A Note on the Sirens

 In Circe’s instructions to Odysseus concerning the Sirens she says:

You must drive straight on past, but melt down sweet wax of honey

 and with it stop your companions’ ears, so none can listen;

the rest, that is, but if you yourself are wanting to hear them,

then have them tie you hand and foot on the fast ship,

standing upright against the mast with the ropes’ ends lashed around it,

so that you can have joy in hearing the song of the Sirens. (XII.46-54)

She lets Odysseus know he has a choice, “if you yourself are wanting”. But when Odysseus relays her instructions to his crew he says “but only I, she said, was to listen to them, but you must tie me hard in hurtful bonds.” (XII.159-161) The divine imperative may serve as an easier explanation than the self-subjection to the subtle joy of enchantment. Though Odysseus presumes his men would not understand his choice, Circe understands that this peculiar joy would be attractive to Odysseus.

It is this small lie of omission that caught my attention, because of how progressively elaborate Odysseus’ tales become. This is Odysseus’ second speech after descent to the land of the dead. Though this small omission does not compare to the great deception of his homecoming, it does strike me as an acute sign of change. With the exception of Odysseus’ deception of Polyphemos—“Nobody is killing me by force and treachery”—this is the first explicit example I have caught of Odysseus lying (I am speaking chronologically, not with regards to the sequence of the Odyssey)(If anyone knows of a previous one, please tell me, either from the Iliad or Odyssey!).

The majority of Odysseus’ crew has already been subjected to enchantment, either by escapism of the lotus-eaters or Circe’s forgetful swine-potion.  Though Odysseus appears immune to enchantments. Circe is unable to turn him into a pig. He does not succumb to the temptation of the lotus. Kalypso cannot “win over the heart within [him]”, even with the promise of immortality. What is the enchantment of the Sirens? Why does Odysseus subject himself to it?

This is their song according to Homer:

Come this way, honored Odysseus, great glory of the Achaians,

And stay you ship, so that you can listen here to our singing;
                 For no one else has ever sailed past this place in his black ship

Until he has listened to the honey-sweet voice that issues

From our lips; then goes on, well pleased, knowing more than ever

He did; for we know everything that the Argives and Trojans

Did and suffered in wide Troy through the gods’ despite.

Over all the generous earth we know everything that happens. (184-191)

We know that the Sirens have sung to other men and those men have perished upon the rocks. This is what gives the Sirens their notoriety. That does not mean that their song is the same for all men.

The Sirens call Odysseus by name. The song of the Sirens reveals two things: the Sirens personalize their song to enchant particular men and the Odysseus is enchanted by the promise of knowledge.

The Sirens must have access to the soul of the sailors. It is by this power that they draw men near to their island. The Sirens mix the honey of melody with an individual’s desire. The proportion is correct and Odysseus is enchanted. “I signaled for my companions to set me free, nodding with my brows”(193-194) presumably either to order the men to sail towards the island or jump off the ship and swim there himself.        

              on the island, a listening of communion. (I am reminded of the dual sense we use the word “see”, when a friend asks me if she could see my book. She does not ask for permission to gave upon the book in front of me from where she sits, but to have it herself for her own disposal. Maybe that would make for a whole post on its own, why do we ask if we could see an object when I want to use, examine, and/or possess it?) The song is only a promise of the knowledge of the Argives, Trojans, and everything that happens. Odysseus is enchanted by the promise of absolute earthly knowledge. 

Listening is used in two distinct ways here. There is the listening Odysseus suffers as he is tied to the mast and the listening he could partake in

            Odysseus returned from the land of the dead a few days prior. He has already been privilege to hear the homecoming stories of his friends— Achilles, Agamemnon, and a great procession of Danaan queens. Perhaps this is why the Sirens proceed to promise the knowledge of the Trojans, which Odysseus does not know of, and then total earthly knowledge.

            Circe said there would be a joy in hearing this song. Homer does not give us Odysseus’ reaction. Odysseus does not have time to reflect, as he must swiftly prepare for the passage by Skylla. So why did Odysseus choose to listen? Why does he conceal it from his men? He must appear to his crew as mad. He thrashes in his bond like a dog. The crew thinks, no man would subject his heart to such painful desire. Poor suffering Odysseus, the gods bring all the more suffering upon him. But Circe understands that Odysseus derives a pleasure from the joy in enchantment, and that he will choose to listen. For a moment, Odysseus forgets his sorrows, forgets his homecoming, forgets Penelope, and listens to the song of knowledge. How similar to a philosopher, when given the taste of knowledge, or merely the promise, they must travel to the source. Here, the path to this source is the path to death.

Ultimately, he does not fall prey to the enchantment of the Sirens. If they do sing truly, that “he then goes on, well pleased, knowing more than ever he did”, what does Odysseus know after hearing the song? He does not learn the acts of the Argives or Trojans, nor of all that has happened on earth. Odysseus does know the song the Sirens sang for him. I am reminded of Tarkovsky’s film Stalker. In the film, there is a place called the Zone in which a man’s greatest desire in fulfilled. The film follows three men to the door of the Zone. None of them are able to enter. The three suffer a two-fold terror, the terror of the revelation of one’s greatest desire and the terror of the fulfillment of that desire. The Sirens serve that first role. They can reveal our greatest desire. For Odysseus, it is knowledge. The Sirens cannot offer the gratification. In this moment, enchantment serves as revelation. To seek the knowledge of one’s greatest desire may appear as madness or pain to the world, but for a man like Odysseus, it is a joy to discover himself.

            

Film Classics—Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window"

The opening credits appear before an interior . The blinds of three windows open themselves in succession from left to right. The music of loud horns and drums play. The windows reveal the courtyard of modest city apartments. It is day. Alfred Hitchcock's name flashes across the screen. The camera swings low towards the window. In the center of the screen lies a small window. Through this window, we can see a woman brush the back of her blonde hair. What draws our gaze to this woman? Two things: the color and the motion. I suspect this opening scene may offer a way into understanding sexuality, violence, and ultimately, the act of spectating through Rear Window.  

What is a rear window? A first answer may be the window that is behind us. The window in the back of a car for instance. The rear is found in relation to the activity of the car, the moving forward, which we recognize as the front of the car. In this film, we look out of the window of an apartment. Why do we call it rear? The windows are placed opposite the front door. The door is the gateway into the world. What, then, do the rear windows face? In cars lined up on the highway, the rear-view mirror lets us look at the front of other cars. In Hitchcock's New York City courtyard, the rear window is a gateway into the rear window of other apartments. The rear window is both that which we look out of and look into. Perhaps we have also found the answer the question, what is a window? It is the limit of our built spaces. (Eyes are a kind of window too.) It also both to be looked out of and into. We build windows to allow the light in and our gaze out. Windows are for when we want to look out without going to where we wish to look. At times, this separation is desired in bad weather or protection from the snake in the zoo. But at other times, we find windows to be symbols of separation. Imagine the prisoner meeting their loved one, separated by plexi-glass. Windows can sometimes be worse than walls. They imprison us while allowing us to gaze upon that from which we are exiled. 

After the camera moves towards the window, the camera cuts down to a cat, ascending stairs beneath the window. The camera rolls in a counter-clockwise pan of the courtyard, exploring the space, a family upon a balcony with the child on a tricycle, a man in pajamas lying on a fire escape, the blonde woman, an empty apartment, and ending back inside, where we see a bead of sweat roll down Jimmy Stewart's brow. Cut to a shot of a thermometer. 94 degrees. The camera tracks to the left, refocusing out into the apartment of a man shaving. A large piano sits in the room. The radio plays an interrogating commercial "Men, Are you over 40? When you wake up in the morning, are you tired and rundown?" Hitchcock plays an interesting trick here. The music which played over the credits and throughout the prior sequence of the courtyard is found to be generated by this radio. The music starts again, a latin flavored maraca-backed song. We, as the audience, are hearing the same music as the residences of the courtyard. The sound editor lives in that apartment. Cut to the man sleeping on the fire escape. A alarm clock hanging from the railing sounds, and to our surprise a woman emerges from behind his feet. It appears as if this couple has been driven out of their apartments, perhaps by the heat. Why are they sleeping head to toe?  They are sleeping in public which might explain this modest position, though it is still oddly platonic for a married couple. The camera continue to move to the blonde, now zoomed closer than the prior shot. We can see her naked back and shoulder blades. She walks into her living room with the larger window. She is wearing very short pink shorts. She is putting on tube top when it falls to the ground. She flexibly bends over to pick it up, displaying her rear to the camera. The rear window has obtained a third sense. The window displays a rear to the world. The woman continues to bounce around the apartment making breakfast, stretching her leg up into the arm, revealing her thigh and crotch. The camera continues to move. We hear the laughter of children. The narrow alley reveals a water truck driving down the street with children following playing the water released from the truck. An arm reaches out of a window to remove a piece of cloth from a bird cage. The camera returns to the apartment to Jimmy Stewart' sweat soaked brow. We now see he is in a wheel chair. The camera moves down to his leg cast. Upon the cast is scribbled "Here lies the broken bones of L.B. Jefferies". We ask, how did he break his leg? Hitchcock answers us with a piece of economic story telling. The interior of the apartment shows a smashed camera, photographs of a race car accident, horrific images of bombs and war. This man must have been injured in one of these accidents that he photographed. He has seen the world at its worst. He thinks that the rest of the world should see the worst too. The final two images of this introductory scene are the most disturbing. We see first the image of a woman in negative. The negative is the image privilege only to the photographer. The inversion of light and dark is a horrifying effect. The camera pauses to make sure we see. The camera continues to a stack of magazines below, the same picture, of a blonde model in a black dress. I think this opening scene serves as a synecdoche, revealing L.B. Jefferies suffering of interior life, insecurities of aging, isolation, sexual frustration, professional dreams, and hidden revelations. 

The film divides itself into two. There are the private frustrations of the impotent Jefferies. The cast makes his travel aspirations impossible. The cast also goes up to his waist, making him sexual impotent. He fears the commitment of marriage as well, disgusted by the trivialities of domestic life, preferring the life of "fish heads and rice". His injury has forced him to live that domestic life. And to a purpose that Jefferies himself claims is not for mere "entertainment", he looks out of his rear window into the windows of his neighbors. The images of lives unfolding within small windows is familiar to a world with more and more screens, cell phones, computers, projectors.  Initially, it appears as if there is a clear distinction between the inner and outer world. I want to humor a thought for a moment, that what Jefferies sees through the rear window is not the outer world, but rather descent into the dark inner world . To gaze through the rear is the same as gazing into the abyss. I would like to remind the reader that we call a rear both a behind and a bottom. Jefferies apartment is situated on the third floor. Thus the camera is perpetually looking down. Jefferies does not get to look at the world, of deeds and politics, but into what happens behind closed doors, what men do when they put on the ring of Gyges. To look through the rear window is to look into the abyss of the human being, unaware of observation (If this is possible is a different and interesting question.) Let us pray that they do not look back.

Should we peer through the rear window? Jefferies asks this to Grace Kelly's character Lisa.

Jefferies: Do you, do you suppose it's ethical even if you prove that he didn't commit a crime?

Lisa: I'm not much on rear-window ethics.

Jefferies: Of course, they can do the same thing to me. Watch me like a bug under a glass if they want to.

Jefferies resolves that as long as the windows goes both ways, as long as he submits to the same scrutiny, it may be okay. I believe Jefferies is being watched like a bug on three different levels. On the first, the lives that he watches are mirrors of his own frustrations. Second, the suspect of the main murder-plot Thurwold does recognize Jefferies as the observer and watches back. And third, Jefferies is watched like a bug under glass by the camera, and thereby by us, the audience. 

The stories of his neighbors express the same frustrations he experiences. The frustrated composer struggling to produce music is the same as Jefferies, who is a frustrated artist as well, an artist of the still image. The newlywed couple express his desire for sexual satisfaction while revealing the unpleasant consequences of married domestic life. Miss Lonelyheart, alcoholic and lonely, suffers the same isolation and boredom as Jefferies. The blonde woman, whom we find named Miss Torso by Jefferies, embodies a distant unconsummated erotic desire. (Sidenote: What an grotesque nickname for a woman. Who is cutting women up, Jefferies?) At times, Jefferies evens prefers to gaze upon Miss Torso while the princess of Monaco lies upon his bed. Why prefer the image to the real, obtainable woman in front of him? Miss Torso demands nothing of Jefferies—erotic excitement without any commitment. These images and characters reveal eddies of Jefferies unconscious, but it is unclear whether Jefferies has this self-recognition.

What about Thurwold? The film is most known for this plot. Jefferies witness activities and images that raises suspicions of murder. The camera, while Jefferies is asleep, shows Thurwold and a woman leave the apartment in the early morning. This piece of dramatic irony lulls the audience to side with the detective pragmatist. We think Jefferies is just a paranoid man who has been deceived by a self constructed conspiracy. The images can be reasonably explained—maybe. This is just another instance of Hitchcock's genius.

Thurwold and his wife, Anna, can be read as an inversion of Jefferies and Liza. Jefferies and Anna are both invalid. They must be taken care of by Thurwold or Liza/Nurse. The bond of caretaker and patient can be a embarrassing and humiliating role for a couple to fulfill. Jefferies suspicion of Thurwold allows Jefferies to fantasize a dark desire. Jefferies is not willing to marry Liza because he wishes to retain his Odyssean desire for experience. but he is unable to liberate himself because of his injury. Thus, he was unable to make the choice nor reap the benefits marriage, but has been forced into the domestic life without his consent. What does the murder by Thurwold mean for Jefferies? It is the ultimate act of liberation. The caretaker, bound to the dependent patient, servers the tie. 

I want to focus on the moment Thurwold looks into the rear window. Liza has just been caught in his apartment. The police arrive after Jefferies called the police to report a domestic dispute. Liza talks to the officers while she holds her hands behind her back. She wags her ring finger bearing a wedding ring. Jefferies notices the sign and says to the nurse "She's got it". Jefferies stares through his camera lens, the closest amount of zoom, and moves up to the face of Thurwold. He stares down at the ring. He recognizes that her motion is a sign. He turns his head and stares directly into the camera. He sees us. 

The plot thought: a woman would never leave behind her wedding ring. The story about his Anna leaving must be bogus because she would have brought her wedding ring. Therefore, she did not go on a trip but was murdered. The conclusive evidence is found. There are some strange meanings for Liza to be wearing the ring. By putting on the Anna's ring, Liza has adopted the role of the wife. She serves as a stand in for the deceased Anna. This must be what the police initially think walking into the apartment. Further, by wagging it at Jefferies, she wishes to draw attention to it. On the plot level, she say "Look, I have the evidence." But the power of the image itself says "Look, this could be your ring. Look at what I am capable of doing for you. I could be your wife." The semiotics of the framed stories recall Hitchcock's experience with Silent Film. We are not privileged to the sound of the interior stories, but they are played out in motion, gesture, and expression. Liza violates the dramatic space of Thurwood's apartment because she is aware that she is being watch. Thus, the act of drawing attention is what draws Thurwold's eyes up into the camera. We only give signs when there is an observer. Thurwold can now regard Jefferies as a bug under glass. 

What can we learn from watching? What is the danger?  Rear Window offers a nuanced exploration of these questions both formally and substantially. The blur of diegetic music and camera motion leaves us unsure as to what is real in the film and what is not. We know no one was murdered for the sake of this film, but that does not mean that the demons the film witnessed are no less real—the demons of ennui, isolation, lust. We watch films the same reason Jefferies watched the lives of his neighbors, not merely for entertainment, but to be witness the mysteries of the human being in our terribleness and beauty. There are real dangers to act of watching, when these images consume us, when they substitute the realities of our own lives. Perhaps if we examine our own lives with the same scrutiny we observe murderers and films, we may see something true.

Film Lately—Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine

Blue Jasmine is a big film with big shots and big emotions. This is Woody Allen's third film shot in 2.35:1, the other two being the iconic Manhattan and forgettable Anything Else. This is a departure from Allen's normal use of 1.85 or 1.37. This aspect ratio is often reserved for films about comic book heroes and snowboarders. Allen used this additional canvas to write his love letter to New York in Manhattan with his gorgeous black & white cityscapes. Though Blue Jasmine does take place in San Francisco, the city does not play a starring role as New York does in Manhattan. Yes, Allen does give us few shots of the Frisco Bay and the rolling hills. In Blue Jasmine, Allen fills his screen with the caged, nervous, delusional emotions of the starring role Jasmine. The effect is claustrophobic. I was reminded of Paul Thomas Anderson use of 70mm in last fall's The Master, a film stock normally reserved for epics such as The Lawrence of Arabia and Ben-Hur. In both Blue Jasmine and The Master, the medium of epic film has been turned inward, to explore the world of emotion, memory and subjectivity.

Blue Jasmine is a loose interpretation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Cate Blanchett's Jasmine moves in with her sister in San Francisco after suffering hardships in the east. Allen's method of story telling consists of jump cuts from San Francisco to New York, with the major story in San Francisco progressing chronologically.  The back story in New York jumps achronologically, narrowing in on a harrowing act of betrayal. The cuts are at times abrupt, but they retain a psychological continuity. At times they serve as simple vehicle for back story, but also to dive into the mind of Jasmine—images, painful and joyous memories, loose associations. The mention of french perfume throws us into a 5th Avenue conversation with a friend.

Allen is at his best with the awkward deadpan coffee talk and quips. A notable scene that comes to mind—Jasmine is babysitting her nephews and has taken them out to a pizza joint. Over a glass of white wine, she turns on her socialite cocktail party persona, advising them to always tip service workers well and reminiscing how "Blue Moon" played when she met her husband. The boys gape, understanding nothing of a world of which they will never be members.

Overall, the film left me neither sympathetic for Jasmine nor did I find myself hungry for blood. Allen offers a rich commentary on the aesthetic beauty of class divisions. He seduces us with creme blouses, big sunglasses, and white stone over the bay with beautiful faces. But the viewer knows the moral compromises that brought those images into being. On the other hand, he portrays the lower class with a sort of cartoon tenderness of simplicity and charm. In an economically divided world, Allen offers no definitive answers. On a philosophic level, Allen asks, what do we do with our history? Do we forget and move on? Or do we try to revive the past in a different form? Can we forgive? Blue Jasmine offers a portrayal of one women's path of self-destruction trying to find an answer and a new life in the west. The film is notable darker than his past two films Midnight in Paris and To Rome with Love. Allen channels the spirit of Beckett in his post-recession America, an America that is lost and forgetful.

Book Recommendation—Hinges: Mediatations on the Portals of the Imagination by Grace Dane Mazur

  

Tum demum horrisono stridentes cardine sacrae

  panduntur portae.                                                     

The awaited

Time has come, hell gates will shudder wide

On shrieking hinges.                                         

-Virgil, The Aeneid

My fellow St. John's alumni and current students may be familiar with Grace Dane Mazur: she recently gave a writing workshop here in Annapolis and her husband/mathematician  Barry Mazur gave the lecture What is the Surface Area of a Hedgehog? in 2011.

Hinges is a compilation of 5 essays: The Hinges of Hell, The World of Fiction and the Land of the Dead, Forbidden Looking, Hell and Hinges Revisited, and Hinges of the Mind and of the Heart.

Mazur unusual pedigree grants here uncanny perspective in the nature of  art, imagination, eros and death. She has studied painting and ceramics, morphogenesis and micro-architecture of silk worms, and teaches at the MFA program at Warren Wilson in Creative Writing..

Through this collection of essays, Mazur feels free to hinge (her verb of choice) between the classical works of Literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Parmenides-- to the classics of Visuals Arts, Ruben's Orpheus and Eurydice with Hades and Persephone, Fra Angelico's Christ in Limbo, and the 17,000 year old Cave Paintings of Lascaux. These literary and artistic investigations are punctuated by her personal accounts of the adventure to the Caves of Lascaux with her husband Barry and Eva Brann, the rape of Turk's Caps from a local farm, and her keenest interest--the act of writing. 

Mazur explores a question that I myself have been interested in for some time: why do men seek wisdom through Hades? What can we learn by traveling through the darkest parts of the soul and of the world? She explores this question through Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Parmenides, and the modern work of Katherine Mansfield's Laura in "The Garden Party". I continue puzzle over the descents or movements outside (Mazur stresses that we need not think of the journey into the underworld as strictly "under" or "below" but that the journey is simply into the world of the Other, free of strict spatial relation) of Don Quixote into the Cave of Montesinos, Dante into Hell, and Hans Castorp up to the Sanatorium. She has helped me reexamine these latent questions with honest blend of phenomenology and poetry. 

Mazur is most interested in the writing. This gives her writing an electric thoughtfulness that transcends a typical synthetic pan-department essay. This stands out with lines like, "Because the close, focused attention of the writer is often even more piercing and prolonged than that of the reader, the imagined world replaces by its intensity and brilliance the ordinary world of the living. This, too, can lead to a certain terror." P. 51

Hinges is a meandering journey through the soul of the artist. Mazur writes in an accessible syntax, approaching poetic heights. I would recommend this to all who are interested in the matters of art. 

The Mock Trial of Nidal Hassan

Gentle readers,

I wish to bring to your attention the farce playing out in the military court in Fort Hood. As I am sure you recall, 4 Novembers ago, in 2009, Nidal Hassan fatally shot 13 military personal and injured another 32. After years of political and tribunal procedures, the trial has begun. Allow me to paint a picture of the courtroom on Tuesday.

Hassan sits in a wheelchair in his military fatigues—the only one in the room wearing military uniform. Hassan is confined to a wheelchair because of the wounds he suffered from Sergeant Mark Todd's pistol. He is paralyzed from the waist down. Due to his body's difficulty in temperature regulation, he dons a small green knit cap in between proceedings. Hassan wears a full beard, after a year of controversy whether or not he could appear in court with the beard. Hassan claimed it was under his religious affilation to wear the beard. The previous Judge Gregory Gross was replaced after ordering Hassan to be forcibly shaved. He was replaced with the currently presiding Judge Tara A. Osborn.

via AP

Hassan had attempted twice earlier to plead guilty to the charges, but due to the rules of military court, a defendant cannot plead guilty to a crime in which the death penalty is a possible sentence. The charges must go to a trial by jury. 

The absurdity continues to grow—Hassan has elected to represent himself. With no legal background, Hassan has been given a legal defense team in order to assist him with the technicalities of legal procedure. Hassan assumed responsibility of interrogating jury members and cross-examining the witnesses. These witnesses include the very people that he himself shot.

“I will be cross-examined by the man who shot me,” said Sergeant Lunsford, 46, who retired from the Army and remains blind in his left eye. “You can imagine all the emotions that are going to be coming up.” via NYT

In his opening statement Hassan says, "The evidence will clearly show that I am the shooter."

What was the sound of the court room after those words were spoken? I can hear nothing but a tenuous and baffling silence.

 This man has been denied the ability to confess. He must now endure the charade of defense. His team of lawyers yesterday requested to be released claiming that Hassan was actively trying to receive the death penalty. Judge Osborn put the court to recess to speak to Hassan in private. Her recent ruling today allows Hassan to continue to act as his own attorney. 

Literature cannot compare to the strangeness of this trial. A crime of this magnitude is only possible in the modern age, due to the advance technology and wide scale distribution of repeating fire arms. The political and religious ties are complicated—a muslim american working for the Army, with correspondence with questionable Islamic leaders. This trial combines the American Psyche's fear of mass shootings with the xenophobia of Muslim America, played out in a fatalist kafkaesque court room drama. I will continue to follow this trial and share with you my thoughts.