Status Updates From The Marriage of Cadmus and ...

“Greeks were drawn to enigmas. Resolving an enigma means shifting it to a higher level.” From Oistrus to Oedipus, “in the maximum pointlessness lies the maximum splendor.”

Just wrapped up Ch. 9 and it’s interesting how Calasso starts to let go of you. He’s concluding his book now that we’re towards the end, and he does so gently - as id he’s well aware of what you’ve just been through. A delicate hand holding throughout a nearly incomprehensible journey of nature, man and cosmos. Like Aristotle says “ancient physiology.” Breathe in, breathe out. We’re almost there.

Book VIII was intense. That one really leaves you buzzing. Feels like Calasso reached a crescendo and gets you as close as he can to understanding what myth was and, most importantly, still is.

I swear I’ve always known, deep down, the Sparta was a bunch of Communist lunatics. Lycurgus sounds like the blueprint for Lenin and Stalin. In fact, their greatest weapon of all was their own propaganda depicting them as a noble and virtuous, law abiding society. But they were really just deceitful and ruthless, Commie killers. I must have an Athenian blood memory about those punks, they never sat right with me.

If, driven by an old compulsion, we were to define what the gods were to the Greeks, we might say, using a Occam’s razor, everything that takes us away from the ordinary sensations of life. “With a god, you are always crying and laughing,” we read in Sophocles’ Ajax. Life is a mere vegetative protestations, glazed eyes looking out on the world, the certainty of being oneself, without knowing what one is…

do NOT ask Persephone how wild mint came to be …

Just finished book VII. Focused on Demeter and Persephone and the deal that was made to send Hades’ bride back to him half the year. Representing the rotation of the earth and the changing of seasons.