classics digests, reflections and reviews
I’m finally starting to read “The Divine Comedy” (translated by Allen Mandelbaum) with my GR group. Departing from my usual practice of writing one review at the end, I’ll be jotting down my thoughts, findings and impressions as I read along, in a running series of posts, starting with this one. Mandelbaum translated both Aeneid and Divine Comedy, and received awards for both. No other translator of DC has that […]
Read moreThe Emperor Has No Clothes The overall impression or feeling I had after reading Part I is perhaps the same as that of the little child in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale: bland disappointment after being seduced into high expectations, and a nauseating sense of disgust. Is this the best you could conjure up, Herr Goethe? The “representative man”, one who is supposed to be the equal of the Spirit, […]
Read more“The Power of Darkness” is perhaps one of the darkest of Tolstoy’s works, because it depicts the most hideous of human nature. One can hardly believe that the characters are human beings, not some wild beasts, or those driven mad by the gods in the Greek tragedies. C.S.Lewis might have been inspired by “The First Distiller” in writing “The Screwtape Letters”, as it relates the story of how an imp […]
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The Conservative It is generally supposed the Conservatives are usually old people, and that those in favour of change are the young. That is not quite correct. Usually Conservatives are young people: those who want to live but who do not think about how to live, and have not time to think, and therefore take as a model for themselves a way of life that they have seen. His Wife […]
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“The Bacchae” won the first prize in the City Dionysia festival in Athens in 405 BC, for good reason I suppose. The structure, plot, and character development are among the best of Euripides. William Arrowsmith, the translator, compared it to “Oedipus the King”, “Agamemnon” and “King Lear”, as one of the greatest tragedies. Truth be told, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. For example, is there anything […]
Read moreAll three Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, have written plays related to Oresteia, a tragic tale of the seemingly relentless misfortunes of the House of Atreus, descendants of Tantalus. What distinguishes Aeschylus’ trilogy from the others, imo, is the use of the mystic character Cassandra and the depiction of the Eumenides, both are essential to the main theme of the trilogy, namely justice, from executing vengeance to trial by […]
Read moreQuotes: “Deceit was the plotter, Lust the slayer, two dread parents of a dreadful phantom, whether it was god or mortal that did this deed.” And then think what manner of days I pass, when I see Aegisthus sitting on my father’s throne; when I look on him wearing the very robes which my father wore and pouring libations at the hearth where he killed him; and when I see […]
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