Jump to content

μεταμορφώσεις


Recommended Posts

  • Premium Member

Oppenheimer : "My life as a child did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things. . . . I need physics more than friends."

 

See Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Return of Howard Hughes.

 

"Because young Robert [Oppenheimer] was frequently ill as a child, his mother Ella became overly protective. Fearing germs, she kept Robert apart from other children. He was never allowed to buy food from street vendors, and instead of taking him to get a haircut in a barber shop Ella had a barber come to the apartment."

 

See Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus.

 

(Bonus : And the young Howard Hughes' first wife was named Ella.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

"When Oppenheimer was nine years old, he was once overheard telling an older girl cousin, "Ask me a question in Latin and I'll answer you in Greek."

 

See Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

[In 1942] "Teller suggested that even a fission bomb might inadvertently ignite the earth's atmosphere, seventy-eight percent of which was hydrogen. "I didn't believe it from the first minute," Bethe said later. . . . Bethe soon ran calculations that convinced both Teller and Oppenheimer of the near-zero impossibility of igniting the atmosphere."

 

See Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

"Werner Heisenberg . . . director of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, a nuclear research facility in Berlin. . . . [In 1944] General Groves seriously pursued the notion of kidnapping or assassinating Heisenberg. He dispatched OSS agent Moe Berg to Switzerland, where the former baseball player stalked the German physicist in December—but ultimately decided not to attempt an assassination.”

 

See Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus. (Also Norris, Racing for the Bomb, 292; Nicholas Dawidoff, The Catcher Was a Spy, 192–94.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

[In 1945] "Oppie muttered, "Funny how the mountains always inspire our work. . . ."

 

"An FBI informant reported on August 9 [1945] that Oppie was a "nervous wreck." . . . "The weekend after the Nagasaki bombing, Ernest Lawrence arrived in Los Alamos. He found Oppenheimer weary, morose and consumed with qualms about what had happened."

 

See Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

The Death of Orpheus

 

Song charmed the hearts and minds of the wild beasts in the forest,

his song, the poet of far-lying Thrace, and even persuaded

the rocks and stones to follow him. But look! The frantic daughters

of the Cocones, cloaked in hides, from high on a hill beside

Hebrus, saw Orpheus weaving his songs with the sinewy

strings of his lyre. And there was one, her hair scattered on the breeze :

“See there!” she said angrily. “There is the man who despises us!”

She aimed her spear at the sonorous mouth of the Apolline

poet, and let fly; but her leaf-wreathèd weapon passed him by

without a wound. Then another threw a stone in his direction,

but as it soared at him through the air, his harmony of voice

and string overwhelmed the weapon, which fell kindly at his feet

as if asking forgiveness for its rude flight. Then the violence

increased as war-thoughts intensified, and insane vengeance reigned;

yet all their weapons fell before his mellow sound. The women

broke out in a clamour of Berecyntian pipes of horn,

with drums and claps and Bacchic screams, to blot the lyre’s song. Soon

the stones turned red with the blood of the poet they could not hear.

 

First to fall were the innumerable birds, standing spellbound

by the voice of his song; next, the snakes and all the animals

swelling the entourage of admirers of Orpheus :

all of these were clobbered by the wild Maenads, who then turned

on bloody Orpheus, just as birds assemble in the sky

when the raven of night appears in daylight, or when the deer

in the arena of the amphitheatre is torn apart

by the dogs set loose in the early morning sun. The women

fell upon Orpheus and pounded him with their leafy-green

wands, which were not meant for such a service. Some gathered

handfuls of earth and flung it in his face; others tore branches

from trees as weapons; and others flung stones. In their excitement

of fury no weapon went unused. By chance nearby a herd

of cattle were ploughing the earth, while brawny farmers dug

at the soil around them, dripping with sweat. When they saw what

was coming they dropped their tools and forgot their work and rushed off;

and the women entered the empty spot and took up the hoes

left behind, and the heavy mattocks, and the long grub-axes.

 

First the crazy women killed the cattle when intimidated

by their projecting horns, tearing the animals to pieces;

then they went for the poet. Spreading his hands out, Orpheus

spoke—delivering words for the first time that way—but to no

use, for the women heard nothing of his voice as they killed him.

Mighty God! The voice that moved stones to hear and wild animals

to understand—he exhaled it out with his soul and died.

 

O gloomy-wingèd Orpheus! All birds and beasts around you

in the forests wept. All the stones, too; and the trees, which often

grew closer to you to listen. It is said the rivers ran

heavier with their own tears; and the naiads, and dryads too,

tore at their hair in grief. Pieces of his body were here, and there.

His head and lyre the river Hebrus received, and (a miracle!)

while floating mid-stream the strings of the lyre sent out a sad

tune, and the lifeless tongue undulated out a melody,

and the river-bank hung its head sadly.

 

Now these ran the waters into the sea, leaving their home behind,

and gained the shore of Lesbos, near the fortress of Methymna.  

Exposed here on the sand of a foreign spot, the head was charged

at by a primitive snake while the hair still dripped from the sea.

But the sun came and waved off the snake just as it reared to bite;

and forevermore its jaws, as it slithered this way and that,

stayed hard as rock and frozen wide-open.

 

So the shade of the poet went down under the earth, to the place

no one wants to go to. But he’d been there before, and recognized

all the old places. He moved through the fields till he found his love

Eurydice, and scooped her up in his arms. Nowadays he

walks with her, sometimes some steps behind; or then some steps in front,

and Orpheus looks behind him to gaze at Eurydice.

 

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 11.1–84

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Orpheus in the Underworld

 

Through interstellar air Hymeneus, wrapped in golden robes,

entered Ciconian country on the Hebrus. Orpheus

raised his voice in greeting; but the outcome was disastrous.

The god of marriage was present, yes, but brought no festive words,

nor cheerful faces, nor any kind of favorable omen.

The torch he held up pumped out smoke that burned the eyes, and failed

to catch.—And the end of the wedding turned out worse than the start.

While the bride strolled through the grass with her retinue of naiads,

she was bit in the ankle by a serpent’s tooth, and fell dead.

 

When the glorious poet had shed his fill of tears above,

he went below, to attempt a reunion with Eurydice,

daring to walk through the shadowy gates of the underworld.

Moving among the inessentials engrossed in pointless work

(still simulating life in spite of entombment), Orpheus,

then, came to queen Persephone and the king of the gloomy

place of shadows. Before them he manipulated his Lyre

and sang : “You divinities of the abyss beneath the earth,

where everyone living drops in (all human-borns), may I speak,

if permitted? I shall relate my truth clearly. I come down

to Tartarus not to admire the wonders, nor to venture

a capture of Medusa’s monstrous spawn, the Gorgon three

whose necks hold up entangling snakes. The cause of my descent

is my wife. She stepped on a serpent and felt the injection

of its killing venom, which took away her promising years.

I sought to find the power to endure, and indeed I tried;

but Love has beaten me. So I have come. I sing a prayer

of awe for this place, for this deep, immeasurable darkness

of silence, and for Eurydice, whose fate spun out too fast,

and brought her here. Eventually everyone who’s living

will pay their debt to you. Though we delay up top for a while,

fast or slow we all drop into the one same house; no one escapes.

You enjoy the longest reign of all over human beings.

Since all this is so—that my wife shall end up here no matter

how many years she’s given to live, when they’re all over—

then why not let her return to me for now, as a favor?

But if the Fates refuse to give my wife back to me, know that

I’m dead-set against leaving here. You can keep the two of us.”

 

 

to be continued

 

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.1–39

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Orpheus Flees Hell With his Wife

 

Thus, singing over the strings of his lyre, Orpheus moved

the bloodless dead to tears. Tantalus quit snatching avidly

at the waters, Ixion’s wheel slowed to a stupefied stop,

the vultures quit pricking the liver while the Belides

abandoned their urns, and you, Sisyphus, sat down on your stone.

As the tale comes down to us, his song also overcame

the Furies, whose cheeks ran wet with tears. Nor could Persephone,

nor the king who governed the depths, refuse his eloquent music.

 

Eurydice was summoned. She came forth from the freshly dead

with slow and wounded step. So, in this place, husband and wife hugged

each other, and were given one proviso : On the way out

(he was told) do not look back until well beyond the valley

of Avernus. Your eyes must not see the opening to Hell

a second time—or your beloved will slip through your fingers.

 

So they went they way up a steep footpath through silent country.

Winding through deep, dense gloom the way was obscure, and difficult.

In the distance, finally, they saw the threshold of the earth

over them. It was then, worried for her safety, that Orpheus

turned round, to check the progress of his love. And so instantly

she fell back, all the way back. He reached out his arms to catch her,

hoping to grab her tight, but (unhappy hero!) clutched only air.

Eurydice, dying a second death, addressed no complaint

against her husband, for what could she say but that she was loved?

“Farewell”, she spoke, but her husband only barely heard her word;

her voice was lost as she went back to the place under the earth.

 

 

to be continued

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.40–63

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Orpheus Mourns His Wife, and Moves the Trees With Song

 

So then Orpheus was struck senseless. He came to a standstill

at the second death of his wife. Just this much the more did he

resemble that unnamed man whom the three-headed dog of hell,

when hauled up into the upper world, froze to stone, from terror

at the sight; and only when his life stopped did the fear leave him.

Or what of the fate of the husband Olenus, who assumed

as his own the sin of his wife, to protect her? He resolved

to look guilty for you, unhappy Lethaea, whose beauty

produced in you overconfidence in the eyes of the gods :

once joined in love, you two now live as stones in river Ida.

 

Orpheus prayed to return below, and cross over the Styx,

but the boatman of Hades refused. So seven days he mourned,

sitting by the banks there, turning ever-filthier, and eating

no food—his only diet was pain, sadness of soul, and tears.

He lamented the cruelty of the gods of Erebus,

then returned to the heights of Rhodope and windy Haemus.

 

Three times, then, the sun closed out its year by coming to Pisces,

and in all that time Orpheus shunned womanhood and its charms,

whether weary with his awful fortune, or fixed to the love

he had pledged for life. Nevertheless, many women cherished

hopes of marrying the poet, but each departed in grief

at her rejection. Instead, the poet hero of Thrace

granted his affection to the mild boys of his homeland.

He relished the first flowering of the springtime of their years.

 

There was a hill, a superior hill with a level plain

of soft green grass. There was, however, no shade there. When the poet

of heavenly song sat down and strummed the strings of his lyre,

it was then that cool shade came to the hill. The Chaonian oak

came heavy with acorns; and the poplar trees, and the scented

limes; also the beech trees, and holy laurels; and the brittle

hazel trees, and the ash trees fit for spears; and also the smooth

silver-fir, and the ilex drooping with catkins, and the pretty

plane trees, and the maples of many colours, and the willows

that gather by rivers, and the lotus that loves the waters.

Also the evergreen box-tree, and the slender-trunked tamarisk;

and the bicoloured myrtles and the blue-berried viburnum.

You came too, you ivy-vines that weave your way around, with grapes

dangling from your stems; also came elm trees wrapped in ivy;

and the wild mountain ash; and pitch pines; and the arbutus

freighted with strawberry-red fruit; and the easy-going palm,

its leaves bestowed as rewards of victory; and the narrow-

trunked pine trees crowned with overflowing foliage, a pleasant

sight to mother of gods Cybele, since Attis, her lover,

stripped himself of humanness, and stiffened into a tree trunk.

 

 

How the boy Cyparissus Became a Cypress Tree

 

 

Here amid the multitude came the cypress—cone-shaped, but once

a boy beloved of Apollo, the god who strings the lyre

and strings the bow. For once upon a time an enormous stag

roamed the plains of Carthea, and was sacred to the Nymphs there.

His antlers rising high and wide put his head in shade. Glowing

gold were these antlers; while lying on his shoulders glittered

a necklace of elegant gems. A headpiece on his forehead

bound with leather ties surrounded the stag with silver sparkles;

while pendent from his hollow ears hung glittering pearls of bronze.

This stag showed no fear, nor any natural shyness, and dropped

by homes of men, and let them reach out their hands and stroke his neck,

a pleasure to him and them. But beyond all other people

this animal was dear to you, Cyparissus; you, the sweetest

boy of all the Greeks. It was you who led the stag to pasture

on the freshest green grass. It was you who brought him to water,

to the clearest springs that flowed. You, Cyparissus, wove garlands

of flowers to decorate his horns. And it was you who sat

like a horseman on his back, cheerfully moving here and there,

guiding him gently with comfy bridle and reins of purple.

 

In hottest summer time, at high noon when the sun burned brightest,

when the clawed Crab near to vaporized in the heat of the sky :

then, fatigued, the stag laid his body down on the grassy earth,

and cooled himself in forest shade. So, at that place, at that time,

a boy came—it was you, Cyparissus—and all unknowing

you hurled your sharp spear, and it fixed itself in your beloved.

When you saw the deadly wound, and who (o cruel sight!) was wounded,

you, Cyparissus, tore your hair out, and wished for death yourself.

What did sun-god Apollo not say to comfort you? So many reasonable

words strove to soften the grief you felt. But the boy only moaned

at Heaven, and asked only one service : to keep him in grief

forever. At that, as he wept out all his strength, he saw his limbs

begin to colour green; and his hair, which now curled down by his

snow-white temples, began to bristle, and grew stiff and erect;

and, finally, in a slender tapering spectacle, he reached up

high in the sky as a cypress tree. The god himself now let

out a moan of his own, and sadly said, “I shall mourn for you,

and you for others, and others in mourning shall stand with you.”

 

Such were the sylvan trees that Orpheus had drawn to himself.

The singer sat surrounded by an assembly of birds and beasts

of the forest. So he tuned his lyre, and tried its strings, and as

his fingers roamed there, he listened to his varied chords; and though

diverse in pitch, they harmonized; and he raised his voice in song.

 

 

to be continued—with 590 lines of The Song of Orpheus

 

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.64–147

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Orpheus sings the tale of Ganymede

 

“O Muse, daughter of God, my parent and inspiration,

move my songful words! Beforetimes I have sung of the power

of God, and harmonized the Giants in a heavier tone

of voice, and the scattering of lightning illuminating

their struggling on the Phlègraean Plains. But now a light touch

is fit, for I would sing of boys chosen by gods, and of girls

fired by illicit love, and the penalty paid for such lust.”

 

“For Phrygian Ganymede, the king of gods once burned with love;

and, inventive as he is, Father Zeus found something else to be.

Still and all, for God not just any old bird was suitable;

his dignity wouldn’t suffer him to assume any figure

unable to lift his thunderbolts. But Zeus still beat the air with false wings,

and snatched the Trojan boy, who even now, much to Hera’s ire,

mixes the nectar, and administers to the cups of Zeus.”

 

 

Such is the tale of Ganymede.

 

 

To be continued

 

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.148–161

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Jordan Cronenweth : out-of-phase trickery

 

What looks for all the world like out-of-phase at a specific spot on a tabletop where a stream of sunlight hits (the vibratory effect intensifying character conflict), a visual effect occupying just under center-right of the frame for an extended duration of screentime, is finally revealed to be flickering from a fireplace. Theory : This is not an errant interpretive item emitted by your indefatigable, pictureless spectator, but an intentional cinematographic technique which juxtaposes the blue future cool of the Male with the red human warmth of the Female. (Altered States, 58:09–58:46)

 

In fact this must be defined as a genius move, because the trickery occurs where the sunbeam and fireplace reflection visually meet.

 

Cronenweth apparently found such visual trickery appealing, because one shot in Blade Runner is designed to include what may or may not be out-of-phase, and good luck figuring it out. The introduction of Roy Batty : 25:29–56:00.

 

 

Edited by Jeff Bernstein
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

The Longest Yard (1974) : Dolly Zoom in Shot 1

 

is a deft cinematographic storytelling technique : the subtle weirdness generates an uncomfortable feeling in the unconscious of the audience, who is watching an otherwise comfortable, luxurious setting. In storytelling terms, this DZ is proleptic : it signals bad times ahead. Absorbed a different way, this DZ approximates the perverse warp of what looks like, from the outside, the lovely lifestyles of the rich and famous. Just recall the one word Burt Reynolds says over the sound of America's national anthem : a verbal essence of the visual DZ.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member

Orpheus sings the tale of Hyacinthus

 

“You, too, Hyacinthus, Apollo would have fixed in the sky,

if sad fate had allowed him the chance to do so. Nevertheless,

in your own way you remain immortal. As often as spring

follows winter; and Aries, aquatic Pisces; just so often do

you rise up in green fields of flowers. You, Hyacinthus, Zeus

loved beyond all others. And, settled at the centre of the earth,

Delphi lacked its god, while Apollo frequented the wide-

open river Eurotas outside Sparta. But there he honoured

neither strings nor arrows. Forgetting himself, he did not ditch

his nets, nor hold back the dogs; but covered the uneven ridges

as friend in the hunt. Meanwhile, for some time, he fed his flame.”

 

“Just now, the sun held between the coming and ending of night.

They stripped down to smooth skin. So, shining all over with oils,  

they lifted the discus and entered a contest. First through the air

went the discus from well-poised Apollo, whose effort scattered

the clouds opposite them. It fell back to solid earth after

suspension of long duration, exhibiting both strength and art.

Directly after this, the heedless Spartan youth ran out to take

his turn, eager to try the discus. But the solid earth drove

it back into your face, Hyacinthus. Apollo turned pale

all over, like a little boy, and lifted the fallen body.

Now he tries to revive you, now tries to quench the wound, now tries

to stop your expiring soul with application of herbs.

None of these arts worked. The wound was incurable.

As in the garden, when violets, or poppies, or lilies

are snapped off, their liberated tongues quivering,

unexpectedly, then, the head wilts, no longer enduring,

and sinks to earth; so his face lay still, with all character fled,

and the head, a weight on the neck, recumbent on the shoulders.

‘You leave me, Hyacinthus, stolen in the first of your youth!

I see,’ said Apollo, ‘that I am at fault for your downthrow.  

This move of mine distresses me. My hand wrote your destruction.

I sent you away under the earth. But yet what is my fault?

Unless playing together can be called a fault? Unless loving

together can be called a fault? If I could abandon the world

and come with you I would; but Fate holds those strings, not I.

But you’ll always be near to my lips, for I’ll remember you

in song. With my fingers on the lyre’s strings I’ll even speak to you

in song. And as a new flower your markings shall imitate

my song. And in time to come a mighty hero shall arise

and assume those markings as his own.’ Such were the actual

words of god Apollo. And now look! The blood, having leaked out

and stained the soil, was no longer blood. From it arose a lily

brighter than Tyrian dye. (The form of this one was purple

in colour; while the other was coloured silvery-white.)

Not satisfied—for it was he, Apollo, who made the lily—

the god wrote his sorrow on the leaves, so that each new lily

speaks out the letters of sadness—A I ! A I !—at its opening

bloom. Sparta was proud to call the boy its own, and honours

him even these days, celebrating, each anniversary,

as their fathers did, the festival of Hyacinthia.”

 

 

The end of the tale of Hyacinthus

 

 

to be continued

 

 

Ovid, Metamorphoses, 10.148–219

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...