Aeneid Doodle: Creative Platypus

-
The difference between Virgil and Homer is the difference between written poetry and oral poetry: Virgil is finer, but Homer is truer. I've preferred Homer since my student days, but I have had to teach Virgil on occasion and each time I give it my level best. When all else fails, I can fall back on the sheer beauty of Virgil's imagery. Here we have a scene from Book VII where Aeneas meets his father's ghost on the fields of Elysium. The asphodel shines in the twilight of the Dead Realm as Anchises shows his son the spirits of famous Julio-Claudians yet to be.

Comments

Jessica Snell said…
Ooh, I really like this one.
6:29 PM
James said…
This one's been banging around in my head for several days now and I finally had time to put it down on paper due to the flooding (schools closed, roads out, cars flooded=low cost of living the rest of the year). I like this sort of abstract stuff. There's a truly talented artist who has a slew of paintings in this style(only much better) based on A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan that you can find by googling the titles. Meantime, I'm waiting for that season of life where I can slip in an art class or two at a community college.
7:26 AM
Jessica Snell said…
Yikes! on the floods. Hope you guys are keeping high and dry!

Art classes sound truly luxurious & wonderful. May that season come soon!
2:22 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

-
Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
Read more