Frankie And Johnny (1991)

i straight up do not believe that odysseus did everything he did to get back to penelope and telemakhos. or even that he did everything he could. wanting to return to them is not the whole story. i like the myth about odysseus pretending to be mad to get out of the war for lots of reasons, but one of them is because it's an attempt to escape the narrative, foiled by his love for his son, but also because there is contrast to what we know of him long after the narrative has sucked him back in. odysseus is no less kleospilled than anyone else! he fights for his pride; he makes mistakes; he gets worn down; he delays his homecoming, in ways that are and aren't his fault, all the time. he wants to go home. he doesn't just want to go home.

but he does try. by leaving ogygia he willingly goes back into the narrative one more time, and he never gives up until he finally returns. isn't that compelling enough? do we have to sand it down?

Staff Pick of the Week

My staff pick is The Life and Death of Jason, a Metrical Romance by William Morris with decorations by Maxwell Armfield. This edition was published by Dodd, Mead and Company in New York in 1917.

William Morris was born on March 24, 1834 in Walthamstow, near London, England. He was known for being a being a leader in the Arts & Crafts movement, a socialist activist, and for founding the Kelmscott Press in 1891 which helped kick start the contemporary fine-press movement. Morris was also a poet and author, and his poem The Life and Death of Jason was first published in 1867. It chronicles the exploits of the Greek mythological hero Jason, leader of the Argonauts, and his quest for the Golden Fleece. Morris was a follower of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and worked closely with the artist Edward Burne-Jones who illustrated several Kelmscott Press books, including the 1895 edition of The Life and Death of Jason.

I chose this 1917 edition of The Life and Death of Jason, printed 21 years after the death of William Morris in 1896, because of Maxwell Armfield’s wonderful illustrations. Maxwell Armfield was a British artist and writer who was trained in Arts and Crafts principles. I first came across Armfield’s Jason early in my time at Special Collections when I worked as undergraduate assistant shelving books in the department. Now several years later and much wiser about William Morris’s lasting legacy, I really see the connection of this book has with earlier editions even though it is aesthetically very different. This is made clear in Maxwell Armfield’s “Note on the Drawings” which precedes the text:

“In the case of an epic, one feels, I think, that the important quality of the décor should be unity not so much with the ideas of the text as with the book as book, and unity also within itself.

This point of view must consider the embellishment not so much as illustration proceeding from the text as a continuation of the binding and page purposing to present the text to the eye; or as commentary on certain aspects of the matter not necessarily touched on at all by the author.”

This holistic approach to book design is very much in line with Morris’s principles, even if the illustrations are more modern in appearance than the Kelmscott Press’s medievalist aesthetic.

For an even deeper dive into Maxwell Armfield’s artistic interpretation of The Life and Death of Jason, I recommend the article: Illustrating Morris:The Work of ]essie King and Maxwell Armfield by Rosie Miles published for the Journal of William Morris Studies in 2004.

View more posts about William Morris.

–Sarah, Special Collections Graduate Intern

Speaking of how Troy 2004 has personally offended me:

They took sandpaper and went to town on Hector. Smoothed out all his imperfections because how can good man also be bad man sometimes oh no my brain can't deal with that.

Also they didn't make him nearly as scary as he should be. Hector in the iliad is the. Scariest. The achaeans are terrified of him. Like he's the guy that walks on the battlefield and people run for their lives. He can lift boulders. He gets his ribcage smashed and gets back up like ten minutes later (granted, that's apollo, but in the god-less universe of troy they could've used it to make him even scarier) He doesn't go home all clean, he goes home and talks to his wife and holds his son while covered in gore. It's stressed that nobody but Achilles can beat him. He nearly burns the ships. He boasts and commits hybris after killing Patroclus.

Hector is the unbeatable war machine that makes mistakes sometimes, that morphs into a loving, smiling dad when he sees his son. The unbeatable war machine that's keeping an entire city safe, that gets scared and runs for his life when he knows he's in actual danger. That in the second-to-final moment has to be tricked into bravery, to stand and fight, so he has the chance at the final moment to recover from that and be supremely brave again and run straight to death, with his mind set on glory. Because he's extremely human right to the end. And his pride is as huge as his feeling of duty and love.

Also they took away that great scene where he's like "fuck your bird signs" he was such a legend for that in the iliad.

Filling a request on twitter for Hektor experiencing a moment of happiness, and really, isn't that what we all truly want?

A rare day with nothing more urgent to do than entertaining Polyxena

Overcoming the slightest challenge of my day: “This is just like the Odyssey.”

i’ve seen some chatter regarding pro-war sentiment in rings of power. lotr was so clearly anti war, and people are claiming that is lost in rop. are we watching the same show?

when finrod goes to war, galadriel loses her best friend and brother.

when the southlanders go to war against the orcs, they end up slaughtering their own townsfolk.

when elendil sails to middle earth with miriel, he is sailing to the loss of his son and she her eyes. when she returned, her father was dead and her kingdom at a precipice.

when galadriel takes ups arms with halbrand, she ends up bringing the destruction of the southlands and advances sauron’s own plans.

war touches even the harfoots, who come to arrive to their haven to find the stones of eruption have destroyed their grove and all their food and hope for the next season.

there is no glory in war here. there is only ruin, black orc-blood, and the ashes of mount doom. when the characters in rings of power go to war, they end up killing their own kin and causing a chain of events that cannot be undone.

Etruscan mirror, 4th-3rd century BC.  This bronze mirror case shows Odysseus’s homecoming, namely him reuniting with Penelope - with his dog Argos in between the two.

reunion.

some sketch I drew in March;)

wish the piraeus archaeological museum had a public catalog but hey everyone check out this c. 420-410 funerary stele from salamis with a tragic actor staring at his mask

Gaston de Latenay, Nausikaa scans by Book Graphics blogspot/2014