Lexington Victorian Sampler

Euripides, Bacchae: THE PROLOGUE

During this course I worked the Bacchae of Euripides a freshman from Greek. Not all my students are freaks of nature (no, not all) that enter college reciting choruses of tragedy. What happens is that, in Eugene, his father taught him Greek when he should have fourteen.

Of course it was a waste of time and enthusiasm to explain to this student that the beta comes after alpha. Instead we decided to dedicate the year to work a tragedy of Euripides, and I proposed were Bacchae. We have read and translated from the edition of Diggle . What is now hang my version of the prologue to the tragedy, given by Dionysus on his return to his homeland, Thebes.

Eugenio special plan has served him to become familiar with a genre that had never read the original Greek, to learn to sing trimeters and to enter the wonderful world of textual criticism. I have benefited as much as him in this symbiosis. In the times of Bologna will be a comfort to remember that my last class in Greek at the Faculty of Arts of my University of myself to make a text philology as Bacchae of Euripides.

Thanks, Eugene.

DIONISO

I introduce myself, son of Zeus, in this land Theban

Dionysus, which once bore the daughter of Cadmus,

Semele, who was lighting the fire that the carrier beam.

After trocar my way for a mortal god, I am

with the sources of Dirce and the water of Ismene.

And I see my mother's grave, a victim of lightning,

this is near the house, and the ruins of the palace

the smoke makes the flame of fire from Zeus, still alive, immortal

excess of Hera against my mother directed. I praise

Cadmus, who

this area has been impassable, her daughter's room, from the vine I

I have covered all around with the rich foliage clusters.

After leaving the plains of rich gold

Lydians and the Phrygians, the sun-whipped plains of the Persians, the walls

Bactrian and harsh winter land of the Medes

walked, and Saudi happy

and throughout Asia that together with the salty sea

spreads, which has its beautiful cities

towers filled in mixture of Greeks and, together, barbarians

this is the first city of the Greeks I have come to

after my form there choirs and institute my

mysteries, to be a divinity known by mortals.

And to this Theban land first

helena got aroused between cries, igniting a fawn skin of your body

tirso

and putting in his hand, projectile ivy .

is that my mother's sisters, the least desirable,

were saying that I, Dionysus was not born of Zeus and Semele

after being seduced by any man, Zeus

attributed disgrace his bed,

tricks of Cadmus, thus the

killed Zeus, they claimed, because his pretended marriage.

Well, to themselves in the palace did I leave

crazy, and deranged mind inhabit mountain,

and carry the apparel of my rites of force.

And all the female offspring, few women were

the Cadmea, I took them, crazy, out of their homes. Together

mixed with the daughters of Cadmus

under the green firs settle on rocks homeless.

For this city must learn well, even unwittingly,

not start living in my Bacchic rites,

and I come out in defense of my mother Semele

showing to mortals as a divinity fathered by Zeus.

dignity is that Cadmus and Pentheus

tyranny has passed, born of his daughter,

which the gods fight me face and me from libations

and at any point in their pleas remembers me.

Therefore I will show that I was born as a god to him and all

Thebans. And in another land,

after tidying it from here, turn my foot,

showing me. And if the city of Thebes

viciously, with weapons, the mountain to get

Bacchae tries to maenads I will join in military action.

So I have changed my appearance by a mortal

and transformed my way to the natural male.

But they left the Tmolus, the bulwark of Lydia,

my aunts, women who from among the barbarians

suit as my assistants and companions on the road:

raise your eardrums, which in City of Phrygian

are on home soil, invention of mine and mother Rhea,

going to crash and be mounted on either side of this palace

that of Pentheus, who sees the city of Cadmus.

that I, going to the folds of Cithaeron,

where are the Bacchae, I will participate with them in the chorus.

Joseph B. Torres Guerra

Kate Playground Archive

almost three years ago I decided to compile a list of basic novels. Say you mean by "basic novels" which should include a pack that an alien mandásemos interested in understanding the human novel representative and key milestones.

I did a query from my contacts on Facebook and my students at the University of Navarra. So ments come out a list, of course, will not satisfy everyone, so are these things. But again, it comes to making a list of ten titles "representative and essential" to condense the narrative effort of man in the eyes of, say, a being from another galaxy.

Nor is ten book recommendations. I'm sure more than one of these titles and indigestion may confuse some readers.

conclude with two indications:

• The list was virtually closed and collated with opinions of friends (and wife) in autumn 2008. But it was a list of nine titles. I confess that I had difficulty choosing the tenth novel. This is Dickens Great Expectations ... yes, Great Expectations, provided to read it in the conditions indicated the list.

• But what makes a list like this in the blog of Homer? It is true that the list proposed here transcends all boundaries of the blog (linguistic and historical). Of course it is also true that the first of ten novels is the work of Heliodorus, in case anyone thought (any) that the novel is an invention S. XVI. What "Ten Ten" we still looks a bit classical input? Then the next mission is to decant the ten basic landmarks of Greek literature.

But that is for another post. Would that give you these ten titles to think, reflect and comment.

Heliodorus and Charicleia Theagenes

Chrétien de Troyes, Erec and Enid

Primero

M. de Cervantes, Don Quixote

H. Fielding, Tom Jones

Ch Dickens, Great Expectations [if you read the original ending]

F. Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment

M. Proust, Swann's Way

Th Mann, Magic Mountain

V. Woolf, Waves

PS. In a post on the corner of Alexandria quote this post. In a commentary ADDED I will explain why around the alien, here I copied it:

"What the alien comes from something I read in a comic book as a child. Lower Mars with a mission to get the most representative works of literature human. Then go into a bookstore, asks to make the selection and the manager will choose the Iliad, the Odyssey and Quixote. But the young man who prepares the package is wrong, and involves two stories for children and Phone Directory of Madrid. A Martian's heads like children's stories but they seem very simple. The phone book, however, exhausts them and makes them abandon any plan to invade Earth, for ever and ever. "

José B. Torres Guerra

Part Manterola Bikini

Epictetus TEN TEN AND WRITING SOFTWARE MYTHS

"If you want to be a writer, write" - Epictetus

When I came to Pamplona in 1992 landed on the floor of a Chilean doctor, a lawyer by profession and a philosopher by vocation. Raul Madrid was, a mutual friend, very little "sober." Yes, there were too many books in room, too many maps and posters.

One of them read by first time high of Epictetus that opens this entry. That phrase sounded like a knock, was a hitch flag for two future teachers who, at some point, have raised another profession and other writings.

dedicate this post to my friend Raul, so distant, so different, so close. I dedicate this post to all my students in Navarra with which I meet every fortnight to read and discuss together stories and poems. Because if you want to read, read. If you want to write, write.

ἂν θέλῃς γραφικὸς εἶναι, γράφε - Ἐπίκτητος

Joseph B. Torres Guerra