Tonight

[alt_sinistra]

Just a reminder that I’ll be up on the tower from six to half-eight or so for those doing their observations of the Draconids. The weather looks a little iffy, but I think we should have a brief run of clear skies in there. Tomorrow, I'll be up for my usual seven to nine office hours.

7ths years: just a reminder that your final project proposals are due on Thursday. Tonight or tomorrow would be a good time for last questions.

1st years: I’ve had several questions about your essays. Don’t worry: these early assignments are designed to give you a feel for my expectations, and give me a sense of where to focus our attention. We’ll be talking further in class about both, and you’ll get detailed notes as well.

Comments

Re: Private message to Antosha

[alt_antonin]

Dearest,

I note that was not, precisely, an answer. Any particular sort of thought, or just the sort that occupies one at three in the morning? (You needn't answer if it's the sort of thing that needs a bit more thinking upon before maturing, of course. Or if it's best held private.)

As for the rest -- I am at your disposal. And yes, I suppose I do need something to occupy my summer -- though I had assumed Our Lord would have some task to occupy me. We shall see!

And Mr Marvolo has messaged me asking about our tactics, so I shall go be professorial.

Yours,
T

Re: Private message to Antosha

[alt_sinistra]

Tosha -

Fixed stars. I... No, better to talk through it a bit.

Let me frame it this way. Imagine a hypothetical trashy romance novel, if you will. Certain known character types. Dashing - and skillful - her gentleman, somewhat battered from previous wars. A woman past the first bloom of springtime youth, apparently cut from the 'clever and bookish' heroine mold. Various secondary characters: siblings and friends and that cast of faces designed to allow the author to share some necessary piece of plot.

He and she fall - through chances of fate and choice - into each other's spheres. There are the usual challenges, the ups and downs. Some do not think her worthy of him. Some think he has not settled from the rakish behaviour of his past. It changes friendships, some, for both of them.

And then, one day, there is a duel. (I suppose this must be one of those Napoleonic era romances. Surely not medieval.) She watches. And she is taken, all of a sudden, with a sense of this gentleman that is both a surprise and not a surprise. Seeing him in a new light, as it were, that fierceness and sureness and what is hiding beneath the surface.

Something far older, far more primal - well, that is the nature of good romance novels, even the trashy ones. To play with the layers of human interaction and reveal and obscure them in turn. To illuminate desire and choice and action, all at once.

It is not a bad thing, this discovery. And it is not even unexpected by our heroine - well, she reads romance novels, and she knows enough of the reality that seeds them. (For she truly is no young and inexperienced maiden.) But it is a thing to think about, when one finds oneself the morning after the climax of the novel, more sure than ever that the happily ever after is, in fact, a well-rounded goal.

There. Is that explanatory enough without being too indelicate and personal? As I said. Thinking. Though now I think I might have a way to talk about it with Poppy on Wednesday, so thank you. (And on the whole, I would rather find I am living in a romance novel than in most other genres. So I suppose there's that.)

A, thoughtful.

Re: Private message to Antosha

[alt_antonin]

Little star,

There; have now provided Mr Marvolo with perhaps more detail than he was expecting in answer to his entirely perceptive and insightful question, tidied up a few more loose ends of correspondence, and am once more at your disposal.

On my mind, as I prepare my lecture on history that must, by its very nature, touch some on what the people of the time believed, and motivated by the central theological question of the age: the first line of the Gospel according to John, as we have received it handed down to us: ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος. Rendered most often in English since the days of King John's translators as "in the beginning was the Word", but the word used in Greek for 'Word' is, to my ear, best rendered not as 'word' but as Story, in Platonic form. After all, what is history but understanding the stories each group of people have told themselves? A little bit of narrative awareness can go quite a long way in one's life. To be human is to be a storytelling animal, searching for meaning and pattern amongst a sea of interconnected events. The question of individual stories is subsumed in the nature of Story, and we are left to try to find meaning in the pages of our lives.

As we are speaking hypothetically and literarily, I suppose the questions we readers (those of us who are so drawn to stories) must ask include whether our heroine is much surprised by her revelations, and whether her realisations are supported by the text. And if they are -- which I believe them to be -- then the nature of Story must dictate they were there all along, and she was simply not conscious of the hallmarks and harbingers she was seeing.

Does that help you, in your deconstruction of the text? It is an ancient enough story, and one that has been told thousands of times before -- but of course, each iteration has the capacity to be young again, and new.

Philosophically,
T

Re: Private message to Antosha

[alt_sinistra]

Toshenka -

Goodness. That... Yes. (And before you ask, Raz has been asleep some time, I have been curled up on his couch reading your books, and I am going to go join him once I finish this. You should find your rest as well, if you have not already: this is certainly no crisis, and can keep. Promise. Do please, tell me if I ever presume too much on your time or energy.)

Is this not why working in the original tongue is so powerful? That one loses - well, in my set of symbols and metaphors, I talk about how we lose sight of the cosmos, if we look only at a piece of it, through a lens.

And I mean that very much in the original Greek sense of the word: I've a lengthy lecture of my own on that topic. That our universe is a vast complicated toy - a thing of sheer delight - we can examine, a model of order and connection that meet and dance in all manner of amazing ways. That it lives and breathes and changes, and is not static and locked and stagnant. Look only at the pieces, and nothing makes sense. Ahem. I will stop now, or I'll be here all night.

That question of meaning, too. I am beginning to come to a theory of weddings as stories people tell about their lives, and the expectations of stories that other people want to see from one. (Ask me again in, oh, six months to the day, and I expect it will be a far better developed thesis.)

Back to our hypothetical novel, I think. You are quite right that each iteration has the chance to be new again. But the deconstruction I am struggling with - heroine watches masterful gentleman and her love and interest is expanded - is a struggle not for what is revealed about him, but what it reveals to the heroine about herself. (Apparently, Our Author has been setting up the denouement adequately and placing hints of what will come sufficiently through the text. All hail The Sensible Author.)

In short, our heroine is surprised that she - having been the bookish and clever type - was quite as moved by the display of prowess as she was. Not upset in the slightest, mind you. Pleased. Delighted. Reassured, even, in some ways. But with rather a sense of .. oh, back to my thesis about stories and weddings. People want to make one into symbols that suit their own stories, and this one is rather a cliche.

And so our heroine finds herself remarkably contented - for yes, delighted and pleased, and the gentleman is very fine indeed. But also a tad discombobulated. It will settle eventually, I am sure, but it - back to our conversation about the point at which one can or cannot avoid thinking about things - raises new thoughts that cannot readily be ignored. Pieces of one's own cosmos to which insufficient study has been given.

Though this conversation has helped rather a lot, so thank you. Your willing companion in philosophy,
A.