What I Wish I'd Read Earlier - Year Two

This is almost a continuation of yesterday's post.  I'm going to write about what pieces of the list I wish I had read earlier in life.  Note: this isn't necessarily my favorite ones or the ones I would most recommend.  In fact, some of the best stuff, I actually had read earlier so it won't be on this list.  It might be best to think of this as a shorter list I wish I'd given my teenage self.

• Herodotus - I've read some of 'The History' but not all of it and not as completely as I did this time.  Some great stuff in there.
• Aristotle - The one I mean here is 'Poetics'.  This is essential reading for writers and dramatists and I didn't know about it at all.
• Marcus Aurelius - I wish I'd done some work on his 'Meditations' when I was younger.  I wonder what my teenage self would have thought of some bracing Stoic philosophy?
• Milton - The 'Areopagitica' should be required reading for high schoolers.  
• Pascal - There are a number of Pensees that would have done me some good at an earlier age.  
• Swift - And I feel almost foolish for not reading 'Gulliver's Travels' before now.  This will be on the list of books that I try to get my kids to read when they're teenagers.
• Mill - I feel about Mill's 'On Liberty' the same way I do about 'Arepagitica'.  We need to arm the young against those who would try and wall off speech and thought.

I went back and forth about including the early Greek plays here.  Yes, they should be read, and probably early, but they weren't quite as WOW as the other things on this list.  

What I Wish I'd Read Earlier - Year One

Frankly, I wish I'd had this idea last year, but so be it.  I'm going to write about what pieces of the list I wish I had read earlier in life.  Note: this isn't necessarily my favorite ones or the ones I would most recommend.  In fact, some of the best stuff, I actually had read earlier so it won't be on this list.  It might be best to think of this as a shorter list I wish I'd given my teenage self.

• Aristophanes - 'Clouds' is simply wonderful!
• Plutarch - 'The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans' is a book that I wish I'd dipped in and out of much earlier in life.  It's history and biography set in contrast with two time periods and is all very interesting.
• Montaigne - The list suggested seven different essays but there are many more worth reading.  
• Locke & Rousseau - I wish I'd tackled much more of the 17th and 18th century thought that brought back democracy.
• The Federalist - Someday I'd like to work my way through the entire Federalist and the body of opposing arguments.
• Marx/Engles - The 'Manifesto of the Communist Party' is easy enough reading.  I wish I'd taken a few days earlier in life and simply made my way through it.

The rest was certainly worthwhile, and I have a grave feeling that I'm short-changing Plato and Aristotle.  

Thomas Hardy - Poetry

For the full list of posts and an explanation of the poetry series, please click on the 'Poetry' link at the bottom of this post.

This time I recognize the name of the poet, but I only know him as a novelist.  The following poem, 'Convergence of the Twain' is about the Titanic.

In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her; stilly couches she.

Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to thythmic tidal lyres.

Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls - grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

Prepared a sinister mate
For her - so gaily great -
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

Alien they seemed to be:
Nor mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,

Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

This really is an interesting poem.  The ship, Titanic, and the iceberg that mortally wounded her did indeed have a date with destiny.  No one knew it, but even as the ship was being built, the iceberg broke off of the glacier and started its long journey down to the shipping lanes.  And then, as the poem says, "Now!" and they met.
I know there is a long history of connecting the sinking of the Titanic to hubris but I'm not that comfortable with that connection.  After all, we now build much bigger ships and take on much bigger projects.  Most of them succeed and some do so spectacularly.  If there is a moral here that we shouldn't let our reach exceed our grasp, well, I don't buy it.
I will admit that there is some striking poetry in the contrast of the luxurious ship at the bottom of the ocean with sea worms 'grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent'.  But that contrast is one that is almost always true of death and riches.
Overall a pretty good poem.  It's interesting and striking.  I don't agree with what I think is (at least part of) the message but that's ok.  Art isn't good or bad depending on whether we agree with it or not.

Reflections on Year Two

I don't know that the second year had as simple a 'theme' as the first year, but that's ok.  What it did have was some pretty large blocks of related writings.

• The first block was of Greek literature.  This started out with the 'Iliad' and moved on to five different Greek plays.  I'm putting Herodotus here too.  His 'The History' is sometimes fact and sometimes fiction but is clearly literature.  Aristotle's 'Poetics' belongs here too, even though it came up later in the list.  Among these pieces are the foundations of western story-telling, history and theater.  
• The next block had to do with philosophies of life.  In here is Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius and Pascal.  Each of them give a fairly full 'code' to live by.  Marcus Aurelius and Pascal are even closely related in how their writings are grouped.  
• Next I would put the Enlightenment writings on the relationship between citizen and state.  Here we get Hobbes' 'Leviathan', Milton's 'Aeropagitca', Rousseau's 'Discourse on Inequality' and Milton's 'On Liberty'.  You could put together a pretty good study course on this era of writing alone.  I'd throw Swift in here too, since 'Gulliver's Travels' is about comparing different forms of government and peoples.   

This doesn't cover all of the things that were read, nor do I mean that the other things weren't worthwhile but these were the things that seemed to more naturally group together.  

Lewis Carrroll - Poetry

Hey, I know this one!  The next poem is 'The Jabberwocky' by Lewis Carroll.  Earlier this year, in an attempt to interest my two oldest kids (6 and 3) in poetry, I had them listen to this poem.  They didn't take right to it, but months later, they still remember it.

'Twwas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the boroboves
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beare the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Lon time the manxome foe he sought-
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
And mimsly were the borogobes,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

What a fun poem!  Carroll very freely made up his own words (my spellchecker has no fewer than 42 words that it doesn't like here) but it all makes sense.  The scene of the 'tulgey' wood is very clear in my head.  The only other author I can think of who could simply create such large numbers of words and still be perfectly understood is Shakespeare.
Are there phrases that have stuck in the culture?  Sure, plenty of them.  The first two words, 'Twas brillig' is completely recognizable.  For months now, I've been calling one of my sons 'my beamish boy' when he does well.  And I think D&D straight up ran with the idea of the vorpal blade.  And somewhat related, but I think that Frumious Bandersnatch would be a wonderful name for a cat.
I love this poem and it fully deserves its recognition and honor.

Readings for January

Two pieces:

January
Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound link
Herodotus: The History (book VII-IX) link

Fair Play to Fly Your Freak Flag - Mill

Mill doesn't just argue for free speech, he also argues for fairly broad freedom of actions.  He writes about how each person becomes more valuable to themselves and others when they can lead life in the way they best think they can.

To give any fair-play to the nature of each, it is essential that different persons should be allowed to lead different lives. In proportion as this latitude has been exercised any age, has that age been noteworthy to posterity.  Even despotism does not produce its worst effects, so long as Individuality exists under it; and whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.  

As I have been reading Mill, I've been thinking about current society in the Western world and wondering what Mill would have thought of it.  On this point I think he would have been well pleased.  Our society very loudly supports alternate lifestyles.  There are some exceptions to this, including some strange ones where traditional lifestyle choices come under attack.  (The one that jumps to mind is the one where parents are threatened with legal consequences for spanking their children.)  But in the main, we have a 'live and let live' society.