At 9:03 AM -0700 10/5/03, Jon Corelis wrote:
>The Muse is literally the first person to appear in Western literature
>(Iliad 1.1.) Following this line of thought, it's perhaps interesting that
>"anger" is the first word in Western literature. And continuing our perusal
>of Homer, I've always thought it delightful that we don't get more than two
>pages into the oldest book of our literature before we find some old fart
>saying, "You know, back in the old days when men were really men ..."
>(Iliad 1.259ff.)
>
>==================================================
>Sappho incidentally apparently didn't have a problem with the idea of the
>Muses, since she says in so many words that her life was dedicated to them.


Hi Jon

I said way way back that the Muse I was talking about didn't have
anything much to do with the one Homer invoked. And in fact one of
my own sequences is caled Mnemosyne, after memory, mother of the nine
muses. Mnemosyne alone knows how to contemplate the past, the
present and the future simultaneously and to know the totality of
things in one glance: it is easy to see why in an oral culture she
was so celebrated, because she was, literally, culture. What the
muse gives to the ancient poet is _memory_, without which he could
not enumerate the name sof the gods or warriors or the cosmogony of
the world. Before there were nine muses, there were three: Melet,
Mneme and Aoide, in a shrine in Helicon, who indicated three modes of
poetic activity: the first, mental exercise, concentration and
attention; the second, memory and the third the completed poem. By
permitting the poet to share their memory and vision of both the
divine and the mortal, the muses allow the poet to inaugurate the
real, and to participate in the ordering of the world. This seems to
me a very different and rather interesting idea of muses, as opposed
to the more modern romantic idea, which is the one I have problems
with.

At 9:03 AM -0700 10/5/03, Jon Corelis wrote:
>I'm not sure what there is to say about patronage that hasn't been in dozens
>of books. Since poetry has no commercial value, its producers in order to
>produce it simply have to be given time, which means money. The patron's
>motives are perfectly understandable: to gain the prestige of supporting
>activity which has recognized cultural value, and secondarily to have a few
>flattering personal references in the output. Patronage no longer exists
>because we now live in a society in which there are no noncommercial values,
>so in general the only arts which can be produced, and the only ones which
>are valued, are those which make money. But the record of patronage, when
>it existed, at producing poetry is pretty good: it's worth putting up with
>"O Maecenas descendent of many kings..." to have "Never seek to know,
>Leuconoe,..."

Patronage does still exist; on the whole the patrons are now
governments and universities.

Best

A