5,4,3,2, and...ACTION!!!

It has been too long since I've posted, methinks -
what can I say, confluences (of thought) come when they will, and they go away...
that said: still have no idea quite what Mark's getting at in his Odyssean reflections. Other than this: perhaps he/you (again, the problem of who are we addressing in this blog) are pointing to two contrasting pictures of the ontological nature of art - we do not know which in any piece being made, but hopefully it's the 'around-the-tree' kind? and the tree is God?
yep, that's about all I got on that -time for some of my own:

So, I've been thinking about this idea of 'direction'. Direction in the sense of how the word is used in the theater. Now, there are good directors and then there are bad "directors". What differentiates the two is whether they are giving directions, or whether they are giving destinations - two very different things: A destination is where an actor is supposed to be (physically or emotionally) in a given scene, sadly, many people in the role of director only know how to give these - "be angry", "you love her", "stand further away", etc. Things that, if realized, may very well make a scene more theatrically compelling, but statements that leave an actor somewhat paralyzed. How can one 'be angry'? Sure I can pretend, and that is one vaild way of approaching a certain type of presentational theater, but if it is a realist drama (life-like, and so of import to this thought) - it's not very helpful. Compare this with actual 'directions' which, like when driving a car, are steps one takes to get to where one needs to be (Turn Left, go 3 miles, etc.): "Intimidate him!", "stay as far away as possible", "pretend he has a gun in his back pocket", etc. Statements like these can actually guide an actor into action (interesting what the words reveal - actor, not be-er) and that action can facilitate a certain emotional response or real relationship.
An example of where such principles apply in the real world:
On occasion I have been told, "you are a good man". When this happens, I become uncomfortable, because it is not helpful. If they had said "that was a good deed", changing the verb from 'to be' to 'to do', then I would politely say thank you, but as it stands, what can I say? My pauline understanding of selfhood does not allow me to believe that I am an inherantly 'good' man. Furthermore, even if I believe what others might say about me to be true, and not my own dogma, I am not certain that it would lead me to more good acts, so if goodness was what they wanted to encourage they would then have failed. I know that what you call someone determines how they act - the classic example of the child who is told they are stupid and consequently does poorly in school, despite standard intelligence. However, I think this naming-forming language is only really efficacious in childhood, it is after all developmental psychology. As an adult, i think to be affirmed as good, would lead to a contentment, a resting on the laurels, analgous to what catharsis in the theater might accomplish - satisfaction of emotional compulsion disipating impetus for action (Brecht).
In this example specifically, I think 'goodness' is unattainable (again, protestant theology infuses my thoughts here, but this doesn't nullify their validity, Mark, plus it's nice and po-mo to speak of the unattainability of things, so don't even thing about challenging this point), since it is not a static thing - it looks different in every different situation in every moment. Thus it is always something to be strived for. Plus, If I do not have a platonic view of a metaphysically grounded self, I am left only with a self defined by my actions. Therefore, only if next time I am presented with a chance to do good and I do it can I be called 'good', but then there will be another 'next time' (ad infinitum).

I guess i am just interested in leaving the people I am communicating with possibilites of action - Not to confine them to a set course, not to tell them to change, or stay the same - a richer and more varied affirmation of humanity.

A question

How often are foreign films retranslated? Is it a big deal when they are? Who are the Peavear/Volokhonskys of the film world, and who are its Constance Garnetts? Why is it that though I am picky and opinionated about translations of Rilke, Homer, or the Bible, I simply accept that I'm getting "correct" versions of Bergman, Jeunet, or Godard?

On a parenthetical note, this may be the most pretentious thing I've ever posted here.

Chagall Mosaic

It might be a New Jerusalem—
These folks shimmer and laugh, scratch
The sky with fiddle tunes;

But what of that bird-woman, the baby wedged in her breasts?
What of that monstrous leviathan tail
Sinking under the dharma sun?

As the tree that grew from your spine uncoils,
You watch the boats list on the fiery lake.

The works of loom and adze

In Ben's last post, he clarified the difference between 'arcadian' and 'utopian,' as defined by Dr. Jacobs in our Auden class last year. It reminded me of another dichotomy from that class, the idea that the Aeneid, as opposed to the Odyssey, is the true Christian epic. The pattern of the Odyssey is circular—the object is to return home, to restore things as they were. The Aeneid, on the other hand, is linear and nonrepetitive, we are going somewhere new. The idea is that as devastating as our losses may be, something immeasurably better can be gained: Troy was sacked that Rome might be founded. Ben is right, it's not "behold, I make all things just like they were," but "I make all things new." A classic Protestant euphemism for "died" is "called home" or some such phrase, but it should really be "called forth."

All true, but nonetheless I have for years held an affinity for the Odyssey that I still haven't really figured out. I think part of it is due to the fact that I'm a sucker for the idea of going home (e.g. I tear up every time I read "when you have to go there, they have to take you in" in Frost's "Death of the Hired Man"). I've been thinking a lot about the end of the Odyssey lately, specifically about the two works of art we encounter there.

The first is Penelope's infamous shroud, which she tells a disguised Odysseus about in Book XIX (from Robert Fagles' unparalleled translation):

I yearn for Odysseus, always, my heart pines away.
They rush the marriage on, and I spin out my wiles.
A god from the blue it was inspired me first
to set up a great loom in our royal halls
and I began to weave, and the weaving finespun,
the yarns endless, and I would lead them on: "Young men,
my suitors, now that King Odysseus is no more,
go slowly, keen as you are to marry me, until
I can finish off this web,
so my weaving won't all fray and come to nothing"....

So by day I'd weave at my great and growing web—
by night, by the light of the torches set beside me,
I would unravel all I'd done.

This is a cyclical, potentially endless enterprise, and one all too familiar to me, to all of us. We are constantly having to undo things we've done or redo what has come unraveled. It reminds me of Laura Miller's appreciation of DFW in Salon, where she speaks of "the discipline and of the abrading, daily labor" that true humility requires. Penelope's shroud mirrors the way we must continually fight back our own instincts toward self-aggrandizement, how we strive to actually be caring and sincere rather than merely appearing to be. But it might also be the cycle of sin and penance or any number of things. The point is that there is no end in sight to this work, it is as regular as doing the dishes.

Moreover, Penelope has no idea why she's doing this, to what end. She doesn't know whether her husband will be back, doesn't know if these suitors will ever leave. She's hoping they'll get bored, that she can wait them out, but who knows? She weaves, I think, to distract her mind and her hands, to give herself something to do. As good a reason as any, but one that seems kind of hollow and pointless, a constant suspension.

But then there's the other piece of handiwork. To set the scene: in Book XXIII, after Odysseus has mercilessly butchered the suitors and revealed his true identity to his wife, Penelope (grown understandably skeptical in twenty years) puts him to the test. She asks a servant to move their marriage bed out for them, at which point Odysseus gets pissed. By way of explanation, he tells this story:

There was a branching olive-tree inside our court,
grown to its full prime, the bole like a column, thickset.
Around it I built my bedroom, finished off the walls
with good tight stonework, roofed it over soundly
and added doors, hung well and snugly wedged.
Then I lopped the leafy crown of the olive,
clean-cutting the stump bare from roots up,
planing it round with a bronze smoothing-adze—
I had the skill—I shaped into plumb to the line to make
my bedpost, bored the holes it needed with an auger.
Working from there I built my bed, start to finish...
That's our secret sign, I tell you, our life story!
Does the bed, my lady, still stand planted firm?"

This knowledge is the couple's shibboleth, the way in which Odysseus and Penelope know that the long strands of their respective stories have finally rejoined. The trunk of the olive tree runs through the center of their house, their marriage, and, by extension, the whole poem. It is the great immovable pole around which Odysseus revolved through all his wanderings. And its rootedness stands in contrast to Penelope's "great and growing web."

What the bedpost stands for, I don't know. But if the shroud is real, perhaps the bedpost is as well—a great unassailable Something that anchors what we do. I haven't yet wrapped my head around the enormous implications of this—though they are both thrilling and frightening—but, as they did for Penelope, they allow me to continue my daily weaving and unweaving with a renewed vigor and hope.