Review: "Hearing Homer's Song" | The New Republic
On the short and momentous life of Milman Parry “Sappho and Alcaeus,” by Lawrence Alma-Tadema,1881. Courtesy of the Walters Museum of Art. One afternoon in 1935, Milman Parry, a 33-year-old scholar whose research would revolutionize the study of Ancient Greek poetry, was unpacking his suitcase at the Palms hotel in Los Angeles. According to his wife, Marian, Parry was naked from the waist up and rummaging through his clothes when he accidentally jostled a handgun tangled up in a shirt, which sent a bullet into his heart. Underneath a news photograph of Marian taken later that year, a cap...
Source: newrepublic.com