Seminars are terrifying if you're going for valedictorian or something - no one knows how much the grade for the group work matters, but to be safe kids who care about their grades just have to do all the work themselves. But they're kinda nice if you are going for a nice round C. You only have to do a little bit of poetry analysis instead of a LOT of poetry analysis and meeting a study group is built in. 

Also they're looking more at Prometheus, apparently, and while Annisa objects vehemently to its treatment of death she has to admit it's the best poem they've read so far. 

English poetry! Misaki is totally prepared. This is among the classes that she has totally got under control.

Actually it's kind of archaic and unfamiliar, but by the time the first discussion rolls around she's gotten through Prometheus and gets it. This would be better if it weren't a relentlessly upsetting poem. She is not going to think about predicting her own funereal destiny. She is not. The school can't make her.

Leander actually likes his lit classes a lot? They're mostly in fairly archaic language-- he's in this and a class on Arthuriana and he's half-expecting to have to pick up Middle English by the end of term but as languages to have to pick up go Middle English is head and shoulders above Nahuatl so it'll be fine, probably, unless it's not, but Astor was very firm on live in the worlds in which you live so he's going to prepare for the world where it's fine and doesn't swamp him-- but he's good at having strong opinions about stories, and not even just because it's where every coping skill he's ever had is derived from. 

...which is to say that he cried the first time he read Prometheus, but it is now the thirty-first time he's read Prometheus and he's ready for the discussion group, he thinks.

"Okay, who else has a verse of Prometheus, it looks like we have to compare notes now. I've been trying to figure out the conversation with Zeus that the second verse recounts - is that from some other telling of this story? The textbook doesn't say and I can't figure out where he's getting all this stuff on how their conversation went, and it seems pretty important if he's making it up or if he's offering a lens on something we're already supposed to know..."

"Lucian of Samosata's Dialogues of the Gods includes one between Zeus and Prometheus where Zeus agrees to set him free in exchange for a prophecy. That's kind of weird with this poem, isn't it?"

"It's not a standard part of the story, anyway, and I would expect that if he were referencing a specific one the textbook would have mentioned? I've never heard of the Lucian of Samosata version at all."

"It's not authentic. It's from the second century AD, so he'd've been a Christian, and redemption is a Christian theme."

"...sorry, I wasn't trying to make a claim about where it came from, what I meant is that the version where Zeus negotiates with Prometheus for a prophecy isn't widely referenced and didn't make it into the cultural stream that references to Prometheus can be assumed to be building on, so I would guess that the poem probably isn't referencing it unless there's some specific reason to think it is." 

Misaki does not have anything remotely resembling an idea of what is or ever has been mainstream. "Not that I know of, yeah."

"I was really struck the first time I read it by the claim that Prometheus had begged to die and been denied. It doesn't feel like it's on the same thematic thrust as the rest of the poem at all, and I just don't see where he's getting it!"

"Huh, it didn't stand out to me as weird at all and now I'm curious how you're reading it."

"So....Prometheus's situation is bad, and he knew it would be, and he did it anyway, because giving mortals fire was that important to him, and.... I don't think we're supposed to be grateful, exactly, but we're supposed to see it as - vaguely aspirational, maybe? It's about how it was worth it, not about how it was stupid, even though altruism is stupid, generally, it's saying there's an adult kind of altruism. At least that's how I read it. But then there's this entire digression about

'the ruling principle of Hate 

Which for its pleasure doth create

The things it may annihilate,

Refus'd thee even the boon to die:

Which ....contradicts itself! If you're conceptualizing of Hate as - the force in the universe that brings people about just to end them - then it seems really important that Prometheus is in fact still alive, that he was not in his martyrdom annihilated, that his defiance is - an ongoing thing, not a thing that happened once and then he died and didn't exist anymore. So - how could death possibly be a boon, which my dictionary says is a good thing? And I don't think it's just a problem with my dictionary because the next bit is 'The wretched gift Eternity Was thine' but that's the only not wretched bit about the whole thing, that he's immortal, that he wasn't annihilated. And then it's got all the stuff at the end about how mortals can - learn from him, take strength from him, aspire to be like him, which makes sense, to conceive of mortals as - at war with more powerful forces that want to deny us everything, but that are less determined than us, and will be surprised, by our determination - and then it ends "making Death a Victory!"

Which is stupid! Prometheus isn't dead! His victory isn't that he died for his ideals, lots of people did that, practically everyone has done that, that is the default outcome if you try having ideals. It feels very important to the story of Prometheus that it is not about Prometheus doing something good and dying about it, and that aspiring to be like him wouldn't be doing something good and dying about it!" And the textbook says that Lord Byron went off to fight in the Greek war for independence and died about it, so maybe he actually was confused and it's not just that the poem is confused, and he thinks the special thing about Prometheus is that he tried to do good and died, but he's wrong, that's not what's interesting about the story at all!"

"Maybe it's like death if you stop being able to go anywhere or do anything. Like how you don't think of people in maw-mouths as alive."

"I think I'd disagree with that - for having your liver eaten, not for a mawmouth, I agree on the mawmouth - but it'd sort of make sense, except for the thing where then why emphasize that he was refused 'even the boon to die'? That feels like he is drawing a distinction between death and eternal imprisonment, but ....a bizarre one where eternal imprisonment is worse than death?"

"...I mean I do think the obvious reading is that Byron thought being tortured for eternity was worse than death? I think a lot of people would consider an eternity of torture to be worse than death, the example that comes to our minds is maw-mouths because we're wizards and if you're not a wizard you don't have that particular example in mind but it's the same basic intuition."

"The difference between maw-mouths and being chained to a rock isn't exactly irrelevant, though! If we determined that inside mawmouths people carry out conversations and yell at Zeus for being stupid that would completely change whether it's worse than death!"

"He's writing about religion so he probably means for you to think of death as going to heaven, since he's from a Christian society, or, uh, Hades with the weird river, I think the Greeks believed in that? At least given that it's a religious poem to begin with, right, like, Prometheus exists in it."

"I feel like if you get a cushy afterlife then that completely changes the calculus around doing suicidal altruistic things. ...doesn't mean you're wrong, though."

"...uh, no, Greek mythology references in English-language literature aren't working under the assumption that it's a religion the readers or the authors believe in really at all, it's more like a shared literary tradition you can make references to and be fairly sure that everyone in the audience is at least passingly familiar with the story. If it were about the Christian god it'd be a religious poem but this isn't. Also I think Lord Byron might have been an atheist but I'm not actually sure, the biography I looked up just said he kept picking fights with the Anglican church.

...and the other thing I would say about the torture vs death thing ties into a bigger thing which is-- I don't think it's literally about the story of Prometheus? Or, it is at all literally about the story of Prometheus, but it's using Prometheus as a vehicle to talk about the heroism of defiance against cruel authority more generally, because it's not a narrative poem and it's not just a retelling of the story that exists, and because Prometheus gets used as a metaphor for human defiance of authority and the natural order kind of a lot-- and, like Annisa said, because Lord Byron fought in wars of independence.

And so when he says 'Prometheus, hero after which we should pattern ourselves, you knew you were going to be tortured for eternity for doing the right thing and you did it anyway and and no amount of torture could break that and you turned even death into something that could be victorious,' that doesn't seem like something where the obvious reading is about what Prometheus, within the narrative, would be thinking or what his options would be, and obviously you can agree or disagree with that statement but making your agreement or disagreement hinge on the specific literal scenario of being chained to a rock and having your liver eaten seems like it's kind of missing the point."

"So it's a metaphor for death."

"I just don't see how being tortured for eternity turns even death into something that can be victorious! They've got nothing to do with each other!"

"They have a lot to do with each other. For example, they're both bad."

"I'm not trying to argue that it's true that death is victory but

Which even in torture can descry

         Its own concenter'd recompense,

Triumphant where it dares defy,

And making Death a Victory.

sure seems like it's saying that?"

"...yeah. You're right about what the poem is saying." But the poem is WRONG and Lord Byron is DEAD and it was NOT a victory.

(He has a giant pile of feelings about whether the poem is wrong, mostly centered around Thy godlike crime was to be kind / to render with thy precepts less / the sum of human wretchedness, and the idea that refusing to accept a cruel natural order even if that refusal killed you or worse could be heroic rather than stupid, but that seems like a profoundly unproductive and stupid conversation to have with a classmate and so he is just simply not going to.

Leander is KILLING IT on not having stupid and unproductive conversations for absolutely no reason. (That's a lie he is not.))