Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Caroline Dale Snedeker’s Seth Way: A Romance of New Harmony, which I enjoyed so much that I now want to visit New Harmony, which conveniently is within my own state. Robert Owen attempted to found a utopian community in New Harmony, which he didn’t quite manage, but he did draw together the biggest conglomeration of scientists in the entire United States outside of Philadelphia. I think that’s pretty good for a little town in a state that was less than a decade old at the time.

I also finished Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations (in the form of a recent translation by C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks, entitled The Emperor’s Handbook), which I chased down with a book about the modern practice of stoicism, Massimo Pigliucci’s How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life.

Now it must be said that Pigliucci is drawing mainly on Epictetus rather than Marcus Aurelius, so it’s entirely possible that Epictetus just emphasizes things really differently than Marcus, but it’s striking how much less gloomy Pigliucci’s stoicism is than Marcus’s. I don’t think he includes a single meditation as glum as Marcus’s “Everything disperses and vanishes like smoke, both the rememberer and the remembered,” which neatly includes two of Marcus’s favorite themes: the inevitability of death and the foolishness of chasing other people’s opinions, when in one hundred years those opinions and the people who held them will all be naught but dust.

Marcus also likes to remind himself of the cheering fact that suicide is always an option if life becomes too unbearable. This is very Roman. (In fact, I’m trying to think of an ancient Roman suicide that isn’t understood as heroic - you’ve got Lucretia, Seneca, Brutus, random slaves who choked themselves on sponges or cast themselves beneath the wheels of carts rather than become gladiators - but I’m coming up blank.)

But here’s a meditation I liked: “Plainly, no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you’re now in.”

Now this is not plain at all - who among us is in a situation well-suited to the practice of philosophy? - but at the same time totally true. There’s no better time to practice philosophy because there is no other time, period. We have no control over past or future, only now.

Also I just like to imagine Marcus Aurelius repeating this to himself while, say, riding through the rain, with water dripping down his neck under his armor, as he and his army head to yet another battle at some godforsaken corner of the empire. He’d rather be home reading BUT NO, the Germans have attacked YET AGAIN and duty calls. “Plainly,” he says to himself, his teeth gritted so they won’t chatter, his thighs probably chafing from endless days in the saddle, “no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you’re now in.”

What I’m Reading Now

On missroserose’s recommendation, I’m listening to M. T. Anderson’s Symphony for the City of the Dead, A++ would recommend. It’s a book about the Soviet Union (admittedly I am an easy sell for books about the Soviet Union), as seen through the lens of the life of the composer Shostakovich and his Seventh Symphony, which he composed during the Siege of Leningrad. Totally epic! And highly recommended as an audiobook in particular: not only is Anderson a good reader, but the format allows for excerpts from Shostakovich’s work, which is invaluable in a book about music.

I’ve also started If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, which is a weird book. It’s about a reader (“you”) in quest of a book, only instead of ever getting to read a book, a variety of printing problems and translation issues mean that instead you keep getting the first chapter of one book and then another… which is frustrating because most of them are the beginnings of interesting books, but frustrating in a satisfying way?

And! At last I have the opportunity to finish Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ Gypsy Breynton quartet! (These days this series is mainly known as a precursor to Little Women in its tomboyish heroine, but it was pretty popular in its time.) I’ve begun Gypsy’s Sowing and Reaping, which is about Gypsy’s attempt to save her brother Tom from the evil influence of college: tobacco, and cribbing, and slang. There’s something irrepressibly entertaining about the nineteenth century horror of slang.

However, this third book does seem weaker than the first two: it’s focused on Gypsy’s attempts to keep her brother on the straight and narrow rather than her own flaws, and also it doesn’t have any interestingly weird incidents like the first book where Gypsy sleepwalks into a canoe and casts off (still sleeping) and wakes up to find herself floating in the middle of the lake.

What I Plan to Read Next

Symphony for the City of the Dead has inspired me to search out more audiobooks about composers, if they exist and if my library has them. Recommendations welcome!

Comments

[landofnowhere]

I read the suicides of Cassius and Antony as idiotic rather than heroic: they both fall into the pattern of "Someone I love is dead, let's kill myself! Wait, what, they *aren't* dead?"

[kore]

Yeah, I remember the description in Plutarch of Antony being hauled up to Cleopatra's boudoir on the outside of the tower? in a kind of basket/corset so his guts wouldn't fall out before he got there, which sounds undignified. I think Cleopatra got major props for being a woman and Foreign and yet Dying Nobly, tho.

[landofnowhere]

Looking this up now:

"And when she had thus got him in and laid him down, she rent her garments over him, beat and tore her breasts with her hands, wiped off some of his blood upon her face, and called him master, husband, and imperator; indeed, she almost forgot her own ills in her pity for his. But Antony stopped her lamentations and asked for a drink of wine, either because he was thirsty, or in the hope of a speedier release. "

I wonder if he wanted the wine because he was so embarrassed about all this?

[kore]

In seminar one time someone pointed out that Antony is sort of a more 'modern' figure because he dies for love -- not for dignity, or duty to the state, or private ideals (Sokrates). Which seems to render him kind of embarrassing to Romans. Their idea of Badass of the Week was more like Scaevola ("the trick is not minding it") and that woman, I forget whose wife she was, who was like "Oh husband, see how easy it is to depart this life, even I a weak and feeble woman can do it" and then I think he also stabbed himself out of shame he hadn't been first.

[kore]

Also I just like to imagine Marcus Aurelius repeating this to himself while, say, riding through the rain, with water dripping down his neck under his armor, as he and his army head to yet another battle at some godforsaken corner of the empire. He’d rather be home reading BUT NO, the Germans have attacked YET AGAIN and duty calls. “Plainly,” he says to himself, his teeth gritted so they won’t chatter, his thighs probably chafing from endless days in the saddle, “no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you’re now in.”

*cracks up*

[osprey_archer]

It certainly puts my own problems into perspective. No matter how bad things get I will never have to spend the rest of my life tramping around the hinterlands at the head of a Roman army.

[kore]

Water leaking into your caligae....or would they have worn socks in wherever it was, Moesia?

[thisbluespirit]

Also I just like to imagine Marcus Aurelius repeating this to himself while, say, riding through the rain, with water dripping down his neck under his armor, as he and his army head to yet another battle at some godforsaken corner of the empire. He’d rather be home reading BUT NO, the Germans have attacked YET AGAIN and duty calls. “Plainly,” he says to himself, his teeth gritted so they won’t chatter, his thighs probably chafing from endless days in the saddle, “no situation is better suited for the practice of philosophy than the one you’re now in.”

Ha, that is just great!

Also, yes, Romans and stabbing themselves, it is just a thing. Romans/knives. Also: nothing says I love you like killing each other!

(I watched an old BBC drama set in the English Civil War once and the Roundheads break the Royalists' siege of their house and one of the daughters is going: "Shall we kill ourselves?" and Father Royalist just goes: "No, we are not Romans!" I'd just been watching I Claudius and Julius Caesar before it so I got where he was coming from entirely.)

[osprey_archer]

I have always thought that it was a sign of Brutus's true affection for Julius Caesar that he stabbed him. He loved him too much to let him become a dictator! Surely one of the kindest things one friend can do for another.

Also this last bit about the Royalists seems like the 100% likely outcome of giving one's children an education steeped in the classics. The barbarians have broken down the gates! Of course the only right path is suicide.

[thisbluespirit]

He loved him too much to let him become a dictator! Surely one of the kindest things one friend can do for another.

*nods* It's all about speaking truth to authority. And not because your best friend who is really into you talked you into it because he was dead jealous.

For any good Roman, nothing say I love you like a nice stabbing or poisoning. It shows true affection and honour! Nothing can convince me otherwise. Suicide is also up there next to it. Mere words mean nothing!

He probably didn't educate his daughters in the classics, that was why they made the mistake, but he obviously would have been and so was aware of typical Roman flaws and not about to emulate them in modern times like the 17th C. (It was a bit of a funny 1980s thing, not as good as a solid 1970s thing, but giving Julian Glover a line like that made up for everything, even the obvious nighttime filming that was actually day. Well, having Julian Glover in things is always a good move, especially when he gets to be sarcastic instead of evil, instead of evil and sarcastic.)

[osprey_archer]

Brutus's fatal mistake was being so good and noble himself that he couldn't recognize that Cassius was a snake in the grass acting from base motives. He thought Cassius also had the best interests of the Republic at heart! It must have been a bitter day when he realized that Cassius was acting out of jealousy of Caesar's power and Caesar's closeness with Brutus.

The daughters knew enough about the classics to know that proper Romans would have killed themselves, at least. Perhaps it's a case where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[thisbluespirit]

BUt all Cassius wanted was for Brutus to hug him and love him more often, so Brutus should have just been less stoic and reserved and it would all have been okay and no one would have had to get murdered. Or stab each other/themselves.

But it wouldn't have been very Roman, so what can you do?


I think the daughter had just learned how to be melodramatic in a frock, good for pretty much all ages from c.1500-1900 when in a period drama.

[osprey_archer]

Would Cassius have still loved Brutus if Brutus had been less stoic and reserved? I think he might have just moved on to the next stoic, reserved, perfectly Roman unattainable guy. Stabbing was inevitable.

[thisbluespirit]

Stabbing was inevitable.

As it so often is, alas. *nods*

[konstantya]

Drive-by comment to say If On a Winter's Night a Traveler! I started reading that *cough* years ago now, and never got around to finishing it (not out of lack of interest; I'm pretty sure life just got in the way). But this serves as a reminder that I should get back to it--or perhaps even start over at this point, heh. "Frustrating, but frustrating in a satisfying way?" is a good description of it, I think--and I also think the question mark is key. XP The unusual structure (and plot?--such as it is) doesn't exactly make for an easy or comfortable read, but the challenge is intriguing all the same.

[osprey_archer]

I also abandoned it the first time I tried to read it, also because life got in the way rather than a lack of interest. It's a book that sort of invites the reader to abandon it anyway - all these first chapters that never go anywhere.

[konstantya]

True, true... While I do know that life got in the way in my first attempt, I also know from experience that if I'd really wanted to, I could have found/made time to finish it. A second attempt would likely (hopefully?) be more successful since I know exactly what I'm getting myself into.