It was a big week for poetry, leaving only one slot for an essay (which was also on poetry). Also several bundles of very short pieces.
Quick review on this week's readings:
15th Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Nishapur: 4/5 several of these were fun, and there was some interesting history behind them. I think they'd be better scattered throughout than all in one night's reading.
16th Aesop's Fables: 4/5 I always enjoy these chances to read original (or at least more original) versions of works that're engrained in out culture in different forms. People talk a lot about how a lot of original folk tales are, but Aesop is just straight metal. Eye gouging, mosquitos bleeding people to death, etc. Also some solid one liners.
17th Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin(again): 4/5 Not quite as good as the initial set from AoBF. I do like how down to earth and relatable these are. Ben Franklin was interested in finding out more about his family, like many people. Ben Franklin admits that he learned shorthand, and forgot it, like many people do with skills like that. Also, dads/granddads haven't changed in 250 years.
18th The Frogs by Aristophanes: 4/5 Aristophanes shows that the ancient Greeks were already doing a lot of staple comedy bits over 1000 years ago.
19th "The Poetic Principle" by Edgar Allen Poe: 3/5 A little long, mostly due to awkwardly inserted excerpts of poems through. "Philosophy of Composition" is mostly the same, but better. Appreciate the raging at didactic and allegory.
20th "The Eve of Saint Agnes" by John Keats: 5/5 We need more swashbuckling romance poems!
21st "The Nightingale" by Hans Christen Andersen: 1/5 "If you love something, enslave it. It will return and agree to become a spy for you." Mediocre writing (possibly the translation's fault) and an insane theme single handedly ruining this weeks' average, which would've been a clean 4/5 without it.
Average: 3.6/5 Our best week so far, even after Andersen. Not only were these fun, but they were fun in genres that I normally don't love.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
A little lighter on the deep thoughts and philosophy this round, which I surprisingly missed. I went into this expecting the historical/philosophical/political essays to be a real drag, but I enjoyed most of them. If nothing else, it leaves me feeling like my brain didn't quite get the workout this week that I've come to expect from the previous two. I'm sure I could've thought about The Frogs more or something, so partially my fault.
On the other hand, both of this week's poetry entries scored at least a 4/5. As someone who doesn't love poetry, that's awesome! I've always felt like "I don't like poetry" is a bit of a lazy take (the same as people who say they just don't like any kind of sci-fi or romance or musical or whatever genre/medium), but it's been like 90% accurate in my experience. Getting some more exciting/fun poems obviously helped. Maybe I should try searching for "adventure poems" or something.
General question/reflection for the week: I've talked at length about how the best part of T5FSOB is the overall optimistic outlook most of the writers have, and this week continues with that. Today (at least in the US) I think it's fair to say that people are broadly not happy with the state of humanity/the world, and that there's a trend towards saying that if you are happy you're probably either an idiot or a bad person. What (if anything) changed? Were people happier 100 or so years ago? Did Eliot (and the writers he chose) belong to a particular class that was happy, even if most people weren't? Is it just a question of people being more informed about bad stuff? Is there actually more bad stuff now than there was then? Was being optimistic more valued then? Or is it a kind of emotional/intellectual survivorship bias, where the positive survives and the negative is forgotten?
Logically, I know that most people are better off materially than they were in the past, equality is better than it was, people are living longer, crime/danger is down in most of the world, etc. While a substantial portion of the authors in the collection were upper class, aristocrats, etc. it's certainly not all. Poe's family wasn't particularly wealthy, and he spent much of his adult life poor/sick. Aesop was literally a slave. Ben Franklin did well for himself... eventually. Overall, a lot of them seem like they'd have backgrounds that'd map out to being middle class writers (some full time, some as a side job) today, but their outlook is much happier than I'd expect in such a group. Hard (probably impossible) to tell if that's a result of the mood of the times, or simple Eliot's selections.
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