The Dorian Mood

The Dorian mood, 

or

I wanna go for a whirl

Of all the ancient now long dead civilizations the Minoan culture of Bronze Age Crete has a special hold on my feverish and fettered imagination. Like all things ancient, any ideas we have of yon olden days are much more about how we want to see and how we interact with the world, than they are about what the people who actually lived in ancient climes felt and thought. If only because our understanding about those long gone days is so shallow and fragmented.

"There dwell Achaeans, there great-hearted native Cretans, there Cydonians, and Dorians of waving plumes, and goodly Pelasgians."

As much as an island can be a crossroads, Crete was the crossroads of the Ancient North African and West Asian cultures. The stepping stone and ruminating place for the passing of culture onto the barbarous northern lands. Homer tells us that the island was home to many different groups, Achaeans, Cydonians, Dorians, Pelasgians as well as True Cretans. Adding the influences from merchant activity and Crete can pass for a member of the global village, a seemingly modern multi-cultural land.

Much has been lost from cataclysms and wars and revolutions and plain old forgetfulness. Sadly we do not know the older script of these eteokretes, Homer's true Cretans of the Odyssey. So we do not know what sort of language they spoke, was it part of the PIE language grouping, or an older style of speech lost in the dust of earthquakes and wars and ruins of massive relentless tsunamis? There is debate even about the meaning of Minos. Did this word mean king, or war chief, so that all rulers of Crete were called Minos? Did it mean more like ascetic? Or was it, as most assume, just another name among many?

The Minoans seem to closely match the imagined pagans dancing through the opium dreams of the Victorian decadent Algernon Charles Swinburne. Minoan arts holds an erotic orientalised fascination, a playful, exuberant sway over the imaginings of generations of artists and scholars. Exposed bosoms of matrons hailing the sun. Bull leaping male and female athletes glowing shiny and naked and well oiled and the sparkling sun bestowing countless kisses on the tips of frothy waves. Naked soldiers eating and drinking in laconic commons. A chanting, incantation hissing priestess holding over her head writhing snakes of prophecy and good fortune. The wild songs to the Great Mother wailing over the mud brick cities, across the wild mountains and the deep valleys cut, out over the wine faced sea.

Crete may have been one of the birth places of the infant Zeus. Where the Great Mother in her birth pangs dug her fingers into the rich volcanic soil on the flanks of Mt Ida (or was it on Anatolian Ida?) and brought
into being the Dactyls. Spirits of knowledge and metal melting and pouring and many magic crafts. They taught useful and helpful things to poor ignorant mankind. Wretched ones, mere bellies. Crete, where Daedalus built the cow shaped frame for the Poseidon unnatural love after the white bull cursed Queen Pasiphae. So mating she brought into the being the hideous Minotaur. Daedalus (of Joyce fame) then force built the labyrinth to house and keep from human eyes that part man part bull prodigy of that god toying unnatural union. Needing to flee from the enraged king he built wings of feathers and bees wax. The son of Daedalus disobeyed the father and fell to his death.

After seeing the new exhibit Theatre of the World at MONA, I felt that I had to bring along the rest of the family, who were sadly sick with colds when I first went. Knowing what to expect I made a beeline for a
surprisingly dark, small and claustrophobic room. In reality it was no more than a trick of weak lighting that made the room feel so small. What was in this small dark room that so caught my eye and imagination?

Recently I read an article about MONA which stated that the gallery had subverted the traditional gallery experience by not raising buildings to the heavens. Rather submersive the entrance took one down down to the underground. I can only agree with the weeping philosopher in saying that the way up/down are one and the same. Regardless I trundled my tired old frame down the stairs into the belly bowels of the limestone earth.

One often hears lurid tales in the more lurid mass media articles about the obsession with sex and death of the owner and staff of MONA. And one would think that I was joining in the general death loving frenzy by going into this one particular room. For the room contained some half a dozen various coffins and caskets. Caskets gathered from across time and history, across space and geography. All these categories fell into disrepair. However death that was not my desire, indeed I did not even understand that the object that so interested me was a coffin until later, assuming it to be a chest for linen. I stumbled upon the room, the object, and my eye and my will fell upon the octopus with her outstretched arms.

What however is a larnax? It is in this case a coffin, but it can also mean a chest, as in the case of Hephaestus, as mentioned in Iliad 18.413, it seems to be his silver tool chest.

From Samuel Bulter's translation.

The bellows he set away from the fire, and gathered all the tools wherewith he wrought into a silver chest; and with a sponge wiped he his face and his two hands withal...

The word also can mean a water trough, by this I assume the containers still seen on farms for watering horses, pigs, cows and etc. In the final passages of the Iliad the bones of Hector are gathered from the
fire:

And the white bones they gathered, brothers and comrades
Swelling sorrow flowing tears down their cheeks.
And the bones they placed into the golden urn, covered gentle
With shimmering, gleaming purple robes. They placed the urn
Into the hollow trench and covered smooth with close set stones.

When one thinks about classical art, one thoughts are often drawn to the rigid poses of the Egyptians, or the mathematically precise statues and architectures of the Greeks, or rather the lovingly intricate folds of senatorial robes. In thinking of classical art the mind does not usually jump to ideas of naturalism, and even less does the idea of abstraction come into the conversation. Or if abstraction is thought of, it is of the geometric designs of the 'Dark Age'.

Formal, religious, locked into forms and a lack of experimentation are some of the things that people will think when thinking of ancient art. But of course this is wrong. A central dogma of science is that the processes occurring now have occurred in the past. So for the example of geology we have weathering, erosion, plate tectonics etc, all having occurred in the past. All of these processes of the past are still occurring. In the realm of art these can be taken to mean that in the past artists were like our current artists, they were effected by events happening around them, the great social movements, they were interested in change and development, in trying out new things, and most importantly (and often forgotten) they knew that art is fun, a type of playing.

What did set Minoan art apart from other cultures? One element being the sense of motion not often seen in the older monumental art of Egypt and Babylon. A sense of asymmetry. Objects would be purposely skewed off centre. Lines would take on a life of their own and would bend and twist and arabesque across the surface to be covered. Colour, when viewing the recovered artifacts seems to be almost non existent, but in reality the ancients loved colour and used it with a lack of inhibition that would make the most radical fauvist blush.

So what was drawing my mind? A simple baked clay Minoan casket from about 1350BC. What was it I liked about this piece? The symbol of the octopus with long tendril tentacles reaching out in wavy lines from
the body of the beast. Much Minoan art used these realistic images from nature. With the octopus being a common subject. Within a traditon of lines and formed like the constant waves upon the island, the constant motion and rolling tumble of storm and fair, the octopus sometimes appeared as natural, sometimes as little more than abstracted lines of tentacles rolling, undulating the constant swell. The constant surge wearing away at beaches and rocks the background to a tradition of movement and playfulness.

The always in the background threat of earthquake and tsunami to more than once wipe out all that was gained and forced the people back upon themselves. Great fire belching volcanoes sending out rolling waves to rumble mindless over the city walls, across the land, deep into the rich farmlands.

So this tension of natural and abstract moved across the generations with the creature becoming no more than a one sided line. In a similar way that we have moved along until we are no more than one sided adjuncts to the machine, and one sided dreamers of shopping schemes.

This could be seen as a model for our modern art. Once we drew things. Since the Renaissance a certain type of artist spent their entire lives defining with mathematical perversion the role of line and shadow. Now some of our artists are happy with no more than a collection of lines and a random splashing of colour. In this way we can see the dogma that I spoke of before. What is true for us was true for those who came before us, and what our ancestors did, so we are still doing.

So in a darkened room exhibiting the concern of MONA with coffins and caskets and all things deadly, I was able to admire this 3000 year old coffin, decorated as it was with asymmetrical designs and swirls. And
of course I wondered about the body that was stuffed into such a small casket, as well as wondering what the original colours were, who had made this object, who cried and what rituals were performed. The size and shape of the object. How was the body meant to fit? Were bones broken? Was it meant to represent the chest where people would keep their few belongings? Was it Egyptian in origin, does it represent the box in which Horus the husband of Isis was tricked into entering. The chest that became his coffin. This box which floated down the Nile and into the great sea beyond. Which Isis found bound in the giant tree trunk supporting the ceiling of a palace of a local king. Her cries of pain so profound and powerful as to cause the death of children.

I stood and thought about thinking, about the way in which this simple object made me think about the past and the future. But mostly I liked the way that this one small thing silent out of the pages of history seemed to me to be like a snapshot, a photographic object, which was able to stop time and movement. Like the photograph a newspaper or a political party uses of their opponent. Head back eyes half shut mouth open in laughter, to display the worst aspect of the candidates character and appearance. This Larnax, while not being shuttered in motion to cause embarrassment, does represent a frozen moment. A slice of life. A Series of questions. The moment when the practise of art was in the process of moving from one generation to the next. A moment of death, maybe an old patriarch or even older matriarch passing, and the wrinkled craftsman, out of respect for an old friend, makes one last casket in the fading style. The moment when the artist was surveying what had gone past and what was valuable to keep, to preserve. The moment younger hands took the reigns, when younger talents took over the workshop and studio.

A moment of tradition captured, made solid. A moment in the movement of art made solid. A moment in an anonymous individual's life. That moment of death. Did he or she pick out the casket themselves? Was it chosen after death? Was the object a rushed job due to a sudden accident, or illness? Was the casket chosen after a long and happy life, or a short and brutal one, a life of mediocrity? So many particulars, so
many questions. Questions which may or may not have answers, questions which I do not have the resources to even begin to answer.

All of this and more.

---

This description came from the email sent to me from MONA concerning
my tour of the museyroom.

Larnax (chest-shaped coffin)
Crete, Late Minoan Period, c. 1325 - 1275 BCE
Fired clay with painted decoration
95 x 122 x 49 cm

The custom of chest-shaped, clay coffins, or larnakes, is believed to
have originated in ancient Crete. The deceased would have been laid in
a flexed position and the gable-shaped lid secured with cords. The
shape may well have been based on wooden storage chests used within a
domestic context but, if so, none of those survive: recent scholarship
has identified Egyptian linen chests as the probable model

My Years of Freedom

Some I entered a short story contest for Adult Literacy - using the usual arts bureaucracy sort of language the contest was '...for the creation of exciting, inspiring and challenging stories to support and encourage adult learning, and to highlight the fact that "It's never too late ... to learn to read".' I did not expect, but would have welcomed the cash, to win. And here you can find out just why my story lost.

---

By all accounts Charlie had led a hard life. He was born in 1965 in a
small nothing of a rust coloured falling down town in outback
Queensland. His Father worked as a truck driver at the local coal
mine. He worked long shifts doing dangerous work. Over the years the
stress and the drink took hold of him. One day the thunderbolt
struck. He was promptly fired after causing an accident on the work
site. Having made a bit of cash, betting on a horse race, he was well
and truly drunk at the time of the accident.

Charlie's family was forced onto relief, onto the dole. The family's
average everyday rural poverty was transformed into a desperate
struggle for survival. As the amount of money coming into the house
lessened so the threats and the bullying and the violence
increased. Charlie hated living in his own home, he hated living in
fear, but mostly he hated the fact that he was too young and little
and so could not protect his mother.

One small mercy was that Charlie's father would spend as much time
away from the family home as possible. He would try to scrounge up a
demoralising days work here and there, often getting paid in rum or
beer. Maybe helping a local cocky shore up a lazily leaning
fence. Sometimes going off to help muster cattle, or digging a trench
for an irrigation scheme. To make ends meet his mother grew
vegetables, and looked after some of the local kids. His father would
shoot feral animals, cashing the pelts in for the bounty the state
government offered. The children gorged themselves with thin rabbit
stew on such days.

There was never enough money. There was never enough food to feed the
growing children. There was never enough of anything. Whenever
Charlie's dad had more than a couple of bob he would shoot off down
the pub to drown his sorrows; in the selfish manner of the weak men
with families who drunkenly wallow in self-pity and self loathing. One
long humid steaming summer days eight hour long drinking session ended
with a fist fight. Inflated, ranting male drunken froth pride wounded
over some trivial slight. Charlie's father was arrested for the king
hit. A punch caused by nothing which in turn caused the victim to fall
with a sickening thud. The back of his skull shattering when landing
on the stone guttering of the footpath in front of the local hotel.

Before the sun set on that day two more isolated rural families were
plunged deeper into merciless poverty due to that one single,
mindless, drunken punch.

Before the father left the family home, before he started his stretch
in a cold hard cell, he had got Charlie's mother pregnant. The
pregnancy went well in the first trimester, nothing beyond the normal
nausea and aches and pains and cravings. With the terror of the house
being locked away, it was like a dark storm cloud had dissipated. For
Charlie it felt like the first rains that break a desiccating
drought. The heart lifting sensation of the cooling wind carrying the
smell of the coming rain. The far off rumble and flashes of
lighting. Charlie's mother seemed as happy as he ever remembered her
being. She had more time, now that the demands of her husband had
disappeared, to spend on her children. She would often be found
working in the small vegetable garden round the back. She could be
found feeding and fussing about the dozen or so chooks that a
neighbour kindly donated to the family. The kindness extended to the
effort of building a chook yard from old bits and bobs found around
the property to protect the precious birds from the senseless blood
lust of the dingoes and foxes and wild dogs.

And then one day, a month or so before the due date of her child
everything went wrong. The drought breaking rain become a raging
tempest. Charlie, being the eldest of the three children in that small
rusty dusty house, tried his childish best to save her life. With no
telephone, he yelled at his younger brother to run the mile and a half
to the nearest property to get help. By the time assistance came
Charlie was already hugging his dead mother, soundlessly sobbing
without end, unable to even articulate his grief. His little boy tears
mixing with the dark deoxygenated blood that poured without stopping
from out of his mother. His little boy innocence poured out of him,
tears and snot and sweat mixed with the blood that searched out and
found the many tiny cracks and joins in the hand made floor and
dripped onto and mixed with the rusty dry dirt so full of the
heartache and betrayal of the history of this land. His breathless
brother sweaty and covered with dust, his infant sister sitting in the
blood, slapping her hand and crying for reasons she was too young to
understand.

It would be decades before he saw his sister again. He never spoke
with his brother again after that day, the younger brother had been
killed in a car accident.

Needless to say that with such a shocking start to life Charlie had
very few chances as he grew into adulthood. He was separated from his
brother and sister. They were all sent to different foster
families. Not knowing where his siblings were, Charlie was shuttled
from agency to agency, sent to a series of unsatisfactory foster homes
and brutal or indifferent schools. He spent most of his time angry,
fighting with teachers, fighting with the other students, fighting the
bullies, preying on the weak. He banged his head against the brick
wall education system. So the young Charlie, alone in the world, was
overlooked and misplaced and eventually given up on by the
system. Soon he was not bothering to show up for school. He had
dropped out of school more or less completely by the time he was
fourteen. He could read a bit, but only with difficulty and he was not
able to write more than his name.

At a young age he, like his father before him, found himself locked
away in the a cold in the winter and stinking hot in the summer
Victorian era prison. He had tried to rob a bottle shop. He was
arrested when an off duty police officer unluckily entered the bottle
shop at the time Charlie was demanding of the publican's nephew all
the money in the till. Charlie was twenty five years old, and he was
stuck away in prison. He had lost all contact with his sister and
brother. He had refused to even speak to his father when he was
paroled, and Charlie's father was only too happy to ignore and reject
his troubled son. Charlie no longer even knew how to get in contact
with any uncles or aunts. By any sort of reckoning, unless something
was to seriously change in his life and quickly, he was destined to
a life of poverty, drug abuse and petty crime, and most likely an
early death.

His luck, however, was about to change. Who could imagine that a stint
in prison could be a life changing and life affirming event? As luck
would have it he was housed in the same block with a tall, strong,
handsome and charismatic aboriginal elder. Not many of the prisoners
knew his real name they all called him 'Goanna'. He laughed his rusty
rough as the outback eroding dust laugh when questioned about his
name. 'Everyone calls me Goanna, cause I used to like to fuck every
woman I met. See the goanna has two dicks, and all the ones in my mob
they would say I fuck like a goanna. Name sorta stuck. One day I met
up with this nice white girl, she was sweet, and we had a good time
together. Until her racist dad found out about us. The bastard was a
local cop. I was eighteen, and she was only seventeen, so the bastard
did me on statutory rape charge. That was years ago, but if you are a
black man and you catch the eye of the police, well let's just say I
have been in and out of gaol ever since.' He slapped the green
custodial painted walls and laughed. 'This place is my country now,
and this mob is my mob. Eh?'

One day Goanna, who was also a member of the Communist Party took
Charlie aside. Standing over the younger man, he said, "Mate. Blokes
like us, we're shit, our lives are shit. We're shit. We got nothing,
we got nothing in our past, and our future is more of the same,
eh. Past, future, present it is all fucked. We just got shit, eh? Our
life is a constant struggle everyday. You just wanna drink and drug it
all away eh? You only get one chance. How do you think you can make a
better life for yourself, eh?'

Charlie thought, and after a little while he replied, 'We gotta get
ourselves a whole heap of money, I reckon.'

'How you going to do that boy? Eh, how you gonna do that?' Charlie
mouthed words, but no sound came out. 'You gonna rob a bottle shop, or
a bank? That will just bring you back here.' The silence of Charlie
was answer enough for Goanna. 'Books eh. Books are the weapons you
need boy, books are the tools which will allow you to build a better
life. You want me to teach you to read?"

Charlie thought for a moment, He remembered how mother would sometimes
read from an old tattered fairy book to him at bedtime. She had wanted
him to go to school, to stay in school. Who knows how things would
have been for me if she had lived. I owe it her, to her memory. 'What
the fuck have I got to lose, I've got five years in this shit mound,
what else am I to do with my time? What the fuck else...'

With Goanna working with him and urging him on, and picking him up
when he fell Charlie quickly built up his confidence and
abilities. And soon he made his teacher smile. When the screws found
out what was happening they saw to it that Goanna was moved to a
different wing of the prison. Charlie tried to write him letters, but
his spelling and his handwriting was atrocious, and his grasp of
grammar was not much better. So he redoubled his efforts, it was not
enough to be able to hunt and peck at the words and struggle to make
sense of sentences, he had to gain fluency. He had to work
harder. After a few months Charlie was able, with pride, to send and
receive letters to his friend and mentor, Goanna.

I first heard this amazing, inspiring story in an interview with the
local ABC radio station on the National Day of Literacy. Charlie spoke
with passion about the story of his life. I felt the need to track him
down and hear his story and to write it down. He was joy to be
with. We had many long conversations. Charlie, not his real name,
would not let me use a tape recorder, or even to take shorthand
notes. I would franticly scribble in my notebook after our
meetings. So there may be mistakes, and misquotes in the story, but
even it is not exactly the story of Charlie, there are plenty of
stories of men and women who have overcome the odds and turned their
lives around. Almost all of these positive results were the result of
education. Charlie is but one of many. Granted more people fall by the
wayside, but we can feel a certain reverse schadenfreude when we are
able to hear about the victory of the true battler.

I will leave the final summing up to Charlie. I have done my best to
accurately capture his words.

It seems absurd to say, but those years in prison were my years of
freedom, the time when I was most free. I devoured everything I got my
hands on. I attacked learning with all the hunger of a sailor in a
knock shop after a long stint at sea. I read the Bible, a book which
was easy to get in prison. I read tattered, battered dog eared and
smudged old westerns, I read the letters to Penthouse which circulated
around the prison uni like currency. The Salvation Army officer who
came to visit us got me copies of classics like Plato and
Shakespeare. I stayed off the drugs and the harsh gaol house grog. I
got my hands on a dictionary, and using Malcolm X as my guide I copied
out every damn word of that book. How much I learned from that effort,
I can never say, but it was my infinite university in a small
room. All the knowledge of the world can be found in a good
dictionary.

With my new found skills I became a hero among the prisoners. I was
able to make a few dollars and pouches of tobacco, to earn some prison
respect by writing out letters for criminals to their family. I wrote
heart felt love letters to wives, girlfriends or boyfriends. I
modified angry replies for Dear John letters. I also wrote letters to
lawyers and social workers. Too many times I found that the prisoners
often drew the short straw, as they were not able to read, and so were
not able to fully understand the intricacies of the cases against
them. I am proud to say that I was able to help quite a few of these
sad broken men, many of whom were suffering from mental illness and
should not have been in prison. This lasted until the authorities
understood what I was doing and how I was helping the inmates. For
many of the cases against them were weak, and being ignorant the
accused ones were able to be intimidated into accepting gaol terms
that they did not deserve. The prison staff used the fact that I was
able to get my year twelve diploma as a weapon against me and my
fellow inmates. The governor organised for me to be paroled early. It
seems funny now, but I was sad to leave the prison, I felt I was doing
good work, that I had found my calling.

I was thrown back into the world, with a new set of clothes, and
$75.40 in an account that my 'wages' for prison work had been
deposited. After a few months of confusion and despair, caused by
adjusting to being free and at not seeing my prison friends, I roused
myself. My life of freedom began by my going to the local library and
pouring over records. Soon I was able to happily track down my sister,
and sadly I learned about the death of my brother.

I enrolled in and graduated from the local university. Now I fly
around the world and I work talking about the problems caused by
illiteracy, and advocating for prisoners rights. I have a family and a
future. I will try to instil a love of books in my children. Goanna
was right, books are the tools we need, the tools that can allow us to
lead the life we want to lead. Books are weapons that allow working
people to fight back, not just for ourselves, not just for our
immediate families, but rather for all of the poor and vulnerable and
oppressed the world over.

---

I am in the fortunate group of people who are able to read and write. I learned to read in school, as a child, so I have no real understanding of the depth of problems for those who are not as lucky as I have been .

I do know that for years adult literacy was a very important goal and organising tool for a revolutionary proletariat. Too important, I think, to leave to the arts administrators and the beauacrats and time wasters at DEEWR, but that is apparently our fate in the current age.

Not, as I said, being unable to read, on hearing of this contest my mind at once jumped back to the half remebered fragment of a reading of the biography of Malcolm X. He spoke of reading the dictionary in his time in jail, and transcribing all the entries. This was the revolutionary edge of adult literacy I had in my mind when writing this piece.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader as to how well, or how poorly I hit my target. The winners can all be seen here.

Looking at you kid

Having recently moved to rural Tasmania I have quickly learned that
one must makes ones own entertainment. There are few cultural outlets
in these small towns. Not even a cinema. So culture is mainly confined
to the library and the video shop.

Country people are therefore forced to rely on their own efforts, as
we do not get the pleasure of, for example, the TSO or Bell
Shakespeare Company coming to our little town. Into the breach steps
our own Sorell On Stage (SOS) theatre group. This is a lively group of
enthusiastic amateur thespians. Being, as my wife reminds me, an art
snob, this is not the sort of theatre I would produce, if giving the
chance. But I am only too happy to support the group. To this end I
went along to their most recent production 'Murder in Casablanca.'

This was organised with the support of the local RSL club. With the
addition of kitchen and staff, the theater group and the RSL were able
to create two evenings of dinner theatre. 

So on a crisp and damp winters end evening I went to the Sorell
Memorial Hall (SMH) to see the play, and to help out as a waiter. As
this was written and directed by a member of SOS I did not know what
to expect. 

The Sorell Memorial Hall is a pretty little building built in an art
deco style, with wide horse flanks curving away from the
street. Boasting a pretty little entrance way in the linear geometric
style favoured of the art deco, a little bit of Broadway in old Sorell
Town.

I will dispense with the bad aspects first, as they are few and are
mostly a function of being an amateur theatre group in a small
town. In all these sorts of productions the talent is not uniform. As
this play was a musical in the best of all possible worlds there would
be a small band playing to add texture and depth to the music. Alas
this is not possible. But the keyboard player was very good, and it
was nice to see his interactions with the cast. The play itself was
not so much of a narrative arc, as a skeleton on which to hang a
series of songs and set piece actions. The lighting was not used to
full effect, this is something SOS may want to concentrate on in the
future. With only a small budget for sets and costumes effective
lighting can with illumination hide a multitude of sins.

On a deeper note the plays produced are non confrontational, and do
not force the audience to engage too much with the works. There is no
Brechtian ideas of Theatre of Alienation, or Beckett absurdity, these
comments however say more about me they do of the group.

Without challenging ideas of theatre as an art form, or challenging
the audience to look at their assumptions of everyday life, in their
locally written and performed play Murder in Casablanca the group did
a good job of subverting many ideas of performance. The production was
a sort of homage to the classic movie Casablanca, and the songs of
that era, not so much a play as a series of songs hung together round
the conceit of all the women that Rick Blaine had known in his life coming
into his bar. This allowed the various lovers of Rick to tease him and
to sing songs of the film noir era, sadly resulting in the murder of Ilsa.
The director broke the convention of the proscenium arch, smashing the
illusionary window which separates audience from performer. As this was dinner
theatre and people were eating and drinking it was important to mingle with the
crowd and so keep their interest. So the play took place both on the
stage and around the stage, slowly melding and melting into the
audience. Like an old time rave when the crowd was of more interest
than the music. This was very interesting and in a word, cool.

The limitations of money and time allow for amateur theatre to stand
above the 'real', the professional. In professional theatre much of the
decisions made, and this is true for many of the professional arts,
are made for commercial reasons. Either to find a nice neutral piece
that will not offend, or for some artists a desire to offend as an end
in itself. With small town local theatre the decisions may be made due
to money issues, but they are not commercial issues, a subtle
distinction. But outside of the city art market, art can be made for
the purest reason, the greatest reason, because it is fun, and it is
what we want to do. In small town art the barrier between audience and
performer is naturally broken down. The person singing on stage one
day will then be found at the local antique shop the next
day. Everyone is a neighbour and the crowd are free to chat and mix
with the cast after the show. When is one allowed to chat and rub
shoulders with Geffory Rush after a performance in the alienating
theater market place of Melbourne, were the distinctions of artist and
plebeian are stark and unavoidable.

In all a better event than a performance, but still a fun time and
most importantly a social event, a time to get together, not to create
more distinctions. For this reason alone we should support the local
artist in the same way that we desire to support the local butcher or
bakery, as a way of turning on back on the impersonal market.

Sorell Council Sesquicentennial

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On one of those cloud slate coming the end of winter mornings when the sun seems to be a feeble flame shining with a false light I trotted down the road to the Sorell Memorial Hall to partake in the festivities of 150 year anniversary of the foundation of Sorell City Council.

Being an old school history geek this sort of this always captures my interest. Indeed when I move to a new town or suburb I like to find out as much as possible about the history of the area. This knowledge helps to put things in perspective and helps one to learn the lay of the land. History is honesty, or at least it should be. History (from the Greek istoria, meaning enquiry) should be, like science, based in the first instance on observation. Then a hypothesis can be created, which of course must then be tested by more observation and etc. History must be seen as an iterative process. A process of continual criticism and self criticism. In this way can the science of history develop and advance.

The Memorial Hall has the numerous, obligatory monuments to the war dead that one sees in all the small towns dotted across the landscape. The saddest one being a small reminder for two local lads who drowned on the return trip from South Africa after the Second Boer War. A war which was a harbinger of the terrors of twentieth century total war. A war that gave us commandos, free fire zones, scorched earth, guerilla warfare and concentration camps. A war eagerly (and to my mind surprisingly) supported by a recently sobered up Algernon Charles Swinburne. It was passing sad to see the two names and the forlorn words buried at sea.

I arrived and was greeted by local school kids dressed in period costume, playing period games. Once in the hall I made myself a cup of tea, and had a quick look at the various artefacts on display in the room used by the local historical society. I found a place and was able to sit down and hear one of my favourite tunes, The Wild Colonial Boy played as a sound check.

Sorell pivot of the Black Line, surrounded by shallow rapidly changing ever flowing ocean waters. Home of one of the oldest continually operating schools in Australia. Mooted as a potential capital of Tasmania. Sorell once a stockyard centre of boat building, busy with ferries full of bags of wheat destined to support the struggling colony of New South Wales. Now the ferry-men are no more, the bullock drivers the wheat farmers the original inhabitants all gone into the dust of the past, moved along by the rapid changes of history. Henry Reynolds tells us how the wind carries the cries of the betrayed and the dispossessed and the murdered through the trees of windy Tasmania.

Being a great fan of folk music, it was with particular interest that I listened to the Greenhill Two. Local Peter MacFie scoured the archives to unearth the long silent tunes of Alexander Laing. Sent to Van Diemen's Land due to his getting drunk and spending the money entrusted him to help recruit for the 92nd Gordon Highlanders Regiment. Like the droogs of Alex DeLarge he worked his way from convict criminal to become police officer, to being the jailer of Sorell Gaol.

The duo played on fiddle and guitar a set of seven songs. All songs by Laing and all based around the local area. Starting with Sorell Wind Mill, with the fiddle creating the impression of the whirling arms of the wind mill. Gordon Street, Sorell, a much more rollicking number which may have been formed from the the impressions Laing had looking out the window of his 'office' in the old gaol. Miss E. E. P. Reardons' Quadrille was written to commemorate the birth of his grand daughter. Mrs Champ's Reel in honour of his second wife. Brady's Lookout 1825. Brady being a famous bush ranger who held up the town of Sorell. The duo played one more piece the name of which I did not catch.

As Pilate asked, in John 18:38, of Christ 'Ti estin aletheia'. What is truth? This question is most important in any historical reckoning. Even when the music of Laing is written down and note for note played, one is still left with the lingering doubt, is this what Laing meant? Does this sound like the tune he wrote, what he heard in his secret lonely head? 'Truth is', Kierkegaard witheringly answered, in a manner that still haunts modern thinkers, 'an objective uncertainty passionately held in an inward appropriation process.' This is even more clearly
seen in the quest for historical truth, in grand sweeping histories of countries and nations and peoples. How can any historic narrative be said to be true when talking over masses of people over many years. This can be seen most pointedly in our modern dissections of the history of race relations in Australia. Some talk of black armbands while others talk of genocide, and there seems to be no grounds of agreement between
such opposing views.

This question was again raised when the local theatre group Sorell On Stage reenacted the first meeting of the Sorell Council. On July 1 1862 the Sorell Council had their first meeting. The same day as the Battle of Malvern Hill in the American Civil War, and the marriage of one of Queens Victoria's daughters Princess. Even with the reading out of minutes of the meeting, one has to ask how much left out? Minutes are not always complete, as things may be missed, words misquoted etc. Also with the bare minutes there was no context given, no idea of body language, no ability to understand the dynamics of the relations between the various members of the committee. This is of course not a fault of the theatre group, in fact it is not a criticism at all, but rather a problem that all historical research must face.

As an aside it is worth noting with some pride that in 1862 all of the councillors where all men, but in 2012 we have a woman, Carmel Torenius, as the mayor of Sorell, Laura Giddings as the Premier of Tasmania and Julia Gillard as Prime Minister of Australia. As they used to say (in a patronising way) when advertising cigarettes way back in the 1970s, you've come a long way baby.

And then the local school kids in period dress played the games kids would have played in the 1860s. Cake was eaten, tea was drunk and the locals had a lovely forenoon taking and chatting among themselves.

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The shitty shadow play

A friend whom I have never met, but only through the inernet, Ian Milliss wrote this article for the 250th anniversary issue of Art Monthly. Our digital dialogue has allowed me to develop respect and some sort of affection for his views and opinions. This article made me think about stuff, and I was at first going to reply with a witty internet sized one liner, but the more I thought the more words and ideas were vomited forth. So I guess you should read his article first, to get some context. Or not.

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The shitty shadow play of a shitty world, so a pal of mine in Canberra called the art scene and the local artists. This is caused by the global fordism of art, as Ian so clearly points out. The idea that Disney will buy out the museyrooms is a dystopian fantasy that sadly can become true, if we do not keep on guard. (One only has to look over the history of the cinema, and the banal state of publishing in the Anglosphere, to see the danger will are facing.) Indeed David Walsh refers to MONA as a subversive adult Disneyland, and much as I admire and appreciate the gallery one has to ask the question, how subversive a can a Disneyland, adult or otherwise, become. Is the goal of art to titillate and 'shock' with walls of vaginas, and smears of poo? Or is the goal of art to, in simplistic terms, try to make us better people, to try to make us see the world though the eyes of pure childhood playfulness anew? We have only a tenuous grasp on life, and we should not settle on facile blandness.

The mass production of art combined with, not a lack of talent, but rather a lack of ideology. Indeed ideology seems to be a dirty word these days, but to me it is nothing more than an attempt to bring things together, and attempt to make sense of the contradictions of internal world versus external world. A gathering together of threads, going way way back to the PIE *weid- meaning to see.

Too many people, schooled as they are in the vapid world of witty one liners and the constant fear of any authentic activity take ideology to mean little more than impractical thinking about things. Not really understanding that there is more to life than the constant one sided pragmatic jumping from one crisis to the next with not understanding as to how all things are interconnected and come together. Art is seen as apart from politics, apart from our interpersonal relationships, apart from the choices we make as consumer. Of course like all things human ideology can become perverted, and can become a hindrance to thinking and activity, but this is why the critical activity must also be turned inward, one must constantly question oneself. So when new experiences, new ways of seeing arise they must be integrated into one's ideology.

We can see this negative understanding of ideology clearly in recent critiques of the green party, who are constantly assailed for having principles and a policy they are not willing to throw overboard at the first opportunity. This can be summed up with a quote from Michael Danby, the federal member for Melbourne Ports, reported in the cesspit of pretend pragmatism vexnews

'The Greens have discredited themselves with many inner-city voters I talk with every day by voting with the Liberals on asylum seekers. Frankly I’ve been struck by the magnitude of the criticism I hear of their self-indulgent and viciously ideological position on asylum seekers, that is costing lives.'

While I do not like to see the Greens on the side of the LNP, it is wrong and a misunderstanding to say the Green Party voted with the liberals. They voted as they saw fit, in a way that they felt was true to their positions and policies. On the other hand the liberals in a choreographed display of populist vengeance (who can forget the staged spectacle of Joe Hockey and his histrionic welling up at the idea of  sending unaccompanied children to Malaysia, while at the same time cynically supporting the idea of turning back boats) voted in a way that would bring maximum disruption to the government, regardless of any ideology the LNP may have.

But I digress, for it is late and I am tired and a bit tipsy.

Art should be part of this trying to make sense of the world, and while I do not disagree with the idea that the world is in many ways unknowable and in constant flux,  one has to also admit that the world is repeatable and in many ways can be known. This can be seen in the simple act of cooking dinner, I apply heat the water boils, I apply a knife to the carrot and it cuts, I add yeast to flour and the dough rises.

One day art in the future will dissolve, and this process is beginning,. This can be readily seen with our street art, as well as the space created by the internet. When this day comes art will be simply a part of everyday life, and there will no longer be a need for the priestly caste of critics to mediate and tell us what is pure and what is impure. Conversation will become inclusive. The conversation will no longer be the purposeful obfuscation using silver dollar words. The conversation will no longer spew forth from one sided two faced confusers with a weak grasp of the ideas of thinkers such as Derrida. The weakness and shallowness of these types of posers support their ideas with a firm grasp on the language and tropes of the arts bureaucracy and ways to job the system. Everyone will be an artist precisely because there will be no artists in a festive echo of Lenin's idea that one day the lowest clerk will be able to run the affairs of the state. Art and humanity will be free and human activity will be seen for what it can be, a type of play, a thing of joy, and not a hammer with which to batter the other in vain attempts to gain control and dominance. Art will be enjoyed for it's 'spiritual value', not it's exchange value. Art will become integrated into life, and indeed ones life itself will become art. To me this should be the aspiration of all artists. 

With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting that design might cover their face,
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall

Gallifrey Falls!

Children of the Void

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"We, peopling the void air, make gods to whom we impute the ills we
ought to bear."
Matthew Arnold.

It is all in Lucretius, Matthew Arnold said when he encountered
Darwin's Theory of Evolution.  More completely he said, in a letter 'I
cannot understand why you scientific people make such a fuss about
Darwin. Why, it's all in Lucretius!' Atheism and philosophical
materialism have a long and proud history. A legacy, which Zizek
reminds us, we must defend and celebrate.

I am not sure if Zizek quoted Hume correctly in his article published in the New York Times,
as I was not able to find the exact quote, but I must admit I did not look very hard nor for
 very long. Regardless of the accuracy as to who said what in what context and the provenance
of the quote it is a good one. "David Hume, a believer, made this point in a very poignant way,
when he wrote that the only way to show true respect for God is to actmorally while ignoring God's existence." As an atheist and a materialist I not only ignore the existence of any God, although this
is a good default position, I actively reject the existence of God.

This simple skeptical quote from Hume, who is considered the greatest
of English philosophers, and like many great Englishmen, he was
actually not English, made me think. And it shows how atheists are
better than Christians. Atheists are often accused of having a bleak
and soulless world view, and living in a lonely and dying universe,
full of darkness and the cold wind of outer space, I do not deny this
for a minute. The universe is dark and lonely, and we live a tiny
sliver of a small fraction for a fabulously brief time, on a tiny mote
circling a mediocre sun. Nature is immense and we are so very very
small. Puny even.

But let us, as a thought experiment, turn this idea around. For to me
this idea of a dark soulless universe should be the basis for a
atheist morality. The universe is some 14 billion years old, and is
expanding at a furious rate. There is no god, and we are all
alone. The children of the void.  The chances of any one of us even
being born are fantastic. And we only get one trip, and when it ends
we go back into the void, at best our bits are recycled and without a
faint gasp the universe carries on with it's serene disinterest.

What does this mean, each of us a unique fantastic accident? To me,
and I am but one small thin voice beneath pleasing city towers, amid
the busy hum of men, this means only one thing. To me this leads to a
moral position that requires no god, no fear of punishment or
reward. It is simply that we must not harm other people. All people
are unique and equal, and each life is a miracle never to be repeated
again even if the universe turns and cools for another 14 billion
years.

How often do we hear the belligerent non-combatants spew out
nauseating cliches such as 'Shoot them all, let God sort 'em out.' This
would not be a possible option for a through going materialist
position, as there is neither an after life, nor is there a sublime
all forgiving god to sort out any mistakes. There is no justice after
death.

Morality is then based on the idea that each human is unique and there
is no recovery from a mistaken death. In more traditional words this
means simply the golden rule, 'do unto others, as you would have them
do unto you.'

This seems to be no more than a petty truism, and it very well may be,
but it is as close to a universal ideal that you are likely to come
across.

"Zi Gong asked, saying, 'Is there one word that may serve as a rule of
practice for all one's life?' The Master said, 'Is not RECIPROCITY
such a word?'" The Master being Confucius

"Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." Thales

"Regard your neighbour's gain as your own gain, and your neighbour's
loss as your own loss." T'ai Shang Kan Ying P'ien

From Christians to Confucians to ancient Greek natural philosophers to
Buddhist monks to atheists, this idea cuts across cultures and time.
As simple and seemingly straight forward as this idea may be, it
raises as many questions as it solves. What of the convicted criminal?
If the judge would not like to go to jail, how could she send the law breaker
to jail? Interesting as this dilemma is, this is an argument we should
hold off for another time.

This rule of performing every act as if you wish it to be a universal
truth, does not require any higher power, it does not require a system
of reward and punishment. Most importantly, as Confucius pointed out
it has the value of reciprocity.

Many commentators have pointed out various aspects of human life that
set us apart from animals, some include language, other tool making,
still others our control of fire, our ability to laugh or alternately
our ability to feel shame. All of these are true, and as one sided
views are both correct and incorrect. For as far as reciprocity is
defined as an aspect of human life, we can say that reciprocity is an
aspect that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Even
though other creatures are social humans seem to have deeper and more
complex mutual relations. Again this will open up another theatre of
argument, we should leave such arguments for another day.

The rule of being excellent to one another lies at the heart of all
things human, the fact that we are social animals, the fact that to
survive in this hostile, cold, dark, lonely universe we are compelled
to come together and work together. This can be seen in the world we
have built and more intimately in our building of families and the
raising of children, the next generation. It seems as a truism to me
that if we maintained a mutually hostile and suspicious attitude to
one another we would still be living in caves and eating grubs and raw
meat. There would be too much for any one person, or family to cope
with, and life would be nasty, brutish and short.

So the atheist is more moral than the theist as she wants to do the
right thing, because she knows it to be the right thing to do, and
seeks not to go to heaven, nor to avoid hell, nor to please a powerful
supernatural force. And this arises from the understanding the
universe is a cold uncaring place, that we live in an absurd world
with death as the only and universal prize given to all of us,
regardless of how successful or beautiful or wonderful a person may
be. The president and the pope and the poorest, most marginalised all
come into the world naked and all die frightened and alone. But in
that one bright shining moment with the sun and the wind upon your
cheek the materialist will see the world as a rich interaction of
relations, and will see all things as one, and she will live
intoxicated at the joyful accident of life, performing all actions as
if she wished them to be a universal law, with no fear of god or
death. This is a true morality.

You Burn Me

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The tea-rose, tea-gown, etc.
Supplants the mousseline of Cos,
The pianola "replaces"
Sappho's barbitos.
Ezra Pound - Hugh Selwyn Mauberly

Fragment 38:
You burn me.

What are we to make of such a fragment? A fragment with so little information. We know very little about Sappho. We do not even write her name in her dialect. Psappha would be more correct. Even her name is mediated by years of eroding and mutating tradition. All that we accurately know about her life could easily fit into a single tweet.

She was born on the island of Lesbos, but was she a lesbian? Or was she, as the Victorians affirmed, a teacher, the head mistress of a finsishing school? We do not know. A priest in a cult of Adonis? A sacred prostitute at the temple of Aphrodite? How much does it matter? So much of what we think we know is just guesswork based on scattered ashes of the body of her works.

She seems to have been born as early as 630BC, and may have died in 570BC. One of the entries in a Byzantine encyclopaedia, the Suda, dates her to the 42nd Olympiad (612-608BC). Even this simple date is ambiguous,  tantalizing. Was she born in 612 or is this date her floruit, her time of flourishing?

Even straight forward and to our minds basic facts are open to argument. Did she marry and have children? An entry in the Suda suggests she married the wealthy Kerkylas from Andros, but this may be bawdy Attic punning propaganda, as the name could be taken to mean the she married 'Dick Allcock from the island of Man'. Possibly this came from one of the many Athenian comedies which used Sappho as a figure of ridicule. As the political climate in Athens became less tolerant of the noisy, boisterous democracy of the rowers, of the assembly, and the theatre; and as those who had been lampooned turned more and more to the law courts for compensation, the Middle Comedy period arose. In this style of comedy stock characters were used as cover for political critique, until the characters took on a life of their own, and became an end in themselves controlling the poets more than being controlled. Apparently Sappho was one of these characters, sexually promiscuous and often portrayed as a lesbian, and so fiction and biography became intertwined. 

As an aside it is interesting to note that Athens, the cradle of democracy for the modern West, was one of the more sexist communities in Ancient Greece. Women could not own property, and if the husband died the wife was often married off to her uncle. She was described as being 'of the land'. Marry the widow to get the farm. In our modern contract of falsehood Sparta represents a militarised Socialism similar to the collective of the Borg or the unfeeling Cybermen of Doctor Who. In reality compared to Athens Spartan women were accorded greater freedoms. This may have been because of the practical problems caused by the men spending most of their time in the regimental mess. In Laconia the young women exercised naked, as only Spartan women could give birth to Spartan warriors.

In the barbarous eastern frontier, where Sappho was from, women had various rights. This goes a long way to explaining the misunderstandings between Troy and the Achaeans, which led to the long cruel war. In the mind of Paris if Helen wanted to leave her husband she was free to do so, and was also free to take her dowry with her when she left. In the mind of Menalaus Alexander had violated an oath, had committed sacrilege

It is probably too much to assert that this middle comedy characterisation of Sappho as promiscuous and a lesbian was the deciding factor in Pope Gregory ordering the burning of her books. We do not know what was in the nine lost books. But we can assume that the lies generated about Sappho some two centuries after her death and the legend of insatiable sexual hunger that was created around her tempered the views of the Pope. In 1072 the Papacy ordered her books burnt. These perfect songs had survived some 1500 years of natural and man made disasters, the numerous wars and upheavals of the lived history of the Mediterranean. Did not Plato suggest that the comedies of Aristophanes played no vain part in bringing into being the mood of hostility towards Socrates? And that these distortions of the thoughts of Socrates acted upon the minds of the Athenian jurymen. In the Republic Plato suggests banning comics such as Aristophanes. The ones who earn their dinner ridiculing actual persons. For as we know only too well from our daily going about our business that the spreading of falsehood and rumour in the public culture takes on a life of it's own and that these lies confront us as an alien force. If, as is said in the old proverb, ‘a lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on’ how many times will the lie circle our networked globe? Will it race round the world even to the extent that, like Superman flying so fast and so often around the world, time stops and then moves backwards. And so the electron fast lie is able to rewrite history, our shared artificial narrative.

Was Sappho a lesbian, or was she married? Again the poems seem to point to both of these possibilities. Of course one can be married and have children and at the same time be a lesbian. They are not mutually
exclusive. Indeed we all have different modes of existing at different times of our lives. As it seems fairly certain that she was an aristocrat, it could be that she entered into an arranged marriage. Nobles have had arranged marriages for as long as they have wanted power.

One poem refers to Cleis, her 'kala pais', but does this mean beautiful daughter, or beautiful slave? The Greeks used the word pais to mean child. In the same way that rednecks in southern states of America would call black men boy, pais can also mean slave. This idea of the slave as childlike can be seen in French which still uses Garcon to mean boy, servant or even waiter. Obviously the language of domination. Most commentators seem to agree that it was her daughter, and I am not in a position to argue, but after almost 3000 years of time, writing as she did in an obscure dialect, how can we be sure what we know.

We can be pretty sure that she had to flee Lesbos and spent some time in Sicily, then a Greek colony. We know this as Cicero tells us a statue was erected in her honour in Syracuse. She may have been exiled for political activity, or the activity of her family. We do know she came back to Lesbos.

The one thing that we do know, and the only thing I feel we can truly focus on, is the fact that she was greatly admired as a poet. We know that she invented new forms of metre, notably the aptly named Sapphic stanza. Three lines of eleven syllables, with a fourth line of only five syllables. The Greeks, like the Latins based a line of poetry on alternating vowel sounds; not as in English poetry on stresses. In the following model:
- is a short vowel sound,
u is a long vowel,
x means the author could use either long of short.
The line would look like this:

- x -  x  - u u -  u - -  

An example in English by Alan Ginsberg

    Red cheeked boyfriends tenderly kiss me sweet mouthed
    under Boulder coverlets winter springtime
    hug me naked laughing & telling girl friends
        gossip til autumn


We also know that her poems were meant to be sung, accompanied by the lyre. The barbitos that Pound mentioned in our opening quote. Plato, among others, spoke of her as the tenth muse. Many poets including the Roman Ovid and Catullus greatly admired her work, even if they had muddle headed views about the woman herself. In another confusion of history we do not know if Sappho invented the plectrum, what we would call the pick for playing the lyre or if she invented the pectis, another type of stringed instrument. Both, neither? The truth does not really matter. For these legends show the esteem the ancients felt for her as a lyric poet. If alive today would Sappho be an example of what we would call a singer songwriter?

How much can we deduce of her character from the poems that have come down to us? I do not think we can place too much value on the remaining  fragments in giving us a clear answer. Often the poet will write a work from a specific point of view, will try on different voices and personas, which may or may not agree with the inner-held views and feelings of the maker. This is even more true in any analysis of Sappho, as we have many fragments but only a few completed poems. I do not think we can view her poetry as confessional in the same way that we can with the works of Sylvia Plath. As we can be no more that transitory confused visitors into her world, obscured as it is, as we are, by the fog and shadows of the past. We can only admire her work. We must refrain from using as a reinforcing mortar our bias and feelings in an attempt to support and add form to the crumbling walls of her often very sparse words.

The Middle Comedy Athenian playwrights, Victor Frankenstein like tried to reanimate Sappho, but with no understanding of electricity it seems they were left with the frail expedient of rubbing amber over her dried bones. Our modern artists attempt to energise Sappho. As so little is known, Sappho is one of those compelling figures of history who seem to work like a magnet on the razor sharp minds of our poets. Over the generations she has been stripped of her actuality. The dry brittle turning into dust bones of Sappho have been dug up and fashioned into a type of skeleton for both ancient and modern critics to try to reanimate. Attempts have been made by these thinkers of thoughts to bring her back to life in their own zombie image. Cutting and pasting great slabs of fleshy meat lies and transplanting the bloody vital organs of ideological contradiction; emotional, political and psycho-sexual.

As we have no real basis for raising Sappho from the dead, it is my feeling that we should let the poems stand, as best we can, on their own and admire their diamond sharp neatness.

Maybe she was 'looking small and dark, and exactly like a nightingale with misshapen wings enfolding a tiny body' as a scholiast to Lucian said, or maybe she was violet-haired and honey smiling, as a contemporary said.

Did she threw herself into the sea from the cliff of Leukates for love of Phaon of Mytilene, as some attest? Did she die at home in her bed, surrounded by loved ones and family?

So little actual knowledge so much ink spilled.

Sadly the ravages of time, the hostility of those who opposed paganism, the hostility of generations of misogynists, have left us only torn faint smouldering embers dug from out long buried garbage heaps. These embers are still bright, and are still able to burn under the skin of the reader after over 2500 years.

I have translated, in no particular order, some bits and pieces below. I have not even tried to reproduce the metre of her work, as the gap between modern English and the obscure inflected Aeolian tonal dialect is too great for us to safely jump over.

Fragment 16 - Is this a critique of Homer's hymn to violence?

Some they say the prancing cavalry
Others an army with banners
Still others the ships under sail
Are the most beautiful
Upon this black dismal earth.

But I say it is the loved one...

Fragment 31 - Something is happening here. This piece is full of sexual tension and energy. Is she lusting after the man or the woman? Is she behind the bushes spying on young lovers and bringing herself to orgasm. It seems that way to me. As green as grass could also mean as fresh as grass. Which makes me wonder; could Sappho be thought of as an Ancient Madonna?
Like a virgin? This fragment falls apart at the end, and we are not sure if the last line is meant for this poem.

He appears to me, this man,
As lucky as the gods. The one
Sitting cheek to cheek close to you.
You sweetly speak, he answers, obeys.

And your laughter excites desire.
In my breast my heart quivers.
The merest glance on you
And my voice fails.
My words break into pieces.
Fire burns under my delicate skin.
My eyes blind, a roaring fills my ears.

And sweat pours down, a trembling
Takes hold of me, as green as grass
I am. And a little death appears to me. 

But all can be dared.

Fragment 36, - in love in life, in all things this should be our motto.

I yearn after, I strive for...

Fragment 38 - simple, opens the door to the room of many questions.

optais ammi.
You burn me.

Fragment 47 - universal and timeless, who of us has not felt this?

As the winds shakes and bends the mountain oaks,
So love has disturbed my purpose...

Fragment 52 - simple, clear, almost Zen like. Also a fine example of the very literal style of the Ancient Greeks noted by Robert Browning.

The moon is setting
The Pleiades as well.
In the middle of the night
The hours pass.
Alone I sleep.

Fragment 54 - no context here, have no idea what she meant, but it
sounds nice. I think it could be Adonis again.

Down out of heaven he came,
All dressed in purple.

Fragment 82 - the Kleis fragment mentioned above

I have a lovely daughter
Formed like golden flowers.
Beloved Kleis.
Not the wealth of Lydia
Nor lovely...


Fragment 138 - A lovely image, note that Sappho uses the masculine
form of my love, filos, as opposed to feminine file.

Stand before me love, face to face
Let your beauty pour into my eyes

Fragment 140 - Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite was a complex
character in Greek mythology. When the spring rains come and the snow
melts the rivers of Lebanon run red (with the rusty red earth) and the
ancients used to say that this was the blood of the dieing Adonis. The
cult of Adonis seems to have been secret women's business, and during
his yearly festival women would plant seeds in a small thin bowl of
dirt, the plants would grown quickly, and as quickly they would die
off. Adonis is one of the models of Frazer's ideal of the dieing
God. I tried to capture the alliteration of this verse. Kuthera being
another name for Aphrodite.

He is dieing, O Kuthera,
Your darling Adonis
What is to be done?
Beat your breasts daughters,
Rend your dresses.


If I was to reanimate Sappho I would imagine her running her own symposium. Vast drinking and dinner parties with gorgeous young things as sharp as they were beautiful lounging languid on pillows stuffed with rose flowers, and hurling copper eyed ladles across the room, trying to make the most satisfying clatter as the ladle hit the wine jug. A delicate wine splatter following. The room would be abuzz with conversation and bon mots and perfumes and flirtations and the sound of the lyre would announce a new song from the Divine hostess Psappha of Mytilene.