To seek, to find, to design and not to yield.

Design Some­thing Every­day 14/365

This was a design based on one of my favorite poems, Ulysses, by Alfred Lord Ten­nyson. The poem is very mov­ing, and has the great hero Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) at the end of his life feel­ing the urge to strive, explore and set sail once again. That is an urge we have and should cher­ish, that lit­tle voice that tells us there is still much more to see and do. It is a human qual­ity that we need to heed, espe­cially when our boat has waited to0 long in the har­bor. Here’s the com­plete poem (don’t worry it’s in the pub­lic domain):

Ulysses
by Alfred Lord Tennyson

It lit­tle prof­its that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these bar­ren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a sav­age race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I can­not rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suf­fered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scud­ding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roam­ing with a hun­gry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And man­ners, cli­mates, coun­cils, gov­ern­ments,
Myself not least, but hon­oured of them all;
And drunk delight of bat­tle with my peers;
Far on the ring­ing plains of windy Troy.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all expe­ri­ence is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untrav­elled world, whose mar­gin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unbur­nished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too lit­tle, and of one to me
Lit­tle remains: but every hour is saved
From that eter­nal silence, some­thing more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearn­ing in desire
To fol­low knowl­edge like a sink­ing star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scep­tre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, dis­cern­ing to ful­fil
This labour, by slow pru­dence to make mild
A rugged peo­ple, and through soft degrees
Sub­due them to the use­ful and the good.
Most blame­less is he, cen­tred in the sphere
Of com­mon duties, decent not to fail
In offices of ten­der­ness, and pay
Meet ado­ra­tion to my house­hold gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the ves­sel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic wel­come took
The thun­der and the sun­shine, and opposed
Free hearts, free fore­heads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his hon­our and his toil;
Death closes all: but some­thing ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbe­com­ing men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twin­kle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sit­ting well in order smite
The sound­ing fur­rows; for my pur­pose holds
To sail beyond the sun­set, and the baths
Of all the west­ern stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal tem­per of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Poem Source

Just for fun here’s a YouTube video of a per­for­mance of the poem:

Polyphemus Gives Odysseus’s Men a Hand

Design Some­thing Every­day: 12/365

Here’s a lit­tle sketch for my design some­thing every day project. Imag­ine your­self as one of clever Odysseus’ men in the cave of the Cyclops, and one-eyed Polyphe­mus, son of Posei­don, reaches down to devour you, or as Samuel But­ler grue­somely put it in his translation:

The cruel wretch vouch­safed me not one word of answer, but with a sud­den clutch he gripped up two of my men at once and dashed them down upon the ground as though they had been pup­pies. Their brains were shed upon the ground, and the earth was wet with their blood. Then he tore them limb from limb and supped upon them. He gob­bled them up like a lion in the wilder­ness, flesh, bones, mar­row, and entrails, with­out leav­ing any­thing uneaten.” — Homer, The Odyssey Book 9, trans. Samuel Butler.

Links:

The Odyssey, by Homer Trans­lated by Samuel But­ler via the Clas­sics Archive at MIT.
Free online audio ver­sion of the But­ler trans­la­tion of They Odyssey at Lib­rivox. Although it is great to read Homer, one should lis­ten to a good read­ing of his epics. Con­sid­er­ing that’s how most in the ancient world were exposed to them, I find it fun to lis­ten to them being read. It makes me feel like I am walk­ing in their shoes, er sandals.

A Map of the Underworld according Virgil’s Aeneid Rendered as a Subway Map

Design Some­thing Every­day 11/365: In honor of my love of maps, infor­ma­tion graph­ics and Vir­gil, I decided to imag­ine Aeneas jour­ney as if it were a sub­way map. So enjoy. Don’t for­get your sub­way token’s for Charon!

I have always loved maps, as a child I would look at our world atlas and pon­der the far flung reaches of the globe. Then I dis­cov­ered a his­tor­i­cal atlas at my school and real­ized that maps could not only take you hor­i­zon­tally across the globe but also ver­ti­cally in to the dis­tant past.

A period I found par­tic­u­larly fas­ci­nat­ing was the Roman Empire. I’d gaze at the maps show­ing the roads stretch­ing out from Rome like a web unit­ing the dis­parate cor­ners west­ern world under the the ban­ner of The Sen­ate and Peo­ple of Rome — SPQR.

The great poet Pub­lius Vergilius Maro, bet­ter known to us today as Vir­gil wrote his mas­ter­piece the Aeneid at the same time Rome was near­ing the apex of it’s power and con­fi­dence. This mag­nif­i­cent poem was writ­ten to, amongst other things, cre­ate a mythol­o­gized past for the Romans of the first cen­tury CE, par­tic­u­larly for Virgil’s patron, the Emperor Augus­tus. As such, the poem depicts the Romans  as a peo­ple not great at skill in art, des­tined to rule.

Let oth­ers bet­ter mold the run­ning mass
Of met­als, and inform the breath­ing brass,
And soften into flesh a mar­ble face;
Plead bet­ter at the bar; describe the skies,
And when the stars descend, and when they rise.
But, Rome, ‘t is thine alone, with awful sway,
To rule mankind, and make the world obey,
Dis­pos­ing peace and war by thy own majes­tic way;
To tame the proud, the fetter’d slave to free:
These are impe­r­ial arts, and wor­thy thee.“
–The Aeneid, Book 6 Trans­lated by John Dryden

This pas­sage takes place dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between Aeneas and his dead father Ancheises in the under­world. This is direct allu­sion to Homer and The Odyssey. In Homer’s work must his hero Odysseus must visit a cave where he will sum­mon the dead seer Tire­sias (amongst other dead celebs). By doing this he will gain the knowl­edge to com­pete his quest and finally reach the far shores of Ithica.

In the Aeneid, Aeneas has the same quest but he actu­ally has to travel through the land of the dead, instead of just wait­ing at the gate like Odysseus. This is one of the most impor­tant and vivid parts of the poem. His jour­ney has inspired artists and poets for cen­turies, now it has inspired a daily design and under­world sub­way map!

Links & Sources:

• The basic out­line of the map was taken from Alice K. Turner’s truly amaz­ing book A His­tory of Hell. It would be dev­il­ish of me not to rec­om­mend it.
• The Aeneid trans­lated by John Dry­den via The Inter­net Clas­sics Archive at MIT. The recent Robert Fagels trans­la­tion looks really good too.
• Free Audio Ver­sion of  The  Aeneid via Libravox.org (also the Dry­den ver­sion… yeah Pub­lic Domain!)
• Under­world & the After­life: A good arti­cle about Greco-Roman ideas of, well the under­world & the after­life via Car­los Parada of Greek Mythol­ogy Link. I used a lit­tle of this for the sub­way of the under­world map.

Doodle of the Day for February 11, 2009

Odysseus is tempted by the song of the sirens, via boom box.

Click for the full image.

Doodle of the Day for February 9, 2009

Odysseus hears the com­plaints of the dead while vis­it­ing the under­world to get direc­tions. Elpenor let’s Odysseus know, in no uncer­tain terms, that he needs a proper bur­ial, Odysseus is unmoved.

Click for the full image.