Category Archives: Art

Tulips of Istanbul

February 24, 2024 – 5:40 pm

This post about flowers on the Bosphorus originated in 2015, when I created it as a webpage on my part of my department’s website. A follow-up the next year did become a blog post, “Early Tulips.” Since we moved to Sarıyer in 2022, it turns out we can walk to the Emirgan Korusu in an hour. This is

  • what I have done a couple of times in the last week,
  • why I put this old post here, below the following new photos, from Saturday, February 24, 2024 (made with my old mobile, unlike the old photos!).


I started out in Atatürk City Forest, following the trails down to the lake


On Saturdays, the old road through the stream valley below the lake hosts a bazaar

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Istanbul | Tagged | Comments (1)

Cavafy in Istanbul

September 10, 2023 – 10:03 am

The first part of this post concerns a poem by Constantine Cavafy on accepting one’s fate. There are three parts after that:

The Cavafy poem, “The God Abandons Antony,” is based on a passage in Plutarch’s life of that person. Susan Cain wrote about the poem in a newsletter. Her book Quiet gave me a new appreciation for my parents. It so happens that my parents had me by adoption. Unfortunately other people are not happy to be in that situation.

Some people are also not happy with their sex. Cavafy’s poem could have given courage to Ms Cain during a painful birth. Courage is literally manliness in Greek. Plutarch writes of a man’s imitation of a woman in labor. Roberto Calasso’s Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony led me to the story. I talk about all of that.

I have since learned of another good essay, “Personal Integrity in the Poetry of C. P. Cavafy,” in Beshara Magazine, by Andrew Watson. A different Andrew Watson played football for Scotland in 1881, and The Guardian has an article, “‘We looked identical’: one man’s discovery of slavery, family and football” (24 December 2020), by Tusdiq Din, about Malik Al-Nasir, formerly Mark Watson, who discovered, through their physical resemblance, a family relation with Andrew.

When Ayşe and I moved from Fulya to Tarabya last October, we were coming nearer where C. P. Cavafy once lived along the Bosphorus.

Boxes packed for moving. Rolled-up carpets; bubble wrap around bookcases. Light comes from a window on the right and a glowing globe on the upper left. Two more spherical paper shades sit on boxes
Last evening in Fulya
Saturday, October 15, 2022

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Istanbul, Poetry, Sex and Gender | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

Even More on Dialectic

July 11, 2023 – 6:02 am

At the beginning of the first post “On Dialectic,” I raised the question of why I put so much into such posts. I propose now a couple of answers.

  1. I want to collect all evidence for what I am investigating – currently dialectic in Plato’s Republic. As Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) has Sherlock Holmes say in A Study in Scarlet (1887; Wordsworth Classics, 2004),

    It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment.

    And yet in Religion and Philosophy (1916), Collingwood states “the fundamental axiom of all thinking,”

    namely that whatever exists stands in some definite relation to the other things that exist.

    Thus “all the evidence” is everything in the world.

  2. I am engaged in such self-defense as a certain Islamic philosopher is, by the account of Strauss in Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952):

    Fārābī avails himself then of the specific immunity of the commentator or of the historian in order to speak his mind concerning grave matters in his “historical” works, rather than in the works in which he speaks in his own name.

Cloud with several lobes above deciduous trees in leaf
View from our balcony
Sanatçılar Sitesi, Tarabya, Istanbul
Saturday, July 8, 2023

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Collingwood, Maugham, Plato, question and answer | Tagged , , , | Comments (3)

Dawn (Iliad Book XXIV)

May 12, 2023 – 5:54 pm

The games of Book XXIII of the Iliad have not been enough to let Achilles sleep. He tosses and turns,

yearning for the manhood and valorous might of Patroclus, thinking on all he had wrought with him and all the woes he had borne, passing through wars of men and the grievous waves. (lines 6–9)

It occurs to me to ask: Is that what we call a description? It is a “setting down in words”; however, if it is a “verbal portrait,” this only goes to show what a remarkable power we have, to know what somebody is thinking by how he looks.

Small white flowers among leaves and vines
Atatürk Kent Ormanı
Tarabya, Sarıyer, İstanbul
May 11, 2023

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Aristotle, Homer, Plato | Tagged , | Comments (5)

History (Iliad Book XXIII)

May 4, 2023 – 9:05 pm

Square stone column with faucet at the bottom and Ottoman writing in Arabic script at the top, below the capital; road, buildings, and trees behind

Ottoman fountain
Harbor of Tarabya (Θεραπειά) on the Bosphorus
Sarıyer, Istanbul, May Day 2023
The bay was called Φαρμακία by Medea
according to Dionysius of Byzantium (2nd century c.e.)
in his Anaplous (“sailing up”) of the Bosporos
Rough translation by Brady Kiesling:

§ 68 Immediately following is the bay call [sic] Pharmakias, from Medeia the Colchian, who deposited coffers of drugs here. It is, however, a very fine and commodious place for fishing and ideal for beaching ships. For right up to the edge of the beach it is deep and very safe from the winds. A multitude of fish are attracted here. The forest, however, is dense, with a deep wood of every species, and meadows, as if the land were competing with the sea. Its circumference is shaded by a forest overhanging the sea, through the middle of which a river descends noiselessly.

Still water below a row of small boats, one with a mast; behind them, on the far side of the harbor, three large boxy buildings, with trees around and above them

Along the coast to the left
towards the Sea of Marmara
is the Pitheci Portus
again according to Dionysius:

§ 66 Beneath this prominent coast follows a bay in which is Harbor of Pithex, whom [sic] they say was a king of the barbarians who lived here who together with his sons led Asteropaios in the crossing to Asia. From here the shore is broken and steep.

Achilles slew the ambidextrous Asteropaeus in Book XXI of the Iliad
He will be giving away the spoil now, in Book XXIII

Topographical map of a section of the Bosphorus, with many points labelled with their Greek names in Latin letters

Map source: Richard Talbert, editor
Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
Princeton University Press, 2000

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer | Tagged | Comments (4)

Grief (Iliad Book XXII)

April 27, 2023 – 6:54 pm

The fascinating moments in the Iliad are when somebody has to make a decision.

  • Achilles is a killing machine in Books XX and XXI; but back in Book I, enraged by his commanding officer, Achilles could nonetheless decide not to slay him.
  • At the end of Book XXI, Agenor was tempted to hide from Achilles, somewhere away from the walls of Troy; instead he served as a decoy to draw Achilles away from the city gates.
  • Now, in Book XXII, the other Trojans are running in through those gates like fawns. Hector is having trouble deciding whether to join them.

Wall assembled haphazardly of rubble, dressed stone, brick, and tile; weeds grow out here and there
Wednesday morning, April 12, 2023
Akarsu Sokağı (“Runningwater Street”)
Tarabya, Sarıyer, Istanbul

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer, Plato | Tagged , | Comments (4)

Fishes (Iliad Book XXI)

April 19, 2023 – 6:51 pm

In Book XVII of the Iliad, Zeus pitied the immortal horses, Xanthus and Balius, as they wept for the slain Patroclus: “For in sooth there is naught, I ween, more miserable than man among all things that breathe and move upon earth.”

Stylized image of a shark on the door of a truck parked nose to nose with a taxi; foliage beyond
Monday morning, April 17, 2023
Sarıyer, Istanbul
Kefeliköy / Δικαία Πέτρα
(There exist a map and memoir of this settlement)

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer | Tagged , , | Comments (4)

Words (Iliad Book XX)

April 13, 2023 – 6:34 pm

“The feeling of helplessness and humiliation in the face of an abuse of power is an awful one.” That’s what Achilles found out, back in Book I of the Iliad; however, the words themselves, dated April 11, 2023, are by Claire Berlinski. Her Agamemnon is Elon Musk.

Two cats sit facing one another on a narrow ledge below one window and above another
“And when they were come near, as they advanced one against the other, then first unto Aeneas spake swift-footed goodly Achilles: ‘Aeneas, wherefore hast thou sallied thus far forth from the throng to stand and face me?’ ” (Iliad 20.176–9)
Kireçburnu (“Lime Point”)
Κλειδὴς καὶ κλεῖθρα τοὺ Πόντου (“Lock and Key of the Pontus”)
Sarıyer, Istanbul
Sunday morning, March 26, 2023

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer, T. S. Eliot | Tagged , , | Comments (5)

Responsibility (Iliad Book XIX)

April 6, 2023 – 5:27 pm

Book XIX of the Iliad is all talk. This annoys Achilles, but is important for Agamemnon and Odysseus, and they should know better – Odysseus even says so.

Two corpulent dogs lie at the bottom of two slides in a children’s playground; one has started to raise himself
Achilles gets ready to fight while Patroclus lies dead
(or, one of two well-fed street-dogs goes through the motions of defense)
Şalcıkır Parkı, Tarabya
Sarıyer, Istanbul
Sunday morning, March 26, 2023

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer, Maugham, Sex and Gender | Tagged | Comments (6)

Reflection (Iliad Book XVIII)

March 30, 2023 – 6:16 pm

Twelve Trojan warriors die, merely because Achilles shouts at them across the Achaean trench. That is all Achilles does, in Book XVIII of the Iliad, and no more deaths are reported – unless we count the ones depicted around the city at war, on the shield that Hephaestus forges for Achilles at the request of Thetis. (See note 1)

A beacon stands in front of the sea at the end of a street lined with trees and a cafe. We see the beacon between two bicyclists on the road that crosses the foreground
“Achilles, dear to Zeus, roused him,
and round about his mighty shoulders Athene flung her tasselled aegis,
and around his head the fair goddess set thick a golden cloud,
and forth from the man made blaze a gleaming fire.” (Iliad 18.203–6)
Kireçburnu (“Lime Point”)
Κλειδὴς καὶ κλεῖθρα τοὺ Πόντου (“Lock and Key of the Pontus”)
Sarıyer, Istanbul
Sunday morning, March 26, 2023

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By David Pierce | Also posted in Homer | Tagged , | Comments (7)