Song of a Reformed Headhunter

My first Aeneid , and it was a very engaging introduction. The translation read very well and I followed Virgil's storytelling eagerly, skipping over only the list of combatants and their family origins. The sack of Troy was utterly gripping. The tragedy of Dido, in this translation, was less affecting than I expected. Aeneas' reaction in the episode was remarkably muted. The Furies were terrifying; the whole descent to Hell was excellent. In the war between the Trojans and the Latins, Aeneas, destined by the Fates to win, was less interesting than the tragic figure of Turnus, war leader of the Latins. I was struck by how closely Virgil imitated Homer in terms of incidents and also tried to go one up. So the epic did not end with the siege of the Trojan's camp, as in The Iliad but went further in having the Trojans lay siege themselves to Latium, the success of which forced finally Turnus to fight Aeneas one to one. Ferry's iambic pentameter is very flexible and capabl...

The Adventures of Amir Hamza , an Indo-Persian epic translated by Musharraf Ali Farooqi, opens as a rollicking tale of war and romance, but turns into a repetitious cycle of fruitless attempts by Hamza to return from fairyland to his one true love. I find his faithful retainer, Amar the prankster, much more interesting a character. Hamza, the idealized hero and lover, is consistently faithful and loyal throughout. Amar, however, is more liable to upset established order. From the wise counselor Buzurjmehr, he receives a special codpiece called an aafat-band . A brocade pouch that protects Amar's testicles when he races, jumps and gambols, it has "flowers and leaves embroidered on it in seven colored silken threads, and a priceless ruby hanging from its sash for a button." The Adventures have long existed in the South Asian oral narrative tradition of dastan-goi ( dastan narrative). They also existed in different versions in multiple handwritten manuscripts. In 1855 th...

Finally finished reading Shahnameh today, the Persian Book of Kings, translated by Dick Davis. Arranged like a royal chronicle, the book falls into two parts, the first legendary half, teeming with hero-kings and demons, and the second more "realistic" half, closer as the history is to Ferdowsi's own time. The turning point lies in the reign of Sekandar (Alexander the Great), who is depicted initially as a world conqueror, but later, more importantly, as a seeker of knowledge. I like the legends better. They have more colorful characters, and livelier adventures.The defeat of Zahhak the Demon King by Feraydun, the Simorgh (magical bird) that raised Sam and helped him in his distress, the riddles posed to Zal by Manuchehr's priests, the seven trials of Rostam, the duel between Rostam and his son Sohrab, which I first read as a poem by Matthew Arnold. The characters in the second half may be more complex, less easy to pin down, but the struggle between hero and king ...

Not feeling too well, but chugging along. Curled up in bed last night, like a kid, to read Dick Davis's translation of Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings . Part of my project to read the ancient classics of all civilizations. I have read so far Gilgamesh, Ramayana, Bhagavad Gita, Zhuang Zi, the Analects, Beowulf, Iliad, and Odyssey. I appreciate suggestions for reading. Shahnameh, the Persian national epic, was composed by the poet Abolqasem Ferdowsi in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries C.E. "Its subject matter is vast," writes Davis in the Introduction, "being nothing less than the history of the country and its people from the creation of the world up to the Arab conquest, which brought the then new religion of Islam to Iran, in the seventh century C.E." The scope is vast but the telling, in Davis's prose translation, interspersed with verse, is pleasingly simple. The battle is between just kings and nasty demons who make themselves tyrants...

After a long interval, I finished reading Calasso's retelling of the Indian myths. I summarized the first six chapters in this blogpost . This post will be briefer on the next nine chapters. Chapter VII describes the sacrifice of the horse, the "king of all sacrifices," Calasso writes, for he who celebrated it became king of all kings and would obtain everything he desired. Before the horse died, it was allowed to wander any land it wished, protected by four hundred armed guards. During the wait, stories ( pariplavas ) of the deeds of gods and kings were endlessly recited. Narrative thus became . . . a way of preventing the relationship with the wandering horse from being broken. The narrative wandered around like the horse. The secret thought of the narrative is the horse. The secret thought of the horse is the narrative. When the horse returned, it was strangled, and then the king's first wife lay with the dead horse, its phallus introduced into her vulva. When morn...