However, there are tantalising details along the way that point to a dark poetry of legend. For a start, Schliemann and his direct successors were digging into the fortified citadel; modern remote-sensing has unearthed Troy-proper which is approximately ten times the size.
This population of about 25,000 easily matches the one described in the Iliad. However, what is fascinating is that Homer describes the walls of the citadel, for instance in the scene where Hector runs around the walls.
According to Laphams, Homer describes the actual Trojan war of Troy VI-VII but compresses descriptions with the ancient citadel that dates from about a thousand years previous. In other words, Homer uses poetic licence. They also suggest that the Trojan horse scene could be read as a poetic metaphor, since Troy VIh was levelled by an earthquake, and Poseidon the god of earthquakes, is represented by a horse!
Following this earthquake disaster, Troy VIIa was gutted by fire and evidence of new pottery (meaning a new population) is extant. That is so convincing it hurts, and I was reminded of The Ten Commandments that elsewhere was discussed, with its supremely literal interpretation (P10).
Could it not be, in an equal sense, that the crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and the Israelites is another poetic metaphor? In ancient days there were far, far fewer facts and no easy way to check details. The facts to the ancient Israelites would be basically that they started out in Egypt and ended up in the land of Canaan.
I read a bit more, and “Yam Suph” in Hebrew can actually be translated “sea of reeds”. The image there is more of Egyptian chariots getting stuck in the mire in a sign of good fortune for the rebels. To Byron, fortune is reality (TofF8) – or the fates, destiny.
Etymologically, Karl Hoffmeier writes,
The crossing of the sea signalled the end of the sojourn in Egypt and it certainly was the end of the Egyptian army that pursued the fleeing Hebrews. After this event at Yam Suph, perhaps the verb soph, meaning “destroy” and “come to an end”, originated.
Another possible development of this root is the word suphah, meaning “storm-wind”.. The meanings “end” and “storm-wind” would have constituted nice puns on the event that took place at the Yam Suph.
Nowadays, all we know are facts; contrariwise, we have no knowledge of poetry as metaphor. On top of that, facts are very persuasive to the ego, and this invites in the mirror of illusions – perspective and straight lines. Our world of “facts” leads to the world of algorithms – or number – as opposed to the real world of rhythm and proportion.
Bending facts is poetic, whereas rigidly sticking to them is an ideological vacuum that appeals to acolytes of the sorcery of numbers.
Therefore, I would say that going by Troy, poetic interpretations of history are physically and psychically justifies. It is a rip-roaring yarn, after all!
As CC Beck has said, to overplay verisimilitude is to tell the audience what to think (P4). If life has a story it’s not also factual. Fact is DNA, fact is algorithm. Story is rhythm, symmetries, proportions, balance. Also rhyme.
Poetry amplifies reality not in a literal sense, in a descriptive and narrative sense. Facts in the modern scene lock us into a looking-glass world of distorted reflections. Fiction becomes fact; lie becomes truth.
Facts, meaning news, are the dominant way “they” keep us in-line. Rhyme and the primal strength of rhythm are the reality in the physical and psychic sense of living with power and independence.
Pavillon Noir, Caza 1975 (Pilote)"Tremble, prefab suburbs, grey skyscrapers, demi-lux residences armed with concrete, surrounded by glass and steel, tremble mammoths.. Soon I will have accumulated enough gold to leave my mooring and arm for the running of skyscrapers in action.
At their gaping portholes I will put one hundred canons, their deep holds refuelled with white rum and gunpowder. At the outpost of guy wire I will raise my flag of death..
Soon on top of my armored poop, under the black wind of urban chimneys, running myself like a wedge through the obscure suburbs.. I will pilot a leviathan of reinforced concrete, a terrifying giant.
And the sleepyheads will sink on its passing. And the sad commuters will tremble more so when they see floating on high the shadow of the black flag of the last of the pirates."
Far from the light of news channels lurk the dark inglenooky areas only regeneration can occur. Where the psyche is free to ride on imagination, on pulp fantasies. Where the physical strength of growth destroys light; where there is green revival on the seas of fate - see HB31 destruction of light by forests and the strong shoots, the roots of human culture. Revival from decadence.
Destiny is a tiller-man, a freedom-fighter against the dual entities of businessman and shopper. The one feeding the other with ever-more persuasive words; lies of straight-line diplomacy. On the seas of fate pirates seek out their own destiny – the dream of the universe.
MUSICAL TERRORIST (Ari Up)
