Stir It Up (Herakleitos 50)

50.

Thatdelicious drink, spiced hot Pramnian wine mixed with resin, roasted barley, andgrated goat’s cheese, separates in the bowl if it is not stirred.

  

Notes:

1. Fragmentary terracotta relief (Roman) of Satyr working awine press. 1st century AD. British Museum.

2.  EuergidesPainter, Kylix drinking cup, Dancing woman with two crotales, tondo of an Atticred-figure, 510–500 BC from Capua. British Museum.

3. Like so many sinceHerakleitos’ time, I’ve wondered over these words as an image of change, itssequences and consequences.  In the Oxford Companion To Wine (3^rd. ed. 2006), the fine wine writer JancisRobinson informs: “Some individual wines that were praised were two wines ofmysterious origins: Bibline andPramnian. Bibline is believedto be a wine made in a similar style to the Phoenician wine from Byblos, highlypraised for its perfumed fragrance by Greek writers like Archestratus.  The Greek version of the wine is believed tohave originated in Thrace from a grape variety known as "Bibline".Pramnian wine was found in several regions, most notably Lesbos but also Icariaand Smyrna.  It was suggested byAthenaeus that Pramnian was a generic name referring to a dark wine of goodquality and aging potential.”   

4. N.b., I've avoided what I think would have been a predictable, but mistaken, decision to include a link to the Wailers' truly immortal "Stir It Up" here.  You can probably sing it in your head -- every rising and falling line, swoop, sigh and surge -- and feel the bass plucks, clicking cymbals, guitar chops and swirling outer space synthesizer lines.  It will sound much better that way than through any sort of internet music system.  Obviously, however, it's a modern "related item" to this dreamy fragment, also probably composed near the wine-dark sea.