With or Without an Epitaph

AN ANCIENT CITY
WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

The Palaces of Nimroud Restored, 1851
by James Fergusson (1808 –1886)

From the 1853 collection of scholar and excavator
Sir Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894)

Where to find Nimrud on the map:
20 miles south of Mosul / Nineveh

Not shown on map:
Jerwan is 25 miles north of Mosul / Nineveh
Why these three ancient cities: Jerwan, Nimroud, and Nineveh?

First of all, let me say that if you are sitting down to read the poems of contemporary American, Jim Barnes, you had better have a World Atlas handy, because you are going to need it! In a good way! The geological and emotional strata of these poems run deep and wide. Five college towns in Ohio -- can you trace the route across the State? Small hometowns in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, with names unknown to many (well known to me). Cafes, museums, ruins, villas -- all over Europe! You must envision where they are, where the poet has been and takes you now, where you may one day go on your own steam. E.g., The Fertile Crescent:

At Jerwan

Stretching south toward Nineveh
the fertile lands Sennacherib
surveyed have now neither grain nor gold
for the hand holding compass and fold.

Long before the droning night came
down for the spoils and the wind with blame
for the deadly absence and the fall,
frowning figures left their places

on the crumbling marble monuments
and sank into the dry river bed
where the hot hand that fell still means
to fall on the holy heads of gods.

No gardens hanging from the banks,
no stone aqueducts now standing
lone, level, or otherwise.

Far from
Ishtar and Nineveh only this:
dust, thirst, desert despair,
the dream of Sennacherib gone wrong.

by Jim Barnes (b 1933)
in Sundown Explains Nothing, 2019

Artist’s Depiction of the Jerwan Aqueduct
Sennacherib (750 - 681 BC) ruled Assyria from 705 BC to 681 BC, and beautified the capital city of Nineveh with aqueducts, canals, hanging gardens, temples, and a “palace without a rival.” Yet, as Barnes points out, all that magnificence has been replaced by "lone, level" sands, eerily distant. The reader is reminded of proud fictional (or maybe not) Ozymandias, king of kings:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822)

My son Ben, on vacation in London, also took a moment to remind me of Ozymandias, sending me this photograph of the tomb of eccentric 17th-century medical quack Lionel Lockyer. Ben added his own clever caption . . .

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

. . . and the following commentary:

"On the other hand we've all heard of Ozymandias,
so maybe he was on to something?"

Or at least Shelley was!"

[True, it is not all that unusual to hear
the name of Ozymandias twice in one week
-- and at least twice before on this blog!]
Back in the day, Lockyer (c.1600 – 1672) successfully marketed a miracle pill that apparently cleansed the entire digestive system by causing simultaneous vomiting and diarrhea. Though it sounds exceedingly unpleasant, his product had a huge following during his lifetime; and upon the occasion of his death, he took the opportunity to write as his epitaph one final advertisement for his "Pilulae Radiis Solis Extractae" (extract of sunlight!), more commonly referred to as "Lockyer's Pill":

Here Lockyer: lies interr'd enough: his name
Speakes one hath few competitors in fame:
A name soe Great, soe Generall't may scorne
Inscriptions whch doe vulgar tombs adorne.
A diminution 'tis to write in verse
His eulogies which most men's mouths rehearse.
His virtues & his PILLS are soe well known...
That envy can't confine them under stone.
But they'll survive his dust and not expire
Till all things else at th'universall fire.
This verse is lost, his PILL Embalmes him safe
To future times without an Epitaph

Lockyer thought for sure his pills would outlast his faux sonnet. Ozymandias and Sennacherib envisioned generation after generation surveying their mighty works. Yet in each case, the future went its own way, choosing a different fate for the would - be heroes, leaving behind a "dream . . . gone wrong."

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Monday, October 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Lausanne
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

When Women Wore Names

A NAME THAT IS ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

I know thee by name. . . .
Exodus 33:17

Fear not . . . I have called thee by thy name. . .
Isaiah 43:1

JONI

KITTI

For more Cartouche Hieroglyphs: Alphabet ~ Generator
A few months ago, my friend Joni
shared this photograph with the caption:
"Ran the sun up to this 'Warrior Song'
by The Red Shadow Singers
and received my new name Running Redbud
Love my shirt feeling grateful ❤️"

Listening to the old Anishinabe Thunderbird Warrior Song reminded me of a favorite essay from teaching days when one of the recurring themes on my syllabus was "you deserve to be called by your name." It took me all summer to track down a copy, but here is an excerpt, just in time for Joni's birthday:

The Names of Women
Louise Erdrich

"Ikwe is the word for woman in the language of the Anishinabe, my mother’s people, whose descendants, mixed with and married to French trappers and farmers, are the Michifs of the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota. Every Anishinabe Ikwe, every mixed-blood descendant like me, who can trace her way back a generation or two, is the daughter of a mystery. The history of the woodland Anishinabe – decimated by disease, fighting Plains Indian tribes to the west and squeezed by European settlers to the east–is much like most other Native American stories, a confusion of loss, a tale of absences, of a culture that was blown apart and changed so radically in such a short time that only the names survive.

"And yet, those names.

"The names of the first women whose existence is recorded on the rolls of the Turtle Mountain Reservation, in 1892, reveal as much as we can ever recapture of their personalities, complex natures and relationships. These names tell stories, or half stories, if only we listen closely.

"There once were women named Standing Strong, Fish Bones, Different Thunder. There once was a girl called Yellow Straps. Imagine what it was like to pick berries with Sky Coming Down, to walk through a storm with Lightning Proof. Surely, she was struck and lived, but what about the person next to her? People always avoided Steps Over Truth, when they wanted a straight answer, and I Hear, when they wanted to keep a secret. Glittering put coal on her face and watched for enemies at night. The woman named Standing Across could see things moving far across the lake. The old ladies gossiped about Playing Around, but no one dared say anything to her face. Ice was good at gambling. Shining One Side loved to sit and talk to Opposite the Sky. They both knew Sounding Feather, Exhausted Wind and Green Cloud, daughter of Seeing Iron. Center of the Sky was a widow. Rabbit, Prairie Chicken and Daylight were all little girls. She Tramp could make great distance in a day of walking. Cross Lightning had a powerful smile. When Setting Wind and Gentle Woman Standing sang together the whole tribe listened. Stop the Day got her name when at her shout the afternoon went still. Log was strong, Cloud Touching Bottom weak and consumptive. Mirage married Wind. Everyone loved Musical Cloud, but children hid from Dressed in Stone. Lying Down Grass had such a gentle voice and touch, but no one dared to cross She Black of Heart.

"We can imagine something of these women from their names. . . ."

Yet, despite their power and beauty, these elegant and naturally descriptive names were slowly, surely, and sadly, overwritten throughout the 20th Century by Christianized, Anglicized and Frenchified replacements: "She Knows the Bear became Marie. Sloping Cloud was christened Jeanne. Taking Care of the Day and Yellow Day Woman turned into Catherines. Identities are altogether lost."

Erdrich explains what happened in her family of origin: "The daughters of my own ancestors, Kwayzancheewin – Acts Like a Boy and Striped Earth Woman – go unrecorded, and no hint or reflection of their individual natures comes to light through the scattershot records of those times, although they must have been genetically tough in order to survive: there were epidemics of typhoid, flu, measles and other diseases that winnowed the tribe each winter. They had to have grown up sensible, hard-working, undeviating in their attention to their tasks. They had to have been lucky. . . . all the mothers going back into the shadows, when women wore names that told us who they were" (emphasis added).

Happy Birthday to Running Redbud!

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com