Eros at Play | Hacker News Reader

Eros at Play

aeon.co

66 pointspepys12 comments

The internet works in mysterious ways, I just discovered Sappho's poetry for myself yesterday - here's 2 opposing performances of the same poem, [1] a recreation of the ancient greek and lyre, and [2] a well done english translation with electronic gesture-controlled harmonization (of Imogen Heap fame). It's really been dragging me into wanting to learn more about ancient people -- how little has changed !

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOlIqozu3Fg

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks19HI3r2yQ

(Translation side note, a few of the translations I've seen take "χλωροτέρα δὲ ποίας ἔμμι" to mean "I'm greener than the grass", whereas [2] skillfully places the meaning as "I'm paler than the grass drying", next line is "yes it seems I am dying", does anyone know why this would be a common mistake?

All I know is χλωρο is "Chloro" as in Chlorophyll !)

It seems to me that Ronald Knox's On Englishing the Bible remarks that the "pale horse" of Revelations is "chloros" in the Greek.

Oh very interesting, thanks for the tip

It seems this may be related to that wine-dark sea of homeric greek, I'm seeing some references that Chloros is also used to describe the color of honey ! a pale yellow, so that chloros might be more about brightness than hue.

Another aeon article goes into detail... https://aeon.co/essays/can-we-hope-to-understand-how-the-gre...

thanks again

”All I know is χλωρο is "Chloro" as in Chlorophyll”

It also is “Chlor” as in Chlorine (the element). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine says that’s a ”pale yellow-green gas”

It's amusing that now the (to me, fairly natural) "strangely gratifying...withholding of details and delaying of pleasure" is portrayed as "[casting] off the imaginative constraints of mass culture", when the general story has been that treating sex like shaking hands or sharing a cigarette is itself the breaking of old-fashioned constraints. The circle of life, I suppose.

Opening graphic is NSFW, btw.

Really? That looks like fine art to me, I don't think I would have an issue with this at work.

NSFW warnings aren't about what you have an issue with. They're about what your hypothetical 60-year-old conservative boss has an issue with.

So anything not work related I suppose.

Fair enough. That's a good way to formulate it, I will keep this in mind.

Hypothetical _US_ (or prudish) 60-yo conservative boss.

Really, trying hard to, I don't envision a single European country where this would qualify for NSFW.

Thanks for the heads-up. I work in an open-floor-plan office, and dozens of people might be able to see my screen at any random instant. This includes men and women and some from other countries and with different cultural backgrounds.

_Probably_ nobody would have seen it on my screen and _probably_ nobody would have given it a second thought if they had, but I prefer not to make people uncomfortable!

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