Greece – Reading Markson Reading

The inside front cover and first page of David Markson’s copy of The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley:

On which Markson wrote his last name as an inscription, in addition to the city in which the book was purchased, “NYC.”

—

The world of Odysseus.

The world of Ulysses.

The world of Odysseus and Ulysses is mentioned throughout Markson’s novels.

“Possibly I should point out that Odysseus and Ulysses were the same person. For some reason the Romans changed his name.”
– David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pg. 82.

Pgs. 58 and 59 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume Two by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson has underlined two passages from Euripides’ Helen:
     The first:
     “Withhold then the malignant blade from thy sister, and believe that she herein is acting with discretion.”
     The second (the final lines of the play):
     “Many are the forms the heavenly will assumes; and many a thing God brings to pass contrary to expectation: that which was looked for is not accomplished, while Heaven finds out a way for what we never hoped; e’en such has been the issue here.”

—

As it says in the note on pg. 59 in the above scan, the final lines of Helen are “found likewise at the conclusion of the Alcestis, Andromache, The Bacchae, and, with a slight addition, the Medea.”

     Markson noted this on pg. 67 in The Last Novel:
     “Andromache. Alcestis. Helen. Medea. The Bacchae.
     Each of which Euripides ends with his chorus speaking an identical verse—to the effect that the ways of the gods are unpredictable.”

Pgs. 416-417 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined a number of the lines on the last two pages of Sophocles’ Oedipus the King (aka Oedipus Rex).
He also placed a pound sign and an exclamation point at the end of the play.

—

     “Oedipus gouges out his eyes, Jocasta hangs herself, both guiltless; the play has come to a harmonious conclusion.
     Wrote Schiller.”
     Wrote Markson.
     On pg. 4 of This Is Not A Novel.

(So there you have it a whole month’s worth of scans from The Complete Greek Drama, and we haven’t even done a quarter of the marginalia in those two books, and I even left some of the best stuff for later—like a whole diagram Markson drew in the back…)

Pg. 992 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlined a few lines from The Trojan Women (by Euripides), where Menelaus curses Helen:
     “And now I seek…
     Curse her! I scarce can speak the name she bears,
     That was my wife.”

—

Oh Helen and the blame game…

     “There is no description of Helen’s beauty anywhere in the Iliad.
     Strangely like is she to some deathless goddess to look upon, being all that is said.
     Though the Trojan elders do acknowledge that no one could be blamed for having endured a war because of her.”
     – David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 29.

     “Although what one doubts even more sincerely is that Helen would have been the cause of that war to begin with, of course.
     After all, a single Spartan girl, as Walt Whitman once called her.
     Even if in The Trojan Women Euripides does let everybody be furious at Helen.
     In the Odyssey, where she has a splendid radiant dignity, nothing of that sort is hinted at at all.
     And even in the Iliad, when the war is still going on, she is generally treated with respect.
     So unquestionably it was only later that people decided it had been Helen’s fault.
     Well, Euripides of course coming much later than Homer on his own part, for instance.
     I do not remember how much later, but much later.”
     – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pgs. 194-195.

     “You go wherever you like. I’m not about to get myself killed for that wife Helen of yours.
     Says Agamemnon to Menelaus—essentially about commencing the Trojan War—in the little that remains of a lost play by Euripides.”
     – David Markson, The Last Novel, pg. 132.

     “And which furthermore now makes me realize that if Euripides had not blamed Helen for the war very possibly I would not remember Helen, either.
     So that doubtless it was quite hasty of me, to criticize Rainer Maria Rilke or Euripides.”
     – David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pgs. 196.

Pg. 635 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume Two by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson drew a checkmark next to a line from Aristophanes’ play The Wasps:
     Just before the checked line, Bdelycleon says:
     “There, what do you think of that? I have brought you everything needful and much more into the bargain. See, here is a thunder-mug in case you have to pee; I shall hang it up besides you.”
     Markson puts the check next to Philocleon’s response:
     “Good idea! Right useful at my age. You have found the true alleviation of bladder troubles.”

—

     Reminds me of a line from David Markson’s Vanishing Point:
     “An appointment with E. M. Forster that Tennessee Williams once canceled.
     Because he could not abide old men with urine stains on their trousers, Gore Vidal said Williams said.” (Pg. 140).

You have found the true alleviation of bladder troubles.

Pg. 754 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlined three passages in Euripides’ Medea, just after the titular character has slain her children offstage:
     1) “Thy sons are dead; slain by their own mother’s hand.”
     2) “MEDEA appears above the house, on a chariot drawn by dragons; the children’s corpses are beside her.”
     (This also gets an angular bracket marking in the margins.)
     3) “Having borne me sons to glut thy passion’s lust, thou now hast slain them.”
     (This also gets an X in the margins.)

—

The scene of Medea murdering her sons is not shown, interestingly enough.

     In fact:
     “Not one of the violent moments in Greek tragedy occurs on stage. Medea murdering her sons, for instance. Or Orestes bloodying Clytemnestra.”
     Wrote Markson on pg. 70 of Reader’s Block.

The inside front cover of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume Two by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson wrote as an inscription:
“David M. Markson”

—

Up until this month, I had barely touched Markson’s two volumes of The Complete Greek Drama because there was so much marginalia within both editions, I didn’t even know where to start. And I didn’t want to lean too heavily on using scans from these two books—after all, I could have made a whole blog using just the marginalia from them. I ended up barely using scans from these books in my first year and change of doing this blog, for fear of turning these into the blog’s lynchpin or fulcrum.

     As Markson once said:
     “Beware of Greeks bearing fulcrums.”
     – Springer’s Progress, pg. 38.

And yet, here I am, now…
After noticing I’ve barely used these books, I’ve dedicated a whole month to them.

The last page of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson has made a list of various books on the Greeks, and placed dashes and angular brackets next to some of them.

     The list is as follows:
     “- R. C. Flickinger: The Greek Theater + Its Drama
        T. H. Gaster: Thespis
   – W. C. Greene: Moira—Fate, Good + Evil in Greek Thought
   > Moses Hadas: A History of Greek Literature
        A. E. Haigh: The Tragic Drama of the Greeks
     – P. W. Harsh: Handbook of Classical Drama
     – Gilbert Highet: The Classical Tradition
        H. D. F. Kitto: Greek Tragedy
A. M. G. Little: Myth + Society in Attic Drama
     > G. Norwood: Greek Tragedy
        G. Norwood: Greek Comedy
        A. W. Pickard-Cambridge: Dithyramb Tragedy + Comedy
        J. T. Allen: Stage Antiquities of the Greeks + Romans
     – M. Bieber: The History of Greek + Roman Theater
        A. W. Pickard-Cambridge: The Attic Theater
     > H. W. Smyth: Aeschylean Tragedy
     > Gilbert Murray: Aeschylus, The Creator of Tragedy
        G. Thompson: Aeschylus and Athens
     > C. M. Bowra: Sophoclean Tragedy
        T. B. M. Webster: An Introduction to Sophocles
        W. M. Bates: Sophocles, Poet + Dramatist
     > G. M. A. Grube: The Drama of Euripides
     > Gilbert Murray: Euripides and His Age
        W. M. Bates: Euripides, Student of Human Nature
     > Gilbert Murray: Aristophanes, A Study
        Croiset: Aristophanes + the Political Parties at Athens
        P. E. Legrand: The New Greek Comedy
        A. Koerte: Hellenistic Poetry”

—

As Markson told Joseph Tabbi in his interview in 1989:
“Some while back I must have spent, oh, two full years reading and rereading all the Greek and Latin stuff, not just the authors themselves but any number of commentaries, cultural histories, and so on.”

(I am fortunate enough to not only have his two volumes of The Complete Greek Drama, from which I’ve been taking scans this entire month, but also I own three of the books listed in the above list that were once Markson’s and are themselves marked up with some of his marginalia.)

Pg. 401 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined most of the lines on the page in an exchange between Oedipus and Messenger in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (Oedipus the King).
(And placed an X next to one line.)

—

One of the lines underlined in the above scan is the Messenger saying to Oedipus:
“Found thee in Cithaeron’s winding glens.”

     “Cithaeron.”
     Markson hauntingly brings up on pg. 117 of Reader’s Block with no other reference to the play in the general vicinity to give hint to meaning or to anchor one’s reading of the allusion.
     As is often the case with Markson…

Markson is everything that is the case?

Pg. 826 of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

On which Markson underlined part of a speech by the eponymous character in Euripides’ Hecuba:
“I may be a slave and weak as well, but the gods are strong, and custom too which prevails o’er them, for by custom it is that we believe in them and set up bounds of right and wrong for our lives. Now if this principle, when referred to thee, is to be set at naught, and they are to escape punishment who murder guests or dare to plunder the temples of gods, then is all fairness in things human at an end.”

—

“The first writer known to condemn slavery is Euripides.”
Markson notes on pg. 175 of his novel Reader’s Block.