Memory Takes Hold

In the end, it was in the beginning.
 
In a most beautiful paradox, we begin with memory. Mnemosyne and her daughters inspire us to create not only art, but, in the process, to fashion ourselves from all that has preceded us on both an intimate and an historical level. I unconsciously understood this, as my early fascination with mythology attests. But it did not rise to consciousness until I read Great Expectations and committed these words to memory: "Pause you who read this, and think for a moment on the long chain of iron or gold, thorns or flowers, that might never have bound you but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." The perfect roundness of the past—the personal and the archetypal—meeting the present fills me with contentment. And it has been a joy this year to share in the weaving of a communal tapestry of the classical and the contemporary.

“With the Heliconian Muses let us start our song” begins Hesiod’s Theogony, the Greek myth of the universe's origins. The Greeks believed Chaos was the womb in which we were fashioned, and I believe the Greeks were responding to that inexorable desire for understanding that lies in the borderlands, just beyond our comprehension. Our class focused on the importance of the origins that have framed philosophical thought from its inception, forward to the Sartrian tenet of existence preceding essence; the individual past informs the individual present. But in the Jungian sense, the collective past—what he called the collective unconscious—also blends with personal history to create a human tapestry that spans the ages. This fabric illustrates man's greatest endeavors and deepest conflicts, which are first noted in the seminal Western texts: The Iliad; The Odyssey; and The Aeneid. Since the Classics students had previously read The Odyssey and were to read and translate The Aeneid, it was important that they understand how and why Odysseus, Aeneas, and the other warriors of The Iliad have come to embody their archetypes. Our discussion of the Trojan War and its aftermath nurtured many discussions of what it means to be a man and, more importantly, what it means to be human. Agamemnon was universally denounced as an egotistical warmonger, Odysseus was viewed as the flawed human most like us, and Achilles seen as both a spoiled crybaby and a man in a Catch-22 not of his own making. Students were enamored of Patroculus and Diomedes because they could identify with their struggles against the immortal and mortal powers, fate and chance, that exert influence over their own lives. These same archetypes resonated throughout the characters we met in the months that followed: Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Cleopatra, Henry V, Medea, Eleanor of Aquitaine and her sons, and their reflections in the dysfunctional families of Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill. Vanity, insecurity, and the struggles for power and fame—with a corresponding loss of love and empathy—have always motivated humans.

As the first year of the MHS Classics Academy came to an end, the students confidently answered the question of how and why we humans have arrived at this place. The nine young women and men who chose to forge this new path capped the year with a glorious exhibit of the myriad ways in which they synthesized the old with the new and thus entwined themselves with the ancients. Last September, I did not know which aspects of our studies would resonate most strongly and inspire the students’ creative processes. Over the course of the year we struggled with the usual distractions: snow days, schedule changes, college acceptances and disappointments.  Yet the work these students produced revealed they never lost focus and were clearly conscious of the seminal threads that seem to weave humanity in being.

On June 15 the students illuminated their vision of these patterns. Their art, which ranged from tiles and wood carvings to dramatic readings, performances and film, were not simply informed by the works we read and the heated conversations they inspired. The students did not just illustrate the question of how the personal and collective past informs their present. Instead, their art embodied the existential question of who and why we are. Their responses invariably reflected the essential influences of The Iliad and Medea. I confess to being fascinated by Medea, and we had compared the Witch of Colchis with many strong females from Hera to Helen to Electra to Eleanor of Aquitaine to the women weilding political power in the present. But the students' empathy for the Medea, if not approval for her actions, was astonishing. As one young man said as he presented his depiction of Medea and her children, in a series of panels united by two twisted strands that might symbolize the Fates' threads, DNA’s double-helix, or linked omegas, the Witch of Colchis had no choice and any of us, when presented with her dilemma, must accept that we might be willing to act as she did. An aspiring actor and director wove Medea's abandonment into a contemporary tale in which none of the young, hip, urban professionals ends up content, let alone happy. Medea's soul lies in every spouse insulted by the likes of Newt Gingrich or humiliated by Anthony Weiner. We are all the woman scorned.

Likewise, we are all soldiers in those armies at impasse before Troy’s gates. Students depicted the warriors’ character flaws and painful experiences in ways that reflect the human condition. We are as inflexible as Agamemnon and as frustrated as his fellow generals as they watch lives lost to his and Achilles’ stubbornness. They, like us, lament our inability to be heard and understood. We are as divided as Achilles, struggling with irreconcilable choices; the conflict over whether to seek meaning in public glory or in personal satisfaction has certainly not become an ancient artifact. We are also Andromache and Hecuba, watching our husbands and children perish for no good reason, and we are the violated Cassandra, our truths discounted. Two students created pieces that celebrate and embody our divided selves: a mask of the Minotaur, which reflects the inexorable commingling of human and beast, and a symphony, Reconciliation, the harmonies of which urge us to resolve our discord.  In the end their art argues for zugos, Greek for balance.

I am so very proud these nine students, who opened themselves to the muses and allowed themselves to be guided by the possibilities inherent in not simply illuminating the classics, but rather by animating them. Although not all will be directly studying the humanities as undergraduates, I know their work will be shaped by their past, and they will not fail to notice the patterns in their own lives as they follow their paths—ones that overlay the archetypal trails laid out for them by Homer, Virgil, Euripides and all who have come after them. I know that their spirits and the tapestry we wove together will sustain me on my own journey, one that is a bit more balanced and full of wonderful memories.