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Mon 18 Feb 2019 09:50:48 AM EST
Went to bed at ten.
Woke around four-thirty, and dozed until six.
High of twenty-six and mostly cloudy today.
Decided to take the day off work for no particular reason — my first PTO day of the year.
Reactions to book two of the Iliad:
- Some of these heavenly visitations, like when Iris in the guise of Polites warns the Trojans, remind me of angelic visits in the Bible.
- Funny that Homer pauses at this moment filled with dramatic irony — the Greek army set up for defeat — to catalog the armies. To prolong the dramatic tension? A simple camera sweep — taking in the Greek army the first time we see it assembled for battle? As readers, we can speed through it, but listeners to a recitation wouldn't have that option.
- Even in the catalog of ships, Homer gives this little portraits (some quite chatty, almost snarky) that keep the section from being entirely skippable.
- Agamemnon "testing" the troops is such a weird moment, like an insecure girlfriend fishing for reassurance. Situationally, it's funny, but it's not really played for humor in the text.
- Would Agamemnon (and Odysseus, to a lesser degree) have as such an ass to Homer's contemporary audience, or is that simply my modern perspective? Apart from being a dick to everyone, when he unknowingly tells the truth with "Zeus has seriously deluded me", are we to laugh at him or pity him?
- Thersites heckling Agamemnon it an odd incident. The authorial assertion is that everyone hated the guy, but if that's true the entire incident seems mean. Homer tells us Thersites often unloads his "large store of insulting language" at Odysseus. "The Greeks felt nothing but anger and resentment at him" feels like a projection from Odysseus's mind rather than a universal truth about the Greeks.
- The catalog of Greeks compared to the catalog of Trojans makes the Trojans seem hugely over-matched in number. But it also shows the Trojans just as favored by various gods — that this is a conflict of split loyalties.
Homer’s Humor: Laughter in The Iliad, Robert H. Bell
http://www.nhinet.org/bell20-1.pdf
Twenty-minute walk after lunch.
Watched Incredibles 2 on Netflix
Meh.
Played some Mario Odyssey.
Messed around with some Go stuff.
Played a little Gris.
Beautiful, though less "game" in the game than I'd prefer.
A nearly full moon tonight.
Watched some anime (The Morose Mononokean and My Roommate is a Cat).
Servings: grains 8/6, fruit 3/4, vegetables 4/4, dairy 5/2, meat 6/3, nuts 0/0.5
Breakfast: cucumber, carrots, banana, coffee
Lunch: a chilaquiles/migas thing (sort of a spicy omelet pancaked with corn chips)
Afternoon snack: apple, banana
Dinner: pizza
122/77
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