Page 56 - Gonzaga at 60
P. 56
GONZAGA
Philip McDonagh
Anything published by
a civil servant needs to
be cleared formally by
the Secretary General
of his Department and A couple of weeks ago, I visited Troy for the irst ime. Looking out from the excavaions towards
Philip was asked to the Scamander River and the Aegean Sea, I thought of John Wilson and Gonzaga. Thanks to John
remove any possible Wilson, I fell in love with Greek at age 13.
doubt that the views Our Turkish guide at Troy did not fail to make pracical use of the past: ‘Aeneas came from
expressed in the second Troy; the EU has its origins in Anatolia; and so Turkey belongs in the European Union’. I thought
sentence of the second of Fr Stephen Redmond, whose history lessons had plenty to say about Constaninople. As if by
paragraph were those some GPS of the imaginaion, Fr Redmond helped us orient ourselves in the spaces of history.
of his tour guide, rather
than his own. The Reading the Iliad within sight of Mount Ida, I saw the poem diferently. Clubbable gods live
soluion came in the like eighteenth century Irish landlords, or the suitors in the Odyssey. They feast, they joke, caring
use of a simple device only intermitently for the human beings, the whole ciies under siege, whose future or non-
of punctuaion: the future they setle. But the poet is not in awe of the gods’ privilege. Homer celebrates everything
colon. Departmental that is precious in the unsheltered human world – the family life of Hector, Andromache, and
anxieies were resolved. their son; the kindness of Patroclus to the enslaved Briseis; the courtesy of King Priam towards
‘Fr Veale,’ Philip the shunned Helen. The narraive builds up to Achilles asking Priam how many days’ truce will
commented, ‘would be
chufed in Heaven.’ be needed for the funeral of Hector. In Mediterranean and Near Eastern culture, it was common
to expose a dead enemy (or a cruciied man) as carrion. The respecful treatment of the dead,
Philip McDonagh
Anything published by
a civil servant needs to
be cleared formally by
the Secretary General
of his Department and A couple of weeks ago, I visited Troy for the irst ime. Looking out from the excavaions towards
Philip was asked to the Scamander River and the Aegean Sea, I thought of John Wilson and Gonzaga. Thanks to John
remove any possible Wilson, I fell in love with Greek at age 13.
doubt that the views Our Turkish guide at Troy did not fail to make pracical use of the past: ‘Aeneas came from
expressed in the second Troy; the EU has its origins in Anatolia; and so Turkey belongs in the European Union’. I thought
sentence of the second of Fr Stephen Redmond, whose history lessons had plenty to say about Constaninople. As if by
paragraph were those some GPS of the imaginaion, Fr Redmond helped us orient ourselves in the spaces of history.
of his tour guide, rather
than his own. The Reading the Iliad within sight of Mount Ida, I saw the poem diferently. Clubbable gods live
soluion came in the like eighteenth century Irish landlords, or the suitors in the Odyssey. They feast, they joke, caring
use of a simple device only intermitently for the human beings, the whole ciies under siege, whose future or non-
of punctuaion: the future they setle. But the poet is not in awe of the gods’ privilege. Homer celebrates everything
colon. Departmental that is precious in the unsheltered human world – the family life of Hector, Andromache, and
anxieies were resolved. their son; the kindness of Patroclus to the enslaved Briseis; the courtesy of King Priam towards
‘Fr Veale,’ Philip the shunned Helen. The narraive builds up to Achilles asking Priam how many days’ truce will
commented, ‘would be
chufed in Heaven.’ be needed for the funeral of Hector. In Mediterranean and Near Eastern culture, it was common
to expose a dead enemy (or a cruciied man) as carrion. The respecful treatment of the dead,
