rodin and the ancient greeks

i didn’t realise that rodin was in london a lot, and kept visiting the british museum to see the elgin marbles and other greek sculpture; seems (at least according to the bm’s materials) that this was his primary source of inspiration

setting his and the greek pieces side by side was great: you could really see how he had developed his own forms from theirs, particularly the headless and limbless torsos:

and it’s interesting that rodin’s own source for most of his later works (excepting the burghers of calais?) was his own – architectural – la porte d’enfer (the gate of hell), as that’s what the parthenon sculptures were: figures on a building:

the horse

the iliad

the iliad (samuel butler)

i: how much Ag’s behaviour stems from menelaus’ loss of helen and his of iphigenia: chryses approaches BOTH brothers, Ag keeps Chryseis so as not to be like his brother, and to keep an Iph-replacement

ii: Zeus has gone to bed with Hera, OK, but he CAN’T SLEEP, and pretends to the dream that Hera is onside

trojan catalogue tells us the dates of some (e.g. two killed in the river by achilles), but ends with a brief mention of sarpedon & glaucus – no hint of book 16

iii: how the poem starts and ends with a trojan in fear of a greek (and hector upbraids paris, but then does the same)

helen ALREADY KNOWS of the duel before Idaeus tells Priam

v: anchises had secretly let his mares get pregnant from laomedon’s stallions, just as his affair with aphrodite

viii: diomedes is, as hector in 6/22, worried that turning back would bring him shame, but he then takes nestor’s advice that in reality his reputation is too strong to be thus damaged – hector isn’t as wise

ix: we see from ag at the start why homer had him say similar things at the start of ii – but this time he’s serious

xiii (and the flyover books in general): lots of discussions of heroism, bravery, the gods – they’re aware of how important it is to have the gods on their side

p208 brilliant trick – we’re made to enjoy battle and then realise…

xvi: arming of myrmidons – how a girl’s (loss of) virginity doesn’t seem important

xvii: glaucus has a go at hector rather like achilles at agamemnon

xviii & xix: the biggest change, and homer deliberately expands achilles’ grief to include all the greek women and men

xxii: hector’s error caused the deaths of many trojans, as achilles’ patroclus

xxiii: ?meriones mocks odysseus for having athene help him as a mother – dig at achilles?

How they are related

well, it’s been a few years since i drafted these notes, so this attempt at connecting them is a bit token – well, at any rate unfresh.

the iliad notes above are really just notes to myself from a recent rereading, but what i seem mostly to be picking up are the taplinesque little connections which sew the work together – which make it a text(ile). in that regard we are in the world of sculpture – henry moore certainly, whose work (once visited at much hadham) gave me the distinct, epiphanic, feeling that i then understood better how the world fitted together. rodin? less so, beyond the obvious point that he develops his ideas and shapes from greek originals. looking at them above, perhaps i see more easily through his work how the world falls apart, as surely it is now seeming to do.