What Pausanias saw when he looked up at the pediments of the temple of Zeus in Olympia
2019.03.22 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. I have by now lost count of how many times in my life I have visited the Museum at Olympia. And I cannot keep track of knowing what different things I remembered to view, or forgot to view, each time I was there. But there is one thing I know for sure as I look back on it all: each and every time I have visited that museum, I have never missed the chance of viewing the surviving fragments of the spectacular sculptures that had once upon a time adorned the east and the west pediments of the temple. In the second century of our era, the traveler Pausanias had viewed those same sculptures—and he saw them in all their unfragmented glory as he looked up at them from down below at ground zero. There they were, looming over him from on high, framed within the east and the west pediments of the lofty temple. I highlight here one of the many details he saw as he looked up to view those marvels of classical sculpture. It is the head of a male figure sculpted into the center of the west pediment.
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A Turkish Angora Cat in Paris: An insight into Catullus’ ‘Sparrow Poem’ (c. 2) arising from a Modern Greek Song
2019.03.18 | By Lucia Athanassaki
This response has been inspired by Gregory Nagy’s discussion of Catullus’ famous ‘Sparrow Poem’ (c. 2) in Classical Inquiries 2018.12.13. According to Nagy, Catullus’ model was Sappho’s ‘Sparrow Song’, lost to us but not to Catullus, in which the Lesbian poet expressed her affection for her little sparrow. Taking my lead from a Modern Greek pet song, I shall explore a slightly different path, the possibility that the ‘Sparrow Poem’ is not a poetic exercise on a Sapphic song, but Catullus’ imaginative reconstruction of Sappho’s relationship with Aphrodite’s winged charioteer.
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Analyzing a song to a sparrow: ‘I’m for you the girl, you’re for me the joy’
2019.03.15 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. I analyze here a song that is visualized inside a very short video-audio fragment taken from a Greek film made in 1960. (I thank my friends Lucia Athanassaki and Ewen Bowie for introducing me to this film.) I say “fragment” here because the micro-story that is being told by the song, within the compressed space of only a little over two minutes, 2:16, is detached here from the macro-story of the film that envelops it. And what is the subject of this micro-story? The answer depends on seeing and hearing the performance of the story in song. The story is in the song, which is meant to be sung by a girl to a sparrow.
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A scenario for exchanges of comments on a planned monograph about the ancient reception of Sappho
2019.03.08 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. As the title of this posting for 2019.03.08 indicates, I am planning to produce a monograph about the ancient reception of Sappho, and part of the plan is to organize a system for exchanging comments about this monograph, the text of which is I think not yet ready for publication in print. In this posting, I attempt to get the conversation started by making selected comments on my own text and by inviting selected colleagues to respond with comments of their own—either on my selected comments or on my actual text in its present form. The formatting for the comments is made possible by a new annotation tool developed by Luke Hollis and his associates. This tool makes it possible to comment on any one paragraph or on groupings of paragraphs.
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Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Part Seven
2019.03.01 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. This posting for 2019.03.01 is Part Seven of a long-term project that started with Part One at 2019.01.08. The numbering of my paragraphs here in Part Seven continues from §110 of Part Six, posted 2019.02.22, continuing from earlier posts. In Part Seven here, I attempt to round out my findings, as of now, about the reception of Sappho’s songs in the ancient world. Most if not all of these findings, I must emphasize, are not as yet certain, but they can point the way, I hope, to eventual certainties.
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Homo ludens at play with the songs of Sappho: Experiments in comparative reception theory, Part Six
2019.02.22 | By Gregory Nagy
§0. This posting for 2019.02.22 is Part Six of a long-term project that started with Part One at 2019.01.08. The numbering of my paragraphs here in Part Six continues from §95 of Part Five, posted 2019.02.08, continuing from earlier posts. In Part Six here, I concentrate once again on the poetry of Catullus, which has been my main preoccupation in the course of this overall project ever since §53 in Part Three, posted 2019.01.25. This time, over forty paragraphs later, I hope to tie up some of the many loose ends that I have made for myself in pursuing the questions I face in studying the reception of Sappho by Catullus.
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