Anagogical: interpretation of a word, passage, or text (as of Scripture or poetry) that finds beyond the literal, allegorical, and moral senses a fourth and ultimate spiritual or mystical sense.

Isn't it wonderful when life intersects with what you're reading? Watching the PBS NewsHour tonight there was this story...
"A dramatic performance project called 'Theater of War' uses ancient Greek tragedies for a very special goal: To link ancient and modern warriors in an understanding of war's pain and mental agony."
Here's the link to see it yourself, something to think about when reading Sophocles who is up next.

Agamemnon: (the Oresteia are three plays by the Greek playwright Aeschylus. Agamemnon is the first of the trilogy. More about the Trojan war,...great.)

Time and Scene: A night in the tenth and final autumn of the Trojan war. The house of Atreus in Argos. Before it, an altar stands unlit; a watchman on the high roofs fights to stay awake.

Watchman:
Dear gods, set me free from all the pain,
the long watch I keep, one whole year awake..
propped on my arms, crouched on the roofs of Atreus
like a dog.

I know the stars by heart,
the armies of the night, and there in the lead
the ones that bring us snow or the crops of summer,
bring us all we have-
our great blazing kings of the sky,
I know them, when they rise and when they fall...
and now I watch for the light, the signal-fire
breaking out of Troy, shouting Troy is taken.
So she commands, full of her high hopes.
That woman-she maneuvers like a man.

And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,
and the thoughts go groping around through the night
and the good dreams that used to guard my sleep...
not here, it's the old comrade, terror, at my neck.
I mustn't sleep, no-

(shaking himself awake)

Ancillary
Pronunciation: \ˈan(t)-sə-ˌler-ē, -ˌle-rē

1 : subordinate, subsidiary
2 : auxiliary, supplementary

Merriam-Webster online

I am total crap when it comes to poetry. Because of a bad experience in fourth grade I have stayed away form poetry until a few years ago. I am not a critic though, just a reader, I can tell you what I liked and that is it. I Bought a Poet's guide to Poetry by Mary Kinziea few years ago but I didn't finish it. I'm going to read it again. Along with the reading list I posted I have another one to read along side: Joseph Campbell, The Trivium, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, A History of Reading, etc., and that Kinzie is on the list. I'm planning to get through it before I get to more of those great poets, most of them are further down on my list so I have a bit of time to learn how to assess poetry. Perhaps though poetry is like opera, more fun when you don't know what's going on and you can access your emotional reaction more.

In any case, Richmond Lattimore has set the book up in sections, the poet's name as the heading with a few paragraphs about the poet and then a page or two of his selections. Almost every poem and epitaph are fragments and often there is very little known about the author. Here are my favorites.

Alcman of Sparta

No longer, maiden voices sweet-calling, sounds of allurement,

can my limbs bear me up; oh I wish, I wish I could be a seabird

who with halcyons skims the surf-flowers of the sea water

with careless heart, a sea-blue-colored and sacred waterfowl.

Stesichorus of Himera

Palinode to Helen

That story is not true.

You never sailed in the benched ships.

You never went to the city of Troy.

Ibycus of Rhegium

In spring time the Kydonian

quinces, watered by running streams,

there where the maiden nymphs have

their secret garden, and grapes that grow

round in shade of the tendriled vine,

ripen.

Pindar of Thebes

Athens

O shining and wreathed in violets, city of singing,

stanchion of Hellas, glorious Athens

citadel of divinity.

War is sweet to those who have not tried it. The experienced

man in frightened at the heart to see it advancing.

Do not against all comers let break the word that is not needed.

There are times when the way of silence is best; the word in its power

can be the spur to battle.

Mistress of high achievement, O lady Truth,

do not let my understanding stumble

across some jagged falsehood.

Apotheosis1 : elevation to divine status : deification
2 : the perfect example : quintessence

Once again curtsy or Merriam-Webster online.
Next week I'll be beginning the Greek plays, first Aeschylus then Sophocles. Watch out things are about to get wild!

“...[B]ecause mythology was historically the mother of the arts and yet, like so many mythological mothers, the daughter, equally of her own birth. Mythology is not invented rationally; mythology cannot be rationally understood. Theological interpreters render it ridiculous. Literary criticism reduces it to metaphor. A new and very promising approach is opened, however, when it is viewed in the light of biological psychology as a function of the human nervous system, precisely homologous tot he innate and learned sign stimuli that release and direct the energies of nature-of which our brain itself is but the amazing flower.” -Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God, Primitive Mythology

People say of the Iliad and the Odyssey that Homer was saying life is either a battle or a journey. If that is true Homer believed life was a battle. Only about a third of the Odyssey is Odysseus' journey, it is the most fascinating part. The rest is about Telemachus, Penelope, and at least a third is dealing with the suitors. All people in ancient Greece are subject tot he whims of the gods and the plans of destiny but none more than the women. Just as I never believed the war was about Helen I don't believe that the fault lied in the suitors. They complain many times that Penelope gave them all words and signs that their presence was wanted. Of course men can say that but it because they interpreted her words and movements to suit his own desires. Penelope though laments, when she learns that the suitors are plotting to kill her son, that she hadn't kicked them all out long ago, that tells me she had the choice to do so. Hospitality is very important to the Homeric people, that is the great moral lesson that seems to preoccupy the Odyssey the most, how to be a good host and a good guest. If you are not it can warrant death as the suitors learn. Just as many people read the meeting of Telemachus and Helen, where she says that just as Menelaus was sacking Troy she had had a change of heart and that the only reason she went with Paris in the first place was because she had been tricked by Aphrodite, and smile knowingly, that is how I read Penelope and the suitors. The Iliad and the Odyssey would be more interesting from the female perspective. Helen, Penelope, and Briseis are by far the more interesting characters.

The events that you would expect at the ending of the Iliad, the Trojan horse, the death of Paris and Achilles (remember his heel), and the sacking or Troy, are briefly mentioned in the Odyssey. I suppose that the stories were so well known to Homers audience he spent his time detailing other the other aspects but for me it was a shame. I would have preferred hearing about those things than many of the other scenes. A particularly fascinating scene of the Odyssey is when Odysseus goes to the gates of Hades. I read this part very closely because it is from Greece that we get our Western concepts of the soul and the after life, though it is till too soon for the happy side. The golden resurrection god, Dionysus, wouldn't be born into Greek mythology for some time.

To my mind the Odyssey is really the dreams of a child about his absent father. The ideal. When a child grows up missing a parent he concocts fairy tales about that parent, “He didn't abandon me, he's really an international spy, brave handsome and rich, and he left to protect me, but he'll come back and we'll have adventures together.” Perhaps this interpretation says more about me. Perhaps it says something about Homer.