The Club Dumas
An example of the universal*– or, according to Krauss,
"This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason…."
For more on the field of reason, see
A reasonable set of "strange correspondences" Unreason is, of course, more popular. * The ninefold square is perhaps a "concrete universal" in the sense of Hegel: "Two determinations found in all philosophy are the concretion of the Idea and the presence of the spirit in the same; my content must at the same time be something concrete, present. This concrete was termed Reason, and for it the more noble of those men contended with the greatest enthusiasm and warmth. Thought was raised like a standard among the nations, liberty of conviction and of conscience in me. They said to mankind, 'In this sign thou shalt conquer,' for they had before their eyes what had been done in the name of the cross alone, what had been made a matter of faith and law and religion– they saw how the sign of the cross had been degraded."
– Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy ,
"For every kind of vampire, |
And from last October —
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Friday, October 8, 2010
Starting Out in the Evening This post was suggested by last evening's post on mathematics and narrative and by Michiko Kakutani on Vargas Llosa in this morning's New York Times .
"One must proceed cautiously, for this road— of truth and falsehood in the realm of fiction— is riddled with traps and any enticing oasis is usually a mirage."
– "Is Fiction the Art of Lying?"* by Mario Vargas Llosa,
* The Web version's title has a misprint— |
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Saturday November 8, 2008
ET SUPER HANC PETRAMAEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM
MEAM ET PORTAE INFERI
NON PRAEVALEBUNT
ADVERSUS EAM
Benedict XVI, before he became Pope:
“… a purely harmonious concept of beauty is not enough…. Apollo, who for Plato’s Socrates was ‘the God’ and the guarantor of unruffled beauty as ‘the truly divine’ is absolutely no longer sufficient.”
“The lapis manalis (Latin: ‘stone of the Manes‘) was a name given to two sacred stones used in the Roman religion. One covered a gate to Hades, abode of the dead….
One such stone covered the mundus Cereris, a pit thought to contain an entrance to the underworld….
The… mundus was located in the Comitium, on the Palatine Hill. This stone was ceremonially opened three times a year, during which spirits of the blessed dead (the Manes) were able to commune with the living. The three days upon which the mundus was opened were August 24, October 5, and November 8. Fruits of the harvest were offered to the dead at this time.”
Log24 on
August 24,
October 5, and
November 8.
Tuesday, December 10, 2002
Tuesday December 10, 2002
Three Coins in the Fountain
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Mars |
Victory |
Sol Invictus |
The reverse of three bronze coins
minted during Constantine’s early years
"Constantine like many of his predecessors had worshipped the Greek and Roman gods, particularly Apollo, Mars and Victory. This fact is evident in the portrayal of these gods on the earliest of Constantine’s coins. Yet surprisingly, even after his dream experience, and subsequent victory over Maxentius, it is recorded that he continued to worship these gods. Although the images of Apollo, Mars and Victory quickly disappeared from his coinage, later coins minted under Constantine shows that he likely continued to worship the sol invicta [sic] or ‘Unconquered Sun’ for 10 years or more after his dream experience. Yet, over a period of years, the experience of the sign, and the victory at the Milvian bridge, eventually led Constantine to favour and later to convert to the Christian faith."
— Ross Nightingale, "The 'Sign' that Changed the Course of History," in Ancient Coin Forum
"Three coins in the fountain,
Each one seeking happiness.
Thrown by three hopeful lovers,
Which one will the fountain bless?
Three hearts in the fountain,
Each heart longing for its home.
There they lie in the fountain
Somewhere in the heart of Rome."
— Sinatra's version of the 1954 song
(Lyrics by Sammy Cahn, music by Jule Styne)
Which one will the fountain bless?
In order to answer this theological conundrum, we need to know more about the unfamiliar god Sol Invictus.
A quick web search reveals that some fanatical Protestants believe that the Roman deities Sol Invictus and Mithra were virtually the same. Of course, it is unwise to take the paranoid ravings of Protestants too seriously, but in this case they may be on to something.
The Catholic Church itself seems to identify Sol Invictus with Mithra:
"Sunday was kept holy in honour of Mithra…. The 25 December was observed as his birthday, the natalis invicti, the rebirth of the winter-sun, unconquered by the rigours of the season. A Mithraic community was not merely a religious congregation…"
— The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911 edition.
Nihil Obstat, October 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor
Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
It would seem, therefore, that as December 25 approaches we are preparing to celebrate the festival of Sol Invictus. This perhaps answers the theological riddle posed by Sammy Cahn.
From "Things Change," starring Don Ameche:
"A big man knows the value of a small coin."
Today's site music celebrates
Cahn, Styne, Sinatra, and the spirit of the 1950's.
Many thanks to Loyd's Piano Music Page
for this excellent rendition of a Styne classic.