Aristophanes’ speech on YouTube

These two YouTube videos may be of interest:

Aristophanes’ Speech from Symposium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4paSMqKYXtY


Hedwig and the Angry Inch - Origin of Love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YO9FpWX57E

non ridere etc

Just came across this Guardian interview with Alan Hollinghurst shortly after he won the Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty. Considering how moralistic a response Hollinghurst's works, in particular this novel, sometimes elicit, I thought this quote especially worthwhile:

Nick's millionaire Lebanese-born lover, Wani, is hooked on extreme porn and takes bucketloads of cocaine. One reviewer called Wani depraved, an odd remark to make about Hollinghurst's morally neutral fiction. "I don't make moral judgments," he says. "I prefer to let things reverberate with their own ironies and implications. That was one of the interests of writing this book from the inside and not just writing something that broadly satirised or bashed up the 80s. To tell it from the point of view of someone who was very seduced by it." Nick is as morally compromised as the rest. Or not, depending on your point of view.

Judgments are easy. Every person has them. Insights are rarer.

Persistent Voices

Our own Philip Clark reads from his new anthology Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS, on Thursday December 10th from 6:30 PM to 8:00 PM at the DC Center (we used to meet there: Suite 350, 1111 14th St NW, just below Thomas Circle).

Stephanus and Plato

I'll let the link explain Stephanus numbers. They're little numbers you find running down the page in Plato (or less helpfully at the top or bottom of each page). They're useful for locating passages among different editions. If you buy or use an edition other than the "Penguin Classics" Christopher Gill translation, be sure the translation you use has these Stephanus numbers. It will be very hard to keep everyone on the same page, so to speak, without them. In particular, be aware that Penguin has a "Great Ideas" edition of the Symposium, also using the Gill translation, but without the Stephanus numbers! I encourage people to bring or even use other translations than the Gill (the old Victorian Jowett, for example, has the most beautiful phrase and clause in the English language) but don't be without Stephanus.

linguistic resources

Sorry not to have put this up before, well before, the discussion, but true fans of The First Verse will continue to piece the puzzle, and these links will prove useful to them.
First, for Gaelic expressions, the Hibernian Archive;
for Dublin slang, the O'Byrne Files;
and surprisingly useful, when all else fails, is Urban Dictionary.

abracadabra …

appears eight times in The First Verse, the first four times associated uniformly with Chris Mooney, Niall's sometime boyfriend: Abracadabra, me granny comes from Cabra. The fifth also is Chris but Niall at first thinks it might be Pablo (nothing too significant in that—Niall is perpetually perceiving Pablo). The sixth is brought on by Niall thinking of his grandmother. The seventh, more worryingly, is what Niall thinks just before he turns on the light to return to Pour Mieux Vivre by delving into Patrick's books (preceded by a flickering sixth appearance of a congratulatory Pablo Virgomare). And then finally the eighth on the last page of the book when the old woman (someone's granny) answers Niall's question "When is the next 46A due?" with

"Abracadabra," she said, pointing to its green shape coming out of town towards us.

"Abracadabra" is commonly used nowadays just as a "poof—there it is!" and so I think it is here. Alternatively, we're supposed to think that the sleek Virgomare is disporting himself now in granny drag!?

It is odd, I'll admit, that the novel ends so emphatically on the word "south"—when just a page before our PMVs were so determined to "Follow the allroads [a startling word itself] away southbound to the next level." but perhaps the irony here is that Niall's next level will be one free of Pour Mieux Vivre (as opposed to the 46A transporting Niall across the Bay of Biscay to the Escorial, some thousand miles west of Rome).

Lastly on the difficulties of the last page(s), Niall begins "to discern the first strain of something old and sad, the last strains of something new." The former must be the Miserere of the PMV. We don't know what the new strains are but it is worrisome that they are the last of them. Or rather it would be worrisome, this last temptation of Niall Lenihan in the Anal Hell Inn, were the bus not to ensconce and remove him to Mum & Da in Sandycove.

Glossary for The First Verse

Here are definitions of some of the terms in Barry McCrea’s The First Verse.

anorak: a hooded jacket like those worn by those in polar regions.

bodhrán: an Irish frame drum.

braying: yelling, shrieking.

cess: bad cess to, may evil befall.

coeval: of the same age.

conkers: a game played orig. with snail-shells, now with horse chestnuts on strings, in which each player tries to break with his or her own that held by the opponent.

craic: fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation (Irish). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craic.

Dolmio sauce: a brand of tomato sauces marketed to kids in the UK.

Ecce enim veritatem dilexisti: incerta et occulta sapientiae tuae manifestasti mihi.
Asperges me, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.
Auditui meo dabis gaudium et laetitiam: et exsultabunt ossa humiliata.
Averte faciem tuam a peccatis meis: et omnes iniquitates meas dele.
Cor mundum crea in me, Deus: et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.:

(From Psalm 51)

But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.
Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice.
Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.
Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me.

eejit: idiot.

flan: an open pastry or sponge case containing a filling.

foolscap: a former size of paper for printing, 13½ x 17 inches. Also, a former size of writing paper, 13 x 8 inches.

frogmarch: the practice of forcibly transporting suspects or prisoners through a public place, up to and including carrying them such that their limbs splay in a frog-like manner.

gom: a fool; a stupid lout.

knacker: Irish term of affection for low-life scum.

limpet: any of various mollusks that sticks tightly to rocks.

locked: drunk (Irish).

louche: not straightforward. Now usu., dubious, shifty, disreputable.

“oranges and lemons:” see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oranges_and_Lemons.

piss-up: a session of heavy drinking.

“plurality of bottles:” from Flann O'Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds: “Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I became subsequently addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me.”

snog: engage in kissing and cuddling with.

stór: darling (Irish).

swot: a person who studies hard.

uilleann pipes: Irish bagpipes.

yonks: a long time; ages.