Breakfast with Pandora

Tales as old as time? (long and wonky)

An article from the Atlantic Monthly making the rounds of the Internet has made the claim that "scientists" have proven some folk tales go back thousands of years.

The original "Little Red Riding Hood" apparently goes back "2,000 years" to somewhere "between Europe and the Middle East." (Where would that be? I thought those two places were connected.)

Fun, if true. But I want to sound a note of caution for all those who think that tracing the origin of stories is a scientific endeavor.

A long time ago I did a doctoral thesis on comparative mythology and religion, linking twins in the Bronze Age of the Near East with similar figures from Greece. I do think stories and beliefs get transferred between cultures.

But all of this study is extremely complex and highly speculative, and it is irresponsible to claim otherwise.

Comparative mythology and folklore as a scholarly study goes back a long way-- over two hundred years, in fact, and began shortly after scholars realized that language itself moves and changes in a predictable way through time. This study is called historical linguistics.

Linguistics has proven to be a much more fruitful-- and scientific-- area of investigation. How people pronounce, use, and interpret words can be observed and hypotheses can be tested.

Stories are of an order of magnitude more complex. Even just one detail of a story-- say, Cinderella's glass slipper, which has been famously studied in folklore-- can have a huge number of variants.

Think about putting together a whole set of details, plots, characters in just one story. In order to conclude that two "versions" or "variants" of a story are related to an "original" story, how much of the stories have to correspond? Seventy-five percent? Fifty percent? Less?

Most of the time the scholar's gut instinct rules. They want it to be so, and so it is.

Then there's the chicken and egg question. Of stories in disparate geographical areas that are deemed variants of an original story, which one came first? Which one influenced the other? Which one, so to speak, traveled to which place?

How do you even determine the original details of the original story?

These questions are highly vexed, because most folk tales are not originally written down, but told orally. Folktales that make it into print and thus are able to be studied cannot be scientifically proven to be any age at all. The only way to prove that a folktale existed in a certain time is if you have a text of it. So the only real scientific tool that a scholar has to determine the age of a story, and thus its ability to spread elsewhere, is absent.

Finally, you have the question of parallel generation. Given that human beings are very similar overall and have the same instincts of storytelling wherever they are, what is to stop a culture from imagining a story very similar to one in another, disparate culture? In this case, there is no transfer or traveling of tales at all. How can you tell apart the stories that grew up native, and those that immigrated?

In my work on twins, for example, I came upon scholars who were convinced that twin mythology in Greece ultimately went back to a common ancestor in the Indo-European homeland (perhaps south Russia) thousands of years before.

At the same time, anthropologists had unearthed stories and traditions remarkably similar to those of the Greek twins all over the globe.

With all these caveats in mind, I set out in my dissertation to suggest the possibility that cultural transfer of twin mythology and religion had occurred in a relatively small geographical area in a relatively short amount of time, with the encouraging support that the same type of phenomenon likely occurred with other mythological figures in the same period (Aphrodite, for example, very likely started her career in the Near East and came to Greece some time in or close after the Bronze Age).

There was no question of my being a "scientist" who could prove that a story had its origin somewhere as many as six thousand years ago, as the article claims for the story "The Smith and the Devil."

One final note of caution: historical and comparative mythology has a checkered past. In the late twentieth and early twentieth century, it was used to justify racist ideology, and it was a cornerstone of the Nazi master race theory. Some German scholars believed that Germany was the origin of the Indo-European people and language, and so all the beautiful and noble ancient works of literature in Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit (all Indo-European languages) belonged to the original "Aryan" (a term used in Indo-European scholarship) race.

Other language families, especially the Semitic (which includes Hebrew) were inferior.

As soon as you decide that a story "originates" in a certain area, the possibility opens up that that "original" group of storytellers were somehow "better," because their story colonized, conquered, improved, civilized, or influenced another culture.

So, fun as it may be to imagine that folk tales go back to a certain date and time, that is all that is really happening: fun imagination. Unless it is racist imagination. Then it's not so fun.

Image from pixabay.com

Seeing and naming color

Hard on the heels of the strange viral dress controversy, the public radio program Radiolab comes out with the sensationalist headline that at a certain time in human history, we could not "see" the color blue.

(UPDATE: For an ancient color specialist's blog post, go here.)

Image: a bit of the Aegean Sea near the island of Spetses, Greece.

This phenomenon includes the ancient Greeks, and in particular, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer, who never called the sea "blue" but often called it "wine-dark."

"But do you really see something if you don't have a name for it?" was the question asked by an article digesting the program.

Apparently Radiolab thinks the go-to expert for insight on color in ancient Greece is William Gladstone, the famous British Prime Minister of the 19th century, who was also a scholar of classics.

Gladstone believed that ancient minds were more primitive than ours, and in fact that they were just beginning to develop because creation had occurred only a few thousand years before.

Radiolab seeks to reinforce this questionable insight through anthropologists' study of non-technological societies, some of which seem not to see the difference between green and blue.

They thus perpetuate the outdated but evergreen idea of an "us" versus "them" attitude towards unfamiliar cultures where "we" are more scientific and by implication better, and "they " are benighted and incapable of "seeing" things.

Gladstone's own phrase was that human beings were "in the childhood of the race."

Instead of concluding that ancient and/or "primitive" peoples were incapable of seeing certain colors, perhaps it would have made sense for Radiolab to do a little research closer to our own day. They might have found Evelyn Irwin's Colour Terms in Greek Poetry, in which it is argued that Homer's color system is not based on hue but on a "basic, pervasive opposition of black and white."

An article on the color of Athena's aegis from 2009, furthermore, states that "Colour in this context is accorded more than a strict chromatic meaning and is assessed as a symbol and signifier in the context of discourses between artists, authors and their audiences." The notes refer to numerous other similar studies.

This theory makes no suppositions about the biological capabilities of ancient peoples, but instead concerns itself with their preferences and emphases.

My students often ask when we are going to learn the colors and the numbers in Latin, as they do in elementary school Spanish. The numbers we learn eventually, but I have to tell them that we are not going to learn the colors, because there is no dominant term for the colors of the prism in ancient Rome.

That doesn't mean that Romans didn't "see" blue or couldn't name it, but that they were not taught from early on (preschoolers are often asked, "Do you know your colors?") that there is one over-arching dominant term for a certain swath of the spectrum of a prism. At some point after the Enlightenment, this became an important thing for students to know, but it is not important for ordinary human life.

I believe the Romans and Greeks saw shades, not ideals. If they didn't use one umbrella term for blue, it is because that umbrella term is arbitrary and learned. (By the way, they and the Greeks had plenty of terms for blue shades. Here is a link to the ones in Latin.)

Ancient peoples and non-technological peoples of today had and have the same faculties as we do. But they do not have the same fetish for scientific categorization.

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Scenes from a life well-observed

I am signed up for a couple of email book suggestion services, and based on the preferences I have chosen, it seems as if there's a boat load of jeopardy out there. 

Just about every book description screams that the world will end if the adolescent hero doesn't do something that will change his or her life "forever." 

Enter Richard Abbott's "Scenes from a Life," the anti-screamer.

Abbott is a trained scholar of ancient Egyptian and Hebrew, and a keen observer of the archeologies of the Bronze Age Near East. His aim in this gentle, well-crafted novel is to bring to life the ordinary folk of that time, and to tell their stories with attention and care. 

There are no pharoahs or pyramids in this story, no angels, no burning bushes, and no precocious adolescents. The end of the world is not in the offing.

The lives of the characters matter in a subtler but no less important way.

Makty-Rasut, the central character, is a scribe and artist who decorates the tombs of Egyptian religious officials. This means knowing Egyptian hieroglyphics as well as how to draw those characteristic side-facing figures familiar to many. He is charged with depicting "scenes from the life" of the one commissioning the tomb. 

This theme of crafting moments extends out to author Abbott's practice in this book, which is not to tell the story of Makty-Rasut linearly, but in alternating scenes from his life-- and from those of other folk related to him-- that normally would be called flashbacks. In this case, the term doesn't seem appropriate, because it implies a digression. Here, the scenes are carefully ordered to create a progessively fuller picture of who Makty-Rasut is and why he behaves as he does. 

"Scenes from a Life" is a "historical" by genre, but only because the story unfolds in the past. It explores much more deeply the commonalities of humans throughout the ages: who am I, where did I come from, who are my friends, what is my purpose in life. The striking thing about "Scenes" is not its unobtrusive historical accuracy-- see "Cold Mountain" for the obtrusive kind-- but its sensitivity: its assured, mature observation of people. 

Sometimes the observation is gently humorous, such as when Makty has to deal with a subordinate who can't get to work on time. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, as in Makty's relationship with the non-Egyptian woman Milashuniyet. Anyone who has spent any time trying to understand and live with a member of the opposite sex will see him or herself in this literary mirror. 

But this is not Peyton Place transferred to ancient Egypt. One of the more disorienting aspects of the time is the nature of male-female relationships. Unlike in ancient Greece, where fathers determined who would marry whom, in ancient Egypt and Canaan there seems to be much more variety of the kinds of relationships possible, and in the freedom to choose both partners and levels and commitment. At the same time, there exists a touching sentimentality about marriage that is utterly different from the Christian-influenced, romantic concept of happily-ever-after love.

Freedom to choose both partners and levels of commitment may seem strikingly modern, but read the book. You'll see.

"Scenes from a Life" is handsomely produced for the Kindle, and includes fascinating background material for the linguistically and historically curious. I found I had large numbers of questions to ask the author after reading this book, but at the same time was absolutely satisfied.

Is Makty's life changed forever by the end of "Scenes of a Life"? Yes, and that's enough. You won't miss the the lack of an end of the world.

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The changing face of Facebook

In 2009 I wrote a blog post about what I considered to be a new or newish phenomenon: Facebook. 

Etwart says: hashtag cultural studies

I predicted that all other entertainment media would suffer from Facebook's appeal: that everyone's ability to tell their own stories with instant publication to their online community would mean we would turn into a society of micromythologists.

We would, in other words, all be famous for 2 or 3 seconds, as long as it took for our friends to read our posts.

That turned out to be not true at all.

Facebook, or my Facebook feed, anyway, has turned into the equivalent, not of a smorgasbord of personal stories, but mainly into a "shopper": the old-time term for a free extra edition of the newspaper, with a few editorials and features, but mostly advertisements.

It's not that no one is telling their story anymore. Just that nearly everything else has crowded that out.

I'm a culprit. Those of us selling our own books are energetically plugging them on Facebook.

I also have musician friends advertising their gigs; artist friends plugging their pieces and shows; and there are plenty of fundraisers out there as well. 

Not to mention the "Suggested Posts" and the pages I've "Liked." Much of that has to do with spending money. Except maybe for that Steampunk thing I Liked, which started flooding my feed with pictures of leather corsets.

And of course, the nonstop political stuff.

Very few friends simply share their lives: two exceptions are Linda and Cathy, who have challenging home and family situations. They use Facebook as a place to vent, to ask opinions, to seek help and support, to laugh, and to celebrate good news. 

Linda and Cathy are the features and editorials in the old-time shopper that Facebook has become for me.

I love newspapers and will read them "cover to cover" given time. Even a shopper can be entertaining.

But you get tired of being pitched to all the time. That's why I've stopped advertising my book on Facebook. I just don't see giving the same 150 friends the same opportunity to buy something they've already passed on. 

So here is the light bulb, which you may already have been screaming at your computer screen: instead of adding to the Facebook ad noise, why don't I share stories from MY life? 

Goodness gracious. What a concept. I might just have to try that.

Or stop complaining.

Your questions: nectar and ambrosia

Nectar and ambrosia are, respectively, the food and drink of the ancient Greek divinities. A reader has asked about their properties. I am happy to put in my two drachmas.

Image: Breakfast with Pandora = Food of the Gods

The word "ambrosia" in Greek means "immortal stuff." Ambrotos mean "not mortal," "not dying." In fact, one of the collective words for the divinities is hoi ambrotoi, or The Immortals.

What was ambrosia? Nothing specific the Greeks could imagine. It was just food for beings who don't die.

Scholars don't agree on the etymology of nectar.

The reader asked a very good question: "How dependent are the gods on nectar and ambrosia? Would they lose, if not immortality, then their youth/vitality if parted from a source of nourishment for an extended period of time (similar to the Norse gods and their dependency to the Apples of Idun)? And if not, then why do they need to eat and drink at all?"

William F. Hansen writes in Classical Mythology: A Guide to the Mythical World of the Greeks and Romans that nectar and ambrosia "maintain the gods in their ageless state," but I have never read anything in Greek mythology itself that says that nectar and ambrosia are necessary for maintaining immortality or that not consuming it would be problematic.

My sense is that the Olympians consumed nectar and ambrosia for the pleasure of it. This would make sense for the ancient Greeks, who had a perception of their divinities as immensely powerful, always blessed, dependent on almost nothing and no one.* Nothing interferes with or can impair Olympian immortality, so says the poet Hesiod, unless they swear an oath by the River Styx and go back on it. Even then they only stay in a deathlike coma for a year, and then are excluded from the community with the divinities for nine years.

During the year of the "breathless" coma, Hesiod writes, the offending god or goddess cannot "come near to taste nectar and ambrosia." This implies that nectar and ambrosia might revive him or her, but it may also simply mean that he or she cannot be in fellowship with the gods as usual.

On the other hand, the Titans, who were defeated by Zeus in a cataclysmic battle for world supremacy, did not die at the conclusion of the horrific firestorm created by Zeus' thunderbolts, but were mashed alive under massive mountains, where they lived on in chains and presumably had no ambrosia or nectar, either.

Based on all this, I don't think eating and drinking, or not eating and drinking, nectar and ambrosia would materially affect a Greek divinity's existence.

End of first part of post. For the really geeky among you, read on.

Greek mythology as a subject is like the subject of dinosaurs. It's beloved, and intricate, and there are a myriad details to study. And the people who study these topics tend to want to make sure they understand everything and that there are no inconsistencies.

Dinosaurs are an evolving subject (pun intended). Our understanding of them changes as scientists continue to examine and consider the fossil record. It hopes to be precise, but we don't know everything, and in the meantime the subject get tossed around in popular culture.

Greek Mythology is similar. It's not science, for sure, since messy, imprecise humans made it up. Nor is it theology, the way we think of theology as being mostly logical or at least able to be figured out to a point. But like the subject of dinosaurs it has been played with and changed and idolized and demonized, and Disney has made a movie about it.

Even the Greeks themselves loved their stories and changed them to suit their tastes and desires of the moment. So if you asked an ancient Greek whether ambrosia and nectar maintained the divinities in their ageless state, I'm sure you'd get a passel of yesses and nos and plenty in between.

The inconsistencies are what I love about Greek Mythology. They show that the Greeks were human. And I like human.

*Contrast this with the Hittite divinities, the family of gods and goddesses of ancient Bronze Age Turkey. They were dependent on offerings from the Hittite king for their well-being.

This is gorgeous

Take a look at this video and tell me in the comments, honestly now, if you saw this video as a commercial on TV or on the Internet, would you think it came from a self-publisher?

 

For those who can't click on the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUN_3AoyMcs 

And yet it does. UK imprint JJ Books is the property of one John Jackson, the 82-year old "chairman of a solicitor's firm" (chief partner in a law firm, for us in the States), according to his publicist Jonathan Knott. 

Having available a lifetime of earnings as an attorney, plus connections and friendships, must open a lot of doors in self-publishing.

• How much did it cost to have this video made? This isn't your average YouTuber on his webcam.
• The illustrator is superbly talented. I hope she did not come cheaply. 
• The blurbs have name recognition ("Times" of London, no doubt).
• Creating the book as an "app" for the iPad must have also cost.  

I love that there are beautiful children in the video enjoying the book almost as a toy rather than just as a book. A paper book doesn't read to you, doesn't have animation, doesn't have buttons to push. This is very appealing.

To be published on February 28 of this year, "Tales for Great Grandchilren"  is a free download, and one story is included. Each additional story costs 99 cents, and there are a total of 13 stories in the collection.

John Jackson clearly has a leg up on most of us in terms of resources. Will this book, "Tales for Great Grandchildren," be a sales success? Does John Jackson, who has accomplished so much in his life already, need for it to be a sales success? What is his goal?

In self- and e-publishing the goal may not be to make a million dollars and become a famous author. It may be simply to do what you want to do.

J.A. Konrath, self-publishing superstar, says the key to making money in self- and e-publishing is to have a lot of things to buy at a small cost. He was a traditionally published author with a large back list, and he makes tons because his old books sell well online. It reminds me of that once-popular get-rich-quick scheme of taking out tiny ads in magazines that say, "Best chili recipe ever, $2.95" and your address. If you have enough different recipes in enough magazines, you will eventually get 10,000 people to send away for your recipe. and make something like $20,000 from a piece of paper.

Such an approach to e-books is not conducive to high quality literature, but to each his own.

A beloved teacher of mine who is also an acclaimed novelist once said that she could not handle the tyranny of having to write books solely for money. The income she got from writing was always a supplement to her family income; she did not produce work frequently enough for it to be a breadwinner's share.

Self- and e-publishing allows everyone-- those after the big gold strikes, and those panning a small stake upstream-- to take writing and publishing at their own speed, and to invest in marketing at whatever level is comfortable. John Jackson's beautiful marketing video may not translate into big sales, but it is what he wanted to do and he went for it. That's gorgeous stuff.

Netflix Follies: "The Bicycle Thief" (gli spoiglieri)

On a Friday night in America, what most of us reach for is a little escapism: some car crashes, maybe some romance, aliens, werewolves, happy endings. Especially now, with the world's wounds gaping wider with earthquakes and political upheaval and the wearying recession.

Movie still found here.

In my household, it's a bit different. After a long, grueling work week, we clicked on the "Foreign" Netflix tab. And we came up with "The Bicycle Thief," a classic of Italian neorealism from 1948. Netflix suggested I would give it 5 stars, and indeed, the Data Mining Demons do not lie.

We made the choice partly because son was the only remaining child at home this particular Friday night, and he likes and doesn't get much in the way of Foreign. Really dedicated readers may remember my post on this topic some years ago about another classic, this one Swedish.

I will probably do some spoilers (in fake Italian, "gli spoiglieri") from this point on, so scurry off now, you ones who don't want it spoiled.

"The Bicycle Thief" is about a man who's trying to provide for his family in post-World War II Italy. That country's economy is shattered, and many are out of work. Antonio is young and good-hearted, and he has a good wife, Maria, and good son, Bruno. You're rooting for them from the very beginning. When Antonio gets a job putting up posters around the city of Rome, all seems well. The one catch: he has to use a bicycle to get around town. If he doesn't have one, he can't keep the job.

It's not difficult to figure out what happens on the first day of work: the bike is stolen. Antonio has one day off, Sunday, to try to find it. Otherwise it's unemployment again, and the family is on the brink, with Bruno and a new baby to raise as well.

So most of the action of the film revolves around this one problem, and how it might be solved. As another blogger has pointed out, the film magnifies the problem into something that is greater than it should be-- thinking about this realistically, there are so many bicycles in Rome, you'd think Antonio would be able to borrow one till his first paycheck came in.

But I was caught up in the all-or-nothing nature of the film, which takes on the pathos of something much greater and more momentous, like a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. It's in the back of your mind from the beginning that the only way out is for Antonio to make his own theft. I mean, this film is full to the gills with bicycles. Couldn't someone spare just one? But as sure as Italian men are devastatingly handsome, you know Antonio is going to have to go the same route as the thief he's pursuing.

What takes this simple story to its 5-star heights? Bruno, of course. This 8-year old kid spends the day of searching with his dad, and personifies hope. He has an unshakable confidence in his father, even as it becomes clear there's no way, no how they're going to recover this two-wheeler. The performance of this youngster is unforgettable.

Indeed, Bruno is the salvation of the film, because stories, whether Italian or American, and especially ones that don't end happily, need to have some kind of hope anchoring them. As Antonio and Bruno march into the future, you don't know what's going to happen to them. But Bruno's love-- and compassion-- for his father is intact. You see that as he looks up at Antonio, who is barely holding it together, and takes his hand. In Post-World War II Italy, you have to grow up fast.

It's said that we turn to tragedies in order to comfort ourselves with the notion that even if our lives are sad, someone else's is much sadder. I don't think that was the case this time for me. This time, I just felt for the two characters almost as if I knew them, and I wished them well. Maybe that's the point of "realism," to tell an almost documentary story about ordinary people and yet to make it seem as grand as Sophocles.

I pray for the world, and hope not to lose my compassion. It is wonderful to know, amidst the wrack and ruin of our world, that human beings can make such beautiful art.

 

This still found at this blog.

The Aeneid Meme: Casting your favorite Roman epic

(This is a meme, so consider yourself tagged [this means you, Michael Leddy]-- and skip to the bottom if you want to avoid the preliminaries.)

Image: The Roman national epic in Victorian art.

An eon ago, before that Troy thing with Brad Pitt, there was a made-for-TV Hallmark Hall of Fame mini-series that dramatized the Odyssey.

Remember it? The one with Armand Assante as Odysseus, Bernadette Peters as Circe, Vanessa Williams as Calypso, and Greta Scacchi as Penelope? Anyone? Anyone?

Turns out that was back in 1997. Goodness, how time flies.

Back then, mythology geek that I was, and much younger and more idealistic, I decided to have an ancient Greek mythology neighborhood experience with it.

I invited everyone on our cul-de-sac to come see it on our TV, but with a twist: I determined to take the TV outdoors, sit it on a box on the street, and spread out blankets on the grassy slope of our lawn. My scheme was to recreate the ancient Greek practice of outdoor entertainment, making a kind of electronic Theater of Dionysus.

Idea guy that I was, I didn't care how I was going to acquire and spool 50 feet of extension cord and cable out to where the TV was to be perched. But we finally managed it, with much long-suffering from then-spouse, and some neighbors consented to indulge my fantasy.

It was a great scheme, but the experience was a bust. The movie was long, full of commercials, and stupid. Assante was a stiff, and they messed up a great story that was already a screenplay almost as it had been originally written. Plus, at the end of the 3 hours or whatever, we were only halfway through the two-day Event.

My neighbors politely declined my invitation to come back the next night. They were already mosquito-bitten enough, and had earned several cups of sugar and other favors in plenty.

Several years later, with Troy, big Hollywood messed up the Iliad. Now there is only one great ancient epic to go: the Aeneid.

The Aeneid is a downer, so they will have to do a lot of fixing of it if they want to make it palatable to American audiences. But it is also the national epic of Rome, which gives it a great hook.

Aeneas, the national hero of Rome, is your basic Trojan hero minding his own business during the Trojan War, when the Greeks use the Trojan Horse to penetrate his city and destroy it.

Conflict. Violence. Screaming. Fire. Think Troy, but without that confusing ankle thing.

Aeneas has to flee, though he'd rather die fighting. Much to his chagrin, the gods have designated him as the father of the Roman people.

Aeneas and his ragtag band of followers-- an idea stolen from Battlestar Galactica-- go on a long mission to find their new home. Along the way, Queen Dido pops up as a love interest for Aeneas. Another tragedy ensues, as it is impossible for her and Aeneas to be together. Dido ends up with a white flag upon her door.

Finally Aeneas and company come to Italy, where more conflict awaits Aeneas, and a villain-- the Italian superstar warrior Turnus. In the poem, this ends tragically as well, since Turnus ends up not being such a bad guy after all. But Hollywood can get him a Black Stetson and everything will be fine.

Now, with all this going on, there's got to be about 12 optioned screenplays going around So Cal waiting for the right investors.

So let's get a jump on the competition. Who do you want to see in the prime roles of this blockbuster epic? 

Aeneas... the reluctant hero... a family man, a single father, good with a sword when he has to be, but much more interested in peace.

Dido... exotic Carthaginian queen... a widow forced into the executive position by the death of her husband... a great leader, noble city-builder who falls tragically for a man she can never have.

Turnus... young Italian hothead... angry at this newcomer who has stolen his bride-to-be, Lavinia, because of some cockeyed prophecy...  monstrously talented at the art of war, but young-- so young...

Supporting characters:

Anchises... Aeneas' father... an inspiration to Aeneas, and a source of great sorrow... he dies before the proto-Romans come to Italy, but Aeneas meets him in the underworld, where he tells his son about the coming greatness of Rome...

Ascanius/Iulus... Aeneas' son... a cute little kid who grows up throughout the years of the story... by the end, he is a young man himself...

Lavinia... the daughter of King Latinus, the intended of Turnus, who is given to Aeneas after a prophecy tells Latinus that she should be wed to a stranger who comes from overseas... She should be pretty and young, but keep in mind she has no lines...

The Olympians... How do we handle them... yes, they are characters in the epic, especially the jealous Juno, who holds a vicious grudge against the Trojans...

Have at it! Tell the world who you'd like in these roles. And add other roles from the story (e.g., Anna, the lady standing in the painting above) as you see fit.

In a world...

The lesson of Enkidu

Over at Hugo Schwyzer, where feminism now, today is the main event, a post on the ramifications of a study that says "college-aged women did sixteen hours more work" per week than their male counterparts. Apparently college boys are playing a lot of video games, and co-eds are making sure civilization doesn't crumble.

From Hugo's perspective, the crisis of this study has to do with women working too hard, trying to be perfect. But there is another angle. I have posted before on the evolution of male roles, and I do believe that boys and men are going through one of the most difficult psycho-social moments in the history of the species-- at least in middle-class America. I can't speak for other cultures and classes.

Here's the situation: since about 1960, men have been expected to cede an increasing amount of power to women. And, contrary to history and tradition, they have been expected to do it willingly.

Through this process, and with a lot of fits and starts, women have acquired an easily measurable amount of public power, in the form of jobs, choices, laws, rights, and expectations. It has been a revolution.

What have men gotten in return for giving up power? A lot of not easily measurable things. A more humane way of life. The opportunity to share more fully in the raising of children and managing of a household. More mutuality in marriages.

Men traditionally do not value these things. We value power, competition, and the ability to hoard, consume, and destroy resources. We have allowed women to civilize us to an extent, because there is something in us that values that. (As one woman once said on a radio broadcast encouraging guys to contribute money to a woman-oriented cause, "C'mon guys. You like us. We're soft, squishy, and we smell nice.") Many of us do, however, remain tempted to go cross-eyed on occasion.

So the fact that young men are losing themselves in aggressive, competitive, destructive video games while attempting to ignore responsibility and pretend that society doesn't exist-- well, it doesn't surprise me.

And truthfully, this has been going on for a long time. The civilization of guys is a primeval thing, and it is a present-day, present-moment thing. The wonderful story of Enkidu is a great example of that.

Enkidu is a supporting character in the ancient (4,000 year old) epic of Gilgamesh, a story which was first told around 2000 BC and went through several versions through more than a millennium of transmission. The epic, according to Professor Tsvi Abusch, combines "the power and tragedy of the Iliad with the wanderings and marvels of the Odyssey."

Enkidu, master of animals.

Enkidu is the best friend of Gilgamesh, the hero of the epic, and the one who goes through all the power, tragedy, wanderings and marvels. Enkidu shares some of that excitement, but his most interesting moment is his introduction:

The whole of his body was hairy and his (uncut) locks were like a woman's or the hair of a goddess of grain. Moreover, he knew nothing of settled fields or human beings and was clothed (in skins) like a deity of flocks.

In other words, he was playing video games in his pajamas all day.

That's not quite true: Enkidu was also actively an enemy of civilization, disrupting the hunting of animals. Trappers were put out; this wild man was destroying their livelihood.

The solution? Gilgamesh, who was king at the time decreed that a prostitute go out to Enkidu and attract him. Enkidu liked the prostitute and stayed with her "for six days and seven nights."

Thereafter, the animals that had been his friends shunned him, and he became a protector of shepherds from lions and wolves. Later, he went to see Gilgamesh, wrestled with him, was defeated by him, and the two became great friends.

The prostitute began the enculturation (some say "humanization") of Enkidu by introducing him to some of the best things about civilization. Then, importantly, Enkidu finished his maturation by intimate contact with a powerful, civilized man.

For modern-day Enkidus, there are a lot of women interested in civilizing or at least spending six days and seven nights with them. But you see where that has got us. Lots of Enkidus playing video games and enjoying themselves in other ways.

I think the key is the contact with a strong, responsible man, someone guys can look up to. Not many of those good men are out there or have ever been out there. Now, in the brave new world of equality, mutuality, and less opportunity to die early in war, they are even more valuable.

My son has had the great advantage of contact with lots of responsible men (besides me) who are fun to be around, in the form of coaches, teachers, pastors, youth leaders, and friends of mine. I try to do the same by my friends' sons, and this year I'll be advising a bunch of teenage hero boys who are facing the great challenge of these transformative days. With God's help, I'll do okay. I'll keep you posted on developments.

Blogging Norse mythology: Troy and Asgard

I'm branching out in my mythology reading, and here's my first post on Norse mythology.

Photo: Greece, sky and sea, 2007.

Right off the bat in Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, a famous Icelandic account of Norse mythology, we get this passage:

Near the middle of the world, a building and a living hall were constructed... The place was named Troy and is found in the region we call Turkey. It was built much larger than others and in many ways with greater skill; neither cost nor the resources of the country we spared. There were twelve kingdoms with one high king, and to each kingdom belonged many groups who paid tribute. In the city there were twelve main chieftains. These rulers were superior in all human attributes to the other people who had preceded them in the world.

One of the kings was named Munon or Mennon. He was married to Troan, the daughter of Priam, the chief king. They had a son who was named Tror, the one we call Thor... By the time he was twelve years old, he had acquired his full strength. Then he was able to lift from the ground ten bearskins, all in a pile... In the northern part of the world he came across the prophetess Sibyl, whom we call Sif, and he married her... [Thor had sons and grandsons, ending with] Voden, the one we call Odin, an excellent man because of his wisdom and because he had every kind of accomplishment.

Being a true newbie in Norse mythology, I was surprised at a few things:

a) Thor, the Norse god of thunder, starts off as a human grandson of Priam, the legendary king of Troy whose city was destroyed by the Greeks in Greek mythology.

b) The author latches on to Troy and its people as the greatest in the world, rather than Athens or Rome, both of which got bigger and had a lot more popularity in ancient times.

c) Odin is a great-great-umpty-great grandson of Thor. I was under the impression that Odin was older than Thor, or at least, being Norse gods, they were of the same age.

Next, Odin, who has the gift of prophecy, finds out he will be great in the northern part of the world, and so he decides to set off from Troy with a large group of people:

So, too, they took with them many precious things. Wherever they went on their travels, tales fo their splendour were told, making them seem more like gods than men. They journeyed without stopping until they had reached the north, where they entered the region now called Saxland. There Odin settled down for a long time, taking possession of much of the land.

All translations from Jesse L. Byock, buy the book here

These people came to be called Aesir, because they were Asians, and their city was called Asgard, or Asia Yard.

It's possible Snorri was interested in a migration of people from Asia to another land because he was familiar with a very famous story that was still popular in the Middle Ages (when Snorri wrote), also about a people who migrated from Troy to somewhere else.

Anyone care to comment on who that was? I'll put the answer in the comments anyway in due time.