I Blog For Girls Who Are Plagued By Loneliness Despite Being Overall Well Liked

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The Death Toll of the Earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria may have reached 20,000 people, and that’s outside of all those who are injured and lost.

If you could donate PLEASE do!!!

Here’s a post full of charities you could donate to, but I’ll add my own trustworthy ones here:

Islamic Relief:  teams are on the ground right now providing emergency food assistance, shelter, medical supplies to hospitals and clinics, as well as blankets and tents for those made homeless by the quake in Turkey and Syria

Molham: The team at Molham are currently on the ground helping displaced families in Turkey and Syria who have been affected by the earthquake   

Turkish Red Crescent: The team are distributing essential aid to those affected by the earthquake across Turkey.

The White Helmets: The team are on the ground in Northwest Syria searching for survivors and removing the dead from the rubble.

Turkey Mozaik Foundation: Attempting to provide immediate relief and medium to long term recovery to survivors of the earthquake. 

MSF: remaining in close contact with the local authorities in northwestern Syria and with the authorities in Turkey to extend their support where it’s needed. They’re providing essential life kits to displaced people in the region

Turkey Emergency Earthquake Relief

please PLEASE reblog. Syria and Turkiye need our help!!!

("I exist in two places: here and where you are")

Suzanne Buffam, "Vanishing Interior"

Sufjan Stevens, "The Only Thing"

Rene Ricard, "And Then I Tried"

Constellations. A fourteen weeks course in descriptive astronomy. 1870.

Internet Archive

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

so I was translating the Iliad and of course I had to end up crying again

why?

well, first of all, there’s something important about the Iliad: it’s very common that a certain verse appears a lot of times in the poem (for example, “and thus, X said” or “and then, black death took over his corpse”) because the Iliad and the Odyssey were oral poems. Those verses made it easier for the poet to remember the rest, a bit like the chorus of a song.

Okay. So. In the book 2 of the Iliad, Achilles is with his mother, and he’s crying because Agamemnon has offended him. And Thetis says:  τί δέ σε φρένας ἵκετο πένθος; ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε νόῳ, ἵνα εἴδομεν ἄμφω. (Son, what sorrow has taken over your heart? speak, don’t hide it in your heart, so we both know).

Then we move forward to book 16. Homer shows us a four verse long simile describing Patroclus’ tears: he cries warm tears like a dark fountain pours its waters over a cliff.  Achilles gets worried about him (because who would like seeing the love of his life crying like that? not me, not Achilles) and Achilles asks him why is he crying, and says:  ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε νόῳ, ἵνα εἴδομεν ἄμφω. The exact same verse.

And! then! there’s book 18. Patroclus has died, and Achilles is completely devastated. His mother appears quickly at his side, and, alarmed, says:  τέκνον τί κλαίεις; τί δέ σε φρένας ἵκετο πένθος; ἐξαύδα, μὴ κεῦθε. (Son, why are you crying? what sorrow has taken over your heart? speak, don’t hide it). Yes, this same verse again.

Think about it. The very words Achilles had comforted Patroclus with, Thetis has to repeat them to comfort her son again. At first, he was crying because he was offended; then he cries because, as a consequence of that offence, he’s lost the person whom he loved more than his own life.

Intertextuality in the Iliad is absolutely fascinating and heartbreaking and I’m not okay

07/29