Meanwhile, the Sibyl, Resisting possession, storms through the cavern, In the throes of her struggle with Phoebus Apollo. But the more she froths at the mouth And contorts, the more he controls her, commands her And makes her his creature. Then of their own accord Those hundred vast tunnel-mouths gape and give vent To the […]
The hardy Trojans feel a cold shiver go through them, Their prince from the depths of his heart beseeches The god: “Phoebus, you always had pity for Troy And her troubles, it was you who steadied Paris’ aim and directed the arrow Into Achilles, you who were pilot As I entered sea after sea, skirting […]
The Trojans would have kept standing, fascinated By all on display, except that just then Achates, Who’d been sent on ahead, came back accompanied By the Sibyl, Deiphobe, daughter of Glaucus, priestess Of Diana and Phoebus. Who addressed the prince: “This is no time to be standing staring here. It would be better now to […]
And now they pause on that hill where Dedalus, At the end of his flight, first fluttered to earth: He had risked himself to the sky, away and afloat To the north, through the cold air, unprecedented, Rowing with wings—which he then dedicated To you, Phoebus Apollo, there on the spot Where he landed, and […]
I have foreseen and foresuffered all – Aeneas in Seamus Heaney’s “The Golden Bough” (Virgil’s Aeneid 6, 98-148) from Seeing Things I might have been a wise king setting out Under the Christmas lights – except that It felt like the forewarned journey back Into the heartland of the ordinary. – Philip Larkin in Seamus […]
Before housing Mattin’s Social Dissonance, the small room at the far end of Documenta-Halle was home to two expansive installations at two previous documentas: Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Game Station at Documenta 11 in 2002 and Nalina Malani’s In Search of Vanished Blood at dOCUMENTA (13) 2013. Looking at installation shots of these two works, you […]
Minus Plato has a mission for you, if you choose to accept it. As you may have noticed, the last few posts have been getting closer and closer to discussing the book Medea by the Soundwalk Collective. I had seen the book many years ago in the Wexner Center Store and on discovering that the […]
Spinal Discipline is the name of Irena Haiduk’s performance at documenta 14 in which thirteen members of the “Army of Beautiful Women” walk while balancing the surrogate Proust book Seductive Exacting Realism on their heads. This use of a book as a tool for correct posture and grace is accompanied by other seemingly superficial features […]
Homer’s Margites, which is deplorably lost, bore, says Aristotle, the same analogy to comedy, as his Odyssey and Iliad to tragedy. The gods had taught him neither to dig nor to plough, nor any other skill; he failed in every craft – Aristotle, Nic. Eth. vi. 7, 1141:
After the horrific actions at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virgina yesterday and the president’s complicit equivocal response, today I turn to William Pope. L for words, images and objects of wisdom and resistance. I hope to write another time about his amazing Whispering Campaign, spread across Athens and Kassel (below is a shaky […]