Aaron Helton

tags: #History #Literature #Books #Beowulf #Scandinavia

(Note: Still missing the header image)

Vendel Era Helm on display at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities.

The epic for March is Beowulf.

When I began thinking about its place among the epics I chose for the year, I thought I might focus on Beowulf’s elegiac quality, something that not all of the epics share, at least not in the same way. On second thought, however, it is clear to me that Gilgamesh also possesses this quality, especially in the Sumerian poems, which refer to him as Bilgames. Both are concerned with gaining lasting fame through deeds, though it is true that Gilgamesh is vastly more focused on action than introspection. Where they diverge most, however, is in their views on death. Whereas Gilgamesh undertakes a quest in search of eternal life (a quest he fails), Beowulf wastes little time in resigning himself to death, so long as he can die in a blaze of glory. Both come around to the idea of death in their own way, but Gilgamesh is famous for his existential angst in this regard.

Contrast these attitudes with those from Shahnameh, which also cannot help but examine the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Time and again the characters of Shahnameh caution and counsel one another not to put too much stock into life, the world, possessions, and the like, because God, the heavens, fate, or whatever forces have been set in motion cause one to rise and another to fall. The death scene of Dara (whom we must interpret as representing Darius III) provides particularly evocative passage in Shahnameh. It’s worth quoting the whole speech:

When he heard Sekandar, Dara said, “May wisdom always be your companion! I think that you will find the reward for what you have said from God himself. You said that Iran is mine, and that the crown and the throne of the brave are mine; but death is closer to me than the throne. The throne is over for me, and my luck has run out. So the high heavens revolve; their turning is toward sorrow, and their profit is pain. Look at me before you say ‘I am exalted above all this great company of heroes.’ Know that evil and good both come from God, and see that you remain grateful to him for as long as you live. My own state shows you the truth of what I say. Look how I, who had such sovereignty and glory and wealth, am now despised by everyone. I who never injured anyone, who had such armor and such armies, such splendid horses, such crowns and thrones, who had such sons and relatives, and so many allies whose hearts bore my brand. Earth and time were my slaves, and remained so while my luck held. But now I am separated fom good fortune, and have fallen into the hands of murderers. I despair of my sons and family; the earth has turned dark for me, and my eyes are white like the eyes of a blind man. Our own people cannot help us; my one hope is in God the Creator. I lie here wounded on the earth, fallen into the trap of death, but this is the way of the heavens whether we are kings or heroes. Greatness too must pass: it is the prey, and its hunter is death.”

Arriving as this does slightly more than halfway through the Dick Davis translation of Shahnameh, it is hard to read this as an elegy for Iran, even though that’s sort of what it is. This segment of the epic portrays the ascendance of Sekandar, or Alexander the Great, over the Persian empire, an eclipse of the old with the new. Dara’s conscious elegy here is common throughout Shahnameh, as generations rise and generations fall, but it has additional import because the changing of the guard is from one empire to another. This, perhaps, renders Shahnameh the real outlier in this set of epics so far. Nothing in Gilgamesh can be construed as concerning itself with the rise and fall of particular civilizations; indeed, Gilgamesh’s most pressing concerns involve only himself and, before his death, Enkidu.

Beowulf, on the other hand, has an air of the rise and fall of civilizations about it. By the end of the work, when Beowulf has reached an old age, enemies of the Geats are crowding ‘round awaiting his death. His lack of a natural heir and his deathbed choice of the inexperienced thane Wiglaf as heir leaves Geatland in a precarious position, one his people cannot help but notice. This brief passage from Seamus Heaney’s translation occurs during Beowulf’s funeral:

A Geat woman too sang out in grief;
with hair bound up, she unburdened herself
of her worst fears, a wild litany
of nightmare and lament: her nation invaded,
enemies on the rampage, bodies in piles,
slavery and abasement.

This is, indeed, the ending note of the work. Had Shahnameh ended with Sekandar’s conquest of Persia, or just on the eve of conquest, in the moments after Dara was struck down by his kin, it might have carried this same note. But whereas Beowulf ends on a low note, Shahnameh continues on, largely unconcerned with the fates of individuals and even civilizations in the larger scheme. I imagine this is a consequence of Persia having continued on, never really having lost its sense of identity, the security of which Shahnameh helped retain.

About the Text

The story of Beowulf contains many elements that may be familiar to many of us today. Composed between 1000 and 1300 years ago, it tells the story of the Geatish hero Beowulf and his various exploits. If you have seen the adequate but not terribly noteworthy 2007 film of the same name, then you know more or less what happened in the first part of the epic: arriving in Denmark, Beowulf and his companions offer to rid Hrothgar of the predations of Grendel, a monster who hunts and eats Danes. In so doing, he provokes Grendel’s mother into a fit of revenge and must likewise defeat her. Successful, he takes his spoils back to what is modern Sweden, where he later rules as king of the Geats. As an old man, having ruled for 50 years, he ventures forth one last time to rid his land of the scourge of a wakened fire-breathing dragon, and though victorious, he perishes in the battle. It deals with themes of bravery, legacy, and death, and offers up some curious examples of early medieval kingship.

Translations

Because I already owned it, I will be reading Seamus Heaney’s bilingual edition of Beowulf. I am also interested in the posthumously published translation by J.R.R. Tolkien, who undoubtedly drew heavily from Beowulf; since I don’t own it, however, I will have to put off reading it until later. Finally, a friend pointed me to an interesting experimental take on Beowulf, the translation by Thomas Meyer, which I would love to pick up at some point.

Other Resources

As with previous works in the sacer-epic reading list, Beowulf has been covered elsewhere. I was quite happy with the three-part series that aired recently on the Myths and Legends podcast. You might enjoy it as well.

(These are mp3 links)

60A — Beowulf: I’m Kind of A Big Deal

60B — Beowulf: The Depths

60C — Beowulf: Unknowable but Certain

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along.

2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

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tags: #Philosophy #Life #Sisyphus #Progress #Struggle

The Myth of Sisyphus more closely describes the tragedy of the progressive condition than it does the universal human condition. Here I use the term progressive at face value: that is, of or pertaining to progress, and specifically people who hold human progress as a desirable, achievable goal. In this piece, I intend to examine the rationality of pursing human progress when one believes it is impossible.

We can examine human history and development through a few different lenses, each with its faint air of mutual exclusivity hanging over the fact that reality is somewhere in between. The two primary ones are the Progressive and the Cyclical. To these, I would like to add the Evolutionary. Each lens offers varying degrees of comfort according to what the observer values most. I’ll spend a few moments outlining them to help frame the rest of the discussion.

Progressive

The first point of the triptych is the Progressive view, which is the idea that human history has an arc, a direction, and that as moral agents we human have progressed to new moral heights. Evidence we use to support such claims include technological progress, the fact that “we” don’t own slaves anymore, and the slate of (politically) Progressive agendas we have managed to advance, however slowly. This is an attractive idea for obvious reasons, among them that we can see elements of progress with our own eyes. Implicit in this view is the idea that our human ancestors were all terrible people. By extrapolation, so are we, because we are not as good today as we will be tomorrow.

Cyclical

The second point of the triptych is the Cyclical view, which suggests that, insofar as human history has any kind of arc, it is a periodic function, mirroring the rise and fall of empires and civilizations. Evidence we use to support this claim primarily includes the fact that history is littered with the corpses of dead empires and civilizations. For those of us who read history as a long game, this view is, while perhaps not overly attractive, at least comforting in its rationality, somewhat like the cold clockwork certainty of death. Implicit in this view is the idea that, unless we’re in a golden age now, we are simultaneously marching away from and and toward golden ages. By extrapolation, we are never in a golden age, but always retreating from one and avancing toward another. Also implicit here is that we can count on human nature to both create and destroy, else we would be firmly ensconced in the Progressive view. The danger of hewing closely to this, however, is that it allows the worst devils of our nature to undermine the better angels. Insofar as these remain in balance (which they never do), any ideas of human progress or regression remain static.

Evolutionary

The third point of the triptych is what I am calling the Evolutionary view, which is that the best we can hope for in human history is that we adapt well enough to temporally local circumstances to survive. In other words, it suggests that we make the best of whatever situation, but exhibit no bias toward either explicit improvement or explicit regression. We have a number of human-built institutions that superficially operate this way, exercising situational discretion rather than blanket edicts as a matter of flexibility (or perhaps antifragility). Similarly, we tend to find some comfort in the encapsulation of moral and ethical stances within their temporal circumstances and calling them artifacts of their time. Implicit here is that there is no larger goal or meaning; rather, all meaning in this system is contained in local optima.

I am suggesting that reality is probably some mix of these. Human history does show signs of real progress, but it is neither as pronounced nor as durable as the Progressive view supposes. At the same time, empires and civilizations DO rise and fall, but their undulations are not as clean or complete as the Cyclical view posits. And finally, there is a strong strain of the globally aimless but locally optimized Evolutionary process tooling around in the other two views, one that adds a resilience that’s hard to ignore, but ultimately remains silent with regard to our desire to see ourselves as improving our lot. The Myth of Sisyphean Progress

My personal view of history most recently has been one of nearly complete retreat from the idea of real, durable human progress in favor of a evolutionary cyclicality. Whatever gains we make as humans in moral terms seem frail in the long view of history. Democracy is all we as Americans may know (unless we are immigrants or persons of color), but it is a historical aberration despite the seemingly universal longing for liberty. Technology appears to be more durable, but it needn’t coincide with any sense of moral development. Indeed, technological progress often outpaces the capacity for both governance and moral response, but rarely fails to capitulate to the onslaught of oligarchs.

Despite my dim view of the durability of human progress, especially moral progress, I find I’m still committed to progressive values. If I hold no hope of overcoming the weight of human history, how is it that I can still cling to a doomed moral structure? This, then, is where Sisyphus is most instructive. Or, rather, Camus’s conception of Sisyphus. In his essay, Camus wrote:

It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.

Clinging to the myth of human progress in the face of overwhelming evidence against it seems absurd, and indeed it IS absurd. But:

The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn.

We prove nothing to anyone but each other and ourselves. If we do not succeed where we cannot succeed, how can that constitute failure? And if we somehow do succeed, then all the better. It is for the struggle itself: We must imagine the progressive happy.

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tags: #History #Iran #Shahnameh #Books #Literature

As time permits, I find myself searching the web for people, places, events, and ideas in Shahnameh. I was pleasantly surprised during such a search to encounter the blog of sci-fi/fantasy author Kate Elliott, who spent much of 2016 reading Shahnameh with another author, Tessa Gratton. They’ve used the opportunity to have a conversation about each of 42 segments (although by the looks of it, they missed a couple of weeks). You should give their conversation a read. The Shahnamah Reading Project 2016, with Tessa Gratton & Kate Elliott

By way of an update, I am finishing up the reign of Darab. As the narrative progressed, I was scanning eagerly for signs of any events from externally verifiable history. The place names are relatively easy to identify more often than not, but the personal names don’t ever seem to match up unless you know what you’re looking for. For instance, according to legend, the present-day Iranian city of Darab was founded by Darius I, who ruled Persia at the peak of the Achaemenid Dynasty. Darab-gerd, its old name, in fact means Darius-town, meaning that Darab is probably Darius I. Of course, this means that the founder of the same dynasty, Cyrus the Great, has already come and gone in this narrative, but who was he in Ferdowsi’s telling?

Now, I understand that Ferdowsi was not recounting a strict history of Persia more than he was recounting its myths. After all, the great hero Rostam, at one point during his conversation with doomed Esfandyar, declares his age to be over 600 years, a plausible figure given the length of time he’s been active in the story. Still, one might expect that events occurring in the subjective timeline to begin to mirror those that are closer to the present than the earlier parts of the narrative. It is the age of the names and their various transliterations and translations that makes it difficult to trace here.

If Darab is our reference point, and we know that Darab means Darius, we can draw some conclusions. First, we can be confident that the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great coincides with Ferdowsi’s telling of the conquest of Persia by Sekandar. The Persians recorded his name as both Sekandar and Iskandar, and Alexander is the Greek version of his name. Second, we now have a means of walking backward to Cyrus III, known as Cyrus the Great. For this, we have to use etymology. Again, it is the Romanized Greek version of the name that we in the West have preserved in our histories, but it is through the old Greek and Old Persian that we start to get a sense: Kyros or Kurus. These forms, of course, much resemble Kay Khosrow. This comparison breaks down somewhat when we note that the etymology of Kurus and that of Khosrow are distinct and unrelated. In that case, we still have Kavus (Kaus), Kay Khosrow’s grandfather. An intriguing entry in Volume 10 of the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society (1841) suggests that the cuneiform inscription of the name of Cambyses I, Cyrus the Great’s father, was Kabus.

This still leaves us with lots of myth overlaying some identifiable historical touchstones. As we move forward in Ferdowsi’s mythical history, we will undoubtedly begin to recognize even more actual history. For me, this is what helps ground the epic and make it part of the real world.

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tags: #History #Literature #Books #Iraq #Gilgamesh

(Note: Missing image, currently at /images/gilgamesh.jpeg)

(Note: Learn More section is badly formatted)

Gilgamesh by Union (Wikipedia)

The second book in my Sacer-Epic Reading Journey is The Epic of Gilgamesh. This work, regarded as the earliest known surviving epic, tells the story of its eponymous hero, Gilgamesh, semi-mythical king of Uruk, and his friend Enkidu. It has cast its shadow on numerous later works, including Homer’s epics and the Bible.

Like many ancient works, The Epic of Gilgamesh comes to us from a fragmentary list of sources, the earliest of which were a series of independent Sumerian poems about the hero. A more cohesive work appeared later, in Old Babylonian, though most of this has been lost. The most complete (“Standard”) version comes from surviving copies of twelve stone tablets, the best of which were discovered in the ruins of the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, located in Nineveh (the one-time capital of Assyria, located on the outskirts of modern day Mosul, Iraq).

Synopsis

The Epic of Gilgamesh follows its hero, who rules the city of Uruk as an oppressor, and Enkidu, a wild man created by the gods to be the equal of Gilgamesh. Their initial strife against one another gives way to an intense bond of friendship, and the two proceed to adventure together, causing enough mischief that the gods intervene again, sentencing Enkidu to death. Grief drives Gilgamesh to search for the secret of eternal life.

Themes

Just from the synopsis above, we can detect a few central themes. Friendship, death, wisdom, knowledge, fear, and pride all offer themselves as likely candidates. In contrast to Shahnameh’s vast panorama, The Epic of Gilgamesh is an intimate affair, more familiar in scope if you’ve already read other epics like The Iliad and The Odyssey. Thus we can expect its themes to reflect the narrower scope and their effects on individuals rather than entire nations.

As I get a chance, I will continue my compilation of epic-themed excerpts (begun and partially explained here), which is taking the form of a concordance. Further, I will publish here on Medium any observations about the text that catch my interest.

Learn More

There is much more to read and/or listen to than I can link here, but the following sources should provide some good insight.

Read: Epic of Gilgamesh – Wikipedia The Epic of Gilgamesh is an epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia that is often regarded as the earliest surviving great…en.wikipedia.org Gilgamesh – Wikipedia Gilgamesh (; 𒄑𒂆𒈦, Gilgameš, originally Bilgamesh 𒄑𒉈𒂵𒈩) is the main character in the Epic of Gilgamesh , an…en.wikipedia.org Uruk – Wikipedia Edit descriptionen.wikipedia.org

Listen: Epic of Gilgamesh, In Our Time – BBC Radio 4 Andrew George at SOAS, University of London Frances Reynolds at the University of Oxford Martin Worthington at the…www.bbc.co.uk 54A-Gilgamesh: Did We Just Become Best Friends? The Epic of Gilgamesh is amazing. It is quite possibly the oldest epic we have, and though it only exists in fragments…www.mythpodcast.com 54B-Gilgamesh: Huge Part two of the Epic of Gilgamesh, where Gilgamesh and Enkidu go off to fight Hugeness the Terrible, a firebreathing…www.mythpodcast.com Myths and Legends: 54C-Gilgamesh: Dust The end of the saga of Gilgamesh...and possibly the end of Gilgamesh, but not if the demi-god has anything to say about…mythpodcast.libsyn.com

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along. 2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey In November of 2016, among my Facebook friends, I sketched out an idea for a reading list for 2017 based around a…medium.com

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tags: #Shahnameh #Iran #History #Books #Literature

In my mind, there is something inherently pleasing about a concordance. To those who know me, this is perhaps not a surprising revelation. After all, as a child I spent more time than most thumbing through dictionaries, reading entries at random. We also had a copy of Strong’s Concordance (i.e., The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible), which, while an admittedly overwhelming tome, nevertheless served as a point of continual attraction to me. I will readily admit to having a narrow scope of interests with respect to Strong’s, but the mere fact that an exhaustive index of words used in the King James Bible existed fascinated me, and I made frequent use of it.

As I have progressed (slowly, alas) with my reading of Shahnameh, it occurred to me that some elements occur with enough frequency that one might wish to examine them in a broad manner. The idea arose from a particularly evocative conception of vengeance (or revenge) that appears within a number of other phrasings. If we look at the Warner and Warner translation, Volume 1, Chapter 65, V.98 (simply abbreviated V.98 to use the W&W verse numbering convention) we come across lines like this:

thus our tears
May wash the tree that springeth of revenge

This imagery recurs, but not often. Still, it caught my attention, despite the numerous mentions of vengeance or revenge. At first, I was going to try to catalogue such peculiar turns of phrase that I encountered in my epic readings. (Another example from Homer is the description of the sea as “wine-dark”, which I find just as peculiar a description as the above treatment of vengeance.) But I quickly realized while searching through the Warner and Warner text of Shahnameh that the ancient Persians were a vengeful lot. Perhaps they are no more so than any other ancient or modern humans, and perhaps the number of instances of revenge have more to do with the multigenerational scope of Shahnameh. After all, the closest work of such scope I can think of is the Old Testament, specifically the books of Chronicles and Kings (Book of Kings is the literal translation of Shahnameh, for what it’s worth). Whatever the reason, vengeance is a recurring topic in Shahnameh, and while it probably doesn’t make the same frequency of appearances in other epics, I suspect it, like many other recurring themes of humanity, does show up.

And so, I have begun a concordance of epic themes. Whether I have the stamina to finish it is another thing entirely, but it is now in progress regardless. I have started this concordance with the term “vengeance”, and will round it out with “revenge” and “avenge” before training my sights on other topics. For now, it is limited to Shahnameh, but I hope to expand it.

Note on methodology: I am trying where possible to preserve entire independent clauses and sentences. The result is not always perfect, since there are some unresolved punctuation questions in my sources, and it occasionally creates longer entries than may be strictly warranted, but the effect is to present enough context to evaluate the usage.

Without further ado, here is a partial concordance of the word “vengeance” in Shahnameh.

Vengeance

See also: Revenge, Avenge

• Shahnameh, V.16: When one year had passed thus the blest Surush / Was sent by God; he greeted Gaiumart / And said: “Lament no more, control thyself, / Do as I bid, collect thy troops and turn / Thy foemen into dust, relieve earth’s surface / Of that vile div and thine own heart of vengeance.”

• Shahnameh, V.16: The famous Shah looked up and cursed his foes, / Then, calling by the highest of all names / Upon his God, he wiped his tears away / And prosecuted vengeance night and day.

• Shahnameh, V.17: The days of Gaiumart had reached their close / When he achieved this vengeance on his foes;

• Shahnameh, V.68: And if I shall refuse my heart will feel / His vengeance — not a matter for a jest / From one who is the monarch of the world;

• Shahnameh, V.81: If then his worthless head shall be discrowned, / Earth rescued from his sway, and thou wilt give him / Some corner of the world where he may sit / Like us in anguish and oblivion — well / Else will we bring the Turkman cavaliers / And eager warriors of Rum and Chin — / An army of the wielders of the mace — / In vengeance on Iran and on Iraj.

• Shahnameh, V.86: Live we in joy together and thus safe / From foes: I will convert their vengeful hearts: / What better vengeance can I take than that?

• Shahnameh, V.87: Two hearts were full of vengeance, one was calm / Thus all three brothers sought their royal tents.

• Shahnameh, V.94: The Shah rejoiced because she was with child, / Which gave him hope of vengeance for his son, / But when her time was come she bore a daughter, / And hope deferred hung heavy on the Shah.

• Shahnameh, V.96: He summoned all his paladins and nobles, / Who came intent on vengeance for Iraj, / And offered homage, showering emeralds / Upon his crown.

• Shahnameh, V.100: And we will drench with blood, both leaf and fruit, / The tree sprung out of vengeance for Iraj.

• Shahnameh, V.100: Next for their pleading that ‘the Shah must wash / His heart from vengeance, and forgive our crime, / Because the sky so turned o’er us that wisdom / Was troubled, and affection’s seat obscured:’

• Shahnameh, V.105: I will don a coat of Ruman mail / To leave no part exposed, and then in quest / Of vengeance on the battlefield will send / The dust of yon host sunward.

• Shahnameh, V.106: The men of name marched mailed, with massive maces, / All bold as angry lions and all girded / For vengeance for Iraj;

• Shahnameh, V.106: That pair of murderers with a huge array / Set forth intent on vengeance and drew up / Their host upon the plain:

• Shahnameh, V.108: This will be Ahriman’s own fight, / A day of martial deeds and vengeance-seeking.

• Shahnameh, V.120: These chiefs are elephants, / Both terrible, both girt, both bent on vengeance.

• Shahnameh, V.121: The Iranian host, / Though clogged by killed and wounded on the plain, / Pursued apace, while Minuchihr, all wrath / And vengeance, cast his fleet white charger’s mail / And pressed on till within the foemen’s dust

• Shahnameh, V.123: Seek brotherhood / And use it for a charm, put off from you / The implements of war, be wise and pure / In Faith, secure from ill, and banish vengeance.

• Shahnameh, V.130: hereafter we / Will put our hand upon the scimitar, / And in our vengeance desolate their realm.

• Shahnameh, V.166–167: I will seek God and pray Him, / With all the instancy of devotees, / To wash all opposition, wrath, and vengeance / From both their hearts, and if He hearkeneth / Thou shalt become my wife before the world.

• Shahnameh, V.190: My conduct shall acquit the Shah of vengeance.

• Shahnameh, V.233: Youth as thou art / Thou hast no peer in stature, Grace, and valour; / So ere thy spreading fame shall thwart thine action / Take vengeance for the blood of Nariman.

• Shahnameh, V.234: None issued forth / And none went in, but though the gate was shut / So long the foe lacked not a stalk of hay, / And Sam forewent his vengeance in despair.

• Shahnameh, V.238: Pack all the best, / Then fire the hold in vengeance.

• Shahnameh, V.241: I took on Salm and on the brutal Tur / Due vengeance for my grandsire — great Iraj — / I cleansed the world of its iniquities / And built me many a city, many a fortress;

• Shahnameh, V.249: With zeal, he bragged before his sire with loins / Girt up and vengeance in his heart:

• Shahnameh, V.249: Now whatsoe’er my grandsire left undone / Of vengeance-seeking, fight, and stratagem, / Is left for my sharp sword to execute.

• Shahnameh, V.249: Afrasiyab, high-wrought and full of vengeance, / Went forth and opening the treasury / Abundantly equipped his warriors;

• Shahnameh, V.250: Thou know’st what Salm and valiant Tur endured / Through that old wolf and sworder Minúchihr, / And yet Zadsham, my grandsire and our king, / Whose helmet touched the circle of the moon, / Ne’er spake a word of such a war, or read / The book of vengeance in the time of peace.

• Shahnameh, V.262: When Shah Naudar was well bemused he went / Behind his curtains, meditating vengeance, / And those brave chiefs — the Íránian cavaliers — / Departed in disorder from the court / To assemble at the quarters of Karan, / With eyes like winter-clouds;

• Shahnameh, V.265: Go with a valiant host / Well furnished, and take vengeance for the lost.

• Shahnameh, V.273: This done he marched from Dahistan to Rai, / Hid earth beneath his cavaliers and made / His chargers sweat, assumed the royal crown, / Bestowed a liberal largess of dinars, / And played as monarch of Iran his part / With thoughts of war and vengeance in his heart.

• Shahnameh, V.274: The grasses on these fields and fells are hanging / Their heads in shame before the sun while we / Ask vengeance, mourning as it were a father, / In whom the stock of Faridun survived, / While earth was servant to his horse’s shoe.

• Shahnameh, V.275: The The Iranians are upon the march for vengeance

• Shahnameh, V.275: I will not take other order / So that my brother may not turn upon me / In vengeance.

• Shahnameh, V.299: Now wheeling to the left, now to the right, / And seeking to wreak vengeance on all sides, / He made earth mountain-like with slain, astounding / The bravest Turkmans.

• Shahnameh, V.306: he hath assumed the crown / And flung the gates of vengeance wide again.

• Shahnameh, V.309: On this I say that feuds should not endure / For ever, and if vengeance for Iraj / Was owing it was wreaked by Minuchihr.

• Shahnameh, V.327: They have burnt up our cities and inflamed / Our vengeance by the outrage.

• Shahnameh, V.332: Thy part is now to saddle Rakhsh and seek / For vengeance with the world-allotting sword.

• Shahnameh, V.366: Full of vengeance, / And in hot blood, he came before the Shah

• Shahnameh, V.390: I and mine are girt for vengeance.

• Shahnameh, V.405: He gave a paladin the letter sealed, / Who reached the monarch of Turan and Chin / In haste, first kissed the ground and did obeisance, / And after compliments gave him the letter / Which, when Afrasiyab had read it, filled / His head with vengeance and his heart with rage.

• Shahnameh, V.467: Why waste thy heart / In vengeance?

• Shahnameh, V.499–500: From sunrise till the shadows grew they strove / Until Suhrab, that maddened Elephant, / Reached out, up-leaping with a lion’s spring, / Caught Rustam’s girdle, tugged amain as though, / Thou wouldst have said, to rend the earth, and shouting / With rage and vengeance hurled him to the ground, / Raised him aloft and, having dashed him down, / Sat on his breast with visage, hand, and mouth / Besmirched with dust, as when a lion felleth / An onager, then drew a bright steel dagger / To cut off Rustam’s head

• Shahnameh, V.554: If I perforce must lose it / In vengeance for the wrong which I have … suffered, / Command … I am resigned.

• Shahnameh, V.567: None will seek vengeance if I fight him not

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along. 2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

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tags: #Books #Shahnameh #Literature #Iran #History

Illustration of Kay Kavus. Source: http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kayanian-v

A recurring motif in Shahnameh is the struggle of generational succession and the effect, especially at the royal scale, of those successions. A multi-generational sacred or epic work can’t really avoid this as a by-product, of course: the Bible itself contains numerous such examples as it details the reigns of the various Israelite kings. In contrast to other works I’ve read that deal with generational succession in some way, Shahnameh concerns itself with the ebb and flow of fortunes that are tied to an individual king’s attitudes, the answer to the overwhelming question: will the son be like the father?

English has a few proverbs that have the same implication as the title. Wiktionary suggests:

• apple does not fall far from the tree

• chip off the old block

In childhood, we grow to see ourselves as distinct from our parents, a new thing capable of whatever our dreams can conceive. This reaches a critical point in adolescence, our springboard into the wide world. From here, we gather together the imparted wisdom, the lived examples, and what we think of as our own unique ideas and issue forth, to fly or fall as far as our desires and efforts allow. Looking back now, I suppose the most surprising thing was not that the proverb was almost always true, but that exceptions to it ever arose. Overall, my experience is that the proverb is true more than it is not.

Ferdowsi begins his account of Kay Kavus’s war against the demons of Mazanderan with a brief discussion on the potential effect of differences in priority between father and son. Kay Kavus was a king who actively rejected the lessons of his father, Kay Qobad, as well as the kings before him. One region of the world, called Mazanderan, was the home of demons and sorcerers, a place that was notoriously difficult to conquer. Up to this point, the Persians had an unwritten rule not to conduct military adventures there, since it was a wasted effort (Warner & Warner):

Yet they attempted not Mázandarán —
The home of warlock-dívs and under spells
Which none hath power to loose; so give not thou
Men, wealth, and money to the winds.

Kay Kavus’s insistence on claiming the wealth of Mazanderan was a serious break with precedent, irrational even, and he acted against all of the advice of his chieftains.

Here is Ferdowsi, with his assessment. It’s worth having in both the Warner & Warner verse translation and in Davis’s prose translation.

W&W:

If ever mortal injury befall
A fruitful tree, when it hath waxen tall,
Its leaf will fade, its root become unsound,
Its head begin to bend toward the ground;
And when the stem is snapped off at the root
‘Twill yield its station to some fresh young shoot,
Resign thereto the garden’s burgeoning
And all the lamp-like lustre of the spring;
But if, my friend! an evil shoot should rise,
Let not the good root suffer in thine eyes.
So when a father leaveth to his son
The world, and showeth him the course to run,
If he shall flout his father’s regimen
Call him no longer son but alien.
He that abandoneth his teacher’s path
Deserveth every evil that he hath.
This ancient hostelry is fashioned so
That thou canst not distinguish top from toe,
And he that wotteth of its evil way
Doth well to quit it with what speed he may.

Davis:

If a noble tree grows tall and is then damaged in some way, its leaves wither, its roots weaken, and its summit begins to droop; and if it snaps, it must give way to a new shoot that, when spring comes, will bud and blossom like a shining lamp. If a sickly branch grows from a good root, you should not curse the root for this. In the same way, when a father cedes his place to his son and acquaints him with the secrets of life, if the son then brings shame on his father’s name and glory, then call him a stranger, not a son. If he slights his father’s example, he deserves to suffer at the hands of fate. This is the way of the ancient world, and you cannot tell what will grow from a given root.

The effect of this departure from precedent was disaster in the form of Kay Kavus’s capture at the hands of the div (demons), and he received an object lesson in the precise reasons his forbears had avoided conquering Mazandaran.

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tags: #Books #Literature #Shahnameh #Iran #History

I’ve almost completed my reading goal for the third day of Shahnameh (which I’m balancing with daily readings of War and Peace, following Brian E. Denton’s daily devotional and mediation series), and I have some initial thoughts. The most immediate impression is also the most superficial, and that’s Dick Davis’s treatment of the subject. In making my selection for an edition to read, I admit I wasn’t looking closely. I might not have selected the Penguin Classics edition had I known it was almost entirely paraphrased prose. Still, there aren’t many English editions to choose from, and I don’t see any in my cursory scan through Amazon that also attempt to preserve the poetic structure in any way. I guess I had hoped for a slightly different approach from Davis’s delivery, which nonetheless is regarded as definitive in terms of English translations of Shahnameh. Since I am incapable of reading Persian or Farsi (for which many editions exist), Davis and his blend of prose and poetry must suffice.

Digging into the material itself, delivery method aside, I was quickly confronted with a tapestry of narratives pinned on a body of assumed knowledge, knowledge I don’t exactly possess. I’m not sure Davis bears much responsibility for this, except in his curious omission of footnotes and endnotes. I skipped the introduction, which was perhaps unwise, seeking instead to sink or swim in the material according to my own abilities. On second thought, though, I do blame Davis, who made the decision to begin his narrative with the ascendance of Kayumars (also transliterated Kaiumers and Gaiumart), the first shah of the world, skipping entirely Ferdowsi’s exordium and the explication of the world’s cosmology. Some of this appears to merit mention in Davis’s introduction, but at present I am unable to say precisely how much.

Perhaps the cosmology isn’t that important. I’m open to others’ viewpoints on this. But consider for a moment the following, taken from the English translation available on the Zoroastrian Heritage site, which does consider this material important (translation by Warner & Warner, about whom more below):

The first thing needful for thee is to know
The sum of primal elements which He,
Who maketh all things, made from naught to show
The greatness of His own supremacy.
Those elements are fourfold; at their birth
No time elapsed and labour had no share;
Fire shone above, and in the midst were air
And water; underneath was dusky earth.
Fire was the first its virtue to unfold;
About it moisture ceased and dryness came;
Then fire where’er it failed made way for cold,
And moisture followed cold.

Do we simply assume that this view of the world’s creation was shared among ancient peoples, in Persia and elsewhere? I suspect evidence would contradict such an assertion. Or do we assume that modern sensibilities (noting that Davis’s translation appears to have been published in 1997) would reject a “four elements” cosmology? Whatever his reasons, Davis has extracted only the pre-Islamic components of the text for presentation, despite the text having only been set down to paper in post-Islamic Iran.

If you are curious and want a fuller rendition of the work, Arthur and Edmond Warner penned a nine volume translation in English that includes the entire exordium and cosmology. The Zoroastrian Heritage site includes selections from Warner & Warner, but their complete text is online at the Packard Humanities Institute, as well as the Internet Archive (link is to Vol. 1). I will be relying on these as supplemental reading for the Penguin Classics edition, in part to try to capture the essence I described above in my excoriation of the idea of rendering an epic poem into prose.

Detail of “The Representative of Humanity” by Rudolf Steiner and Edith Maryon, 1922. Public Domain.

In reading through the omitted portions, however, there are more assumed details that are not explained simply by reading the exordium and cosmology. Who is Ahriman, and from where did the Div originate? Why do they prey on Man? For these, we need some background in Zoroastrian belief, but I am not yet up to the task on this matter, as the faith itself is wholly unfamiliar to me, its relation to Second Temple Judaism, Christianity, and Islam notwithstanding. Ferdowsi’s audience no doubt possessed the relevant background knowledge to make sense of these cosmic forces, which seems to have humanity occupying some space between the spenta mainyu and the angra mainyu, which are roughly spirits of creation and destruction, respectively. It will take me a bit more time to investigate this.

In the next portion of this series, I hope to look a little closer at the goings-on, the particular episodes recounted in the early portion of the work. There are some mild surprises, especially for the casual historian. Stay tuned!

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along.

2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

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tags: #readinglists #books

(Note: This post was rescued from Medium, where it first appeared. It is here for archival purposes.)

In November of 2016, among my Facebook friends, I sketched out an idea for a reading list for 2017 based around a monthly selection of ancient epics and extant traditional/sacred texts, thinking to focus on age-old ideas. Looking through the possibilities, it became apparent that there was no way to mark in any clear way a distinction between the sacred and the profane, as a handful of the works belong to currently active lived traditions, while the rest were treated with similar reverence during their times as lived traditions. In all cases, they are stories handed down, the legacy of preceding generations of people attempting to come to grips with the same things we face today, often preceding the advent of writing. The fact that we have not been able to resolve their original questions speaks to their timelessness, their steadiness in the face of a world always in flux, and their role as a vehicle for the voices of the ancients. We do well to seek their counsel, and that is what this reading journey is all about.

As the year closes, I have readied my list and collected resources that will supplement them and provide context and analysis for what, at times, can be opaque language, especially when translations necessitate different comparative semantic densities from their originals. At the beginning of each month, I will post on Medium and link in this post a brief introduction for each work, and over the month, I will follow up with periodic observations, notes, and quotes I found of interest and/or utility. Any who are interested are welcome to join in.

The List

Each entry includes space for a link to the introduction page (updated monthly as I post them) and a link to the edition I will be reading in case you want to follow along.

January: Shahnameh

Shahnameh

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143108328/

February: The Epic of Gilgamesh

He who saw the Deep: The Epic of Gilgamesh

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140449191/

March: Beowulf

Beowulf: Introduction

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Beowulf-New-Verse-Translation-Bilingual/dp/0393320979/

April: The Iliad

Sing the Rage: The Iliad

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer/dp/0140275363/

May: The Odyssey

Sing the Rage 2: The Odyssey

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Homer/dp/0140268863/

June and July: The Aeneid

Sorrow, Unspeakable Sorrow

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Aeneid-Penguin-Classics-Deluxe/dp/0143105132/

Edit 2017–12–11: From August, my project sort of ran off the rails. Not only did I never bother to create landing pages for the remaining items, some of them I skipped entirely. These remaining items will feature in my end of year post for my reading for the year.

August: Metamorphoses

There is no landing page for this because I never created it. I bought Metamorphoses and began reading it more or less on time, but I quickly ran into a sort of modernist despair at the character of the stories. Many of them are fine stories, no doubt, but there is a strong undercurrent of rapaciousness among the Greek and Roman gods that is hard to ignore. I understand, of course, that this was how the people who passed these stories around understood their gods to act, but that doesn't mean we have to retrace all of their steps. Perhaps I will return to Ovid at a later date, or perhaps I will merely keep Metamorphoses on my shelf as a reminder that there are better stories out there to read. In any case, Ovid isn't to blame; he's merely the messenger. But given the choice between fantastic tales that include gratuitous rape and equally fantastic tales that don't, I know which I prefer.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141394617/

September: The Mabinogion

Through a confluence of badly timed events, I never actually got around to this book. It will, I suppose, continue to sit on my shelf, only partially read, as it has done for some two decades.

Amazon (note: same translator, different publisher): https://www.amazon.com/Mabinogion-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140443223/

October: The Prose Edda

This is where my reading thread for the year resumed. I read and greatly enjoyed this work. My favorite part was where I saw how Tolkien had lifted names from it wholesale to populate his own works. It's perhaps too late to create a landing page for it, or maybe instead I will create a common landing page for the rest of the works.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140447555/

November: The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale

I'm actually still reading this. It's really good.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/014044775X/

December: Mahabharata (abridged, C. Rajagopalachari)

I'm also reading this and very much enjoying it.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/8172763689/

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The zombie as a metaphor for the fear of immigrants is compelling and convenient. As such, it holds much explanatory power, especially given the modern popularity of zombies. It is not the only metaphor available, however, and it may not even be the best modern metaphor. What follows is a brief meditation on zombies as a metaphor for the fear of automation.

Popular conceptions of zombies have always been relentlessly “other”, easily distinguishable from normal humans by their shambling gaits and apparent mindlessness. If we relied only on the portrayal as other, the immigrant metaphor would suffice. Yes, there are easy racial overtones, in the same way racist propaganda has sought to dehumanize various peoples in some way, especially in the focus on skin color as a means of determining the degree of otherness, but also in the various attempts over the years to compare intelligence scores between racial groups in an effort to support human-animal classifications that placed non-white races as more akin to animals. And let’s face it, most zombies do act like “animals” in some sense. I suspect that’s why these metaphors persist.

But what if, instead, we focus only on the apparent sense of self, that quality we like to use to raise humanity (all of it, if we’re feeling humanist enough) above its mere animal origins? Sure, there is the animal connection again, the human-biased denial of the selfhood of animals. As science slowly chips away at the supports of that argument, however, the human animal is left grasping at something else above which to raise itself. Automation, specifically artificial intelligence, seems to be the target. This is where a concept of self as a uniquely human (or, as we admit broader definitions of sentience, animal) trait begins to converge into a fear of artificial intelligence. Even the name artificial intelligence implies a hierarchy, with natural intelligence trumping artificial.

In his novel Blindsight, Peter Watts paints a picture of a zombie that is so good at blending in it doesn’t know it is a zombie. Possibly of greater importance is that neither does anyone else. It has adapted itself to act like other people, and although it has its quirks, it appears to fall along the spectrum of roughly normal human experience. If you are afraid of the implications of artificial intelligence, then this is the zombie that will frighten you the most. Our intuitive understanding of such artifice is that, no matter how convincingly it portrays itself, it cannot possess a “true” sense of self.

If we move back into the realm of popular portrayal, the metamorphosis from human to zombie requires the death of the self. In almost no portrayals do zombies have memories of their former lives, and they instill terror by imbuing non-human life into the dead masks of people we knew. The most dangerous people in zombie movies fall into two groups: 1) those infected who were, in life, closest to the protagonists, and 2) those infected who gain access to the protagonists’ inner circle prior to becoming recognizably other. Both are predictable but crucial milestones. The first requires the protagonist to confront the death of self in former loved ones, thus allowing the protagonist a viable psychology of survival against all other zombies (i.e., they become inhuman). The second occurs later and forces the protagonist to implement a refinement of the psychology by which tests of worthiness can be applied to any applicant to group membership.

Both scenarios can appear in a fear of automation metaphor. We live in an age where it’s no longer readily apparent which actors with which we deal are real humans, pure automaton, or something in between. Our world is populated by a chimera army of mechanical turks and weak artificial intelligences who, while perhaps unable to pass a Turing test, are nevertheless convincing enough that at worst, they drag us kicking and screaming into the uncanny valley but at best leave us guessing. Add to this the existential dread conjured up by the specter of genetic engineering, mind uploading, and the perennial efforts to achieve artificial intelligence, and you have a recipe for horror that cannot easily be mapped to a horrific portrayal. And people have tried. It’s hard to be truly afraid of a robot uprising because there is rarely a portrayal in which the robots themselves aren’t recognizably other. Notable exceptions include Terminator, which provides some of the most compelling horror precisely because the terminators resist identification as other. Identification as other is the prerequisite for being able to fight against the other.

Zombies that are more successful at appearing human will provide the basis for the most terror, according to this idea. And the zombies that are most likely to be successful at appearing human are the automatons we’ve either created or made of ourselves, since they reduce our sense of recognizing other-than-human actors. We fear (either for ourselves or on behalf of our loved ones) being stripped of the illusion of consciousness and having it replaced by a convincing proxy that we cannot fight because we cannot recognize it.

#automation #fear #robots #zombies

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tags: #intention #outcome #philosophy

The idea for this has been percolating for a while, but it finally managed to escape my head. I do not guarantee it’s complete or usable, but here is my attempt to map out the tension between intention and outcome. Suggestions for improvement are most welcome.

The reason for this map is to examine the landscape within which people operate, especially as it relates to social good. I’ve never been completely comfortable with the idea that “it’s the thought that counts,” because clearly there are situations in which this is not true. Nor am I comfortable simply dismissing good intentions entirely, as in, “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” And while this map doesn't answer the question, perhaps it can be useful in examining our own behaviors.

When I first set out to make a map some months ago, I started with a 2x2 grid. It didn’t take me long to realize that 2x2 was not granular enough to work with, because there is significant ambiguity in this space. Since then I have settled on a 3x3 grid, which I present below.

Let’s deconstruct this a bit.

Some things should stand out immediately. The upper right corner is green, the lower left corner is red, and the middle box is white (transparent). The rest of the squares are the default blue color from Google Drawings. Thus there are three general categories of interactions here: unambiguous (red/green), invisible (white or transparent) and ambiguous.

My working assumptions are these:

Any situation will be approached with intentions on a continuum between good intentions and bad intentions. At the ends of the continuum, actions are undertaken on purpose for a specific goal. In the center is a neutral intention, which usually just means no particular goal was in mind when the action was taken, or the action taken was accidental.
The result of an action measures along a continuum between better outcomes and worse outcomes. At the ends of this continuum are results that can definitely be said to have improved or worsened the situation. In the center is the neutral or negligible outcome, which usually means neither benefit nor detriment.

Unambiguous

Good Intention, Better Outcome (GI/BO): I would call this good-hearted with positive results. In situations that need changing, it is the best possible outcome, and the one all people with good intentions will strive to meet. For lack of a better word, I will call this Saintly.

Bad Intention, Worse Outcome (BI/WO): People who engage in this kind of behavior regularly fit most working definitions of evil, or mean-spirited. Otherwise it’s just acting in a mean or spiteful way. This is Deliberate Successful Sabotage.

Invisible

Neutral Intention, Neutral Outcome (NI/NO): There is nothing particularly mindful about actions undertaken here, and since the results do not change a situation, there’s little to examine from a values perspective. Probably a great number of actions fall into this category.

Ambiguous

The rest of the items create significant ambiguity by way of either self-negation, inconsequentiality, or simple mindlessness. These form the sub-categories of the ambiguous item set.

Mindful Self-Negation

Good Intention, Worse Outcome (GI/WO): Due to gross misunderstanding, significant blind-spots, or some other reason, efforts to improve a situation have made it worse. This one can be termed Mind Your Own Business.

Bad Intention, Better Outcome (BI/BO): Due to gross misunderstanding, significant blind-spots, or some other reason, efforts to worsen a situation have had the reverse effect. This one can be termed Total Backfire. The Streisand Effect is an example of how this works in practice.

Mindfully Inconsequential

Good Intention, Neutral Outcome (GI/NO): Willingness to do something good exceeds understanding of the situation, or the effort simply fails with no other consequence. Also known as Despite My Best Effort.

Bad Intention, Neutral Outcome (BI/NO): Willingness to do something bad exceeds understanding of the situation, or the effort simply fails with no other consequence. Also known as No Harm No Foul.

Mindless

Neutral Intention, Better Outcome (NI/BO): Action not deliberately targeted at the situation manages to improve it, usually due to ignorance of the situation or as an incomplete understanding of unintended consequences. Also termed Happy Accident.

Neutral Intention, Worse Outcome (NI/WO): Action not deliberately targeted at the situation manages to make it worse, usually due to ignorance of the situation or as an incomplete understanding of unintended consequences. Also termed Squished Bug.

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