This one I would probably never have read if it hadn't been quoted at the beginning of Swallows and Amazons, which caused me to look it up. I remember being slightly disappointed when I found out he was only talking about reading a translation of Homer, and then still more disappointed when I tried to read the Iliad. (Hint: it's better when you're not seven.)
And that's all I have today... I was going to post about going to see Dr E, but I find I need to think about it for another day.
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
John Keats
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
Oh, and also this:
Origami (2012) from ESMA MOVIES on Vimeo.
20 comments:
You...The Iliad...seven years old...
How, exactly, did you end up with a bloke like me? :)
Ha. I didn't actually read it! I looked at the first two pages and put it back on the shelf. I just wanted to see if it was as good as he apparently thought it was.
I just got lucky, I suppose.
lucky you ventured onto serial-killer infested moors, and got out of libraries ;)
It was considerably more exciting than the library! And continues to be to this day... :)
...I'm sure I could think of ways to make a library more exciting.
I only went in the school one to look at naked men in the medical dictionary... they weren't very appealing, but it was all I had!
Hmm...I feel sure you could too.
You should've tried the photography section.
My school didn't run to a photography section. It barely managed desks, most of the time - They still had ink-wells in them!
My school had ink wells too... and when my sister was in grade 2 and graduated to pens they were still using them!
I came across Homer in Roger Lancelyn Green's retellings which were a lot easier to get on with than Chapman!
Between him and Classics Illustrated comics I got a good education in great literature.
Tragic...and deeply unfair to those trying to learn naked men.
That video is amazingly beautiful and more than slightly terrifying.
My brother read the Iliad at about 7 or 8--not because he read Keats, or because he had heard of the Iliad any other way, but because it was a book, and it had been put on a high shelf. It wasn't there to keep it out of his reach, but on the assumption he wouldn't be wanting to read it just yet--I guess not having it easily available was reason enough to read it. :D (He liked it as an adventure story--presumably he just ignored anything he didn't understand at that point. :))
Too bad you didn't have National Geographic in your library. That was my source for nekkid -- or at least nearly nekkid -- people. And libraries aren't boring!
rsf
Libraries are magic. After all, they're full of books! :)
We had snow last night, enough to stick. (You don't need to plan a trip to NYC, though, Sherlock, it's also been raining and it's now a horrible, slushy mess.) Still, snow!
RSF - I think libraries being boring or not depends on funding and who else is in them. Our school library was crap.
There's a few libraries in London I swear don't contain any books. They are sadly being closed all over the place. I hope we keep one near us, for Sherlock.
We had snow too, but it's already vanishing, RR.
There's this modern fad with public libraries about trying to get to a magical "percentage of collection used" number that has way too many of them discarding most of the twentieth century. It makes me nuts. Libraries without books aren't much fun. And librarians who forget that you have to keep teaching people how to find what they're looking for don't have much success. But I still think libraries, in general aren't boring. And part of what makes them good is which patrons walk in and what they ask for. So visit your local library and be NOISY! (Well, metaphorically noisy, anyway.)
rsf
Well, funding has been slashed, too, which I think is criminal. How are you supposed to have an educated citizenry if there's nothing and nowhere for them to READ?
(We had over 4 inches in Central Park, but the streets are all shoveled and the slush is starting to melt.)
Every Friday morning we go to the library and read book after book after book, we have done since I finished work to have Tiny two and a half years ago and do you know on only three occasions have we seen other kids there, we must have been over 100 times and we're there about an hour each time and there's only ever me and mine. It makes me worry we'll lose the place to be honest :-(
Anonybob, if you know other parents who are home that time of day, start dragging them along. And ask the librarian if she's got a program that needs an audience. Most of my parents who come have to come after work, so Friday morning is pretty quiet as a rule.
rsf
Libraries aren't boring, no, but I think what L was suggesting would probably spice them up considerably.
The pub does not have the same lack of numbers RSF ;-) I'll be taking a new tiny baby with me come January so that will double the kiddy count, its going to be her mummies nap time AND I get to play with a baby. It's good to start them young I think :-)
I think what L was suggesting would probably spice them up considerably.
Indubitably. :D
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