War and the Iliad is a perfect introduction to the range of Homer's art as well as a provocative and rewarding demonstration of the links between literature, philosophy, and questions of life and death.
Simone Weil's The Iliad, or the Poem of Force is one of her most celebrated works--an inspired analysis of Homer's epic that presents a nightmare vision of combat as a machi...
War and the Iliad is a perfect introduction to the range of Homer's art as well as a provocative and rewarding demonstration of the links between literature, philosophy, and questions of life and death.
Simone Weil's The Iliad, or the Poem of Force is one of her most celebrated works--an inspired analysis of Homer's epic that presents a nightmare vision of combat as a machine in which all humanity is lost. First published on the eve of war in 1939, the essay has often been read as a pacifist manifesto. Rachel Bespaloff was a French contemporary of Weil's whose work similarly explored the complex relations between literature, religion, and philosophy. She composed her own distinctive discussion of the Iliad in the midst of World War II--calling it "her method of facing the war"--and, as Christopher Benfey argues in his introduction, the essay was very probably written in response to Weil. Bespaloff's account of the Iliad brings out Homer's novelistic approach to character and the existential drama of his characters' choices; it is marked, too, by a tragic awareness of how the Iliad speaks to times and places where there is no hope apart from war.
This edition brings together these two influential essays for the first time, accompanied by Benfey's scholarly introduction and an afterword by the great Austrian novelist Hermann Broch.
THE
true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is force. Force employed by man, force that enslaves man, force before which man's flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with force, as swept away, blinded, by the very force it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the force it submits to. (查看原文)
To define force-it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all; this is a spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing us:
...the horses
Rattled the empty chariots through the files of battle,
Longing for their noble drivers. But they on the ground
Lay, dearer to the vultures than to their wives.
The hero becomes a thing dragged behind a chariot in the dust:
All around, his black hair
Was spread; in the dust his whole head lay,
That once-charming head; now Zeus had let his
e... (查看原文)
比起学者分析，更像是用文本表达自己的观点，不是很严谨，序里点出薇依微调了一些段落，不过还是挺有趣的。Bespaloff写Thetis and Achilles的部分。
“Thetis herself never plays the mother of the conquering hero; she remains the tortured mother of a son in agony. H...比起学者分析，更像是用文本表达自己的观点，不是很严谨，序里点出薇依微调了一些段落，不过还是挺有趣的。Bespaloff写Thetis and Achilles的部分。
“Thetis herself never plays the mother of the conquering hero; she remains the tortured mother of a son in agony. Her presence restores Achilles to a juster sense of human proportion; she saves him from dissolving into myth.”(展开)
All beautifully written. 很難想象在weil被中文學界高度關注的時候bespaloff在英語研究中都行跡罕至；對Weill來說，力量（暴力）是伊利亞特中可以清空和石化一切生命的絕對主體，任何人甚至無法附著在力量之上（全文保持對人名的漠不關心）真正的史詩精神則在於認辯這一力量並拒絕——而非反抗，這種精神從伊利亞特直接蔓延到了福音書，而後失落。對Bespaloff而言，力量是美...All beautifully written. 很難想象在weil被中文學界高度關注的時候bespaloff在英語研究中都行跡罕至；對Weill來說，力量（暴力）是伊利亞特中可以清空和石化一切生命的絕對主體，任何人甚至無法附著在力量之上（全文保持對人名的漠不關心）真正的史詩精神則在於認辯這一力量並拒絕——而非反抗，這種精神從伊利亞特直接蔓延到了福音書，而後失落。對Bespaloff而言，力量是美麗的(beauty of force)，真正的英雄是抵抗的保護者赫克托爾。Broch試圖用荷馬史詩和托爾斯泰作為藝術生長的路標，此前，神話融入詩歌，此後，詩歌又向神話回歸；（時代的）老年風格（cp. 阿多諾、薩義德）的過早強加在藝術形式上，現代藝術為存活必須叩問本質：抽象，技術焦慮，脫落的詞彙。(展开)
这几天我不禁又开始思考这个问题。 这本书包含了三位作家对战争的看法，他们都是犹太人，他们写作的时间都在二战时期，他们都是通过荷马史诗中的《伊利亚特》作为出发点。 我其实只读了其中薇依的散文“The Iliad, or The Poem of Force”（伊利亚特，或力之诗），因为这一篇评...
(展开)
Ellenbuch
0 有用 Champloo. 2024-02-13 15:20:45 加拿大
比起学者分析，更像是用文本表达自己的观点，不是很严谨，序里点出薇依微调了一些段落，不过还是挺有趣的。Bespaloff写Thetis and Achilles的部分。 “Thetis herself never plays the mother of the conquering hero; she remains the tortured mother of a son in agony. H... 比起学者分析，更像是用文本表达自己的观点，不是很严谨，序里点出薇依微调了一些段落，不过还是挺有趣的。Bespaloff写Thetis and Achilles的部分。 “Thetis herself never plays the mother of the conquering hero; she remains the tortured mother of a son in agony. Her presence restores Achilles to a juster sense of human proportion; she saves him from dissolving into myth.” (展开)
0 有用 摇梨 2024-10-26 01:40:07 美国
All beautifully written. 很難想象在weil被中文學界高度關注的時候bespaloff在英語研究中都行跡罕至；對Weill來說，力量（暴力）是伊利亞特中可以清空和石化一切生命的絕對主體，任何人甚至無法附著在力量之上（全文保持對人名的漠不關心）真正的史詩精神則在於認辯這一力量並拒絕——而非反抗，這種精神從伊利亞特直接蔓延到了福音書，而後失落。對Bespaloff而言，力量是美... All beautifully written. 很難想象在weil被中文學界高度關注的時候bespaloff在英語研究中都行跡罕至；對Weill來說，力量（暴力）是伊利亞特中可以清空和石化一切生命的絕對主體，任何人甚至無法附著在力量之上（全文保持對人名的漠不關心）真正的史詩精神則在於認辯這一力量並拒絕——而非反抗，這種精神從伊利亞特直接蔓延到了福音書，而後失落。對Bespaloff而言，力量是美麗的(beauty of force)，真正的英雄是抵抗的保護者赫克托爾。Broch試圖用荷馬史詩和托爾斯泰作為藝術生長的路標，此前，神話融入詩歌，此後，詩歌又向神話回歸；（時代的）老年風格（cp. 阿多諾、薩義德）的過早強加在藝術形式上，現代藝術為存活必須叩問本質：抽象，技術焦慮，脫落的詞彙。 (展开)