Nymphs again: a brief prosopography.

Eurydice was an Auloniad. Lets talk about Eurydice. She was married to Orpheus. One day she was running away from a libinously rapacious persuant, Aristaeus (a minor god, whose name means "the best", but who was in fact the god of bee-keeping, which, you know, puts him pretty high up there in the Pantheon) who wanted get some bow-chicka-wow-wow. In her haste, she stepped on a snake, who bit her in thanks, and thereby she died and went to hell. But wait, there's more. Orpheus, prodded on by the perennially ennui-ridden gods, went to get her, which I find pretty funny. It reminds me of high-school freshmen being prodded by upperclassmen to do outrageous things that everybody knows won't go well. Once down there, being a great musician, Orpheus performs his own private concert for any and all beasts and creatures he encounters, pacifying all hellish oppositions that stand in his way. At the final boss-level, he uses his musical prowess to charm Hades, the god himself, and Persephone, his trophy-wife; they, in lieu of applause, let him go get his nymphy-wife and take her back up. But their guerdon is granted only on one condition: that as he lead her out of hell, he not look back at her.
In the words of Daniel Walker, and to the tune of "the wheels on the bus go round and round": "DO YOU KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN NEXT".

Cut to Ovid.
Metamorphoses, Book X. 52-84:

The track climbed upwards, steep and indistinct,
through the hushed silence and the murky gloom;
and now they neared the edge of the bright world,
and, fearing lest she faint, longing to look,
he turned his eyes--and straight she slipped away.
He stretched his arms to hold her--to be held--
and clasped, poor soul, naught but the yielding air.
And she, dying again, made no complaint
(for what complain had she save she was loved?)
and breathed a faint farewell, and turned again
back to the land of spirits whence she came.

The double death of Eurydice
stole Orpheus' wits away; (like him who saw
in dread the three-necked hound of Hell with chains
fast round his middle neck, and never lost
his terror till he lost his nature too
and turned to stone; or Olenos, who took
upon himself the charge and claimed the guilt
when his ill-starred Lethaea trusted to
her beauty, hearts once linked so close, and now
two rocks on runelled Ida's mountainside).

(See, I am not the only one to make strange, impertinent parenthetical remarks.)

He longed, he begged, in vain to be allowed to cross the stream of Styx a second time.
The ferryman repulsed him. Even so
for seven days he sat upon the bank,
unkempt and fasting, anguish, grief and tears
his nourishment, and cursed Hell's crulety.
Then he withdrew to soaring Rhodope
and Haemus battered by the northern gales.

Three times the sun had reached the watery Fish
that close the year, while Orpheus held himself
aloof from love of women, hurt perhaps
by ill-success or bound by plighted troth.
Yet many a woman burned with passion for
the bard, and many grieved at their repulse.
It was his lead that taught the folk of Thrace
the love for tender boys, to pluck the buds,
the brief springtime, with manhood still to come.

Gee, thanks Opheus.

Again:

It was his lead that taught the folk of Thrace
the love for tender boys, to pluck the buds,
the brief springtime, with manhood still to come.

Selah.

a report: intelligence got from this morning's blithe literary excursus.

Have you heard of nymphs? Minor deities within the grand mythological Dramatis Personae. Lady-spirits who inhabit or stand in authority over different geological features. The notion that there are sentient, and what's more, godly beings intricately related to each of nature's nooks, to all natural phenomena, is kind of appealing, from a dramatic, daydreamy perspective. I think I'd like to trick my potential children for as long as possible into thinking that these things exist, thereby imbuing a specious sense of wonder into them at a young age and providing me with yet another outlet for .

Anyway, here are a few favorites. Though as this resource tells me: "All nymphs, whose number is almost infinite, may be divided into two great classes."

The Nymph Rap Sheet: highlights
Aegle: of dazzling light.
Alseids: of groves (I like the sound of the word "grove"). They like to scare travelers!
Auloniads: of vales (I like the sound of the word "vale").
Crinaeae: of fountains. I'm trying to imagine the nymph that correlates to the Fluor Fountain of Faith @ Biola.
Hyades: of rain.
Epimeliads: of apple trees. Somebody write this play: "Washington vs. the Epimeliad".
Lampades: of the underworld. Very little empirical data to support the existence of these tikes.
Nepheliads: of clouds.
Melissai: of honey, bees, and manna. so so hilarious.

I could easily go on.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY; comments not far behind.

"The litotes, or diminution, is the peculiar talent of ladies, whisperers, and backbiters." - Alexander Pope, 1727

Litotes. What are they? Where are they? Where are my keys?
A litotes (pronounced li-tuh-tees [I leave the first vowel sound purposefully vague in my notation here, because, I think whether to employ the monophthong 'ɪ' or the dipthong 'aɪ' is the speaker's preference]) is a literary/rhetorical device whereby a value, predicate, adjective, property, thingamajigger, etc., is communicated in an understated way by means of expressing the negation of its contrary, by denying its opposite.

Examples:
1.
M. "Are you quite comfortable?"
W. "I am not uncomfortable."
-pause-
M. "Saucy whore."

2.
"And when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared, and no small tempest lay on us, all hope that we should be saved was then taken away."

(Incidentally, this quotation, wherever it's from, makes shoddy work of the difference between the words "lay" and "lie".
Quick way to make the distinction: "lay" is transitive; "lie" is intransitive.
Quick example:
2a.
"The subject lay the object down on the indirect object with the utmost of care, due to its radioactivity, letting it there lie untouched." - Alexander Pope, 1728.)

Ahem, now, some powers and principalities in the world of rhetoric have it that the following is also an instance of a litotes:
3.
"It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain." - Catcher in the Rye

You know what, that quote is such a gem, I'm making it the QUOTATION OF THE DAY, not that lame Pope one. Holden Caulfield, racking up the points! I mean, tumor on the brain!? THE brain!

Quotation of the Day.

"No, I've gotten in trouble with that before: falling in love with girls, by which I mean falling in love with myself."
- Max Clark

To my longstanding friends.

I cherish each of you.

"Friendly Insulting Gesture from a Wayfaring Stranger Come Home." or "I HEART FRIVOLOUS INGENUITY."

Hello. Compelled by my negligence in posting for the last two weeks, I have mustered up the following:

Once you have watched the first 20 seconds or so, you get the point; don't watch out of a sense of duty. But if you're like me, you won't be able to control yourself. I find this entrancing.

Whatever it is this show does with the physical universe, I want to do with concepts, with narrative. That includes whatever spiritual effect is accomplished by the funny music and japanese singing!



AND THERE'S MORE...



Isn't that final screech/yelp impossibly funny?