Memorate.

Bloggers Karamazov has posted an interview about what sounds like a very interesting book: Today Robin Feuer Miller sat down with Barbara Henry to discuss her book, Tales from the Netherworld: The Katabasis in Russian Literature, which came out with Northern Illinois University Press this month. […] RFM: I have to confess! I needed to look up the word “katabasis.” Possibly others might too, so could you give a quick, handy definition of it before we go further in our conversation? BH: Strictly speaking, a katabasis is a descent, understood in the literary sense as a descent to the underworld, a key stop on the heroic journey. But almost as soon as you define it, questions arise. Is Odysseus’s visiting Hades a katabasis if he actually sails over Ocean and makes blood offerings at Hades’ entrance? Isn’t that a nekyia, a summoning of ghosts? Is Gilgamesh’s journey really a katabasis if he doesn’t make a descent, and there don’t seem to be any, well, dead people, in the place he visits?…