Sybil

Found during my readings of Elliot’s Wasteland (off sparksnotes):

A sign of the pessimism with which Eliot approaches his subject is the poem’s epigraph, taken from the Satyricon, in which the Sibyl (a woman with prophetic powers who ages but never dies) looks at the future and proclaims that she only wants to die. The Sibyl’s predicament mirrors what Eliot sees as his own: He lives in a culture that has decayed and withered but will not expire.

I’ve read and translated quite a bit of the Satyricon though and never encountered her…more things i wish i had time to go back and look it up.

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one response

Written by feather

October 23rd, 2006 at 12:17 am

Posted in Academia

One Response to 'Sybil'

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I remember really liking East Coker.

Edward Ocampo-Gooding

14 Apr 07 at 1:46 pm

"Writing is simply a form of speaking which endures after it is uttered ... the soul of our words." - Castiglione

Quis sum

I was once a history graduate student at the University of Toronto; my research focused on the prehumanists; i completed my final paper in July 2008 and am now taking a year off. When i have collected the necessary funds through gainful employment, i will be embarking on a world voyage - a voyage of self-discovery prompted by hours sitting in airports and talking to complete strangers. My main interests include but are not limited to latin, italian, cultural theory, educational curriculum, historiography, cognitive processes, language-theory, gender relations and THE WESTERN CANON (mwahaha); i am not particularly interesting, avant-garde or risque; My main hobbies include the exciting activities of cooking, baking, going to the gym, eating green apple-caramel lollipops, restaurant reviwing and acting as child-like and sassy as possible. i like to pretend this blog contains thoughts worth sharing with the few friends who take the trouble to read it - but i know that is a delusion. These are mostly journal entries. Occasionally i post something more 'creative' in the form of a response to an editorial, a scholastic insight or a thought-experiment. oh yeah, my name is heather, i'm of Montreal and i was born in the nefarious, ominous year 1984.