tarigwaemir

Lowell House on the Feast of St. Charles Borromeo

I've been reading Kafka on the Shore, and I think the most terrifying line I've ever read in a work of fiction has to be this one: "Kafka, in everybody's life there's a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can't go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That's how we survive."

I can't even begin to explain how frightening that sounds.

We've just read Aeschylus' Prometheus Bound for the Book of Job (the question posed is whether Job is a Biblical Prometheus and a rebel against irrational, tyrannical authority). The translation is from this Oxford University Press series The Greek Tragedy in New Translations, where modern poets in conjunction with classical scholars take on the challenge of translating Greek plays. The result is earthshaking. Io slipping in and out of coherent speech, her moments of madness punctuated in capital letters (the first time where all caps has worked for me). The different cadences of Prometheus' speech depending on whether he's "chanting" or "singing" his lines. The raw, almost primitive language, myth in its earliest, cruellest form. As I was reading, I couldn't help wondering why there weren't storms and earthquakes ripping apart and ravaging the very air around me. Some words are much too powerful; they physically shake us.

I want to see this play, preferably this translation or the original Greek, performed on stage.

All the major primary sources we've been reading for this course have had this intensity. It is such a quiet little course, with mild-mannered, soft-spoken Prof. Machinist lecturing in a small room in Sever. No multimedia other than an occasional word scrawled on the chalkboard, an anachronistic version of a classical Harvard liberal arts education. But the words that are spoken, the ideas that are entertained in that quiet little class! I feel with every lecture I am brought face-to-face with something so epic, so primal that it's impossible to describe its magnitude. Behind our docile questions, there are the stark, horrific face of human suffering and the turbulent seas of chaos that lie beneath the foundations of our fragile civilized world. It's more than philosophy, it's literature. I look at our texts, and I realize all over again, this is why we read and this is why we tell stories.

Hm, that was rather melodramatic. I guess this material is affecting me more than I expected. ^_^

Embarrassing moment in section today, when the TF mentioned "someone" who had stapled the pages of their paper in the wrong order and told all of us to use page numbers in the future. Oh no, I thought, surely that can't be-- But yes, it did turn out to be me. -_- On the other hand, I got an A! Plus a comment telling me my language was "beautiful & precise" (although she told to me to establish my connections more carefully instead of jumping to conclusions). Hah, she'll no longer have such a good opinion once she sees the frantic scrabble that passes for the essay on my midterm. >_>

Yours &c.