Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Magus and Ancient Greek

The last week, I have made it four- hundered pages into The Magus. I admit it had a bit of a slow start, but now I am quite perplexed. There are constant twists and turns. I'm not sure which of the characters are being deciteful and honest. I also noticed a certain correlation between this story and the tales of ancient Greece; namely that of sexuality. The body and its interactions with other bodies was such a big thing in ancient Greece, as well as the tales of full- grown men taking sexual advantage of boys. This was also implied in The Magus, when Nick was saying how the boys at his school offered a more tantalizing sexual vibe than the women. The difference was that Nick, unlike the ancient Greek gym teachers, did not follow up on this feeling.

In other news, we reviewed for our exam in class. Pieces from all the texts except The Magus will be fair game, though we were gratefully offered about sixty percent of it. Some of the subject matter ranges from Hesoid's Theogony to questions regarding first six chapters of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, and questions such as which goddess was created from Ouranos's dismembered sexual organs (Aphrodite) and what does il lorro tempre mean. For future reference, it means "in the beginning".

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