Musings at 9:53 am...

One of the subjects for this week's contemplation over at LJ Idol is "Achilles' heel."

Looking out over the Internet, it's pretty obvious that this collocation is most often used as a synonym for "a vulnerability," and that's a shame, because it ignores a nice story line that, in my opinion, adds at least one and possibly two other "necessary" conditions for a vulnerability to be an Achilles' heel.

The OED defines the "heel of Achilles" (or Achilles' heel) as "the only vulnerable spot," which hews true to the original mythological tale where the infant Achilles' mother managed to dip her baby in the river Styx, thus making Achilles physically invulnerable anywhere his body had come into contact with the river's waters.

As related in the story, mom held on to the tot by one of his heels during the immersion process, and thus the heel remained vulnerable. Ultimately, as the tale goes, Achilles took an arrow in that same heel and died as a result.

Interestingly enough, Achilles is not the only hero celebrated in song who experienced this problem.

Up where the Norse gods held sway, goddess mother Frigg made her son Baldr invulnerable to everything on earth, except mistletoe. Along the Rhine, a gent named Sigfried became invulnerable when he was drenched in a dragon's blood (except for one little spot covered by a leaf).

Moving away from Europe, a Hindu story holds that a certain Duryodhana covered his groin when he stood naked in front of his mother, whose gaze made whatever she looked at - yes, you guessed it - invulnerable. And in Persia, a fellow named Esfandiyan is said to have taken a dip in a pool that made him invulnerable, but because he kept his eyes closed while under the water... well, you can guess what happens later, both to him and the rest of these guys.

What is striking about all of these tales, and impels me to muse on the subject, is that in all of them, the invulnerable ones are not only vulnerable in only one spot, but they are also unaware of their one vulnerability. That aspect - not knowing - seems an important one to me, even if it doesn't to the OED. (Among other consequences, it makes "I don't know" the only logical answer to the question "What is your Achilles' heel?", but I digress...)

The whole scenario is quite appealing for storytellers, across all cultures and eras, as the combination of a single fatal and unrealized weakness and its exploitation brings all plot threads together and gives the writer a neat way to tie them off.

If you have any doubt, permit me to describe the climax of a version of the story updated for modern audiences:

A small group of rebels has come into possession of plans for a powerful and virtually invulnerable enemy ship that is capable of inflicting mass destruction wherever it goes. They determine that the only way to destroy this ship is to attack using very small ships and to launch an explosive through a small, insignificant exhaust port. A fleet of such small rebel ships attacks the enemy, and many of the attackers are destroyed in the process. One attacker gets through, however, and manages to fire a rocket into the exhaust port, causing the enemy ship to blow up.

The story? Remember the original Star Wars movie?

Which reminds me of something my old Slavic Languages Chairman once said, but that's a tale for later!

Cheers...

Another break in "the cloud"...

In between pages of work, I decided to once more unlimber the old search-fu and see if I couldn't find out whatever happened to the professor who was Chairman of the Slavic and Germanic Languages Department at SUNY Stony Brook back when I was an undergraduate (superseniors are undergraduates, right?)

I had never had any luck in previous essays, and I had forgotten how relatively common his name was, so with a sense of déjà vu, I added "Slavic" to the search string, because of his academic title and the fact that he had created a Slavic Cultural Center in Port Jefferson, not far from the campus. This time, my search hit the nail squarely on the head. There was my guy, up there at the top of the search results page.

The only problem is, it was an obituary, which is probably why the search worked this time.

Ed Czerwinski had a reputation at Stony Brook for giving just about everyone who enrolled for his classes an A grade. It was rumored that students who never showed up and never handed in any work got Bs. So, the six-credit Intensive Elementary Russian course he was teaching during the second half of my junior year was just the thing for me, an engineering major, who needed 6 credits of humanities to satisfy a graduation requirement.

The rumors about Ed's grading turned out to be overly optimistic. By week 3 of his course, I had pretty much stopped going to class, so as to concentrate on the important things in my academic life, like electrical science, fluid dynamics, and lab.

That week, he somehow managed to buttonhole me in the library. He told me that, in his opinion, having me in his class was an inspiration to the other students, and that my absence was having a deleterious effect on the group. Further, while he normally didn't care about who attended or did not attend his class and wasn't a big fan of the grading system, he so much as threatened me with a C if I didn't straighten up.

I straightened up.

I will probably have more to say soon about Ed Czerwinski, who died at the age of 75 a little over four years ago, on February 16, in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Cheers...