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September 1, 2019 · 6:35 pm

Summer 2019: Reading and Reflections

Last year was the most difficult in my 20+ year teaching career. I was burned out and exhausted by June and decided that, except for a quick trip to Boston, I wasn’t going to do any traveling over the summer. In order to recharge and refocus I spent my time at home sitting in my garden which has a beautiful view and I alternated between reading, getting some sun, and swimming.

I began the summer by reading Virginia Woolf’s The Waves which I brought with me on my long weekend to Boston in late June. Of all her books this one seems to get the least attention, but I enjoyed it, in a different way of course, as much as any of her other novels I’ve read. One can see the beginnings of her stream-of-consciousness style for which she is so well-know. The story is heart wrenching and tragic and not an easy read, but so worth the effort. It’s not surprising, now that I look back on the summer, that I chose Horace’s Carpe Diem poem, Ode 2.11 to translate and spend some time with after reading The Waves: “Why would you exhaust your soul making plans for the future, a soul that is not up to the task?”

After this I was in the mood for more Tolstoy, especially after I saw @levistahl post on Twitter that Hadji Murat was one of his favorite summer reads. (Levi is great to follow, by the way, if you like books, cats, dogs, baseball, 70’s movies and Columbo.) Tolstoy is one of those authors whose writings I savor and am rationing the few remaining books of his I have left. J.L. Carr’s novella, A Month in the Country was also on Levi’s list and I read the book and saw the film. Carr’s story was the perfect book for the summer setting in my garden.

I spent all of July reading Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. I was so happy to connect with @genese_grill on Twitter who has translated Musil and who had wonderful insights into this enigmatic magnum opus. (Genese is also great to follow on Twitter for books, literature and translation.) The Man without Qualities, both Volumes I and II , were the most challenging books I have ever read. I’ve seen them described as philosophical novels and the combination of Musil’s complex sentences and thought demanded my focus and concentration. Reading Musil’s Diaries alongside the novels also provided valuable insights into some of the threads that run throughout his narrative.

My final summer reading was spent on the first three volumes of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. On Friday night I finished Volume III, The Guermantes Way, which felt like it ended on a sad note. The narrator finally gains admittance into the Guermantes’ inner circle and, like many other things, is disappointed by what he finds. The petty gossip and the shallowness of the characters he meets are sad and pathetic. I’ve been thinking a lot about indifference, which word Proust uses continually throughout all three books in a variety of contexts. If I can pull my thoughts together I might write something about this after I finish all six volume. Needless to say, this is one of the most intense, illuminating, pleasurable reads I’ve ever had. It was a wonderful summer, indeed, and I feel refreshed and recharged and ready to inspire my new classes to appreciate an ancient language. Wish me luck!

For the rest of this year I will be occupied with finishing Proust and would also like to finish Schmidt’s Lives of the Poets which I’ve gotten half way through.

(By the way, Henry, my black and white cat, who is quite annoyed that I’ve gone back to work, insisted on sticking his nose into my book photo.)

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Filed under British Literature, German Literature, In Search of Lost Time, New York Review of Books, Novella, Proust

Tagged as Carr, Musil, Proust, Tolstoy, Woolf

May 20, 2019 · 11:56 am

De Senectute: Sappho, Ovid, Tennyson, Musil and Cicero

Aurora Taking Leave of Tithonus. Francesco Solimena. 1704

In classical mythology Tithonus was a Trojan prince with whom Eos (Aurora to the Romans), goddess of the dawn, falls in love. This deity, whom Homer calls “rosy-fingered,” captures Tithonus and sweeps him off to the home of the gods and asks Zeus to grant Tithonus immortality. Eos, however, forgets to also ask for eternal youth. Even though Tithonus is immortal, he grows old and frail. Sappho, in her “Tithonus” or “Old Age” poem uses him as a metaphor to illustrate the effects of her own aging (translation is my own):

Old age has already taken from me my once soft skin,
and my hair, at one time so dark, has grown white.
My spirit has grown heavy, my knees, which used to be
nimble enough to dance like fawns, no longer carry me.
I mourn these things but what can I do about it?
It is not possible for men to be ageless. For at one time
they say that Eos, smitten by love, carried off Tithonus in her
rosy arms to the edge of the earth, he who was handsome
and young; but in time gray old-age took hold of him who
was a still a husband to an immortal wife.

In Ovid there is a brief mention of Tithonus as Aurora and some of the other goddesses complain that they cannot stop the aging of their mortal lovers )trans. my own): “Aurora, daughter of Pallas, mourned the old age of her own husband.” But, as Sappho says, what could she do?

What is missing in these myths is Tithonus’s own words. Tennyson’s brilliant poem about the Trojan prince gives him that voice: “Let me go: take back thy gift,” Tithonus begs her. He laments his inevitable aging, recognizes that as humans we must accept this fate, and pleads with Eos to release him from his immortality. I offer here one of my favorite stanzas, but please do read the entire poem:

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-hair’d shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man—

So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seem’d
To his great heart none other than a God!
I ask’d thee, ‘Give me immortality.’
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men, who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills,
And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me,
And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, tho’ even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide,
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

I was also reading Robert Musil’s Thought Flights over the weekend and one of his short narratives struck me as a similar commentary on aging, how we see ourselves and how others see us. In “Susanna’s Letter,” a married woman is writing to a friend about a train journey during which she reflects on her changing body as she ages. Her chin was “once energetic” she notices, and her neck used to be straight. But despite these physical reminders of her age, “It is all downward going from here on out, but every step becomes calmer and more secure.” And my favorite passage, bitter sweet—both hopeful yet sad—from the story is the one in which she connects her aging body to her spouse (trans. Genese Grill):

My husband much have seen every details of my body by now, and he loves me anyway; he loves me as I am. Sometimes that makes him unbearable to me. For it takes all my power from me. I should say, it takes all the fantasizing out of my body. Then I am like a finished book, one that has already been declared to be very beautiful; for, the fact that a book is beautiful is no consolation for its having already been read.

On one final, positive note, in Cicero’s philosophical treaty De Senectute (On Old Age), he writes (trans. my own):

I follow and obey nature who is the best guide as if she were a divinity; it cannot be true that she has arranged well the other parts of our lives but then, like a bad poet, neglected the final act of the drama. It is necessary, however, that there be a certain kind of end, frail and withered with a timely maturity, just as the berries on the trees and the fruits of earth, which wise men must gently endure. To fight against nature would be as useless as the giants rebeling against the gods.