apsun's blog

Although I am a big Shakespeare fan, this was my first time reading The Tempest. I wanted to write about a scene that stood out to me because of its modernity and originality. In Act III, scene i Prospero’s daughter Miranda proposes marriage to Ferdinand, Prince of Naples and hier and son to Alonso. He is the first man she can remember seeing other than he father and falls immediately in love with him and him with her. Although Ferdinand pays her many compliments, Miranda is the one of the pair really initiating the love confession. She is the one who propositions marriage to the Prince after asking him if he loved her. These are brazen questions for a woman to ask a man shortly after meeting him, even for our time, let alone the Shakespearean era. Miranda’s behavior is shocking, but Shakespeare includes a clever quality to her character that allows her behavior to be uncouth without Miranda so. Because she is isolated from social custom, the audience can have no expectation for her to behave as a conventional lady and so her advances come off looking sweetly pure and naïve, not overly eager and desperate.

My favorite lines from this scene are when Ferdinand proclaims his servitude to Miranda and her father happily, he says, “Hear my soul speak: / The very instant that I saw you, did / My heart fly to your service, and there resides / To make me slave to it, and for your sake / I am this patient log-man”. I also liked when Miranda tries to repay Ferdinand’s compliment of her beauty by complimenting his looks. She comes off sounding a little strange and unconventional because his is the first face she has ever tried to admire. She says, “How features are abroad / I am skilless of; but by my modesty / (The jewel in my dower), I would not wish / Any companion in the world but you; / Nor can imagine form a shape, / Beside yourself, to like of.”

The Ferdinand/Miranda love story might be one of my favorites in the Shakespeare tradition for its originality and purity. This scene especially conveys the unspoken bond between two lovers that need nothing besides each other to realize their happiness together. It is this element of positivity and unfaltering confidence in their love for each other, even without comparison to other lovers or other perspectives, which make their sentiments seem so beautiful and true. 

After reading Cabeza de Vaca narrative, and seeing how much information there was about him on the Internet I was very surprised I had not heard of him before. I was even more surprised to hear that my roommate new exactly who he was when she saw me reading his book. I asked her how she knew of him and she said that she had taken an Explorers of America course in her middle school in San Antonio, Texas. Considering that Cabeza de Vaca had so much direct influence in the discovery of Texas, it makes sense that Texas children be well informed of his arrival. However, I wondered why I, growing up in San Francisco California, had never heard of him before. Unlike Columbus, Vaca has intimate relations with the native peoples he meets and even becomes like them, taking on the role of healer in their tribe. This inside-look at Indian tribes as well as the sheer amount of life-threatening events that come between Vaca and his men should surely warrant this narrative a more prominent role in middle school/high school education. His story is interesting and deep and I am happy to have finally learned about an explorer I wish I had known about sooner.

On another note, the animated movie El Dorado, while pretty uninformative was very good. I even found myself picturing it a lot while reading Vaca’s narrative!

Many of my peers touched upon the element of communication with the Native Americans in Cabeza de Vaca’s narrative. Because Vaca didn’t speak the any of the many tribal languages that were frequenting the Americas at the time he complains about difficulties that arise from a language barrier, such as hostage situations and negative influences on Vaca’s attempt at Christian conversion.
However, what struck me about his narrative was the amount of communication Vaca and his men were able to have without knowing the language. The two races share many intimate moments over the course of Vaca’s travel log. Including but not limited to a major rescue and aid for him and his men after Vaca’s shipped had wrecked and clear enough communication to Cabeza de Vaca that he had the qualities necessary for a healer. In especially the latter, these seem like they would take more than just wordless empathy to convey fluidly. Nevertheless, Cabeza de Vaca usually is able to make (what seems like) relatively educated guesses on what the native people are trying to say to him, as well as what they are saying to each other, just by observing their interactions with each other, he and his men, and gesture.
It seems as though either Cabeza de Vaca must be wildly guessing about messages the Indians are trying to convey, or that the humanity that is shared between the two groups has allowed communication to transcend past speech. As a linguistics student, I found this to be a  pretty interesting premise. In linguistics, many philosophers try and describe a language’s relationship to objects in the world. A point pretty often made in the foundations of linguistics is that it would be impossible to discern what specific words meant in an unknown language just by observing their actions. Its is known as The Indeterminacy of Translation, or W. V. Quine’s Gavagai argument. Read further here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_of_translation. The point regards the connection between language and behavior, that they are inextricably linked. Cabeza de Vaca are able to gather information about what the natives are “saying” due to their behavior and mostly think they have gleaned an adequate understanding of things, however, it could be so that his interpretation is muddled by Vaca’s own speech and behavior in relation to the Indians. 

I had the intuition upon learning that Columbus had read Marco Polo's travel log, that his motive may have been primarily an adventure seeking one. However, it is hard to defend the actions of him and his crew as being motivated purely by the want for an exotic experience. I think these are important controversies to bring up, but I would never be so radical as to make the argument that his discovery not celebrated or to say that Columbus' Day should discontinued to be a holiday. A peer of mine wrote a blog post about certain scholars writing on how the victimization of the natives has been almost idealized so that they may gain unification out of the traumas they collectively endured. In similar vain, and more relevant to the morally uncomfortable questions Columbus’ “discovery” raises, it the concept of the creation myth.
In a Steinhart class I took last semester called Persuasion and Propaganda, we learned that nationalism is strengthened when a birth story of the nation is incorporated into education and society in general. The idealization of America's birth, or the sugarcoated version of Columbus’s discovery we are usually told as children, is our creation myth. There is so much importance in raising awareness about the genocide that occurred during those early years, but perhaps there is a quality equally as important that comes from telling every American child, first, the story of brave Christopher Columbus sailing the ocean blue. Is unity among a nations people something that must always be contrived? Or is it possible to maintain a united nation if pride was to take a backseat to the truth and the violent version of the story was instead replicated? These questions surround the righteousness and creation of a creation myth. Personally, it is hard for me to make the argument that a story with more violence, and yes, more truth should replace an idealized version of Columbus’ discovery as the birth story of our country. I am not sure kids growing up in America should be responsible for handling more cynicism about their country then what they will eventually glean from higher education, the internet, and television. Maybe Columbus is like Santa Claus. 

Columbus’ initial voyage to the New World was made possible because of his relentless petitioning to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. He required their permission and blessing both from a political position as a citizen of Spain and an economic one. Their investment of three ships plus goods and crew was literally the reason why Columbus’ voyage was possible and the catalyst for America’s eventual discovery. What I came to realize was that what Columbus was looking for from the Spanish king and Queen was a sponsor. Columbus therefore appeals to what the Spanish royalty are most interested. He assures them his journey will be one primarily in search of riches, to conquer new land, and to propagate Catholic conversion.
The fact that the approval for Columbus’ journey to America came after so much time, and so many attempts, brings up the question of if what Columbus wanted to gain from this voyage were the same aims he had proposed to Ferdinand and Isabella. Maybe his initial requests contained goals geared more towards academia or geological exposition. Perhaps his drives were more egocentric, like gaining fame and fortune as Polo had done, or more personal even, like fleeing an unrequited love or impressing a requited one. We may never know if Columbus had ulterior motives for going on his trip, ones that he did not mention to his sponsors. Although they would have sparked our interest today, Columbus’ records do not contain these personal details. Their absence is not confusing because the narrative documents a service to the king and queen and therefore such personal details would have been inappropriate. It is a bit unsettling, however, that this is the reason we know less than more about Columbus today.
Columbus enters into what is a “sponsored by” agreement with the Spanish royalty, and their desires therefore take prominence over his own. It is interesting to look at such an antiquated example of the sponsor/sponsee relationship, because it is one dominating the media of the world we live in today. Could Columbus have been the original sponsored man? And if so, how appropriate that he discovered America - a land that would one day become plastered with product placement. If Columbus hadn't been pressured to claim the lands he discovered for his country, convert natives to Catholicism, and seek gold at all costs, all because of his sponsor requirements, then maybe America would be a different type of country than it is today. Was Columbus a sellout?

I have been thinking about the pearl fisheries Battuta describes in the Persian Gulf ever since I read Battuta's description of them. Battuta writes about pearl divers who could hold their breath for up to two hours underwater collecting oysters. He describes a method of attaching a rope to these divers so that men in boats may pull them up quickly once they needed oxygen. Battuta even touches upon the chemical reactions necessary to create a pearl by describing how shells are pried open and their contents exposed to oxygen. I was intrigued by this practice and did a little google-ing to learn more about the pearl industry. In an article called Pearl Fisheries in History, Battuta’s account is mentioned as one of the earliest records of the Persian Gulf’s pearl fishing industry. The article (http://www.karipearls.com/bahrain.html) is kind of a dry read. More interesting was Wikipedia’s link on pearl hunting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_hunting).
Even though it does not specifically mention the Persian Gulf it satisfied my curiosity about how divers were able to hold their breaths for so long. Apparently, “in order to find enough pearl oysters, free-divers were often forced to descend to depths of over 100 feet on a single breath, exposing them to the dangers of hostile creatures, waves, and drowning, often as a result of shallow water blackout on resurfacing”. Wow.

While Marco Polo centered his log primarily on trade routes and goods, Battuta expands the interests of the traveler further to include not only commerce, but also personal observations of his daily life. This included mentioning the foods he was served, the places he stayed, and how he traveled from point A to point B. In addition, Battuta makes many comments regarding the overall mindset of citizens of certain cities. These anthropological theories were both interesting and impressive for their insightfulness and for being of tonality modeling a modern-day traveler. More than anything, his remarks on people were the ones that left me thinking after I had finished his travel narrative. Specifically, Battuta mentions the cities of Damascus, Jerusalem, Mecca and Basra to be filled with citizens who possess the quality of undoing kindness onto strangers. In Damascus, for example, citizens participate actively in providing endowments for those less fortunate members of the community. It seemed to correlate that anytime Battuta would reach a major religious landmark, the city that surrounded it would be so overcome by its religious significance that its residents were overwhelmingly pious. Perhaps this is due to the fact that members of a religious epicenter like Mecca and sacred cities like Damascus which hold famous centers of worship like the Umayyad mosque, must be accustomed to religious travelers and therefore do not hold xenophobia. However, the way Battuta describes things, it seems more like a major mosque or temple is powerful enough to have a daily, peaceful influence upon the citizens who live among it and worship in it.
On a final (unrelated) note, I liked hearing about the crazy customs of the Ahmadi dervishes at Umm ‘Ubayda. I did a project on whirling dervishes in high school and it was neat to see a specific group of them brought up in Battuta’s travel log. 

As I have a personal interest in writing and reading poetry, I wanted to take a look at Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan”. He is reported to have written the poem after an opium trip dream about a description he read of the Khan Polo mentions in his travel accounts. The full text of the poem is available here:
http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=48043&pageno=58
I have read Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner poem and it is one that has stuck with me my entire life. His poem about the Khan was less monumental, although still quite moving. Coleridge has a way with narrative poetry. His descriptions are short and sweet, although still fresh and unique. I particularly liked the lines “gardens bright with sinuous rills” and “Five miles meandering with ever a mazy motion”. This poem is fragmented due to the fact that a visitor interrupted Coleridge’s writing and he apparently lost his opium inspired poem. I don’t know if I believe that he had the entire thing memorized, it may have just been the drugs talking. Regardless, I liked the start to this epic poem and found myself pulled into crazy the Pleasure-Dome world of ice and sun wanting to know more about how Coleridge imagined the Khan in all his power. 

I really enjoyed Marco Polo’s account of his travels through the Eastern world. Even though there exists an ongoing debates regarding which parts of the novel are fact and which are fiction, I was less concerned with viewing this text as a historical document and more evolved in enjoying a travel log filled with so much wonderment. As we discussed in class, many travelers (and I know I am guilty of this) exaggerate parts of their journeys, or leave certain things out, when recounting them to others. I was not perturbed by this with Marco Polo mainly because his stance of unquenchable curiosity for knowledge on and experiences within the mysterious Eastern world was so prevalent through the tone of the record and the quick pace at which the Polo team moved through cities.

I was particularly grabbed reading about Marco Polo’s interpretation and interaction with the Buddhist monks living in the Tibetan mountains, under the worship of Kahn. He was able to reveal information about the Buddhist monastic way of life that had never been known before. Some things that shocked me were the dense population of monks within individual monasteries (up to two-thousand!) and that some dressed in a uniform of yellow and red to symbolize the “two great sects into which the lamas are divided” (a footnote on pg 149). I had always imagined that monks were required to wear (stereotypically) dressed in black robes. Another stereotype Polo quashed was his data that not all monks were required to remain celibate, although he does mention that all monks had shaved heads and beards, a detail that aligns with popular belief.  Although Polo does not go into expansive detail about his time with the monks, there seems to be evidence that many scholars have tried to recount his time there more thoroughly. Specifically, through an excerpt in Laurence Bergreen book Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu, I learned that Polo was displeased with the sparsity of lifestyle the monks practiced and generally opposed to their culture because of its association with idolatry (pg. 78). Knowing a little about the basic values of Buddhism, I thought this repulsion was kind of ironic. Check out this cool National Geographic article with specific reference to Polo’s time with the Chinese monks!
http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/marco-polo-photos/#/yellow-hat-monks_11349_600x450.jpg

Since Hephaistos makes such a point to distinguish Egyptian culture from every other ancient civilization at the time, it got me wondering what the biggest, or rather; most relevant difference was differentiating Egypt from the rest of the world. My thoughts turned immediately to Egyptian rulers being female and the general feminism present in Egyptian in comparison to other ancient societies to did not grant such rights to women. I found myself on a cool Queen’s of Egypt website. Check it out! http://www.kingtutone.com/queens/cleopatra/

Herodotus records important factual information about his observations on Egypt, Cairo, and the Egyptian way of life. He goes into a great deal of specificity and although his descriptions are so accurately detailed his writing comes off a mundane, he fluidly transitions through describing many aspects of Egyptian culture. I was interested in learning about Egyptian pets and animal care as it is (incredulously) relatable to the animal rights movements in modern civilizations. Specifically, I was surprised at learning about the extreme levels of respect and reverence held towards household cats and dogs, and shocked at the personal sacrifices made after one of these creatures had died (shaving eyebrows/body hair). I had assumed that empathy for animal rights was a product of civilizations advanced as my own and never imagined its existence in ancient societies.

However it is my personal opinion that the real gems of Herodotus’ An Account of Egypt are found in his re-tellings of succession stories within the Egyptian monarchy. Specifically, I was enchanted by the story of Pheros, son of Sesotris, who came to the thrown after his father committed suicide without embarking on a militaristic rite of passage voyage. He is blinded for ten years after catching a disease from a river water flood and is told by an oracle that he may only regain his sight once receiving water from a woman who has not slept with men besides her husband. After finding her and getting his sight back Pheros married the woman and killed, by burning, all the women who had failed him and offered stone obelisks of dedication toward the temple of the sun. I enjoyed this story for its grim romanticism. I liked the concept of a man needing a woman to see in, and how the metaphor is taken so literally. I also thought that, on regaining his vision, Pheros decided to grant importance to light – something that can be felt, although only truly understood when it is seen, and also perhaps the original symbol for wisdom’s illuminating quality.
One concept repeated throughout his account was the Egyptian relationship with death and the afterlife. The detailed burial practices were careful and deliberate, showing a great deal of faith in their traditions. Even more striking was that although judgment would be passed after a person died, usually concerning the actual fatal event, family members had a moral obligation to mourn their dead regardless of social status. The lengths to which an Egyptian would go to protect and mourn the body of his dead brethren seem limitless. In one specific anecdote, a brother risks his life ten times over to trick the royal guard into letting him sneak away with his brother’s corpse after he had attempted to loot a royal tomb.

Lastly, I enjoyed the brief descriptions of the seven social classes within the Egyptian community. Without its inclusion I feel as though An Account of Egypt would have been lacking a key element to painting a complete picture of Egypt.