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On Ancient Paths
In Schliemann’s Library
Title: discoverer of the site of Troy.
Central imagery: classical architectural terms; not just referring to the room, but the several layers of an archaeological site.
l. 9. Trabeated: term applied to post and lintel construction.
l. 9. Doric: The earliest order of Greek architecture.
l. 10. Entablature: “The uppper part of an order, consisting of architrave, frieze and cornice."
l. 10. Tympanum: many definitions differing according to discipline, but here, the triangular area of a pediment. And of course the ear drum or small drum.
l. 15. Areostyle: The “arrangement of columns in which the space between each is three and a half times the diameter of one column.”
l. 20: re the confusion over which level was the Troy of the Trojan War.
l. 22. A Moveable Feast: Referencing a set of memoirs by Ernest Hemingway.
l. 23. Beach: Sylvia Beach owner of Shakespeare and Company Bookstore in Paris and first publisher of Ulysses.
l. 25. Conjunctival: Joyce had conjuctivitis which is an inflamation of the eye.
l. 27. UnIthical: Not necessarily unethical.
l. 28. Entastic: Entasis is the slight buldge added to columns to make them appear straight.
l. 32. Metope: the space between two triglyphs in a Doric frieze - originally left open, late had carvings.
l. 34. Frieze: the middle part of an entablature.
l. 40: from a poem published in “Organon”-1969, Eastern Washington State College
l. 43. Triglyph: a vertically grooved block used in a series in a Doric frieze.
ll. 44-45: From W.B. Yeat’s “The Hawk”
“I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.”
“I will not be clapped in a hood,
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist,
Now I have learnt to be proud
Hovering over the wood
In the broken mist
Or tumbling cloud.”
l. 47. Stylobate: the substructure on which a colonnade stands - the foundation.
l. 55. Leucothea: the sea-goddess, changed by the gods from Ino to Leucothea- after fleeing from her husband, she threw herself into the sea - saved the shipwrecked Odysseus by giving him her veil.
l. 62. Natal: pertaining to a person's birth-Sylvia Beach gave Joyce his copy of 'Ulysses' on his birthday. Neither neo- or pre-.
l. 68. Machicolation: “In a mediaeval castle, a projecting parapet supported by corbels and having openings between the corbels through which defenders could drop missiles, etc., upon assailants.”
l. 75: and following. Pound was sentenced to St. Elizabeth’s mental hospital for treason for his radio broadcasts during WW II in which he called himself “Uncle Ez.” “A Lustrum for You, E.P.” was written by Charles Olsen; several layered pun on “lustrum”: in Latin lustrum can be a whorehouse, a swamp or bog, or it can be an expiatory sacrifice done every five years; it can merely mean five years, or the five-year tax census. Also, Pound’s “Lustra,” a book censored by its publisher in 1916.
l. 78: Eliot’s “Four Quartets” and “The Wasteland.”
l. 84. Sempiternal: having no known beginning and presumably no end.
l. 91. Acroterion: A pedestal without a base used to support statues over the pediment.
l. 93: the “Ovidian Rag” rather than the “Shakespherian Rag” in “The Wasteland.”
Note- Quoted architectural definitions are from “A Short Dictionary of Architecture,” Dora Ware and Betty Beatty, 1945.