April 8th– From "The Libation Bearers" by Aeschylus (~500 BC)

A really wild staging of the play!

April 8th– From The Libation Bearers by Aeschylus (~500 BC)

Summary: Agamemnon's son, Orestes avenges his dad on Apollo's orders, which gets the furies after him. 

Commentary: 

This were new sorrow, a blood-bolter’s load

 You could just drop this into a 40K game. No one would even notice.

More commentary on the performance than the play here, this version is crazy!

The masks are, I think, traditional, but you don't see them much anymore, even in productions of ancient Greek/Roman theatre. I like that the chorus sings, always a nice touch. Makes them seem more otherworldly. Interesting that the script in the play has a lot of references to "we're just women" that aren't in the one in T5FSOB. The chorus are all apparently captive/hostage women, but I don't see as many references to it in most translations. Overall, I don't know that the video is a super accurate translation, but they need that rhyme/meter. It's probably worth it, and always better to watch a play than read it. Desperado was definitely not in the original Greek.

THE BEACONS RELIT!

April 6– From "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelieus (F is for Foul)

 No music

April 6– From Meditations by Marcus Aurelieus

Summary: What is badness? And how to avoid it.

Commentary: Happy birthday Marky A! A lot of the readings are chosen based on the author's birthday. Today's reading opens with a definition of "badness." or foulness if you will.

Most translations go with something like "evil" or "wickedness" but badness does sound cooler. This translation is a little questionable in general.

It is thy duty then in the midst of such things to show good humor and not a proud air; to understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

One of the goals of this project is to spend more time doing "valuable" or "useful" things than scrolling reddit or whatever. Does this quote mean that if you spend your time on something that isn't valuable you lose your own value?

7. Be not ashamed to be helped; for it is thy business to do thy duty like a soldier in the assault on a town. 

This is a good thought about modestly accepting help when you need it.

17. Eudaemonia [happiness] is a good daemon, or a good thing. What then art thou doing here, O imagination? Go away, I entreat thee by the gods, as thou didst come, for I want thee not. But thou art come according to thy old fashion. I am not angry with thee: only go away.

The voice here is weird, addressing happiness instead of the reader. Also, you don't hear a ton about happiness in most readings on stoicism.

24. A scowling look is altogether unnatural; when it is often assumed,[5] the result is that all comeliness dies away

MA does not believe in resting bitch face.

65. Take care not to feel towards the inhuman as they feel towards men.

This is an epigraph in my animal-zombie-apocalypse book.

62. Constantly observe who those are whose approbation thou wishest to have, and what ruling principles they possess. For then thou wilt neither blame those who offend involuntarily, nor wilt thou want their approbation, if thou lookest to the sources of their opinions and appetites.

Putting this one last/out of order since I think this is a great thing to keep in mind, particularly with modern demagogues. I said to my wife the other day, "even if Ben Franklin came back from the dead and ran for president, I would still want to hear his platform, not just vote for him cause I like Ben Franklin." Value people because they stand for what you believe in, don't stand for something just because someone you admire likes it.

 

 

 

 

 

April 5– From "Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes (1651) (E is for Ethics)

Leviathan by Volbeat

April 5– From Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (1651)

Summary: Oops, no summary?

Commentary: It's Hobbes's birthday! Also, E is for Ethics. The page numbers don't really make sense here, unless there's some kind of edition issue. 313 is in the middle of a Rousseau passage, and we've never mixed authors before. 322 is the blank page between the intro and first section. For the sake of sanity, I grabbed the first 10ish pages: Intro, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2. 

Hobbes really likes Es and LLs. Spell check is losing its mind with this one. Then I realized T5FSOB is actually using a modernized spelling edition and tracked one of those down.

Concerning the first, there is a saying much usurped of late, that wisdom is acquired, not by reading of books, but of men

This is not a saying I think I've ever heard. I guess I can quit this whole thing then, since books don't give knowledge.

 So that sense

in all cases is nothing else but original fancy caused (as I have said) by

the pressure that is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes,

ears, and other organs, thereunto ordained.

But the philosophy schools, through all the universities of

Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another

doctrine; and say, for the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth

forth on every side a visible species, (in English) a visible show, apparition, or aspect, or a being seen; the receiving whereof into the eye is seeing

We saw a little of this "things only exist because we perceive them" in one of the other readings. I don't think that the opposition is as clear here as Hobbes makes it sound. We only know things are real because we perceive them, but we can percieve them because of what they put off. 

From hence it is that the schools say, heavy bodies fall downwards out of an appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature in that

place which is most proper for them; ascribing appetite, and knowledge

of what is good for their conservation (which is more than man has), to things inanimate, absurdly.

Is this a thing "schools" actually said commonly, or is Hobbes just overly literal?

The entire imagination section feels like someone with no particular imagination trying to explain it to people. 

So when a man compoundeth the image of his own

person with the image of the actions of another man, as when a man

imagines himself a Hercules or an Alexander (which happeneth often to

them that are much taken with reading of romances), it is a compound

imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind. There be also other

imaginations that rise in men, though waking, from the great impression

made in sense: as from gazing upon the sun, the impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after

April 4– From "She Stoops To Conquer" (1773) by Oliver Goldsmith (D is for Drama)

2008 BBC Production

April 4– From She Stoops To Conquer (1773) by Oliver Goldsmith

Summary: A guy gets shy/awkward around high class women, and seduces lower class ones. The women he's supposed to marry takes advantage of a prank her brother plays to pretend their house is an inn and she's wench to seduce him.

Commentary: D for (medium) Drama today. I'd heard of this play, so I was looking forward to it. It seems good, though we only got a short taste of it. No more for the year, unfortunately. I'll add it to the follow up list and finish it at some point.

After several strike outs in a row, I finally got a play with a few easily accessible versions. This BBC production seems accurate and well produced (though it's more television than stage). It has a classy horse fart joke near the end of the selection, and some truly over the top wigs.

A few stand out lines: 

HARDCASTLE. And I love it. I love everything that’s old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wine; and I believe, Dorothy (taking her hand), you’ll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.

The old man's still got it.

 Despite knowing it from experience, it still amazes me sometimes how frank some of these old plays are. 

MISS HARDCASTLE. Eh! you have frozen me to death again. That word RESERVED has undone all the rest of his accomplishments. A reserved lover, it is said, always makes a suspicious husband.

A woman wanting a forward husband, and a lover? Gasp!

LANDLORD. Ah, bless your heart, for a sweet, pleasant—damn’d mischievous son of a whore. [Exeunt.]

The ideal way to feel about a rambunctious teenager.

This was a fun one, and a nice break from the dry biographies that've been popping up the last week or two. 

 

April 3– From "Life of George Herbert" (1670) by Izaak Walton (C is for Conquer and clergy!)

April 3– From Life of George Herbert (1670) by Izaak Walton

Summary: Herbert gets married, joins the clergy, and writes some poems.

Commentary: The last of three of these Walton biographies in relatively short succession. We'll get a fourth, but not until late in the summer. I won't particularly miss them. 

Our C word comes from this passage:

This was a fair preparation for a marriage; but, alas! her father died before Mr. Herbert's retirement to Dauntsey: yet some friends to both parties procured their meeting; at which time a mutual affection entered into both their hearts, as a conqueror enters into a surprised city; and love having got such possession, governed, and made there such laws and resolutions, as neither party was able to resist; insomuch, that she changed her name into Herbert the third day after this first interview.

Apparently it was quite a whirlwind romance, though Walton has no particular details to share, just that they were such a match and so in love, etc., etc.

 I said this about one of the earlier biographies we read, it's weird reading a bio of an author that mentions a bunch of their works without having read the works themselves.

On the whole, I don't care for Walton's writing. He's the king of long passages with little detail, and they're just boring and not actually particularly informative. He wrote a good fishing book apparently, maybe I'll give that a try.

April 2– From "Voyage of The Beagle" (1839) by Charles Darwin (B is for Beagle)

The BBC is something.

April 2– From Voyage of The Beagle (1839) by Charles Darwin

Summary: Darwin checks out a native ceremony and some nightmare crabs while studying reefs and atolls.

Commentary: For those of you stopping by for the first time, let me just start by recommending that you go read some Darwin. I'll admit up front that he's very racist at some points, but I think the quality of his writing outweighs that. It helps that he's dead. He makes travel writing sound like a fantasy novel, and it's super cool. I believe this section substantially overlaps the start of the last one I read. I'm not sure why they're like that, but interesting to start seeing some of the pieces fit together.

The dance did not commence till the moon had risen, and it was well worth remaining to behold her bright orb so quietly shining through the long arms of the cocoa-nut trees as they waved in the evening breeze

Like this part here. It's not overly purple (something I feel a lot of travelogues fall into) but it does make the ceremony sound appropriately exotic and beautiful. 

Or take this: 

 A man standing ready in the bow at this moment dashes through the water upon the turtle’s back; then clinging with both hands by the shell of its neck, he is carried away till the animal becomes exhausted and is secured. It was quite an interesting chase to see the two boats thus doubling about, and the men dashing head foremost into the water trying to seize their prey.

 If you ever need a description of how they hunt the STORMTURTLE for your fantasy novel, just crib some Darwin. Maybe leave off the part after this about cooking their shells off them alive and releasing them to die... Or maybe not, some books are dark like that.

Or maybe you could use one random out of place rock (it's really a dragon egg or something):

The occurrence of this one stone, where every other particle of matter is calcareous, certainly is very puzzling.

The rest is a repeat of last time. If you weren't following the blog then, go read about nightmare crabs! 

 

April 1– Assorted Poems by Robert Browning (18XX) (A is for April)

 Browning reads "How They Brough The Good News From Ghent to Aix"

April 1– Assorted Poems by Robert Browning (18XX)

Summary: A bunch of poems, mostly about missing home.

Commentary: If you're here from A to Z, welcome, take a seat, leave a comment. Over the next month I'll be doing exactly what I've done all year on this blog, reading the daily selection from The Harvard Classics with a little commentary. If you're lucky, I put a related song or clip or something. The only change is that every day I have to find a way to link the entry to the day's letter. I've got about a third of the month mapped out already, so it should be a fun, but not too challenging, puzzle. Except the weird letters.

Tonight's was especially easy, with April being in both the selection heading and one of the poems:

O, TO be in England

Now that April’s there,

I really appreciate that most or all of Browning's line breaks occur in natural places. I hate when I'm reading a poem and it's like:

Her lips were

red and her

eyes were blue

and her toes

were yellow

Occasionally there's something to be said for being deliberately awkward to try to shake up your reader, but I feel like a lot of poets are just sloppy/don't think about it enough/get forced into awkward lines to fit their meter.

For comparison, here's the opening of "How They Brought The Good News [...]"

I SPRANG to the stirrup, and Joris, and he;

I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three;

‘Good speed!’ cried the watch, as the gate-bolts undrew;

‘Speed!’ echoed the wall to us galloping through;

Behind shut the postern, the lights sank to rest,

And into the midnight we galloped abreast.

Nice and clean. Flows well.

Equally appreciated are the unforced rhymes. We've had several poetry selection in T5FSOB where you get really awkward lines lines just to get them to rhyme. They reminded me of when you write a poem in second grade. Who cares whether "I will drive a car in a star with a bar really far!" makes sense (and honestly, that's better than some of them...) you just gotta get those rhymes in.

Hark, ’tis the sparrows’ good-night twitter

Was the Twitter bird a sparrow? Remember the "good old days" when a lot of tech nerds were nerds in general and into classic literature and stuff? Some still are, but they get shouted down by the crpyto-lib-bros.

Fun set of poems tonight, great way to start the month. I hope all you new A to Z peeps have a good time following along.