On the day recounted in Book VIII of the Iliad,
- on earth, the Achaeans are twice driven behind their new walls;
- during the first rout,
- Odysseus does not hear when Diomedes urges him to come to the aid of Nestor;
- Hector thinks he will be able to burn the Achaean ships and kill all the men;
- Agamemnon prays for mere survival;
- the second time, Hector calls for fires to be lit, lest the Greeks try to escape in the night;
- in heaven, Zeus
- weighs out a heavier fate for the Achaeans;
- declares that it shall be so until Achilles is roused by the death of Patroclus;
- warns Hera and Athena not to interfere (though they try to anyway).
I wrote a fuller summary in 2017. Because I was reading it, I also talked about Huysmans, Against Nature, and the belief of the main character that the prose poem could
contain within its small compass, like beef essence, the power of a novel, while eliminating its tedious analyses and superfluous descriptions.
Now I shall find reason to bring up Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle, Thoreau, and Freud, and especially William James and Collingwood on the subject of emotion.
Waters of the Bosphorus, Sarıyer, Istanbul
Wednesday morning, January 11, 2023
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