To Euripides, She Was Always The Woman

Medea is a play that has never been out of style, but directorial choices have varied, and on occasion playwrights have adapted the material to the current circumstances. A proletarian perspective on Medea is possible, but such an adaptation would be to Euripides as Anouilh to Sophocles; even less so, because Anouilh did not need to shift the focus from Antigone. The Nurse delivers the first speech on the subject of the foolish drama of the aristocrats; the Pedagogue advocates on the behalf of the children; and the Messenger, despite his fancy speech (which may be due as much to his job in addressing the melodrama of the those who rule as much as his own personality), has a rather common view of the world. 

Meanwhile the aristocrats put on a poor show. Aegeus is on the lower end of the IQ scale. Jason is not much smarter and does not learn from experience than angering a woman who would murder her own brother is a bad idea even if there is now an opportunity for gain. Creon and Glauce are generic placeholders for king and Corinthian progeny - Creon literally means 'one who has strength' and Glauce or Glaucus is a generic name for a princess, especially a Corinthian one such as Bellerophon. Anyone named Glaucus in Greek mythology either dies or is ultimately ruined and broken. Medea, meanwhile, seems trapped between two genres, the tragic and the epic, and rejects the possibility of breaking the cycle of abuse from which she has suffered. The only physical affection between two related aristocratic individuals results in the painful death of both. Medea's advice to Aegeus sets in motion the birth of Theseus, which ultimately leads to her later flight from Attica and the eventual death of Aegeus due to the black sails of Theseus' return.

In the current media environment, I would expect a book from the perspective of the Nurse and the Pedagogue; but mostly the Nurse, since women narrators seem to sell better.

What Do You Want, Your Modesty?

 One of the peculiarities of life is that you can go years or decades without examining patterns that you know are peculiar. Such was the case recently with the constant switch in Ancient Greek between singular and plural. This fluidity is particularly noticeable in the Chorus, and to a lesser degree in the protagonist, deuteragonist, and (if there is one) tritagonist of Greek tragedy. This environment, however, partially normalizes this movement, especially if you know the history of Greek drama. The Chorus was the primordial performer at the Dionysia, with the occasional Choregos as the equivalent of the modern soloist. The Choregos could stand out, but he was still ultimately part of the Chorus. The Protagonist emerged as a performer who could act independent of the Chorus and engage in dialogue with it. The Deuteragonist came next, although a bit too early to be a cat of any kind, and then, much later the Tritagonist. The Chorus was singular and plural from the beginning, and the Choregos could move between the numbers as necessary, but the permeability of grammatical number for the Protagonist and his kin I had assumed was the result of the elevated style of Greek drama. This was partially true, but not necessary for the reasons I had assumed.

Before I go any further, I would like to clarify that in almost all case the explanation of metric convenience is a facile explanation and diminishes the skill of the tragedians.

An investigation into Smythe's Greek Grammar, a tome of wisdom compiled by a greater intellect than mine, revealed much. There is a Plural of Majesty (S1005) in Greek, but it applies to the noun rather than the verb, as an Anglophone might anticipate. These plural nouns do impart an air of majesty to tragedy, but it is the number of the verb which is more relevant here. The verb, specifically in the first person, when plural with a singular noun, is termed a Plural of Modesty (S1008), a concept rather alien to English-speakers, except perhaps in a cynical and manipulative way. This Plural of Modesty is meant to diminish the individual and place her in the greater crowd of whichever category is currently applicable. The evidence that some individuality remains lies in the retention of the feminine. When a feminine speaker uses the Plural of Modesty in verbalization, the modifying participles remain feminine if singular (S1009). If the participles change their number to plural, the gender becomes masculine, because masculine is the default in Greek. The construction of participles render this condition especially visible. 

The permeability of singular and plural, however, is still far more common than the above would suggest. Tragic dialogue flows between the specific circumstances of the tragedy and general statements which are applicable to the circumstances (S1012), between individual disaster and cosmic horror. This fluidity renders most of the shifts of number comprehensible, with the remainder a matter of consistency of style.

The core of Greek is its facility with grammar, but even something as simple as grammatical number cannot escape (lanthanein) the pathological philosophizing of the greatest dramatists.

Hwaet!: Review of Beowulf

Sometimes I forget how blessed I am to live in the Bay Area, with its plethora of theatrical options. On Friday night, I went with L. to Beowulf. I had planned to meet up with a fellow member of the SF Language Lovers Meetup group, but the exigencies of getting to the theater prevented this. The performer, Benjamin Bagby (whose name makes me think of the Hobbit), sat on a spare stage. A screen with supertitles hung over him; I am not sure which translation he had chosen. The performance was abbreviated to 90 minutes, since a full retelling of Beowulf would require the time my ancestors only had in the miserable wet winters. Bagby's voice was resonant and varied according to character and timbre of conversation - this is not an easy task while maintaining the metrics of epic poetry. Bagby took frequent breaks to refresh his throat, but the pauses were well worth the results. As Bagby continued to recite, I began to recognize more words without reference to the supertitles; this task was made easier by my familiarity with the plot. The performance was old-fashioned story-telling at its best.

The confluence of events, or one might say, my wyrd, has conspired that on the very day I am attending a reconstructed live performance of Beowulf, I learned about St. Chad, who is the alleged patron of elections. Ever dutiful in my pursuit of truth, even at the cost of a delightful pun, I looked into this matter. According to truthorfiction.com, there is no patron saint of elections, which is suitable: elections, after all, in the hands of God, preferably via the High Priest using the Urim and Thummim. Saint Chad, or Ceadda, however, is a real person, probably the youngest brother of Cedd (also sanctified), Cynibil, and Caelin. The alliteration of the names is an Anglo-Saxon practice, but their etymology is Celtic, suggesting a mixture of (presumably aristocratic) Celtic blood into the Anglo-Saxon ruling class. All four brothers were ordained, and two (Ceadda and Cedd) became bishops. While the careers of the brothers bishop is worthy of note, the more important data here is the two domains of the paternally-connected patron saints. Ceadda became the patron saint of astronomy, while Cedd became the patron saint of interpreters. The vagaries of English diachronics ensured some confusion between the two, and either could be construed as Chad (note the later spelling), patron saint of elections.

I have been preparing for this evening's live performance of Beowulf by rereading passages from my glossed text of Beowulf. A glossed text is anathema to serious scholars, but has certain advantages. The reader is more engaged in the text than he would be when distracted by paragraph 11.17 of the grammar or technical terms. A glossed text might work better when the reader already knows the story. The glosses in this edition do not resolve the kennings, but rather allow the reader to familiarize himself with the typical components. The actual plot of Beowulf is spare, so much of the beauty of the poem is in the style. The constant variation of components for indicating the same item is a vehicle of poetic utility, but I do wonder if it is not the ancestor of some modern English style. Could the admonition of high school English teachers that one should not use the same word for the same concept multiple times in a row owe some of its force to the love of inventive language seen throughout classic English literature?

Budge Like An Egyptian

On Friday night, after Thanksgiving, I went to the Egyptian performance,"Psalms of Ra", at the DeYoung. It was fortunate that I had decided to go that evening, since it was the last performance of the year by the DeYoung's artist in residence, Gregangelo, and the Velocity Circus. I had wanted to go to an earlier performance, but some event (I don't remember which) prohibited such revelry. Despite the attractive cost (free) of the event, I had some hesitation. I had not been to anything with "Circus" in its name since I burned out on the pretentiousness of Cirque du Soleil several years ago.

Like a fanboy at a Dan Brown conspiracy movie, I took my copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead (Budge's edition) with me. I have been reading it occasionally lest I forget my hieroglyphic writing. The transliteration (as opposed to translation) of Ancient Egyptian is contentious and involves rapid evolution. The net result is that Budge's system of transliteration is quite different from that which I learned last spring at San Francisco State University, which in turn varied slightly from the version I had learned back in 2000.

I ate dinner in the dip between the DeYoung and the California Academy of Sciences where the seals used to live and read my Book of the Dead, although I used the academic pronunciation which I had been taught, as far as I could. I may be an Egypt geek, but even I was not going to lug my Middle Egyptian dictionary to the park with me. After I had supped, I went up to the DeYoung and walked through the exhibit of the artist in residence. This did nothing to alleviate my skepticism, since it was all glitter and illusion - fun but not as thought-provoking as traditional art. Gregangelo appears to enjoy creating portmanteaux, since his exhibit shared that feature with his stage name. At least there wasn't any of the Black Athena nonsense, and my ability to read hieroglyphs did impress my companions in the entrance line.

The performance itself, viewed from the perilously steep seating arrangements of the theater, was a mixed bag. The incorporation of Mongolian hand dancing was inevitable, given the provenance of three of the members of Velocity Circus, but I found it hard to accept until I had thought about it after the performance. Several of the rather short numbers featured the transcription and translation of the Egyptian lyrics of the dance number, but were there presumably for visual sitimulation alone, since I could not read them before the screen changed. I suppose I have been spoiled by the supertitles at the opera One of the later pieces was too flush with neon; overall, however, I enjoyed the performance. My attitude is that I have come to enjoy a show and I will! When it comes to performances with themes of ancient cultures and languages, sometimes you have to be grateful that they exist at all.

But I suppose I'll have to write the Etruscan language mob drama myself.

Royaneh 2009

I went up to Royaneh on Wednesday of the first week (Troop 14 spends two weeks at camp). The heat and dust were still familiar. The camp programme now included many new badges, most of which do not have the activity level of traditional “camp” badges - Entrepeneurship, Salesmanship, and Theater were among these. Fourteeners who remember about candy and soda probably realize that some boys already understand Entrepeneurship quite well! The new Trading Post is spacious and has a deck which is eminently suitable for loitering.

On Thursday, the night was bitterly cold, which was either unfortunate or character-building, depending on whether you were a Scout in the Wilderness Survival class or a proponent of the tough-it-out school. It was also skit night, and the troop used one of the skits from Wednesday‘s campfire. Its dark humor worked slightly better in the more intimate setting of Pioneers (the site where the troop stays while at camp) than in the Ralph W Benson Amphitheater.


On Friday, there were the usual panics about unfinished badges, exacerbated by sloth and estival distraction. Some were agape at the notion that Bruce and I required some level of evidence before signing notes. The most notable thing, however, occurred at the Friday (camp-wide) campfire. When the camp staff began to wheel Jumbo on stage, the big screen on which the photos of the week’s activities are projected, they dropped it, and then in the process of fixing it, they dropped poor Jumbo again. the slide show occurred, but I credit its barely perceptible haste to the time lost through Jumbo’s failure to fly.


The breakfast of the first Saturday is always slightly odd, since the camp staff is bidding adieu to the Scouts, even though our troop does not leave. I was rather surprised that our camp task was not to clean Big Egypt, since that’s a favorite task to assign to Troop 14. Big Egypt is the shower house/bathroom between the dining hall and Pioneers, which earned its moniker because the old Big Egypt before its reconstruction once had a trough called the Little Nile - I shall be silent on the composition of that river. The troop split into rough age cohorts: the older Scouts went to the JLT (Junior Leadership Training), while the younger Scouts descended to the parade field to practice Colors. After a game of football to shed some excess energy, the younger group marched up to Scanlon Ridge, where they did some orienteering and the folly of claiming knowledge was shown quite dramatically. A group of Scouts later went down to Roman Plunge (aka the old Canoe Base) for an old-fashioned swim. I am told that there was a Siren from the camp staff down there. Then came the inevitable game of Capture the Flag. The campfire started late, so both I and another were cut from the program, and the Sherlock Holmes never even entered into consideration - it would be nice to find something equally engaging, but slightly shorter.


On Sunday, the Scouts signed up for merit badges and went on cairn hikes. The opening camp campfire (which I had not seen the previous Sunday) had undergone improvements and revisions.


On Monday, the day was unexceptional, and the troop campfire started late, as usual for this session, but the performances therein were superb. The quality of the skits was erratic, but the musical offerings by patrol members were excellent. I’m not sure the contents of House of the Rising Sun are appropriate for a Scout campfire, but the execution was nearly perfect.
I left on Tuesday.

Evie's Waltz: Come Already Down

Evie's Waltz, the newest play by Carter W. Lewis examines the intersection between the stresses of society and family. The dialogue is sharp and dark, and the final reveal is well-hidden, but its performance within sight of the Obama presidency somewhat tempers the bite it would have if there were more years of neo-conservative rule anticipated. An angle involving the dark secrets which the relentlessly chipper father holds is a cliché , but the jaded mother's response is refreshing and it does provide a red herring before the final reveal. The overall experience was intellectually stimulating, but perhaps the alumni reception which I had attended previously that afternoon was buoying my spirit too much for me descend to the level of grimness necessary to appreciate on an emotional level modern playwrights; perhaps I did not require catharsis. I heartily encourage all who have not seen Evie's Waltz to do so, but it would be prudent to avoid an excess of joy prior to the experience.

Review: Speed the Plow

Last night, my father and I went to ACT to see David Mamet's Speed the Plow. The first worrying signs were my confusion over whether I had seen it before and my discovery upon perusing the programme that I had watched a filmed version of State and Main on the very same (that is, Mamet's only) theme. I know I'm not naive to the darkness of humanity (how could I be after reading the Greek tragedians?), so perhaps I have a less wizened soul than playwrights. The interaction of Fox and Gould was as manipulative as one might expect from Hollyword soulsuckers: the semantic emptiness of their banter did not surprise me, but slightly annoyed me. I prefer more meat in the dialogue. The "unfilmable" book seemed too extreme, but I am willing to concede the possibility that Mamet's need for dichotomy led to the ridiculous philosophy of the book and the absurd juxtaposition of genres (prison film, buddy film, romance) of the "good" script. The thing that hindered my enjoyment most of all, however, was the complete and utter lack of distinction between the characters of Fox, Gould, and Karen, and their clones in State and Main. If I had never seen anything by Mamet in any form, perhaps this play would have been eye-opening, but it provides no new insights to one who is not a Mamet virgin.

The Weekend

After a rather dull Friday, more notable for my contemplation of the Great San Francisco Bay Oil Spill rather than any particular work I accomplished. Mom and I went to ACT to see The Rainmaker, of which I had a vague memories due to a hazily remembered movie verison of the broadway version of the play. The performance was wonderful and piercing, ddep thoughts expressed in vivid language.



On Saturday, I had the first half of Scouting for Food, in which the Scouts hang the bags on the doors. This year, however, the bags had been replaced by door hangers in an attempt to reduce litter. The sky was beginning to cloud over. The cubs, a chief component of this outing, arrived late, and too few of our own were in attendance. I would have preferred to go with one of the Scout groups rather than sitting at Broadway and Lyon, but I accepted my role.



After the Closing Circle, I returned to Maple Street and Mom and I rushed over to Berkeley to see the CCA (California Classical Association) performance of Argonautika written by Mary Zimmerman. I found it remarkable how different yet equally true interpretations of a character such as Jason could be. There were occassional moments of pretentiousness. Theorizing in drama should be in character, and I found the zodiacal interpretation awkwardly presented. It also occurred to me that the figure of St Christopher may have more to do with Jason bearing Hera than the grim chthonic ferryman Charon.


Once the curtain had fallen, the rain had increased greatly. I went over to Another Change of Hobbit and picked up the copy of Donaldson's Fatal Revenant. Then I read it as I awaited the return of my beautiful Amy, for I had foolishly left my key in San Francisco. Initially, my plan was to got a certain restaurant along Shattuck, but Amy persuaded that she was tired and that I ought to get some food to eat in. So trudged through the rain and acquired the comestibles. She returned and we had dinner together.



This Sunday, Rod Dugliss spoke at St James on the state and office of the diaconate, to which I remember his appointment, Later, there was a sale of goods and trinkets to benefit Palestinian Christians, and I attended the last Via Media discussion, which was on mission (although not quite what Amy would mean by 'mission'). When I went to Kaju for coffee, Seiko was harried and Lindsey Berkovich was there with her husband.