Book six with Hector and this thing has really hit its stride. Quite enjoying this
getting a college degree while junior high age sure
but thatās not what I said
THATāS NOT WHAT I SAID
Definitely holds up throughout, actually books 2-4ish are the sloggiest. On my first reading my favorite book was the one featuring Patroclus so look forward to that.
Itās amazing how much Iliad influence has filtered into videogame and comic-book culture, presumably mostly indirectly at this point, but is nowhere to be seen in modern highbrow culture. The meta-story of the Acheans gathering the best gear for the final battle is like Diablo, the serial one-on-one encounter structure of the battles is like an SRPG (whenever somebody throws a spear, I imagine a Shining Force attack swoosh), and obviously superhero origin stories, dysfunctional teamwork, and ādark and grittyā motivations are all there. The highest form of culture quietly became the lowest and Iāve rarely seen this noted (except in the modern myth business thatās usually overly specific about only Star Wars).
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the odyssey is way more of a high / middle brow godparent for whatever reason, maybe because itās better??!!
HOW DARE YOU
the structure of the odyssey is pretty interesting but cāmon
CāMON
The shrug bait works as well as advertised!
;____;
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I love road movies
I love weird creatures
I love trickster heroes
I expected to love The Odyssey way more than the poopy Iliad
but,
The Iliad runs over The Odyssey in a chariot and drags its bloody corpse around the battlefield. THE BATTLEFIELD OF LITERATURE.
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time to update this thread i guess!
so I finished the Iliad; then I read Memorial by Alice Oswald (which was nice if not mindblowing); been reading a ton of non-Great Books stuff for classwork.
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interspersed in there I read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (first in the A.S.L. Farquharson translation, which was ok but old-timey; iām going back through in the Gregory Hays translation which is much more immediate in tone although Iām not sure which is the more accurate). the stoicism stuff has been useful to me insofar as certain quotes rattle around in the back of my head; i certainly donāt take it as dogma tho, given how much of a dour moany fuck marcus aurelius can be. (e.g. his quotes like ārotting flesh, children fighting with one another, dogs barkingā ā he gets all wasteland at certain points and itās a drag). i see a lot more beauty in life than he sees and i think i have it more correct than he does in that sense. [whatās weird is his notes to himself paint him as an asshole taskmaster whereas his letters to Fronto are positively fawning.]
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related to classwork i read Plato ā Crito, which was nice given its brevity and its easily grasped philosophical takeaway (which, again, ought to be critiqued ā after all, saying the social contract means we should follow all laws even if unjust, and we canāt oppose any law unless we opposed it since birth ā pretty ridiculous!)
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on and off in the fall, i was reading Senecaās dialogues and letters, and for me Seneca is really underappreciated as far as being a stoic who actually appreciates the nice parts of life and treats it all with sort of a good humored acceptance of circumstance as opposed to a dour (stereotypically-)military attitude. i really appreciated his writing style tho, again, who knows how much is translator (C. D. N. Costa) and how much is him. need to finish this up / reread
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iāve got some junk āāāāinterpretationāāāā copy of Epictetusā Enchiridion (here titled āthe art of livingā which sounds pretty hippy-dippy to me). the most interesting translation iāve found is this one which doesnāt seem to have a print version
otherwise iāve been on a big poetry kick recently so dunno when iāll get back on this. iāve also been reading a lot of religiously-oriented stuff, buying my 4th translation of the bhagavad gita for some reason,
- hint to anyone looking to check out eastern spirituality, iāve seen nothing but rave reviews for eknath easwaran translations. he was an indian english professor turned spiritual seeker and instructor, so his translations apparently carry a lot of contextual nuance and poetry.
those of yall who have been following my discord bitching about this know that i hate all manner of religious fakes, holy phonies, spiritual grifters out for self-promotion, and ideological biases in translation ā easwaran seems refreshingly free of all that.
(unlike, say, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, which is recommended all over the web despite carrying a clear ISKCON/Hare Krishna slant)
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if you like poetry and religious stuff you should read burton watsons translation of the lotus sutra next (if you havenāt already)
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cool, why that version?
Itās good! I donāt know if any others are widely available now that I think of it. But Watson is a good translator.
(I thought of it because there is lots of poetry in the text, the poems kind of repeat what the prose parts say with more adjectives but I like them)
kinda similar to reading Boethiusās Consolation of Philosophy, then.
Hey I thought you were following the SJC reading list
that was the plan, yeah! but i got sidetracked. i still have it all in a google doc.
tfw takes me six months to read 3 weeks worth of the SJC syllabus
this reminds me though, i should get back on the horse. next up: odyssey
Well I mean you have like school and shit. At SJC all you have to do is sit around and read the books. Jesus, I couldnāt even imagine trying to go through the seminar list now. I can barely scrape through a goddamn Neal Stephenson novel.
man i do wish i had gone thru the sjc curriculum as an undergrad tho. like it would have handily replaced my philosophy reqs, and apart from IR and theology courses, the rest of my undergrad curriculum was easily sacrificable
Why would you do this to yourself
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The real dope is that St Johnās is a secret trap to get philosophy people into math and science. If you ignore that half of the curriculum you wonāt even get whatās so great about it.