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Orpheus in the Underworld - Ovid
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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A slender book, maybe 4X4 Inches, 100 pages, a curated selection from Ovid on the Myth of Orpheus.
Only there was maybe 2 pages all told about Orpheus, Eurydices, the rest is all the accompanying myths and fables that set up the rest of Greek Mythology. And if 2 pages were told about Orpheus and Eurydices, why then less than a page is devoted to his time in the underworld.
Anyways, Ovid and his metamorphosis. Orpheus and his Lyre. And in the end they were together, he and Eurydices, so - nothing in Ovid's rendering of the myth that I can use, but it was good to be refreshed...
Myth and Reality - Mircea Eliade
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 113
This was interesting, and up my alley. I should have discovered Anthropology a lot earlier, although I always felt I could just show up and join in on the local events. My reportage shouldn't require accreditation.
From this, the key takeaways:
- Myths can only be recited at certain times - evening, fall or winter
- The word: “Alcheringa”
- Levi-Bruhl, abundant citations, other authors and authorities in the field, sadly proving to be a keeper if I want to continue on in this direction, but - no, goddamnit - let it go!
- Myths as related to Christianity (a myth; midnight masses, etc)
- Myth, origins, ritual - myths about language, about writing (the invention of)Myths vs stories or fables
- Ritual, dancing, songs, firelight, deep in a cave magic, storytelling, shamanistic journeys, rites, superstitions, taboos,
- The return to the beginning, the golden age, a place outside of time - “IN the Garden” or “Kronos, devouring his children” - in the days when men were giants and the sins of their fathers had not so diminished them, stooped them like Atlas under the weight of a world they had no hands in making;
- Memory & Forgetfulness, the rivers Lethe & Mnemosyne - to be asleep is akin to death or forgetting, to be ‘conscious” in the spiritual sense is to “awaken” - into another kingdom,
None of this was anything I didn't know, just couched in language perhaps a degree or 2 above your average layman. I enjoyed it, but the information was largely gotten by instinct and just confirmed in his text.
Crow Presents...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 137
Finally, after months of feeding the crows have finally brought me a gift:
Pretty sure it's 24 K.
Surprise Me!
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 127
Bored, with no-good-reason, every (or most) human being's existential life crisis, food, covered, housing, covered, money: well, that's a little longer term than I'm thinking, the internet is failing to deliver and there's no relief in sight...
Chat GPT to the rescue:
All right, Rod. Here's one I think you'll enjoy.
A Library That Doesn't Exist — But Should
Imagine a hidden library whose books are not books mentioned in literature, but books that ought to have existed inside the fictional worlds of literature.
I give you seven volumes from its shelves:
1. The Book of Lost Roads
Author: An unnamed Roman surveyor, c. 117 AD
Known from: A passing reference in a manuscript supposedly found among the papers of Jorge Luis Borges.
Contents: Every road that was built, abandoned, forgotten, and eventually rediscovered—plus roads that lead only to places that no longer exist.
Warning: Reading the chapter corresponding to your own town causes you to remember streets that were never there.
2. A Treatise Upon the Proper Disposal of Dragons
Author: St. George, revised edition
Contents: Not how to kill dragons, but what to do with one afterward.
Includes chapters on scales, teeth, volatile organs, treasure-hoards, smoke damage, and the surprisingly difficult question of dragon inheritance.
The final chapter is missing.
3. The Catalogue of Unfortunate Gods
Author: Anonymous
Contents: 10,003 minor gods who were worshipped by exactly one person.
Among them:
The God of Things Almost Remembered
The God of Keys That Fit No Lock
The God of Rain That Falls Only on Empty Houses
The God of People Who Wave Back at Strangers
The final entry is simply:
10,003. You.
4. The Natural History of Impossible Animals
Author: Charles Fort
Contents: Meticulously documented creatures that cannot possibly exist.
The illustrations are extraordinarily convincing.
Several have been photographed since the book was published.
5. The Complete Correspondence Between Death and the Devil
Edited by: M. Bulgakov
A collection of letters concerning their longstanding professional disagreement.
Death argues that the Devil gets too much credit.
The Devil argues that Death gets too much business.
Neither will admit that they occasionally substitute for one another.
6. The Manual of Things That Must Not Be Named
Author: Unknown
The entire book consists of blank pages.
Except for the index.
The index contains one word.
There is no agreement among scholars what the word means.
7. The Book You Are Reading Now
Author: Unknown
Publication date: Not yet determined.
The remarkable thing about this final book is that every copy contains a slightly different story.
In yours, the story begins with a man in British Columbia who spends an afternoon wondering whether there might be a lost book somewhere in the world containing the answer to a question he hasn't thought to ask yet.
He goes looking for it.
And somewhere, apparently, the book is looking for him too.
And since you previously asked me for imaginary books in literature, here's the rabbit hole I'd take this down next:
I could construct an entire "Bibliotheca Impossibilia"—perhaps 100 imaginary books, divided into books actually mentioned in real literature, books invented by fictional characters, books that exist only as fragments, cursed books, nonexistent scholarly works, books that contain themselves, and books that were supposedly destroyed.
That could get wonderfully Borgesian.
***
Actually, Chat GPT delivered on this one. Still bored but I have the solution in hand..
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