Tag: Homer

Bryan Doerries on “‘Why Homer Matters,’ by Adam Nicolson”

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According to Nicolson, “Epic, which was invented after memory and before history, occupies a third space in the human desire to connect the present to the past: It is the attempt to extend the qualities of memory over the reach of time.” The purpose of epic “is to make the distant past as immediate to us as our own lives, to make the great stories of long ago beautiful and painful now.”

…He prefers the view that, instead of being the creation of a single man, let alone of a single time, “Homer reeks of long use.” Try thinking of Homer as a “plural noun,” he suggests, made up of “the frozen and preserved words of an entire culture.”

Read the rest here.

[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, and goodreads.]

all yellow B&N | Amazon | Etc.

‘Gabbler told me to start my story in a more interesting place (where I had started it wasn’t “entertaining enough”).’#FirstLine #Automation

Posted on by blablablaandgabbler

[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, and goodreads.]

Why “The Iliad” Still Matters

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A Burlesque Translation of Homer from the Public Domain Review:

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homerHilarious! One of the best “Evoking of the Muses” since…since…well, BLA’s, I must say. See the entire work at PDR. – Gabbler.

Doing some research to better understand those Automata-creatures that BLA created:

Posted on by blablablaandgabbler

Reading Explorations in the History of Machines and Mechanisms by Teun Koetsier and Marco Ceccarelli (Editors):

“Automata make their first appearance in Homer, in a form that is strikingly similar to those described in On Automaton-Making. Hephaestus is depicted creating self-moving tripods to serve the gods on Olympus (Homer Iliad 18.373-381 [16]). This passage from the Iliad is the inspiration for the later automaton, when what was once impossible and divine becomes possible through the human application of mechanics [17]. Certainly, the form of automaton seen in Heron and Philon would seem to be a conscious emulation of this passage…The most likely context for the display of the automata described in On Automaton-Making, given their size, is that of a symposium, particularly in the case of the moving automaton described in the first book, especially considering its Dionysian theme. There is also a clear parallel created between the three wheeled automata of Heron and the tripods of Hephaestus [16] when they are presented in a sympotic context.”

BLA just gave a shake of the head and told me, “You want to know why some of Heron’s automata theories and musings don’t make much sense? Because Vulcan wouldn’t let such secrets be spread so easily. The exactness of machines now is nothing compared to what the gods once allowed. And I’m not talking about divine machines here. I’m talking about man-made things. Even if made from god-made secrets.”