More specifically concerning: greece
18 June
18 June 2001, around 14.11.
We students were trotted up Lycabettos hill, an occasion for profuse sweating and sporadic complaint, but the views rendered both bearable, the sun hesitating behind faint clouds, even Oedipus’ Cithaeron visible in the distance. Doorjamb at the sanctuary of Artemis at Brauron; Attika, Greece (21 June 2001; usual camera)
Loxias
21 June 2001, around 12.30.
Funerary
21 June 2001, around 12.31.
little bird
21 June 2001, around 12.32.
28 June
28 June 2001, around 14.13.
What is one looking for in these cases, anyway? One could find an object lesson, an unexpected symbol, but one is unlikely to find what it all meant; it is a void, then, and scholarship a waste of time? Perhaps. One little thing, this fixation on an object, whether worthy or no; wisdom and understanding […]
capital
3 July 2001, around 15.59.
5 July
5 July 2001, around 14.14.
Acrocorinth. One sees the world open out to the horizon, from the span of Attica to the slopes of Parnassus, across the tenuous isthmus, the Peloponnese now broken to an island by the works of man. On the isle of Pelops, taciturn rocks lie uneven as a rumpled blanket, jagged as a broken shield. From […]
16 July
16 July 2001, around 14.16.
It’s deeply complex: it’s not what you see. There’s a tension between what you are and what you know. One must read behind the phenomena, the surfaces; one could take hours, days, months to comprehend one column capital, working over the surfaces with a magnifying glass in search of scratches. This is scientific. Then there’s […]
21 July
21 July 2001, around 14.18.
Delphi – up and about just before six to watch the Pythian sunrise, the bunched mountains and outcrops of rock losing their dusky shadow to the warm necessity of the sun. The trees in the valley seem almost lush, but dwindle to scrub along the harsh and rugged walls. A stillness through everything – even […]
Observation
31 July 2001, around 14.19.
One muddles oneself with thinking, succumbing too easily to the temptation to compare what is with what might be – learn to be insensate, let things, let people, be as they are, and do not expect what cannot be given. Kerameikos and the haze of the Acropolis in the background. Athens, Greece (31 July 2001; […]
1 August
1 August 2001, around 14.20.
Piling pebbles upon the beach, the water laps against the sky, the low sound measuring time’s loss, the imponderable construction of a memory. Set one foot, then, in front of the other, and take no moment to look back, but continue – onward.
Lustral Basins, or the Archaeology of Remembrance
7 August 2002, around 13.29.
We stood in the sun, which was sharp and swimmingly white, though not quite directly overhead. The only thing brighter than the sunlight was the dust, which swirled and eddied low around our feet, stirred by the rare breezes. The olive trees and other low, scrubby plants were soaked in this dust, and seemed nearly […]
gallery
3 February 2003, around 9.17.
Olympia.
Lavatory
15 March 2003, around 9.02.
Palace of Nestor, Pylos, July 2001
formicae
18 July 2003, around 14.04.
From a review (via A&L Daily) of a biography of Hans-Georg Gadamer (of whom I am as ignorant as a newborn): Was Gadamer really like Socrates? Or did he lack the courage that made the Greek drink poison rather than submit to the mob? Uh, Mr. Reviewer, sir? Socrates drinking the poison? Uh, that was […]
Citation (14)
1 December 2003, around 9.29.
the character of a historian.
pedant
4 December 2003, around 10.05.
One of the strangest footnotes I have ever written: On the knee as a seat of power, see Deonna (1939); on the knee as a gathering place for seminal fluids, see Onians (1951): p. 173–86. This lends credence to the theory that one channels the powers beyond when writing, because really, I don’t think I […]
axunesias
9 January 2004, around 15.33.
Μὴ οὖν προδόται γένησθε ὑμῶν αὐτῶν, γενόμενοι δ’ ὅτι ἐγγύτατα τῇ γνώμῃ τοῦ πάσχειν καὶ ὡς πρὸ παντὸς ἂν ἐτιμήσασθε αὐτοὺς χειρώσασθαι, νῦν ἀνταπόδοτε μὴ μαλακισθέντες πρὸς τὸ παρὸν αὐτίκα μηδὲ τοῦ ἐπικρεμασθέντος ποτὲ δεινοῦ ἀμνημονοῦντες. κολάσατε δὲ ἀξίως τούτους τε καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις ξυμμάχοις παράδειγμα σαφὲς καταστήσατε, ὃς ἂν ἀφιστῆται, θανάτῳ ζημιωσόμενον. τόδε γὰρ […]
the mind diseased
6 March 2004, around 13.14.
Modern Greece, in history and literature, has been viewed as a transitory moment squeezed between two larger and more important entities. Viewed chronologically, modern Greece rests between the glory of the classical Greek past and the hope of a resurrected Greek future, which in many Western minds ought to resemble the democracies of Western Europe […]
ostraka
31 December 2007, around 21.58.
The memory of cranes flying in rain-heavy sky, lit in low-slanting sunlight; tall grasses and the bounce and hum of a bus; gold-leaved crowns, and painted walls, dank scent of earth, and the brightness of the cranes, flying. Don’t know what direction they flew, nor what direction I went, but away from the past and […]
Citation (46)
29 June 2012, around 15.16.
on the Greek language.
The Balkan Trilogy
15 March 2013, around 12.09.
From a series of postcards of Bucharest in the 1940s. Olivia Manning. Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy. New York: NYRB Classics, 2010 (1960–1965). This is an odd way to start a consideration of Olivia Manning’s Balkan Trilogy, but I want to take a moment to think about Graham Greene. His novels inhabit a peculiar […]