LEFT HAND HATE KO’d BY LOVE.
Class 11/17 - 1.5 Hours
During today’s class we discussed many different aspects of books 21–23. One of the more memorable discussions was a comparison of humiliating deaths and noble/glorious deaths, in reference to Telemachus hanging the disloyal maids instead of letting his dad kill them. A little extreme but you know, Telemachia. He’s got some stuff to prove, and what better way than to kill the women for sleeping with the suitors. And because cleaning up their dead love affairs wasn’t enough, the most humiliating death ever is the grand prize for the poor maids. In my opinion, killing the maids in the first place is slightly over-doing it. It’s not like Odysseus’ loyalty to Penelope wasn’t questioned a few times during his journey, so for the father and son to be so blood thirsty in these books is kind of alarming. But who am I?
The only justification for this menis is that the suitors are pretty fucking terrible all the way around, and then your maids went and presumably sucked their weiners, and did lots of other dirty, unspeakable things. Yeah, no thanks. Bye Felicia.
I don’t often feel menis-like rages within my emotional range, but it does start to tingle when I here the song “Loyal” by Chris Brown, Tyga & Lil Wayne for two preseasons: 1. These hoes/maids ain’t loyal 2. Chris Brown, Tyga & Lil Wayne are SO WHACK (sorry Lil Wayne, you lost your mojo), and they are the contemporary equivilant of suitors. Literally ass holes that no one likes, but somehow still garner the attention of the unloyal maids because the maids air heads. So yeah, Telemachus & Odysseus. I kinda feel you. Check out the whack-ness below and see how long it takes for you to feel the MENIS! I think it starts to set in right about when Chris Brown starts singing, and Lil Wayne stops rapping (Only because I’m trying to maintain some of Lil Weezy Wee’s dignity here, his verse was heinously bad too).
Book 24 - 11/18 - 2 hours
I would say that I didn’t like this chapter as the important excitement has come to end, but I appreciate Homer tying it back to The Iliad, encouraging comparisons to be made between them. Agamemnon and Achilleus provide us with a brief but informative reflection of their life and death, which works well to balance our perception of lifes 5 great stories. Agamemnon is distraught over the downfall of his love life as his wife, Clytomnestra, was super unfaithful and murdered him, demonstrating the significance of Love and relationships. He even tells Odysseus how lucky he is to have Penelope, and how great she is. Achilleus’ death is also reflected on with a large emphasis on how epic the shit was, and how much respect he earned from everyone. Nothing we all didn’t already know, but still relevant now that the final racer of the trojan war has crossed the finish line home. This book is also interesting because the people of Ithaka are pissed off at Odysseus for killing all the suitors, which is a total flip of perspective that we’ve been subjected to the whole time. We see everything that Odysseus did as heroic and super epic, but people who have been without his presence for over 20 years are pretty much over him….. And I feel them, 20 years is a long time. I’d be kinda irritated too if this man showed up after forever and a day, meanwhile everybody has pretty much accepted him to be dead. You can’t just pop back on the scene and think everything is exactly how you left it…. But that’s not the story we came for. We came for the story of how Odysseus restored his oikos, and how Telemachus became a man, just like his daddy. In book 24, Telemachus tells his father that he will not bring shame to their family name and that he is just as great, maybe even better! Telemachus was definitely listening to Drake’s song “Worst Behavior” while his dad was with Laertes, because he came back feeling himself. And righfully so as Drake’s coming of age song and music video emphasize overcoming doubt and defeat in the journey to manhood. In the words of Drake, “Always hated the boy, but now the boy is the Man, muhfucka I done growed up!”
He even has his Dad in the start of the video! Now we see why Drake has so much swagger.
Class 11/19 - 1.5 hours
During today’s class we discussed our next reading: Plato’s Symposium. Prior to today, I knew nothing more about Plato than the fact that he was a greek philosopher, however I left the class very excited about the work. Apparently, the story is basically a dialogue between characters who are discussing the origin and meaning of LOVE. Who doesn’t like a good love story? AMIRIGHT?! Love has been prevelant in both the Odyssey and the Iliad, being that is an important factor in life’s 5 great stories, So I am excited to read a work that is soley dedicated to the concept.
Another intersting discussion from today’s class was on Herodotus’ story of Solon and Croesus, which was about defining happiness. Croesus tells Solon the story of Tellus of Athens who is purposed to be happier than Solon, who has ignorantly claimed to be the happiest man in the land. Croesus goes on to school our young nephew, Solon, explaining that true happiness can only be attained when you’re dead, which reminds me of a conversation with Dr. S. a few weeks ago where he stated that all life is suffering. This would then corraborate Croesus’ (& Herodotus’) claim that the truest happiness can only be attained when your dead, and ended the suffering that is life. I may be reaching, but it’s just an interesting line of thought my mind wandered down during this class discussion.
Plato’s Symposium Pg. 233–250 - 11/21 - 2.5 hours
Socrates is my favorite charachter so far. He seems disconnected from the social realm but in a way that actually allows him to be connected to the overarching natural/universal realm, in which the social world exists. Also, his curiousity and relaxed demeanor are admireable. I am excited to hear his speech the most. One thing that I notice and apprecaite from the structure of the story, is how each character’s speech builds upon and refines the previous character’s. Phaedrus, the youngest and assumably least wise, rightfully begins the discussion by laying out the very foundation of Love or Eros. He notes that it is very old, and is of the most good that is known to man (like family, honor, and wealth). He references the idea of an army composed of people who genuinely loved each other, willing to sacrifice anything for their comrades, and how this would be unparalled by any other force. Pretty serious if you ask me.
Then Pausanias builds on this, adding that there two kinds of love, represented Earthly Aphrodite and Heavenly Aphrodite, Earthly being associated with a more short term satisfaction and passion, whereas Heavenly is associated with long term, deep-meaning and intellegence. At this point, the concept of love is still a little clouded, but thankfully the doctor, Eryximachus, steps in to continue the demystification from a more scientific perspective, however he gets pretty abstract and cosmological with it, acknowledging what I percieved to be a universal law of balance of everything. Everything has two parts working to establish balance between them amidst the chaos of the universe, thus there being two types of love.
Plato’s Symposium Pg. 251–263 - 11/23 - 2.5 hours
Following Eyrxmachus’ speech, Aristophanes offers an intersting twist on the developing concept of love by telling a story of the origins of humans as we know. He explains how the orginal human possesed a dupclicate set of arms, legs, genitals, etc, and that Zeus split it into two separate weaker beings that possed less of a threat to the gods. Ever since this split, humans live with a desire to reconnect with thier other half. Huh. Pretty interesting. I thought about this idea from a genetic stand point of chromosomes splitting during meiosis, and the ploidy of the cell going from a diploid state to haploid. In the case of the original human, I guess it would have been tetraploidy and split into two diploid humans. Idk. Maybe I’m reaching again, but this has been my favorite speech so far just because of where it made my mind wander to. He basically said, love is about completeness and feeling whole.
Jerry MaGuire, anyone?
But yeah, thankfully Aristophanes speech isn’t as corny as Jerry MaGuire’s. It just a nice way to think about the origin of love. Word to Agathon though for bringing it all back together cause shit we were getting lost in the sauce. And when love is involved, its best to go easy on the sauce. Babies usually result from love and too much sauce.
In my opinion, based on Agathon’s speech, love IS ACTUALLY the sauce. It’s young, fresh, flexible, & complicated — but necessary! It balances all the spices of life like justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom which are all elements that dictate our experiences of life and the 5 great narratives. He notes that love is a source of order to the chaos that exists, perhaps a reference to the dualities of love, the good love and bad love, the earthly love and heavenly love. This conception of love’s strength and significance is most aligned with our previous impressions from other classic literature, specifically the love between Odysseus and Penelope.
At this point in the story, I am consumed with thoughts of my favorite movie and movie scene of all time: Radio Raheem telling Mookie “the story of Love & Hate, a tale of Good and Evil,” in Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing.
“Let me tell you the story of Right Hand, Left Hand.
It’s a tale of good and evil.
HATE: it was with this hand that Cane iced his brother.
LOVE: these five fingers, they go straight to the soul of man.
The right hand: the hand of love.
The story of life is this: static.
One hand is always fighting the other hand,
and the left hand is kicking much ass.
I mean, it looks like the right hand, Love, is finished.
But hold on, stop the presses, the right hand is coming back.
Yeah, he got the left hand on the ropes, now, that’s right.
Ooh, it’s a devastating right and Hate is hurt, he’s down.
Ooh! OOH!
Left-Hand Hate KO’d by Love
If I love you, I LOVE you. But if I HATE you…..”
There it is. Love and hate.