Pope's Odyssey

September 16, 2008 By

I have read The Odyssey three times now, and twice it has been Pope’s 1726 translation. Or perhaps I should call it Pope, Broome & Fenton’s, since according to George Sutherland Fraser, Pope only translated 12 of the 24 books, leaving the remaining half to the other two men. Whichever, I have read it twice, and while reading it this time, I could not escape a certain embarrassing conclusion. I hate poetry.

There are certain arts that I have worked to appreciate, such as opera; and then there are those that I have decided there is not enough time, and I do not have enough interest, to take the time to learn enough to appreciate them as art, such as ballet and modern dance. Poetry falls somewhere between these two.

I know, as a writer, I really should learn the basics of poetry. (Surprisingly, my English minor at Cal did not require this.) But, I just find it so irrelevant. When I was reading the story of Odysseus, one of the greatest stories of all time, all I kept thinking was how Pope’s poetry kept getting in the way.

Poetry, though, is such a core part of the tradition of literature that ignoring it means not completely understanding the art of writing. I suppose I have known this for some time, which is why I put #22 – Develop an appreciation of poetry on the list. I don’t know when I will start to tackle it, but hopefully it will be little more enjoyable than a trip to the dentist.

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Book of Job

September 12, 2008 By

I have heard that many people find solace in the Book of Job during difficult times. Having just read it for the first time, I find this inconceivable.

The plot, in a nutshell: Satan is in God’s neighborhood and stops by for a chat. God points out the most righteous man on earth, and as a way of showing off, tells Satan he can do anything he wants to Job, short of killing him, and Job will keep his faith. Satan bankrupts Job, kills his family, and covers him in boils. Job is then visited by some friends and he tells them he would like to speak with God to so he can learn what he he has done that displeased God. His friends tell him he must have deserved God’s wrath, and who is he to try to divine the mind of God. Finally, God gets so mad about these men talking about him that he makes his voice appear in the wind to tell Job and his friends that they are impudent for daring to ask any of these questions, and to try to understand God’s will at all. When Job throws himself at God’s mercy and apologizes for his impudence, God restores all that was taken from him.

Perhaps there is comfort in knowing that even the righteous are apt to suffer, and we are not meant to understand God’s will. I might be able to buy that interpretation, if it weren’t for the first scene, where God basically brags about Job, and then uses him to impress Satan. As the reader, we know God’s will and can therefore see how petty he is acting. His tirade at the end almost seems as if he’s embarrassed by his own behavior, and makes up for it by demanding obedience and telling Job he is not worthy to know why he was punished. And Job, like a battered dog, returns to his master with his head hanging low.

Perhaps the solace come from knowing that God is paying attention to our lives at all, and it is a comfort to know that there is a greater purpose for our suffering, albeit one that is hidden from us. But, knowing that it might be just because God wants to show off to his nemesis certainly doesn’t comfort me.

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Herodotus and Egypt

September 9, 2008 By

The second selection for the Civilization class is Book 2 of Herodotus: “Egypt.” I have read the entire Histories before, and loved it. The second half of it, anyway. The first half is a bit dry, reciting far too many facts around far too few histories. Unfortunately, this selection is in the first half, and suffers from it. So much is spent on describing units of measure, diet, and clothing, that it detracts from its main strength: Herodotus is a great story-teller.

In addition to being the first historian, Herodotus was also the first ethnographer, the first travel writer, the first folklorist, and the first literary critic. His little asides in this book, mostly meant as color commentary, are far more interesting than the main section, which is mostly a bland description of Egypt meant for his fellow Greeks. His deconstruction of the story of Helen and the Trojan War (he contends Helen could not have been at Troy, and therefore could not have been handed over to the Aegeans as demanded, as she was in Egypt with Paris at the time) is priceless. By the time he gets to the war with the Persians, this descriptive storytelling is dominant and really one of the great enjoyments of literature.

I also uncovered my first problem with the kindle. It is very difficult to flip forward and discover how many pages are left until the end of the section, something that I do often. I need to know sometimes whether I should soldier on until the end, or stop where I am. Very easy to do in a book, very cumbersome on a kindle, especially in a book that has no table of contents.

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EA Freeman on Race and Language

September 2, 2008 By

The works included in Harvard Classics are arranged somewhat pellmell into 50 volumes, so there are an additional 2 volumes of reading guides, indexes, and lectures to assist in tackling the whole set in a more organized fashion. I figured I might as well start big: The History of Civilization.

The course starts with an essay, “Race and Language” by Edward Augustus Freeman. Though written in 1879, and despite using dated, borderline-racist terms like “inferior races,” it is remarkably prescient. Freeman’s argument is that race is an artificial construct, as is language, as a means of national identity. He states that the people of his time were starting to identify with their cultures based on these very constructs, and it was changing the political affiliations of Europe. For those who would doubt him, he warns,

I must emphatically say that nothing can be more shallow, nothing more foolish, nothing more purely sentimental, than the talk of those who think that they can simply laugh down or shriek down any doctrine or sentiment which they themselves do not understand.

He foresaw the nationalism that led to the devastation of World War II and Hitler’s determination to unite the Germanic people.

One main object of modern policy is to bring these exceptional districts under the general rule by spreading the German language in them.

And his observations are still eerily relevant today. He writes of the idea of a Slavic people, and foresees the political climate of the post-Yugoslavian Balkan states.

It is a feeling at whose bidding the call to union goes forth to men whose dwellings are geographically far apart, to men who may have had no direct dealings with one another for years or for ages, to men whose languages, though the scholar may at once see that they are closely akin, may not be so closely akin as to be mutually intelligible for common purposes.

A hundred years back the Servian might have cried for help to the Russian on the ground of common Orthodox faith; he would hardly have called for help on the ground of common Slavonic speech and origin.

Certainly a great introduction to these volumes, for one of my greatest worries was their relevance.

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The Harvard Classics

September 1, 2008 By

I have a Kindle. Don’t worry, though. This isn’t going to be a post talking about how much I love it (I really do) or how much it has changed my life (it really hasn’t).

Ever since I first read a book on my PDA nearly 7 years ago, I have dreamt of a device that was portable and could hold my entire library in its memory. My dream device has a leather cover, is about the size of a trade paperback, can hold around 500 books, and is as easy on the eyes as a real book. Pretty much exactly what the Kindle is.

It needed to hold 500 books so it could hold all of the works of what has been called the Western Canon. When I was in college, I first encountered the Harvard Classics, otherwise known as the Five Foot Shelf. (The editor, Charles Eliot, had stated that a good education could be obtained by reading for a few minutes a day from a collection of books that would fit on a five-foot shelf.) I had seen a complete set in Green Apple Books in San Francisco, and immediately began to covet it. But being a poor college student, I decided instead I would learn what books should be included and then read them all anyway as used paperbacks.

I created a list on a typewriter in my room between study sessions. I kept the list with me as I moved from city to city, updating it periodically in both form and content. I created a website for it 1994, then a database in 1999. I still have the list and it has grown to include works beyond the West. And yet, my desire to read the entire 5-foot shelf continued to swell.

Then I got the Kindle, and discovered that someone at the MobileRead forums had converted the entire set into ebooks. I downloaded them a few weeks ago, and just last night finished the last of the other books in my queue. Tonight, I begin to tackle #64 – Read the Harvard Classics.

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