From: Cobelli@aol.com Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 5:56 PM To: Milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Oikos (was Achilles, was Hero in Paradise Lost) Dear List: Isn't there something of a probing of this question in terms of mimesis, that is, how the character of Odysseus is a "imitation" of "Homer's" specific worldview in Auerbach's book Mimesis? Odysseus cannot be perceived apart from the context of his lineage, his beliefs, his islet kingdom? Scott Grunow P.S. And speaking of a sex goddess, does anyone remember that moving passage in the Iliad in which we get a glimpse of Helen on the walls of Troy remembering her homeland? How does this fit in with oikos? Such an added dimension, almost a "modern" psychological approach to a character, seems unusual for the Homeric poet. From: webmaster [webmaster@portnaz.org] Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 8:08 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Martin illustrations [EXPIRED TRIAL LICENCE] Tell me more about the Martin illustrations, for, not being familiar with them, I would like to see them. Thanks, Alex. -----Original Message----- From: Terrance F. Flaherty To: milton-l@richmond.edu Date: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 3:24 PM Subject: Martin illustrations [EXPIRED TRIAL LICENCE] > > > >What I really want to find out is the caption on the Satan >in Council image. And I don't mean that it refers to the >first two lines of Book II of PL. If you ever find that out, >and could pass it along, that would be great. > > >Can anyone help with this question? > >Thanks in advance, > >Terrance F. Flaherty > > > > From: Colin Burrow [cjb1002@cam.ac.uk] Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2000 6:13 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: RE: Milton's wives There is indeed a lot that is excellent in Annabel Patterson's piece, though as I remember it makes something of M's use of 'he who' in DDD as a way of thinking about himself without quite saying so. When I first read the article I was very impressed by that detail, but it sensitised me to uses of 'he who' elsewhere in M's prose, of which I found so many that I was not sure the point stood in relation to DDD. Colin Burrow, Fellow and Tutor, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge CB1 4AR tel: 01223 332483 web: http://www.english.cam.ac.uk -----Original Message----- From: owner-milton-l@richmond.edu [mailto:owner-milton-l@richmond.edu] On Behalf Of James Dougal Fleming Sent: 27 December 1999 14:20 To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Milton's wives On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, John Leonard wrote: > No personal references in DDD? I find this oft-repeated claim hard to > reconcile with this: > > "what a fit help such a consort would be through the whole life of a man, is > lesse paine to conjecture then to have experience" (chap. iii, last words). > > And then there is the word "desertrice" which Milton coined in Tetrachordon. > Sounds pretty personal to me. > > John Leonard > > > > > > Indeed. And Annabel Patterson's "No mere amatorious novel" piece has, I think, treated this question subtly and definitively. James Dougal Fleming From: Terrance F. Flaherty [Lycidas@worldnet.att.net] Sent: Thursday, December 30, 1999 12:13 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Martin illustrations What I really want to find out is the caption on the Satan in Council image. And I don't mean that it refers to the first two lines of Book II of PL. If you ever find that out, and could pass it along, that would be great. Can anyone help with this question? Thanks in advance, Terrance F. Flaherty From: Derek Wood [dwood@stfx.ca] Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2000 1:29 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: In praise of Achilles, was Re: Hero of Paradise Lost John Leonard wrote: > Carrol Cox (addressing Carol Barton) writes: > > "I bet you think Odysseus gives > up immortality for Penelope rather than for his *oikos*." > > ....What man in his right mind (let's be > honest) would want to rule some pimple in the Adriatic, growing older every > day, and knowing that he will meet a violent death, when he could enjoy > immortal youth the sex goddess Calypso? Is the *oikos* really as compelling > a reason as all that? > > John Leonard What's the right answer?....... Especially after he meets Achilles in Hades? dw From: James Dougal Fleming [jdf26@columbia.edu] Sent: Monday, December 27, 1999 9:20 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: Milton's wives On Thu, 16 Dec 1999, John Leonard wrote: > No personal references in DDD? I find this oft-repeated claim hard to > reconcile with this: > > "what a fit help such a consort would be through the whole life of a man, is > lesse paine to conjecture then to have experience" (chap. iii, last words). > > And then there is the word "desertrice" which Milton coined in Tetrachordon. > Sounds pretty personal to me. > > John Leonard > > > > > > Indeed. And Annabel Patterson's "No mere amatorious novel" piece has, I think, treated this question subtly and definitively. James Dougal Fleming From: Mario A. DiCesare [dicesare@interpath.com] Sent: Friday, December 24, 1999 7:54 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: In praise of Achilles, was Re: Hero of Paradise Lost John Leonard wrote: > > Carrol Cox (addressing Carol Barton) writes: > > "I bet you think Odysseus gives > up immortality for Penelope rather than for his *oikos*." > > This sounds shrewd on first hearing. What man in his right mind (let's be > honest) would want to grow old with Penelope (bless her heart) when he could > enjoy immortal youth with the sex goddess Calypso? But isn't Carrol just > changing one problem for another? What man in his right mind (let's be > honest) would want to rule some pimple in the Adriatic, growing older every > day, and knowing that he will meet a violent death, when he could enjoy > immortal youth the sex goddess Calypso? Is the *oikos* really as compelling > a reason as all that? > > John Leonard John, your usually trenchant and illuminating insights have failed you here, alas. Oikos means a good deal more than a building. It is the place of both stability and change, where fathers age and children (e.g., sons you haven't seen for twenty years) grow up (more or less -- I've never been completely easy about Telemachos) and friends as well as wives change and become perhaps even more interesting than they had been, as one also grows and changes and maybe understands more. But more important: You're forgetting the fundamental life impulse that marks Odysseus more than most. Odysseus, yearning for the smoke rising from the rooftops of Ithaka, is yearning for real life, with its risks and possibilities. Immortality and immortal youth are not necessarily the same thing, as Odysseus probably knows; Kalypso's wish to confer immortal youth on him doesn't mean that she can. Indeed, the examples she cites (V.124ff) are all examples of the curse which divine blessings bring. It's probably relevant to think of the Sibyl cited in Eliot's Waste Land or of Gulliver's startled delusion and then enlightenment when he comes upon the immortalized beings who share with the Sibyl the wish to die -- is it the Struldbruggs? memory fails and many of my books are still packed in boxes.... As for Achilles, I couldn't agree more with Carrol Cox in his comments. I don't think you can wrest Adam or Aeneas from their contexts, but that's not relevant to his particular and general arguments and to the fine, humane insights he has into the Iliad and its tragic hero. Cheers, and happy Hannukah and Christmas and a splendid year 2000, the last of this millennium, to all and sundry. And John, especially, thanks again for your continuously perceptive commentary. Mario From: Carrol Cox [cbcox@ilstu.edu] Sent: Thursday, December 23, 1999 9:21 PM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: In praise of Achilles, was Re: Hero of Paradise Lost John Leonard wrote: > What man in his right mind (let's be > honest) would want to rule some pimple in the Adriatic, growing older every > day, and knowing that he will meet a violent death, when he could enjoy > immortal youth the sex goddess Calypso? Is the *oikos* really as compelling > a reason as all that? Yes --IF THE "READER" ASKS THE QUESTION. Modern literature, at least from Milton on, forces the reader to make such judgments continuously. (See the endless debates some decades ago about Milton's "signpost sentences": each of thos sentences forces a free judgment. That is, each time the text forces a complex judgment of some sort, the reader in his/her isolation temporarily forms a society (where none existed before) between him/herself and the narrator, who also comes from nowhere (stripped of social relations). But in the world of Odysseus (see M.I. Finley's fine book of that title) the inseparability of oikos/person is given. When Odysseus is furthest from home, trapped in the cave of Polyphemous, he is "no man" not just as a joke but in simple truth. And when he first shows up in his own palace he does so as a *thes* -- very inadequately translated as "beggar." A *thes* is a man without an oikos, a nothing. (In Book 11 Achilles says he would rather be the lowliest *thes* alive than foremost in Hades.) It is a given of the poem that Odysseus to be Odysseus must struggle to return to his *oikos*. No choice is involved -- for poet, for audience (who listen, along with the poet, as the Muse tells the tale), or for character. Contrast Tell me, Muse, of the man of many ways . . . with *either* Of man's first disobedience . . . *or* And then went down to ship . . . In the first, story, poet, and audience are one. In the second and third poet and reader are abstract until through a series of choices they form a temporary society where none had existed before. Odysseus does not create or build his *oikos* (so your reference to "ruling" is misleading), it creates him, he is of it. The question, "What man in his right mind (let's be honest) would want to rule [whatever]?" brings us back to a society of windowless monads, making abstract choices through which they form (or seem to form) a society where none existed (or seems not to have existed) before. That endless repetition of forced free (detached, intrinsically meaningless) choices is what empties the present of meaning in capitalism, transferring all reality, all meaning, to an endlessly receding abstract future. To return to Odysseus -- as soon as, bringing a modern Miltonic or novelistic perspective to the poem, we began to see Odysseus as making an abstract free choice, and to see ourselves (as isolated readers) forced to judge that choice, the poem simply goes "poof"! As you say, seen as a choice, no sane man would give up immortality for *either* a wife or for rule of a pimple. And yet the poet bases his whole poem, a poem about a man characterized above all as a man of intellect, on the making of that choice. Clearly one is not to ask the question, to see it as a choice. Carrol From: AntiUtopia@aol.com Sent: Friday, December 24, 1999 10:10 AM To: milton-l@richmond.edu Subject: Re: In praise of Achilles, was Re: Hero of Paradise Lost In a message dated 12/23/99 5:09:26 PM Eastern Standard Time, jleonard@julian.uwo.ca writes: << This sounds shrewd on first hearing. What man in his right mind (let's be honest) would want to grow old with Penelope (bless her heart) when he could enjoy immortal youth with the sex goddess Calypso? But isn't Carrol just changing one problem for another? What man in his right mind (let's be honest) would want to rule some pimple in the Adriatic, growing older every day, and knowing that he will meet a violent death, when he could enjoy immortal youth the sex goddess Calypso? Is the *oikos* really as compelling a reason as all that? John Leonard >> That's the thing, though...if we're going to start talking about human motivation, we need to allow for multiple possibilities. If I were to frame the question in terms of, for example (and they could be multiplied), the stages of human development described in some Vedic literature, I'd say that a soul that had outgrown its attachment to mere physical pleasure would want the pleasures of family next, then community after that -- both of which Odysseus had missed since leaving home for the trojan war. Point being that after awhile, even a sex goddess gets old if that's all she has to offer. Provided that the man does, indeed, grow up (never something to take for granted :) ). Jim