Tea at Trianon: Reclaiming Homer

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, February 14, 2021

Reclaiming Homer

From Crisis:

Homer, like many of the famous Dead White European Males, has fallen on hard times simply for being an old, dead, white, European male—as Bernard Knox wrote in the 1990s. Yet, Homer is the great voice of our age of rage and resentment. Far from celebrating and glorifying violence, Homer subtly deconstructs the Hesiodic cosmos of rage and violence, and sings into being a cosmos of love that is based on compassion and forgiveness.

“Rage—Goddess—sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles.” Those are the immortal words of the greatest song ever sung. What is important to realize when being introduced to Achilles, is that he is attributed with a divine trait, mēnis, rage or wrath. Mēnis is the term Homer uses to describe the rage of the divines. Kholos, by contrast, is the term Homer uses to describe the rage of mortal humans. There is a divine horror to the rage of Achilles at the beginning of his epic.

Civilization is formed by song. This necessitates us to ask what song and civilization was Homer singing into existence? (Read more.)