this is combining Ovid’s Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can’t stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.
idk I don’t think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it’s like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.
Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika
and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.
The Excidium Troie + Ovid’s Heroides:
Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman
Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)
a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.
In the midst of writing a play about the children of Priam (Cassandra, Hektor, Paris, Helenus) and this has made me think harder about Paris in two days than I have in years. I need to add some of my own sources because this feels also like a lot of the feelings toward Hektor and his heroic necessity, though his tragedy is more societal than with the gods
the embarrassing realization that if i ever get a tattoo (i don’t think i’ll ever get one), i’m probably gonna get one on my left wrist and it’s going to be patterned like apollo’s bracelet aghgfhd
i don’t really design tattoos so just a leetol idea …. a leetol mock-up of sorts …..
Amphiaraus Sees The End or NO COMMENT ON WHAT THE GODS INTEND
-Statius, Thebaid Book III (trans. Jane Wilson Joyce)
recently I read Jane Wilson Joyce’s translation of Statius’ Thebaid and I’m just so (screams for ten years) about all of it. so. Apmhiaraus and Apollo.
this isn’t how the actual scene itself goes, but more of an exploration of. you know. themes. or more accurately, the culmination of a bunch of thoughts/feelings I had while I was reading it. congrats, you’re favored by the gods! by zeus and apollo. an esteemed seer from a family of seers. no one will heed your warnings because the forces at play eclipse mortal lives. what’s a human being to a plague? you know you’ve been betrayed. violence devours violence devours violence. a cursed house brought all of you onto the stage against your will because it’s a plague, it’s war, it’s an infection, and you cannot exit the scene because the infection will take everyone. you don’t want to die, but you’re favored by the gods! so you will be spared/denied a natural death to preserve your honor, and the site where you fell into the underworld will become sacred ground. you never wanted to be here in the first place.
