Beowulf (Old English, 8th century(?))

I had never read this and saw it as a Kindle item - so why not? Seems like it's the kind of thing that should be read.  

But it is rather hard to follow. Beowulf crosses some body of water to hep King Hrothgar of Denmark - Hrothgar's royal hall is regularly attacked at night by a monster named Grendel. Beowulf pledges to defeat the monster without using weapons, and succeeds by tearing off Grendel's arm, after which Grendel dies.

They celebrate - but on the next (or one of the next) night Grendel's nasty mother (a swamp resident) attacks the hall and kills a key warrior. Beowulf gets into Ma's underwater den and kills her by using a giant's sword conveniently found there.  

Beowulf goes home and becomes king.  The story then jumps forward ~50 years. A dragon with an immense treasure hoard (Smaug-like!) is disturbed by a thief and starts attacking the kingdom. Beowulf and a few warriors go to take on the dragon.  All the men but one abandon Beowulf.  But he gets the job done, though mortally wounded.

Didn't take much time, I didn't love reading it but am glad I did. 

Hope Against Hope (Nadezhda Mandelstam, 1970)

(401 pages; dense but worthwhile and I took my time)

As with Kolyma Tales, Solzhenitsyn, etc. - I find so interesting the stories of folks struggling against, or at least to survive, the Soviet regime.  This one had all sorts of compelling elements.

The author is the surviving spouse of a Russian poet (Josip Mandelstam) who quickly fell out of favor with the regime, was arrested in 1934, then again in 1937; he died in a transit camp in Siberia (Vladivostok area, perhaps enroute to Kolyma).  

A favorite part of the book was her descriptions of the poet's creative process - helps imagine how this might work (since it never happens for/to me!) Josip didn't write down poetry and work on drafts - she would notice when he was concentrating in a certain way, often with lips moving, then eventually he would start writing - not a finished product but very far along - not good to try to interrupt him in this situation.

Some items - 

1.  Like the linked Kolyma stories - the author uses a spare, unsensational approach to a situation that could support a lot of drama - it's effective.

2. The author and her husband were around through the 1920s so there's a lot of perspective on a decade where I normally haven't seen much. Idealism in the early days. True believers and fellow travelers even then.

3. The idea that the revolution had launched a new era, scientific, inevitable - many liked this idea, or at least big chunks of it.  Also Stalin as strong man following difficult-chaotic times (similar appeal for Mussolini, Hitler, perhaps even FDR in a way) - this has a certain popularity. 

4. But the totalitarian, terror aspects go from unpleasant "necessity" to dominance. The 1930s - when a car pulling up to a residence, the sound of an elevator coming up - instant fear. Lubianka, black cars, interrogations.

5. Some of it echoes recent US approach (even if ours is comparatively lame). Dismissing ideas as "bourgeois" sounds like recent era of dismissing ideas as "whiteness" (or pick any of the 2010-2024 cancel-words).  These words inspire fear, for a while.

6. The poet and the author both work in the world of words, and see how language control is an essential tool of overall control. The progressive left pushes for language control now, areas such as trans, CRT.  Endless examples, just saw a Mt Holyoke tweet - faculty are expected to report misgendering.  As with Soviets, two elements - take over the language, require reporting.

7.  They were closely connected to Anna Akhmatova, another holdout but she survived.

8. Interactions with other famous 20th century Russians - Pasternak, Bulgakov, 

9. Author's efforts to save copies of her husband's work.  Sometimes using memory for items too dangerous to write down. Handwritten extra copies stored in separate locations, dangerous.

10. Poet got off lucky in 1934, merely banished to live at least 100 kilometers from Moscow.  Plenty were in similar straits, making housing difficult to find; they were called "105ers").  Couldn't be published, couldn't get jobs - living in poverty.

11. Author (though not the poet) was around for the famous "thaw" - when Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1953 - some improvement though short-lived. Still required to speak of the crazy days as historically necessary. Poet was somewhat rehabilitated in this phase.

12. The day-to-day fear - this part hard to imagine - most everyone one encountered was quite probably an informer - especially when younger poetry enthusiasts would show up and exhibit intense interest - they never trusted these folks.

A lot to think about from these awful times.

Metamorphoses (Ovid, 8CE)

(512 pages (with notes))

Book club selection (via Nicole; session held (via Zoom) October 2021).

Another book I was interested in, but wouldn't have picked up absent a book club assignment.  Ovid's masterpiece; weaves in lots of myths.

Creation story right upfront - even in Roman times (and before), an Eden myth.  Things were great!  Then humans screwed things up!  Then a Flood.

Echo, Narcissus.   Phaethon has trouble with chariot - Phaeton automobiles.  Orpheus.  Orpheum theaters worldwide.  That aspect goes on and on - interesting.

Things we see in art galleries:  Andromeda's rescue; Rape of Europa; etc.

Jove a bit of a roustabout.  Not alone. 

Lots of violence, but how about Book 6, p. 144, Tereus - takes wife's sister, cuts out her tongue, his son pays, he dines - even by standards of all these stories, this was most graphic so far

What does this tell us about the listeners?  Meaningfully different than today's common TV fare?

Made me muse about a world where almost no one could read, and even fewer could own a manuscript (book).  Does predominately oral delivery encourage this type of literature?  

And how widely were these stories known?  Perhaps locals just knew their local stories?  Did the stories spread in the same form, or did [central] government have the tools to make things universal?  (Thinking of Discovery of France - centralized control of schooling for propaganda; printing.)

Triumph of Christianity concepts about ethics not connected to religion - and how.  (so many examples incl. rape, incest).  How the time was ripe for a new religion - these stories were old; Ovid's retelling masterful yet backward-looking and servile; not inspirational!

So many folks turned into birds or rocks or whatever - seemed odd.  I started wondering whether this was related to their view of the afterlife.  Even good folks could only foresee a dismal life as a "shade".  Perhaps virtuous victims were getting a good deal by living on as an animal or rock (avoiding both the rest of their now-unhappy life and also afterlife as a "shade")?  Unvirtuous victims get stuck as some undesirable animal or rock?  What is this metamorphosis business?

Ajax's debate with Ulysses was entertaining - classic brawn v. brain

I liked when the stories had more length - this happened toward the end, with Troy, Aeneas

Kind of odd how quickly things are skipped through - necessity, I suppose - Achilles death doesn't even mention his heel.  Dido just a line or two (she has her own opera!)

Fascinating to me that regimes controlled artists even 2000 years ago (and no doubt much farther back than that).  

The Odyssey (Homer, 8th century BC (7th century?)) (translated by Emily Wilson)

(525 pages)

I much enjoyed reading this then-new translation back in 2008; this 2018 translation was receiving rave reviews so I gave it a try. 

It's great - highly recommended.  Translator is remarkably skillful at using short words, active phrases.  In the introduction she explains that she decided to use iambic pentameter - different than the original Greek, but customary/suitable for English.  She also states that she decided to restrict herself to the exact number of lines used by Homer - a "difficult constraint" - she "wanted a narrative pace that could match its stride to Homer's nimble gallop".  (That phrase from the introduction gives a glimpse of what she did with the translation.)

Her introduction runs 80 pages and is uniformly helpful, interesting.

I'm not seeing a reason to recount the plot because it's so well known (and because I briefly did so in the above 2008 link anyway).  So many stories that are essentially immortal in their own right, let alone to consider that they are all collected in this single epic. 

Also needless to say - this has been read and enjoyed for centuries (millennia, actually) - that won't stop.

Robert Frost - A Life (Jay Parini, 1999)

I continue reading biographies of artists in the hope that it might give some glimpse of the "creative process." I don't know that that's happening at all, but I am enjoying the bios (Goethe, Lizst, Tolstoy, Goya, now Frost).

Didn't know Frost actually grew up in San Francisco - he didn't get to New England until age 11 or 12 or whatever. The author comments that this might have helped him become such an effective observer of New England - not having grown up there, he didn't take for granted the look of the place, its folkways, its speech patterns, etc.

Didn't know that he lived in England for a few years, and that that interlude was a catalyst for putting his poetry into publication and bringing him into the public eye. Came back just as WWI was breaking out.

Interesting stories of his parents - the father was a hard living newpaperman, the mother a saintly figure. Frost was quite interested in Darwin's work, and loved being out in nature on long hikes, "botanizing."

Frost learned by reading; interesting that he was such a fan of Prescott's work on the conquest of Mexico - this author says that he wrote his first submitted poem on this. He didn't much care about being in college. He actually did try farming in a number of settings, after a fashion. Dramatic love affair with his bride-to-be; children in a what seemed to be a pretty undisciplined household; mental illness with children.

Also spent many years teaching, and then many years as a famed public figure doing minimal work for excellent pay at various colleges. Also was perhaps the first poet to do widely attended public lectures. It seems that he developed a certain on-stage persona, and really enjoyed playing it.

Also interesting - and seems contemporary - he was out of step with many of the university types because of his opposition to the New Deal - expressed belief instead in limited government and individual freedom and responsibility. This was particularly interesting to me because of the current intensified debate along these lines.

And then the poetry - no need to list favorites here, it would be long. Just re-read "Death of the Hired Man" the other day. I just really don't get how poets do it, but wish I had a better feel for this. Basically incredible to think about how much is packed into each line, once somebody breaks it down for me.

The Odyssey (Homer, 8th century BC) (translated Robert Fagles)

It was a pleasure to go back through this long-ish poem, and I can see why the Fagles' recent translation was named one Time magazine's 10 best books (1996). It was a sequel to Homer's Iliad, and a predecessor to the Aeneid (Fagles' translation discussed here).

Fagles teams up with this guy named Bernard Knox, who provides long, scholarly-sounding introductions. It's a great combination.

The story - Odysseus returning home from Troy to deal with the suitors chasing Penelope (to the chagrin of Laertes and Telemachus) is well known. And it is amazing how many elements of the story are staples: Cyclops; the sirens and their famous song; Calypso; Scylla and Charybdis; the visit to the land of the dead; etc.

One of the reasons I wanted to read it was because the movie "O Brother Where Art Thou" was loosely based on this; also James Joyce's "Ulysses," which I need to read again since it didn't make much sense to me the first time.

Great stuff.

Voices of Silence - The Alternative Book of First World War Poetry (compiled by Vivian Noakes, 2006)

I picked this book up for two reasons - I'm always interested in World War I material, and in general I need to get a better handle on poetry (there's so much going on there, and I just don't get it).

[By the way, I just watched a 1927 silent film, "Wings", starring Clara Bow. This showed a couple Americans who became aviators in WWI and vied for a girl. The flight sequences were amazingly good (how did they do this over 80 years ago?), and the overall picture really worked. And who knew, it was the very first film to win an Oscar for "Best Picture." And also launched Gary Cooper's career. Anyway, this WWI movie has nothing to do with this book, but is summarized nicely here, and also here. I was interested because I have to believe a WWI film-maker in 1927 would have a different take than folks coming along much later. Loved the scenes of the WWI-era tanks, etc.]

This book probably was better suited to the first aim. I guess there is a canon (with some variation of content) of WWI poetry that is recognized as the most significant; this book was an effort to pick up musings of the common soldier.

It is interesting to get the perspective of these folks; if nothing else, it is fascinating that writing poetry was a common pursuit among a wide variety of soldiers in those days. I don't think one would find much poetry coming out of today's troops stationed in Iraq, for instance.

I only made it about 2/3 through. Well worth it as an alternative view of the proceedings. You get the sense that no one knew what to make of the brave(?) new world of modern warfare, it just didn't match up to anyone's expectations of the glory of battle.

The Aeneid (Virgil, 29-19 B.C. (Robert Fagles translation)

Somehow I have never gotten around to reading this. It was surprisingly enjoyable and worked well for reading on the stairmaster.

Some thoughts:

1. This work definitely is part of the traditional canon; references to it pop up all over the place. For example, it's been mentioned within the last couple days in the two other books that I have in process.

2. The foreward was helpful in explaining Virgil's purpose - basically he was writing something that put the founding of Rome and its empire-building and law-giving in a heroic aspect. He built directly on, and borrowed from, Homer. He also used the underworld visit as a device to praise the top political figures of his day.

3. Dido was a really strong character.

4. The underworld scenes are fascinating and seem to cover what I know of most religions' key elements of the afterlife. I don't know that much about Dante but he seemed to borrow very heavily from this (I do recall Virgil was even his guide as he passed through the underworld).

5. The battle sequences are full of graphic violence. Now I'm thinking this year's surprise hit movie of ancient warfare ("The 300") - which I avoided because I thought it would be too violent - may have been consistent with Virgil's descriptions.

6. He emphasizes piety and interaction with the gods as the key to Rome's success.