The Greek Myths
22/11/21 20:15:13
I tried to kind of hash this out last night with no luck.
Why is myth interesting? Lets just talk about the Greek Myths specifically
- Tells us how the ancient Mediterranean cultures thought about the world and their place in it, even in some cases not literally but symbolically.
- The stories that are created are products of the world and culture. Kind of an interaction between what is the case
and what people want to be the case.
- Was it that the explanations of the world through gods was considered a good explanation or that it was pushed through oppressive structures?
- The belief structures and sheer variation of them are important too. Just in terms of trying to understand our ancestors. For instance, the different cults or attributions to different gods
Classics
Why is the classical period so respected? For instance, the Renaissance was this rebirth where they looked back at this ‘Golden age’. Was it more as a re-aligning, to set a platform for progress? A homage and then move on. Or was it that the best ideas were then and we should learn from them first and then have our own thoughts.
It doesn’t seem that there was no progress from those ancient ideas. At some level though a lot of ideas might have their roots in the classical ideas because its like step 1,2,3 of the proof. Maybe this is the argument then of facing the world. Build up your fundamentals of what came before and then progress with what you are in.
23/11/21 20:22:22
I always seem to find myself searching for a narrative in things I’m trying to understand. Or at least a coherence. This leads to this which leads to this. Or just trying to simplify. It’s a level of abstraction needed to condense information.
Today, I found myself fascinated by the idea of the blank verse. A style of writing. The idea that you could morph words in such a way in a given block to create emotion or imagination in the reader seemed fascinating. Escpecially something like John Milton’s paradise lost. I don’t find myself immediately understanding or even recognising some cohesive complexity (the complexity merely arising from my confusion) nor could I really tell poorly written complicated flowery language from well written or respected complicated language (to a degree) but I was intrigued to delve into the verse. To get familiar with its form.
I just want to note also that last night I was pretty much absorbed by Fry’s retelling of the myth of Psyche and Eros. It interesting to note that Eros did not want to be seen. She fell in love with something more than his looks it seems. What that was, I’m not too sure.