Mar 31– From The Life of John Donne (1670?) by Izaak Walton
Summary: A guy gets a death portrait drawn and sleeps with it by his bed.
Commentary: So, this guy is supposed to be the model of a Christian life, but we read a story about how he's so vain about how he sleeps with his own death portrait? ON EASTER!? (As my wife reminded me, Easter is a floating holiday. I figured we'd get one of the Easter gospels today.) Is this satire? We get some post-facto justification that you're supposed to look at it and how much he aged and how you should get to work serving God ASAP, but the entire beginning is about people wanting to be commended, praised, etc., and the end is all about how much people lauded him after his death. Elliot really does a great job of making Christianity sound terrible in these selections.
Mar 30– From I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Alesandro Manzoni (1827)
Summary: The plague comes to Milan.
Commentary: This is the second excerpt we've gotten from this book, and I still don't feel like I have a good handle on it. This section was interesting. The descriptions of all the individuals, when they got the plague, etc. It's almost like a Resident Evil log or something. I wonder what will become the "canonical" novel, movie, whatever about Covid in 100 years. Also, people being idiots during a plague was a thing hundreds of years ago. History repeats. It's kind of darkly comforting.
Summary: Undead horse riders? A guy rising from the grave?
Commentary: These are interesting, but without any context I don't really know what's going on. I'm not sure why we got the end of one selection and the start of the other instead of all of one.
Commentary: I flooded my bathroom and kitchen and got like 3 hours of sleep last night, so I'm going to shortchange you all here. Short commentary that I've said before: I wish we'd read more excerpts from these kind of primary semi-foundational documents when I was in school. We definitely read 10 variants of the phrase, "The Wealth of Nations was one of the most influential economic texts of all time!" but other than "It's capitalism" and "The invisible hand" I don't think I could've told you a thing about it when I was 18 or 20. If you're going to put in a textbook, lesson, test, whatever that a book is super important, shouldn't a student of that course be able to tell you more than a sentence that isn't really an accurate summary?
It's a good thing titles/subtitles aren't a finite resource. The full title of tonight's section would be:
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations- Book I- Of The Causes Of Improvement In The Productive Powers Of Labour, And Of The Order According To Which Its Produce Is Naturally Distributed Among The Different Ranks Of The People. Chapter I- Of The Division Of Labour.
That's a short paragraph on its own.
The division of labor is interesting. It's obviously true that one person getting good at one thing and just focusing on that is helpful. But there is also such a thing as over specialization. The same is true in work, academics, hobbies... Even in tools/machines. Today, I had to buy a prybar to pull down some molding. There was a molding specific one, and it probably works really well. But how often am I going to need to pull down molding? This thing was basically a hand sized hoe, it wouldn't have been any good for any other wedging/prying. On the other hand, I have a Leatherman that sits in my toolbox, and it does about a million things pretty well. But have you ever tried to cut something with the saw on one of those, compared to a regular hand saw? Anything more than an inch or so around is a struggle, and it's almost impossible to get a straight cut. Doesn't fit well in most miter boxes or other guides either.
Summary: Lying (especially minor lies or slight embellishments) is easy. Everyone lies when they write or speak imperfectly.
Commentary: I know I harp on "The Philosophy of Composition" by Poe a lot, but this is really just a shorter, less well written, version, with some weak moralizing thrown is as a bonus.
Summary: A bunch of animals teach us a bunch of lessons.
Commentary: On the one hand, I appreciate how quick and easy these are to read. We just moved today, and I'm beat. On the other hand, I'm less thrilled about finding them all. Every edition of Aesop has slightly different translations, arrangements, etc. and there's no good digital versions of the actual T5FSOB version that I can copy cleanly. I think we're technically missing two or three that we're supposed to have, but this'll have to do.
The Man and the Wood: A sort of Giving Tree story about a tree getting cut down after letting a man have a branch for an axe handle
The Hart in the Ox-Stall: A deer hunting cult
The Fox and The Lion: "Familiarity breeds contempt" (which I never realized was an Aesop, cool to learn where a common saying comes from, I'm surprised it hasn't happened more)
The Lion and The Statue: “That is all very well,” said the Lion, “but proves nothing, for it was a man who made the statue.” Take that, propaganda!
The Tree and the Reed: “OBSCURITY OFTEN BRINGS SAFETY.” Not good info sec advice.
The Dog in the Manger:“AH, PEOPLE OFTEN GRUDGE OTHERS WHAT THEY CANNOT ENJOY THEMSELVES.” True that, Ox.
The Man and the Wooden God: A guy breaks god and finds a bunch of money inside. This one is weird.
The Tortoise and the Birds: An eagle agrees to carry a tortoise, but a crow talks him into dropping him so they can eat him instead.
The Young Thief and His Mother: The moral is just stealing a Bible verse, AND THE FABLE IS ABOUT STEALING!
The Ass in the Lion’s Skin: “FINE CLOTHES MAY DISGUISE, BUT SILLY WORDS WILL DISCLOSE A FOOL.” I think I like this better than "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
Summary: "To be or not to be..." and the Mousetrap play from Hamlet
Commentary: Normally, I try to watch the plays, but we're currently in the middle of moving, so I'm cutting corners this week! I'll get last week's recap someday (probably Thursday).
To be or not to be is pretty high on my soliloquy list. Up their with Crispin's Day (Henry V) and better than Tomorrow and tomorrow (Macbeth) or the balcony (Romeo and Juliet, though Mercutio's Alas poor Romeo is the underrated best from R&J). While no less overdramatic than the others, it's feels more authentic (Hamlet's semi-acted madness helps) and it deals with a more relatable question than many of the others. Where do we draw the line before we do something stupid/dangerous to take a stand against mistreatment? And what is the best way of taking that stand?
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are kind of terrible friends for spying on Hamlet, but he does want them to think he's crazy, so I guess that partially absolves them.
In all the whore calling of Shakespeare, "Get thee to a nunnery. Why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? " is certainly memorable.
I imagine Shakespeare has a lot of fun with Mousetrap, he gets to have Hamlet call out his acting pet peeves:
HAMLET.
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue. But if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness. O, it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters, to very rags, to split the ears of the groundlings, who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant. It out-Herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
FIRST PLAYER.
I warrant your honour.
HAMLET.
Be not too tame neither; but let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o’erstep not the modesty of nature; for anything so overdone is from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now, this overdone, or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be players that I have seen play—and heard others praise, and that highly—not to speak it profanely, that, neither having the accent of Christians, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of Nature’s journeymen had made men, and not made them well, they imitated humanity so abominably.
FIRST PLAYER.
I hope we have reform’d that indifferently with us, sir.
HAMLET.
O reform it altogether. And let those that play your clowns speak no more than is set down for them. For there be of them that will themselves laugh, to set on some quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, though in the meantime some necessary question of the play be then to be considered. That’s villainous, and shows a most pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it. Go make you ready.
I've never cared much for Mousetrap itself, Hamlet is not as good of a writer as Shakespeare. Lots of drama, but the lines aren't terribly clever, unlike this one from Hamlet mid play:
Summary: Guinevere monologues to Gawain before she gets burnt at the stake. Broadly: let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Commentary: Please stop rhyming words with themselves. Especially easy ones like lie. Tons of words end with the eye sound, and it's also very slantable. I assume this is intentional, since it happens several times, but I think it's awkward.
I do like this stanza:
"However often Spring might be most thick
Of blossoms and buds, smote on me, and I grew
Careless of most things, let the clock tick, tick,
The repetition of tick to hit the syllable number and mimic the clock is a nice trick.
Summary: A bunch of guys with animals they claim to be related to trick a djinn into sparing a man's life.
Commentary: I generally enjoy the 1001 Nights stories when we get them. This is probably the least of the three we've had so far, but still decent. As I said in the first one, it gets meta pretty quickly, with the merchant using almost the same trick on the djinn (he accidentally killed his son when he tossed a date pit) that Scheherazade is using on the sultan.
O thou Jinni, and crown of the kings of the Jann, if I relate to thee the story of myself and this gazelle, and thou find it to be wonderful, and more so than the adventure of this merchant, wilt thou give up to me a third of thy claim to his blood?
He has 3 guys tell 3 stories, each asking for 1/3 of the claim. The first one starts like this.
THEN said the sheykh, Know, O ‘Efrit, that this gazelle is the daughter of my paternal uncle, and she is of my flesh and my blood. I took her as my wife when she was young, and I lived with her about thirty years; but I was not blessed with a child by her; so I took to me a concubine slave, and by her I was blessed with a male child, like the rising full moon, with beautiful eyes, and delicately-shaped eyebrows, and perfectly-formed limbs; and he grew up by little and little until he attained the age of fifteen years. At this period, unexpectedly had occasion to journey to a certain city, and went thither with a great stock of merchandise.
That's quite an opening! He eventually has a son with the concubine who his wife/gazelle turns into a cow.
The last thing of interest here is the bookends Scheherazade uses at the end of each night and tale.
Here Shahrazad perceived the light of morning, and discontinued the recitation with which she had been allowed thus far to proceed. Her sister said to her, How excellent is thy story! and how pretty! and how pleasant! and how sweet!—but she answered, What is this in comparison with that which will relate to thee in the next night, if I live, and the King spare me! And the King said, By Allah, I will not kill her until I hear the remainder of her story. Thus they pleasantly passed the night until the morning, when the King went forth to his hall of judgment, and the Wezir went thither with the grave-clothes under his arm: and the King gave judgment, and invested and displaced, until the close of the day, without informing the Wezir of that which had happened; and the minister was greatly astonished. The court was then dissolved; and the King returned to the privacy of his palace.
We get an editor's note about not including them after:
[On the second and each succeeding night, Shahrazad continued so to interest King Shahriyar by her stories as to induce him to defer putting her to death, in expectation that her fund of amusing tales would soon be exhausted; and as this is expressed in the original work in nearly the same words at the close of every night, such repetitions will in the present translation be omitted.]
On the one hand, it is a pretty long bumper. On the other, I think something like that can be good for the rhythm of a story, and I wonder if a shorter version that repeated would be more palatable.
But this, said Shahrazad, is not more wonderful than the story of the fisherman.
Ends the story, and similar phrases are at the end of other sections, so they remain at least.
Summary: Faust monologues a lot and starts summoning demons.
Commentary: Holy crap, a girl! I think there's less than 10 female writers in the whole T5FSOB, so seeing one as a translator is interesting.
Also holy crap, that's a lot of monologue. I guess it makes sense, Faust is basically a villain origin story, so he has to ham it up. We read Marlowe's Doctor Faustus in high school, and I enjoyed it. Goethe seems good too. He's all:
Vain by dull poring to divine
The meaning of each hallow'd sign.
Spirits! I feel you hov'ring near;
Make answer, if my voice ye hear!
And
Where phantasy creates her own self-torturing brood,
Right onward to the yawning gulf to press,
Around whose narrow jaws rolleth hell's fiery flood;
With glad resolve to take the fatal leap,
Though danger threaten thee, to sink in endless sleep!
Mar 21– From The Aeneid by Virgil (~25BC) translated by John Dryden
Summary: Aeneas prepares for war.
Commentary: I'm wondering if I should look into finding an audio version for The Aeneid. My general rule is to read poetry aloud, but 10-15 pages in a bunch is a lot. Reading it out does help stop me from rushing/skimming.
Now night had shed her silver dews around,
And with her sable wings embrac’d the ground,
When love’s fair goddess, anxious for her son,
(New tumults rising, and new wars begun,)
Couch’d with her husband in his golden bed,
With these alluring words invokes his aid;
I feel like no one is ever this comfy in Ill and Odd. Interesting to see the differences.
Virgil/ Aeneas is pretty bitter about the whole losing the Trojan war thing, it's all "lesser race" and undeserved grace, etc. etc.
Going back to the above, I like how The Aen (that doesn't work as well as The Ill and The Odd) handles more everyday matters, but keeps the epic tone of its inspirations.
The time when early housewives leave the bed;
When living embers on the hearth they spread,
Supply the lamp, and call the maids to rise;—
With yawning mouths, and with half-open’d eyes,
They ply the distaff by the winking light,
And to their daily labour add the night:
Thus frugally they earn their children’s bread,
And uncorrupted keep the nuptial bed—
On the other hand, it does move a lot slower. I feel like this whole selection would've been like 3 pages in The Iliad, and it gets kind of repetitive at times (not that The Iliad doesn't too.)
Commentary: Another one where the selection breaks kind of weird, and is shorter than it has to be. For the ones like this where pages don't seem to have an clean/obvious break, I wish we could get a line/paragraph number or a fist/last word or something. No overlap at least.
According to your Cartesians, everything is performed by an impulsion, of which we have very little notion; and according to Sir Isaac Newton, it is by an attraction, the cause of which is as much unknown to us.
VO before the first song on the Isaac Newton rock concept album.
a man who discovers a new tract of land cannot at once know all the properties of the soil.
A good thing to remember when you try something new.
Gravity, the falling of accelerated bodies on the earth, the revolution of the planets in their orbits, their rotations round their axis, all this is mere motion. Now motion cannot perhaps be conceived any otherwise than by impulsion; therefore all those bodies must be impelled. But by what are they impelled? All space is full, it therefore is filled with a very subtile matter, since this is imperceptible to us; this matter goes from west to east, since all the planets are carried from west to east. Thus from hypothesis to hypothesis, from one appearance to another, philosophers have imagined a vast whirlpool of subtile matter, in which the planets are carried round the sun: they also have created another particular vortex which floats in the great one, and which turns daily round the planets. When all this is done, it is pretended that gravity depends on this diurnal motion; for, say these, the velocity of the subtile matter that turns round our little vortex, must be seventeen times more rapid than that of the earth; or, in case its velocity is seventeen times greater than that of the earth, its centrifugal force must be vastly greater, and consequently impel all bodies towards the earth. This is the cause of gravity, according to the Cartesian system. But the theorist, before he calculated the centrifugal force and velocity of the subtile matter, should first have been certain that it existed.
It's interesting reading these old science bits. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure about 80% of this is wrong. (They are, we find out in the next sentence. Hurray, not worthless as science!) He also talks about north, south, east, and west in space, which hurts my brain a little. I think we've more or less standardized on: coreward, rimward, spinward, and trailing in science fiction.
But being retired in 1666, upon account of the Plague
I know a lot of people who did that in 2020.
Now a heavy body falls, in reality, fifteen feet in the first second, and goes in the first minute fifty-four thousand feet, which number is the square of sixty multiplied by fifteen. Bodies, therefore, gravitate in an inverse ratio of the squares of the distances; consequently, what causes gravity on earth, and keeps the moon in its orbit, is one and the same power; it being demonstrated that the moon gravitates on the earth, which is the centre of its particular motion, it is demonstrated that the earth and the moon gravitate on the sun which is the centre of their annual motion.
How cool would it be to be the person who did the math for this the first time, and found it all worked? Openheimer would've been a better movie if they showed more of the math. Thanks for showing the math, Voltaire.
I mentioned in one of the histories (Tacitus, I think) that I wish we put excerpts of this stuff in modern text books, and it's the same for science. Gravity is not that exciting. Reading a first or second hand account of the "discovery" of gravity is way better.
Summary: This is a much more "historical" history, in the sense that there's a lot of dates and dead guys. I feel like the previous Herodotus piece was more archeological, "this building was here, was this big, made of this material," etc. etc.
Commentary: This selection is about 1/4 a repeat of the end of the previous selection from Egypt. Some degree of overlap isn't surprising (might need to reestablish context) but that seems like a lot. On the plus side, as I read over, it did seem familiar, so I'm maintaining at least a little of what I read. I'd love to see the actual notes that Elliot (or whoever was working with him/the publisher) made while they were organizing all this. Did they just not realize it? Was the overlap the only way to get two clean sections of the right size? Did they think it was really important to learn about generational time and the role of the Greek gods in Egypt?
Being set free after the reign of the priest of Hephaistos, the Egyptians, since they could not live any time without a king, set up over them twelve kings, having divided all Egypt into twelve parts.
Why did the Egyptians need kings? Them specifically, or does Herodotus think it's part of the human condition? Why twelve?
(I should've read to the end of the paragraph before doing a quote pull. An oracle told them so.)
Psammetichos's story was interesting. Accidentally fulfills a prophecy (by using his helmet as a cup), exiled, comes back and takes the whole thing over. How many times have we seen that story in a fantasy novel or something? Makes you wonder how many authors knew his story back when the trope was being formed, vs made it up themselves or copied from elsewhere.
Now Psammetichos held out his helmet with no treacherous meaning
and
And to him this that was done was in some degree not unwelcome
I like how Herodotus always makes it sound like people don't want to be king, but then they go and conquer everyone three sentences later. "I wasn't going to be king, but I guess if I have to..." no one is just a chill king who lets the regional authorities handle things or whatever.
Summary: Two guys get throne of out a bar. They're broke. One of them is in love. Sir Giles Overreach is a con man/extortionist.
Commentary: I'm going to have to make a list of all these plays I can't find recordings of and go bug the theatre department or library at all the colleges around. That or go on a bunch of road trips or something to see them live. Even modern theater is kind of rough to read, let alone something from 400 years ago. I was so hopeful when we started on page 1 too, finding the section in the play in the recording is the hardest part. We don't actually get to Overreach, who is the most famous part of the play, making this a puzzling selection. He appears to be a cross between Dick Dastardly and Shylock, with mustache twirling evil, but also financial scammery.
Over: I'll therefore buy some cottage near his manor, Which done, I'll make my men break ope his fences, Ride o'er his standing corn, and in the night Set fire on his barns, or break his cattle's legs: These trespasses draw on suits, and suits expenses, Which I can spare, but will soon beggar him. When I have harried him thus two or three year, Though he sue in forma pauperis, in spite Of all his thrift and care, he'll grow behindhand.
Mar 11 "Compensation" by Emerson: 3/5 This one was better than I expected. I'm not a huge Emerson fan, but this one was solid, especially in the middle third. Interesting to look at how similar philosophies have existed in different regions, cultures, and time periods.
Mar 12 "Second Dialogue" by Berkeley: 2.5/5 Garbage philosophy in preening style. That said, T5FSOB isn't just supposed to be "good" stuff, it's supposed to show what/how we've thought over the years, and Berkeley's philosophy is still taught today. Contrasts with some of the other philosophical bits we've read.
Mar 13 I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) by Manzoni: 2/5 I don't even remember reading this one. My notes sound decent though.
Mar 14 Le Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Malory: 2/5 Slightly better than the previous selection from Malory. Still felt rushed/lacking. I blame the translation.
Mar 15 Caesar by Plutarch: 2.5/5 This was fine, and I get why it goes on the ides, but didn't thrill me.
Mar 16 The Voyage of The Beagle by Darwin: 5/5 I learned about giant horror crabs and they sounded cool!
Mar 17 "The Poetry of The Celtic Races" by Renand: 3/5 I waffled on this one a lot. First I was 2/5, why are we letting the French explained Ireland, but if it hadn't been on Saint Patrick's Day, I probably would've given it a 4, since I did learn quite a bit. Settled on the 3.
Weekly Average: 2.85 Started kinda iffy, but closed strong!
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
Honestly? I think I was half asleep for like half the readings last week. I skimmed back over my notes and barely remembered Berkeley and Malory, and totally forgot Manzoni (who I put Irish music for initially?)
That said, I think Renand comes close to being a model text for this kind of activity. Compresses multiple related stories into one coherent entry, provides enough detail to be interesting without bogging down, taught me some cool stuff I never new. I'd probably read his blog today.
I did two things on the main blog today: Complained about non-Irish excerpts on Saint Patrick's day, and memed on Samwise Gamgee. Let's address both of those by looking at two of my favorite works by Beowulf translators.
Me: Explaining how all writing connects to Beowulf. Image: https://fersacambridge.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/an-ode-to-the-pinboard/
I just wanted to get some actual Irish in here today. Heaney wouldn't be born for another 30 years or so after the publication of T5FSOB, so I suppose we can't fault Elliot for not picking him. Today, he's probably best known for his Beowulf translation (probably the most popular one in American highschools. Not the most scholar-accurate, but very readable.), but he's a successful poet in his own right.
It is, in my opinion, a good poem in a fairly traditional way. It rhymes cleanly, has imagery, the line breaks work, etc., etc.
But I like it because it speaks to me personally. Both of my grandfathers worked with their hands. Neither one seemed to actually have a very well defined job or title. On my mom's side, Pappy worked in an auto-shop, and my mom said he was basically a laborer, not a technician or whatever. In retirement, he was quite a woodworker, he made displays for all the holidays by hand. At least one of them won an award in the local newspaper. On my dad's, Poppop did something with the boiler at a cookie factory. Supposedly he only really worked the days they turned it on and off, and just kind of tinkered and fixed little things the rest of the year. I have a wooden giraffe that he made at some point.
My dad worked in programming, but I think he identifies more blue-collar than white. He always says he didn't "go to real college." For what it's worth dad, the community college you went to was rated better than the state school I went to.
And now I'm here, typing away at this blog, in between a couple of other writing projects.
But, at the end of the day, whether its carving or welding or programming or writing, we all wanted to dig in and make something. And, while text to speech is working on it and we might be able to hook our brains up to computers someday, we all have to do it with our fingers and thumbs.
Second, my favorite bit of Lord of The Rings, and one of the few popular Sam scenes I didn't post earlier today. Tolkien was a huge fan of Beowulf, and had quite a few articles and lectures on it, as well as doing his own translation. Beowulf (and Norse mythology in general) were major influences on Lord of The Rings.
There's some good in the world Mr. Frodo...
You've probably seen this scene about a million times. Either way, probably worth watching it again. The scene that goes with it in the book is set a bit earlier in the book. I admit I'm not up enough on LOTR (Tolkien, like Beowulf, is meant to be read aloud, and I don't have the patience to do that with a 500K word long book) to be able to talk exactly about how that matters.
The crux of both is a beautifully written version of "it's always darkest before the dawn." I think Sam/Tolkien's is a bit more active, which I like. Yeah, the sun will come up tomorrow. But you won't see it if you don't keep going. The book version adds a bit in the middle that I like:
Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them. I used to think that they were
things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for,
because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was
a bit dull, a kind of a sport, as you might say. But that’s not the way
of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the
mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them
Not many people in real life would want to go fight the Demon-Nazi-Terminator-Aliens. Or if they did, they'd change their mind the first time the guy next to them got blasted with a inside-out ray. But at the end of the day, the people who are in that place and that time are the ones that have to deal with it. If you're one of those people, sucks to be you, but I hope you'll do your best. If not, then I'm sure the smaller burden you have to carry is important all the same.
There's another bit in Fellowship that pairs nicely with this:
“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
There's good in the world, and that's what this whole reading project is about. Other people are a big part of that good (not to put down cats or waterfalls or cool looking rocks), and you can be part of it too.
Limerick Rake (I used the Irish Anthem pretty recently, but this one has a whole stanza about grammar and Euclid, so clearly on theme for the blog. Ignore the fact that like half the recordings skip that verse for more lasses...)
Summary: Some French dude really likes the Irish. Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Commentary: So for Saint Patrick's Day, we get a Frenchman writing about Ireland instead of one of the Irish or Irish adjacent authors that're actually in T5FSOB? Thomas Moore has around 10 poems in one of the volumes, and I know I read some Johnathon Swift a week or two ago. Although, there really aren't as many Irish authors as I would've expected. Yeats is totally absent, and a fairly uncontroversial choice, but there were not shortage of other options at that point. Also almost no Irish mythology/folktales (this essay is all I've found), despite having a variety of others. I'm not going to pretend there aren't plenty of groups omitted by Elliot (I think there's about a half a dozen women total in the collection, and anything south or east of Italy might as well be Mars) but this wasn't one I was expecting.
All that aside, I learned that the Irish have a plausible, but verified, claim of being the first Europeans in North America.
Did they not have a glimpse too of that great land, the vague memory of which seems to pursue them, and which Columbus was to discover, following the traces of their dreams?
Columbus "discovered" the Bahamas, which is about as far as you can get from Iceland and still be in North America, but sure, same thing, Renan.
Also, despite being mentioned nine times in today's reading, it isn't really about him. I was considering giving Elliot a pass when he came up, but no.
Perhaps the profoundest instinct of the Celtic peoples is their desire to penetrate the unknown. [...] The legend tells how, while St. Patrick was preaching about Paradise and Hell to the Irish, they confessed that they would feel more assured of the reality of these places, if he would allow one of them to descend there, and then come back with information.[...] A pit was dug, by which an Irishman set out upon the subterranean journey. Others wished to attempt the journey after him. With the consent of the abbot of the neighbouring monastery, they descended into the shaft, they passed through the torments of Hell and Purgatory, and then each told of what he had seen. Some did not emerge again; those who did laughed no more, and were henceforth unable to join in any gaiety. Knight Owen made a descent in 1153, and gave a narrative of his travels which had a prodigious success.
The best part of this story isn't the opening bit of flattery (and while I'll take the compliment, I think the urge to explore is nearly universal in human cultures), the Irish people going, "We'll believe in Hell when we get there," or the first guy going. It's the others who went to their priest to ask for their Hell-field-trip permission slip. Obviously, they're all down at the pub and find out their buddy got talked into going to Hell. Well, you can't let your friend go to Hell all by himself, so now they have to go too! Very Samwise Gamgee.
How it started: You hear a Saint/Wizard convince your friend to go to Hell.
How it's going: Yep, Hell is pretty fiery.
(I think I'll go throw up a bonus post for "There's some good in the world, Mr. Frodo..." since I'm apparently Sam-Posting today.)
It cannot be doubted for a moment, after the able researches of Messrs. Ozanam, Labitte, and Wright, that to the number of poetical themes which Europe owes to the genius of the Celts, is to be added the framework of the Divine Comedy.
Renan: Everything the Italians did, the Irish did first. I'm Irish on one side and Italian on the other, so no loss there, I guess.
One can understand how greatly this invincible attraction to fables must have discredited the Celtic race in the eyes of nationalities that believed themselves to be more serious.
Screw you, "more serious" nationalities! If you can't have a good story, what's the point? Does this explain why so many authors pretend to be Irish? Their countries don't let them have fun writing their books, so they have come hang out with the Celts?
Which is worth more, the imaginative instinct of man, or the narrow orthodoxy that pretends to remain rational, when speaking of things divine? For my own part, I prefer the frank mythology, with all its vagaries, to a theology so paltry, so vulgar, and so colourless, that it would be wronging God to believe that, after having made the visible world so beautiful he should have made the invisible world so prosaically reasonable.
I think you can take out the "when speaking of things divine" and this applies as a general philosophy on most things. If you can't embrace the beauty of things and dream a little, you won't get very far.
All in all, I appreciate Renan's good opinion of the Celts, and I did learn some interesting things, but I still think I'd have preferred something a little more primary. Go read some Seamus Heaney. Éire go Brách!
Since I'm already blogging every day, I decided to hop onto the A to Z Challenge that a few of my friends are doing. Short version: Every day (except Sundays) in April I have to post an entry that somehow relates to a letter of the alphabet, starting with A on the first. I looked, and about half the days line up fairly easily. For example April 1st will be "A is for April" with a Browning poem with the line ""Oh! to Be in England Now That April's There."
For the handful of you already following the blog, there will be very few changes, but this will hopefully get some more eyes on the blog before the handful of friends I've personally invited. I've been wanting to post it around a little for a while, so this is a great way to do it.
For those of you who are new, a quick intro to the blog, and links to a few posts:
15 Minute Classics is based on The Harvard Classics (usually referred to here as T5FSOB for The Five Foot Shelf of Books) reading guide. Charles Eliot, longtime president of Harvard University, claimed that he could put together a collection of books that would fit on a three foot long shelf and give a person a liberal education if they studied them closely enough. He later bumped it up to five feet, and Collier Publishing took him up on it. If nothing else, it was a solid marketing gimmick, and the collection sold thousands of copies (most frequently in the form of 50 hardcover volumes) between its initial publication in 1909 and the 1970s. It's a fairly wide selection: poetry, drama, history, science, travel... It's got the expected "dead white guy" biases, but that's not surprising, and it doesn't detract from the quality of the texts, many of which are still foundational in their respective areas. In the 1910s, a reading guide (volume 51) and a 20 volume fiction collection were added.
The reading guide contained a list of readings (generally 10-20 pages in the original collection), one for every day of the year, that would take about 15 minutes to read, answer the timeless question "what shall I read?", and give you a starting point for your hypothetical liberal education.
Every day, I take the selection (they're all public domain, and generally pretty easy to find, except a few that use a weird translation/edition), paste it into a Google doc, annotate it, and then post a brief summary and commentary here on the blog. Some days are better than others, both in the quality of the reading, and the energy I put into it. On a good day, you get some pictures, videos, or music to go with it. On a bad day, you get Robert Burns, whose poetry I would erase from reality if I could, but who Eliot loves. If a selection is good enough, it goes on a reading list that I'll circle back to someday to read read the whole piece. I do a weekly review posts where I sum up my feelings for the pieces, what I've learned from the project, etc. I generally lean more fun than scholarly, but hopefully you'll learn a little something. Occasionally, I do a bonus post on a more recent piece I think fits with the rest, or digging in on a subject I learned about from one of the readings.
If you want a quick taste of the blog, here are a few entries I'm fond of:
January 1st: Ben Franklin's Autobiography- A good way to start off the year. I don't know how many times I've had to read and reread this in HS, college, etc., but it's great every time.
January 11th: Federalist 1 by Alexander Hamilton (and 2 by Jay, which is less good)- I was not expecting to enjoy an article some guy wrote to convince people to support forming the US. I was wrong. Very insightful, with advice still worth following today. "serve to give a false bias to the judgment, that we, upon many occasions, see wise and good men on the wrong as well as on the right side of questions [...]we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists."
February 27th: Longfellow's Poems- I don't like poetry. I love Longfellow. "Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; Dust thou art, to dust returnest, Was not spoken of the soul."
Summary: Darwin talks about giant freaky crabs, unexplainable coral, and rubbing toxins on his face!
Commentary: Darwin continues to be one of the highlights of this project. 50 percent travel writer, 25 percent thriller (kind of a low tech Michael Crichton), and 25 percent old school fantasy, but better than 90% of the writers in any of those genres.
We start out with a lovely description of sitting on the beach under a coconut tree:
During another day I visited West Islet, on which the vegetation was perhaps more luxuriant than on any other. The cocoa-nut trees generally grow separate, but here the young ones flourished beneath their tall parents, and formed with their long and curved fronds the most shady arbours. Those alone who have tried it, know how delicious it is to be seated in such shade, and drink the cool pleasant fluid of the cocoa-nut.
Sounds very relaxing. I had a professor in my MFA who did travel writing professionally. That's better than anything she ever showed us.
Then we go to crabs.
The crab begins by tearing the husk, fibre by fibre, and always from that end under which the three eyeholes are situated
Did you know crabs this big exist, that they're "only" the third biggest crab (depending on how exactly you measure) and that they can safely ingest toxins, which then makes their own flesh toxic?
Oh, and they can rip apart metal boxes.
Then we go on to coral, the main topic of this section. He rubs some on his face.
One day, however, by merely touching my face with one of the branches, pain was instantaneously caused; it increased as usual after a few seconds, and remaining sharp for some minutes, was perceptible for half an hour afterwards. The sensation was as bad as that from a nettle, but more like that caused by the Physalia or Portuguese man-of-war.
I guess "rub my face on it" was his equivalent of "poke it with a stick." Did Steve Irwin actually poke everything with sticks? I didn't watch much of his show, but it seems like one of those things he did once or twice and then got memed for.
Most of the rest is him going, "Wow, the ocean is big and mysterious! What's up with coral?" in a way that lends itself to some kind of horror fantasy.
Captain Fitz Roy found no bottom with a line 7200 feet in length, at the distance of only 2200 yards from the shore.
bears the stamp of having been subjected to organic arrangement. [...] This is a wonder which does not at first strike the eye of the body, but, after reflection, the eye of reason.
The theory that has been most generally received is, that atolls are based on submarine craters
He is trying to disprove that last one, it still lends itself to an overall feel of, "aliens did the coral to xenoform Earth" or something.
on what have the reef-building corals, which cannot live at a great depth, based their massive structures?
A sentence right out of Lovecraft.
If the sea had formerly eaten deeply into the islands, before they were protected by the reefs
Makes coral sound like it's some sort of fae creature fighting the ocean titan.
I would play Darwin: The RPG. I wonder how much of his actual writing you could cram into the campaign setting, bestiary, etc. It'd be pretty cool. You'd play as part of an exploratory voyage (classes: naturalist, captain, sailor...) and they'd only make the horrific monsters maybe 10% weirder than he actually makes them sound.
Surprisingly, I hadn't added him to the reading list yet, but I put him in today. I'll have to see if I can find an annotated version or something. It's one thing to go find pictures of the animals and stuff once every couple weeks when he comes up in this blog, but I don't think I'd want to have to do it manually while reading the whole book. The Digital Voyage of The Beagle would be a cool project. Even if you just dropped a hyperlink to the Wikipedia pages for all the species names it'd be a big help.
Summary: He was warned, but they still killed Caesar.
Commentary: I feel like reading about Caesar's assassination on the anniversary is pretty cold. Selection was fine. Tells the story well enough, but not super exciting or well written. I've read a few other snatches of Plutarch over the years, and I think they were generally a bit better. Could be a weak translation, or just an iffy section (but obviously a thematic one).
Commentary: I feel like this round is a little more concrete than the last selection we got from Malory. I'm going to see Spamalot this weekend, so it's fun to see where some of the scenes come from.
Summary: Some kind of negotiation between nobles and priests? We're picking up in the middle here. Something about trying to get the woman he likes not to marry another man.
Commentary: This is one where the edition here is probably quite different than you'd read today. Apparently several editions were published around the same time (I think this one is 1844) by different translators, all of varying qualities (and based on different editions of the original text). I sometimes think about switching to a more modern version of selections like these, but I've decided to stick with the originals unless they're particularly unreadable or inaccessible. Will probably find this one in a more modern version.
I really enjoy the voice in this one. I'd describe it as wise, but informal.
The proverb was not exactly to the purpose, but the Count had cited it instead of another, which had crossed his mind: ‘The wolf changes its skin, but not its nature.’
Very fun, but also you can feel your brain working on it a little.
Summary: Berkeley A: Am I smart Berkeley B? Berkeley B: So smart, Berkeley A.
Commentary: Another selection where we could've read the whole thing, but only pull around half. Also feels weird to start with the second dialogue. I've read one or two of these imaginary philosopher conversations before. They've always struck me as equal parts cumbersome, pretentious, and cowardly. Stand for your ideas for their own sake, don't put your words into the mouths of some ancient Greeks (one of whom you're working like a strawman-puppet or a kid playing chess against themselves) to make them sound more authoritative.
This is from one of the "nothing is real" branches of philosophy, which was the only one I studied in undergrad. I'll Bertrand Russel debunk it, since his response is the closest to mine (emphasis added).
If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either unduly limiting the mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology. We are uttering a mere tautology if we mean by 'in the mind' the same as by 'before the mind', i.e. if we mean merely being apprehended by the mind. But if we mean this, we shall have to admit that what, in this sense, is in the mind, may nevertheless be not mental. Thus when we realize the nature of knowledge, Berkeley's argument is seen to be wrong in substance as well as in form, and his grounds for supposing that 'ideas'-i.e. the objects apprehended-must be mental, are found to have no validity whatever. Hence his grounds in favour of the idealism may be dismissed.
If nothing is real, nothing matters, and it's all rather pointless. Which is kind of a general philosophy version of the classic Marcus Aurelius:
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
If the choice is to live life like things exist and matter, and not, it feels like a pretty obvious choice. And one where the alternative is to just walk in front of a train, since it's all pointless anyway.
Commentary: I've read a little Emerson (and some other Transcendentalism in general) before this. What strikes me the most about it is how similar it is to the (pop culture version of) a lot of Eastern philosophy. I wonder how much, if any, exposure he had.
EDIT: I went back and read the rest of "Compensation" and Emerson provide some solid quotes for his ideas from Western culture, so probably more a case of convergent evolution. I wonder why the selection cuts so early here. The middle third is really the best, and it's short enough Eliot could've included the entire essay and kept within the length we've seen before.
Mar 4 Some Fruits of Solitude by William Penn: 3/5 I respect him for making an actual list. Not saying he was going to do a list, and then writing a disorganized essay like a lot of people do.
Mar 5 Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini: 2/5 One of these was enough.
Mar 6 "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe: 4/5 Great poem!
Mar 7 "Of Judicature" by Francis Bacon: 3/5 Include more works on important but little understood subjects!
Mar 8 Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes: 2/5 This section in isolation doesn't really work.
Mar 9 "Treatise on Good Manners and Good Breeding" by Jonathon Swift: 2/5 Swift's satire is a little dry for my tastes. Why pick these over "A Modest Proposal" or something?
Mar 10 Philaster by Beuamont and Flescher: 3/5 Hard to judge plays by writing, but seems good.
Weekly Average: 2.7 Pretty average week all around. This is definitely easier to do now that I've thought out the scores a bit better.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
While not as odious as Burns (who should've never have been included in the first place) I'm not looking forward to more Cellini. He's too embellished to be a good autobiography, but not exciting/interesting enough to be a swashbuckling fiction story a la The Three Musketeers. Most interesting inclusion this week was Bacon's. There's a lot of things about the world/society and how it works that most people don't know a lot about or think about a ton, but are good to know. This was a great introduction to some basic principles of jurisprudence. It'd be really cool to see selections on (making this list up on the spot) leadership, first aid, government (we've gotten a few of these), cooking... A liberal education should prepare you to be a functional and independent member of society, and there's a lot of things that would be good to know.
Summary: King wants daughter to marry guy. Daughter wants to marry someone else. Everyone spreads rumors about everyone else having an affair. You know the drill.
Commentary: Another play with no (easily accessible) versions for me to watch. It seems clever enough, a couple good bits of wordplay in this excerpt. As I've said several times before, it's hard to really give a good opinion of a play from only reading an excerpt.
Commentary: I've always found Swift's satire a little dry. I used to think that was primarily a factor of age/culture, but as I've enjoyed some older and/or more foreign works in T5FSOB (Don Quixote is nearly a hundred years older, and was written in Spanish, but it's still funny) I'm starting to think it's more him specifically. Yes, some people use good manners as an excuse to be an asshole. Yes, sometimes people have manners that're good in a given situation but not in others. Thanks JS, great insight there.
Summary: A guy tries to get his best friend to seduce his wife.
Commentary: Where are we? Seriously, we pick up like 250 pages later in DQ than the last time, and we're in the middle of a story someone (a priest if my Googling is correct) is telling a story to DQ and a group of travelers. Maybe in context it makes more sense, but isolated like this it just feels weird. This is the first known appearance of a character named Lothario (though he's not particularly lecherous). His friend wants him to seduce his wife. His friend sucks. We don't get far enough to find out if he succeed!
Summary: Kevin Francis Bacon explains the role of judges, and his opinions on judicial philosophy.
Commentary: I think Bacon's theories are fairly agreeable (more that they're kind of basic and hard to argue with.) More importantly, this is a great "survey" type writing for something that more people should know about, but probably don't. What does a judge do? What kind of principles are they supposed to abide by? I wouldn't mind TF5SOB had more of this type of reading about background societal knowledge. I also appreciate that he translates his own Latin. Until he stops halfway thought.
Summary: A creepy raven crashes a dude's reading session and reminds him of his dead girlfriend.
Commentary: I will, again, lament the choice of The Poetic Principle instead of Philosophy of Composition, especially since The Raven is the model text for it.
Beyond that, it's "The Raven." You've probably already read it, and I don't know that I have any criticism to share that hasn't already been written 1000 times.
I've enjoyed "The Raven" for as long as I remember. I've said before how I don't like most poems, but I do enjoy a lot of narrative/epic poetry, and I think Poe's "Unity of Effect" might be the simplest way to explain it. If the ideal for a piece of art (Poe specifies mostly poetry, but I think it's broadly applicable across mediums and genres) is to convey something, then it would be foolish to casually discard any aspect of that art without good reason. But that's exactly what "traditional" poetry does. You wouldn't (without a specific good reason) try to write a prose story without a plot or dialogue, anymore than you'd try to make a painting without any straight lines. Yet it's "normal" for poetry to almost completely remove plot, dialogue, and often severely turn down character, in the hopes that the artist will somehow convey something via pretty word choice alone.
Summary: Cellini escaped prison, his jailors are idiots, and he uses urine for first aid.
Commentary: Cellini is the worst sort of creative non-fiction writer . He starts off with a story about a guy thinking he's a bat and how he wants to build bat wings, but doesn't even escape prison with them! It wouldn't be any less believable than the story anyway.
Summary: Know thyself, smell the roses, inner beauty is more important, remember that you're not perfect, moderation in all things, discipline, marry for love.
Commentary: Ben Franklin definitely read these. I changed my wife's tire and then had a drink with dinner. I'm tired. Pretty good advice for the most part.
Feb 26 Preface to Cromwellby Hugo: 2/5 The assorted contradictions (perfection of pastoralism vs truth of Christianity) here are interesting to think about, but overall not a particularly interesting or well written piece.
Feb 27 Assorted Poems by Longfellow: 5/5 I think this is the first 5/5 I've given, and it's to poems. Just goes to show strong writing is still great, even if its outside your normal genre.
Feb 28 “On The Institution and Education of Children” by Montaigne: 2/5 We had another education piece on Wednesday. Like a lot of the other essays (particularly by the French writers) I don't necessarily disagree with most of this, I just didn't need to read an essay so long on speculation and short on actual points.
Feb 29 From Hermann and Dorothea by Goethe: 2/5 Passable "my dad doesn't want me to marry you" story. We get mostly the end, and I'd like to have seen more of the middle. Interesting dialogue
Mar 1 “The Spectator Club” by Richard Steele: 3/5 I'm more interested in reading some of the later Spectator pieces than this one, but I can respect the desire to grab an introduction.
Mar 2 From Two Years Before The Mast by Dana: 4/5 I'm still amused that the first excerpt we get here has them off the ship for 90% of it, but a good piece overall.
Mar 3 From Life of George Herbert by Walton: 1/5 Poorly written and uninformative biography.
Weekly Average: 2.7 Pretty average week overall. Not to repeat last week's summary, but I don't really get a lot of Elliot's selections here. Hermann and Dorothea, "The Spectator Club", and Two Years Before The Mast feel like odd excerpts to pull out, and Life of George Herbert is a bit like like picking Measure for Measure as the only Shakespeare in a collection.
Overall Thoughts on The Project:
The best part of any reading list is getting to find pieces you wouldn't normally read, but wind up enjoying. Second is giving you an excuse to read something that you've wanted to for a while, but never got around to. This week had both with Longfellow and The Spectator in the first category, and Two Years Before The Mast in the second. This is the second or third time a poem selection has surprised me in T5FSOB, and I'm glad I'm getting a chance to appreciate poetry a bit more, and to start to identify what I like (and why I dislike so much poetry). On the whole, I think it comes down to both subject and format. So much poetry is just overwrought and cliche. Great, you love X a lot. We get it. No one else has ever loved something as much as your love X. Mmmhmmm. Combined with shoehorning in words that don't really fit to match rhyme or meter schemes that make them awkward to read, and it's not a fun experience. When we get poems with more interesting/aspirational content, and either a looser pattern (or just make better use of the existing one) I enjoy them more. It's interesting, since I broadly like the use of limitations in art (found footage/epistolary, rough pencil sketches, etc.) but the rules for poetry generally don't seem to pay off.
It occurred to me this week that I never really explained my scoring system. In truth, I don't think I ever really thought it through myself. Moving forward, I'm going to attempt to calibrate it as follows.
1/5: Should not have been included in T5FSOB in the first place. Poorly written, not particularly intellectually stimulating, historically unimportant.
2/5: Valid for inclusion in T5FSOB but not a good selection for the reading list. Might be a poorly chosen excerpt from a stronger piece, or an okay piece that has value but not in the top 20% or so that a piece (by napkin math) should be to get into the reading guide.
3/5: A passable choice for the reading guide. Well enough written, and at least somewhat historic or thought provoking. While not spectacular in and of itself, suitable as a starting point to discover other pieces or start thinking about a subject.
4/5: Actually good. A selection that works without needing other pieces to prop it up. Writing quality is decent, and it has some sort of critical/educational value.
5/5: The best of the best. Something that immediately prompts me to want to find more on the subject/author or otherwise changes my perspective on life.
Commentary: Another odd selection. Walton's most famous work, by far, is The Compleat Angler. I think that'd be a charming diversion from the norm in T5FSOB, and developing a hobby, like fishing, is good for a well-rounded liberal education. Volume 15 isn't even biographically themed (it's got another one of Walton's bios, and The Pilgrim's Progress) so it could've fit right in there. Might be an nice palate cleanser after the relatively heavy allegory in TPP.
Not really a great piece. It's a biography that tells as much about his family as it does him (part of this is due to the part Elliot selected) and it's full of awkward "Now I'm going to tell you about..." intros to sections that're only a paragraph or so long anyway. Complemented by the also common, "I will later write about" it feels like only half the reading is actual content. The inclusion of the love letter and sonnet were a nice touch. A biography-via-correspondence probably exists, and would be neat to read.
Summary: A sailor goes for his first shore leave in California.
Commentary: This is one I've really been looking forward to. I read a fair amount of naval fiction, but it's interesting to get the real life perspective, and Two Years Before The Mast is still consistently recommended almost two centuries after its debut.
Enjoyable enough read, Dana is a fine writer. Conversational, with a good balance of detail. Like several other selections, it's kind of weird to have the first part we read being mostly them off the ship, but we'll get more later in the year.
There's quite a bit of non-English in here, and it makes me wonder how the audience in the 1800s would've handled it. Some of the selection we've gotten have a hefty sprinkling of Latin, and were written (I think) with the intent that an educated person would be able to read it. Here we get a little French, but quite a bit of Spanish. AFAIK, Spanish wasn't a super common second language back then. Did people just muddle through from context clues? If you were upper crust, would you have a Spanish>English dictionary in your study or wherever? Did Dana just not care about accessibility and go for authenticity?
Summary: An introduction to the characters of The Spectator
Commentary: I suppose it makes sense to introduce the characters in the first entry. I don't know that it's the most exciting thing to read. At this point, they're more or less stock characters, but maybe they were a bit more original at the time. The Wikipedia article on The Spectator is interesting, and I believe we get more later in the year.
