Five characters for literary tea
The Everyman:
Maqroll. His optimistic fatalism,
his steady course through the ceaseless tides of fate, his nobility, his
scoundrel heart.
The Genius: Don
Quixote. To inhabit his world, to
turn literature into a haze of absurdities, or perhaps to escape from literature, which can be a haze of absurdities, takes nothing short of genius.
The Muse:
Ophelia. Hamlet was a
fool. His salvation was there all
along.
The Classical:
Achilles. Honor, glory,
pride, the joy of battle, all the old crap that just keeps coming back.
The Modern: the
fleeing warrior in the shield poem of Archilocus who has no illusions about
life and who, if needed and to borrow a phrase, knew how to run as only the
truly wise and the truly cowardly can run. He has his reasoning:
Ἀσπίδι μὲν Σαΐων τις ἀγάλλεται, ἥν παρὰ θάμνῳ
ἔντος ἀμώμητον κάλλιπον οὐκ ἐθέλων·
αὐτὸν δ' ἔκ μ' ἐσάωσα· τί μοι μέλει ἀσπὶς ἐκείνη;
Ἐρρέτω· ἐξαῦτις κτήσομαι οὐ κακίω
This is a tea I would like to attend. However, given Ophelia's presence, and the personalities in attendance, I fear there could be trouble. Nah, on second thought, Achilles would make short work of the rest of us.
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