Sunday, May 1, 2011

Walking Oedipus to Colonus

ANTIGONE- O father, father, Would that some god might grant thee eyes to see This best of men who brings us back again. - Sophocles "Oedipus at Colonus"
My thumos! Keep turning and showing a new side of your versatile nature in each encounter with every philos.

Keep mixing your temperament to match that of each philos.

Have the temperament of a complex octopus, who always looks like whatever rock he has just clung to.

Now be like this; then, at another time, become someone else in your coloring.

It is true to say that sophia is better than being atropos.
- Theognis of Megara (213-218)

The last word in this passage, a-tropos is all-important. It means 'having no versatility, having no power to turn'; cf. Odysseus at Odyssey (i 1) as polu-tropos ‘having much versatility, having many ways to turn’. Such themes are relevant to the description of Odysseus as polu-tropos in Odyssey (i 1). This word, meaning ‘turning many different ways’, is applied to Odysseus because this hero can change his identity to match wherever he is. He can be different things to different people by literally turning himself into a different person. As we see from the verses of Theognis (213-218), the octopus as pictured as such a personality, since this animal can change its color to match wherever it is.

4 comments:

Thersites said...

'Would you say virtue or a virtue, for there are other virtues, such as courage, temperance, and the like; just as round is a figure, and black and white are colours, and yet there are other figures and other colours. Let Meno take the examples of figure and colour, and try to define them.' Meno confesses his inability, and after a process of interrogation, in which Socrates explains to him the nature of a 'simile in multis,' Socrates himself defines figure as 'the accompaniment of colour.' But some one may object that he does not know the meaning of the word 'colour;' and if he is a candid friend, and not a mere disputant, Socrates is willing to furnish him with a simpler and more philosophical definition, into which no disputed word is allowed to intrude: 'Figure is the limit of form.' Meno imperiously insists that he must still have a definition of colour. Some raillery follows; and at length Socrates is induced to reply, 'that colour is the effluence of form, sensible, and in due proportion to the sight.'

nicrap said...

old man of the sea.

Thersites said...

Ah, but that I could assume infinite figures... ;)

nicrap said...

...infinity is but the continuous possibility of plus one. ;)