Like any other typical product of Murrkin culture, I have always been taught by peer pressure that it is very important to hate certain types of music. The earliest time I can remember that this made a strong impression on me must've been in or around 1973, when I was 11 or 12. In school, in music class, our music teacher not only played "Unsquare Dance" for us, by the Dave Brubeck Quartet -- she actually made us get up and dance to it. And I was really enjoying myself, doing the dance to the 7/4 our teacher had explained to us. Until I noticed the looks on some of the faces of other students. It seemed that this music was Not Cool.
Flash-forward over 40 years, and I heard "Unsquare Dance" again and realized that our music teacher had been underrated and that the peer pressure which had said that this music was Not Cool, was -- well, I shouldn't have listened to it. The peer pressure, that is.
A few years later, the Eagles were tremendously popular, and me and my homies didn't like them, and neither did the critics at Rolling Stone. All was in harmony -- until I learned that "Take It Easy" had been co-written by Jackson Browne, whom I, my homies and the critics at Rolling Stone all liked very much. And then things got even more confusing because Joe Walsh, just about the epitome of cool in my young world, joined the Eagles.
And then in the 80's, Don Henley put out some stuff I really liked: the single "Dirty Laundry," and after that, the album Building the Perfect Beast. I didn't like the entire album, but I liked more than half of it a lot. However, the critics who had hated the Eagles along with me still hated Henley, and their descriptions of why did not make sense to me.
Had I become uncool? Luckily for me, I paid much less attention to those critics by that time.
Then in 1989 Henley released "The End of the Innocence," title track to the album of the same name, with Bruce Hornsby and Wayne Shorter sitting in. I just assumed that this had to be cool with those critics. But eventually I found out that they had shit all over this one as well. Their opinions were meaning less and less to me.
There was also the matter of James Taylor. These critics seemed to hate James Taylor even more than they hated the Eagles. This never made sense to me. I've only ever hated 2 or 3 of James Taylor's singles.
Phil Collins was definitely uncool for me and those like me in the 1980's. But then, things started to get complicated again: "Abacab," by the post-Peter Gabriel Genesis, was pretty cool, I thought (to myself). And then came "Sussudio" and "Take me Home," which I absolutely loved. And then I read a interview with Miles Davis, and to my astonishment, he liked some of Collins' stuff too! (He referred to the keyboard-and-horns riff in "Sussudio" as "a bad jam.")
More complication: I noticed that some recordings by Peter Gabriel, unquestionably cool, contained drum and vocal tracks by Peter Collins!
It may have been the interview with Miles Davis, 1986 or so, which finally just pushed me over into listening to the music I liked and no longer caring whether people thought it was cool or not -- but it took several years to do that good work. During the same time, a quote by Cormac McCarthy kept rolling around in my head, doing essentially the same work, a quote about how you've crossed a major hurdle in life when you stop worrying whether people think you're cool (I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of it.)
Back to the late 70's, and from there into the 80's and beyond: punk rock and new wave made a tremendous impression on me and others of my set. And then there came the times when some punk and new wave bands changed their styles, and some of us damned them for it and called them sellouts, and I didn't.
And finally there's Coldplay. I don't really understand why people hate Coldplay, and I don't much care anymore either. "Clocks" is a bad jam, your loss if you can't appreciate it. No, I don't particularly care to discuss it. Your loss, Jack!
"Clocks" was released in 2003, and "Viva la Vida," the Coldplay song which you may think is called "When I ruled the World," as I used to assume it was, and long after that, I finally learned that that awful single "Yellow" is by the very same band, released in 2000. If "Yellow" was the only record they'd ever released, then, yeah, I could understand the disdain. But the band who made "Clocks" and later music is clearly a completely different band, and members of the band have talked about how they made their second album, the one with "Clocks" on it, twice. They thought they were done, and then they thought about it and said, We can do a lot better than this -- and they did a lot better, if "Yellow" and "Clocks" are any means of judging.
I actually recently did a Google search for why do people hate Coldplay, and I found no good reason, just a bunch of nonsense.
The first song I ever hated entirely on my own, in fact, I can't remember ever hearing anybody else saying they hated it, and I never cared, because they're my ears: "Hey Jude," by the Beatles. But even this case has become complicated, because on the soundtrack of Wes Anderson's wonderful movie The Royal Tenenbaums is a very nice melody and -- oh my God it's an instrumental version of "Hey Jude" by the Mutato Muzika Orchestra, and I enjoyed several minutes of it before I realized Oh my God I'm enjoying an instrumental version of "Hey Jude," and I kept enjoying it even after I realized.
Maybe I'm just not a very good hater.
Monday, March 30, 2020
Thursday, March 26, 2020
Dream Log: Liev Schreiber's Chili
I dreamed that I was working serving lunch in a soup kitchen in Lower Manhattan. Perhaps most of you already know that "soup kitchen" refers to a place which offers free hot meals to people in need, whether soup is included in the meal or not.
This soup kitchen was a big one, with a dining hall seating hundreds of people at a time. After we had finished serving the people and cleaning up, I fixed myself a tray and went to to eat with some other people who had worked there that day.
As some of you may know, soup kitchen food can range from really terrible to really, really good. This particular meal was nothing fancy -- no-beans chili, corn bread, greens and coffee -- but each part of the meal had been made really, really well.
In this dream, there was no dangerous virus circulating. People stood close together and touched each other. On my way to sit down I smacked Liev Schreiber
on the back, and he joined me to sit at a small table with George Clooney and Jeri Ryan. All of us were bundled up in winter clothing because it was cold at this table. A small window let in some light. Outside it was sunny and very, very cold. Liev and George both had beards. I didn't see any facial hair at all on Jeri, and I looked very closely because it was a very, very pretty face, with no make-up on it, my favorite way to look at pretty faces.
I was nervous the whole time because I was afraid that George Clooney was going to spring one of his famous practical jokes on me, but in this dream, he didn't.
Liev said, "How do you like the chili?" Goerge and Jeri and I all groaned and rolled our eyes and said Oh my God it's good. Liev persisted, "Is it only good because it's cold in here and you've all been working hard, or would it taste good or under any circumstances?" The three of us took that question seriously, took a little time with it, but we still all agreed that it wasn't just a matter of the setting or the circumstances, which admittedly enhanced the ewxperience. We all agreed that this chili was just terrific, period. Liev grinned and asked us, "Did you notice that it's vegetarian?"
We had not noticed. After some very, very close inspection, George asked, "Is this tofu? It really tastes like ground beef." Liev nodded. George asked, "Are you sure?"
Liev said, "I ought to be sure, I cooked it." We asked him how he had done it, and he just grinned and replied, "With great care and skill. And some great tofu from one of our donating stores." George, Jeri and I all raised our paper cups of coffee to toast the cook.
After a while Liev said, "It's always cold in this corner in the winter. It's ridiculous, the walls in this corner are full of holes. Let's patch it up." He took a shopping list for a hardware store out of a pocket and handed it to me for my perusal. I just handed it straight on to George and said, "I never paid attention in shop. I only passed because the shop teacher took mercy on me. I honestly think I'd be the most help by continuing to wash dishes and staying out of your way."
Liev didn't want to give up on me that easily. "You could help out, and maybe learn a couple of things."
"I'm fifty-eight freakin' years old, Liev," I replied. "Thank you for offering me the opportunity, but.. You know: old dog, new tricks." And at about that time, I woke up.
This soup kitchen was a big one, with a dining hall seating hundreds of people at a time. After we had finished serving the people and cleaning up, I fixed myself a tray and went to to eat with some other people who had worked there that day.
As some of you may know, soup kitchen food can range from really terrible to really, really good. This particular meal was nothing fancy -- no-beans chili, corn bread, greens and coffee -- but each part of the meal had been made really, really well.
In this dream, there was no dangerous virus circulating. People stood close together and touched each other. On my way to sit down I smacked Liev Schreiber
on the back, and he joined me to sit at a small table with George Clooney and Jeri Ryan. All of us were bundled up in winter clothing because it was cold at this table. A small window let in some light. Outside it was sunny and very, very cold. Liev and George both had beards. I didn't see any facial hair at all on Jeri, and I looked very closely because it was a very, very pretty face, with no make-up on it, my favorite way to look at pretty faces.
I was nervous the whole time because I was afraid that George Clooney was going to spring one of his famous practical jokes on me, but in this dream, he didn't.
Liev said, "How do you like the chili?" Goerge and Jeri and I all groaned and rolled our eyes and said Oh my God it's good. Liev persisted, "Is it only good because it's cold in here and you've all been working hard, or would it taste good or under any circumstances?" The three of us took that question seriously, took a little time with it, but we still all agreed that it wasn't just a matter of the setting or the circumstances, which admittedly enhanced the ewxperience. We all agreed that this chili was just terrific, period. Liev grinned and asked us, "Did you notice that it's vegetarian?"
We had not noticed. After some very, very close inspection, George asked, "Is this tofu? It really tastes like ground beef." Liev nodded. George asked, "Are you sure?"
Liev said, "I ought to be sure, I cooked it." We asked him how he had done it, and he just grinned and replied, "With great care and skill. And some great tofu from one of our donating stores." George, Jeri and I all raised our paper cups of coffee to toast the cook.
After a while Liev said, "It's always cold in this corner in the winter. It's ridiculous, the walls in this corner are full of holes. Let's patch it up." He took a shopping list for a hardware store out of a pocket and handed it to me for my perusal. I just handed it straight on to George and said, "I never paid attention in shop. I only passed because the shop teacher took mercy on me. I honestly think I'd be the most help by continuing to wash dishes and staying out of your way."
Liev didn't want to give up on me that easily. "You could help out, and maybe learn a couple of things."
"I'm fifty-eight freakin' years old, Liev," I replied. "Thank you for offering me the opportunity, but.. You know: old dog, new tricks." And at about that time, I woke up.
Friday, March 20, 2020
The Stele of the Lapis Niger
The Romans and the Greeks began using the alphabet at about the same time, in the seventh or eighth century BC, the Greeks first and the Roman shortly thereafter. But while the Greeks very soon began writing poetry and philosophy and drama, the Romans had very little, if anything, which could be called literature, until the mid-third century AD, when they began to copy some of the Greek literary genres. But they had been using writing for other things besides literature, as we can see from inscriptions: writing upon hard surfaces such as stone or metal. Moreover, in the case of Latin literature, we don't have any manuscripts (writing upon soft surfaces such as papyrus, parchment or paper) until the early 1st century AD. Livius Andronicus and Plautus wrote Latin literature in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, but our oldest copies of their work are on manuscripts made much later. We don't know how much the writers of the manuscripts changed what the authors wrote. The scribe who copied a manuscript of a text centuries after its author had died may have thought he was "correcting" the text when he made it more closely resemble the Latin of his own time, whereas, from the point of view of a 21st-century scholar interested in the language of the original author, the scribe was destroying something precious by not simply copying the text exactly. It all depends upon your point of view. The oldest Latin inscriptions, on the other hand, were made as early as the 7th century BC, and they preserve exactly what the language was like in the time when they were created, and therefore, they show us how the language changed.
One of the very oldest Latin inscriptions is on the stele of the Lapis Niger. A stele is a piece of stone taller than it is wide which serves as a monument. "Lapis niger" is Latin for "black stone." In 1899, the archaeologist Giacomo Boni discovered this stele under a pavement of black marble in the Roman forum.
Sometimes people mistakenly refer to the stele itself as the Lapis Niger, but it is light brown, not black. The name Lapis Niger refers to the black marble which was used to cover the shrine containing the stele, some time after it was made.
And when was it made? Estimates have varied widely, from not long before 450 BC to not long after 600 BC. But any of those estimates would make the stele one of the oldest-known objects with Latin writing on them.
And what is written on this stele? What sort of a place, exactly, is this shrine? Again, the experts disagree. Some say it is the place thought by some ancient Romans to have been the tomb of Romulus. (Other ancient Romans believed that Romulus never had a tomb because he flew up to Heaven at the end of his life.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Festus all mention the shrine, and they themselves seem uncertain about what exactly it is. Although the Latin of the inscription is very different from the classical Latin of Cicero, Caesar and Vergil, and is written vertically, and boustrophedon -- that is, the letters in each line go in the opposite direction of the preceding line -- and the individual letters resemble Greeks letters much more closely than later Latin letters do, the main difficulty is, first, that only pieces of the stele, and therefore only fragments of each line, are preserved; and second, that the letters are in such bad shape that experts' transcriptions of what is left vary quite a bit. One line, for example, may refer to a king, or to a priest; another may refer to justice, or to Jupiter. We can generally say that the inscription is a warning that the place is sacred, and describes how those who disrespect it will be punished, although not enough text remains to know for sure just what this punishment would be.
One of the very oldest Latin inscriptions is on the stele of the Lapis Niger. A stele is a piece of stone taller than it is wide which serves as a monument. "Lapis niger" is Latin for "black stone." In 1899, the archaeologist Giacomo Boni discovered this stele under a pavement of black marble in the Roman forum.
Sometimes people mistakenly refer to the stele itself as the Lapis Niger, but it is light brown, not black. The name Lapis Niger refers to the black marble which was used to cover the shrine containing the stele, some time after it was made.
And when was it made? Estimates have varied widely, from not long before 450 BC to not long after 600 BC. But any of those estimates would make the stele one of the oldest-known objects with Latin writing on them.
And what is written on this stele? What sort of a place, exactly, is this shrine? Again, the experts disagree. Some say it is the place thought by some ancient Romans to have been the tomb of Romulus. (Other ancient Romans believed that Romulus never had a tomb because he flew up to Heaven at the end of his life.) Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, and Festus all mention the shrine, and they themselves seem uncertain about what exactly it is. Although the Latin of the inscription is very different from the classical Latin of Cicero, Caesar and Vergil, and is written vertically, and boustrophedon -- that is, the letters in each line go in the opposite direction of the preceding line -- and the individual letters resemble Greeks letters much more closely than later Latin letters do, the main difficulty is, first, that only pieces of the stele, and therefore only fragments of each line, are preserved; and second, that the letters are in such bad shape that experts' transcriptions of what is left vary quite a bit. One line, for example, may refer to a king, or to a priest; another may refer to justice, or to Jupiter. We can generally say that the inscription is a warning that the place is sacred, and describes how those who disrespect it will be punished, although not enough text remains to know for sure just what this punishment would be.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Old Things
I'm getting to be an old thing myself. In less than 3 months I will be 59 years old, which really doesn't seem right. On the inside, I feel like I'm 15, tops. On the outside, various physical signs assure everyone that there's no mistake, that I'm really 58 going on 59.
My car is rather old. It's a 2003 Saturn Ion 1 which I got brand-new in the autumn of 2002. At the time, it was not only a brand-new car: the Ion model was brand-new, too, so I got a few Hey wow Mister what kinda car is that?! remarks. Not for very long. Production of all Saturns was halted in autumn 2009 and the brand was officially discontinued in autumn 2010, so that by many people's standards, the newest Saturn is a pretty old car.
The idea of holding onto old cars, and replacing their engines with electric motors, seems to be gaining in popularity. One big argument for this is that is effects the environment less to replace an engine, than to build an entire new car. Currently, such a conversion is much too expensive for the typical old-car owner, but as the number of conversions goes up, and it's going up fast, the price per unit comes down. Will my Saturn live on as an EV? The thought makes me smile.
Once, I held in my hands a pocket watch which was first sold in 1884, which seems very old to me. Nietzsche had not yet gone insane in 1884. I held that watch and said solemnly, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." A silly thing to say: there's no reason to suppose that that watch ever came within 1000 miles of Nietzsche, or drove anyone insane. But for some reason it amused me greatly to say with mock solemnity, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." I don't think it was wrong to say such a thing: Nietzsche himself was not big on solemnity, to put it mildly. He even wrote things in his books about how he laughed at those who didn't dare to laugh at him.
Once, through inter-library loan, I got a copy of one of Nietzsche's books which was published in 1887, also before he went insane, which meant that he himself closely oversaw its publication. I'm sorry, I don't remember which book it was. Perhaps the 2nd edition of Morgenroethe? Whatever it was, I was so impressed by the quality of the book, by the way that the paper had held, and how it was just the perfect size and weight, that I looked up Nietzsche's letters and read him writing about what paper and font he wanted for this book. Did he self-publish, or was it normal for German writers in the 1880's to have so much say in the construction of their books, or did Nietzsche choose a publisher who gave him a lot of consideration in such things? Your guess has to be at least as good as mine.
I own a book which was published in 1869. I got it in the early 1990's. At that time 1869 seemed incredibly old for a book which someone such as myself got for $8.50 at a second-hand bookstore (the price is written inside the front cover). It's volume 2 of a 2-volume set of the works of Schiller. Perhaps if both volumes had still been around, it would've been worth more than $8.50 per volume. Perjaps not. Again, surely, your guess is at least as good as mine. The volume is big, the publisher is the FG Gotta-sche Buchhandlung, the font is small Fraktur which I've never been able to read very well at all. This volume 2 is mostly or entirely non-fictional prose. After many attempts at reading Schiller's accounts of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and the Thirty Years' War, I found a copy of the same texts in Roman type and was immensely disappointed in the dopey things Schiller has to say about history.
1869 no longer seems like nearly such an incredibly old age for a book which I own; but this volume may still be the oldest I own. No, wait... I have a Teubner edition of Aeschines' orations which was published in 1851. I got it for $5.50, I have no idea when or where. In the case of the Schiller there are clues as to when and where I got it. It's my 2nd-oldest volume.
I read texts which are sometimes thousands of years old, but I tend to prefer to read then in recent editions. I'm not particularly interested in old books or collecting, other than for reasons which have to do with the texts themselves. What can I say, people have gotten better at setting type and making it legible. And the old editions, if and when I want to struggle through them, are available in new photographic reprints and in places such as Google Books.
My car is rather old. It's a 2003 Saturn Ion 1 which I got brand-new in the autumn of 2002. At the time, it was not only a brand-new car: the Ion model was brand-new, too, so I got a few Hey wow Mister what kinda car is that?! remarks. Not for very long. Production of all Saturns was halted in autumn 2009 and the brand was officially discontinued in autumn 2010, so that by many people's standards, the newest Saturn is a pretty old car.
The idea of holding onto old cars, and replacing their engines with electric motors, seems to be gaining in popularity. One big argument for this is that is effects the environment less to replace an engine, than to build an entire new car. Currently, such a conversion is much too expensive for the typical old-car owner, but as the number of conversions goes up, and it's going up fast, the price per unit comes down. Will my Saturn live on as an EV? The thought makes me smile.
Once, I held in my hands a pocket watch which was first sold in 1884, which seems very old to me. Nietzsche had not yet gone insane in 1884. I held that watch and said solemnly, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." A silly thing to say: there's no reason to suppose that that watch ever came within 1000 miles of Nietzsche, or drove anyone insane. But for some reason it amused me greatly to say with mock solemnity, "This is the watch which drove Nietzsche insane." I don't think it was wrong to say such a thing: Nietzsche himself was not big on solemnity, to put it mildly. He even wrote things in his books about how he laughed at those who didn't dare to laugh at him.
Once, through inter-library loan, I got a copy of one of Nietzsche's books which was published in 1887, also before he went insane, which meant that he himself closely oversaw its publication. I'm sorry, I don't remember which book it was. Perhaps the 2nd edition of Morgenroethe? Whatever it was, I was so impressed by the quality of the book, by the way that the paper had held, and how it was just the perfect size and weight, that I looked up Nietzsche's letters and read him writing about what paper and font he wanted for this book. Did he self-publish, or was it normal for German writers in the 1880's to have so much say in the construction of their books, or did Nietzsche choose a publisher who gave him a lot of consideration in such things? Your guess has to be at least as good as mine.
I own a book which was published in 1869. I got it in the early 1990's. At that time 1869 seemed incredibly old for a book which someone such as myself got for $8.50 at a second-hand bookstore (the price is written inside the front cover). It's volume 2 of a 2-volume set of the works of Schiller. Perhaps if both volumes had still been around, it would've been worth more than $8.50 per volume. Perjaps not. Again, surely, your guess is at least as good as mine. The volume is big, the publisher is the FG Gotta-sche Buchhandlung, the font is small Fraktur which I've never been able to read very well at all. This volume 2 is mostly or entirely non-fictional prose. After many attempts at reading Schiller's accounts of the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain and the Thirty Years' War, I found a copy of the same texts in Roman type and was immensely disappointed in the dopey things Schiller has to say about history.
1869 no longer seems like nearly such an incredibly old age for a book which I own; but this volume may still be the oldest I own. No, wait... I have a Teubner edition of Aeschines' orations which was published in 1851. I got it for $5.50, I have no idea when or where. In the case of the Schiller there are clues as to when and where I got it. It's my 2nd-oldest volume.
I read texts which are sometimes thousands of years old, but I tend to prefer to read then in recent editions. I'm not particularly interested in old books or collecting, other than for reasons which have to do with the texts themselves. What can I say, people have gotten better at setting type and making it legible. And the old editions, if and when I want to struggle through them, are available in new photographic reprints and in places such as Google Books.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Cassiodorus and the Preservation of the Latin Classics
Not everyone agrees who deserves to be singled out as the person who has done more than anyone else to preserve Classical Latin literature. I've said several times on this blog that that person is Charlemagne, and upon reflection, I stand by that assessment; but others have said that it is Cassiodorus, born ca AD 490, died ca 585, and there is much to be said for him in this regard.
Along with his contemporary Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, he also surely must be a contender for owning one of the most beautiful of all Roman names. Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator ("Senator" is actually part of his name, not a title. If it seems very strange, it may help to think of an Englishman named John King.) was born into an upper-class family in Scyllacium, a city in in the southern Italian region of Bruttium. He held several high offices under the Ostrogothic kings of Italy: he was quaestor from 507 to 511 (Keep in mind, his birth date is estimated at 490, which would mean that he assumed the office of quaestor at the age of 16 or 17!), consul in 514, and at the time of the death of King Theodoric the Great in 526, he was magister officiorum. Under Theodoric's successor, Athalaric, he became praetorian prefect in 533.
In 540, around the age of 50, Cassiodorus retired. He had attempted to interest Pope Agapetus in the idea of the foundation of a Christian university in Rome, but this project was not realized. Instead, Cassiodorus returned to his native Bruttioum, and founded a monastery which was to be known as Vivarium, after some nearby ponds where fish were bred. I have tried and tried, without success, to find any facts at all about the later history of the monastery Vivarium. The closest I have come is LD Reynolds' passing remark, "His monastery seems to have died with him," in: Reynolds and NG Wilson, Scribes & Scholars, 2nd edition, Oxford, p 73.
In his long, long retirement, besides looking after his monastery, Cassiodorus wrote several works, which can be divided into the historical-political and the theological-grammatical. One of the latter, the Institutiones, is his best-known work, and one of his chief claims for being foremost among the preservers of Classical Latin literature, for it argued that a good education included a thorough study of the Classics.
Besides the Institutiones, which was much-copied and much-used during the Middle Ages, Cassiodorus owned a large library of pagan Latin literature, and copies of these pagan works were spread to other European monasteries along with Cassiodorus' proposals about good education.
It is a sign that knowledge of Greek was dying out in the Catholic West in Cassiodorus' time, that he saw the need to translate the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, and the ecclesiastical histories of Theodoret, Sozomen and Socrates, into Latin.
One thing which makes Cassiodorus' efforts to preserve ancient literature especially remarkable is the time in which he lived and wrote and oversaw the multiplication of Classical manuscripts: it was a time when Classical literature in general was dying out, partly being destroyed in Dark Age wars, and partly being passed by in favor of Christian literature, as has been dramatically shown in the many palimpsested Classical texts discovered since the late 18th century. It is hard to find anyone prepared to actually praise Cassiodorus as an author; but the combination of his wealth and resources, his organizational skills (perhaps honed by his first career in public office?) and his love of pagan Latin literature, meant that he preserved many ancient authors at the very time when the work of many others was vanishing.
Along with his contemporary Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius, he also surely must be a contender for owning one of the most beautiful of all Roman names. Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator ("Senator" is actually part of his name, not a title. If it seems very strange, it may help to think of an Englishman named John King.) was born into an upper-class family in Scyllacium, a city in in the southern Italian region of Bruttium. He held several high offices under the Ostrogothic kings of Italy: he was quaestor from 507 to 511 (Keep in mind, his birth date is estimated at 490, which would mean that he assumed the office of quaestor at the age of 16 or 17!), consul in 514, and at the time of the death of King Theodoric the Great in 526, he was magister officiorum. Under Theodoric's successor, Athalaric, he became praetorian prefect in 533.
In 540, around the age of 50, Cassiodorus retired. He had attempted to interest Pope Agapetus in the idea of the foundation of a Christian university in Rome, but this project was not realized. Instead, Cassiodorus returned to his native Bruttioum, and founded a monastery which was to be known as Vivarium, after some nearby ponds where fish were bred. I have tried and tried, without success, to find any facts at all about the later history of the monastery Vivarium. The closest I have come is LD Reynolds' passing remark, "His monastery seems to have died with him," in: Reynolds and NG Wilson, Scribes & Scholars, 2nd edition, Oxford, p 73.
In his long, long retirement, besides looking after his monastery, Cassiodorus wrote several works, which can be divided into the historical-political and the theological-grammatical. One of the latter, the Institutiones, is his best-known work, and one of his chief claims for being foremost among the preservers of Classical Latin literature, for it argued that a good education included a thorough study of the Classics.
Besides the Institutiones, which was much-copied and much-used during the Middle Ages, Cassiodorus owned a large library of pagan Latin literature, and copies of these pagan works were spread to other European monasteries along with Cassiodorus' proposals about good education.
It is a sign that knowledge of Greek was dying out in the Catholic West in Cassiodorus' time, that he saw the need to translate the Jewish Antiquities of Josephus, and the ecclesiastical histories of Theodoret, Sozomen and Socrates, into Latin.
One thing which makes Cassiodorus' efforts to preserve ancient literature especially remarkable is the time in which he lived and wrote and oversaw the multiplication of Classical manuscripts: it was a time when Classical literature in general was dying out, partly being destroyed in Dark Age wars, and partly being passed by in favor of Christian literature, as has been dramatically shown in the many palimpsested Classical texts discovered since the late 18th century. It is hard to find anyone prepared to actually praise Cassiodorus as an author; but the combination of his wealth and resources, his organizational skills (perhaps honed by his first career in public office?) and his love of pagan Latin literature, meant that he preserved many ancient authors at the very time when the work of many others was vanishing.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Dream Log: Horrible Literary World
I dreamed I was living in some nightmare version of New York City, visually somewhat like the Gotham of Tim Burton's Batman movies.
It was dank and dirty and rusty and it always seemed to be night.
Inside this horrible city was a horrible university full of horrible would-be writers. Whether the relevant department was called the English Department or the Creative Writing Department or something else, it was filled with thousands of would-be writers. Many of them were middle-aged or downright old, and had been students in this same department for decades, ever since they had been undergraduates of conventional age. Like ghosts, they haunted the dim hallways and auditoriums of this university department which was full of Burton-esque shadows. In the entire dream I did not see a single professor or other instructor.
The fatal flaw in this writers' program -- a fatal flaw for the students, perhaps a vital method to an evil administration bent on keeping enrollment and revenue high -- was that it was completely self-referential: the student-writers' reputations were created and raised and lowered entirely within the department itself. None of them cared anymore what anyone wrote or said outside of this nightmarish university building (yet another one of those huge buildings which often appear in my dreams). And presumably, relatively few people outside of the department cared much about what they wrote.
And yet, for some reason, I was there, inside that building, among them. I was neither enrolled nor employed at the university. I did not plan to stay there long. Why was I there at all? I'm not sure.
Many of the students had dopplegaengers of similar height and proportions made of brightly-colored plastic. The art department whose students made these sculptures and installed them in the hallways and classrooms of this department were one of the few interactions of the outside world with this place. The student-writers who'd had a sculpture of themselves made generally seemed to take it as an honor. But I found the sculptures to be especially grotesque, and I wondered whether they had intentionally been made that way, as an attempt to wake the writers up, and warn them that they were living in a nightmare, and that they should flee.
My activity while I was there seemed to center mainly around fighting, physically fighting, with some of the biggest and strongest male students, in order to try to get them to release hoards of books they had stolen from the department library. At some point it occurred to me that this was a rather strange endeavor, since, if I succeeded in releasing the stolen books back into general circulation among the student-writers, it would tend to encourage them to think more favorably of this place, when what I thought I should be doing was was to warn them and cause them to flee to places where there was day-time part of the day and people were not obsessed with meaningless literary distinction; and yet I kept fighting. I fought like Batman, only with my fists, not with any weapons. (I should say: like some versions of Batman. In other versions he uses guns.)
I took a break from the fighting to catch my breath, sitting on a teacher's desk and looking at some of the plastic sculptures. They really were hideous. I asked myself why I was fighting. In waking life, I haven't been in a fight since 1978, and I'm proud of having stopped fighting. (Not that I was in so many fights before that. I can think of 3.)
Then, all of a sudden, I realized that the sculptures were ugly in order to warn anyone, including me, to just get out of this place, that we could only help these student-writers from outside. Then I woke up.
It was dank and dirty and rusty and it always seemed to be night.
Inside this horrible city was a horrible university full of horrible would-be writers. Whether the relevant department was called the English Department or the Creative Writing Department or something else, it was filled with thousands of would-be writers. Many of them were middle-aged or downright old, and had been students in this same department for decades, ever since they had been undergraduates of conventional age. Like ghosts, they haunted the dim hallways and auditoriums of this university department which was full of Burton-esque shadows. In the entire dream I did not see a single professor or other instructor.
The fatal flaw in this writers' program -- a fatal flaw for the students, perhaps a vital method to an evil administration bent on keeping enrollment and revenue high -- was that it was completely self-referential: the student-writers' reputations were created and raised and lowered entirely within the department itself. None of them cared anymore what anyone wrote or said outside of this nightmarish university building (yet another one of those huge buildings which often appear in my dreams). And presumably, relatively few people outside of the department cared much about what they wrote.
And yet, for some reason, I was there, inside that building, among them. I was neither enrolled nor employed at the university. I did not plan to stay there long. Why was I there at all? I'm not sure.
Many of the students had dopplegaengers of similar height and proportions made of brightly-colored plastic. The art department whose students made these sculptures and installed them in the hallways and classrooms of this department were one of the few interactions of the outside world with this place. The student-writers who'd had a sculpture of themselves made generally seemed to take it as an honor. But I found the sculptures to be especially grotesque, and I wondered whether they had intentionally been made that way, as an attempt to wake the writers up, and warn them that they were living in a nightmare, and that they should flee.
My activity while I was there seemed to center mainly around fighting, physically fighting, with some of the biggest and strongest male students, in order to try to get them to release hoards of books they had stolen from the department library. At some point it occurred to me that this was a rather strange endeavor, since, if I succeeded in releasing the stolen books back into general circulation among the student-writers, it would tend to encourage them to think more favorably of this place, when what I thought I should be doing was was to warn them and cause them to flee to places where there was day-time part of the day and people were not obsessed with meaningless literary distinction; and yet I kept fighting. I fought like Batman, only with my fists, not with any weapons. (I should say: like some versions of Batman. In other versions he uses guns.)
I took a break from the fighting to catch my breath, sitting on a teacher's desk and looking at some of the plastic sculptures. They really were hideous. I asked myself why I was fighting. In waking life, I haven't been in a fight since 1978, and I'm proud of having stopped fighting. (Not that I was in so many fights before that. I can think of 3.)
Then, all of a sudden, I realized that the sculptures were ugly in order to warn anyone, including me, to just get out of this place, that we could only help these student-writers from outside. Then I woke up.
Friday, March 6, 2020
Kipling and Racism
Time [...] pardoned Kipling and his views. -- W H Auden
Forgiveness is one thing, but let's try not to completely forget.
Last night, I listened to an episode of Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time" radio series, the episode which deals with Rudyard Kipling. Early in this episode, Professor Daniel Karlin describes Kipling's earliest memories as having been of an "astonishing multicultural" nature. Citing Kipling's posthumously-published memoir Something of Myself, Karlin mentioned that the book begins with an invocation to Allah, then affectionately mentions a Catholic and a Hindu servant who raised him and says that his first language was not English, but Hindi. Karlin seemed convinced that this was enough to prove that the notion that Kipling had had something to do with English nationalism, was quite absurd. By this point, 4 minutes into the broadcast, I was already half-convinced that Karlin was absurd, and the rest of the episode took care of the other half. Kipling's nationalism is as plain to see as Karlin's blindness to Kipling's nationalism.
I was surprised by this description of Kipling's earliest memories. I was reminded once again of the fact that the well-known Eurocentric bigot Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. But I was reminded in part because a video relating in some way to Dawkins was linked to the right of where "In Our Time" was playing on YouTube on my computer screen. I paused the episode of "In Our Time," informed YouTube that I did not wish to see the link to the Dawkins video, and returned to the radio show.
And although I learned all sorts of amazing things about Kipling, from his friendship with Henry James to his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, I heard what seemed to me to be very, very little about Kipiling's racism. Bragg mentioned Gandhi's comment that what Kipling called the "White Man's Burden" was actually a yoke which whites put around the necks of non-whites. And someone called Kipling's views on race "horrible, horrible, horrible," but if I remember correctly, they did so in the subordinate clause of a sentence.
And for a while I was puzzled, thinking about Kipling's undeniable artistic achievements and his experiences in India and his racism, and Dawkins' undeniable scientific achievements and his birthplace in Kenya and his racism.
And then suddenly I remembered all of the Confederate officers who had been raised by black mammies, and all of the Southern men before and since the Civil War likewise raised by black slaves or servants whom they naturally loved liked mothers, as late as the 1960's because in the 1980's I knew some of them when I was a student in Knoxville, Tennessee, and for all I know they might still have mammies in some publicity-shy corners of the South.
So, of course, there would be nothing at all unusual for a Protestant English boy in Kipling's time to be raised by Catholics and Hindus in India, or for a boy in Dawkins' time to grow up in Nairobi, and still somehow not be enlightened by it. I recalled the Confederate slave-owners who believed that they were good to their slaves and that their slaves loved them, and regarded runaway slaves as anomalies, and who were absolutely astonished when, during the Civil War, all of their slaves ran away and never came back. I recalled that I already knew all of this. And that I knew that most of the Englishmen in India in Kipling's time and in Kenya in Dawkins' time were just as surrounded by non-whites as Kipling and Dawkins, without it having automatically enlightened them as to the racist nature of the British Empire.
And then I thought about how often the British monarchy were discussed on "In Our Time," without the tone of discussion coming anywhere near John Lydon's "God save the Queen/The fascist regime/They've made you a moron/A potential H-bomb." They've also made Melvyn Bragg the life peer Baron Bragg, of Wigton in the County of Cumbria.
We see what we want to, and very often blind ourselves to the rest. It's a notable achievement when someone can stand up against a political system which benefits them -- a pre-Civil-War Southern planter, or a pre-Civil-War New York cotton merchant, against slavery; an Empire-era English gentlemen in India against British rule; an Alaskan receiving an annual Permanent Fund Dividend check against global warming; a professor of literature against the messy aspects of a great writer's biography, etc.
A notable achievement, and one which we must repeat unceasingly. You too, Melvyn.
Forgiveness is one thing, but let's try not to completely forget.
Last night, I listened to an episode of Melvyn Bragg's "In Our Time" radio series, the episode which deals with Rudyard Kipling. Early in this episode, Professor Daniel Karlin describes Kipling's earliest memories as having been of an "astonishing multicultural" nature. Citing Kipling's posthumously-published memoir Something of Myself, Karlin mentioned that the book begins with an invocation to Allah, then affectionately mentions a Catholic and a Hindu servant who raised him and says that his first language was not English, but Hindi. Karlin seemed convinced that this was enough to prove that the notion that Kipling had had something to do with English nationalism, was quite absurd. By this point, 4 minutes into the broadcast, I was already half-convinced that Karlin was absurd, and the rest of the episode took care of the other half. Kipling's nationalism is as plain to see as Karlin's blindness to Kipling's nationalism.
I was surprised by this description of Kipling's earliest memories. I was reminded once again of the fact that the well-known Eurocentric bigot Richard Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. But I was reminded in part because a video relating in some way to Dawkins was linked to the right of where "In Our Time" was playing on YouTube on my computer screen. I paused the episode of "In Our Time," informed YouTube that I did not wish to see the link to the Dawkins video, and returned to the radio show.
And although I learned all sorts of amazing things about Kipling, from his friendship with Henry James to his friendship with Theodore Roosevelt, I heard what seemed to me to be very, very little about Kipiling's racism. Bragg mentioned Gandhi's comment that what Kipling called the "White Man's Burden" was actually a yoke which whites put around the necks of non-whites. And someone called Kipling's views on race "horrible, horrible, horrible," but if I remember correctly, they did so in the subordinate clause of a sentence.
And for a while I was puzzled, thinking about Kipling's undeniable artistic achievements and his experiences in India and his racism, and Dawkins' undeniable scientific achievements and his birthplace in Kenya and his racism.
And then suddenly I remembered all of the Confederate officers who had been raised by black mammies, and all of the Southern men before and since the Civil War likewise raised by black slaves or servants whom they naturally loved liked mothers, as late as the 1960's because in the 1980's I knew some of them when I was a student in Knoxville, Tennessee, and for all I know they might still have mammies in some publicity-shy corners of the South.
So, of course, there would be nothing at all unusual for a Protestant English boy in Kipling's time to be raised by Catholics and Hindus in India, or for a boy in Dawkins' time to grow up in Nairobi, and still somehow not be enlightened by it. I recalled the Confederate slave-owners who believed that they were good to their slaves and that their slaves loved them, and regarded runaway slaves as anomalies, and who were absolutely astonished when, during the Civil War, all of their slaves ran away and never came back. I recalled that I already knew all of this. And that I knew that most of the Englishmen in India in Kipling's time and in Kenya in Dawkins' time were just as surrounded by non-whites as Kipling and Dawkins, without it having automatically enlightened them as to the racist nature of the British Empire.
And then I thought about how often the British monarchy were discussed on "In Our Time," without the tone of discussion coming anywhere near John Lydon's "God save the Queen/The fascist regime/They've made you a moron/A potential H-bomb." They've also made Melvyn Bragg the life peer Baron Bragg, of Wigton in the County of Cumbria.
We see what we want to, and very often blind ourselves to the rest. It's a notable achievement when someone can stand up against a political system which benefits them -- a pre-Civil-War Southern planter, or a pre-Civil-War New York cotton merchant, against slavery; an Empire-era English gentlemen in India against British rule; an Alaskan receiving an annual Permanent Fund Dividend check against global warming; a professor of literature against the messy aspects of a great writer's biography, etc.
A notable achievement, and one which we must repeat unceasingly. You too, Melvyn.
Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Dream Log: Nervous Speechwriter in NYC
I dreamed that I was living in New York City --
-- and that I had joined a firm which wrote speeches and essays for non-commercial institutions. Sort of like ad-copy writing, but with less bad karma. I was given the assignment to write a speech on the history of an entity called The Lower East Side Women's Help Foundation. I was also assigned, in this case, to deliver the speech. I went into my boss' office and said that I had recently gotten into trouble for mansplaining, and that I was worried it might happen again on this project.
"Are you planning to explain their current day-to-day operations to them?" my boss asked.
"No, I'm planning to write about the history of the organization, as they've asked."
"Then I don't see a great risk of accidental mansplaining here," my boss said. "Look," she added, "I know these people. They're good people. You'll like them. They'll like you. Get out of my office."
Despite my boss' kind reassurance, and despite my research into the organization having shown me that I probably would like these people, the day of the speech came, and I was very nervous.
I was at the lectern of an auditorium on the ground floor of The Lower East Side Women's Help foundation. The auditorium was full of cheerful, well-dressed women. One of them knew me, and ran up to say hello. "I'm very nervous," I told her. "I've recently gotten into trouble because of mansplaining."
"Let me see what you got," she said, grabbed the pile of paper on which my speech was typed and paged through it. "Looks fine, she said. "Don't be afraid of these people. They're on your side. I truly think the worst that could happen is they'll notice you're nervous and they'll think it's cute. Believe me, they've sat through speeches much worse than that." And she gave me a reassuring punch to the shoulder and returned to her seat.
After a mercifully short introduction, I began my speech: "The Lower East Side Women's Help Foundation was formed in 1862, and was originally called New York City Ladies for Action." This fact caused a ripple of laughter among the audience, while some others looked around, seemingly wondering what was funny. I relaxed a bit, and continued: "Some women in New York had noticed that hospitals were being hard-pressed to treat all of the wounded Union soldiers in their care..." and then I woke up.
-- and that I had joined a firm which wrote speeches and essays for non-commercial institutions. Sort of like ad-copy writing, but with less bad karma. I was given the assignment to write a speech on the history of an entity called The Lower East Side Women's Help Foundation. I was also assigned, in this case, to deliver the speech. I went into my boss' office and said that I had recently gotten into trouble for mansplaining, and that I was worried it might happen again on this project.
"Are you planning to explain their current day-to-day operations to them?" my boss asked.
"No, I'm planning to write about the history of the organization, as they've asked."
"Then I don't see a great risk of accidental mansplaining here," my boss said. "Look," she added, "I know these people. They're good people. You'll like them. They'll like you. Get out of my office."
Despite my boss' kind reassurance, and despite my research into the organization having shown me that I probably would like these people, the day of the speech came, and I was very nervous.
I was at the lectern of an auditorium on the ground floor of The Lower East Side Women's Help foundation. The auditorium was full of cheerful, well-dressed women. One of them knew me, and ran up to say hello. "I'm very nervous," I told her. "I've recently gotten into trouble because of mansplaining."
"Let me see what you got," she said, grabbed the pile of paper on which my speech was typed and paged through it. "Looks fine, she said. "Don't be afraid of these people. They're on your side. I truly think the worst that could happen is they'll notice you're nervous and they'll think it's cute. Believe me, they've sat through speeches much worse than that." And she gave me a reassuring punch to the shoulder and returned to her seat.
After a mercifully short introduction, I began my speech: "The Lower East Side Women's Help Foundation was formed in 1862, and was originally called New York City Ladies for Action." This fact caused a ripple of laughter among the audience, while some others looked around, seemingly wondering what was funny. I relaxed a bit, and continued: "Some women in New York had noticed that hospitals were being hard-pressed to treat all of the wounded Union soldiers in their care..." and then I woke up.
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