Notebook 09 Pg 75

notes

• Metis - Cunning intelligence
• U-lixes  u-lixez
• Penny Spenda
• Stephen + Milly
• Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes
• Fair go for the workers
• Mindless free markets
• Codex Humanicha
• Jimminy Beckett

commentary

Metis - Cunning intelligence
Poor old, wholly overlooked  Metis.  Written completely out of myth-tory she was Zeus's chief counsellor, the one who advised him on how to defeat the Titans. Jealous of her power he rewarded her by swallowing her whole. Nice.

U-lixes  u-lixez
I am a rogue and peasant knave. I remember with shame that this was an idea I had for modernising the Iliad and thus the name Ulysses. What was I thinking?

Penny Spenda
I am guessing this was due to be an updated rendering of Penelope. The original was so, so much better!


Stephen + Milly
For reasons best known (and now entirely forgotten) I have jotted the names of the two children of Leopold Bloom the hero of James Joyce's Ulysses.

Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes
Obviously when I wrote this I was on a complete James Joyce fest as this is the epigraph to his book 'Portrait of the artist as a young man'. The quote is originally from Ovid's Metamorphoses and translates as "And he sets his mind to unknown arts" (in Ovid the line it continues) "and changes the laws of nature."

Fair go for the workers
An Australian expression which I once heard Clive James use as being the best summation of his own politics and thought it a fair explanation of my own.

Mindless free markets
As above, this was his expression for why unfettered Capitalism does not work as the market itself  has no sense of rationality, justice or compassion.

Codex Humanicha
Here I am with no sense of shame or modesty idly jotting down names for what my works will be titled in the future.

Jimminy Beckett
I remember that here I combined him  with him  to create the idea of Disney meeting disillusion.
Jimminy went on to author the play Waiting for Pluto. By the way the original character in the Pinocchio books got unexpectedly crushed and killed by a mallet in the first chapter, which is very Beckett.