hactenus annorum, comites, elementa meorum et memini et meminisse iuvat: scit cetera mater. That is all I remember, friends, of the training I had when I was young, and I take joy in the memories. My mother knows the rest. These lines are the last of what remains of Statius’ Achilleid, the poem about the […]
Today, to commemorate Classicist Emily Watson as the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey into English, I want to take us back to the first English translation of a Greek play, which was also by a woman, Jane Lumley, way back in 1557. Harold Child in his 1909 edition of Lumley’s translation remarks on how […]
Today in our discussion group Myth Mother Invention we have moved on to the topic of “Infans” – the pre-lingual baby and child. In preparation for our meeting, I shared with the group, the so-called ‘Danae fragment’ by the ancient Greek lyric poet Simonides in the following translation: … when in the chest, intricately fashioned, […]
How can I make the experience of my labor speak? This is how artist Carmen Winant begins her brief text To Whom Is It Given?, published in the first volume of Mother Mother, an artist book conceived and edited by Sheilah Restack (Wilson), written seven weeks after giving birth and addressed to her new born […]
For our Myth Mother Invention meeting today, between last week’s ‘Conception’ and next week’s ‘Birth’ we’re focusing on ‘In Utero’. Of course, when we use this technical Latin term for pregnancy, many of us, of a certain age, cannot but think of the Nirvana album and its cover with the transparent anatomical manikin of a […]
The narcissus, to which Kore, struck by its wonder, was drawn; and with her two hands desired to pluck, in that moment it is said that the earth opened and that up from the depths Hades came in his chariot and setting to his horses took Kore away. – Papyrus Barolinensis 44 quoted in […]