2013-03-24 15:18![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
pareidolist
pareidolistHousman The point of interest is - what is virtue?, what is the good and the beautiful really and truly?
AEH You think there is an answer: the lost autograph copy of life's meaning, which we might recover from the corruptions that have made it nonsense. But if there is no such copy, really and truly there is no answer. It's all in the timing. In Homer, Achilles and Patroclus were comrades, brave and pure of stain. Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you'd find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn't wonder. Also lost.
Housman How is it known, if the plays were lost?
AEH They were mentioned by critics.
Housman There were critics?
AEH Naturally - it was the cradle of democracy. Euripides wrote a Pirithous, the last copy having passed through the intestines of an unknown rat probably a thousand years ago if it wasn't burned by bishops.
AEH You think there is an answer: the lost autograph copy of life's meaning, which we might recover from the corruptions that have made it nonsense. But if there is no such copy, really and truly there is no answer. It's all in the timing. In Homer, Achilles and Patroclus were comrades, brave and pure of stain. Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you'd find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn't wonder. Also lost.
Housman How is it known, if the plays were lost?
AEH They were mentioned by critics.
Housman There were critics?
AEH Naturally - it was the cradle of democracy. Euripides wrote a Pirithous, the last copy having passed through the intestines of an unknown rat probably a thousand years ago if it wasn't burned by bishops.
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