the cassandra pages

Roncevaux

I've been reading Cees Nooteboom's Roads to Santiago, which chronicles the Dutch writer's  circuitous pilgrimage (by car) through Spain, less in search of spiritual favors than for the spirits of Cervantes, Zurbarán, Velasquez, Romanesque churches and Cistercian monasteries, tiny villages hung in mountain valleys, virtually unchanged since the Middle Ages. One of the places he visits is the town of Roncesvalles, home of the Abbey of Roncevaux. I love both of those words, which you just have to say aloud: -- Roncevaux, Roncesvalles -- but it took me a while to remember that this is the place where, in 778, the Moors attacked and destroyed the rear guard of Charlemagne's army, while the king and the rest of his army went on ahead bearing treasure and promises of fialty and Christian conversion they had received from the last Moorish stronghold, Saragossa. The promises were a trick, and all the remaining French were lost, partly because the knight Roland refused to signal Charlemagne in time. The great battle was commemorated in one of the earliest works of French literature, The Song of Roland.

Then, a few mornings ago, I was catching up on Lucy's blog, Box Elder, and saw that she had just been there, in Basque country! That was too much of a coincidence, so today I did some research, and downloaded The Song of Roland to read, as well as some of the best images that have been painted of the battle. I haven't yet read the whole thing, but in spite of the power of the epic I found myself aghast at its blatant, Crusader-like message of "Christians are right, Muslims are wrong -- and pagan -- and therefore deserve to die." Of course, the battle took a different course on that day, but one wonders if the world has advanced very much.

My favorites illustrations of the story, though, -- and this is probably what jogged my memory -- are those from The Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends, one of my most-beloved books from childhood, by Alice and Martin Provensen, whose work is much admired by me and by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. I can still remember my mother reading me this story at my bedside, and hear her repeating, "Roland! Blow your horn!" As a fledgling musician, I think I was particularly struck by the idea that someone could blow a horn until their temples burst. But such is the stuff of legend.

Li quens Rollant, par peine e par ahans,  
Par grant dulor sunet sun olifan.  
Par mi la buche en salt fors li cler sancs.  
De sun cervel le temple en est rumpant.  
Del corn qu'il tient l'oiïe en est mult grant:  
Karles l'entent, ki est as porz passant.  
Naimes li duc l'oïd, si l'escultent li Franc. 


The Count Rollanz, with sorrow and with pangs,
And with great pain sounded his olifant:
Out of his mouth the clear blood leaped and ran,
About his brain the very temples cracked.
Loud is its voice, that horn he holds in hand;
Charles hath heard, where in the pass he stands,
And Neimes hears, and listen all the Franks.

An Arbitrary London Timeline

1) ~2000 BC : Remains of seven individuals and grave objects, ancient Jericho. (British Museum)

2) 1300 BC: Bowl and cosmetic box, found strapped with linen over the genitals of an adult male in the cemetery at Tell Es-Sa'idiyeh (the biblical city known as Zarethan) in the central Jordan Valley; this and other Egyptian burial customs at the site are evidence of the Egyptian control of Canaan at the time. (British Museum)

3) ~700 BC : Relief panel from ancient Iran. (British Museum)

4) 594 BC : Babylonian cuneiform tablet recording a donation to a temple by Nebuchadnezzar's chief eunuch, who appears in the book of Jeremiah, and was present at the capture of Jerusalem in 587 BC. (British Museum)

5) AD 43-410 : Mosaics from Roman Britain, and a modern visitor. (British Museum)

6) St. Paul's Cathedral and the Millenium Bridge, seen from Tate Modern on the south bank.

AD 604 : original establishment of St Paul's Cathedral.

AD 1675-1710 : The present St. Paul's, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, is the fifth cathedral to have stood on the site since 604, and was built after its predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It was the first cathedral to be built after the English Reformation, when Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the jurisdiction of the Pope and put it under his own control.

AD 2000 : The Millennium Bridge. We were told that when the Thames is at low tide, people sometimes find bones and artifacts from various periods of London's history along the shoreline here.

AD 2000: Inscription from Tennyson in the floor of the Great Court at the British Museum, built in celebration of the Millennium.

Cycladic figure in a Quebec Landscape (2)

 

A fast drawing in Conté crayon and chalk just to get the idea down; I'll do another larger one in charcoal.

Cycladic figure in a Quebec Landscape

 

This is one of those drawings that happens and then you look at it and say, "whoa!" Now, I'll definitely explore this further.

I've been crazy about Cycladic art since my undergraduate days. Some of these sculptures are only heads, some are seated and a few are doing something, like playing a lyre, but most are like this one - standing female figures. Though a few are as large as 1.5m, most are small, maybe 12-24 inches in height. Dating from 3200-2300 BC, they were made thousands of years before the great period we think of as the height of Greek art, in the 5th century BC. In their minimalist style, carved from bone-white stone, they seem very modern, but there's some evidence that they were originally brightly painted; scholars disagree about whether the figures had a votive significance or not, though the earliest ones, closer to the Neolithic, definitely had the exaggerated hips and breasts of fertility idols.(The Late Neolithic ("New Stone Age") period ended around 3600 BC, when the Bronze Age began.)

I don't own a reproduction figurine, though I'd like one, but yesterday I was looking at a photo of one that I had taken years ago in the British Museum. Because I've also been working on various techniques for creating white lines on a colored field, and decided to sketch the figurine -- but it drew itself as lifesize in a Quebec landscape.

This is just fast-applied acrylic, drawn upon with a white gel pen. I made a mistake in drawing the shoulders and knees of the figure - both should be a bit more balanced and relaxed. However, that's not the point of what was happened in this drawing.

Writing about War

Roman Skaskiw, who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has written several thoughtful pieces about his experiences for the New York Times. He has an essay there today in the "Home Fires" series that the paper has been running about Iraq. Titled "Narrative Memory at War," Skaskiw writes about the fact and fiction of war narratives, and why they come down to us in the forms that they do. It's a good piece, well worth reading, and I appreciated his comments on two of our most ancient war narratives as he probes the curious line between hero and victim, and the mixed motives of participants and chroniclers of war:

While I like the spare granting of hero or victim status in “The Iliad,” I’d be kidding myself to think it isn’t also a whitewashing — propaganda even — for the Greeks. Unglamorous labors are merely alluded to, while excessive descriptions of bloody, glorious combat go on for pages.

My favorite war narrative is Thucydides’s “History of the Peloponnesian War.” The two-and-half-millennium-old narrative does not ignore selfish pettiness, opportunism, false bravado, naïve adventure seeking, and is more familiar to me than many accounts of our wars being peddled today.

Many the wonders

Many the wonders but nothing walks stranger than man.
This thing crosses the sea in the winter's storm,
making his path through the roaring waves.
And she, the greatest of the gods, the earth --
ageless she is, and unwearied -- he wears her away
as the ploughs go up and down from year to year
and his mules turn up the soil.

Gay nations of birds he snares and leads,
wild beast tribes and the salty brood of the sea,
with the twisted mesh of his nets, this clever man.
He controls with craft the beasts of the open air,
walkers on hills. The horse with his shaggy mane
he holds and harnesses, yoked about the neck,
and the strong bull of the mountain.

Language, and thought like the wind
and the feelings that make the town,
he has taught himself, and shelter against the cold,
refuge from rain. He can always help himself.
He faces no future helpless. There's only death
that he cannot find an escape from. He has contrived
refuge from illnesses one beyond all cure.

Clever beyond all dreams
the inventive craft that he has
which may drive him one time or another to well or ill.
When he honors the laws of the land and the gods' sworn right,
high indeed is his city; but stateless the man
who dares to dwell with dishonor. Not by my fire,
never to share my thoughts, who does these things.

Sophocles, Antigone, c. 441 B.C.
(translation by Elizabeth Wyckoff)

Conversing with Aged Men

I just started re-reading Plato's Republic, and in the first three pages came across this dialogue; I wonder if my father-in-law remembers these thoughts from his friends. I'm sorry that it feels too late to read it out loud to him - but maybe I can try. In better days, he would have like that - and what's said here - a lot.

You don't come to see me, Socrates, as often as you ought: If I were still able to go and see you I would not ask you to come to me. But at my age I can hardly get to the city, and therefore you should come oftener to the Piraeus. For let me tell you, that the more the pleasures of the body fade away, the greater to me is the pleasure and charm of conversation. Do not then deny my request, but make our house your resort and keep company with these young men; we are old friends, and you will be quite at home with us.

I replied: There is nothing which for my part I like better, Cephalus, than conversing with aged men; for I regard them as travelers who have gone a journey which I too may have to go, and of whom I ought to inquire, whether the way is smooth and easy, or rugged and difficult. And this is a question which I should like to ask of you who have arrived at that time which the poets call the 'threshold of old age' --Is life harder towards the end, or what report do you give of it?

I will tell you, Socrates, he said, what my own feeling is. Men of my age flock together; we are birds of a feather, as the old proverb says; and at our meetings the tale of my acquaintance commonly is --I cannot eat, I cannot drink; the pleasures of youth and love are fled away: there was a good time once, but now that is gone, and life is no longer life. Some complain of the slights which are put upon them by relations, and they will tell you sadly of how many evils their old age is the cause. But to me, Socrates, these complainers seem to blame that which is not really in fault. For if old age were the cause, I too being old, and every other old man, would have felt as they do. But this is not my own experience, nor that of others whom I have known. How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles, --are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master. His words have often occurred to my mind since, and they seem as good to me now as at the time when he uttered them. For certainly old age has a great sense of calm and freedom; when the passions relax their hold, then, as Sophocles says, we are freed from the grasp not of one mad master only, but of many. The truth is, Socrates, that these regrets, and also the complaints about relations, are to be attributed to the same cause, which is not old age, but men's characters and tempers; for he who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.

I listened in admiration, and wanting to draw him out, that he might go on --Yes, Cephalus, I said: but I rather suspect that people in general are not convinced by you when you speak thus; they think that old age sits lightly upon you, not because of your happy disposition, but because you are rich, and wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

You are right, he replied; they are not convinced: and there is something in what they say; not, however, so much as they imagine. I might answer them as Themistocles answered the Seriphian who was abusing him and saying that he was famous, not for his own merits but because he was an Athenian: 'If you had been a native of my country or I of yours, neither of us would have been famous.' And to those who are not rich and are impatient of old age, the same reply may be made; for to the good poor man old age cannot be a light burden, nor can a bad rich man ever have peace with himself."

Plato's Republic, Part One, Prelude.