for nerds: history, punctuation

It's almost as if Chloe Angyal over at feministing.com is afraid of talking seriously about history. Or is it really just "nerdy," for example, to remember (which she does) "the role of Black women activists in the abolition movement" from 1833 to the 1870s (as blogged by historian and professor of English, Carla L. Peterson)?

I did think it was really nerdy for Mike Sangrey over at Better Bibles Blog to go on and on and on about punctuation.  Or was he just trying to get us to notice how wacky his punctuation was while he was making his pronouncements?  He was trying to convince us of clarity and naturalness, saying things like, "So, punctuation is required in the translation, or it wouldn’t be clear and natural—it wouldn’t communicate to an English audience."  I don't really see that as particularly obvious or fair to a writer, and it gives the translator both a lot of latitude and liberty (contra "Nature"), which is how it should be, I believe.

But then who am I?  For family portraits, you may find me wearing such t-shirts:

And sometimes I like blogging on history and on punctuation together, as HISTORYANDPUNCTUATIONTOGETHER.  Sometimes I'll blog on Aristotle.  Wouldn't a dissertation be enough?  Sometimes I'll blog on the Bible.  Wasn't sunday school quite enough?

Well, call me what you like.  I think you're reading this blog post, aren't you?  Maybe you're one of those translation nerds.  If so, then stay tuned for more.

One day, one of Aristotle's students (it could have been Alexander the Great) read this:

If you recognize it, then it's likely that you know it wasn't written for you.  It wasn't.  You know it's a little clip from Aristotle's Rhetoric.  Yep, that's right.  We know it as the book called "The Rhetoric," or as what its most recent translator, George A. Kennedy, calls On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civil Discourse.  And we know that it's really 3 Books, and the little clip above is what has been punctuated as Book 3, Chapter 5, paragraph 6.  Kennedy has entitled the context here as this - "Chapter 5: To Hellēnizein, or Grammatical Correctness" and has put that title, without my quotation marks but with his own white space, as the header on page 206 of his book, the translation of Aristotle's book(s) on rhetoric.

We can also see that paragraph 6 here is how Aristotle rags on the "punctuation" of Heraclitus.  (To be sure, we already know from other things Aristotle wrote how much he disliked Heraclitus, who, for Aristotle, did not write with "Grammatical Correctness," or To Hellēnizein.)  Aristotle is stressing how important it is to be clear and natural with Greek, for his elite Greek all-male students.  (It's sort of like Mike Sangrey's mantra for Bible translators punctuating).

So, some later editor of Aristotle makes these helpful changes in punctuation, helping out Aristotle, not necessarily Heraclitus:

[6] πέμπτον ἐν τῷ τὰ πολλὰ καὶ ὀλίγα καὶ ἓν ὀρθῶς ὀνομάζειν: “οἱ δ᾽ ἐλθόντες ἔτυπτόν με”.  ὅλως δὲ δεῖ εὐανάγνωστον εἶναι τὸ γεγραμμένον καὶ εὔφραστον: ἔστιν δὲ τὸ αὐτό: ὅπερ οἱ πολλοὶ σύνδεσμοι οὐκ ἔχουσιν, οὐδ᾽ ἃ μὴ ῥᾴδιον διαστίξαι, ὥσπερ τὰ Ἡρακλείτου. τὰ γὰρ Ἡρακλείτου διαστίξαι ἔργον διὰ τὸ ἄδηλον εἶναι ποτέρῳ πρόσκειται, τῷ ὕστερον ἢ τῷ πρότερον, οἷον ἐν τῇ ἀρχῇ αὐτῇ τοῦ συγγράμματος: φησὶ γὰρ “τοῦ λόγου τοῦδ᾽ ἐόντος ἀεὶ ἀξύνετοι ἄνθρωποι γίγνονται”: ἄδηλον γὰρ τὸ ἀεί, πρὸς ποτέρῳ δεῖ διαστίξαι.

And that's when the English translators get busy.  Here's the renderings of the top three translators (I guess they're the most-read):

John H. Freese had this in 1926 and his later publisher, for the Harvard Loeb Classical Library, put the revised punctuated Aristotle text right next to Freese's English --

The fifth rule consists in observing number, according as many, few, or one are referred to: “They, having come (pl.), began to beat (pl.) me.”
   Generally speaking, that which is written should be easy to read or easy to utter, which is the same thing. Now, this is not the case when there is a number of connecting particles, or when the punctuation is hard, as in the writings of Heraclitus. For it is hard, since it uncertain to which word another belongs, whether to that which follows or that which precedes; for instance, at the beginning of his composition he says: “Of this reason which exists always men are ignorant,” where it is uncertain whether “always” should go with “which exists” or with “are ignorant.”

Then H. Rhys Roberts, the same year, has this (which was republished also, in 1954), with a few updates in natural and clear punctuation, like so --

(5) A fifth rule is to express plurality, fewness, and unity by the correct wording, e.g. "Having come, they struck me (oi d elthontes etupton me)." It is a general rule that a written composition should be easy to read and therefore easy to deliver. This cannot be so where there are many connecting words or clauses, or where punctuation is hard, as in the writings of Heracleitus. To punctuate Heracleitus is no easy task, because we often cannot tell whether a particular word belongs to what precedes or what follows it. Thus, at the outset of his treatise he says, "Though this truth is always men understand it not," where it is not clear with which of the two clauses the word "always" should be joined by the punctuation.

Much more recently, and to make things more natural and clear for students of rhetoric in 1991 (and then 2007), Kennedy has this --

6. Fifth is the correct naming of plural and singular:  "Having come, they beat me."  What is written should generally be easy to read and easy to speak--which is the same thing.  Use of many connectives⁶⁴ does not have this quality, nor do phrases not easily punctuated,⁶⁵ for example, the writings of Heraclitus. To punctuate the writings of Heraclitus is a difficult task because it is unclear what goes with what, whether with what follows or with what precedes. For example, in the very beginning of his treatise he says, "Of this Logos that exists always ignorant are men." It is unclear whether "always" goes with what precedes [or what follows].

64. Polloi syndesmoi, or polysyndeton, regarded by later rhetoricians as a figure of speech involing a surfeit of conjunctions: i.e., A and B and C, etc., rather than A, B, C. . . . .
65. Classical Greek was generally written without punctuation and even without spacing between the words; it thus had to be "punctuated" by the reader.

Now, if you're looking for a point from me, an idea, a belief, a conclusion of sorts, then it's this: there's very little "natural" about language like this. Rules are written by humans, even punctuation rules. And these are often broken. I believe the KJV Bible, and just about every Bible before it and after has broken punctuation rules.  (I wanted to say that today, just because it's a historical one, you know, the KJV birthday.)

So the king of pronunciation is the one who makes up the rules. A creative writer, like Heraclitus, might be difficult or playful or allow too much play. And so somebody like Aristotle will come in to try to shut that down, to attempt to shut him up. It's sort of comical when you look at it, because Aristotle is just as nerdy as Heraclitus before him. And his punctuation is hardly any clearer. It's just different in how it pronounces the need for clarity and for naturalness and for correctness.  What might you think?  Is this nerdy stuff?  Does it have relevance to history for you, to bible, to translation?  Is one of the four translations above (that Greek one and the three Englishes) clearer or more natural or more accurate or correct to the original than the others?

Enemy Death

After President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden was dead, I was glad to see that Rod of Alexandria and Joel Watts directed us to the words of certain Jews:

one young rabbi said:

43 ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” 44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the [imperial] tax-collectors do the same?

and one wise king had already said:

17 Do not rejoice when your enemies fall,
and do not let your heart be glad when they stumble

And in quoting Matthew 5:43-46 and then Proverbs 24:17, Joel and Rod might have also quoted many, many others (i.e., 2 Samuel 3:32, Job 31:29, Psalm 35:15, Psalm 35:19, Proverbs 17:5, Proverbs 24:18, Obadiah 1:12, Micah 7:8). 

The history of the Jews is replete with enemies and responses.  In September of last year, Rachel Barenblat was re-learning and teaching the history and posted on "The early history of Jews in Muslim lands"; in October she noted "Jews in medieval Christendom" and a few of their "dreadful enemies" back then and over there.  And, on the day when much of the the world watched the wedding of a future king perhaps and his bride, the history of the marriage of enemy Adolf Hitler to his bride was overshadowed for a moment; and who then celebrated the next day remembering that racist, sexist, evil enemy's death?  I'm sure there were some but we were quieter, weren't we?

I think a lot about enemies, and about this very Jewish concept of loving enemies, or of praying for them, or at least of forgiving them at some point.  How does that happen?  I have enemies.  Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and some who are still very much alive.  The goal for me is not to get rid of enemies.  I just can't do it, often for very real and practical reasons.  "Vengence is mine" is one of those scriptures quoted around me when I was little, and often it seemed very sour-grapes and was mostly helpful because it helps you imagine God as your hit man. 

But I think that there's more to it than just hanging around waiting for the one and only God (who happens to be on my side) to take out my enemy, to kill him.

There is much to learn from the abused and from the oppressed here that echoes the real Jewish sentiments of enemy love.

And reading Anne Lamott, when President George W. Bush was in office taking out all of our enemies, I used to laugh at how she'd work out forgiveness of him, because God commanded her to do so, because this was a scriptural thing to do. She learned not to grit her teeth and not to drink the poison of resentments.

And reading bell hooks, I learn about "definition."  How Aristotle, the enemy of females, taught definition was to avoid ambiguities, to define precisely, to "objectively" put your enemies into little and much lower boxes so as to keep yourself free and above and alive; I think I blogged at least once about his strategy.  But hooks has a better way of defining.  Here's one of her definitions that includes the word enemy, and that acknowledges with some force who that must be:

Simply put, feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression. This was a definition of feminism I offered in Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center more than 10 years ago [in 1985]. It was my hope that at that time that it would become a common definition everyone would use. I liked this definition because it did not imply that men were the enemy. By naming sexism as the problem it went directly to the heart of the matter. Practically, it is a definition which implies that all sexist thinking and action is the problem, whether those who perpetuate it are female or male, child or adult. It is also broad enough to include an understanding of systemic institutionalized sexism. As a definition it is open-ended. To understand feminism it implies one has to necessarily understand sexism.
("Feminist Politics: Where We Stand," Feminism is For Everyone: Passionate Politics, page 1)

Notice her phrases "my hope" and "broad enough" and "to include" and "open-ended" and the repeated, "to understand."   This is key to loving one's enemy, to real understanding, I believe.  Notice who this woman's enemy is, although she suffered much because of men:  "[one does not need to] imply that men were the enemy."  This in not mere rhetoric.

This is a way of opening up the possibilities.  It's akin to what Sappho does, to what Anne Carson helping us read and translate Sappho does (from her book, Eros: the Bittersweet).  It speaks to love, to hate, to how we divide unto death, or pray and forgive.  Yes, it's that Jewish idea, but here's from a Greek, from an English poet's perspectives that might help:

It was Sappho who first called eros "bittersweet." No one who has been in love disputes her. What does the word mean?....  Here is contradiction and perhaps paradox. To perceive this eros can split the mind in two. Why? The components of the contradiction may seem, at first glance, obvious. We take for granted, as did Sappho, the sweetness of erotic desire; its pleasurability smiles out at us. But the bitterness is less obvious. There might be several reasons why what is sweet should also be bitter. There may be various relations between the two savors.  Poets have sorted the matter out in different ways. Sappho's own formulation is a good place to begin tracing the possibilities. The relevant fragment runs:

Ἕρος δαὖτέ μ᾽ ὀ λυσιμέλες δόνει,
γλυκύπικρον ἀμάχανον ὄρπετον
Eros once again limb-loosener whirls me
sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up
_____________________________(LP, fr. 130)

It is hard to translate. "Sweetbitter" sounds wrong, and yet our standard English rendering "bittersweet" inverts the actual terms of Sappho's compound glukupikron. Should that concern us? If her ordering has a descriptive intention, eros is here being said to bring sweetness, then bitterness in sequence: she is sorting the possibilities chronologically....  But it is unlikely that this is what Sappho means....  Love and hate bifurcate Eros....  Paradox is what takes shape on the sensitized plate of the poem, a negative image from which positive pictures can be created. Whether apprehended as a dilemma of sensation, action or value, eros prints as the same contradictory fact: love and hate converge within erotic desire.
____Why?

Notice how Anne notices how "Love and hate bifurcate Eros" but also how "love and hate converge within erotic desire."  This isn't mere rhetoric.  This isn't just poetry.  This isn't at all how an extremist like Osama bin Laden or Adolf Hitler or an elitist like Aristotle would do things.  Yes, I know they're all men.  But who is implying the nature of the enemy?  My enemies?  Love our enemies?  Pray for those who hate us?  What kind of contradictory poetry or rhetoric or Bible teaching is that?

My wife and I once attended a conference on Love and on loving enemies; it was led by a counseling psychologist whose area of research was sexual abuse, on dealing with the trauma afterwards, on confronting the abusers.  His best friend, he said, was a scholar on the Hebrew Bible.  They advised, he told us, to define our enemies, "but to use a pencil with an eraser."  He then gave several categories for abusers of others so as to begin to have strategies and boundaries for moving forward with them in life.  "But," he reminded, "as you define the people in your life, write with that pencil and be ready to use the eraser to make changes."  I like that.  It seems Jewish in some ways, Bible-like in some ways, feminist in some ways, poetic and Sappho-like and literary-with-real-life in some ways.  As I think about what Joel and Rod posted as they thought about the death of Osama bin Lin, killed by the United States of America as announced by its president, it's useful.  I have living enemies today.  And if I pray for my enemies, then how does that change them and me?  It does.  Rather than causing enemy death, it tends to make me question why they are my enemy, death deserving.  These sorts of words, then, and practices, are helpful.

The Bold and the Brave, including Monique Frize and her students

The central portion of The Bold and the Brave explores issues for women in contemporary engineering and science, but the book begins with sections on the philosophical and historical views of women's nature and nurture.

Plato, for example, was opposed to equality for all women, but believed that some women were better equipped to be leaders than some men and therefore deserved the same training and education.

Aristotle, on the other hand, believed the female is a "deformed male." Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that science is beyond a woman's grasp, so her education should be practical. David Hume wrote that women "are too easily swayed by their emotions."

Despite the fact that society agreed that women were not suited to science by their own nature and education was routinely denied their nurture, some woman made significant contributions to science. They rarely got credit for it.

The Danish astronomer Sophia Brahe (1556-1643) helped her brother Tycho Brahe predict comets and eclipses, but Tycho usually gets the credit.

Maria Winkelmann (1670-1720) discovered a comet, but her husband's name was on the report.

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the above is an excerpt from an essay "From martyrdom to poor Mrs. Einstein: For women, science and engineering has been -- and is -- a long, hard road" by Joanne Laucius in which she reviews the book -- The Bold and the Brave:  A History of Women in Science and Engineering, a contemporary report and history -- by Monique Frize.

Laucius notes:  "Frize is a scientist, so it's no surprise that she uses numbers to illuminate the modern part of the story, which has hardly been a steady upwards-and-onwards. The Montreal massacre didn't appear to immediately discourage young Canadian women from studying engineering. Between 1990 and 1995, the number of young women who enrolled in undergraduate engineering courses increased to 22 per cent from 12 per cent."  

Frize is also a writing professor (or at least gets her students writing history in and history of science).  Read the rest here.

If Your Body's Sexed Female, Who's First in History How?

It's interesting how history is written this month.  Yes, this month in 2010.  What's written is making (sexed) history.  In some month some time from now, some of us or our grandchildren will look back and see how we've gendered our memory:

Via my iPhone, I get news feeds and some of those feeds include "history firsts."  On March 9, for example, I got these two items.

Notice in this first one below, there's mention of 19 males but only 3 females, if you include also the plastic doll "Barbie."  The history spans from 1454 to 2010.

http://www.answers.com/topic/tuesday-march-9-2010-from-today-s-highlights-archive

Now see in this second one here, written by a woman even to focus exclusively on women, the history is given month by month but only goes back to 1805 and never makes it forward past 1995.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/09/v-mobile/2026277/a-look-at-womens-history-milestones.html

I'm sure these "histories" are only random samples of other writings of history that are much better, much more accurate and fuller representations of people who are firsts in history.  But as my children increasingly get history bits through technologies like I'm trying to adopt, well I wonder.

One encouraging piece comes via the WhiteHouse App on my iPhone from US Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis.  Maybe its the stories more than the soundbites that will endure.  Here's Solis's first:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/03/09/values-behind-international-women-s-day-0

through Toni Morrison, Paul, LXX Translators, Hosea: Beloved

      Beloved has been and continues to be interpreted in myriad ways, with many different types of interpreters representing many different angles, agendas, and perspectives, responding to what appears to be [Toni Morrison] the author's invitation to read and probe and discuss the book.  There is raging debate still about the character Beloved--whence she comes, who or what she represents, the meaning or import of this or that statement or action attributed to her/it, whither it/she goes.  But all interpreters generally agree that Beloved is a story about a haunting, the haunting of those who are survivor-heirs of the "sixty million and more" made to undergo the Middle Passage (and to whom the book is dedicated).  It is a story about the failure on the part of all of us to remember those who died in such an experience.  It is about the refusal of those who died to go away and remain forgotten; it is about the haunting of the memory of those who died.  It is about why and how the memory of those who died is prevented, held back, made difficult or impossible to embrace.  Why the memory persists.  Why it hurts, traumatizes.  It is about consciousness, the impact the haunting has on the black soul, on the black consciousness.  It is about the impact of the loss of memory, the prevention and refusal of memory upon the black soul.  It is also ultimately about how the black soul may be reconstituted, healed, and united.  So it is also consciousness, interpretation, and articulation about the terms on which, and the framework within which, the black self, the one who is survivor-heir of the Middle Passage may now look back, remember, interpret, negotiate, and speak to the world about what it thinks, how it feels, and how it travels and experiences.  It is about "ripping the veil" that prevents the black self from remembering and healing itself.  It is a pointing in the direction in which the psychological-social stitching, weaving work can be carried out.
      Although it is clear what character in the book does the haunting, not entirely clear in every part of the book is the matter how the haunting is to be understood, that is, how the haunting works, why it persists, what the haunting is really all about.  It should occasion little surprise that I would notice and want to exploit, as very few other interpreters have, Morrison's epigraph, which is taken from Paul's letter to the Romans (9:25), and which also supplies the name of the character for whom the book is named:

I will call them my people,
Which were not my people;
and her beloved,
which was not beloved.

      No argument need be made about the importance of epigraphs in summing up a writer's agenda.  What I want to stress here is the importance of the epigraph in naming the issue behind the (narrative plotline) issue.  In order for this to be clear, it is important that the larger context of Paul's statement (actually a quotation of Hos 2:25, with word agreement with the LXX of 1:9) be established.  The larger discursive-argumentative context is Paul's effort to address the believers at Rome of mixed background ... regarding what appears to be ... an ironic, even paradoxical twist of fate and circumstance -- the phenomenon of the turning to God in great numbers on the part of Gentiles.... Paul tries his best to clarify matters; it does not work.  His arguments are halting, elliptical, and confusing....
      I think it is important to note that the end of the larger section, Romans 9-11, in which the the prophetic statement that Morrison used for her epigraph is found, Paul sums up....  At the beginning of the larger section Paul engages in a wonderful play on the word "call" (kaleo) before he draws a conclusion regarding the "mystery."  It is this word and Paul's play with it -- that is, signifying on it as marker of "hidden meanin'," of paradox -- that seem to draw Morrison's attention and inspire her usage.
      Morrison seems to have applied the Pauline "mystery" that equate "the call" (as election) and being called "beloved" to her book and black existence.  She renders the historical and perduring exclusion and marginalization; the historical enslavement, the other-ness, and subjugation; and the hoped-for elevation and self-possession in society and culture of black peoples mysterious.  Paul's rendering of Hosea's being called "beloved" is translated by Morrison as black folks' coming to be loved.  So it seems that what is most mysterious is the matter of how they were first enslaved and how they can or may come to be healed, elevated.  In Morrison's thinking -- through Paul [ -- through the LXX translators -- through Hosea] -- black peoples are the Gentiles, the ones thought at first to be outside, at first considered marginals, slaves, in terms of some grand design.  And just as mysterious a thing happened with the Gentiles of Paul's day, as even they were brought into the fold, so black folks, according to Morrison, are destined to be "called," to be loved.

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above, an excerpt from the chapter "We Will Make Our Own Future Text," by Dr. Vincent L. Wimbush, in  True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary.  (HT Rod)

Sonia Sotomayor in the Spotlight

Lots of people are reserving judgment about Sonia Sotomayor as Supreme Justice of the United States of America. But those who are not interested in the American President's succeeding have already started to pick at her: "She's an ivy-leaguer, an elitist with no family other than the staff in her office, no common-man experience." "What an obvious, stupid choice by Obama - obviously playing up the gender and race issues." Overhearing such comments on the radio on the drive home yesterday, I wonder who's making them. How invisible is their sex and their skin color on the other side of their anonymous telephone calls?

For some reason, I starting thinking about Sonia Sotomayor when reading a paragraph from a wikipedia entry on someone else whose father seems not to have been around early, the girl whose parents named her Marie Gouze, who later named herself Olympe de Gouges:

Surviving paintings of de Gouges show her to be a woman of beauty. She chose to cohabit with several men who supported her financially. By 1784 (the year that her putative biological father died), however, she began to write essays, manifestoes, and socially conscious plays. Seeking upward mobility, she strove to move among the aristocracy and to abandon her provincial accent.

Of course, the wikipedia editing is collaborative, but I wonder what the race and gender of the author is, who makes the first sentence in that paragraph cohabit with the next? (Fortunately, the writers do give credit to the white de Gouges for all of her work to expose slavery and mistreatment of blacks, work which came before her work for women.)

What do you see in Malcolm X?

Really, what do you see from your own perspective?

Renee at Womanist Musings wishes Malcolm X Happy Birthday by sharing his eulogy delivered by Ossie Davis. Samhita Mukhopadhyay at Feministing wonders "Where would we be without Malcolm?" and advises readers to "check out Grace Lee Boggs on knowing Malcolm X, Adrienne Maree Brown on the application of Malcolm's teaching to building power in communities around violence and Melissa Harris-Lacewell on the legacy of Malcolm X." Anna Clark at Isak remembers "Happy Birthday, Malcolm ... and Brown v. Board of Education" and gets readers looking at various posts and essays.

Zettler Clay for Clutch Magazine remembers "his rescinded views towards females" in the post "Malcolm X and Black Women: Struggling For Closure." (My biblioblogger friends are silent. And my rhetorician friends are just as mute. That says a lot, doesn't it? But Linda López McAlister had trouble remembering those rescinded views towards females when she viewed Spike Lee's biographical film when it came out 16 and a half years ago: "In the last few days--in this order--I heard a talk by the white radical lesbian separatist philosopher Mary Daly, saw 'Malcolm X' and heard a talk by black feminist theorist and cultural critic bell hooks. . . . One thought that kept occurring to me as I was watching Malcolm X give his speeches was how much his separatist rhetoric and Mary Daly's separatist rhetoric had in common. . . . And maybe, if I hadn't heard bell hooks yesterday, I would have come in here today and given a review of 'Malcolm X' that focused more on the cinematic elements of the film and what Black liberation struggles and women's liberation struggles have in common than on the troubling overt misogyny of the film." And maybe, if you remember, you were listening to somebody, from your own perspectives, when you watched the Spike Lee motion picture remembering the life of Malcolm X.)

And maybe, if you were at the Brooklyn Museum between October 31, 2008–April 5, 2009, you would have noticed history in art from your own perspective. What would you have made of "Carrie Mae Weems's Untitled (Man Smoking/Malcolm X), 1990, which explores human experience from the vantage point of an African American female subject"? The work by Weems was part of "Burning Down the House: Building a Feminist Art Collection . . . an exhibition . . . [the title of which] refers to the idea of the 'master’s house' from two perspectives: the museum as the historical domain of male artists and professed masters of art history, and the house as the supposed proper province of women." Go back, look again, at Weem's photo as you frame it. What do you see in Malcolm X?

Aristotle Teaches Einstein

Hal got me to go with her to the public library again last night. With a Joan Didion novel and another by Joyce Carol Oates in her hands, she passed me trying to balance Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams in my own hands while leafing through Annie Dillard's For the Time Being. "Dad, I'm going to get some non-fiction too," she told me and ended up also with two books on mental illness, one on dianectics, one on the "science" of dreams, and a college-level introduction to psychology by "Dr. Joseph G. Johnson." Whew!

Now she'd inspired me to check out from the physics section Lightman's book Ancient Light: Our Changing View of the Universe.

I've heard and read from Lightman about how (he thinks) science writing is different from artistic writing. Doesn't that sound a little like Aristotle, who must keep such categories separate? And I've read Lightman's incredible fiction before and have discussed with him its translation into over thirty different languages. "Do you want the translators of your novels to write in the target language like scientists, Dr. Lightman, or like artists," I asked him. He then incredibly, bravely, shows that he has gone beyond Aristotle and his aristotelian logic: "The translators must be both artists and scientists."

So back to our books. I skim this morning through my daughter's intro to psychology textbook, in which Dr. Johnson begins with a history of the science. Aristotle appears early and directly influences the thinking of Thomas Aquinas and then of Rene Descartes on the mind and soul. I look now at Lightman's science book on the history of cosmology ("In memory of Rabbi James Wax of Memphis who always thought about the big picture"). Aristotle figures early, of course, and directly influences Nicholas Copernicus and then Thomas Digges and then Isaac Newton; as you shall see below and infer by the title of this post, Aristotle also influences Einstein profoundly.

The chapter ends breathlessly (as I think about Lightman's persistent Aristotelian distinction between "science writer / artist writer") with these two sentences:

Whether Newton himself was more persuaded by this logical argument or by his religious beliefs, he ended up supporting the Aristotelian tradition of a cosmos without change. That tradition, unchallenged by Einstein, was not questioned until the late 1920s.
-(page 13, my emphasis)

Anne Carson and Anne Lamott on Resurrection

Listen to silly Anne Lamott and foolish Anne Carson, wanting hoping desiring so gullibly to keep open the historic and literary possibilities of resurrection, as women see it. The one Anne speaks of Jesus, the other Anne of another Greek-fabled drama, Alcestis in Alcestis by Euripides.

Euripides, of course, is that one of whom the Historian F. A. Wright, in his Feminism in Greek Literature from Homer to Aristotle says: “Euripides and Plato are almost the only [male] authors who show any true appreciation of a woman's real qualities, and to Euripides and Plato, Aristotle, by the whole trend of his [sexist, bigoted] prejudices, was opposed.” But I’m reading the “scholarship” of another “historian” (supposedly) who scoffs, like Aristotle, at true appreciation of a woman’s views. I’m talking about James F. McGrath and his newly published book The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith. McGrath is crying for reviews, but not this one here. In his book, again and again (on more than a dozen pages so far), McGrath feels like he has to pooh pooh the inclusion of women as credible witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus in the gospel of Mark. Not surprising. His historiography is straight phallogocentrism. What I mean by that is this. Hélène Cixous, in her book Stigmata: escaping texts, translates and quotes “Clarice Lispector, who did not think in terms of phallogocentrism.” Cixous points out that Lispector provides a definition of the term: “We have seen this before; it is the ‘phallocratic system’ . . . this is how she [Lispector] conceives of it: a ‘system of inflexible last judgment, which does not permit even a second of incredulity’” (123). Now the English translation of Cixous’s French translation of Lispector’s Brazilian Portuguese has yielded the term. The three together have made “phal-” from Aristotle’s φαλλικὰ (“ph-a-l-l-ika”); “logo,” from Aristotle’s λόγος (or “l-o-g-os”) which he himself makes (by) his λογική (or “l-o-g-ikē” aka LOGIC); and “centric” from Aristotle’s κεντρική (or “k-e-n-tr-ikē”). McGrath, like father Aristotle, does not permit even a second of incredulity. He redefines “faith” and “history” under the guise of “religion.” Enough of that then.

Here’s Anne Lamott in Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

I don't have the right personality for Good Friday, for the crucifixion: I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection. In fact, I'd like to skip ahead to the resurrection vision of one of the kids in our Sunday school, who drew a picture of the Easter Bunny outside the tomb: everlasting life, and a basket full of chocolates. Now you’re talking.

In Jesus’ real life, the resurrection came two days later, but in our real lives, it can be weeks, years, and you never know for sure that it will come. I don’t have the right personality for the human condition, either. But I believe in the resurrection, in Jesus’, and in ours. The trees, so stark and gray last month, suddenly went up as if in flame, but instead in blossoms and leaves--poof! Like someone opening an umbrella. It’s often hard to find similar dramatic evidence of rebirth and hope in our daily lives. (140).

Here’s Anne Carson in Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides:

What does Alkestis' resurrection mean for the sacrificial contract that Admetos had negotiated with Death? This question is never addressed in the play. Mathematically Death is down one soul; common sense (what the Greeks call Necessity) tells us such a situation can’t last. But Herakles seems a character able to override common sense. He releases Alkestis simply by choosing to do so. As if to say, within every death a life stands waiting to be set free, should anyone have the nerve to do it. As if to say, try looking deep into a house, a marriage, or an idea like Necessity and you will see clear through to the other side. Death, like tragedy, is a game with rules. Why not just break the rules?

Rules broken by Euripides in Alkestis include the rule of closure. What are we to make of the ending? Can we be sure the veiled women is alive? that she is Alkestis? that she will live happily ever after with her husband and children? Critics have doubted all these. There is a kind of nuptial drama staged in the final scene--perhaps a parody of the ancient Greek wedding, which centered upon an unveiling of the bride before the eyes of her husband and some exchange of words between them--that stalls oddly at its peak moment. Here the bride is unveiled to her husband at 971/1121 (or so it seems to me; critics doubt this too) but she will not be permitted to speak for three days due to her death-polluted condition. An eerie silence carries her into the big dark house of her unconventional husband.

I find I want to say less rather than more about Alkestis. Not because there is less in this play but because the surface has a speed and shine that evaporate with exegesis, like some of [Alfred] Hitchcock’s plots. Or a trembling of laughter, terrible if it broke out. (248-49)

Declaration of Sentiments for 160 Years

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902) addresses the first woman's rights convention, held in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel in Seneca Falls, New York, July 19, 1848.
Courtesy Corbis-Bettman.

This Sunday, July 20, will mark the 160th anniversary of the signing [and reading] of the Declaration of Sentiments at the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Most historians choose to mark the beginning of the organized American feminist movement from this moment, which had its antecedents in the abolitionist and temperance struggles that had begun earlier in the nineteenth century.

The Churches of Lesbos

Dear theist (especially Christian theist),
I grew up in Việt Nam singing from Thánh Ca in church. When my Texan parents took my siblings and me "home" to America for visits, we'd sing from the Baptist Hymnal. Did we know anything of Sappho, of her influence on us?

Dear feminist,
I am still fascinated by adult human conversion. The most profound changes have come for me, and for our fathers, when we and they have deeply listened to the other openly with audacious hope. Have the newer hymns of the Church of Agia Paraskevi been forgotten?

So, my friends, can we hear stories, our stories of transformation?
What about hymns and Sappho?

Let's listen: Over Sappho, over Lesbos Greece, over the Christian Church, there's been a clash. It's a loveless gong and a clanging cymbal sounded above the songs directed to the sky. It's a burning and a burying. A silencing of histories and of identities, of persons, like you and me. Shall we remember and respect?

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Sappho's poem is generally titled the "Hymn to Aphrodite," although it is occasionally listed in some texts as "Ode to Aphrodite." The hymn is a genre that expresses religious emotion and is most often designed to be sung. Sappho's poem almost certainly was performed in this manner. Later hymns, for example those created during the Middle Ages when the creation of hymns became an important expression of religious fervor, were the sole genre of Christian religious expression. In Sappho's time, the hymn was no less fervent. Greeks believed in their gods as fervently as do Christians, who believe in their god and church as an absolute power. Sappho's hymn is analogous to a prayer. She pleads with her goddess, Aphrodite, to intercede on her behalf. She opens the poem with a request for help, moves quickly into recalling past instances when the goddess has helped her, and concludes with an acknowledgement that she and her goddess are united as allies. A careful study of Sappho's "Hymn to Aphrodite" acknowledges its place as a forefather to the later hymns of the Christian church.

http://www.answers.com/topic/hymn-to-aphrodite-poem-3

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Sappho was a Greek poetess and teacher at a girls school on the Island of Lesbos during the 6th century B.C. The exact dates of her birth and death are unknown. Her lyric poetry was so exquisite that Plato called her the “tenth muse.” Much of her poetry was about both the ecstasy and pain of love, which was virtually unknown in poetry until that time. She also wrote hymns of praise to the Greek Goddesses, particularly Aphrodite.

Not much is known about Sappho’s life, and only a few of her works remain.

Early translators, disturbed that many of her passionate love poems were addressed to adolescent girls, simply changed their gender in translation to fit their world view.

Sappho’s books were burned by Christians in 380 A.D. at the insistance of Pope Gregory Nazianzen. The rest of her works may have been destroyed in 1073 A.D. when Pope Gregory VII ordered another book burning.

A Greek court has been asked to draw the line between the natives of the Aegean Sea island of Lesbos and the world’s gay women. . . . One of the plaintiffs said Wednesday that the name of the association, Homosexual and Lesbian Community of Greece, “insults the identity” of the people of Lesbos, who are also known as Lesbians.

“My sister can’t say she is a Lesbian,” said Dimitris Lambrou. “Our geographical designation has been usurped by certain ladies who have no connection whatsoever with Lesbos,” he said.

http://rashmanly.wordpress.com/2008/05/03/island-home-of-sappho-full-of-lesbians/

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A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a deity/deities, a prominent figure or an epic tale. The word hymn derives from Greek ὕμνος hymnos "a song of praise". . .

Christian Hymnody. Originally modeled on the Psalms and other poetic passages (commonly referred to as "canticles") in the Scriptures, it is generally directed as praise and worship to God. Many refer to Jesus Christ either directly or indirectly.

Since the earliest times, Christianity has sung, "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," both in private devotions and in corporate worship (Matthew 26:30; 1 Cor 14:26; Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16; James 5:13; cf. Revelation 5:8-10; Revelation 14:1-5).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hymn

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