"You may be all that the good people who raised you say you are"

"You may be all that the good people who raised you say you are; you may want all they have shown you is worth wanting; you may be someone who is truly your father’s son or your mother’s daughter. But then again, you may not be."

Via Mental Multivitamin comes this (mostly) excellent essay in the Oxford American, "Who Are You and What Are You Doing Here?" I love the anecdote about his high-school graduate father demanding that he major in what interests him (Parents who don't have upper-middle-class status to protect might be the last ones with the gut to do that.) I love the discussion that follows about the purpose of college, an unusually articulate definition of 'finding yourself.' I don't love the excessive partisanship towards the humanities. I also don't like the use of the "don't worry about making money, you'll write a successful book" argument:

                        "[The elementary school teacher] buys shirts from the Salvation Army, has intermittent Internet, and vacations where he can. But lo—he has a gift for teaching. He writes an essay about how to teach, then a book—which no one buys. But he writes another—in part out of a feeling of injured merit, maybe—and that one they do buy.         Money is still a problem, but in a new sense. The world wants him to write more, lecture, travel more, and will pay him for his efforts, and he likes this a good deal. But he also likes staying around and showing up at school and figuring out how to get this or that little runny-nosed specimen to begin learning how to read."

Writing a successful book is rare. Maybe you'll just be poor but happy. And doctors and scientists can be soulful and authentic too.


Another essay in the same issue of the OA is a useful corrective. Emily Witt reviews Ross Perlin's Intern Nation and largely agrees with the book's premise that labor, especially that of the recent college graduate, is massively undervalued. If elementary teachers were paid more they might not have to bet on that book. Pin It

Wheelock's Latin and the works of Jan Morris

This morning my Latin students were reading an adapted sentence from Horace, "Et fortunam et vitam antiquae patriae saepe laudas sed recusas" (You often praise but refuse the fortune and life of the old homeland (= old Romans). I had to explain to them the whole array of symbolism that the Romans place on  their virtuous, simple-living ancestors.

I might have wished for the literary abilities of Jan Morris. Bookslut's piece on her wonderful travel books sums up her lyric prose and her ability to capture the spirit of a city in a few paragraphs:

To the ancient Greeks, history was the realm of the muse Clio, and throughout literary history most readers have thought of history as a branch of literature like the play or the poem. Morris’s histories are literature, and reading them is a startling experience in an age when “history” means either cutesy bestsellers or tedious academic cinder blocks.A small sample of Morris’ historical writing, the setting Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee:Victoria returned to her palace in the evening, exhausted but marvelously pleased, through the blackened buildings of her ancient capital, whose smoke swirled and hovered over the grey river, and whose gas-lamps flickered into tribute with the dusk.

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New Latin Quote T-Shirt: O Tempora! O Mores!

view in the Classics Daily t-shirt shop

A new t-shirt with a Ciceronian slant:

Shame on the age and on its principles! The senate is aware of these things; the consul sees them; and yet this man lives. Lives! aye, he comes even into the senate. He takes a part in the public deliberations; he is watching and marking down and checking off for slaughter every individual among us. And we, gallant men that we are, think that we are doing our duty to the republic if we keep out of the way of his frenzied attacks.

-Cicero Against Catiline (tr. Yonge and London)

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"As if celebrating beauty were something to be ashamed of"

The Great Courses’ uninhibited enthusiasm is so alien to contemporary academic discourse that several professors who have recorded for the firm became defensive when I asked them about their course descriptions, emphatically denying any part in writing the copy—as if celebrating beauty were something to be ashamed of.

I take a piece like this (from City Journal) with a grain of salt, of course. The study of art and literature is always evolving, and newer approaches such as theory can be made interesting and relevant, as long as the lecturer is interested in doing so. Not all professors are. Some are teaching to whatever audience already 'gets' what they are doing, with the rest of the class passively along for the ride.

The audience [of the Great Courses DVDs] —mostly older professionals with successful careers—sees the liberal arts as a life-changing experience, observes Louis Markos, an English professor at Houston Baptist University who has recorded courses on C. S. Lewis and on literary criticism for the company. “They are hungry for this material.”

This resonated with me. When I introduced my Latin students to the development of the alphabet I was forced to remember where I first learned about Phoenician writing systems, and the answer surprised me: in my grandparents' living room. They had shelves of Time-Life books about literature, art and history, which I read when I was bored as a little kid. My grandfather was an undiagnosed dyslexic who had some difficulty finishing college, whose father had a sixth grade education. His home office had shelves of Shakespeare and rigorous nonfiction books. My grandmother recently told me about their trip to Greece with two other couples, and how my grandfather studied Greek history and mythology so he could serve as their tour guide. I wish I could find an undergraduate half that enthusiastic sometimes.

So City Journal may go a little far in advocating a college curriculum modeled on these recorded lecture series, but their point about daring to revel in the beauty of the Western aesthetic tradition is well taken. Pin It

"The spirit was approached through a multitude of sensory beauties"

The title to this post comes from the Guardian's slide show of the Treasures of Heaven exhibit now at the British Museum. Personally, I find the idea of saints' relics a little bit uncomfortable, especially in its more 'complete' forms (as with the bodies of saints displayed I have seen openly displayed in Italian and Greek churches). But it is true that these medieval works of gold, ivory and alabaster make you feel better just looking at them. They are so natural in their materials, and yet so permanent in their preservation of the artist's vision.

Medieval vividness and attention to detail is also on display at the Getty Museum's Medieval Gospels exhibit. I especially enjoyed the action figure-ish illustration of St. John (at the top of the page when you follow the link).

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Labor Day

Gustave Moreau,
Hesiod and the Muse

... There was not one kind of Strife alone, but all over the earth there are two. As for the one, a man would praise her when he came to understand her; but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature. For one fosters evil war and battle....But the other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and the son of Cronos who sits above and dwells in the aether, set her in the roots of the earth: and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil; for a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbour, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order; and neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men.

-Hesiod, Works and Days, tr. Evelyn-White

 

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New read: Stealing Athena, by Karen Essex

While my Latin students were finishing their quiz this morning I downloaded a new historical novel, Stealing Athena. From the library's description of it I gathered that it's about Lady Elgin (as in Elgin marbles) and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles. There's always initial skepticism when I come across a juxtaposing-time-periods kind of novel, but they are mostly very enjoyable in the end. A taste:

"I want you to behave meekly, and not at all like yourself,"Alkibiades said, dragging me by the arm at a pace faster than my tall platform shoes would allow me to walk. "If Perikles sees what you are truly like, he will promptly rescind any offer to help us." (48)

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