wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

Comments

• [1] eva September 15, 2008 - 09:50AM

  Are they associated with Robert Shays? "Achilles In Vietnam" was one of the few books that made sense (if any) of the aftermath of that war.

  Sophocles - more of the "literature of crisis." How apt for our time.

  "Any arrows I may have left lying around,

  I cannot leave for another man to find."

  Or better yet, Euripides: "Unhappy Greeks, barbarians to each other."

  
  
• [2] Ron Mwangaguhunga from NYC September 15, 2008 - 10:50AM

  Philoctetes is also about a terrible combat wound and the loneliness of abandonment. Have David and Bryan gotten any feedback from wounded veterans on that intense play?

  
  
• [3] seth from Long Island September 15, 2008 - 10:51AM

  This should be a Leonard Lopate segment not a Brian Lehrer segment.

  With the presidential election around the corner, Brian should be devoting one third to one half of his program to discussion of the presidential and congressional races.

  
  
• [4] Ron Mwangaguhunga from NYC September 15, 2008 - 10:53AM

  How about "Catharsis." Aristotle regarded Sophocles as the master of Tragedy because of the catarsis of his plays -- esp. Oedipus Tyrannus. Is the emotional healing of catharsis what the authors are after with the veterans?

  
  
• [5] Ron Mwangaguhunga from NYC September 15, 2008 - 10:53AM

  Betrayal plays a great deal in Philoctetes. Do the veterans flinch or even discuss a sense of betrayal after the plays?

  
  
• [6] A.R. from Manhattan September 15, 2008 - 10:54AM

  I agree with #3.

  Enough of this already.

  
  
• [7] eva September 15, 2008 - 10:57AM

  I think there's a value above catharsis (not to underplay catharsis) but to expand everyone's consciousness about how eternal these issues of abandonment of soldiers are - and in making that connection, we can better address that.

  About Doerries' point, the war Sophoclees (and Socrates) and all those men fought in was one of the most tragic, disastrous, hubristic, empire-ending wars ever.

  
  
• [8] eva September 15, 2008 - 10:59AM

  Seth and A.R.,

  I respectfully disagree. If anyone had bothered to read Thucydides, we could have countered the neo-con insistence that Thucydides explained why we had to go to war. Thucydides' history foretold how disastrous Iraq would be, and it did so in excruciating, modernistic detail.