Have you been following the Swift/Perry beef? Were you as bemused as I was to read about the gift of the olive branch? Were you as horrified as I was at the quality of Perry’s handwriting? Were you stunned by the fact that Swift appears to have needed help from fans in order to be sure about the precise meaning and symbolism of the olive branch? Then read on…

It’s an interesting world when an olive branch and a hand-written note sent from one pop music star to another makes world headlines but that’s exactly what happened this month when Katy Perry sent an olive branch as a gift to Taylor Swift, with a hand-written note that appears to say:

“Hey old friend, I’ve been doing some reflecting on past miscommunications and the hurt feelings between us, I really want to clear the air – I’m deeply sorry for…”

Swift shared a short video of the gift and the note on Instagram. She also ‘liked’ a post from a fan that explained the meaning of the ‘olive branch’.

Sigh. Oh dear. If only Swift and Perry were students of Classics at the ANU.

Here are 8 good reasons why:

1. Perry would have taken greater care with her handwriting. Any student of Classics knows that in order to be properly understood, and assessed, handwriting must be legible!
2. Perry would have written her message in carefully handwritten ancient Greek or Latin. That way she could have found more appropriately idiomatic expressions for ‘old friend’ and ‘clearing the air’ and educated her fan base as they desperately scrambled to translate the handwritten note.
3. Perry would not have chosen such an ambiguous gift. In ancient times, the olive branch was a symbol of victory, not peace. [When Athena and Poseidon were making competing claims over the region of Attica, they each gave a gift to the region: Poseidon struck a rock on the Acropolis with his trident and sea water came pouring out but Athena planted an olive tree. The twelve gods judged that Athena’s gift was superior and more useful so Athens was named after Athena, and the olive tree became synonymous with Athena and her victory.]
4. Instead of using Google and Tumblr to decipher the meaning of the olive branch, Swift would have turned to her handy reference guide to classical mythology.
5. Swift would never be so reckless as to cite an incomplete source. For all we know, the rest of the note says: “I’m deeply sorry for finally winning this long-running feud between us – I realise it must make things very awkward for you. See ya laterrrrr.”
6. Swift would never be so reckless as to fail to double-check that the text actually did come from the attributed source and not from someone else.
7. Swift would have correctly interpreted the sticker of the ‘puppy’ as a symbol of purification in early Greek religion (Parker, p.230). Perhaps Perry symbolically ‘washing her hands clean’ of any responsibility for the package?
8. Swift would have taken a video of herself wearing the olive wreath and preferably a toga as well. Clearly that is what the olive branch was intended for.

Oh well, so many lost opportunities. If only both were enrolled as students in Classics at ANU. Then we could really shake this thing off, once and for all.

Header image:

http://time.com/5270322/taylor-swift-katy-perry-olive-branch/

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/09/katy-perry-taylor-swift-olive-branch

http://www.nme.com/news/music/katy-perry-sent-taylor-swift-olive-branch-2310832

Hansen, W. Classical Mythology (Oxford 2004).

Parker, R. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford 1983).

 

Bishop Curry’s speech was not just a great moment during the royal wedding but a fascinating example of the art of persuasion. It revived a mode of persuasion that has largely been lost from formal public discourse: the emotional appeal, which was not, on this occasion, an appeal to negative emotions (for once) but positive ones. So what exactly is the ‘positive’ emotional appeal and how does it work? Happily, the ancient orators have all the answers…

According to the ancient art of rhetoric, there are three ways to persuade an audience: an appeal to reason, an appeal to ethics, and an appeal to emotion. The appeal to emotion is based on the premise that our will prompts us to take action and that emotions influence our will, and that therefore emotions can prompt us to take action. But we can’t will ourselves into feeling love for someone, or feeling anger, or any other emotion for that matter, and this is where the character and appeal of the speaker plays such a crucial role.

There are two fundamental rules for a speaker seeking to appeal to the emotions of an audience. First, the speaker must never reveal his intention to influence the emotions of his audience because if he does, the audience will become immediately suspicious and resistant to the speaker’s efforts. Generally speaking, we don’t like people playing on our emotions but if a speaker initially presents his arguments as reasoned and reasonable, then we are willing to listen. Notice that Bishop Curry did not immediately announce that he was going to try and persuade people to love one another: he began by quoting other authorities on the subject of love generally!

Secondly, the speaker needs to reach the emotions of the audience, by either describing the sorts of things that generally arouse that emotion, or by feeling the emotion himself, or by being deliberately dispassionate so that the audience is provoked to feel the emotion more intensely by themselves. Bishop Curry opted for the first and second methods – by talking about the nature of love and its origin and the wedding and by being an impassioned speaker himself in talking about love.

The use of emotion-laden words can be an effective way to incite emotion in an audience. Bishop Curry used the word ‘love’ fifty-eight times in his address! Another phrase that featured strongly, at least in the first half, was ‘power in love’.

A heavy dose of anaphora (the repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive clause) with increasing volume each time brought the speech to a heady crescendo:

“everything that Moses wrote, everything in the holy prophets, everything in the scriptures, everything that God has been trying to tell the world…”

This emotional crescendo was the point at which Prince Harry looked rather red-faced and embarrassed. But the last words of Bishop Curry’s statement (“love God, love your neighbour, and while you’re at it, love yourself”) were delivered in an unexpectedly casual and quieter tone to give them special emphasis but also to bring the emotional level down again – again a carefully studied rhetorical technique.

Next came an appeal to the imagination – to paint a picture of a ‘new world’ in which people love one another as family and in which love takes priority. The appeal to the imagination relies on visualisation and drama for emotional impact:

“think and imagine a world where love is the way, imagine our homes and families where love is the way, imagine neighbourhoods and communities where love is the way, imagine governments and nations where love is the way, imagine business and commerce when love is the way, imagine this tired old world [voice breaking] when, when love is the way”.

The repetition of ‘where love is the way’ at the end of successive clauses is another highly effective stylistic device: epistrophe. The effect of emotion on the quality of Bishop Curry’s voice was very evident here too and quite deliberate.

To release some of the emotional intensity, some humour was needed at this point, and this came with Bishop Curry’s impeccably timed and appropriately self-conscious remark that “with this I’ll sit down, we gotta get y’all married”. Everybody laughed with relief. Humour renews the attention of the audience and helps to warm people’s attitude toward the speaker. But the speaker had already said a great deal and this is where, from a rhetorical standpoint, Bishop Curry should have quit while he was ahead. A good speaker knows precisely when enough is enough. Unfortunately, Bishop Curry made a classic mistake: he went on to talk about a new topic (the discovery of fire), to ask questions of the audience, to introduce more humour and yet more material unrelated to the first part of his speech.

The conclusion to the speech couldn’t have been more welcome or more overdue:

“Dr King was right, we must discover love, the redemptive power of love, and when we do that, we will make of this old world, a new world.”

With these lines, Bishop Curry saved his speech and brought it back full circle, with more than a respectful nod to the king of oratory, Martin Luther King.

The audience reaction to this emotional appeal makes for an interesting study. Some were visibly moved, some were in deep agreement with the speaker, others were dispassionate and even amused. Why is it that the emotional appeal works on some and not others? Some of us (me included) don’t have a problem admitting that our opinions can be affected by our emotions, and we are quite willing to listen to an emotional appeal. This does not mean that reason is entirely displaced, or that we are completely beholden to our emotional reactions, but that we recognise that emotion has a place in our evaluation of arguments.

For others, being stirred to action by the emotions is undignified and embarrassing. This can manifest in a feeling of confusion, awkward side glances, face scratching, reddened cheeks, visible discomfort or bemused superiority. But, if we are honest, who among us has not been driven chiefly by our emotions at some point in life, often at the cost of our rational mind, and frankly, I can’t think of a better example of a more overwhelmingly beautiful emotion than falling in love. Ah love. Where would we be without it? Maybe Dr King was right, and rhetorical devices aside, there is great power in his idea, not just the words.

Images and recording of the speech sourced from:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-05-20/royal-wedding-meghan-markle-upstaged-by-reverend-michael-curry/9779990

 

 

For those of us who take the Odyssey literally, as a story full of wondrous adventures and traveller’s tales, Odysseus’ visit to the kingdom of the dead is yet another example of Odysseus’ heroism, not in the face of mighty storms or seductresses with evil intent or a race of one-eyed giants but this time in the face of death itself.

For those of us who prefer to read the Odyssey as a psychological drama about the journey of life and learning and psychological development as a person, there is a great deal that is of interest and much that is applicable to our lives today.

In Book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus journeys to the farthest Western edge of the earth, to the kingdom of the dead, in order to consult the blind prophet Tiresias about how he might return home. The land of the dead is a dark and gloomy place and there is no one and nothing there until Odysseus has made preparations, performed libations, sacrificed animals and promised to reward the dead for providing him with certain information. Then the ghosts come. Not just one, or ten or twenty but whole nations of the dead, brides, youths, old men, and wounded soldiers, flocking toward Odysseus, eager to drink the sacrificial blood so that they can converse with him. Odysseus is gripped by terror.

This is interesting in itself – since, for the Greeks of Homer’s time, there are critical features that distinguish the living from the dead – firstly, a corporeal form, secondly, living flowing blood, and thirdly, the ability to speak. In order to control this throng of ghosts, Odysseus must crouch beside the sacrificial pit, with his sword drawn, in order to prevent ghosts from drinking the sacrifice which allows them to speak with their human voice and to once again recognise the living.

The first shade to approach Odysseus is one of his companions named Elpenor. In a sense, Elpenor is in limbo. He is not ‘truly’ dead, since he has not received proper burial rites, and he is clearly suffering, because he makes Odysseus promise to bury him when Odysseus again passes Circe’s island. Elpenor is a reminder to Odysseus that he has responsibilities and things to properly attend to before he can return home. Odysseus promises to remember to give Elpenor a proper burial.

Then Odysseus sees an extraordinary sight. It is the ghost of his own mother, Antikleia, who was alive and well when he left Ithaca, but is now residing here, among the dead.

“I broke into tears to see her here, but filled with pity,

even throbbing with grief, I would not let her ghost

approach the blood till I had questioned Tiresias himself”.

Initially, I was irritated by this scene. Surely Odysseus should prioritise speaking to the ghost of his own mother over and above Tiresias, especially when he is so shocked to see her in the kingdom of the dead! But it occurred to me that if Odysseus has learnt anything in his journey up to this point, it is that he must not be diverted from his aim, no matter how tantalising, or alluring, or upsetting that diversion may be. At this point in the narrative, Odysseus has spent many years in ‘diversions’, with Calypso and Circe in particular, and he has come tantalisingly close to home only to be swept out to sea again, so he cannot afford to let any emotion, especially grief, cloud his judgement. The rational mind triumphs – Odysseus holds it together, and before he speaks to his own mother, he obtains the necessary advice from Tiresias. Tiresias foretells that Odysseus will return home but it will not be the easy, sweet or glorious homecoming that he expects or wants. And even after returning home and dealing with the suitors, Odysseus will have to propitiate the gods, and not just one or two of them but all of the gods, in order. Then Tiresias prophesies how Odysseus himself will die:

“And at last your death will steal upon you…a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age with all your people there in blessed peace around you.”

This is a privileged insight indeed, for who among the living knows the time, place, or manner of his own death?

Having obtained this advice and knowledge, Odysseus allows his mother, Antikleia, to drink the sacrificial blood and she immediately recognises her son:

“Oh my son – what brings you down to the world of death and darkness? You are still alive!”

If ever there was a moment of great pathos in literature, this is it. Antikleia cannot believe that Odysseus has not yet made it home. What is he doing there, a living man in the land of the dead? Odysseus explains that he has come to consult Tiresias, but he is equally perplexed, and asks Antikleia about her death and about the state of things at home. There is a logical order to his questions, first about Antikleia’s death, then the wellbeing of his father and his son, and then the loyalty of his wife. One can read these questions as having a descending or ascending order of importance but, either way, Odysseus’ concern is clearly his status at home and whether he still has a place there.

Antikleia’s responses are similarly logical, but presented in reverse order. She describes Penelope’s faithfulness first, then Telemachus’ maturity and status, his father’s old age and grief, and her own death which was caused by a deep and painful longing for Odysseus. Antikleia’s responses work their way into Odysseus’ heart by degrees. In effect, she says, ‘your wife misses you terribly, your son is now a man and still guards your property, your father is aged and dying from grief, and I myself died from grief’. Odysseus’ concerns about his status at home are assuaged, but what will Odysseus do to repair the grief and longing he has caused?

At this point, all of Odysseus’ hard-earned heroic status and pride falls away. Odysseus is stripped bare to the core – as a child standing before his mother – there is no room for pretence, for emotional restraint or hesitation. With a child-like compulsion, and the most natural of instincts, Odysseus tries to physically embrace his mother not once but three times before he must accept the fact that she is now a ghost that has no physical form. With typically Odyssean suspicion, he accuses Persephone (the queen of the dead) of devising another trick to add to his burden of grief. Antikleia explains: it is no trick, this is just the way things are with the dead. The dead have no form and their spirits flutter away from the body after the body is burnt.

Antikleia’s parting words to Odysseus are magnificent because they re-orient Odysseus back to his aim and urge him on:

“But struggle to the light, quickly. Remember all these things so one day you can tell them to your wife”.

There is also a beautiful selflessness in Antikleia’s words, as she urges Odysseus to go, urgently, and get on with his life, and she shows empathy for Penelope in the injunction to Odysseus to get back to the land of the living and to share what he has learned with his wife.

Surely, this episode is a major turning-point in Odysseus’ emotional and psychological development. To ‘die’ to the foolishness of one’s past, to become aware of the reality of one’s inevitable death, and to reorient oneself toward the present and to the light and to living every day with one’s precious loved ones in the fullest and realest of embraces, seems to me to be at least one of the psychological lessons of this wonderful epic poem.

*Quotes are from the translation of the Odyssey by Robert Fagles, 1996. The last one is adapted slightly to better capture the sense of the original Greek text.

*Image: Sunset on Ithaca.