Scribal Terror

Homer's eclipse

In the Odyssey, Homer refers to an eclipse that presages the massacre of Penelope's suitors. According to Scientific American:

In the 1920s researchers speculated that Homer might have had a real eclipse in mind, after calculating that a total solar eclipse (in which the moon blocks out the sun) would have been visible on April 16, 1178 B.C. over the Ionian Islands, where Homer's poem was set. The idea languished, however, because the first writings on Greek astronomy did not come until centuries later.

If these findings are correct, they testify once again (see the location of Troy, etc.) to the astonishing power of the oral formulaic tradition, the means by which preliterate societies pass on their legends and histories from generation to generation. The Odyssey is generally dated to about 800 BC; the eclipse would have occurred three centuries earlier.   

The whiteness of the whale

 
Here is a white whale named Migaloo. Beautiful. Pure. Awe-inspiring. But it reminds me of Moby-Dick:

Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows  - a colorless, all- color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues  - every stately or lovely emblazoning  - the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge  - pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him.

Glum, ain't it? "Thou surrenderest to a hypo, Ishmael."

Scribal points to Starsky for defining hypo to Ishmael's satisfaction -- it's basically short for hypochondria, which was associated with depression and melancholy at the time.

Imagine

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared. -- J. K. Rowling

The Bookshelf

We haven't had a book day at  Scribal Terror for a long time, so what are you reading -- and what are you learning from it? Squire Frogworthy wants to know.

Two ads by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Peacay at BibliOdyssey has posted a fascinating collection of  nineteenth-century advertising  "trade cards."  The ones above are  by Charlotte Perkins Gilman of "Yellow Wallpaper" fame. Peacay writes:

The pair of Tub Soap girls and the Soapine carriage advertisement {~1880} are of particular interest because the artist/lithographer was Charlotte Perkins Gilman (niece of Harriet Beecher Stowe) who would later become a notable writer/social reformer and feminist. Her 1892 short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' was a first hand account of post-partum depression and suffering at the hands of (learned) quackery. The great medical minds of the day recommended isolation from family, near-total bed rest, restriction of intellectual activity and occasional application of electricity to the muscles.

Madeleine L'Engle, RIP

Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time and many other gloriously deep and imaginative books for children and adolescents, has passed away at 88. She wrote children's books because, she explained, "You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." She wrote about and deeply believed in embracing the paradox of life in a world that is simultaneously physical and spiritual:

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.

And, for her, it was the artist's response that best captured, and best honored, the paradoxical nature of reality:

Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth.

Thanks to Locust Eater , who links to a post by a clergyman who knew her.

Pop quiz

Props to anyone who can say where Harry Hutton got the phrase Mute Inglorious Stilton.

Cyrano de Bergerac's first flight

From The Other World: The Societies and Governments of the Moon:

I attached to myself a number of bottles of dew, and the heat of the sun, which attracted it, drew me so high that I finally emerged above the highest clouds. But the sun’s attraction of the dew drew me upwards so rapidly that instead of approaching the Moon, as I intended, I seemed to be farther from it than when I started. I broke open some of the bottles  and felt my weight overcome the attraction and bring me back towards the earth.

My impression was not incorrect, because I touched down again some time later. Judging by the time I left, it should have been midnight. However, I saw that the sun was at its highest point in the sky, and that it was noon. You may imagine how surprised I was; in fact, I was so surprised that, not knowing how to account for this miracle, I had the insolence to imagine that God had rewarded my boldness by once again stopping the sun in the sky  in recognition of such a noble undertaking.

My astonishment was increased by my failure to recognize the country I was in. Since I had flown straight up, it seemed to me that I should have come down at the same place I started from. With my equipment, I walked toward a thatched cottage from which I saw smoke emerging. I was scarcely within pistol-shot range when I was surrounded by a large number of savages. They were very surprised to meet me, because I think I was the first they had seen dressed in bottles.

Do you know where he and his nose made landfall?

Manga Shakespeare!

Great-looking Hamlet, and an R&J too:

Via Bookslut. What a fabulous medium for the pop-lit of another era.

"Double-Entendre"

This patriotic Loyalist poem breaks into two patriotic Revolutionary poems -- straight down the middle. To read the pro-American poems, you need to read all the lines just to the commas on the left side (this portion of the poetic line is called the caesura); then do the same beginning with the caesuras on the right. From Futility Closet:

Hark! Hark! the trumpet sounds, the din of war's alarms,
O'er seas and solid grounds, doth call us all to arms;
Who for King George doth stand, their honors soon shall shine;
Their ruin is at hand, who with the Congress join.
The acts of Parliament, in them I much delight,
I hate their cursed intent, who for the Congress fight;
The Tories of the day, they are my daily toast,
They soon will sneak away, who independence boast;
Who non-resistance hold, they have my hand and heart,
May they for slaves be sold, who act a Whiggish part;
On Mansfied, North and Bute, may daily blessings pour,
Confusion and dispute, on Congress evermore;
To North and British lord, may honors still be done,
I wish a block or cord, to General Washington.

– Frank H. Stauffer, The Queer, the Quaint and the Quizzical, 1882

P. S. Who knows what is meant by "a block or cord"?