Why Ancient Greeks Kick A-s

I love Ancient Greek poetry. They wrote such embodied, dramatic stuff. The best fiction is about matters of life and death, to paraphrase Tobias Wolff. And the Greeks totally nailed the life-and-death thing. Homer, or some guy with the same name, composed the Blockbusters of his day.

The Illiad Gets Real
The Iliad, for example, starts with the tale of two men fighting over one woman. What's at stake: HONOR: one warrior's wounded pride & what he's going to do about it. READ: ACTION is character. Achilles refuses to fight for the Achaeans (Greeks) because his mistress/spoil from war was taken from him, and given to a lesser warrior and not-altogether competent leader.

Starting to understand why kids don't read the Iliad in Public High Schools? Almost impossible to give the Iliad a Victorian or Right-Wing Christian White-Wash. Kids might really get into the story. And that would be terrible. What if they learn something inappropriate?

But seriously, Doesn't the basic Iliad story transcend time and place? Who hasn't been in a situation(s) where the Guy in Charge is a moron who gets the biggest salary/perks while you're out in the field dealing with real-world problems, kicking and busting your a-s for The Company?.

And when there are cutbacks, who gets hit the hardest? The competent guys doing the actual work, right?

So, Mr. Mediocre, Agamemnon, has to give up his slave-girl, Chryseis, who happens to be a Mighty Priest's daughter, for the good of the Achaean Legion. Agamemnon can't get out of doing his part; he's got to give Chryseis up, or take it up with the Gods, who have been raining fire & brimstone on the Greeks for weeks. And what does Agamemnon do? Mr. Mediocre turns around and demands the woman of Achilles, aka BEST WARRIOR of ALL TIME.

BUT, Achilles has grown fond of his slave woman, Briseis, whom he won in a fair fight. Well, fair by the standards of the time. Agamemnon already has a wife, and if he gets Briseis, he'll have two key women, and Achilles will have none. Furthermore, what a show of disrespect in front of the troops!

So Achilles says: Fine, Agamemnon, take my woman. But, I'm done with you. I'm leaving the battlefield, and I'll be "working" on the Pleasure Principle. Granted, Homer says it more gracefully. Read for yourself...

Wikicommons: L'ira di Achille, 1819, di Jacques-Louis David, Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum

The Iliad IGNITES...

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought
countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did it send
hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a prey to dogs and
vultures...

...Achilles scowled at [Agamemnon] and answered, "You are steeped in insolence and
lust of gain. With what heart can any of the Achaeans do your bidding,
either on foray or in open fighting? I came not warring here for any
ill the Trojans had done me. I have no quarrel with them. They have not
raided my cattle nor my horses, nor cut down my harvests on the rich
plains of Phthia; for between me and them there is a great space, both
mountain and sounding sea. We have followed you, Sir Insolence! for
your pleasure, not ours--to gain satisfaction from the Trojans for your
shameless self and for Menelaus. You forget this, and threaten to rob
me of the prize for which I have toiled, and which the sons of the
Achaeans have given me. Never when the Achaeans sack any rich city of
the Trojans do I receive so good a prize as you do, though it is my
hands that do the better part of the fighting. When the sharing comes,
your share is far the largest, and I, forsooth, must go back to my
ships, take what I can get and be thankful, when my labour of fighting
is done. Now, therefore, I shall go back to Phthia; it will be much
better for me to return home with my ships, for I will not stay here
dishonoured to gather gold and substance for you."

And Agamemnon answered, "Fly if you will, I shall make you no prayers
to stay you. I have others here who will do me honour, and above all
Jove, the lord of counsel. There is no king here so hateful to me as
you are, for you are ever quarrelsome and ill-affected. What though you
be brave? Was it not heaven that made you so? Go home, then, with your
ships and comrades to lord it over the Myrmidons. I care neither for
you nor for your anger; and thus will I do: since Phoebus Apollo is
taking Chryseis from me, I shall send her with my ship and my
followers, but I shall come to your tent and take your own prize
Briseis, that you may learn how much stronger I am than you are, and
that another may fear to set himself up as equal or comparable with me."

....
[Achilles draws his sword to kill Agamemnon, but is stopped by goddess Minerva.]

The son of Peleus again began railing at the son of Atreus, for he
was still in a rage. "Wine-bibber," he cried, "with the face of a dog
and the heart of a hind, you never dare to go out with the host in
fight, nor yet with our chosen men in ambuscade. You shun this as you
do death itself. You had rather go round and rob his prizes from any
man who contradicts you. You devour your people, for you are king over
a feeble folk; otherwise, son of Atreus, henceforward you would insult
no man. Therefore I say, and swear it with a great oath--nay, by this
my sceptre which shalt sprout neither leaf nor shoot, nor bud anew from
the day on which it left its parent stem upon the mountains--for the
axe stripped it of leaf and bark, and now the sons of the Achaeans bear
it as judges and guardians of the decrees of heaven--so surely and
solemnly do I swear that hereafter they shall look fondly for Achilles
and shall not find him. In the day of your distress, when your men fall
dying by the murderous hand of Hector, you shall not know how to help
them, and shall rend your heart with rage for the hour when you offered
insult to the bravest of the Achaeans."

Click to read the Iliad online, via the Project Gutenberg

Don't worry. Agamemnon gets "his due" when he returns home to Greece, but that's a whole other epic! Did I mention that Agamemnon had his daughter sacrificed to the Goddess of Hunting? They don't make Patriarchs like they used to. Thank God. The Atreus Dynasty is seriously messed up. SEEK: Clytemnestra -- One Tough Mother

1974: Big Father lingers...

For more, See Post: Revolution & its Discontents

My parents grew up under a repressive regime that valued OBEDIENCE to authority above all. And Antonio Salazar [left] was the Grand Patriarch, the ultimate AUTHORITY. His right-wing state effectively kept Portugal out of the Modern Age.

My maternal cousin, an anthropologist, once told me, "If you want to know what life was like during the Middle Ages, just ask our parents. It was like something out of the Canterbury Tales."

Approximately 90% of the population was illiterate. My parents were the first generation in our family to go to public schools. My paternal grandmother was illiterate. And my father's siblings, who hadn't finished primary school, were functionally illiterate as young adults.

Jeronimo Vazao: family scholar

My dad was the family scholar. He completed the fourth grade. And he continued his education by joining the Army. My father got teased for his "intellectualism."

"My first year in school," my dad tells me. "The teacher asked us questions. And I answered them. After school, the boys were waiting for me. They beat me up. I learned not to answer questions."

But there were consequences. "If you didn't know an answer, the teacher would smack you with a ruler. But the boys hit harder," says Father. So he learned the Art of Silence.

Church & State, Yes. Civil Liberties, No.

The STATE was allied with the Roman Catholic hierarchy. What Portuguese Catholic bishops said, effectively, became the law of the land. As long as priests remained obedient to Salazar. See how Portuguese rural life paralleled life in the Middle Ages?

Life under a police state, sanctioned by the moral authority of the Catholic Church, was the only political reality my parents had ever known. That is, before we came to America.

I don't take American Civil Liberties for granted. I grew up watching and learning re: What Happens to People schooled in Repression.

My dad was a bit of a rebel, intellectually, if not openly. In the 1960s, he used a short-wave radio to pick up a Communist radio station that broadcast from abroad.

Says my father, "It was the only way to find out what was really happening in the country."

wikicommons: Symbol of PIDE, Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado, the International Police for the Defense of the State. They were rumored to have secret informants in even the smallest villages.

There was no freedom of the press. Or freedom of assembly. The "press" would never announce where Salazar was scheduled to appear. They feared protesters, says my Dad. The News only reported where Salazar had been, and how "welcomed" he was by the Portuguese people.

Mother: Someone is Always Watching

My mother's case, however, is different. She fears the secret police. Even today. And has a generalized fear of neighbors, who could report you to the authorities. THEY would come and get you at night. And, if you didn't have well-connected patrons, you would, quite simply, disappear.

When I was a teenager, my political activism, as minor as it was, terrified my mother. Even today, she acts as though Someone is Always Watching You.

"Life is theater," she says, "and you have to be seen doing the right thing."

My take: you have to act as though you are "right in the head." And, how do people know whether you are thinking the right things, if you don't say the right things? Old cultural beliefs die hard.

Clinging to Eden: Converso Names Take Root

To find out from whom I came, I must travel to Portugal. Ironically, the best records of Conversos are kept by Roman Catholic parishes. Records likely go back hundreds of years -- back to the start of the Inquisition (1497), or to the year the parish was founded, perhaps as far back as the beginning of the Millenium.

If you want a sense of how meticulous Lusos (people of Portuguese heritage) can be when it comes to documenting death and torture, watch the movie Brazil.

[Paradise by Lucas Cranach der Ältere, oil on wood, Wikicommons]

Complications Ensue...

Most of my family, myself included, don't have birth certificates. My only record of "coming into existence" is my baptismal record, or cedula (which doesn't have a picture). The cedula records birth, comfirmation, marriage, and other sacramental rights. The parish also kept records of "good behavior" & financial contributions. And course, records of heretics, and their "outcome."

But, until I can get grant money for travel, I must rely on Library & Web research; exploration of every clue, however far-fetched; lots of Imagination; and Conspiracy-Theory-type thinking.

Confirmation BIAS alert, ie, even though I want to believe my immediate ancestors' surnames are definitive clues, they are about as reliable as hearsay, however juicy my "facts" may be. Pre-Modern people made up & discarded surnames at will, and often village folk re-named their neighbors. Descriptive names might stick to a man, and remained glued, like it or not, to the next generation. Imagine a world where nicknames given by siblings, fraternity brothers, the town joker, and/or gossips have a half-life.

My maternal grandfather, Francisco Pinto, for example, loathed one of his paternal surnames: Alpiarca. It was the name of the village in central Portugal from where his grandfather migrated. When he was nine or so years of age, Francisco Pinto managed to officially eliminate the Alpiarca name from his line of descent. My people are precocious. He wasn't the only anti-Alpiarca campaigner; many kinsmen tried to wipe the name from history. Of course, that/those stories are for another post. And of course, the name survives (in Massachusetts, btw).

A man and/or woman could try to assert control over their destiny and/or re-create their heritage by adopting the name(s) of persons they aspired to be. Or take the socially-respected, Inquisition-Evading names of the local gentry. A powerful patron could be named as a child's godparent, and the godparent's name (and some privileges) would be given to the child.

A great source is Jeffrey S. Malka, author of Sephardic Genealogy: Second Edition, Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World. [More commentary from Malka in future posts]

To briefly sum up: When forced to convert, Sephardic Portuguese chose new surnames that were "close to the earth."

Who, What & Where in the World are my Maternal Surnames?

My mother's natal village contained many wild plants/trees, as well as cultivated orchards & crops. "We had so many trees on the finca (estate)," said my grandmother, Maria do Rosario Bispo Carvalho (abridged name). "It was as if I lived in the Garden of Eden."

Commonly, when Jews were baptized, they re-created themselves by selecting names of trees, eg, Carvalho (Oak), Oliveira (Olive tree), Pereira (Pear tree), Pinheiro (Pine). Less common: fruit, eg, Sousa (type of Sherry grape near the Douro River); or animals, eg, Coelho (rabbit), as in Tony Coelho, former congressman, and Pinto (type of horse), which happens to be my grandfather's name.

A funny thing happened on the way to the Revolution...

I must say, as revolutions go, the Portuguese "Armed Forces Movement" of 1974 was awesome. And I'm not bragging simply bcz my people rock. The universal forces of history & mathematics back me up. KEY STATISTIC: Number of people killed by revolutionaries: ZERO.

Not one person. You've heard of "bloodless" coups. Well, this uprising came miraculously close. A few people were killed, but not by the military. Members of the secret police, the PIDE, fired into the unarmed crowd. But that shouldn't count-- because the PIDE were always killing people.

Watch the movie: Captains of April. Portuguese w/ English subtitles, available thru Netflix. The love story is weak, as love stories so often are when wedged into epic tales of war, but the rest of the film shines. Produced by Maria Medeiros, who you may remember from PULP FICTION, but more important, she sort of looks like me.

Medeiros totally captures the charisma of the revolutionaries, the mood of the times, and how seriously funny the whole thing turned out to be.

FUNNY? First, tanks stopped at traffic lights. I kid you not. I asked my dad about this. "What the hell kind of revolutionaries stop at traffic lights?" I said.

Jeronimo Vazao was in the military, and served in the same barracks (Caldas da Rainha) as did the Hero of the Film (although at different times). My father's Army class was the last to serve on the mainland; all subsequent enlistments were sent to Africa to fight in the colonial war.

Without looking up from his newspaper, my father answers, "Certainly, the officers stopped at traffic lights. As it should be. Order and discipline." Finally, he puts the paper down. "It was a matter of public safety. You have to respect the laws."

MORE FUNNY: Shortly before some Captains of April were scheduled to take over the government radio station, they locked themselves out of their car. At the time, they were parked, unbeknownst to them, in the most notorious homosexual meeting place in Lisbon. And the young men have to change into their uniforms inside the car. Well.... funniness ensues.

For my info re: My family & the Portuguese Revolution, SEE: Flying to America: Revolution & its Discontents

Flying to America: REVOLUTION & its Discontents

I left Portugal nine days after junior officers led a coup against the semi-fascist regime that had dominated Portugal for decades.

My parents planned to work in America for two years, and save enough to mechanize the Vazao stone-cutting business. Then we would return to Portugal.

But then, the Carnation Revolution happened. And political & economic instability ensued. Thousands of refugees from the Portuguese colonies in Africa flooded into Portugal. Many had lost fortunes, and couldn't find jobs. People were desperate, and running out of patience. They wanted government assistance, and they wanted it NOW. My parents feared a Communist takeover.

My dad had initially supported the revolution, but I hadn't known that as a child. Both my parents seemed arch-conservative to me. Mostly, my mother ranted re: communists & my father said nothing, so I assumed he agreed. Yes, I was naive. But then, I was only four.

By 1976 (two years after the 25 de Abril Revolution), the Communists had gained substantial power among the ruling factions. Local communists (including some distant kin) had led the resistance in Portugal, as local communists had led the resistance against fascism in most countries in Europe. After decades, the Portuguese communists had become disciplined and well-organized compared to centrist and left-of-center factions. In the southern provinces, a few large estates had been invaded by landless peasants & Communist allies. Led by their bishops, Catholic priests preached the imminent threat of a Communist takeover.

Communist-led unions organized strikes, but much of the violence was spontaneous. The poor had been repressed for decades, and many acted recklessly. As my father said, "What does an abused and caged dog do when it escapes? It bites the Master." Given the cold war climate, my parents were terrified.

SEE: NYT Film Review re: Documentary: Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (1977)

My mother's employment visa to America was sponsored by the Honeywell Corp, or some such. She was a tailor & embroidery teacher, who started her own school. More importantly, she designed wedding dresses and other custom-made garments [see: photo of one of her creations]. We were supposed to settle in Philadelphia.

Instead, we remained in Ossining where my mother had one cousin who had emigrated from Portugal to Brazil, and from Rio to the US. More important, her second cousin also lived there and was available to pick us up at Kennedy airport.

Yes, we have cousins in many cool places, including Paris & Madrid, and, at one time, Mozambique & Angola. The Portuguese are a mobile, swift-footed people. You never know what tomorrow holds. You may have to leave in the middle of the night. Literally, as did our cousins in Angola.

[To be Cont'd]

Want to see a film re: Carnation Revolution? CLICK: A funny thing happened on the way to the Revolution, re: Capitaes de Abril, or Captains of April (available on Netflix!)

STAY TUNED: I made a 10-minute video with still pictures & audio entitled, "Maria Vazao Wills a Miracle" for Oral History class @ Sarah Lawrence. Pictures will be posted. And perhaps audio too.

Poetry: Fountain of Youth

I write poetry because I need poems to vitalize everyday life, and not because I am a professional and/or "working" poet. I don't write every day. I should, but I don't. I'm a lover, alas. I'm not married to the Muse.

Perhaps, it's fear of commitment. Sometimes I go weeks w/o composing. But every single day, I envision poetry mentally & take out my five senses. Sometimes I experience a mental poem as vividly as I experience a film. A scene. Dialogue strings. A fight and/or flight. An image. A metaphor growing like a tree, with petals hue-ing & falling.

And daily, I play with words. We go running, words and I. Sometimes we take off, and fly too close to the sun. Call me spacey. Astronauts do it with more thrust.

Seriously, I don't desire publication, at this time. I have no desire to publish the Great America [fill in -------] at any point in my life. I've published exactly one poem. Which is one more than the number of stories or essays I have published. Unless you count the series of short stories I wrote for a student-organized tabloid at St. Augustine's Elementary School. That is, until we got busted for publishing w/o school authorization, and, audacious!, charging students for it, and best of all, making money :) Samizdat for the middle school set.

I want people to hear and be influenced by my poetry, and that objective won't be achieved by publishing in journals that few poets read, let alone the general public. My project is poetry performance, and getting grants to work on larger projects & craft, so that one day I will publish something meaningful. Something that spurs folks to do, to be, to vitalize their lives.

For now, I write lyrics, modern-day ballads, and psalms. Some are borderline erotic (ok, maybe I've crossed the border). Some are metaphysical, or otherwise philosophical. But all are passionate, that is embodied. Gut-sy. Incarnate or Carnal, depending on your point of view, or preferred organ of sensation. Whatever. I write what I write. What you do with my words. Well, that's up to you, isn't it?

****

Category: Psalm

Lord,

Show me mercy. I'm just
Human. Breathe me.

Break my blood-brain
Barriers. Commit me.

With your extravagant passion,
Fire me.