Initial Thoughts on Machiavelli's "The Prince"

Niccolo Machivelli's The Prince
Translation by William J. Connell

When I first saw that Machiavelli's The Prince was one of the books required for the Humanities Core class, I was actually kind of excited. This book has been on my to-be-read pile for awhile now; since about junior year in high school, actually. 

It was during that year of high school, that my AP Language teacher assigned each student a topic to research and to present a 5 to 7 minute power point presentation. My topic was Machiavelli. Because of this, I had some prior background knowledge on Machiavelli, his political and social status around the time he wrote this book. That being said, that is all I had. My high school self spoke 7 minutes on Machiavelli, his social standing, his book The Prince, and some of his ideologies but could not be bothered to actually read his most known work. 

Now that I am required to read it I must say this: it is a tough read. Now the translation is easy enough to understand, the tough part is wrapping my mind around his [Machiavelli's] concepts. However, when I do come across some of the points I presented in high school such as the infamous question "Is it better to be feared or loved?" I find a wave of new energy come over me and I try to read The Prince more diligently. 

I suppose the reason I am slowly making my way through the text is because I cannot connect to the history. I am not extremely knowledgeable of all the historical and political figures that were prominent during Machiavelli's time  (thank goodness for those footnotes!). I understand the want a prince may have for growing his empire or why a lord might want to become a prince. I even understand why having troops of one's one would be better in the grand scheme of things than having mercenary arms (hired soldiers). I am just finding it difficult in making a connection between myself and the message of the book. 

I have often thought that people's tones and intentions come across differently through just plain text (i.e. a letter, a book, on a screen such as a text or website) than when they are actually in your presence speaking to you. I did not know Niccolo Machiavelli when he was alive and have no idea how he would have spoken the ideas in his book. All I have is the book. 

Machiavelli is so straight forward in his composition that he does come across as harsh at times. I understand why at the time of its publication this book was so controversial, why it was banned years later, and why Machiavelli gained an unfavorable reputation. However, I also recognize that the content of the book itself is adequate advice. The advice is just stripped of emotion and is all business. 

And ultimately, I think the book is exactly just that: Business. The business of taking over other states, expanding an empire, or on how to gain and maintain control. 

I encourage (if you haven't read it already) to pick it up and read it. I would love to hear what you all think of it and what kind of book it strikes you as. I know I will be returning to it to try and find more meaning within its pages. 

Anti-war Literature

Over the past few weeks in my Humanities Core Course, I have attended lectures with topics being the ancient epic war of the Trojan War, the Thirty Years' War of 17th century Europe, and lately World War II. During one of Professor Smith's, a professor specializing in German studies,  lectures he played a small part of a larger video. A particular image in this video resonated with me. 

City of Dresden after massive bombing.

The image was of the city of Dresden, in the aftermath of a bombing attack. This image- this city rekindled memories of my AP English Literature class from high school. The first time I encountered the bombing of this German city was through  the novelist Kurt Vonnegut and his anti-war novel titled Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death. 

A year ago (around this time of year in fact) I read an anti-war novel. This year, I have read an anti-war play.While one was meant to be read and another watched, both of the writers' aims were the same: to challenge the masses and inspire collective action. 

Bertolt Brecht, the playwright of Mother Courage and her Children, was born in Germany in 1898. He wrote this particular play at a point in his life where he had fled Germany because: 

1. Hitler had risen to power
2. he was left-winged intellectual (believed in some aspects of Communism)

Being exiled from all you know, all that is dear to you is no easy feat. This play has (for all that Brecht tried to keep emotion out of it) tones of loss and despair. This play has been described by actress Meryl Streep as "a cry"; a cry of asking "why?" This question, however, is not part of the question "why me?" but rather "why did we let it get to this?" Brecht's play is a representation of what war is like. There is no heroism in Brecht's representation of war and there is no crushing sorrow (that is supposed to felt), there is just War. 

Kurt Vonnegut,a novelist, was an American with German ancestral roots. He fought during World War II for the Allies, was taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans, and witnessed the bombing of Dresden. The significance of the bombing of this particular city was the fact that it was purely civilian and had no fortification, no armaments to attack and defend from enemies.  It was full of women, children, those injured by the war, those too old to fight in the war, and prisoners of war. Beginning of February 13, 1915 and ending on the February 15th, Dresden was bombed by the Allied forces. 

Living though this, Vonnegut came home and had the seed of an idea for an anti-war novel. This novel may have had its roots in World War II, but it did not become a reality until the Vietnam War was well underway.  His anti-war novel, or as he liked to think of it his "anti-glacier" novel undertook the task of not recounting the horrors of war, but of pointing out the blasé attitude of the masses in times of war. 

Vonnegut felt that the American people had become desensitized to  the violence of war. During the Vietnam war, it became a standard practice to give a toll of the number of dead each night during the news. Death toll numbers, images of massacres became the norm and the violence of war was no longer monstrous or inhumane. 

By reading the novel Slaughterhouse-five I learned that the opposite of love was not hate, but rather indifference. Love and Hate are both strong emotions, they are essentially the two different sides of the same coin. Their counterpart is indifference; the lack of caring is the true horror of the generations that have followed Vonnegut's. 

What I found to be so profound in both Brecht's and Vonnegut's work was the way in which they approached the topic of war. Both of the works I discussed are considered "anti-war" yet these two men did not simply state or show that war is bad (a thought I believe, we all know deep down by our innate instincts that is true). Vonnegut attached the term "anti-glacier" for his novel since he believed "There [will] always be wars...they [are] as easy to stop as glaciers" -and we all know how the confrontation between a glacier and the Titanic went (Slaughterhouse-five. 1. 3).  However, what these writers attacked was not the evilness of war but the actions or lack of actions taken beforehand. What they aimed to inspire was collective action. 

One person alone is not enough to change the world. It is when people come together as one in action and thought that change can be accomplished. 

Personally, I know that I am too detached from war and its violence. I know many wars have started, ended, and some are still continuing in my life time. Yet, my life has been a good one. I have, or at least I believe, not been severely affected by War. The only experience I have with the military was through the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) program at my school. And when I really think about it, but I mean pause and really think, I become ashamed. I reap the benefits of another person's labor, a person who is away from home because of a war. Then I ponder what I should do. Should I become involved? Should I join the military (my JROTC instructors believed I could have been an Officer)? Should I protest war?  

I don't really know what I should do. I am still figuring it out. I am just glad I have had teachers and professors who have introduced me to works such as Slaughterhouse-five and Mother Courage. For jolting me awake from my own apparent apathy towards War; for making me realize that something must be done. 

Sources

• Slaughterhouse-five

      Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-five or the Children's Crusade:       A Duty Dance with Death. New York: Delacorte                       Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1991. 

War and its Mediation

Today I want to talk about viewpoint, mediation, and manipulation. 

When it comes to War, not many of us are there in person to witness and experience all that happens in a war zone or the surrounding areas of the said war zone. For information of this kind we rely on the media. 

When I say "media" I mean journalists, reporters, newspapers, and social media such as Facebook and Twitter. And the media, being the media, has a tendency to mediate events or stories in order to draw out a certain reaction or nudge the general public into a certain kind of action. However, I would like to claim that the act of mediation is not just committed by those who work within the media. 

We as humans have a innate talent in mediating what we see or hear to convey our viewpoints onto others. I know we do this, because I myself can recall multiple times in which I have mediated things said to me. The instance that I can immediately recall is when I worked as a translator for my father's business. 

My father owns a landscaping business. While he can understand the English language when spoken, he himself is limited in conversing in English. This is where I come in: when it came to talking to clients both my father, the client, and I would set up an appointment in which I translated for both client and service provider. My father's mode of speaking becomes very repetitive when he is trying to make a point, because of this I often mediated his speech to the client so that my father's side of the conversation was more straight to the point and clear cut. 

Because of my own experiences in mediating conversations, I understand how easy it really is to manipulate other's words, images, videos, etc. And war is a huge issue that is often mediated.

At the beginning of this post there is a picture in which the original whole picture is in the middle with cropped versions of it flanking its sides. On the left there is a soldier held at gunpoint. This version of the image shows the violence of war and the lack of mercy. The version on the right is its counterpart. Here a soldier is giving another exhausted soldier water. Here the image connotes comradery and care. What the whole image essentially shows is how war images and videos can be manipulated by those who present them. This then brings me to viewpoint. 

Images, videos, an the news are presented to us in certain ways. They are either meant to call us to action, contemplate the actions of our leaders, criticize a course of action, etc. 

In war time, the most common form of media in circulation is propaganda. Propaganda is most commonly presented by the government at war or the military. Since the government and military are the source of this type of media, they present war in a light were it is necessary, heroic, and honorable. 

This viewpoint is quite different than that of those under siege. 

This poster was in circulation during
the time of Soviet Russia. Its aim was to
show the unification of man, woman, state,
and military under Communism.

Critique on how the United States may be
causing more harm than good with all
the "foreign" wars it has participated in. 

Here there is no majesty of war. Presented is the devastation that war can cause. 

The media is great at delivering only part of a story. They take a whole issue and present only facets of it. They may choose to show the horrific, the patriotic, the redeemable. It is up to us as the viewers and the audience to question and think critically; to seek out as much of the story as possible and decide for ourselves how to feel and how to act. 

Sources

• Media Manipulation  https://comm2302metafiction.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/media_manipulation.jpg

Homeric Women: Powerful or Not?

 In the text The Iliad, women are seen to have little free will (unless they are goddesses). They are objectified into prizes. This objectification is seen early on in the epic, as early as Book One when king Agamemnon professes to Achilles "I will be there in person at your tents/ to take Briseis in all her beauty, your own prize"( 1. 217-18). Thus far The Iliad seems to represent the accepted universal truth of early civilization: women are second in respect to man. 

This past Friday, a forum presented by Professor Karanika of the Department of Classics, revealed to me that Homeric women had much more power  than I initially perceived. 

 Marvel's Illustrated: The Iliad issue #1

While it is true that Homeric women are seen as prizes, as status symbols for the man whom she belongs to, they also wield a tremendous amount of power that even they may not have been aware of. 

Two women that must be mentioned first include Helen, wife of Greek king Menelaus now coupling with Paris of Troy, and Briseis, Achilles' won consort taken by king Agamemnon. The power these two women wield is the power endowed to them by beauty (Karanika). 

Helen is acclaimed to be the most beautiful mortal woman alive for whom "the men of Troy and Argives under arms have suffered / years of agony for her" (3. 188-9). Her beauty gave her the power to initiate a ten year long war in which countless people, young and old, found their lives forfeited to the God of Death. 

Similarly, Briseis' power also relies upon woman's beauty. Her power was the brief relief the Trojans see in battle since Achilles became enraged with Agamemnon and refused to aid the Achaean war effort. Briseis, even though she is a spoil of war, was a trigger in the major losses of Achaean life. 

Ordinary women also wielded a power the ancient heroes did not possess.  Homeric women had the power to immortalize a hero. 

Professor Karanika made evident, through contextual evidence, that Homeric women have a voice only when working, praying, performing a ritual, or lamenting. These acts is what make male glory.

When a hero dies, it is a woman's lamentation that memorializes their heroic deeds. Lamentation can even be seen before a hero's death as Thetis demonstrates, " O my child!/ Yes, I gave birth to a flawless, mighty son.../the splendor of heroes" (18. 63-5). Henceforth, Achilles, the son spoken about in the outburst, will be known and attributed with characteristics of splendor and might. 

Homeric women also exhibited power in the circles of prayer and rituals for prayer. The right offering and profusion of adequate words given by a woman or group of women could save a life, a city, a culture, or it could foretell doom.  An instance such as this seen in The Iliad is the gathering of Troy women who pray to the Goddess Athena:

"lifting the [Sidonian] robe on high/ ... [they] prayed to the daughter of mighty Father Zeus:/ "Queen Athena- shield of our city- glory of goddesses!/ Now shatter the spear of Diomedes!...." (6. 357-361). 

The collective prayer of the women above is an instance were their power and their lack of correct use sealed the fate of Troy. While the prayer itself might have been pleasing to the goddess Athena, the improper ritualistic rite was not. While ritual in prayer dictated an offering (which these women certainly provided- i.e. the robe) they were incorrect in using that specific offering since it was not made by Trojan hands but by Sidonian enslaved hands. This technicality was what  invalidated the women's prayer and in the long run cost them their freedom and their husbands and sons' lives (Karanika). 

Most modern women today continue to pursue gender equality since they believe their predecessors lacked it. While most women of the past may not have enjoyed many of the freedoms today's women enjoy, I would not count them out in terms of influence and power. They certainly had their share of it if The Iliad is believed to be a historical reference to actual past events. 

Works Cited

Fagles, Robert, trans. The Iliad. By Homer. Penguins Books: New York, 1990

Comxicology. 9 October 2015. Gamma Radiation. 9 October 2015. 

https://pulllist.comixology.com/previews/OCT072066/0/

Karanika, Andromache. "Friday Forum." The War Prayer: Women's Rituals in the Iliad. Biological Sciences III, Lecture Hall 1200, University of California, Irvine. 2 October 2015. 

An Introduction to the Humanities and Homer's Iliad

Hello Fellow Humans, 

Welcome to my blog. To find out more about who I am and what perspective I am tackling the topic of War CLICK HERE or look to the right side of the blog, look under "Pages," and click the page titled "About Me and this Blog." 


An Introduction to the Humanities  

 Humanities is the study of how humans "[create] meaning through their thoughts, their actions, and their creations" ( Handbook, Pan, pg 5). This definition , as you can see, is a by-the-book definition and when I first read it had little meaning for me. This was troublesome for me at the time since at this point in my collegiate career I was only a Criminology major and considering the addition of another  major (English) which fell under the School of Humanities. 

Soon afterwards, the Humanities was explained to me by discussion leader as "the study of qualitative date versus the compilation of quantitative data" ( Dickmeyer). In other words: the Humanities concerns itself less with compilation of numbers and instead focus the brunt of its powers to the interpretation of texts and artifacts that allows us to peer into a culture, or time period that is or has existed at a different time than ours and allows to extract what is relevant to our society, culture, time period.   

With this idea of the Humanities in mind, I knew had made a good choice for myself in signing up for the Humanities Core Course. 

An Introduction Into the Iliad 

Cover design above is credited

 to Gail Belenson.  This translation

of the Iliad is by Robert Fagles. 

The first work assigned in this Humanities course was Homer's The Iliad. Having read one of Homer's other works, The Odyssey, I was excited and had an idea of what to expect concerning language and form.  

For those of you who are not acquainted with Homer, his poems fall under the genre of the Epic.

Elements that identify an epic poem  include:

1. "a long narrative poem of heroic action
2. written with the use of elevated language 
3. has foundational significance for the culture in which it originates from " ( Izenberg). 

The Iliad is a text that is over three thousand years old. Its original language, Ancient Homeric Greek, is now identified as a "dead language." 

Homer's Iliad, as it has been handed down to us in its current form through many translations, is an epic about the ninth year of a ten year war between the Trojans and the Greeks. The spark that ignited such a costly war was the Trojan Prince Paris' abduction of a Greek woman named Helen. Helen was a lavishly beautiful woman who was the wife of Menelaus , "the younger king of Mycenaean Sparta" (Wikipedia). The main story of The Iliad, however, is not the start of the war but rather nearer to its finish and the conflict that arises between two Greeks, Achilles and Agamemnon, and how their actions or lack of action affect the war effort. 

My own thoughts into the work are as follows:

• How much content was lost or retained during all of the many translation there are for the Iliad?
• Why focus on the spat between two Greek warriors when the war is between the Greek and Trojan people?

Until next time, think like a Humanist! 

Works Cited

Fagles, Robert, trans. The Iliad. By Homer. Penguins Books: New York, 1990

Pan, David. "What are the Humanities?" Ed. Larisa Castillo. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2014. 

Izenberg, Oren. "Humanities Core Lecture" The Iliad and the Meaning of the Humanities. Biological Sciences III, Lectural Hall 1200, University of California, Irvine. 28 September 2015.  

Dickmeyer, Laurie. "Humanities Core Seminar". Donald Bren Hall, Room 1429, University of California, Irvine. 28 September 2015.