January 24, 2019
“So brave you’re crazy.” That is the meaning of the last name of poet Joy Harjo, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. I chose her poem attached below (it is too long to paste, alas,) given that her vision of mapping unknown worlds is related to today’s topic.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49621/a-map-to-the-next-world
After talking about an art detective yesterday, I want to introduce an archeological sleuth today, a man who was indeed both brave and crazy. Heinrich Schliemann took old texts as a map for his archeological ventures. Old as in The Iliad. His vision was set on fire when, as a seven year-old in 1829, he saw a print of burning Troy in a history book, and later, in the green-grocer store where he clerked, heard someone reciting the Iliad in the original Greek. (It’s Germany. It’s possible…so many of us running around looking for potatoes while declaiming classical texts in the original.)
Anyhow, the guy was a bit of a self-promoter, so it is hard to tell what is truth and what is fiction. The following facts are supported, however: he survived a shipwreck near the Dutch coast and later sailed on to America. (Brave and crazy.) He made fortunes in the US Gold Rush and as a war profiteer during the Crimean War in Russia. (Neither brave nor crazy.)
Barely 36, he used his fortune to educate himself both linguistically (it is said he was fluent in more than 10 languages, crazy) and archeology (brave.) He went around the world to gather knowledge, including India, China and Japan. Long story short: he discovered the sites of Troy, Mycenae, and Tiryns by taking the Iliad’s story as a guide that was not just a literary invention.
Along the way he conveniently omitted the names of all the experts who helped him, divorced his Russian wife to marry a young Greek schoolgirl, destroyed important evidence at the archeological digs through rough and unprofessional excavations and stretched the facts whenever it helped his reputation. Let’s settle on crazy.
He did, however, rekindle enormous interest in ancient history and popularized archeology. And German kids like me certainly read wide-eyed about his discoveries when young. Until the day when we realized that he in some fashion was responsible for the introduction of one of the most reprehensible symbols in the 20th century, the swastika.
“He would go on to see the swastika everywhere, from Tibet to Paraguay to the Gold Coast of Africa. And as Schliemann’s exploits grew more famous, and archaeological discoveries became a way of creating a narrative of national identity, the swastika grew more prominent. It exploded in popularity as a symbol of good fortune, appearing on Coca-Cola products, Boy Scouts’ and Girls’ Club materials and even American military uniforms, reports the BBC. But as it rose to fame, the swastika became tied into a much more volatile movement: a wave of nationalism spreading across Germany.
Photographs today are of the state where he was born, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. They were taken in 2007, 18 years after the wall came down.
For music it shall be something from Mendelssohn’s Antigone. For those interested, there is a fascinating 2014 book on the Politics of Appropriation: German Romantic Music and the Ancient Greek Legacy by Jason Geary.
