Lobster and the sound made by typewriters

While looking at the search engine terms used to find my blog, I came across “lobster + sound made by typewriters.” This isn’t much, but it’s a start, or rather, a sea turtle daring the dash.
“Sebastian, Sebastian.”
So, we’ll try this anew, though I promise nothing to the lobster searchers.

In other news, I suspect penguin-sporting SNOOT prescriptivists (try that three times) of booing at the Met.

t/b/c…

will

Pullus: the false grey of the backs of hares. It is the Greek color of mourning; an attempt to camouflage us to the eye of life for a brief moment.
When we are color blind, all the world is pullus, and together, we can dye quietly, in peace under the burning white lights upon the stage.

MJ

I don’t watch TV. I chucked it in the street 7 years ago or so to force myself to read more, spend time with actual people, work, etc. I only have the web. So, perhaps I’m not the average person and I’m not quite as exposed to all the Jackson coverage, having the leasure to read when I feel like it, but I think that in this culture of star obsession, it is perfectly coherent that we should spend so much time on Jackson. I also would like to add that he was an extraordinary musician, dancer, and such a strange personality that it seems perfectly logical to spend some time talking about his death; the death of an icon that we weren’t really ready for as a global community. I’m not shocked. And to boot, perhaps we all feel a little guilty about making fun of him so often when it would have maybe been more productive of us to question what had been done to this poor “freak,” who, from a beautiful black man with dimples and a smile that killed, turned himself into a white shadow. That’s what he did, and it’s a tragedy. Exquisite irony in this year of our first black president. I also think that these moments, when we have 911 calls, minute reports of when he stopped breathing, soon, certainly, what he was wearing, and which hair spray he had chosen that day, we probably equate this extraordinary death with our own. How will it be from moment to moment?

Which hair spray will I choose?

SB

Reading Samuel Beckett’s letters.

Who wouldn’t love SB reading Proust:

“… a mauldin false teeth gobble-gobble discharge from a colic-afflicted belly.  I think he drank too much tilleul.”

and ô, que les parisiens n’ont pas changé:

“How energetic they always are, these self-avowed cynics and désabusés, bristling with passionate estimates and beating their breasts in a jemenfoustiste & jusquauboutiste frenzy.”

(but of course, can’t mention Alfy without mentioning his demise…et puis, it’s offensive, et ça l’est… but still.)

add a low, grey sky and some antidepressants…

New York; H:83° L:62° sunny; join some friends in the park for a glockenspiel-fest(ed) afternoon.

I’m not even proofing this one.

It takes a martini and a father caring for a son for me to finally get here.  and write.  a letter, okay, and email, a poem.  but blog? a responsibility that just doesn’t work now.  Just doesn’t seem possible. I’m drunk blogging and that’s okay.  Some are afraid of their officiality being swallowed.  The French are very afraid of this.  They publish, and Americans seem to be twittering ’til twilight and then poof, which can be unfortunate if you are a dead rock star’s very much alive rock star wife, even if poof. Because if they can save your sorry ass interrupting the Father’s son’s Mother, then they can certainly save your tweets. And they will. because they’ve nothing better to do, like watching some celebrity hit on everyone at The Beatrice Inn.  That’s fine. But no one wants to save mine. So this is fine, because in comparison to the tweeting teens, this one is very anon, and no one will have the patience to read it, which is fine with me.  That permanence can be so immediate and finalement, présent, figé, processus d’un instant de la vie; hmm temporality is different these days. And nice and yet fleeting, did you know? betcha ya didn’t, that data rot exists.  yep, the times. data rot.  all your memories, all your thoughts, rotting away on silver slivers of plastic and in your lap on labyrinths of metal, tiny structures that hold you.  and you thought you were immune!  arrogant you.  25 or is it 24 kids, people, have committed suicide in Wales, in a small area in Wales. is it an epidemic?  They can’t figure it, but blaming phone posts seems to be the trend, or internet pacts. Ah, but I don’t twitter, or tweet, or whatever, and I don’t want to find those who I don’t want to find on Facebook.  

It is spring again.  It’s spring again. The trees are remplising leurs branches encore.  The baby is gagaing.  Gaga.  Singing notes that I can’t get to. Surprise. That’s fine.  enfin… as in anyway…   And here it is: My courtyard.  I had thought of writing this but then stopped.  Didn’t want to seem like a stalker.  And ignorant as can be, more so than my ultra-cultured friend, S, who seems somehow to know everything, even the existence of some terribly idiotic philosophies that shouldn’t even exist, much less be published and he says ‘oh yeah, them!’  And goes on to make me feel like a fool to his bibliothèque of a brain.  So, I shamefully didn’t know the existence of this person.  I admit.  And now I do and am ashamed.  Always ashamed to say, no I’ve never read that.  What is it?  The red running up to one’s face.  The not-so-rare moments when I say, who?  The rare moments when everything is silent, when everyone is sleeping, or crying in their sleep, but at least sleeping.  Across the courtyard is a man up there on the top floor who types on a typewriter, who is behind a tree and next to a wall of books.  I see two paintings hung on the wall in the first window which seem to be not framed, and in the second, a white-haired writer, like me, a writer, but, my God, like when Aperghis said to me, when you say you are nothing compared to Beethoven, you are comparing yourself to Beethoven, a white-haired man who is typing away until about 2:30 every morning. And I can tell you, when I was pregnant, when the baby was born and now, when sleep is so rare so rare so rare, I open the curtain, look up there and see that white hair in the window.  

I only suppose that he is writing, though I can’t see his hands.  I can’t see his table.  I can barely see him. I’m drunk blogging and he’s writing.  Me martini, him, TV?  Old and white.  But so it’s spring again and birds on the wing again and so the trees are going to be filling up again with leaves again and this is my last spring here and so I’m drunk blogging while the baby now cries with daddy, not the mommy, so the mommy can martini her evening away,  and the darkness lets the orange light shine in all those windows in the courtyard where that father reads to his multi-cultural kid dressed in black, where that old guy sits reading the times while his wife cooks, and this one, feeding the unfortunate cat who cries often in 0 degree weather to the tune of Buddha bells in the same garden, oh how i hate them and their buddha bell and desperate cat     this person sits typing away on a machine and I, on a machine, and writing, writing not singing not materning. Maternally typing, but not tweeting.  tap and kiss, tap and goo goo, tap and webern, tap and gawker stalker, what?, yes, it’s true, tap and gawker stalker, you try living in chelsea and not gawk stalking, too fun, where the baby is now screaming, having fallen on his head, it’s okay, not really, but a fall nonetheless, of which, oh dear, there will be many, that it’s spring again and it’s the last winter I’ll be able to see between the branches the beast writing at his table, the Ashbery on 20th street, who calms me when I can’t sleep, knowing that someone is still keeping the writing guard, that someone is doing something important, even in his old age with white hair and green? is it? sweater, me, shaking concoctions, official concoctions of powders and liquids FDA approved for the brain, the development, the eyes and whatever, of my little thing, shaking bottles and feeding to this ever mommy-knowing, mommy-recognizing baby with huge eyes, recognizing me in the night, in the morning, dark night-morning, like some sort of rabbit-child, eat your carrots, who is definitely screaming now, right there, right across the courtyard, whose poems, thanks to S and his culture, of which I am lacking oh dear, soverymuch, I have now read. And that is huge, to secretly watch a poet writing in his window.  That one.  THAT poet.  That John.

Hanged Drawn and Quartered

You won’t believe what the HDQ pac will do for your biotrickling filter!

Ask me how.

Fourth great experience.

00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08

Stealing hawks, witchcraft, desertion in the field, highway robbery, treason, and of course, the letting out of ponds.

16th century England. A parthenogenesized genesis would have to be added, and You, in turn, for it to make sense to anyone.

The subject était nous with you as the object and we were happy happy we pendant au moins a moment un soupir in those days.  Et puis le vent turned elsewhere and it was over and la guerre was on.  This is us, all, our story, parmi the octupi, or not, on land, dans ta tête, sur vos terres, in the air, filtered air, in our living rooms, or our elsewhere… This is it; our story.  

En premier, j’étais pendue à une échelle.

And I say to you now.  

En premier, nous étions mis sur une croix.  J’étais dragged throughout la ville, all of the ladies in their little bonnets, bonnets, the ladies watching us, can it be? little ladies in their silk de loin, de loin, que nous avions acheté, chiffon, crèpe de chine, shantung, and that we sailed and sailed for, those little stripes looking so cool from up here, so clean, she is, all that way, et puis les hommes avec stern faces sucking on their oxygen and getting their pedicures in perrruques, dusty wigs and holding their cholesterol in their hands as proof que nous sommes nous sommes chosen, we, juges and standing or sitting or lying on Roman beds being fed grapes, sanglier, the gras-est foie, peu importe, on our elliptical trainers, treadmills, even perhaps singing, themselves, maybe.  And you were the sternest of all, don’t think you weren’t.

And he can say to you now.

I was mis devant un pupitre.  Je devais chanter mes péchés, ma trahison.  On devait se mettre en the strangest musique.  A kind of minuet, gig, une danse; it went so fast, we didn’t have time to see notre ridicule.  Et les juges, touchant leurs barbichettes, m’écoutaient, se masturbaient avec notre chant la nuit dans des corridors, bibliothèques sombres, ou ailleurs, wherever the purest oxygen be, so be we, in steam rooms foggy with thoughts, que sais-je, peu importe, en rentrant chez eux.  in plaster and en relief dans des églises. et puis. on the walls.  always on the walls.

Would say.

Ils étaient nus sur un lit, ou dans un lit, j’étais sur une table, devant ou sur le coin d’une table, je parlais de mon travail, car ils me le demandaient, mais ils entendaient d’autres mots than what I was speaking, and they couldn’t understand my words. On quitta la pièce quasi en larmes, breathing particles, 99.97% crap, cleaning solutions, moquettes, disgusting, we can’t, won’t stand for less than one hundred percent, that’s right, oxygen.  Breathing, breathing, we.  Je me suis levée et marche marche walk run corner hall and then where? pour suivre ensuite pour te suivre, vous. J’étais dans et puis sur un lit, c’est ça.  Nous étions tied, rope, horses, I can’t see.  Et les femmes, comment? les femmes même.  des mamans.  Il ne voyait plus. J’étais dans et puis over un banc, clovers distracting me from a sweet boy dans un square et puis non, plus.  Une centaine de vers, j’ai du tenir, en ta compagnie,votre, fêtes, in love, in sadness, les jours se suivent and resemble one another, but now, no, j’ai du tenir une centaine de vers pleins de bonnes choses en votre bonne compagnie, with a certain urgence, filtering, with carbon, or other, cooking odors, mold, tobacco, nous étions pendus à une échelle, nous, pendus avec mon sexe coupé, jeté dans le feu devant mes yeux, et mes entrailles sorties devant nos yeux, et nos yeux ouverts, vous, happy happy we.  someone singing.  J’étais en vie.  Nous vivions, nous tous.  Eux.

With a certain electricity, jétais pendue devant les masses.  We did this. I did this, you, vous.

J’étais avec toi, vous.  On ne dit jamais ces mots jamais comme couverts d’acide, comme impossibles, frozen, no longer moving.  

Hanged    Drawn   Quartered

Treason was his crime, or witchcraft, I forgot, did I let out a pond?  Did she steal your hawk, did he fuck your daughter?

You, vous, nous never really said.  because We never really remember, do we?

 

and ooo we’re angry now!

 

 

Newton’s Day!

Troisième grande expérience.  Alexandre loved Marie loved Alexandre loved Véronika loved Alexandre loved s loves himself loves Véronika who loves him or does she? He, she loves d. Luxembourg, Flore… Rome.       the empire. and beyond to where the violet was lain on the tyrant’s grave, where the tree was then destroyed, and the empire, a memory, ô mais bien vivante. nero’s circus 324, hypostasis, 451, 553, that which stands underneath, under the many levels of the under, of the foundation of sous-Rome… sous un pin. grand pin. no humidity here. Because not even humidity makes icons cry. People do.  ”Only a species under grande menace would resort to virgin births.” Il ne reste que la femme cendrier.  Elle accueille tes cendres.  Et quand les madeleines seront finished, of no utility, elle deviendra Sèvres, princesse, bleue et contre tous.  in green love.  L’unité is yet to come.  

Alexandre et puis Véronika.  Il se leva et sans un mot, left the room. (Should have forced evolution as something other, a hypo-truth to shut them up.  A theo-truth to appease them.)  Spinning, spinning, beaux chevaux de bois, giving life in empty circuses and taking them where they may. wondering where the fortifications are and why we sent them.    

Only une espèce sous grande menace donnera naissance of the wombs of our vierges.  Adam and Eve pinochle. And you wanted to nous connaître, silly you.

I’m a shark virgin, shark virgin, where sonar sings and sonny dad walked sur l’eau, l’eau, lève-toi…toi, et danse sous les projecteurs. 

 

Parthenogenesis.  Aeiparthenos.  de bonne guerre.

Daughter of the Father, Spouse of the Spirit, Mother of the Son, Son of the Father who is also the Father and not Son of the Mother, who conceived no such thing, but bore the Son of the Father who is the Father and the Son of the Mother who is the daughter of her son and his spouse, who is no simple mother, but a mother-virgin, ever- virgin, but mother, but not to the son, divine but human but divine but human but divine but human and not human, but spirit, who is the father, who is not dead, though dead for 2000 years, and is everywhere – all the omnis and is the father of the son, one hypostasis, one prosopon, two physes, who is the father, born of the virgin, who was a mother, who speaks to little children in fields, though dead for 2000 years, on hills, in valleys, to shepherds and farmers, to nuns and hairdressers, in living rooms, toilets, her image in tortillas and cinnamon danishes, grilled cheese sandwiches, pretzels, potato chips on airplanes, on Chicago’s South Side, in Vegas, Los Angeles, crying in churches, bleeding on hilltops, deadalive virgin mother.

Allez.  Prenez une vierge, une poche vide derrière les yeux, peinte selon les lois de proportion nécessaires pour faire un beau visage, bleu, si si, bleu.  et elle, simple, poche derrière les yeux.  Poreuse, elle est.  Sèvres s’il faut, pour mieux sucer the liquid you’ve chosen. carmen, de préférence, though he might prefer poppy, or oil, sang de porc, si porc il y a, oh oui, peu importe.  Pas d’humidité nécessaire, this Virgin’s gonna give, elle va donner, elle va oui donner our collective miracle.  You only have to wait que les gouttes de souffrance, vos souffrances, fall from the object, ni putain, et finalement, ni maman non plus, that is what it is because menacée, because threatened.  Allons les enfants, sonar singing in your ears, standing on water, or under, peu importe.  -a perfect fourth to save us en ce jour de gloire. (Shh, les enfants, voyez voyez comme elle pleure pour vous, pour vos sins sins, sing it with me!  Yay!  Clap your hands.  See how you are l’incarnation du mal?  N’est ce pas merveilleux?  Miraculous?)

Embaumée et vierge, alors.  Frolickons-en dans ses jupes.  We love you. We envy you.  We’ll paint you on our tank, our wall, our coffins and, yes, our chocolates and velvet toilet seats. We’ll pay you! to be our vierge. We want you immortal on our walls.  (Cynique, lui, pour que ce jour là, elle devienne reine du ciel, full of grace, pleine Marie-sans-jamais who spends her evenings on the corner.)  Grace, anyone?  Due baiocchi et voilà notre gracieuse maman à tous in that Medici light, looking a little pale, she who spends her nights on the corner.  Due baiocchi pour la reine, and off yee go, my sweet.  Sempre virgem/meta-vierge, faite et re-made, self-referencing, on walls and canvasses et the real one, comme lui, useful for the blood drinking children of man. Ultimate cynical act; 4th century, give us our forever Vierge that flesh eating fondlers may spy ankles in confessionals and sonny dad can shine in your gold.

A blue jay can silence an entire garden.  Didn’t he silence yours?  James, Joseph, Judas Ah Judas, et puis… peu importe.

Oh what fun aeiparthenos is on a one-bred Newton’s day!  Hey!

Send me a Virgin on a plate and I’ll sing you a song.  Une Vierge dans une tache d’huile and I’ll whisper my sins to you in the confesssional où you spy my ankle, Monseigneur.  -une Vierge peinte selon les proportions nécessaires pour faire un beau visage.  And I’ll tell you a story.

 I’ll tell you the story of what we are

who we were.

 

 

 YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT THE HDQ pac WILL DO FOR YOUR BIOTRICKLING FILTER!

ASK ME HOW!

next up…stay tuned.

 

Promised things and a Louis foot

Les Niobides et une serre

It was a smell of fertilizer, but not the manure kind, no, the chemical kind, there where I drew a letter in the dust for the one who had left that day, a letter, simple, to say good luck bye have fun in Florence this will not be the same now and we will not be the same and I know that but that’s okay because we have to move we have to keep walking forward and soon we won’t know each other I know that but that’s okay because we have to let time move us forward to wherever… and we did, like the day that they were airing out the other’s chambre, car il vivait dans a permanent haze. Steam rose from that window et on la voyait de la loggia.

Isn’t this pretentious?, but I swear, you can understand the light in Titian’s paintings when you have spent days and days living and waiting, forever waiting for something, in a 16th century palace like the Villa Médicis.  Enormous windows that give onto all of Rome, in the salon des pensionnaires where I sang every day at the grand piano God knows how many hands have touched, and whose, and in the little one next to it, room, and then especially in the salle de concert, as I thought of it, mid-morning, when I’d sneak in and be the only one. I can only assume it has an official name that I don’t know.  where I have photos of 3 men in blue the day before a concert setting up pinkish-orangy chairs. -happy accident, no plan to that contrast that somehow made the most beautiful, if out of focus, photos that I ever made there. 3 men in blue in a warm sunset room, the one time of day when warmth filled it, setting up their pinkish, faded chairs…  It is a cold light coming from the windows and especially in that middle room, greenish-grey Balthus color.  Though Rome is anything but cold, and anything but filled with cold light, the light in these rooms, these Medici rooms is cold, and as there are only a few Balthus lamps here and there, during the day, there is no light, other than these enormous windows, and that light is cold, bluish, and everyone looks a little green standing before that cold light. a little dead, though so often beautiful, some more than others. Everyone is beautiful in that cold light where they are green and dead and their shirts seem whiter and starchier, which I’m sure isnotaword, because of that blue hue.  until he put up his chandelier. oh well.

It is said that Giacinto Scelsi would ride to the Villa in a Rolls-Royce and not enter the concert hall, but would have his chauffeur stop in front of the loggia and ask that the doors be opened so he could listen from the comfort of his leathered, plush car to the pensionnaires’ concerts.  The communist elements of (ah, we know who that is) the Roman compositional sphere were anything but amused. Oh, but I am.  -just as I am amused by the sneaking of women and the roaming of lions, epoch Ferdinand, and Messalina’s foray into bigamy, “settling odors into the royal pillows” via Gaius Silius, uh-hum, et autre. -Claude’s three penny C, whose destiny it was to die unwillingly by her own hand.

One night, Florence took me down below the loggia where the 4th ? was it, century Emperor’s floor still sits, marble, and even a dog’s footprint.  4th century dog’s footprint?  Somehow that was most impressive to me. And I watched them, these 4th century people, enter the Emperor’s palace, concentrating hard, really hard, I could see them stepping onto the marble, that night when the cold hit and we snuck under ground because, as always, someone had stolen a key  -the night we ate a $600 lobster because I was in shock that S had left with T in a car named Ulysses, Penelope standing on that loggia, waving goodbye, and what else to do but eat and spend? Their faces were full of fear. Strange day. the day I said I was glad he was gone. I wasn’t. Strange day.  For everyone leaving the Villa, the leaving of the Villa is a strange day. For everyone staying, their leaving is a strange day. -because it seems just as impossible to leave as it is to stay.  seems so silly now. but not then. Then, we truly were filled with fear. How do you leave a palace and pines to re-devenir a starving, or relatively for most, artist in that cold, grey, humid city to the west, the one you had left behind for warmth, concentration, solid work, and orange trees?  and yes, other, less noble things.  yet staying would mean absolute death.

But I just wanted to describe a greenhouse. I promise a photo. Les Niobides et le Torse du Belvédère are cast and sitting in there, in silence.  Are surely still there. So, morning coffee with lizards and the fallen, rotting grapes, the occasional dead bird that the cat had offered us, maggot-filled next to the fern we killed and the hydrangea we saved, the jasmine that wormed its way around the railing leading up to the door; jasmine for about 10 days in april and then no more, (I had time to learn these things, two springs, that’s enough, really, to know nature, or think you know nature, to apercevoir something more than just the glance of humanity at that which seems as banal as plastic now that we are all so busy multi-tasking), some sort of lily in a barrel full of water where tiger mosquitos were born in large clouds, in front of the breaking brick wall that housed Diana, though I didn’t know it at the time.  the smell of chemicals, surely dangerous, but who cared? because I could spend hours staring at these distraught faces, legs falling off, broken to pieces, a problem that didn’t seem to bother anyone in particular, pauvres Niobides délaissées. “…car Niobé se disait aussi belle que Léto”. The greenhouse had no green. Plaster, chemicals and a dirt floor where a strange sort of Mesozoic beetle lurked in pretty great numbers, but that’s nothing compared to the flying ant mating festival that took place one day in the heat of the Roman sun in front of the house, above the roses, just beyond the cherry tree, while I talked on the gifted phone and searched the ground for anything Roman, Medicean, Academician isthataword? If you drew a spiral with your finger in that dust, you could be sure that come rain, snow, wind, it would still be there years later, as no one ever walked into that house of green that had no green but only grey, and Niobides would be forever fearing the wrath a few feet above you, there where you could touch the Belvedere Torso, touch it, lick it even, not that I ever did, but I admit I wanted to. empty casts where the cat would sleep.  hollow torso;  were it full, were it alive, were it breathing, I wouldn’t know the difference. I wonder if the letter is still there?

a pou in a grey house, burying letters like some sort of excessively-Romantic, more excessive than any arc-en-ciel-defending Romantic who died on those very steps not so far away, where the fleur de lys ironically reminds the Academy who it is, they are, little romantic mouse, wearing her heart on her sleeve as usual.

mouse. louse. pou.

My friend Didier da Silva tells the story of Scelsi and le coeur du pou. 

It’s the story of a Chinese master, always a Chinese master somewhere, told by Scelsi to demonstrate how to listen to sound (in French) from lesideesheureuses.over-blog.com/…

Vous ai-je raconté l’histoire du pou ? C’est quelqu’un qui voulait apprendre le tir à l’arc. C’est une activité zen. Alors il se rend chez un maître et lui dit : “Maître, je voudrais apprendre le tir à l’arc. – Oui, vous apprendrez cela, mais avant il faut que vous sachiez voir le cœur d’un pou. – Comment ? – C’est facile, vous prenez deux bâtons. Vous les plantez par terre à une distance d’un mètre, un mètre cinquante à peu près. – Oui. Ça, je peux le faire. – Après, vous prenez une ficelle que vous attachez aux bâtons. Puis vous prenez un pou, il y en a beaucoup ici. Vous le posez sur la ficelle. Le pou marchera jusqu’au bout du bâton, puis il tournera en arrière et ainsi de suite. Il marchera tout le temps jusqu’à ce qu’il meure. Il ne peut pas aller au-delà, il ne peut pas voler. – Oui. Ça, je peux le faire. – Après, vous vous étendez sous la ficelle. Vous regardez le pou qui marche sans cesse. – Pendant combien de temps, Maître ? – Eh bien, jusqu’à ce que vous voyiez battre le cœur du pou.” Bon. L’homme se dit qu’il va essayer (…) 
Or vous savez tous que si on regarde longtemps n’importe quel objet, celui-ci grandit. On voit beaucoup plus de détails. Le type reste là longtemps, très longtemps. Les histoires chinoises durent des années ! (…) Puis un jour (…) il voit quelque chose qui bat, comme ça, dans le pou. A force de regarder le pou, il est devenu très gros et il voit battre quelque chose. C’était le cœur du pou. C’est ainsi que l’on entend un son.

 

Devant un loggia, Mercury and water, dust and lily pads, above brique et marbre, beyond a library and a bar, pines hovering close-by, are two enormous wooden doors, open, and notes are pouring over the leather of a Rolls where encore un qui savait vivre sits listening to sound.

Archie and his hornets

 

“And I know how to lead off the sprightly

dance of the lord Dionysos, the dithyramb.

I do it thunderstruck with wine”

 

 

I was thumbing through a dictionary the other day and found this:

 

Ithyphalle, n. m. Antique.gr. Phallus porté en procession aux fêtes de Dionysos. // Archéol. Amulette de forme phallique.

Ithyphallique, adj. Qui a rapport à l’ithyphalle. // En termes de métrique ancienne : vers composé de trois trochées.

 

 

The Ithyphallic verse juxtaposes a rhythm in 6 to a rhythm in 8.  It is an ode or a dance performed at festivals of Dionysus.

We have Archilochos/chus, The Satirist, lyricist, founder of iambic poetry and its application to satire, professional soldier, 7th century BC aoidos, to thank for the ithyphallic verse.  He invented the epode, of which the ithyphallic verse is an example. Post-Homer, Hesiod, he was as well known in his time as they. We only have fragments today, some for example, found stuffed in mummies or wrapped around them; scrap paper from third-class homes. He abandoned Homeric ideals and composed often extremely coarse erotic songs for Dionysian festivals.  He enjoyed his life, full of the delights of sensuous existence. He showed little respect for those who chose to die in battle.

“Let who will boast their courage in the field,
I find but little safety from my shield.
Nature’s, not honour’s, law we must obey:
This made me cast my useless shield away,
And by a prudent flight and cunning save
A life, which valour could not, from the grave.
A better buckler I can soon regain

But who can get another life again?”

 

Heraclitus, Pindar and Critias, not too surprisingly, just said NO!

Heraclitus said that Homer deserved to be flogged, and Archilochus likewise.

Pindar describes Archilochus as ‘growing fat on dire words of hatred.’

Critias denounced him for presenting himself as “an impoverished, quarrelsome, foul-mouthed, lascivious, lower-class bastard.” …love it!

But Plato: “the very wise Archilochos.”

And finally, Horace and Catullus kept him complete in their collections.

Horace: “rage armed Archilochos with his own iambus.”

 

 

“I covered her; my arm cradled her neck,
while she in her fear like a fawn
gave up the attempt to run.

Gently I touched her breasts, where the young
flesh
peeped from the edge of her dress,
her ripeness newly come,

and then, caressing all her lovely form,
I shot my hot energy off,

just brushing golden hairs.”

 

 

“You whom the soldiers beat,

You who are all but dead,
How the gods love you
And I, alone in the dark,
I was promised the light.”

 

Want more?  You can have it, thanks to Guy Davenport!

Just search.

 

 

 

On his tomb could be read:

“Hasten on Wayfarer, lest you stir up the hornets.”

 

 

He was killed by a man named Crow.