Appendix to Part I: Blind Prophets

This is an appendix to the previous post. See also: Part II.

In research for the previous post, I came across this 1885 translation of Oedipus the King by E. D. A. Morshead. (As an aside, his Wikipedia entry is rather amusing.) The translation holds a strict meter, which I find infinitely preferable to the overly Americanized Fagles translation that is so common.

Walter Kaufmann's translation of the epigram (see image above) from Goethe:

Experience it deep in your mind,
As with a curse I now descend!
The human being is, his life long, blind;
Thus, Faustus, you shall meet your end.

Max Ernst, Oedipus Rex, 1922 (click for larger image).

Exhibit A:

Tiresias:
Alack, alack, how deadly to be wise
Where wisdom profits not!

Exhibit B:

Oedipus:
Thou, foster-child of timeless night, nor me
Nor any man who sees the sun canst harm.

(This in particular shows the inferiority of Fagles, who has: "Blind, / lost in the night, endless night that nursed you! / You can't hurt me or anyone else who sees the light-- / you can never touch me.")

Exhibit C:

Tiresias:
A gale of seeming fortune sped thee on
But to a hell for harbour.

---

Two images of Homer, another blind prophet:

William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Homer and his Guide, 1874. Someone has paired this painting with a musical piece from The Thin Red Line: click here. (Also a larger version of the painting on that site.)

The idea that Homer was blind may have something to do with the similarity of the name to the word homeros, which meant "blind" in some ancient dialects.

Click for larger image. Photo source unknown.

Nuestro Señor de La Mancha

In honor of the Festival Internacional Cervantino, currently in its 38th year, and in honor of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, whose celebration needs no occasion, the following:

Detail of sculpture in Alcalá de Henares, Cervantes' birthplace. [Source]

If by chance these gentlemen should wish to know who is the valorous one that served them so, let your worship tell them that it is the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, who is otherwise called the Knight of the Rueful Figure.

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Alcalá de Henares

Madrid, 1979 [Source]

Detail of the above.

Don Quixote of Havana



Detail of above.



Don Quixote, relief by Anna Hyatt Huntington, Audubon Terrace, New York



Guanajuato, Mexico, home of Cervantino. (The full sculpture includes Sancho Panza, but there seems to exist no good photo of the entire thing online.)

A Career

(a: 1863)

Rodin working on the bust of Father Eymard, from http://www.musee-rodin.fr/sjeun-e.htm

(b)

Rodin in his studio at Medoun. © Harlingue-Viollet, Paris, from http://www.rodin-art.com/