MODERN-DAY RHAPSODES
Reported by Stanley Lombardo
Department of Classics
2083 Wescoe
The University of Kansas
Lawrence
Kansas 66045-2139
U.S.A.
After an encouraging start at the 1993 meeting of the Classical
Association of the Middle West and South, we decided to go ahead
with a second installment of Open Mike for Rhapsodes at the 1994
meeting in Atlanta. About forty people attended the session
(scheduled in the last time slot of the meeting), with ten
participants reading/performing selections up to fifteen minutes in
length of Greek, Latin, or original translation. Pamela Gordon
presided, setting a friendly, informal tone and encouraging
everyone to help themselves to the wine and cheese provided.
Authors represented included Homer, Hesiod, Sappho,
Mimnermus, Terence, Catullus, Vergil, Ovid, and Lucan. Four
new translations were featured: Jane Joyce's Pharsalia (part of
the Erictho scene, horrifically read in English and Latin by Pamela
Gordon); Deena Berg's Adelphi (the first scene between the two
fathers, played by David Armstrong and Gareth Morgan); Betty
Rose Nagle's Fasti (three limpid catasterisms, read by the
translator): and Stanley Lombardo's Theogony (the opening and
castration of Ouranos, recited by the translator in straw hat and
staff).
There were two musical performances: Bert Steiner sang two
original Modern Greek songs, and Paula Reiner sang Sappho in
English and Greek with guitar accompaniment. Dan Levine read
three Mimnermus poems in Greek. Pauline Nugent did a Dido
speech from the Aeneid in Latin, and joined Gareth Morgan in a
Greek rendition of the Hector and Andromache scene from Iliad
6. David Fredrick performed Catullus 63, the Atthis poem, with a
fine sense of the ithyphallic rhythm and a nice falsetto in the
middle.
The climax was Gareth Morgan reading the end of the Iliad in
Greek. As Dan Levine remarked afterwards, when Gareth reads
something, it stays read. This is now the forty-somethingth
consecutive semester Gareth has been reading Latin and Greek out
loud during every noon hour with his students and colleagues at
Texas. It shows.
The Open Mike was a huge success in promoting the dramatic
reading of mostly non-dramatic classical literature: epic, elegiac,
and lyric as it turned out. We would like to hear some prose as
well next time, an epideictic speech maybe (we keep inviting
sophists in our announcement, but they must be going elsewhere),
a passage of Apuleius, some Plato or Cicero, whatever. We are
hoping that CAMWS will make Open Mike for Rhapsodes a
regular event at the annual meeting. Next year in Omaha.
Stanley Lombardo
Stanley Lombardo, professor and chair of Classics at the University of Kansas, translates and performs Greek epic.