Sent the last of my applications off yesterday, along with a story to JC and treats for other people. Well, maybe it is a bit overbold to call that little booklet a ‘treat’: more of a glorified holiday card, actually, except, of course, that it has nothing to do with the holidays, red cover notwithstanding.
Also, traveled from New England to SF yesterday, with the ever so joyous stop at Cincinnati. I read Nietzsche on the plane (it seemed suitably pretentious). From BDL to CVG, the fellow sitting next to me read the new biography of Teddy Roosevelt; from CVG to SFO, the woman next to me was reading something by Asimov the title of which I was unable to catch as she spent most of the flight using the book as a pillow.
Smell of snow and, strangely, dust. Also leaves. Witnessed (a martyrdom indeed!) an incident of performance art in the library foyer, involving a team of ‘dancers’ and books, which received such abuse as dropping & general prop-dom (oh, ignominy!).
Also spent the last geology lecture of the year reading essays by Francis Bacon:
There be some whose lives are is if they perpetually played upon a stage, disguised to all others, open only to themselves. But perpetual dissimulation is painful, and he that is all fortune and no nature is an exquisite hireling. Live not in continual smother, but take some friends with whom to communicate. It will unfold thy understanding; it will evaporate thy affections; it will prepare thy business.
A man may keep a corner of his mind from his friend, and it be but to witness
to himself that it is not upon facility, but upon true use of friendship that he imparteth himself. […] Perfection of friendship is but a speculation.
It is friendship, when a man can say to himself, I love this man without respect of utility; I am open-hearted to him; I single him from the generality of those with whom I live; I make him a portion of my own wishes.
‘Live not in continual smother…’ Of course not, Frank, wouldn’t dream of it…
Reading Invitation to a Beheading:
In the evenings he would feast on ancient books in the lazy enchanting lap of wavelets in the Floating Library, in memoriam of Dr. Sineokov, who had drowned in just that spot on the city river (27).
Motivation, of course, something to do with atent shame, as usually I’m the one recommending books. M. read it two summers ago and I’ve been dilatory; still haven’t read Underworld, either…
Listen and take pleasure in what you were not
given in life—quiet. Look, there up ahead is your eternal home, which you’ve been given as a reward. I can see the Venetian window and the grape-vine curling up to the roof. There is your home, your eternal home. I know that in the evenings people you like will come to see you, people who interest you and will not upset you. They will play for you, sing for you, and you will see how the room looks in candlelight. You will fall asleep with your grimy eternal hat on your head, you will fall asleep with a smile on your lips. Sleep will strengthen you, you will begin to reason wisely. And you will never be able to chase me away. I will guard your sleep.
The library. Dusty concrete steps to metal stacks and weak green-blue light.
Reciprocity — sincerity — altruism.
Walking. Cafés. Leading. Following. Chasing. Darkness.
How the history crowds around one, pressing in on all sides, heading towards some incontrovertible truth.
I have not spoken to anyone for three days. My voice feels harsh and tight in my throat, a sharp clenched fist holding back — oh, everything. A hungry, haunted look now taints me about the eyes, and I must look away from passing strangers lest from my stares they catch hold of my unease, make it their own, enter into unnecessary nervousness or discontent.
The proper level of restraint — one does not wish to impose; and all contact,
each glance, is an imposition, is it not? Yet when does this politeness, this so-called consideration become mere insipidity? When does diffidence, edged round with respect and awe, become distance? When do ideas, preferences, desires, fears, become labels, rather than facts? When do people begin to prefer the labels (e.g. I am liberal, I am conservative, I like this, I hate that) to simply being whatever it is that they claim? When do these labels, these signifiers, become bonds tighter than knowledge, closer than friendship? When do words become more important than understanding?
When did this happen?
Has it happened?
Sometimes when I walk along the streets, ferocious, cutting, and I feel nothing, observe nothing; I draw no attention, desire none. Then I see the light hit upon a building, a tree, or hear the uneven laughter of a child, glimpse the watchful smile of a parent, see young people walk, arm in arm, or not quite so, or laugh into the night as they venture who knows where. I see these things, I hear these things, I feel this world swirling around me, and I stop, a pebble pausing in the flood, smiling for the briefest moment.
Everything around me is not beautiful, it is not grand, it is not great — but
it is.
And that must be enough.
Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts — Palestrina, Missa Brevis — the smell of baking apples — seeds of a pomegranate.
Cold air — blue sky.
Lovely … lovely.
Softly, softly. Malthakôs. The oak leaves are falling at last — air of unreality, setting a scene (tho’ not making one). Received two glorious letters — read them in the afternoon light while waiting for the bus. Invariably waiting for the inevitable bus.
There really is something about reading Plato. I can’t explain it. The Apology is just so beautifully ugly — colloquial (one would suppose) — thinking aloud — interrupting the sense of a sentence to follow the train of thought, before returning at last to the idea at hand. All the echoes of Gorgianic jangling, instead of distracting the listener from the content, draw attention to the sense of the argument.
Epiphany of sorts — sitting in the library, trying to think of a good excuse for my lack of preparation (re: Plato) — could conceivably spend hours constructing more or less plausible reasons. Why not, then, use the time to prepare the passage — it won’t be perfect (it never is), but it will be done. And I read the passage and felt much better about everything.
Lulled, gently, into the certitude of reading. Carefully writing out ideas and quotations on 3×5 cards, printing neatly, citing assiduously. Delicious,
really.
Met J. at the Haymarket, chattering away about the month of October (where did it go? what happened? what did you do?) and the inchoate, incomprehensible fear of application (both to one’s studies and to one’s chosen graduate schools). The floor of the cafe seemed suddenly brilliant to me, the bright wood vivid in the artificial light — tho’ perhaps I oughtn’t to have indulged in that espresso, not at 7.30-ish in the evening.
I have come to the inevitable conclusion. Running into the eternal interrogative (thinking Forsterian here, can you tell?): the answer can, the answer must, for me at least, be yes. Not the ‘yes’ that means ‘no,’ not the affirmative that scorns, but that quiet ever so blank ‘yes’ which means everything & nothing, offers no promises, utters not prophecies, simply marks that, yes, things are, aren’t they. Make of it what you will.
They’ve added more shelves in Cutter — at the expense of all the secluded tables, the perfect murky silence of a world without windows, only books. I remember discussing ancient sources in the security of that bunker, chattering about Tacitus and the difficulty of inscriptions as the lights purred and the dust settled. One must keep a constant. I keep one. Change…
Please? Do you have any spare change? Ah—yes.
Much of the day spent in reading — Agora excavations and Dreiser’s The ‘Genius’. Waited late into the night in the language center for befuddled first-year Latin students to seek help; apparently, on Thursday nights, beginning Latinists have no difficulties with the lingua. I was left, then, to amuse myself as best I could, which naturally invovled much reading of a Wallace-Hadrill’s book on Suetonius, more Dreiser, and a heavy bout of eaves-dropping on the student EMT session taking place in one of the nearby Spanish rooms. Giggling girls, cheerful, light, mirth, teasing the Public Safety officer … again the constrast of darkness and light.
Reading Medea (γυνὴ γὰρ ὀξύθυμος, ὡς δ’ αὔτως ἀνήρ, // ῥάιων φυλάσσειν ἢ σιωπηλὸς σοφή. (319–20)). Ah, ionic elements! We are fond of our archaicisms — and might be in danger of descending to dactylic hexameters… give us a minute.
| compare |
Scrutinising my recent reading and find that I’ve been spending far too much time ambling through modern literature — which would, I suppose, be acceptable if I were reading Proust or Eliot or some other frightfully clever & dreadfully important authors, but I’m not — I’m reading the squabblers, with personalities more interesting than their books (which isn’t, to be sure, saying much).
At some point I find myself watching the clouds — the leaves are changing —
some trees are already bare — but the clouds, the warm, the cold, the gathering, dispersing. Autumn puts me in mind of wool jackets, wood smoke, the break of apples, dust of books; also: steam rising from coffee; yellow-orange leaves against a sky the varying blue-gray-lavender of clear cloud-cover.
Reading Onians’ Origins of European Thought;
according to Mr. Onians, the Greeks believed that the thymos, or spirit of consciousness (as opposed to the psyche, the irrational/unconscious, etc.) resides in the belly (pp. 44-89). He also has many and humorous things to say about sneezes (p. 103f.).
History — surrounded, immersed, drowning, etc., with regards to it. Be wary
of being ahistorical. Yet history has of late become mere voyeurism, people sitting in their homes before some flickering screen, or engaged in a voluntary deafness to all but the radio. Even the sound of newsprint has learnt hysteria — and this is all we know of continuity. Everything else remains the scattered moments of a single life, the finding groceries, the worrying about cash, the meeting friends or avoiding them — breathing, longing, living.
And yet history — is it possible that the ringing of a till, the purchase of
book (as, for instance, Friday, Raven
Books, Burney’s Cecilia, $6.95) or some other refreshment (e.g. today — soymilk, bread, apples, onion, $7.19), can be more momentous than the moving of armies. Can the observation of a leaf falling or a mist dispersing be of more significance than an orchestrated press conference? Can a smile, a momentous glance, a significant word, be more powerful than the writ of nations?
It depends, I suppose, on what you are looking for.
Shaping into an utter emptiness. — oh — I was thinking, for a moment, of the
world beyond the silly sighing, past the swaying hum of a string quartet, a world
of mirth and loud laughter, of harsh tones and brash smiles, of confused and blurring lines, of lights unsteady and the dark ever before one’s feet. Seeing as I do not, myself, live as they do, I would like it to at least be said that I am an astronomer of others’ lives, that I watch with as precise a calculation and yet as careful a sympathy as can be felt.
Perfectly idle, reading Infinite Jest, which is not so bad as I remember. I finally got more than ten pages into it, which seems highly virtuous of me. It would have been more virtuous if I hadn’t needed to read Lysias instead.
Console myself with reading & umpteen cups of watery tea. Afternoons of such sweet enjoyableness are so rare with me that I tend to savor them, hold them lingering to myself, rather than share them.
Gainful toil + useful work = wasted time. No reading. Only joy in Monteverdi & a bit of Horace and Pindar and Epicurus (‘Send me a little pot of cheese so that I can indulge in extravagance when I wish’, as per Diogenes Laertius) and Epictetus (Τῶν ἡδέων τὰ σπανιώτατα γινόμενα μάλιστα τέρπει – Those of our pleasures which come most rarely are especially delightful).
Williston Library
Carrel-choosing at the Library — it seems to be one of the social events of the early fall semester… (Yours truly now the proud resident of of carrel no. 502 — fifth floor, by the window, one shelf away from Greek & Latin poetry, twenty-seven paces from Stendhal.) Up very late reading again.
Ineffably charming, oozing good humor & politic attention; I listen & ask questions—then run to the library and hide among my friends, their dusty spines bristling at imagined indignities.
Something like a gloomy day; morning in the library, then returned couchwards for coffee & short stories. The old brain could handle nothing stronger; I put it down to a slight overindulgence in Shostakovich string quartets yesterday evening…
Again, up early. Restless. Still reading the Letters of Rupert Brooke. Aside from having a perfectly splendid name and being a tremendously handsome (in the English manner, if you like that sort of thing) minor poet, I find he even manages to write amusing letters, about such interesting things as, well, life—which is nice (tho’ admittedly I’ve only got through 1908, and he was only twenty-one at the time…).
The first day alone; on my own. Faded grandeur of a forgotten self. Searching for lost books. Remembering old friends, neglected, of course, as they too often are. Baking scones, making tea. Existence in fragments. One cannot expect more. Even so.
Just a note: I realized what it was, that most important thing that I’d forgotten. No pretences, the game is over, the summer’s done. The hope of youth’s but a fond dream, and suits lighter souls than mine. Let us pretend no more.
Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often
it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers, and no doubt this applies to certain of the recollections I have gathered here.
To be more joyful, and border less on abject self-pity, I have taken to pillaging the shelves in my former room (now the library—which is apt) for books to take away; I fear my parents shall be left with hardly any modern literature at all. They merely smile at me, though, as I pilfer a volume or five, and are more worried I might abscond with Charlie Parker & Mahler’s Fourth.
I’ve had a strange thought, too; rather, a recurring memory, a repeated hit upon the wall of my conscious, a fact if you like, a coincidence: a copy of Homer’s Odyssey on my bedside table when I returned.
First snatch at solitude; how sweet indeed it is. I have missed (oh how very much!) the joy of waking to an empty house, all the silences responding to my footsteps, brushing away the dust of evening entirely at my leisure (which means, of course, I need not hide away in bed, avoiding the day’s probabilities).
It all comes down to a matter of contrast (if one wishes to deal with certainties). This dislocation springs, no doubt, from the abrupt difference of colors, the infinite bright variety replaced by a limited palette of infinite subtlety; a harsh chalk (or pastel) quality to the lines converted to a skillful watercolor. Even so, one cannot judge, nor really make apt comparisons; the brilliance of each would be undisputed, but they are so different in kind. My poor brain has gone all addled: I look for things, for people, that simply cannot be there—yet, strangely, am not disappointed…. Is it possible for lives to run parallel, keeping even pace alongside each other and only through a trick of perspective brushing closer at some distant point? It seems to me a rather artful construct, which robs it of much of its potential value as an image.
Walked along the trail up Hunchback Mountain for half an hour or so, before turning ’round again, leisurely ducking spiders’ webs and stopping to watch the flight of birds. At last, a moment wholly familiar.
The very light is altered, or simply different. There is an air about the place, this home, that both entices and fills me with foreboding. The normalcy of little things, scanning the shelves for books, toppling things gracelessly onto the floor, and yet so much has changed—furniture moved, or simply gone. Suffice to say…
Piling pebbles upon the beach, the water laps against the sky, the low sound measuring time’s loss, the imponderable construction of a memory. Set one foot, then, in front of the other, and take no moment to look back, but continue — onward.
One muddles oneself with thinking, succumbing too easily to the temptation to compare what is with what might be — learn to be insensate, let things, let people, be as they are, and do not expect what cannot be given.
Kerameikos and the haze of the Acropolis in the background.
Athens, Greece (31 July 2001; usual camera)
Delphi — up and about just before six to watch the Pythian sunrise, the bunched mountains and outcrops of rock losing their dusky shadow to the warm necessity of the sun. The trees in the valley seem almost lush, but dwindle to scrub along the harsh and rugged walls. A stillness through everything — even the air scarce dares to move. Then a low breeze, the flags pulse and flutter helpless against their poles, the movement of the fabric like the uneven footfall of an unshod horse upon the dust. And I do not know where to look, to the hills losing their cool shadows, or to the east, where I know the light will be. Slanting, the dull ratcheting of the sun into position, fine distinctions sharpening the angle, and a long line of shadow cast by stone. Then, at last, the smooth curve of the plain blushes under the sun’s caress.
I had been in a bad mood; then I saw this from the hills above Delphi.
Facing the famous Tholos at Marmara.
Delphi, Greece (24 July 2001; usual camera)
It’s deeply complex: it’s not what you see. There’s a tension between what you are and what you know. One must read behind the phenomena, the surfaces; one could take hours, days, months to comprehend one column capital, working over the surfaces with a magnifying glass in search of scratches. This is scientific. Then there’s the romantic view: maintain the established ruins, the picturesque. Sitting on the stylobate of the Parthenon, next to the second column from the SE corner (on the west side); looking out over the city, the Piraeus barely visible in the haze. Isolation. Balance and the beauty of design. Deception.
The ‘taking’ of pictures.
The plain of Plataia, north of Athens, Greece
(3 July 2001; usual camera)
Acrocorinth. One sees the world open out to the horizon, from the span of Attica to the slopes of Parnassus, across the tenuous isthmus, the Peloponnese now broken to an island by the works of man. On the isle of Pelops, taciturn rocks lie uneven as a rumpled blanket, jagged as a broken shield. From this height all sound has been absorbed by history; the shouting of one’s compatriots sinks into the silence, drowned by wind and sun.
My bag, outside the American School
Athens, Greece (3 July 2001; usual camera)
What is one looking for in these cases, anyway? One could find an object lesson, an unexpected symbol, but one is unlikely to find what it all meant; it is a void, then, and scholarship a waste of time? Perhaps. One little thing, this fixation on an object, whether worthy or no; wisdom and understanding is not to be gained in this manner — merely a collection of images, a gathering picture, a catalogue, all bare leaves and no explanation. This must be enough.
A Cretan Baetyl, eagerly defended by a large Canadian and a man called ‘Huge.’
Palaikastro, Crete, Greece (27 June 2001; usual camera)
We students were trotted up Lycabettos hill, an occasion for profuse
sweating and sporadic complaint, but the views rendered both bearable, the sun hesitating behind faint clouds, even Oedipus’ Cithaeron visible in the distance.
Listless running of errands and pre-departure nostalgia. I cannot find black
thread, but only a Swiss water-bottle that looks as though it should be used to
cause an international incident, which worries me. Returned my last books to the Ashmolean and sat for some time in the stacks, not wanting to leave. Well, five minutes, but that seems quite a while if one is sitting, feeling soppy. Shipped the last of my boxes, only owing to the good graces of the blessed clerk at the St Clement’s Street post-office, who re-opened after closing (at 1pm of all hours) just so my boxes could go out. It is a good thing, I think, to be polite and hopeless.
More packing. In a haze of irritability, especially when I consider how much pleasanter these last few days would be if I had only begun to send things home sooner. One of the pleasantest sorts of the idleness is that which gives the illusion of business, as all the world well knows. But this is ever the way of things, to know and to know and to know a thing is true and necessary (such as packing one’s things, ending a conversation, saying hello) and yet never doing them. Did find time to read a little book on Latin literature and go for coffee with J., H., and R. (& her inevitable boy). Returned late, from the smoky warm glow of the café through the clear air to evening.
More and still more work in the library, reading about god and trying to comprehend Epidauros, which just leaves me muddled. I find it frightfully confusing that there were at least four different (?) artists called Polykleitos working in the Greek world during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC; it just shouldn’t be allowed. Still, feeling deceptively productive.
Bleh. still. Hesiod is some consolation, and I hope to show great sense about the Works and Days. Oh Works. Oh Days. Oh. Let’s not imitate Cicero.
People sat or sprawled on the lawns, soaking in the sunshine or lolling in the shade. I, meanwhile, was content to walk along the river bank and admire the scene, the hum of bees, &c. The rest of the morning passed amid thoughts of the ancient Greek aristocracy, kaloikagathoi, the beautiful and the good. Have been pondering my reading lately and am sad to note that I haven’t really been pursuing literature as I should — oh, I am reading Philostratus & Demosthenes & Lysias & things, but those just aren’t the same as James & Woolf & Geo. Eliot, & co, nor has there been an exhuberent loss of self, a deliberate rendering of one’s mind to subtle manipulation so common in modern writing. Began the afternoon with drinks at the principal’s house: near twenty undergraduate and graduate students standing awkwardly on the sun-struck lawn, holding glasses of tepid champagne, orange juice, and elderflower water at all angles, whilst attempting to mingle for the sake of appearances.
Sunrise of broken light, white through the varying gray clouds. Nothing unusual, watching the rain fall occasionally, listening to Monteverdi, browsing through the Historia Augusta. A useful day, but not out of the
ordinary, which, at times, is nice.
Friday. Morning in various libraries, reading about the second sohpistic. The
Bod LRR is shut from tomorrow until October, which saddens me a great deal: my last two weeks in England spent without access to its darkened portraits and harried classicists. Still, there are other libraries available, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain. I’ve gotten into the habit. Yes, it is a habit, and it forms character, shapes the mind into a rigorous academic… machine? For some. The finalists are finishing their exams, the weary, taut expression of the penguin people yielding to joy and relief with the red carnation. These are traditions, without which, well, it just wouldn’t be… Silly thing to write about, though. One might as well ramble at great length about the intricacies of memory (oh, yes, that’s been done too, hasn’t it?).
After the ever-entertaining lecture on the city of Rome – the lecturer condescending to swear at the slide projector, which had a disposition to be willful — went to the Ashmolean. God’s gallery was shut for construction and conservation work, the red walls and the tops of paintings barely visible over a temporary divider; so, went and sat in the medieval gallery, an olive green room with a barrel vaulted ceiling. The colors of the icons and portraits possess a mute sharpness; everything seems muffled – the terra-cotta, bronze & ivory in cases – as though in hiding. The entire effect is soothing, not least because it is nearly unvisited rooms, the tourists enter lost and look around politely and leave; the guard converses cautiously with another member of staff and nods in his chair. The faded worn-brick plush benches are comfortable, though, as necessary.
Spent the afternoon reading Plautus.
One of those very strange mornings, indecisive rain and sunshine, which last shone in (when it shone at all) an eerie perfect white upon the shadowed wall. Spent the early morning reading Seneca’s De Clementia and scrupulously avoiding any thought of Cicero.
Is it possible to feel nostalgia for a place one has not left? Can one miss
and long for the very place one happens to be, because one shall too soon leave? I do complain and make snide comments, but I am dreadfully fond of this place, these people, this manner of living. I dread returning to my country.
The morning in the Bod, nodding over libertas (& eleuthería), then to the Ashmolean for a few articles. Lecture as usual. Too sunny for comfort; in a malaise, if you like. Still, the afternoon listening to Bach & Beethoven & Mahler, a pleasant change, and pondering that most ideal of monarchs, Nero.
Up early, and in good humor, scampering too and fro with mind at ease; taking great care not to overburden the old brain, which might crumble without warning. ‘…and though the merriment was rather boisterous, still it came from the heart and not from the lips: and this is the right sort of merriment, after all’ (Pickwick, p. 84). A rainy day, too, after an indeterminate dawn. Went to a lecture on Linear B; the lecturer was Italian and impressed upon all twelve students how difficult a syllabic script (such as Linear B) is.
Somehow found myself walking along Magdalen bridge, looking down at the uncertain green of the Cherwell; it was a color of such astonishing strangeness and beauty that I longed to stop and point it out to passers-by. Was it because of its strangeness, the lingering ripples of olive and emerald and jade, brushed with the new green of the leaves, that it was all of these things and yet none of them, that I thought it beautiful? Or was it simply that I was lonely, and wanted the sharing of it more than the thought itself? A notion.
Tuesday. A heavy day, with mind weighted, wandering through the hours without leisure and without interest. Reading, too, for my essay, attending lecture, and a seminar (on the 18th century: curious how I had never viewed the 1700s as being ‘wedged’ between the monoliths of early modern and late modern history, but have always thought of it as a time of beginnings… this is the American view, rather than the British view; but it is strange that the speaker never mentioned the French Revolution except in passing…).
Broken blue sky and translucent clouds after a night of rain. A typical Sunday, doing laundry, reading, preparing for another week. Churchbells call to all good Christians; the response, if any, is hidden from my window.
Overslept and the morning passed while my brain was still leaden; an hour at the Bod., then coffee, the Ashmolean, lecture & lunch. In a frenzy to finish my essay for tomorrow & attend a lecture on Roman religion this evening.
Wandered around town, easing into habits. Babbitt-dom is still distant, one hopes. Vague unease, unsettled, unsure, balancing only barely. As usual. Spent too much money on books. Again.
Idled in coffee-shops & the library, and read and read and read. Such pleasure. Day started clear, but now overcast. Perfect.
More laundry and packing and reading of A Concise History
of Greece. Tidying things up in general, as a means of distracting myself
from Roman history and the minutae of Greek grammar. Also looking wistfully at the three library books I must return tomorrow; I’ve had them for six weeks, but have scarce made a dent in them, such is my perdition. Shuffled photographs into my Blue Guide to Rome. Overcast and toneless, colder, but no snow.
Spent the day in search of books on modern Greece, which, strangely enough, are more difficult to find than books on ancient Greece. I find it somewhat strange that books on Greece tend to be shelved with ‘Western Europe’ while the ‘Balkans’ and the former Yugoslavia are under ‘Eastern Europe.’ Also purchased a cheap copy of Steppenwolf — which I am prejudiced against, but shall read anyway — and Roman history. A gray afternoon, dreary, with a bit of snow. Required a heavy dose of Brahms & Mozart.
Up to a mist & general laziness, very nice. Spending too much time in writing letters and making notes, which does little use. Have yet to complete summary to my satisfaction and so idle for inspiration.
To see ‘The Genius of Rome: 1592–1623;’ or, in other words, to see paintings by Caravaggio and … some other guys. Then wandered around the city feeling young and disillusioned, everyone and everything seeming uglier and stupider and slower than they should be. Two elderly ladies on the bus into town and St John the Baptist (ca. 1603) were the day’s only redeeming factors. Returned to town in a drizzle, drank a cup of tea, & felt much better. There are times when cities simply aren’t appropriate; moments of unsociability being a prime example.
Awoke to sunshine and roseate light brushing across the plaster walls. In a
good humor, surprisingly, and spent much ofthe morning in the Bod. reading about Cicero, which was curiously enough entertaining. Much caffeination required thereafter, though. Finished The Ambassadors, and greatly pleased thereat; so spent the rest of the day in useful reading and writing and listening to Mozart after having bathed.
Dark smoke-blue sky and evidence of rain, to which was added the sound of car alarm. Naturally. Organizing bibliography, &c., but in no humor for nearly anything.
After a night of nausea, day dawned bright and clear, no frost, but chill preceding spring. Spent much of the day in bed, feeling not well enough for anything, though did stumble through more of The Ambassadors. To sleep early, with thanks.
Overcast toneless gray, neither warm nor cold. Reading The Ambassadors, then up, out and to coffee. Purchased
litre of orange juice, email, return to room, where reading Hellenistic
history, Sophocles & Antiphon whilst trying to organize my bibliography. Dull and stupid, partook of tea & more Henry James, then tired at last, to bed.
A fine day today, overcast, with a light rain whispering the warmth of spring (to be purple about it). Finished Lucky Jim
in the morning, which was adequate so far as novels go, but nothing out of the
ordinary. Into college to, idle before the morning meal, which last I spent in moderate socialization with three other barabarians of various stripe. To the wholefood store for my customary loaf & milk, then returned to room to spend some time in the contemplation of Hellenistic & early Roman history. Usual tea & reading, out for a film, and return to room.
Up, email, breakfast, coffee, read, museum, bookstore, bread & juice, room, Lucky Jim, coffee, pita, read, class (medicine; more dreadful silences and skirting the essentials), room & mirth, potluck, taxi, room, bed.
Up, tea, email, breakfast, library (kinship diplomacy — finished at last), coffee, Greek Religion, room, read, coffee, collections, dinner (which invariably causes indigestion), concert, stroll, room, bed.
Up, tea, email, breakfast, library (kinship diplomacy), coffee, room, read, idleness, bed.
Up, email, breakfast, library (kinship diplomacy), coffee, museum, bookstore, post-office (stamps for letter & forms), room, read, St. John’s Passion, tea, read, Ninth, read, email, dinner, room, bed.
Up, coffee, Women in Ancient Persia…, email,
breakfast, letters, Athenian Culture, library (kinship diplomacy), library II (return book, renew books on Greek cults & borrow book on Roman Rhetoric), coffee, bookstore, bread & milk, room, settle, lunch, write letters, tea, Bach, Ulysses, &c., talk (dreadful and dull), room, bed.
Up, coffee, laundry, email, bread, Ulysses, tea, relax, bed.
Up, coffee, Baroque, Women in Ancient Persia (559 — 331 bc), Brahms, tea, notecards, Elgar, African Civilizations, brunch, groceries, room, Omeros, tea, continue reading, call M, Bach, bed.
Up, coffee, essay, breakfast, email, essay, snooze, deliver essay, room, bed, A Room with a View, talk to Mama, mint tea, drift in & out of wakefulness, sleep.
Up (after a night broken by coughing), coffee, Ulysses,
e-mail, breakfast, Bodley, coffee, pick up tickets, room, rest, lunch, room, read,
essay, rest, bed.
Up (after a night broken by coughing), coffee, Ulysses,
email, breakfast, library, coffee, pick up tickets, room, rest, lunch, room, read, essay, rest, bed.
Up, coffee, essay, email, breakfast, library, essay, tutorial, buy books,
coffee, purchase tea, room, tea, Ulysses, meet to arrange Latin, room, Ulysses, library (return books), dinner, room, bed.
Up (after a night of heated sleep, not tossing and turning, but trapped in
the stillness inimical to rest), coffee, Ulysses, email,
breakfast, library (return books & borrow Greek Prose Style), Athenian Culture, museum (return & borrow books), bookstore (check on religion books in cheap paperbacks), library (translations & TLS), email, lunch, room, tea, Ulysses, Bach, Tragedy and the Tragic, essay, bath, Ulysses, bed.
Up, coffee, languish (a sleepy stupidity tucked amongst the blankets, watching the light seep across the wall and hiding from the sharpness of out-of-doors), laundry, email (a process which, with some manipulation, can be made to consume an hour and half), room, coffee & sandwich, grocery store (for the purchase of weekly necessaries such as bread and jam), room, essay, idleness, bed.
Up, coffee, bath, Love in a Cold Climate (it troubles
me somewhat, being clever and charming and not especially brilliant, the characters remain, as intended I suppose, card-board cut-outs — Cedric, for instance, is an insult to one’s intelligence — though it is entertaining to ponder the actual schedule of the narrator), library (Greek Religion, etc.), brunch, e-mail, room, coffee, Fathers and Sons (I have at last actually set my mind to it and finished the thing, and find it is much more intriguing than I remember from my last attempt four years ago), dabble, Athenian Religion, Bach Mass in B minor, room, bed.
Up, coffee, email, breakfast, library (return book), library II (read), library III (return book & photocopy), coffee & sandwich, room, read, class, which put in mind of Meredith:
…one is not altogether fit for the battle of life who is engaged in a perpetual contention with his dinner…
…which holds true for Thucydides as well; the reason it being generally so wretched is a matter of digestion, not lack of cogitation; even managed an exquisite civility to the disagreeable personages), library, check books, room, read, tea, bread, Bach, bed.
Up, coffee, email, breakfast, library (return book), bookstore, coffee, library (request books), Greek religion (the importance of myth!), lunch, bread & milk, room, read, dinner, room, bed.
Up, coffee, Greek historiography, email, breakfast, library, coffee, milk, room, Thucydides Mythistoricus, lunch, Euripides as social critic (‘question authority’ — I can’t believe I skipped two hours of discussing the Boeotian elements of Pindar to attend), room, generally well-disposed to world and lacking any desire to indulge in excessive criticism (this state being induced by the lecture, Puccini, two slices of buttered bread and a cup of milky tea), Thucydides reading, more reading, the vague inclination (though not enacted) to bathe, bed.
Up, coffee, At Swim-Two-Birds, email, breakfast, library (return books), coffee, museum (periodicals, course reading), library (Thucydides, etc.), The Blessing, lunch, room, The Blessing, bread, Thucydides, bed.
Up, coffee, Greek historiography, Kagan YCS 24, send letters, breakfast, library (return books), Athenian culture (the oikos, the womens’ sphere, pederasty), coffee, library (return books, renew, and borrow Arethusa 11), groceries (bread, milk, etc., no honey), room, At Swim-Two-Birds, email, lunch, package, treats, novel, bath, At Swim-Two-Birds, bed.
Up, coffee, letter, Thucydides, coffee & lunch, bookstore, room, The Third Policeman, tea, bed.
Up, coffee, Ulysses, bathe, putter, send letters, email,
brunch.
Up, coffee, essay, email, breakfast, room, read, lunch, class (‘You’ve stunned them,’ this following a long silence when I’d read my essay; no constructive comments thereafter — no comments at all, in fact), sulk, room, tea, Ulysses, dinner with company, room, bed.
Up, coffee, ΑΝΑΓΚΗ in Thucydides, email, breakfast, coffee, museum, read periodicals, Greek religion (also, womens’ festivals…), lunch, room, essay, read, dinner, room, bed.
Up, coffee, Greek historiography, email, breakfast, coffee, museum, lunch, Greek literary dialects, room, out for dinner, room, bed.
Up, coffee, essay, breakfast, library, translate, tutorial, lunch, room, read,
bed.
Up, coffee, breakfast, Athenian culture and society (paideia),
library (return books, browse periodicals, etc.), lunch, room, read, essay,
bed.
Up, coffee, laundry, email, room, read, coffee, cudgel poor brain about grad school, muddle, read, essay, bed.
Up, coffee, read, library, coffee, bookstore (Die
Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, vol. 2), brunch, talk, room, snooze, movie, room, relax, coffee, socialize, room, bed.
Up, coffee, breakfast, library, read, coffee & lunch, bookstore, class room, smirk, read, bed.
Up, coffee, breakfast, library, coffee, Greek religion, lunch, room, read, bed.
Up, coffee, Momigliano, breakfast, library, museum, essay, room, lunch, Greek literary dialects, library, essay, room, bed.
Up, coffee, Momigliano, breakfast, library, coffee, groceries, room, Athenian Religion, lunch, read, library, room, Satie, German, read, dinner, lecture, room, bed.
Up, coffee, email, breakfast, library (return book), Athenian culture and society, library, coffee, groceries, lunch, room, tidy, bath, Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography,
Mozart, Athenian Religion, tea, snooze, bed.
Up, coffee, laundry, library (return books), coffee & sandwich, groceries (orange juice & instant soup), room, nap, idleness.
Snooze, up, coffee, library, J. E. Harrison (couldn’t
even manage a full hour…), coffee, bookstore (Themis), lunch, library (Divinity and History: the Religion of Herodotus; OCM), apple-mango juice, room, much sneezing & coughing &c., Chopin, read, tea, snooze, read, Satie, bed.
Up, coffee, breakfast, room, Herodotus, bath, Herodotus, library, lunch, library (return book), race to → class, room, bed & sleep & sleep & sleep.
Breakfast, library, J. E. Harrison, coffee, Historical
Methods of Herodotus, postmodern critical article on palm-trees in Attic vase painting, Greek Religion, lunch, room, bath, computer, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, email, dinner, room, bed.
When you reach that point when everyone says: ‘thank you, I’m not actually interested in you: just listen to my problems, they’re important, you know’; when there’s no one left to whom you can write and complain or even express yourself clearly because, in keeping back different pieces of yourself from different people, you are ultimately hiding your very self; then it is time to hide entries in the archives – safe where none shall read.
Up, coffee, essay, e-mail, breakfast, Hellenistic History with the public-school man – post-imperialist and orientalist subtexts in Greek literature after Alexander! – pretend not to suffer from nerves, lunch, Thucydides and Rhetoric (i.e., nearly two hours of sitting, staring at the floor and attempting to conjure an innovative opinion about Pericles’ funeral oration; also, if one lacks explicit proof that Athens was the new Persia one will only seem a fool for saying so), celebration, dinner, bed.
Up, coffee, email, breakfast, library, Greek Religion – what role do the Greek gods play in everyday life? From whence and how did they evolve? What is structuralism? Are you a structuralist? Is Gallic subtlety any match for the brute force of History? – lunch, essay, read, breathe, bed.
Up, email, breakfast, coffee, read, library, chinaware (the only truly silent reading room available), room, books, lunch, library, Greek Literary dialects (using words such as ‘aposeosis’ – is that an anachronistic Doric sigma? – and phrases such as ‘this text goes in for unnecessary iotas every so often’ and ‘it would be syntactically cruel of Alcman…’), a good-humored walk through the streets at dusk, tofu, coffee, The Invention of Athens, essay, Rousseau, bread & jam, bath, read, bed.
::
ego hoc feci mm–mmviii
© 2000–8 M.F.C.