Odyssey 11. 1-50 開始遊地獄

主題: 擁擠的地府

離開Circe，經過一整天奮力划船，來到的海的邊際(Oceanus)，奇幻之旅到了地府，《奧德賽》第十一卷應該是最早期的《地獄遊記》之一。

荷馬史詩的世界觀和現代很不同，海的邊際(Oceanus)，真的就是所謂「海角」，世界的盡頭之一，一點點夢幻，一點點真實，這地極之處，長年在幽暗之中，居民是the Cimmerians，意思是「冬人」，因為沒有陽光，只有冬天，只有黑暗。但，史實中也有Cimmerians這一族人。

走下去，就是地府，兩位大神Perimedes和Eurylochus看著一堆「受難者」(ἱερήια, Odyssey 11.23)，我想，儘管Odysseus有智慧有膽量，看見地府的真實樣子還是心驚膽跳，所以史詩再三強調他的劍不離手。他們照著Circe的教導，開始盛大祭拜，拿出最好的羊與大麥，獻給地府的諸多亡魂。之後，宰羊放出血，從Erebus跑出一堆鬼魂，有少婦、幼子、未婚男女、歷經滄桑的老人、死於戰場的壯士，他們一大票一大票的跑出來，實在太驚悚，嚇壞「遊客」了。

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0135%3Abook%3D11%3Acard%3D1

τοὺς δ᾽ ἐπεὶ εὐχωλῇσι λιτῇσί τε, ἔθνεα νεκρῶν,

ἐλλισάμην, τὰ δὲ μῆλα λαβὼν ἀπεδειροτόμησα

ἐς βόθρον, ῥέε δ᾽ αἷμα κελαινεφές: αἱ δ᾽ ἀγέροντο

ψυχαὶ ὑπὲξ Ἐρέβευς νεκύων κατατεθνηώτων.

νύμφαι τ᾽ ἠίθεοί τε πολύτλητοί τε γέροντες

παρθενικαί τ᾽ ἀταλαὶ νεοπενθέα θυμὸν ἔχουσαι,

πολλοὶ δ᾽ οὐτάμενοι χαλκήρεσιν ἐγχείῃσιν,

ἄνδρες ἀρηίφατοι βεβροτωμένα τεύχε᾽ ἔχοντες:

οἳ πολλοὶ περὶ βόθρον ἐφοίτων ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος

θεσπεσίῃ ἰαχῇ: ἐμὲ δὲ χλωρὸν δέος ᾕρει.

δὴ τότ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽ ἑτάροισιν ἐποτρύνας ἐκέλευσα

μῆλα, τὰ δὴ κατέκειτ᾽ ἐσφαγμένα νηλέι χαλκῷ,

δείραντας κατακῆαι, ἐπεύξασθαι δὲ θεοῖσιν,

ἰφθίμῳ τ᾽ Ἀΐδῃ καὶ ἐπαινῇ Περσεφονείῃ:

αὐτὸς δὲ ξίφος ὀξὺ ἐρυσσάμενος παρὰ μηροῦ

ἥμην, οὐδ᾽ εἴων νεκύων ἀμενηνὰ κάρηνα

αἵματος ἆσσον ἴμεν, πρὶν Τειρεσίαο πυθέσθαι.’(Odyssey 11. 34-50)

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/odyssey11.htm

Next I held the sheep above the hole

and slit their throats. Dark blood flowed down.

 “Then out of Erebus came swarming up

shades of the dead—brides, young unmarried men,

old ones worn out with toil, young tender girls,

with hearts still new to sorrow, and many men

wounded by bronze spears, who’d died in war, 

still in their blood-stained armour. Crowds of them

came thronging in from all sides of the pit,

with amazing cries. Pale fear took hold of me.     

Then I called my comrades, ordering them

to flay and burn the sheep still lying there,

slain by cruel bronze, and pray to the gods,

to mighty Hades and dread Persephone.

And then I drew the sharp sword on my thigh

and sat there, stopping the powerless heads

of all the dead from getting near the blood,

until I’d asked Teiresias my questions.    

以下圖片與資料出處: http://cartographic-images.net/Cartographic_Images/105_Homers_World_View.html

Reconstruction of Homer’s View of the World

            

以下資料出處: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%BE%9B%E6%A2%85%E9%87%8C%E5%AE%89%E4%BA%BA

辛梅里安人 辛梅里安人（Cimmerians或者 Kimmerians；希臘文： Κιμμέριοι, Kimmerioi）是一支古老的印歐人游牧民族。根據公元前5世紀的希臘史學家希羅多德記載，在公元前8世紀和7世紀，辛梅里安人棲居在高加索和黑海的北岸（今天的烏克蘭和南俄羅斯）。然而，考古學家Renate Rolle等人提出在這些地區沒有發現任何可以證明他們存在的考古證據。19和20世紀的學者主要依靠希羅多德的記述進行研究。但在Henry Layard爵士發現尼尼微和Calah的皇家檔案後，學者們有了比希羅多德更加古老的材料可供參考。亞述人的考古記錄表明，辛梅里安人和所謂的Gamir之地，實際上位於高加索南部的烏拉爾圖王國附近；而前8世紀的薩爾貢軍事記錄則描述了辛梅里安人對於黑海南岸的入侵活動。

以下資料出處:  
http://www.talesbeyondbelief.com/greek-gods-mythology/erebus.htm

Odyssey 10. 487-574 to the Hades

主題:天堂與地獄

Odysseus一行人在Circe的島上吃吃喝喝，無憂無慮裹了一整年，厭倦了，開始想家。雖然白天看似幸福快樂，但是到了夜裡，總是憂傷落淚 (Odyssey 10. 478-479)。Odysseus鼓起勇氣和Circe 攤牌，要她兌現承諾，幫助他們回故土。

  Circe很大方，不會強迫Odysseus留下，但是她告訴Odysseus要有心理準備，離開這兒，他們將面對另一艱辛的旅程。Circe重複用一長串字稱呼Odysseus: ‘διογενὲς Λαερτιάδη, πολυμήχαν᾽ Ὀδυσσεῦ (Odyssey 10. 488; 10.504)。這就是Odyssey的專用修修飾詞，宙斯之後裔(διογενὲς)、Laertes的兒子(Λαερτιάδη) 、足智多謀(πολυμήχαν)都是Odysseus的特質與身分。

   另一艱辛的旅程? 第一關就是前往地府找盲眼先知Teiresias。別以為Odysseus很勇敢，聽到Circe說要去地府，他的第一反應是嚎啕大哭，因為去那兒是有去無回啊! 但他想一想，問Circe有沒有嚮導?

  不要擔心吧! Circe開始傳授未來旅程的教戰守則，而聰敏的Odysseus又懂得變通，未來雖然艱辛，但，英雄總會一一過關。

  儘管揚起白帆出發，北風(Βορέαο)會送Odysseus到地府的門口。Circe還詳細描述一下地府的出入境場景。穿越大海Oceanus，到了平坦海岸，有Persephone的聖林，主要的植物是楊樹與柳樹 (Salix amplexicaulis)，船條靠在波濤洶湧的岸邊，然後自行走入Hades陰濕的府邸。

  這兒還描述地府的河道，著名的Styx，支流是哀河(Cocytus)。火河(Pyriphlegethon)和哀河(Cocytus)又一起匯入阿克戎河(Acheron)，會合之處，波濤洶湧，有一塊巨岩在當中。依照Circe的指示，勇敢的Odysseus就是得到這裡，然後挖一深洞，祭拜亡魂。祭拜細節也詳實說明 (Odyssey 10. 521-530)，Odysseus要規勸同伴們虔誠地禱告，向Hades與Persephone祈求。找到盲眼先知Teirisias，他會告訴他們回家的路。

   Circe說完後，正好也天亮了，Odysseus也衝去告訴同伴們，叫醒這一年來都活在甜蜜夢中的或同伴們。年輕力壯的Elpenor還從睡夢中驚醒，從樓上摔下，背部和頸部都摔碎，真的是粉身碎骨，一命嗚呼。

   大家要回家了，興奮不已，只是，當Odysseus告訴他們，現在要去的是地府，又是一陣嚎啕大哭，原來，大家就是怕死喔。

willow: A. [select] willow, Il. 21.350, Hecat.292（a) J., Hdt.1.194, PTeb.ined.703.195, etc.; ἰ. λευκή, = Salix alba, ἰ. μέλαινα, = Salix amplexicaulis, Thphr.HP3.13.7.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0135%3Abook%3D10%3Acard%3D503

ἀλλ᾽ ὁπότ᾽ ἂν δὴ νηὶ δι᾽ Ὠκεανοῖο περήσῃς,

ἔνθ᾽ ἀκτή τε λάχεια καὶ ἄλσεα Περσεφονείης,

μακραί τ᾽ αἴγειροι καὶ ἰτέαι ὠλεσίκαρποι,

νῆα μὲν αὐτοῦ κέλσαι ἐπ᾽ Ὠκεανῷ βαθυδίνῃ,

αὐτὸς δ᾽ εἰς Ἀίδεω ἰέναι δόμον εὐρώεντα.

ἔνθα μὲν εἰς Ἀχέροντα Πυριφλεγέθων τε ῥέουσιν

Κώκυτός θ᾽, ὃς δὴ Στυγὸς ὕδατός ἐστιν ἀπορρώξ,

πέτρη τε ξύνεσίς τε δύω ποταμῶν ἐριδούπων:

ἔνθα δ᾽ ἔπειθ᾽, ἥρως, χριμφθεὶς πέλας, ὥς σε κελεύω,

βόθρον ὀρύξαι, ὅσον τε πυγούσιον ἔνθα καὶ ἔνθα,

ἀμφ᾽ αὐτῷ δὲ χοὴν χεῖσθαι πᾶσιν νεκύεσσιν,

πρῶτα μελικρήτῳ, μετέπειτα δὲ ἡδέι οἴνῳ,

τὸ τρίτον αὖθ᾽ ὕδατι: ἐπὶ δ᾽ ἄλφιτα λευκὰ παλύνειν. (Odyssey 10. 508-520)

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/odyssey10.htm

But once your ship

crosses flowing Oceanus, drag it ashore    

at Persephone’s groves, on the level beach,

where tall poplars grow, willows shed their fruit, 

right beside deep swirling Oceanus.11

Then you must go to Hades’ murky home.

There Periphlegethon and Cocytus,

a stream which branches off the river Styx,

flow into Acheron. There’s a boulder

where these two foaming rivers meet. Go there,

heroic man, and follow my instructions—

move close and dig a hole there two feet square.

 Pour libations to the dead around it,

first with milk and honey, next sweet wine,

and then a third with water.

下面圖片與資料出處: http://thanasis.com/homewk06.htm

下面資料出處: http://www.shmoop.com/odyssey/elpenor.html Elpenor is the guy who wandered up to Circe's roof and fell to his death before the men departed. Odysseus talks to him in the underworld, where Elpenor asks for a proper burial: "I ask that you remember me, and do not go and leave me behind unwept, unburied, when he leave, for fear I might become the gods' curse upon you; but burn me there with all my armor that belongs to me, and heap up a grave mound beside the beach of that gray sea, for an unhappy man, so that those to come will know of me" (11.60-65, 69-78). And so Odysseus actually sails all the way back to Circe's island to give this poor guy a proper burial. That's how important funeral rites are.

20140921讀《湖濱散記》

剛剛隨手翻閱《湖濱散記》。去年暑假收假前比較有心:
筆記 1 http://etwonderland.blogspot.tw/2013_09_06_archive.html
筆記 2 http://etwonderland.blogspot.tw/2013_09_08_archive.html
筆記 3 http://etwonderland.blogspot.tw/2013_09_14_archive.html
筆記 4 http://etwonderland.blogspot.tw/2013_09_18_archive.html

今年再讀書中〈閱讀〉一章，新意又燃起。
那年暑假，梭羅讀Iliad，今年，我讀。



逐字閱讀，畫線，表示有感動。
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm#linkW3 

Reading

With a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.

My residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet Mîr Camar Uddîn Mast, "Being seated, to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines." I kept Homer's Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived.
The student may read Homer or Æschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. 

Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the Middle Ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it.

However much we may admire the orator's occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.
No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;—not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man's thought becomes a modern man's speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.
Those who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor Æschylus, nor Virgil even—works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equaled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.
The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.
I think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a-b-abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled "Little Reading," which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sophronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth—at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man weather-cocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. "The Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of 'Tittle-Tol-Tan,' to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don't all come together." All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella—without any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market.
The best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so-called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts anywhere made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to "keep himself in practice," he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as much as the college-bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so-called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;—and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the "Little Reading," and story-books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.
I aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him—my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper.
It is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book! The book exists for us, perchance, which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let "our church" go by the board.
We boast that we belong to the Nineteenth Century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked—goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the State, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are, indeed, so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?—not be sucking the pap of "neutral family" papers, or browsing "Olive Branches" here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know anything. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture—genius—learning—wit—books— paintings—statuary—music—philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do—not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our Pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman's. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

憂愁扔一邊吧! Odyssey 10.443-465

主題: 憂愁扔一邊吧!

前一段，我嗅出一個問題，人，不容易相信，不相信女神 Circe，不相信自己的同伴，甚至不相信自己。但是，為什麼呢?

  接續前一段，Eurylochus終究服從Odysseus的命令，一起前往Circe的宮殿享受盛宴，不是因為他相信Odysseus了，而是因為害怕嚴厲的責備(ἔδεισεν γὰρ ἐμὴν ἔκπαγλον ἐνιπήν, Odyssey 10. 448)。說來好笑，但也很真實，克服懷疑的方式是害怕。

   當初一半人留在船上，一半人去探路，被Circe變成豬，Odysseus要求Circe把他們變回人形，這些人經歷極大的變化，但是，風險已過，Circe盛宴款待。現在，兩路人馬碰面，又哭成一團，女神Circe說一段很平凡，或語意深長的話 (下面引文，Odyssey 10. 456-465)。這段文字，提醒我們Circe是女神，其實早已知道Odysseus的經歷，但是她真的能體會Odysseus的痛苦嗎?

    此外，Circe點出Odysseus無精打采，憔悴，主要是因為活在過去，一直陷入過去不幸的遭遇，所以難過。這也是為什麼人很難建立信任感，太多過去的記憶左右我們的判斷。

    Circe又說對了，還是先填飽肚子吧! 吃飽了，才有元氣，就像當初從故鄉Ithaca出發時的精神抖擻。

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0135%3Abook%3D10%3Acard%3D428

μηκέτι νῦν θαλερὸν γόον ὄρνυτε: οἶδα καὶ αὐτὴ

ἠμὲν ὅσ᾽ ἐν πόντῳ πάθετ᾽ ἄλγεα ἰχθυόεντι,

ἠδ᾽ ὅσ᾽ ἀνάρσιοι ἄνδρες ἐδηλήσαντ᾽ ἐπὶ χέρσου.

ἀλλ᾽ ἄγετ᾽ ἐσθίετε βρώμην καὶ πίνετε οἶνον,

εἰς ὅ κεν αὖτις θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσι λάβητε,

οἷον ὅτε πρώτιστον ἐλείπετε πατρίδα γαῖαν

τρηχείης Ἰθάκης. νῦν δ᾽ ἀσκελέες καὶ ἄθυμοι,

αἰὲν ἄλης χαλεπῆς μεμνημένοι, οὐδέ ποθ᾽ ὕμιν

θυμὸς ἐν εὐφροσύνῃ, ἐπεὶ ἦ μάλα πολλὰ πέποσθε. (Odyssey 10. 456-465)

http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/homer/odyssey10.htm

‘Resourceful Odysseus, Laertes’ son

and Zeus’ child, you should no longer rouse

an outburst of such grief. I know myself

every pain you’ve suffered on the fish-filled seas,

every wrong that hostile men have done on land.

But come now, eat my food, and drink my wine, 

until you’ve got back that spirit in your chest

you had when you first left your native land

of rugged Ithaca. You’re exhausted now—

you have no spirit—you’re always brooding

on your painful wanderings. There’s no joy

inside your hearts—you’ve been through so much.’  

 

下面這張圖很夢幻!

出處:    http://shadowness.com/AruarianDancer/circe

服裝設計: The Enchantress' Island: Circe, Handmaid Violet/Rosemary, and a Pig

http://inkbramble.com/2012/02/03/odysseybramble/