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Sep. 3rd, 2004 03:00 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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indeedsir_backupI've been making a list of references to myths/poets/authors/singers/etc. in the Jeeves and Wooster novels and a thing struck me.
You know how Bertie was rather keen on describing his relationship with Ginger Winship as that of Damon and Pythias?
Erm... now, Google is divided on the subject. Half of it says they were bosom friends, the other half says they were lovers. I wouldn't know. Little help?
‘Know him?’ I said. ‘You bet I know him. We were like… Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘Who were those two fellows?’
‘Sir?’
‘Greek, if I remember correctly. Always mentioned when the subject of bosom pals comes up.’
‘Would you be referring to Damon and Pythias, sir?
‘That’s right, we were like Damon and Pythias, old ancestor.’
&
‘Jeeves,’ I said, hanging up. ‘You remember Ginger Winship who used to play Damon to my Pythias?’
‘Indeed, sir.’
-- Bertie and Jeeves about Harold ‘Ginger’ Winship in ‘Much Obliged, Jeeves.’
Damon and Pythias (also called Phintias), were devoted friends and Pythagorean students. The two lovers, came from Greece, visit Pytagora in Syracuse, Sicily. Damon was arrested on a baseless charge of spying and conspiring against the tyrant Dionysius who ordered his execution. The beautiful story is narrated by Valerius Maximus in his De Amicitiae Vinculo, book IV, chapter 7:
Damon and Phythias, initiates in the Pythagorean mysteries, contracted so faithful a friendship towards each other, that when Dionysius of Syracuse intended to execute one of them, and he had obtained permission from the tyrant to return home and arrange his affairs before his death, the other did not hesitate to give himself up as a pledge of his friend's return. [For the two men lived together, and had their possessions in common.] He whose neck had been in danger was now free; and he who might have lived in safety was now in danger of death. So everybody, and especially Dionysius, were wondering what would be the upshot of this novel and dubious affair. At last, then the day fixed was close at hand, and he had not returned, every one condemned the one who stood security, for his stupidity and rashness. But he insisted that he had nothing to fear in the matter of his friend's constancy. And indeed at the same moment and the hour fixed by Dionysius, he who had received leave, returned. The tyrant, admiring the courage of both, remitted the sentence which had so tried their loyalty, and asked them besides to receive him in the bonds of their friendship, saying that he would make his third place in their affection agreeable by his utmost goodwill and effort. Such indeed are the powers of friendship: to breed contempt of death, to overcome the sweet desire of life, to humanize cruelty, to turn hate into love, to compensate punishment by largess; to which powers almost as much veneration is due as to the cult of the immortal gods. For if with these rests the public safety, on those does private happiness depend; and as the temples are the sacred domiciles of these, so of those are the loyal hearts of men as it were the shrines consecrated by some holy spirit.
(Taken/stolen directly from here. Most sources, however, call them bosom friends, and not lovers. Not being versed in these matters, I wouldn’t have a clue.)
_________________________
_________________________
‘Old Ginger!’ I said, feeling emotional. ‘It will warm the what-d’you-call-its of my heart to see him again.’
-- Bertie in ‘Much Obliged, Jeeves’
‘To warm the cockles of one’s heart’ – English idiom
__________________________
__________________________
‘But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it.’
-- Bertie about Ginger Winship in ‘Much Obliged, Jeeves.’
“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!”
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Break, break, break”
Hm, so so far I've got Ginger's Damon to Bertie's Pythias, Bingo Little who massages Bertie every time he wants something done, and a couple of chums... and of course, Jeeves.
I'd never have thought Bertram would be so utterly slashable! :D
You know how Bertie was rather keen on describing his relationship with Ginger Winship as that of Damon and Pythias?
Erm... now, Google is divided on the subject. Half of it says they were bosom friends, the other half says they were lovers. I wouldn't know. Little help?
‘Know him?’ I said. ‘You bet I know him. We were like… Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘Who were those two fellows?’
‘Sir?’
‘Greek, if I remember correctly. Always mentioned when the subject of bosom pals comes up.’
‘Would you be referring to Damon and Pythias, sir?
‘That’s right, we were like Damon and Pythias, old ancestor.’
&
‘Jeeves,’ I said, hanging up. ‘You remember Ginger Winship who used to play Damon to my Pythias?’
‘Indeed, sir.’
-- Bertie and Jeeves about Harold ‘Ginger’ Winship in ‘Much Obliged, Jeeves.’
Damon and Pythias (also called Phintias), were devoted friends and Pythagorean students. The two lovers, came from Greece, visit Pytagora in Syracuse, Sicily. Damon was arrested on a baseless charge of spying and conspiring against the tyrant Dionysius who ordered his execution. The beautiful story is narrated by Valerius Maximus in his De Amicitiae Vinculo, book IV, chapter 7:
Damon and Phythias, initiates in the Pythagorean mysteries, contracted so faithful a friendship towards each other, that when Dionysius of Syracuse intended to execute one of them, and he had obtained permission from the tyrant to return home and arrange his affairs before his death, the other did not hesitate to give himself up as a pledge of his friend's return. [For the two men lived together, and had their possessions in common.] He whose neck had been in danger was now free; and he who might have lived in safety was now in danger of death. So everybody, and especially Dionysius, were wondering what would be the upshot of this novel and dubious affair. At last, then the day fixed was close at hand, and he had not returned, every one condemned the one who stood security, for his stupidity and rashness. But he insisted that he had nothing to fear in the matter of his friend's constancy. And indeed at the same moment and the hour fixed by Dionysius, he who had received leave, returned. The tyrant, admiring the courage of both, remitted the sentence which had so tried their loyalty, and asked them besides to receive him in the bonds of their friendship, saying that he would make his third place in their affection agreeable by his utmost goodwill and effort. Such indeed are the powers of friendship: to breed contempt of death, to overcome the sweet desire of life, to humanize cruelty, to turn hate into love, to compensate punishment by largess; to which powers almost as much veneration is due as to the cult of the immortal gods. For if with these rests the public safety, on those does private happiness depend; and as the temples are the sacred domiciles of these, so of those are the loyal hearts of men as it were the shrines consecrated by some holy spirit.
(Taken/stolen directly from here. Most sources, however, call them bosom friends, and not lovers. Not being versed in these matters, I wouldn’t have a clue.)
_________________________
_________________________
‘Old Ginger!’ I said, feeling emotional. ‘It will warm the what-d’you-call-its of my heart to see him again.’
-- Bertie in ‘Much Obliged, Jeeves’
‘To warm the cockles of one’s heart’ – English idiom
__________________________
__________________________
‘But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it.’
-- Bertie about Ginger Winship in ‘Much Obliged, Jeeves.’
“And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!”
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “Break, break, break”
Hm, so so far I've got Ginger's Damon to Bertie's Pythias, Bingo Little who massages Bertie every time he wants something done, and a couple of chums... and of course, Jeeves.
I'd never have thought Bertram would be so utterly slashable! :D
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Date: 2004-09-03 06:40 am (UTC)Wasn't it Jeeves that suggested the allusion? Makes one wonder what the perceptive fellow was picking up on.
I supposed the Tennyson is also the poem referenced in "The Aunt and the Sluggard"?
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Date: 2004-09-03 07:00 am (UTC)And Whee! More gay Greeks in Wodehouse. This is FUN!
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Date: 2004-09-03 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-03 03:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-02 10:05 pm (UTC)Gah! I'm at home for Christmas with my Jeeves books, so cannot get the exact quote, but I certainly remember the passage about "the touch of a vanished hand."
It had me and my housemates laughing for ages.
Especially as (IIRC) he refers to meeting Ginger again as an "assignation", and well, just read the description of said Ginger. Frightfully in need of my book now to find the quote.
The best way to describe it is the phrase that most often comes up between my housemates and me when dicussing Wodehouse: "Oh, Bertie!"