The obligatory image is just a bunch of post-its and receipts that I had written notes-to-self on. (It has nothing to do with the diary entry that follows.) I only photographed the mess because I liked the different colors of the papers. But it looks better in reality — it’s a little more vivid. This reproduction is kinda washed-out. But it’s still OK. It’s good enough for this blog. It’s not a big deal.
Dear diary,
I had planned to see my boss yesterday, but he canceled our meeting because his computer system “went down” (my boss lives in a room surrounded by computers; a loud rushing noise fills the air, caused by the collective whirring of all their cooling fans; and when the system has a problem, which is to say, when it “goes down”, all the machines stop working at once: the fans become quiet, and my boss must dash about in desperation amid a jungle of wires, inspecting all their connections, seeking for the source of the malfunction — at least, that’s how I imagine his situation — and that’s what happened in the early morning), thus I had some unexpected time to do whatever I wanted. So I began to read in Hesiod’s Works and Days, just for pleasure. I own a copy of Richmond Lattimore’s translation. There was a certain part near the very beginning which I liked, so I wanted to quote it for you. Now should I copy it exactly, or restate it in my own words? At the moment, I’m more inclined to give a paraphrase, cuz I wanna focus on the content of the text’s ideas, rather than the beauty of its wording (insofar as those notions are separable), so that’s what I’ll do. Let me stress, however, that Lattimore’s version is exemplary — so anything that ends up sounding attractive about the following digest is due to him; and all ugliness is my own.
Everybody knows that Hesiod talks about the successive ages of mortals that have existed on this earth. There are five: first is the Golden Age; then comes the Silver Age; then the Bronze Age; then the fourth age that Hesiod mentions is not associated with any type of metal: he just calls it “the wonderful generation of hero-men, who are also called half-gods”; and last, as well as least, emerges our own generation, the Iron Age, which is the very worst.
Now for the purposes of this entry of mine, I wanna focus on the Golden Age; and then maybe, if I have time to continue writing, I’ll talk about the Iron Age. So what I think of myself as doing is preserving two ideas: Hesiod’s imagination of the best existence; and then his take on us modern humans.
I’m told that Hesiod lived around 700 B.C., which was exactly six days plus ten months plus two thousand seven hundred and nineteen years before I ended this here sentence. To my mind, that seems like a long time ago; nevertheless, what he has to say about HIS time applies to MY time as well as if he’d written his poem down yesterday. That’s one of the aspects I find so interesting about his composition. (What I just said applies to his Iron Age: the last generation — I should maybe cut it from here and copy it to that later section, if I ever get around to writing about it. Remind me to do that.)
Also I am mostly in love with, but partly perplexed by, what he says about the Golden Age. Here’s what he says about the Golden Age:
There are immortals who live on the top of Mount Olympus. Everyone knows that.
(Remember, I’m paraphrasing — sincerely trying to keep things clear and simple.)
These immortals created a golden generation of mortal people. These lived in the time when Kronos was the king of heaven.
(That is to say: At the time of the golden mortals, the god Kronos was the leader of the immortals, NOT his son Zeus; but Zeus is the king to this very day — I Bryan do posit this latter fact, tho nobody knows for sure who is right: me or them?)
These golden mortals lived as if they were gods. Their hearts were free from all sorrow. They had no hard work or pain. They did not grow old; their bodies did not wither with age. They were constantly enjoying themselves: throwing parties and celebrating festivals. They lived a trouble-free existence. Even death was easy: when it came time to die, it was just like falling asleep. These folks had it made. All good things were theirs. The fruitful farmland yielded its harvest to them automatically, they didn’t even have to till the ground: it just produced abundance freely, as if the soil was acting generous because it loved them. So they had plenty of food, and they could live quiet lives and work on fun projects easily, write books or draw pictures, and their social life was harmonious. They had lots of pet birds on their farm, who felt lucky to be there. And these people were on friendly terms with the immortals.
I fear that a lot of my fellow Iron Agers will want to make fun of these mortals from the Golden Age, out of jealousy for their lot. We might want to say “That life sounds boring,” because everything was so simple and easy. But what’s boring about it, really? Look, it says right there: “they wrote books and drew pictures.” That’s the opposite of boring. That’s intellectually stimulating. And they even had pet birds. Seriously, I think the Golden Age sounds wonderful. I’d go live there, in a heartbeat.
Now here’s another thing that I found interesting. After Hesiod tells us about those first golden mortals, he describes what happened to them after their generation passed away. At first it was hard for me to comprehend what Hesiod meant, because, despite the fact that he had been plainly referring to these folks as “mortals”, I assumed that their good days would never end. But alas they did. Lattimore’s exact rendering of the verse that starts the next part is:
Now that the earth has gathered over this generation…
So when a generation passes away, we say “the earth has gathered over” them. It reminds me of that time when I was a child, and I left all my favorite toys on the floor in the basement for many days, untouched, for I was fasting from playtime; and a thick layer of dust eventually gathered upon my toys, as they were un-played-with; and the dust grew thicker and thicker until it covered them entirely. The earth had gathered over those toys; and it was time for me to create a new generation of toys to take their place. But first, before I dream up something worse — some slightly inferior toys to replace my best toys — I say, first I must tell what happened to the afterimage of my golden generation (which happens to match exactly what Hesiod sez happened to those first lucky people):
Now that the earth has gathered over this happiest age of mortals, they are called “the pure and blessed spirits”. They live upon earth and are good, they watch over mortal men and defend them from evil...
(I’m pretty much xeroxing Lattimore’s verses now, only dropping the line breaks, cuz I wanna get this part right)
...they keep watch over lawsuits and hard dealings; they mantle themselves in dark mist and wander all over the country; they bestow wealth — for this right as of kings was given them.
So it seems that the deceased-yet-somehow-still-living mortals from the Golden Age are Hesiod’s version of what my own sister Susan (a self-styled “mystic”) calls guardian angels, which exist “behind the scenes of our reality” and try to assist us bumbling earth-folk.
Once I heard a lady give a testimony in church: she said that the angles helped her find a good parking spot at the supermarket. I’m not sure if Hesiod’s ex-Golden-Agers, those pure and blessed spirits, would go that far; but I like that they concern themselves in our lawsuits. (This might sound sarcastic, but I’m speaking from my heart.) And if they really do have control over who gets rich, then, while suspecting their judgment, I ultimately defer to their expertise.
*
Now, above I said I was also going to talk about the Iron Age, which constitutes our present, ongoing nightmare; but I’ve run out of time. So I can either publish this entry now, and return to that subject in the next entry if I remember; OR I can set all the foregoing text aside and keep adding to it until it’s more definitively unfinished. Let me think about what’s the best course to take...
No comments:
Post a Comment