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Posted-Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 17:35:19 -0200 (GMT)
[...]
Subject: Re: "RACE","TRIBE",etc./back to ELYTIS
[...]
PETER J. ANDERSON wrote:
> ...The actual reason the western world did not evolve faster
> then it did, was primarily because the mass body of knowledge
and data
> the Greeks of Antiquity, and either created, accumulated,
discovered or
> systematized, had long been lost. Primarily as a
consequence,
from the destruction
> of the library at Alexandria, as well as a few other
ancillary
reasons.
> Had the Romans valued these endeavors, as the Greeks had, this
body
of
> knowledge would surely have been built upon, and we may have
> well been walking on the moon in 1469 instead of 1969! Instead the
loss
> of all this, was one of the primary reasons Europe was to usher in
the "Dark Ages"
> later on. The Romans it seems, were as much a perversion
of "Greek culture", as
> well as a copy of it.
Could not agree more.
> The rediscovery of what was left of these Ancient texts, was
the spark
> that ignited the period we now call the "Renaissance".
Furthermore,
copies of
> those texts, were brought to the west, and translated by
Byzantine
monks, who
> had spent a great part of their lives copying them from various
> sources, including the Arabic, after the fall of Constantinople.
In
> short, once the west finally got a chance to acquire this
material,
(courtesy of
> those old Byzantines), to put it mildly, THEY WENT NUTS!!
Indeed. Though the establishment (as you know) suceeded in
'neutralizing'
those aspects of Hellenic culture which were too 'dangerous'. This
was an...
easy task enhanced by translation difficulties. Even the Arabs
had
distorted the original concepts by translations where certain words
could
not be properly translated. There is a story by modern writer Borges
about
Aberroeh (hopefully spelt right) who was unable to translate two
important
Greek words: Tragedy and Comedy. After a long phase
of despair, he
came up with arabic words quite inappropriate (something like
"festival" or
"celebration" instead). It's a miracle that the original
concepts
did survive...
> This is one of the fundamental reasons why the Greeks, have
always
> maintained, that the west is, and has always been very much in
their
debt.
[...]
There is nothing to guarantee that modern Greeks can stand
up
to the
cultural standards of their ancestors. And nothing to stop
individual
Greeks from pursuing such standards out of their own free will....
[...]
I discovered a remarkable essay relevant to the neo-paganism
of the
poet Odysseas Elytis, written by a guy called Jeffrey Carson.
The
title is "Marina", and is a study of "Maria
Nefeli" (of Elytis) with
cross-references to Shakespeare and also Robert Graves. It
appears
I am not the only one who thinks Elytis was a seeker of the Feminine
Pagan Principle. The essay was found in a bimonthly Greek review
called "XARTHS" (chartis) Nov. 1986, issues 12,22,23.
Unfortunately, Jeffrey Carson's remarkable essay (in English) was
translated into Greek without... traces of the original English.
[...]
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