Articulate English, Plodding German, Piecemeal French

I used to wonder how university professors could know so many languages, but now I'm beginnig to understand. I have tentatively agreed to take on a project for one of my professors, reading through a Greek etymological dictionary and marking out words of foreign extraction. I had initially declined, because the text is in French. He actually showed us the text today, however, and I think that the simplicity and grammatical consistency of the book will allow me to suffer through it. Now, I have the standard nine years of French that is required in Ontario, but so does everone else. I always did pretty well, but I never really cared for it. Today I found out that it was, in fact, useful. I can apparently read French much better than I thought, possibly from years of reading cereal boxes, possibly from growing up in a bilingual country. At any rate, I'm using the opportunity to improve my French. I won't actually start the project in earnest until I'm a bit more comfortable, and if I find out that I'm still struggling, I'll tell my professor. He knows my French is weak, so it shouldn't be a problem. Right now, I plan to do an hour or two of French per night. I have lots of language-learning aids, so I'm good to go. My workload will also decrease in about a week (mind you, I usually say that, and it never seems to happen), so hopefully I'll have more time to devote to this.

Hymn to the Dioskouroi

This is one of the Homeric hymns, addressed to the Dioskouroi, literally 'the sons of Zeus.' I'm posting it here because the sons in question are Kastor and Polydeukes (Latin: Castor and Pollux), the twins that make up my astrological sign, Gemini. Enjoy.

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Quick-glancing Muses, sing the sons of Zeus,
the Tyndaridai, glorious children of fair-ankled Leda,
Kastor, the tamer of horses, and blameless Polydeukes.
Beneath the peak of great Mt. Taygetos
she mingled in love with the dark-clouded son of Kronos
and bore these children, saviors of men upon the earth,
and of swift ships, when wintry storm blasts
rage over the pitiless sea. And the men on the ships
call on the sons of great Zeus offering prayers
with white lambs, as they mount the topmost points
of the stern. The great wind and waves of the sea
force the ship under water, but suddenly they appear,
darting through the air on steady-beating wings,
and at once they check the blasts of harsh winds,
and smooth the waves on the white-capped sea.
For sailors they are fair signs of their toil, and seeing them
they rejoice and stop their painful toil.

Fairwell, Tyndaridai, riders of swift horses.
And I will remember you and another song.

Classes

It occurs to me that a person reading this blog might mistake me for a classicist, that is, a scholar of Greco-Roman studies. While this is true in one sense, it is important to note that Classics is not my major field of study; it is rather my minor. My major area of concentration is history, with a focus specifically on Europe from 1871-1945. That being said, the layout of my classes means that I have exclusively classics classes on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, and a mix of both classics and history on Wednesday. So, 60% (i.e. 3 of 5) of my classes are for Greco-Roman studies, 75% of my school week is exclusively Greco-Roman classes, and 100% of my school week involves classics in some way. Hence all the discussion of ancient Greece, my area of focus (within classics). So, I have two major areas of knowledge: Ancient Greece, and Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. In terms of my preferred style of history, I like the traditional political/military events to be fleshed out with reference to social history; the history of the people. This way, one gets a fuller historical picture without abandoning traditional historiography to the black hole that is postmodernism (I call practitioners po-mos, and I am generally wary of them). To be fair, postmodernism had led to some interesting approaches to history, but I mistrust it for two reasons:

1) There is an inherent contradiction in a following that states that true history is essentially unknowable, but, at the same time, produces enormous ammounts of literature to seemingly achieve that very end, and

2) Postmodernism has no logical endpoint. With enough followers, it could take historiography so far from tradition that we'd be learning about the history of footnotes (there is actually already work on this), and the notion of equality among different types of fungii. Although I agree that traditional political/military history doesn't go far enough, I still think it's a hell of a lot more relevant to our lives than footnotes and fungus.

Yes, there is a lot more to the discipline of history than most people understand. Battles and dates are not the bread and butter of history, and even they have declined in importance in a way that few non-historians are even aware of. No, ever since Herodotos (the first historian from whom we have written accounts) in the 5th century BC, the purpose of history has not been memorization, but enquiry. Historians do not simply look at past events, they ask the questions 'how?' and 'why?' Even the term 'history' comes from the Greek ἱστορία (historia), meaning an enquiry. The good news is that, as long as the discipline is deemed worthy of teaching, it can produce new works forever. Even a single event, such as the French Revolution, is still being written about, as different interpretations emerge, despite the thousands of books that already exist.

I think I've gone on for long enough. More some other time.

I almost got bitten by the TA bug today. It seems that one of the TAs for Greco-Roman Myth has disappeared, and a new one is needed. Unfortunately for me, I'm currently taking that class, so I cannot also TA it. It seems that I otherwise could have been a paid employee of the university. In retrospect, I don't really have a lot of spare time these days, with six classes, a wife, a mistress, and seventeen children. That's right, seventeen. That's too big a number for me to have randomly made up just now. At any rate I expect to get a similar position either this summer or next school year. Apparently it's not that difficult.

Classics Society

I may have gone out for a few (many) drinks with the Classics Society tonight. I may be drunk (right-drunk) right now. I assure you it was most awesome. I'd suggest that you come out, but I know you won't. It's OK. It's the kind of invitation I'd only offer if I knew you wouldn't actually come out, anyway. I'm just that kind of person. Crafty. Like Odysseus (see: Odyssepus).

Poetry

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.

This is one of few poems that I could recite off the top of my head. It's in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I don't know if he wrote it, and I don't care. I find it speaks to the unfortunate condition that is human nature. After my interpretation, it becomes:

We each cheat the other
for personal gain,
but death shall all find us,
one and the same.

Damn, I could be a poet. Anyways, I like the poem because it's honest. There is a dark side to humanity, and we shouldn't try to pretend that there isn't. Another poem I like for that reason is embedded in the 'Canticle' portion of Simon & Garfunkle's 'Scarborough Fair:'

War bellows
Blazing in scarlet battalions
Generals order their soldiers to kill
And to fight for a cause
they've long ago forgotten.

Yeah, that's good. War, death and swindling are all part of human nature. You should probably just accept it. Be realistic, etc. This is why I look down on idealists, communists, and radical feminists. They tend to view these things as something external to our nature that can be made disappear; they assume that we can rid ourselves of these things, and yet remain human. I think not. It's unfortunate, but it's realistic. Human history is not a story about a bunch of people who get along. Now I suggest that you all get very depressed thinking about this. Myself, I'll be right here, going through your stuff.

Hot Times

From now on, I don't think I'll be drinking on Tuesday mornings. I mean, it's awesome, but it makes me useless for approximately four hours. I talked with Steve (former Greek drinking buddy, now ex-Greek drinking buddy), and we'll try to catch the Classics Society pub night on Thursdays instead. I missed the lunch today, but my sources tell me that no one showed up. It should be noted that my sources are not reliable, nor even corporeal. I pretty much made up some facts to suit me. At any rate, no one was in the lounge when I got back at 1pm, and the limited attendance at 11:20am suggests that people decided to give it a miss today. Unless they secretly partied without me. Also possible.

Back

It seems that I haven't posted in some time. My OGS has been dealt with for almost a week now; I solved my problems with it very shortly after my last post. I've been keeping busy with school and Thanksgiving, but it seems that my assignments this year will be relatively light. This is odd, seeing as I'm in the final year of my undergrad with a course overload, but I'm not complaining. It will likely be the case that my next semester is far heavier. That being said, I'm still occupied with constant low-stress work most of the time, and I have become used to doing homework for at least five hours a day. As a result of this, my weeks have become oddly routine, which is something I don't quite like. At any rate, I have joined the Classics Society, and I plan to attend their weekly lunches and pub nights, so as to get out more. This is useful, as it seems that domestic initiative for fun is all but dead. Not that it was ever lively to begin with. In a typical divergence that has nothing to do with my line of thought thus far, it occurs to me that I haven't told anyone about this blog yet. I figure I'll rack up a bunch of posts and then present it as a fait accompli. Now I'm getting a beer. Cheers.