The Odyssey is the story of Americans up to the point where they are well-established, and even so it is detached from the historical side.
quote by Raymond Queneau
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Fiction has consisted either of placing imaginary characters in a true story, which is the Iliad, or of presenting the story of an individual as having a general historical value, which is the Odyssey.
quote by Raymond Queneau
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The Assembly has witnessed over the last weeks how historical truth is established; once an allegation has been repeated a few times, it is no longer an allegation, it is an established fact, even if no evidence has been brought out in order to support it.
quote by Dag Hammarskjold
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Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.
quote by Larry McMurtry
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Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.
quote by Blaise Pascal
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It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.
quote by Eric Hobsbawm
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The story as told in The Odyssey doesn't hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.
quote by Margaret Atwood
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The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.
quote by George Saintsbury
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I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.
quote by Guillermo Cabrera Infante
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It was clear to me that the forms of consciousness of our inherited and acquired historical education - aesthetic consciousness and historical consciousness - presented alienated forms of our true historical being.
quote by Hans-Georg Gadamer
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I did a play called Throne of Straw when I was 11, at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles. It became really clear to me at that point that I enjoyed acting more than any other experience I was having.
quote by Kiefer Sutherland
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During the days of segregation, there was not a place of higher learning for African Americans. They were simply not welcome in many of the traditional schools. And from this backward policy grew the network of historical black colleges and universities.
quote by Michael N. Castle
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On a Close-up of Louis Esterhuizen, on His Poem “Winnie”
So tell me Louis, you allege:
“I went to look at the remarks
found in his biographical sketch:
“I love the work of various poets
and my favourites are AG Visser, Eugene Marais,
Ingrid Jonker, D.J. Opperman, N.P. Van Wyk Louw,
William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, John Keats,
Robert Frost, W.B. Yeats, Yahuda Amichai,
Hannah Szenes, Stevie Smith, Dorothy Parker
and even Homer.””
Further you say: “With the exception of a few names
under the English favourites, all the Afrikaans poets are experts
whom he probably encountered at school,
if a person looks at the verses on his page
you realise that Mr. X has never grown past the incidental
school-contact...In this he is alas not unique.”
Still you are the great master
where it comes to the works of Homer,
as you make a comparison
in your poem “Winnie” between Me. Winnie Mandela
and Homer’s character Penelope,
where there are in reality flagrant contrasts
and the masters canonise this poem
in the “Great Verse Book”
without even being aware of the contrasts?
Let me as just a unfolding poet
who “has never grown past
the incidental school-contact, ”
point out the contrasts clearly:
The story of Penelope comes
out of Homer’s Odyssey where the title
indicates a long historical journey or adventure
or some wanderings
that the main character Odysseus / Ulysses
undertakes before again arriving
at the island Ithaca
where he rules as the king.
For only a very short while
Odysseus / Ulysses is with the nymph Circe
on a island, but the greatest part of the book
is about his wanderings.
In flagrant contrast you write:
”And Penelope comes forward, impatient
and rude as Ulysses is only moving rocks
on his island.”
Where you use the Roman name of Odysseus
to describe Nelson Mandela.
Your Ulysses is not wandering at that stage
or travelling on a historical journey full of adventure
he is busy “moving rocks.”
At that stage your Ulysses
isn’t a king, far less
your Penelope ever becomes a queen,
not even the wife of a president.
The original Odysseus / Ulysses
is only true to one goddess namely Athena
who at various times helps him,
even in his battles,
where your Ulysses divorces your Penelope,
takes another wife
and marries her as a Christian, a Moslem, a Hindu
and also as a Jew.
Still less the ”UDF, AZAPO and also COSATU;
then there’s also the Young Comrades -”
are princes and kings who are trying to seduce her.
Nevertheless you write:
“But while the crown-princes are wooing her
and the almost-princes gather around her
and rollick, the woman plays
in the three storey-mansion
with her last matches.”
The real wife of the real Odysseus / Ulysses
was not involved with a “Stompie” character
who disappeared without a sign
and in the Odyssey the property of Odysseus / Ulysses
is wasted and devoured,
while the princes are fornicating with the maids
and Odysseus / Ulysses
along with his son Telemachus destroys
all of those princes and kings
along with the fornicating maids
that contrasts flagrantly
with the acts of your Ulysses.
Your Ulysses is moving stones, only walks
on his way to freedom a few steps,
divorces your Penelope
and marries another wife.
Nonetheless the original Penelope remains true
to Odysseus / Ulysses,
under the pretext of completing a shroud
that she is weaving for her father in law Laertes,
of which she continually again frays out the thread
and later the two are again together and happy
and it is the nearest
that you come to the original story:
“to again fray out the dream-cloak:
Oh, the endless undoing
of the endless doing, she lisps.”
To my opinion your comparison
between Me. Winnie and Penelope
is rather shallow and totally ungrounded,
as their are just too many contrasts
that you did not think through
and now I am wondering
who is the person
that has “never grown past the incidental
school-contact” as far as Homer’s Odyssey is concerned?
(After Anthony Delius/References: The poem “Winnie” by Louis Esterhuizen, “The Odyssey” by Homer. “On a Close-up of Dirk Opperman, on the Jacket of his Komas” by Anthony Delius.)
poem by Gert Strydom
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Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers.
quote by Camille Paglia
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Unattached for Docking
Being detached
Doesn't mean an attraction isn't needed,
Isn't wanted or wished.
Being detached means a hopeful encounter
Comes...
Unattached for docking!
To rejuvenate idle juices.
poem by Lawrence S. Pertillar
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The Odyssey is the story of someone who, in the course of diverse experiences, acquires a personality or affirms and recovers his personality.
quote by Raymond Queneau
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There is no point in asking a man a question until you have established whether he has any reason to lie to you.
quote by Ken Follet
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Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.
quote by William Golding
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The Million-Pound-Semi-Detached (Demo Recording)
Haven't we come a long way
From newly-weds in our bed-sitter flat?
We skimped and scraped every penny
For a down payment on our semi-detached.
New towns for all the young hopefuls,
A garden suburb with mortgage attached,
Oh, look at us now, sale all agreed, now it's time to exchange the contracts
With the people who sold us a million-pound semi.
Straight out of national service,
Demob suits and short back and sides,
And saw the bomb sites turned air-raid shelters,
Where their families lived all of their lives.
Then the nation built them a utopia,
With pebbledash on the outside, oh,
Look at them now, they've come a long way, they are affluent and bursting with pride.
Soon we'll be sitting inside that million-pound semi-detached,
Detached, in our million-pound semi-detached.
Looking back at the past of this million-pound semi.
Two up two down, a back garden, that was the dream,
Two kids, a cat and a dog, that was the scheme.
Then the kids both grew up and got married and moved out of home,
Then we were strangers again, together alone.
Look at us now, what are we like,
Sitting alone in our million-pound semi-detached?
They're all taking early retirement, the sum total of all of their lives.
Now the country is fat with inflation, immigration has helped us survive.
Once an Englishman's home was his castle,
Now it's a freehold investment to buy, oh,
Look at us now, our debts are all paid, and the Empire has really struck back.
We're the proud owners of a one-million-pound semi-detached,
So detached in our million-pound semi-detached.
A new generation is buying and starting anew,
And learning by all their mistakes the way people do.
Like all the young hopefuls we're buying the future from you,
We hope that one day we'll understand what you've both been through.
Look at us now, what are we like,
Sitting alone, in our million-pound semi-detached?
Look at us now, what are we like,
Sitting alone, in our million-pound semi-detached?
song performed by by Kinks
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.
quote by Harold Rosenberg
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Now, whenever you read any historical document, you always evaluate it in light of the historical context.
quote by Josh McDowell
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