BroomHilda

[Dave Monroe]

Your point being ...?

Terrance wrote:

> Derrida: I've no time for your fables, one word, just one,
> one only.
>
>   Plato: There is time enough. And I believe that the
> grasshoppers
>     chirruping after their manner in the heat of the sun
> over our heads are
>     talking to one another and looking down at us. What
> would they say if
>     they saw that we, like the many, are not conversing, but
> slumbering at
>     mid-day, lulled by their voices, too indolent to think?
> Would they not
>     have a right to laugh at us? They might imagine that we
> were slaves,
>     who, coming to rest at a place of resort of theirs, like
> sheep lie asleep at
>     noon around the well. But if they see us discoursing,
> and like Odysseus
>     sailing past them, deaf to their siren voices, they may
> perhaps, out of
>     respect, give us of the gifts which they receive from
> the gods that they
>     may impart them to men.
>
>     Derrida: Greeks bearing ambiguity, logocentricity's a
> poisons.
>
>    Plato: A lover of music like yourself ought surely to
> have heard the story
>     of the grasshoppers, who are said to have been human
> beings in an age
>     before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song
> appeared they
>     were ravished with delight; and singing always, never
> thought of eating
>     and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they
> died. And now they
>     live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return
> which the Muses
>     make to them-they neither hunger, nor thirst, but from
> the hour of their
>     birth are always singing, and never eating or drinking;
> and when they die
>     they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours them
> on earth.
>     They win the love of Terpsichore for the dancers by
> their report of
>     them; of Erato for the lovers, and of the other Muses
> for those who do
>     them honour, according to the several ways of honouring
> them of
>     Calliope the eldest Muse and of Urania who is next to
> her, for the
>     philosophers, of whose music the grasshoppers make
> report to them; for
>     these are the Muses who are chiefly concerned with
> heaven and thought,
>     divine as well as human, and they have the sweetest
> utterance. For many
>     reasons, then, we ought always to talk and not to sleep
> at mid-day.