Bruce Lewis schrieb:
> Yes, sir, those are the works and the writers I am referring to. Any
> ideas for development in essays by very advanced high school
> students? They've read the works already.
mmh. first idea: the Dido-book.
but we'd better go back to the roots:
from Homer to Lucan all epic developments show parts of dramatic polarity, also
of a hidden Dionysian symphonic depth under a more describing Apollinic
surface,
so just beginning with Achilleus and his selfbinding "mênis" (first words:
"mênin aeide...") as the great fundament of all inner and outer fights fought
in
the Ilias;
then in all those crisis-situations of Odysseus, where Poseidaon seems to
represent the Dionysic oecean (remember Schopenhauer: principium
individuationis
as a little boat on a stormy sea), Odysseus always is the skillfull
consciousness, formed by experience, personality and "I" ("o moi ego!").
This experience in tempest and boiling oceanwaves has some echoes in the
Aeneis,
directly in the beginning.
But not Poseidaon, it's more Iuno who represents the Dionysian power and
nemesis-part against the well-formed personality, the "duty himself", Aeneas.
So for the Dido-book it might be fertile to look at: what is Iuno's influence
on
Dido? Dido's love is dramatic, Aeneas' consciousness of duty shows an
anti-dramatic counterpart, that lets the tragedy develope until catastrophe.
Dramatic also are the many dialogues and speeches. (But where is the chorus?)
second idea: Aeneas with Sibylla in the inferno. the link is built by the
chthonian goddesses and their relationship to Dionysos in the Eleusis-mysteria.
But the whole scene ist not Dionysic in character or Chaos as the epic storms
and ocean-sceneries use to be, no: it is very awakened and formed; it brings
rules, punishments and renewing order of lives, hell and heaven
well-differentiated, and it has the great prophecy of Ilion=Roma: that all
shows
Apollon, changing the powers of Python into pythian oracle, maybe the Apollinic
function of Hermes Psychagêtês, too; - and in the Elysian fields we find
Apollon
in his serene function of Mousagêtês, for we see the poets, singers,
philosophers there, Orpheus himself we see - (is Orpheus more an Apollon on
earth or a torne Dionysos - and all later poets try to collect those "disiecti
membra poetae"?
so far a try of a fast sketch,
(tja, das ist ein weites Feld)
grusz, hansz
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